Globalization vis-a-vis technology: Towards a new vision of globalization in a globalizing world

Date of Publication

2001

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy

Subject Categories

Philosophy

College

College of Liberal Arts

Department/Unit

Philosophy

Abstract/Summary

This dissertation attempts to put up a new vision of globalization in a globalizing world in relation to Heidegger's concept of Gelassenheit.A deeper philosophical understanding of globalization vis-a-vis technology is viewed from the perspective of Martin Heidegger who expressed his critique of modern technology by the explosive situation of the turn-of-the-century Germany. Heidegger's concern with the technological mode of understanding things was intimately involved with his lifelong investigation of what is meant by the being of entities . His broad claim that the entire history of metaphysics from Plato to the present, is a trajectory into the age of technology, raises the issue of technology to the highest metaphysical and ontological status.Heidegger believes that modern technology was the inevitable outcome of modern history. The technological understanding of being (Gestell), the view that all things are nothing but raw materials (Bestand) for the ceaseless production and consumption, is merely the final stage in the history of productionist metaphysics. For Heidegger, modern technology has three interrelated meanings. First, the technology devices, systems and productive processes usually associated with industrialism. Secondly, the rationalistic, scientific, commercialist, utilitarian, anthropocentric secular worldview usually associated with modernity.

Finally, the contemporary mode of understanding or disclosing things which makes possible both industrial production processes and modernist worldview. Both industrialism and modernity are symptoms of the contemporary disclosure of things as new material to be used for expanding the scope of technology's power for its own sake. How such inauthentic working and producing had been transferred to the problems and issues of globalization were taken up in this paper. In the discussions of the technological advancements of globalization from Industrial Revolution to the present, we shall see how Heidegger marks a danger in the present age of technology (i.e., the homogenizing production processes of industrial technology that have destroyed the uniqueness of individual people and places).Yet for Heidegger, if humanity did not allow itself to be stamped by modern technology, history could not be brought to a completion and a new beginning would not be possible. This remarkable claim gives rise to two opposed ways of understanding Heidegger's response to technology. Heidegger insisted that the technological era could undergo a turning depending in part on the stand we take within it. In other words, it depends on our capacity for stepping back from the calculative thinking about entities into meditative thinking about being (Gelassenheit). Authentic producing in this new era, so Heidegger believes, is possible only if humanity were enabled to produce a work of art that would restore meaning to the things which had been made meaningless in the technological era. Heidegger has in mind what the Greeks originally meant by techne: a knowing and careful pro-ducing, a drawing-forth, a letting-be of things.

Abstract Format

html

Language

English

Format

Print

Accession Number

TG03099

Shelf Location

Archives, The Learning Commons, 12F Henry Sy Sr. Hall

Physical Description

291 leaves ; Computer print-out

Keywords

Technology; Industries; Material culture; Globalization

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