Thursday 10 December 2009

Help needed. Good critiques of Heidegger & Techne/ology

Comrades, in the true spirit of creative commons I'm looking for some help from you guys.

For my course Advanced Theory & Method I am writing a 4-5,000 word essay on-I think-'The Ethics of Science' (title to be added after completion!)

So Heidegger is the obvious place to start here but I can only find Alex Callinicos' writings on Heidegger in Social Theory, and the odd, very good (not odd!), reference in The Resources of Critique (excellent btw). But he is not as disparaging-or at least his critique is somewhat limited-as I would have thought him to be.

Please could you point me in the right direction as to 1) what the heck Heidegger is talking about in his On the Question of Technology 2) a good counter argument (mind u, if I understood said essay I may be able to analyse it myself!) and 3) any other useful references for this topic.

Your help will be greatly appreciated and will earn u a wiki point.

Cheers.

6 comments:

Solomon's Mindfield said...

Got loads of good links for this query: From @bat020 See chapters 4 and 5 of Alain Badiou's Manifesto For Philosophy http://is.gd/5hPpa

From Richard Seymour: Adorno - http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-WN9hmEm2rYC&dq=adorno+the+jargon+of+authenticity&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=-2M9Lk628J&sig=R2y_A4GnBwy-tKjSEzBsbQAqT_k&hl=en&ei=eOsgS4jtEISy4Qaa2vjvCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBkQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=&f=false

From Marco Boffo: not quite a critique of heidegger, but still useful (maybe)

http://books.google.com/books?id=0wk9PAAACAAJ&dq=karl+marx+on+technology+and+alienation&cd=1

From Anna Strhan: Not straightforwardly Marxist (and not so much about techne either!), but might still be useful: http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=2480

Solomon's Mindfield said...

From Fabio: I saw your tweet.
I assume you know about this? http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1tZpsoCx0mIC&dq=heidegger+marxism&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=OOkgS9WvOeTRjAfdhaHYBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CBcQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=heidegger%20marxism&f=false

More on Adorno from @averyps and 3 more which r email attachments which I will post once on a normal computer.

Cheers guys (& girls obviously!). I now have loads to get through!

Anonymous said...

BadScience.net has good forums.

Daniel Taghioff said...

Hmm. Well if you want to critique the idea of "information" and the way it masks the unpredictability of human agency you can try here:

www.media-anthropology.net/taghioff_finding_subject.pdf

You can follow it up with Tsing's Critique of "Flow" in the introduction to Friction:

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7885.html

Then you can look at Bruno Latour to think about how collectives are made in practice.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Pdr6jbCGORsC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=Latour+Social+Nature&ots=hM1hmtTClX&sig=0fkfksFceQW_n7C6RfbUuPXF94c#v=onepage&q=Latour%20Social%20Nature&f=false


Then stop and think that a state is a technology, but also a state of mind.


Bourdieu is helpful here:

Bourdieu, P. (1999). Rethinking the state: Genesis and structure of the bureaucratic field. State/Culture: State-Formation After the Cultural Turn, 53-75.

Can send pdf if you like

Then, if you are still hung up on realist ontology, a bit of quantum physics can help you let go of hang ups around basic states of reality:

Rovelli, C. (1996). Relational quantum mechanics. International Journal of Theoretical Physics, 35(8), 1637-1678.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9609002

Have fun and be more than a machine...

Rosa Lichtenstein said...

The best overall critique of Heidegger is Paul Edwards, 'Heidegger's Confusions' (Prometheus Books, 2004).

This book shows just how confused Heidegger is -- to such an extent that it is difficult to see why anyone takes him seriously.

I have tried to show how and why traditional philosophy like Heidegger's, which tries to derive fundamental truths about reality from thought alone, will always be confused, here:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2012_01.htm

Graham said...

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/en/heartfield-james.htm - expelling the subject paves the way for putting technology in the driving seat of social change.