Outline the key similarities and differences between Heidegger and Marcuse in relation to the impact of modern technology

        This essay will seek to delineate the key similarities and differences between Martin Heidegger and Herbert Marcuse in connection to the impact of technology. To begin Heidegger had a simple upbringing in the countryside this lead him according to Macquarrie to have a “critical and almost prophetic stance in the technological age”. (page 1 John Macquarrie) Heidegger’s work focuses on the question of the meaning of Being, which directed him to see the essence of technology not actually being technical (Biemel pp134) just as the essence of the tree “is not itself a tree, which can be found among the other trees.” (pp13 Heidegger) Heidegger’s explanation of technology takes us further than other interpretations. He argues that modern science is in essence technological, which means what goes on in modern science corresponds to the truth of Being in the sense of Gestell.  As Gestell meant enframing, and framing in the dictionary describes as skeleton. (Biemel) 

        Herbert Marcuse on the other hand was a social critic; in 1932 he became a member of the institute for social research or the Frankfurt school. (Singer & Dunn) and was mainly associated with the New Left and youth movements of the 1960s and 1970. Andrew Freenbury supports Marcuse’s view that the technology is socially determined, in his article (Marcuse or Habermas: Two critiques of technology) Feenbury says that this is because the essence of technology is just like any other social institution, it is influenced by interest in public processes and as it to is subject to political critique. As a dialectical theory of rationality is based on the Frankfurt school. (Freeburg) Freeburg goes onto say, that Marcuse’s theory of technology is based on an ontological understanding of being. (Freenburg)

        The difference Heidegger has is that he saw television as “the peak of this abolition of every possibility of remoteness” (Heidegger) he claims that in technology seeming “abolition of remoteness” we become distant from ourselves and things around us. (Wrathall & Malpas) they go on to say technology is, as Heidegger acknowledges, a mode of disclosedness or revealing, its particular en-framing of things. Thus Heidegger writes of the essence of technology that it ”conceals that revealing which, in the sense of poiesis, lets what presences come forth into appearance….The coming to presence of technology threatens revealing, threatens it with the possibility that all revealing will be consumed by ordering and that everything will present itself only in the unconcealedness of standing-reserve.” (Heidegger) technology threatens the possibility of such conjoining. It is apparent that spatiality plays an important role both in the Heideggerian critique of technology and in Heidegger’s account of that being in the world which we can also refer to as dwelling. This means space plays an important role, and has to do with the structure of disclosededness. An important difference to acknowledge is that Heidegger claimed technology can get out of hand and that we should turn away from it. According to Heidegger science and technology have helped perpetuate this distorted view of the world, into so many objects to be manipulated and consumed. (Singer & Dunn) To add he used art especially readings of poetry to combat what he saw as the negative affects of modern western culture. As the process of artistic creation differs from that of manufactured work. Heidegger saw technology as reflecting human intentions whereas art reflects the ways in which human intones interact with the non human world. Thus artist can become Beings, as art was truth and therefore saw science as lacking truth. “What matters to this mindfulness throughout is not a description and elucidation of these sciences but rather the consolidation of the abandonment of being that sciences have enacted and which has been enacted in them-in short, of the lack of truth in all science.” (pp100) and so Heidegger goes on to say we must be mindful of science. Beginning with our Being, we can then proceed to the questioning of technology. "Questioning builds a way… a way of thinking." Heidegger believes that we must have a free relationship with technology in order to explore it effectively. This relationship can be free only if it opens our Being to the essence of technology. Essence, for Heidegger, means more than just ‘what a thing is’, it means the way in which something pursues its course, "the way in which it remains through time as what it is." (QCT 3). "Everywhere will remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception of it, to which today we particularly like to do homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology." (QCT 4) Technology is a sort of revealing, who's essence is Enframing. "We now name that challenging claim which gathers man thither to order the self-revealing as standing-reserve: ‘Ge-stell’[Enframing]." (QCT 19) When translated from German, Gestell [frame], can mean skeleton as well as some kind of apparatus, like a bookshelf. Heidegger uses the term enframing as a challenging claim on man. Once things have been revealed to us we place them inside of a "frame" of understanding, much like a picture frame does to an image. Not only does the image now have a place inside the frame, but we can call it a picture because of the frame which it has around it. Yet it would still be an image without the frame. "But Enframing does not simply endanger man in his relationship to himself and to everything that is. As a destining, it banishes man into that kind of revealing which is an ordering. This ordering holds sway, it drives out every other possibility of revealing. Above all, Enframing conceals that revealing which, in the sense of poiesis [truth], lets what presences come forth into appearance." (QCT 27) he saw implications on modern technology. We should return to the simple way of living ‘the German way of life’ his wrong how do we get there.

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In Marcuse’s influential book entitled One Dimensional Man (Marcuse) Marcuse describes how capitalism creates social control, and calls it a “totally administered” society. He goes on to say the consumption of goods becomes the goal, and the actual need or satisfaction and ignored. Marcuse identified this as “pattern of one dimensional thought and behaviour in which ideas, aspirations, and objectives” this happens with the help of the mass media thought advertising, to sustain the cycle of production and consumption. Marcuse says technology is responsible for liberating us and thinks rationally. A difference of Heidegger is that he saw technology as ...

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