Author : Arthur Kroker
Publisher :
Page : 148 pages
File Size : 45,22 MB
Release : 1984
Category : Political Science
ISBN :
The Canadian discourse - Technological dependency: George Grant as the Nietzsche of the New World - Technological humanism : the processed World of Marshall McLuhan - Technological realism : Harold Innis' empire of communications.
Author : Arthur Kroker
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 39,2 MB
Release : 2004-12-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1442658665
In The Will to Technology and the Culture of Nihilism, Arthur Kroker explores the future of the 21st century in the language of technological destiny. Presenting Martin Heidegger, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche as prophets of technological nihilism, Kroker argues that every aspect of contemporary culture, society, and politics is coded by the dynamic unfolding of the 'will to technology.' Moving between cultural history, our digital present, and the biotic future, Kroker theorizes on the relationship between human bodies and posthuman technology, and more specifically, wonders if the body of work offered by thinkers like Heidegger, Marx, and Nietzsche is a part of our past or a harbinger of our technological future. Heidegger, Marx, and Nietzsche intensify our understanding of the contemporary cultural climate. Heidegger's vision posits an increasingly technical society before which we have become 'objectless objects'– driftworks in a 'culture of boredom.' In Marx, the disciplining of capital itself by the will to technology is a code of globalization, first announced as streamed capitalism. Nietzsche mediates between them, envisioning in the gathering shadows of technological society the emergent signs of a culture of nihilism. Like Marx, he insists on thinking of the question of technology in terms of its material signs. In The Will to Technology and the Culture of Nihilism, Kroker consistently enacts an invigorating and innovative vision, bringing together critical theory, art, and politics to reveal the philosophic apparatus of technoculture.
Author : Nolen Gertz
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 226 pages
File Size : 15,49 MB
Release : 2019-09-10
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0262537176
An examination of the meaning of meaninglessness: why it matters that nothing matters. When someone is labeled a nihilist, it's not usually meant as a compliment. Most of us associate nihilism with destructiveness and violence. Nihilism means, literally, “an ideology of nothing. “ Is nihilism, then, believing in nothing? Or is it the belief that life is nothing? Or the belief that the beliefs we have amount to nothing? If we can learn to recognize the many varieties of nihilism, Nolen Gertz writes, then we can learn to distinguish what is meaningful from what is meaningless. In this addition to the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Gertz traces the history of nihilism in Western philosophy from Socrates through Hannah Arendt and Jean-Paul Sartre. Although the term “nihilism” was first used by Friedrich Jacobi to criticize the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, Gertz shows that the concept can illuminate the thinking of Socrates, Descartes, and others. It is Nietzsche, however, who is most associated with nihilism, and Gertz focuses on Nietzsche's thought. Gertz goes on to consider what is not nihilism—pessimism, cynicism, and apathy—and why; he explores theories of nihilism, including those associated with Existentialism and Postmodernism; he considers nihilism as a way of understanding aspects of everyday life, calling on Adorno, Arendt, Marx, and prestige television, among other sources; and he reflects on the future of nihilism. We need to understand nihilism not only from an individual perspective, Gertz tells us, but also from a political one.
Author : Laurence Paul Hemming
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 358 pages
File Size : 26,4 MB
Release : 2011-03-03
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0826438695
When Nietzsche announced 'the advent of nihilism' in 1887/88, he argued that he was sketching 'the history of the next two centuries': 'For some time now', he wrote, 'our whole European culture has been moving as toward catastrophe [...]: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that want to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect.' Can we gain a ground for reflection upon our own condition? Can we heed Nietzsche's warning? Can we respond to the challenge? In this book, eleven newly commissioned essays from leading scholars offer an attempt to grasp Nietzsche's prescience through Heidegger's critique of it; attempting to think through the philosophical consequences of the last century in reading the signs of our own condition. The book also provides and fascinating and unique discussion of some of the lesser-known texts of the later Heidegger.
Author : Arthur Kroker
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 41,20 MB
Release : 2004-01-01
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780802085733
In The Will to Technology and the Culture of Nihilism, Arthur Kroker explores the future of the 21st century in the language of technological destiny. Presenting Martin Heidegger, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche as prophets of technological nihilism, Kroker argues that every aspect of contemporary culture, society, and politics is coded by the dynamic unfolding of the 'will to technology.' Moving between cultural history, our digital present, and the biotic future, Kroker theorizes on the relationship between human bodies and posthuman technology, and more specifically, wonders if the body of work offered by thinkers like Heidegger, Marx, and Nietzsche is a part of our past or a harbinger of our technological future. Heidegger, Marx, and Nietzsche intensify our understanding of the contemporary cultural climate. Heidegger's vision posits an increasingly technical society before which we have become 'objectless objects'? driftworks in a 'culture of boredom.' In Marx, the disciplining of capital itself by the will to technology is a code of globalization, first announced as streamed capitalism. Nietzsche mediates between them, envisioning in the gathering shadows of technological society the emergent signs of a culture of nihilism. Like Marx, he insists on thinking of the question of technology in terms of its material signs. In The Will to Technology and the Culture of Nihilism, Kroker consistently enacts an invigorating and innovative vision, bringing together critical theory, art, and politics to reveal the philosophic apparatus of technoculture.
Author : Emanuele Severino
Publisher : Verso Books
Page : 456 pages
File Size : 22,16 MB
Release : 2016-10-11
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1784786128
In 1969, Emanuele Severino underwent a Vatican trial for the 'fundamental incompatibility' between his thought and the Christian doctrine, and was removed from his position as professor of philosophy at the Catholic University in Milan. The Essence of Nihilism published in 1972, was the first book to follow his expulsion, and to firmly establish Severino's preeminent position within the constellation of contemporary philosophy. In this groundbreaking book, Severino reinterprets the history of Western philosophy as the unfolding of 'the greatest folly', that is, of the belief that 'things come out of nothing and fall back into nothing'. According to Severino, such a typically Western understanding of reality has produced a belief in the radical 'nothingness' of things. This, in turn has justified the treatment of the world as an object of exploitation, degradation and destruction. To move beyond Western nihilism, suggests Severino, we must first of all 'return to Parmenides'. Joining forces with the most venerable of Greek philosophers, Severino confutes the 'path of night' of nihilism, and develops a new philosophy grounded on the principle of the eternity of reality and of every single existent.
Author : Wendy Syfret
Publisher :
Page : 192 pages
File Size : 43,69 MB
Release : 2022-07-07
Category :
ISBN : 9781788167031
Author : Mark A. Wrathall
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 1605 pages
File Size : 16,8 MB
Release : 2021-06-03
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1108640834
Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) was one of the most original thinkers of the twentieth century. His work has profoundly influenced philosophers including Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Hannah Arendt, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, Richard Rorty, Hubert Dreyfus, Stanley Cavell, Emmanuel Levinas, Alain Badiou, and Gilles Deleuze. His accounts of human existence and being and his critique of technology have inspired theorists in fields as diverse as theology, anthropology, sociology, psychology, political science, and the humanities. This Lexicon provides a comprehensive and accessible guide to Heidegger's notoriously obscure vocabulary. Each entry clearly and concisely defines a key term and explores in depth the meaning of each concept, explaining how it fits into Heidegger's broader philosophical project. With over 220 entries written by the world's leading Heidegger experts, this landmark volume will be indispensable for any student or scholar of Heidegger's work.
Author : Gianni Vattimo
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 40,79 MB
Release : 2007-02-27
Category : Law
ISBN : 9780231130837
Features essays on ethics, politics, and law. This book re-evaluates the meaning, values, and the idea of freedom in Western culture. A daring marriage of philosophical theory and practical politics, this collection is the first of Gianni Vattimo's many books to combine his intellectual pursuits with his public and political life. Vattimo is a paradoxical figure, at once a believing Christian and a vociferous critic of the Catholic Church, an outspoken liberal but not a former communist, and a recognized authority on Nietzsche and Heidegger as well as a prominent public intellectual and member of the European parliament.
Author : Paul van Tongeren
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 19,79 MB
Release : 2018-11-14
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1527521591
This book is a thorough study of Nietzsche’s thoughts on nihilism, the history of the concept, the different ways in which he tries to explain his ideas on nihilism, the way these ideas were received in the 20th century, and, ultimately, what these ideas should mean to us. It begins with an exploration of how we can understand the strange situation that Nietzsche, about 130 years ago, predicted that nihilism would break through one or two centuries from then, and why, despite the philosopher describing it as the greatest catastrophe that could befall humankind, we hardly seem to be aware of it, let alone be frightened by it. The book shows that most of us are still living within the old frameworks of faith, and, therefore, can hardly imagine what it would mean if the idea of God (as the summit and summary of all our epistemic, moral, and esthetic beliefs) would become unbelievable. The comfortable situation in which we live allows us to conceive of such a possibility in a rather harmless way: while distancing ourselves from explicit religiosity, we still maintain the old framework in our scientific and humanistic ideals. This book highlights that contemporary science and humanism are not alternatives to, but rather variations of the old metaphysical and Christian faith. The inconceivability of real nihilism is elaborated by showing that people either do not take it seriously enough to feel its threat, or – when it is considered properly – suffer from the threat, and by this very suffering prove to be attached to the old nihilistic structures. Because of this paradoxical situation, this text suggests that the literary imagination might bring us closer to the experience of nihilism than philosophy ever could. This is further elaborated with the help of a novel by Juli Zeh and a play by Samuel Beckett. In the final chapter of the book, Nietzsche’s life and philosophy are themselves interpreted as a kind of literary metaphorical presentation of the answer to the question of how to live in an age of nihilism.
