Heidegger's Critique of Science and Technology and Its Implications for Humanity (original) (raw)

2024, AKSUJA: Akwa Ibom State University Journal of Arts, volume 5, number 1

There is no doubt that the contemporary society in which we live is one typically noted for technoscientific progress. The level which the contemporary man has reached concerning scientific cum technological developments is quite amazing. Unfortunately, there has been a basic tension between the awareness of the "limit to growth" and the idea of "continuous progress" in science and technology. Behind these great ideas and discoveries is an awful desire to drag humanity to the precipices of nothingness and meaninglessness. Science and technology has gone too excess such that it has moved from pro-man to contra-man. While some scholars attribute this ugly scenario to negligence of moral sense of science and technology by modern man, Heidegger in inquiring into the mood-basis of modern technology however appeals to the Greek understanding of techne which connotes a 'bringing forth' and maintains that technology itself is not good or bad, rather the problem lies with technological thinking which has become the only form of thinking. Using expository, analytical and critical methods of Philosophical research, this work attempts to expose and critically analyse Heidegger's critique of science and technology and its implications for the being of man. The paper agrees with Heidegger that although technological advancements are quintessential for the growth of every society as it helps man to develop and facilitate life, yet many scientific inventions/creations endanger and degrade the being of man. Hence their excesses should be checkmated.

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