The question of technology in Gadamer

Abstract

The text examines Hans-Georg Gadamer's (1900-2002) meditation on technology and its epistemological and ethical implications, ten years after the philosopher's death. It takes as its basis the essay 'Theorie, Technik, Praxis', written in 1972 and published in the collective volume Neue Anthropologie, and the studies gathered in Reason in the Age of Science, of 1976. It goes through the Greek distinction between theory and praxis, the rupture between science and practice brought about by modern experimental science, and the conversion of praxis into technique in industrial civilisation. It discusses the effects of the institutionalisation of science, of over-specialisation and of business-like planning on individual freedom and political decision, as well as the technification of opinion-forming and the ecological crisis as an emblem of the limits of instrumental reason. It closes with the demand, formulated by Gadamer in proximity to Jonas and Ricoeur, for a practical wisdom understood as phronesis and solidarity.