Research On Heidegger’s Criticism Of Instrumentalism

People who are engaged in technical activities will often be caught in a dilemma. On the one hand, they need to use technology to reach some goals, but on the other hand, some things against the original goals will happen during this process. People cannot give up technology to realize goals and want to use technology without these problems. So we have to rethink the technology.Instrumentalism takes technology as tools which mean technology is means of ends. These ends are people’s ends and means are to realizes these ends. Human is both the subject and object of technology and the master of it at the same time. From this point, instrumentalism tells two aspects:one that technology is purposeless and another that technology is unrelated with value. If technology is a tool, user can be free to use and abandon this tool, and these users rather than technology are responsible for problems caused by technology. However, technology is not just a tool as users supposed and is not purposeless yet.Heidegger’s Criticism is from the perspective of ontology instead of sociology, ethics, and ecology. Based on the theory of Being, Heidegger distinguished the relationship between the essence and binges, technology and it’s the essence and concluded that the essence is not equal to binges, and the essence of technology is not technology, and the essence of technology is related to the essence and technology is connected with binges. From the perspective of instrumentalism, Heidegger expanded the essence of technology, but he did not indulge in the relationships between technology and goals, technology and values. Instead, he asked questions to instrumentality of technology and then to the essence of technology. Form this process, he believed that the essence of technology is aletheia which is related to the truth, so that technology is one kind of happening of the truth. The essence of modern technology is Ge-stell as well as altheia, and emphasize imposition and restriction, which is different from nature and skills. Ge-stell takes the world and human beings as bestands. These bestands differentiate subjects because people have been set as bestands. The Aletheia of the Ge-stell has duality:the Ge-stell not only covers the essence and the truth, but also itself, so human beings are not subjects and technology is the structure of the world instead of simply the tool.From the perspective of the Ge-stell, Heidegger’s Criticism of modern technology emphasizes on technical negative effect too much and neglects its positive effect, which is too extreme, although his criticism is indeed profound. As people have their own limitations, technology are needed by people and is people’s living style, and also reflects the shining humanity. Overall, we should realize that technology included two attributes of nature and society.