adorno etc.

ChrisD(RJ) chrisd at russiajournal.com
Wed Apr 10 06:58:14 PDT 2002


James Heartfield wrote: Like Heidegger, Adorno and Horkheimer, and Arendt, see all the world's ills coming from science and technology. ---------------------------------- It is not true at all that either Heidegger or Arendt see "all the word's ills as coming from science and technology." Saying this about Arendt is in fact just bizarre.

Heidegger would never say he is "anti-technology." Anyway, technology in Heidegger is one specific mode of the self-absconsion of being otherwise known as metaphysics. If anything is to "blame," it's Plato (or, actually, being itself).

This accusation can't be levelled at Arendt by any stretch of the imagination. What she says in The Human Condition is that science and technology have reduced people's closeness to and connection with the natural world while, perversely, injecting natural processes into places they earlier weren't. Technology for Arendt is the domination of the world and man by nature, not the opposite.

The Origins of Totalitarianism, by the way, has as own of its central themes, emphasized over and over again, that what distinguishes Fascism and Stalinism from other forms of government is their completely non-rational and anti-utilitarian character.

Chris Doss The Russia Journal



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list