AT THE POINT OF COMPLETION - HEIDEGGER,MARTIN PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY

In the final part of his Prague lecture, W. Berger analyses two different interpretations of Heidegger's philosophy of technique. He terms Heidegger's concept as a ''strategy of recollection'' (Strategie des Erinnerns), recalling the interrogation (on being) in the point of forgetting, which technique presents. The means of remembering is language as a question of surpassing (fragende Uberwindung der Sprache), as the author terms Heidegger's retracting of original meanings through etymology. The author considers that Heidegger's thought is empowering, as a conception of the loss of authenticity, against which must be set the almost religious stress on being (eine fast religiose Betonung des Seins) as a concept of ''challenges which bring the end of metaphysics in consciousness'' (''eine Aufforderung, das Ende der Metaphysik zur Kenntnis zu nehmen'') (G. Vattimo) and sees being that is outside metaphysics as problematic. For Berger, Heidegger's strategy produces a philosophy which develops its own language and thus becomes hermetic (eine Philosophie, die ihre eigene Sprache entwickelt und dadurch hermetische wird). The author sees a parallel concept of technique elaborated by G. Gunther, who understood technique not as an ultimate forgetfulness in being but as the realisation of a dual value of logic. Gunther's strategy is one of the renewal of metaphysics through transclassical logic, which allows it to absorb the theme of reflection (Gunthers Strategie ist die Strategie einer Erneuerung der Metaphysik durch die Mittel einer transklassischen Logik, die erlaubt, das Thema der Reflexion in sie einzufuhren). G. Vattimo ultimately sees the material realisation of the changing nature of value in technological civilisation, where no higher values remain. Heidegger did not consider technique to be just the final stage of metaphysics, but also of events. The programme he linked with this is one of a model for the freeing of a current which has until now brought us to metaphysics. The event is Heidegger's stepping stone, a leap ''which rebounds off the foundation of being and so plunges into the abyss'' in which man and being gain their essence (... der sich vom Grund des Seienden absetzt und so in den Abgrund springt).