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1. Ecological Hermeneutic Phenomenology: A Method to Explore the Ontic and Ontological Structures of Technologies in the World

Chapter of: Phenomenology and the Philosophy of Technology(pp. 27–51)

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Metadata
Title1. Ecological Hermeneutic Phenomenology
SubtitleA Method to Explore the Ontic and Ontological Structures of Technologies in the World
ContributorVincent Blok(author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0421.01
Landing pagehttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0421/chapters/10.11647/obp.0421.01
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
CopyrightVincent Blok
PublisherOpen Book Publishers
Published on2024-10-16
Long abstractThis chapter sets out to develop a phenomenological method to study technology in a way that moves beyond the one-sided essentialist or ‘ontology-only’ approach developed by Heidegger, as well as the ‘empiricist’ or ‘thing-only’ approach found in postphenomeonlogy. After offering an elucidation of Husserl’s and Heidegger’s phenomenology, the chapter breaks new ground on a new way of taking heed of the phenomenon of technology. It neither exclusively interprets this phenomenon as ontological ‘enactment’, pre-understanding, or Heideggerian ‘acceptio’, nor exclusively as ‘things that mediate’ like postphenomenologists would have it. Blok’s phenomenological method instead seeks to demonstrate that a pre-understanding or acceptio such as the understanding of time as linear does not occur in a free-floating way, but finds its footing or ‘founding’ in things (e.g. mechanical clocks). As a result, ontological enactment and ontic content become central to what a phenomenon is, where neither can be ‘bracketet’ or viewed as derivative. Blok does thereby not articulate the relation between enactment and content in terms of deduction or induction, where either content or enactment is prioritized. Rather, the chapter suggests that this relation must be thought as a trans-duction in order to address or ‘move across’ (trans) what is thematic and what remains non-thematic with respect to any phenomenon. Finally, the chapter explains why the proposed method bears the name of ecological hermeneutics, because if the ontological ‘acceptio’ or ‘enactment’ (e.g. linear time) is always ‘founded’ in things (e.g. mechanical clocks), things today do not just appear in the world, but explicitly appear in terms of the ecological constraints of planet Earth.
Page rangepp. 27–51
Print length25 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Contributors

Vincent Blok

(author)
Professor in Philosophy of Technology at Wageningen University & Research
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9086-4544

Vincent Blok is Professor in Philosophy of Technology and Responsible Innovation at Wageningen University. He is also scientific director of the 4TU Centre for Ethics of Technology. He holds a PhD degree in philosophy from Leiden University with a specialization in philosophy of technology. His books include Ernst Junger’s Philosophy of Technology. Heidegger and the Poetics of the Anthropocene (Routledge, 2017), Heidegger’s Concept of Philosophical Method (Routledge, 2019), The Critique of Management. Toward a Philosophy and Ethics of Business Management (Routledge, 2021), and From World to Earth. Philosophical Ecology of a Threatened Planet (Boom, 2022 (in Dutch). See www.vincentblok.nl for more information about his current research.

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