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2. Towards a Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Technology: A Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Technology

Chapter of: Phenomenology and the Philosophy of Technology(pp. 53–72)

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Metadata
Title2. Towards a Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Technology
SubtitleA Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Technology
ContributorAlberto Romele(author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0421.02
Landing pagehttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0421/chapters/10.11647/obp.0421.02
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
CopyrightAlberto Romele
PublisherOpen Book Publishers
Published on2024-10-16
Long abstractThis chapter aims to show why the philosophical study of technology cannot be limited to phenomenology, but necessarily requires a hermeneutic approach. By elucidating the relation between phenomenology and hermeneutics, Romele criticizes the idealist tendencies in Husserlian phenomenology, as well as the ontological hermeneutics developed by Heidegger and Gadamer. The chapter instead advocates an ontic and pragmatic hermeneutic approach. Turning this approach to philosophy of technology, Romele argues that the ‘material hermeneutics’ as practiced in postphenomenology falls short and unmasks it as ‘material idealism’. Notwithstanding its self-professed ‘empirical’ interest in ‘the things themselves’, such idealism jettisons everything about the appearance of things that cannot be captured in terms of ‘technological mediation’, thus ignoring the sphere of symbolic, social, and cultural mediations that always already shape how ‘the things themselves’ are and can be interpreted. The chapter closes by illustrating how a hermeneutic phenomenology of technology opens to a multidisciplinary political hermeneutics of technology.
Page rangepp. 53–72
Print length20 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Contributors

Alberto Romele

(author)
Associate Professor of Communication and Media at Sorbonne Nouvelle University
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8648-6619

Alberto Romele is an Associate Professor of Communication and Media (semiotics, pragmatics, and hermeneutics) at the ICM, the Institute of Communication and Media, Sorbonne Nouvelle University. He has been a researcher at the IZEW, the International Center for Ethics in Sciences and Technology, University of Tübingen, an associate professor of philosophy and ethics of technology at the Catholic University of Lille, and a postdoc at the University of Porto. He holds a PhD from the University of Verona. His research focuses on digital hermeneutics, the imaginaries of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and, more recently, the use of popular images in communication on science and technology. His research has appeared in journals such as Theory, Culture & Society, Surveillance & Society, and AI & Society. He is the author of two monographs: Digital Hermeneutics: Philosophical Investigations in New Media and Technologies (Routledge, 2019); Digital Habitus: A Critique of the Imaginaries of Artificial Intelligence (Routledge, 2023).

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