Abstract

The present age seems to be guided by an obsessive desire to subsume all areas of experience under the control of pure technique. But the technological character of the present age is not itself something which can be dealt with through technological means. This study responds to the need for a reflective standpoint from which the technological character of the technological can be seen, both in its positive significance and in its limitations. It consists of two major parts and an epilogue drawing from both of these: Plato's Critique of Sophistic Rhetoric; Heidegger's Critique of Modern Technology; Epilogue: The Love of Wisdom and the Piety of Questioning. As the investigation in Parts I and II bring to light, there is at the least a strong structural affinity between Plato's treatment of sophistic rhetoric and Heidegger's treatment of modern technology. ;I begin with an examination of Plato's critique of sophistry in the Gorgias because I find in Plato a fundamental insight into the emptiness of pure technique oblivious to its own limits . His criticism of Gorgias' rhetoric as an attempt to develop a purely technical orientation renders this dialogue particularly relevant for our purposes, but the conflict between the security of sophistic technique and the aporia of Socratic questioning is a theme which runs throughout the Platonic corpus. ;In Part II, I turn to Heidegger's interpretation of modern technology. After a brief introduction , I discuss the way in which truth is transformed into certainty with the rise of modern methodological consciousness . The next chapter traces Heidegger's account of the fundamental traits of modern science as "research" . I then examine Heidegger's characterization of modern technology as Ge-stell . For Heidegger, technology is not the use of tools by man, or even a form of consciousness, but a particular way in which the being of that which is manifests itself, namely, as pure calculability. The untruth and danger of technology lie not in the fact that entities are not calculable, but in the fact that technology gives the appearance that it is the whole truth of things. ;In the Epilogue, I look for a way out of the hegemony of technology in Plato's understanding of the love of wisdom, philosophia, and Heidegger's understanding of questioning as the piety of thinking. It is the domain of dialogue and question--a domain which Heidegger shares with Plato in spite of himself--within which the limits of the technological can be experienced. The close reading of the Gorgias in Part I proves to be precisely the kind of encounter which is called for by the conclusions of Part II--a reflective encounter with an experience of reality that is not confined to pure calculability, namely, the Greek experience of finitude as it manifests itself in Socratic dialogue. In fact, the entirety of this study attempts to exemplify the kind of reflection which its own conclusions call for: reappropriation, preservation, and cultivation of the domain of dialogue and question