A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF HEIDEGGER’S TECHNOLOGY AND CONTEMPORARY TRANSHUMANISM

Abstract

The advancements associated with technology have affected virtually every aspect of being, man inclusive. Technology has turned out to be an unopposed fate of our age; technology is our world. The undeniable technological culture in the contemporary society which has placed everything as a subject of technological manipulation has had ambivalent effects. We are thus separated from our nature, as we are viewed solely from a technological dimension and even considered as objects of manipulations. The transhumanist movements have seduced man with the very best of these technological promises. This research sets out to examine the contemporary biotechnological society and the anthropological abnormalities that have plagued its present existence. Many thinkers and philosophers have spoken of the ill-effects of biotechnological advancements while some have projected ideas aimed at the deification of technology; some of these thinkers will be reviewed in this work. The major concern of this work is to critically and systematically analyze the effects of the contemporary biotechnology on man. Hence, the venture of this work is to chiefly explore Heidegger’s conception of technology and technological advancements in which he tried to bring the essence of technology to light. The essential questions are; to what extent does technology enslave the human race interfering with Dasein, our potential for revelation of being? Is man a perplexed victim at the overpowering hands of technology? What future does the praxis of transhumanism and biotechnology promise the human species? Has technology not travelled a long way from "pro-man" to a "contra-man" ideology? A critical evaluation of this problem will gear us into a new phase of relationship with technology.