Yes, Albert Borgmann’s philosophy of technology was significantly influenced by Martin Heidegger, particularly by Heidegger’s seminal essay The Question Concerning Technology (1954). However, Borgmann developed Heidegger’s ideas in more concrete, socially engaged, and ethically explicit directions. Let’s explore the connection:
1.
Heidegger’s Influence on Borgmann: Foundational Resonances
- Heidegger’s central claim was that modern technology is not merely a collection of tools but a mode of revealing (Entbergen), a way the world discloses itself to us.
- He warned that in the technological age, the world is revealed through enframing (Gestell): everything appears as a resource to be optimized and controlled, including human beings.
Borgmann adopts this basic insight, particularly:
- The idea that technology is not neutral, but shapes our relationship to reality.
- The concern that modern technological paradigms conceal rather than disclose meaning.
2.
Borgmann’s “Device Paradigm” as a Heideggerian Development
In Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life (1984), Borgmann introduces the device paradigm, his key concept to describe how technology operates in modern life:
- A device, in Borgmann’s sense, is a technological entity that delivers a commodity while hiding its complexity (e.g., central heating delivers warmth, hiding the process, context, and engagement once required to build a fire).
- This leads to disengagement from the world, where people experience fewer focal things and practices—i.e., activities that demand presence, skill, and care.
This clearly echoes Heidegger’s concern about alienation from being, but Borgmann gives it more structure and sociocultural application.
3.
Where Borgmann Goes Beyond Heidegger
While Borgmann is indebted to Heidegger, he diverges in important ways:
|
Aspect |
Heidegger |
Borgmann |
|
Style |
Abstract, ontological, poetic |
Clear, socially engaged, practically oriented |
|
Diagnosis |
Modern technology as a danger to Being |
Technology as shaping our everyday practices and moral engagement |
|
Response |
Gelassenheit (letting-be), poetic dwelling |
Focal practices as concrete, ethical responses to technological commodification |
|
Ethics |
Rarely explicit |
Central to Borgmann䏭 framework (especially in Moral Cosmology) |
|
Politics and society |
Often silent or indirect |
Engaged with modern life, culture, and institutions |
In short, Borgmann makes Heidegger’s diagnosis livable—transforming existential ontology into a philosophy of everyday life, where ethics, technology, and meaning intersect.
4.
Shared Vision: The Need for Releasement
Both philosophers long for a return to a more authentic relation with the world—what Heidegger called releasement (Gelassenheit) and Borgmann frames as living fully and well, grounded in focal practices and moral cosmology.
In Summary
Yes, Albert Borgmann’s philosophy of technology is deeply influenced by Heidegger, especially in its foundational diagnosis of modern technological alienation. But Borgmann’s unique contribution lies in:
- Grounding Heideggerian insights in concrete social analysis
- Recasting “dwelling” as focal practice
- Adding an explicit ethical and moral dimension
Would you like a diagram showing how Heidegger’s Gestell leads into Borgmann’s device paradigm, and then into his later moral cosmology?