Technology and the Impoverishment of Experience: An Insight through Heidegger and Marcuse

Author

Brenna C. GradusFollow

Graduation Year

2016

Graduation Month

December

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

School or Department

Philosophy

Major

Philosophy

Keywords

Critical Theory, Frankfurt School, technological a priori, Marx, The Question Concerning Technology, One-Dimensional Man

Subject Categories

Continental Philosophy

Abstract

The influence of technology in contemporary society is increasingly pervasive. While humankind reaps the benefits technology has to offer, these benefits do not come without costs. Often these costs are neither articulated nor addressed. Technology, from the Industrial Revolution to the Information Age, has reestablished the way in which we orient ourselves in our world. In doing so it has, in many cases, lowered our standard of human experience, thus creating an impoverishment of experience itself. Martin Heidegger and Herbert Marcuse provide especially insightful considerations of the ways in which modern technology impoverishes human existence. Furthermore, they have both posed means by which society might hope to redeem the quality of experience that has been lost in technology’s wake.

Honors College Research Project

1

Recommended Citation

Gradus, Brenna C., "Technology and the Impoverishment of Experience: An Insight through Heidegger and Marcuse" (2016). Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts. 115.
https://scholarworks.umt.edu/utpp/115