The Concept of Technique in Ortega y Gasset, Martin Heidegger and Álvaro Vieira Pinto

Abstract

Technique has become, in contemporaneity, an end in itself. In its categorical condition, it presents itself as the determinant way of life that involves us from the rules of rationality articulated on the basis of criterion of functionality and efficiency. Under such assumptions, the purpose of this article is to contribute to the debate on the question of technique and its impositions on the way human beings relate to the world, to themselves and to other human beings. In this direction, the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset (1883 to 1955) takes part in this debate, more specifically in his work “Meditation of the Technique” (1963), the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889 to 1976), from the text: “The question of technique”, published in the second half of the 1950s and the Brazilian philosopher Álvaro Vieira Pinto (1909-1987) in his work: “The Concept of Technology” Vol I (2005). Having safeguarded the theoretical and conceptual differences, what brings these thinkers closer to the question of technique is that they experienced the world conflicts of the first decades of the twentieth century, the horrors perpetrated by instrumental technical rationality in the concentration camps and the underdeveloped condition of the people of the third world. Questions that unfolded throughout the twentieth century, reaping lives, imposing suffering and misery on underdeveloped cultures, peoples and countries. Preliminary version of this article was presented at the 2º Colloquium
Álvaro Vieira Pinto, on december 08, 2017 at the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR).