Technophany Issue #2
©Author(s), 2022. Corresponding author:
©Research Network for Philosophy and Technology
ISSN 2773-0875
Confronting the Technical Aporia: Heidegger’s
and Stiegler’s Technics-thinking
Abstract:
Martin Heidegger and Bernard Stiegler have both famously argued that philosophy has hitherto been
incapable of seeing, recognizing, or remembering technics. Both thinkers confronted this technical
aporia by putting forward their own thought on technics, arguing to find themselves in a historically
singular position from which technical thought proper can, for the first time, be questioned and
invented. This article shows how both Heidegger’s and Stiegler’s conceptual projects are supported by
a two-fold reading of the history of philosophy as at once devoid of technical thought proper, while at
the same time harbouring, but only ever implicitly, the resources for thinking and remembering said
technics. Their readings of the work of Immanuel Kant will be shown to be exemplary in this regard.
This article ultimately concludes that, as a result of both Heidegger’s and Stiegler’s particular self-
positioning within the history of technical thought, neither of them could recognize the technical
thought proper within that history that they were at the same time so urgently looking for. Only in this
way can the radical oversight regarding, for instance, Kant’s explicit writings on technics proper make
sense.
Keywords: technics, Martin Heidegger, Bernard Stiegler, history of technical thought, Immanuel Kant
Franziska Aigner
Franziska Aigner, franziskaaigner@hotmail.com