Heidegger,Augustine,and Poiēsis

Abstract

This article looks at the problem of modern technology. In the first section, it considers Martin Heidegger's seminal essay, “The Question Concerning Technology,” and his idea that technology is essentially related to the human faculty of understanding, arising from and determining human knowing. The second part searches for the historical roots of our modern technological knowing. Recent scholarship suggests that these lie in the nominalist view of God as an omnipotent will. A theological solution to this problem emerges, finally, in an examination of St. Augustine's moral psychology in De Trinitate.