Technology and the Holy exploring the ethical in Martin Heidegger

Abstract

The notion of the holy is usually associated with the religious experience of the divine, newlineand therefore has never figured as a central philosophical problem in any of the newlinetraditional philosophical discourses. Martin Heidegger, one of the most influential newlinephilosophers of the twentieth century, broached this notion of the holy (das Heilige) firstly in connection with his philosophical engagement with Hölderlin, a revered German thinker and poet, and then developed it further in line with his larger question of being, thus making it a central philosophical concern throughout the later phases of his philosophical career. newline newlineThe guiding theme of the present project is the two-pronged question concerning the senses and the significance of the notion. The first question concerns the senses of the concept by inquiring into different contexts within which the concept appears, and the second question concerns the significance it has within the wider terrain of Heidegger s thinking. In addition to that, the whole discussion is situated against the backdrop of Heidegger s peculiar understanding of technology as the current constellation of being. I argue that his mature musings on the holy provide a counter paradigm to technology where technology is taken to be an epoch of newlineunderstanding of being in which beings appear as endlessly manipulatable resources. newlineTechnology itself is a culminating point of a long tradition of ontotheologically newlineconstituted metaphysics, at the centre of which is the problem of willing. The holy thus presents itself as a realm unattainable, unapproachable and inviolable, and thus newlinewithout lending itself to any kind of technological manoeuvring. In order to prove this point I take recourse to the major texts and contexts within which the mentions of the newlineholy appears in his writings. This leads us to the second question concerning the newlinerepercussions of the holy within the larger context of the thinker.