Abstract

CASTLETON, Alexander. Technology, uprooting and focal practices: José Ortega y Gasset and Albert Borgmann facing the technological alienation of the world. Humanidades (Montevideo. En línea) [online]. 2021, n.10, pp.39-68.  Epub Dec 01, 2021. ISSN 1510-5024.  https://doi.org/10.25185/10.3.

Contemporary German-American philosopher Albert Borgmann describes modern societies as structured upon a technological paradigm based on consumption, disengagement from reality, and disburdenment. As a reaction to this paradigm, Borgmann indicates the need to establish practices around focal things that center the personal and social world, affording it meaning, and thus promoting the good life. In 1993, the American philosopher Patrick Dust compared Borgmann’s thinking with that of Ortega y Gasset, suggesting that Ortega presents more useful ideas for understanding technology. This article, instead, proposes that the philosophies of Ortega and Borgmann largely overlap, since the two present the same solution to the contemporary technological predicament around the cultivation of focal practices.

Keywords : Albert Borgmann; José Ortega y Gasset; philosophy of technology; technique; alienation.

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