Paper short abstract:

This paper positions “paradigmatology” vis-à-vis two approaches in the emerging field of philosophy of technology, Heidegger’s epochal thinking on technology, and contemporary empirically oriented philosophy of technology.

Paper long abstract:

Of the various developments in the emerging field of "philosophy of technology" the empirical turn stands out as having left its most enduring mark on the trajectory contemporary research takes. Empirically oriented philosophy of technology vows to supersede so-called classical philosophy of technology by investigating the multiform meanings actual technologies possess, claiming that such classical philosophers of technology as Heidegger did not pay enough attention to these, reducing technologies to their condition of possibility, to the disclosure being. This paper looks for philosophy of technology beyond the empirical turn, without, however, wishing to laps back into classical philosophy of technology. Instead, it is argued, the proper field of philosophical reflection is to be found where the empirical and the transcendental meet, where the ontological difference implodes, and the ontic becomes indistinguishable from the ontological. Drawing upon the work of Agamben, Foucault, and Wittgenstein it positions "paradigmatology" vis-à-vis classical philosophy of technology and empirically oriented philosophy of technology.