Tra fisica e metafisica: Vattimo e la tecnica

Gianni Vattimo’s reflections on technology are influenced not only by Heidegger, but also by Aristotle, to whose concept of poiesis he dedicated his first book Il concetto di fare in Aristotele. This is important, because in Aristotle we find a characterization of technology, not in terms of presence or presentification (to a metaphysical determination in relation to substance, as is the case with the late Heidegger), but as a realm in which the contingency of the world — and thus of history — appears. For Aristotle, techne lies “alongside" physics and metaphysics, both of which understand their objects as timeless, necessary and unchanging. Based on this Aristotelian view of technology, Vattimo understands the metaphysization of technology as a kind of naturalization (as Marx would also say) of the productions of human activity (praxis and poiesis), which in fact corresponds to a forgetting of its historical origin. This forgetting is the true root of the degeneration of technology into Gestell. We could therefore come to the conclusion that technology as such is not a form of presentification, but on the contrary a form of de-presentification - or historicization - of reality, and therein lies its emancipatory potential.