Actants and enframing: Heidegger and Latour on technology

Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 34 (2003) 693–704 www.elsevier.com/locate/shpsa

Actants and enframing: Heidegger and Latour on technology Lynnette Khong 67 Braeside Street, Wahroonga, NSW 2076, Australia Received 3 July 2000; received in revised form 27 May 2003

Abstract A central issue in the philosophy of technology concerns the relationship between technology and the conditions under which technology develops. Traditionally, two main accounts are given of this relationship. The social constructivist approach considers technology to be largely determined by “social” factors (e.g. military interests, economic policy). By contrast, technological determinism describes technology as self-determinative, and as following its own independent aim of greater efficiency. This paper discusses two alternatives to these conceptions of technology, namely, the accounts offered by Bruno Latour and Martin Heidegger. It examines their common theses that our present misunderstanding of technology is due to a continued commitment to the subject–object distinction. The paper further compares their accounts, which attempt to overcome this distinction, and argues that ultimately both authors fail to find a role for human beings that is consistent with their contention that we need to develop a less anthropocentric understanding of the world.  2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Actants; Bruno Latour; Martin Heidegger; Pandora’s Hope; Question Concerning Technology; Technology

. . . in the realm of techniques, no one is in command—not because technology is in command, but because, truly, no one and nothing at all is in command, not even an anonymous field of force. (Latour, 1999, p. 298)

E-mail address: [email protected] (L. Khong). 0039-3681/$ - see front matter  2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.shpsa.2003.09.003

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Technology is unique, insuperable, omnipresent, superior, a monster born in our midst which has already devoured its unwitting midwives . . . (Latour on Heidegger’s view of technology: Latour, 1999, p. 176)

. . . what is dangerous is not technology. Technology is not demonic; but its essence is mysterious. The essence of technology, as a destining of revealing, is the danger. (Heidegger, 1977, p. 333)

Introduction A central issue in the philosophy of technology concerns the relationship between technology and the conditions under which technology develops. Traditionally, two main accounts are given of this relationship. The social constructivist approach considers technology to be largely determined by “social” factors (such as military interests, or economic policy). By contrast, technological determinism describes technology as self-determinative, and as following its own independent aim of greater efficiency. In this paper I will be discussing two alternatives to these conceptions of technology, namely, the accounts offered by Bruno Latour and Martin Heidegger. Their work on technology spans several texts and alterations in view, but for the purposes of this essay I will focus on two key texts: Latour’s Pandora’s hope (1999) and Heidegger’s The question concerning technology (1977). These texts have been chosen both because they provide the clearest explications of the authors’ views on technology and because they situate their views on technology in the context of their authors’ more general philosophical concerns. In my discussion I highlight some of the key similarities and differences in Heidegger and Latour’s views of technology, clarify some of the ambiguities in their accounts, and point to their relative strengths and weaknesses. I shall also elaborate on how far they have succeeded in tendering an alternative account of technology.

Part I The ground upon which this comparative analysis is made is the philosophical distinction between subject and object. This distinction is of central concern to Latour and Heidegger in their critiques of technology and their attempts to offer an alternative account. Given Heidegger’s influence on French philosophy in the second half of the twentieth century, it is likely that Latour’s own views have been directly or indirectly influenced by Heidegger. Therefore it is hardly surprising that a common concern should emerge in their work on technology, namely a concern with the limitations of the western metaphysical worldview. In this first section, I shall not be commenting on what Latour’s ideas might owe to Heidegger, but rather shall

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focus on three common theses that I consider to be pivotal in their respective accounts of technology. Thesis 1: The key to understanding technology does not lie in resolving the debate between technological determinism and social determinism In Pandora’s hope, Latour refers to technological determinism and social constructivism as the ‘materialist’ and ‘sociological’ views respectively. According to Latour, the materialist view is summarised in the anti-gun slogan ‘guns kill people’ (Latour, 1999, p. 176). This captures the idea that technology is capable of determining our goals and actions: the gun here is seen as having ‘its script, its potential to take hold of passers-by and force them to play roles in its society’ (Latour, 1999, p. 177). An advocate of the sociological view, by contrast, would argue that technology is a ‘neutral carrier of will that adds nothing to the action, playing the role of a passive conductor, through which good and evil are equally able to flow’ (Latour, 1999, p. 177). The gun cannot, in virtue of its properties, alter the course of an agent’s actions, which depend wholly on “social” factors such as a gunman’s criminal motives.1 Latour offers an alternative view to those of the materialist and sociologist: one that explains the interaction between gun and gunman in terms of ‘the creation of a new goal that corresponds to neither agent’s program of action’ (Latour, 1999, p. 178). Instead of perceiving technologically mediated action exclusively in terms of either artefacts or humans, Latour maintains that we need to understand the way in which technological artefacts and humans act upon each other symmetrically to produce action. According to him, our interaction with technological artefacts is not a one-sided ‘acting upon’ a material object, but rather a reciprocal exchange between actors (or as Latour prefers, “actants”).2 Take his illustration of the humble speed bump or “sleeping policeman”. Ordinarily this artefact would be treated as a purely human creation. Latour argues, however, that the speed bump is capable of “translating” human goals (such as, for example, the goal of a driver from ‘slow down so as not to endanger students’ into ‘slow down and protect your car’s suspension’); and is capable of acting as a “delegate” for carrying out the plans and intentions of others (urban planners, law makers, engineers and so on). In their role as controllers of speed, ‘concrete’, ‘paint’, and ‘gravel’ also contribute to the meaning of ‘law enforcer’. In this way, humans and non-humans are said to ‘exchange properties’ and we are no longer justified in viewing the speed bump as mere object, inert and incapable of action (Latour, 1999, p. 190). Interestingly, Latour ascribes to Heidegger the materialist position. In the ensuing discussion of Heidegger’s view of technology I show that like Latour, Heidegger is opposed to both social and technological determinism, and that in fact many of Latour’s criticisms of the Heideggerian position are unfounded. 1 It is not within the scope of this paper to consider the validity of Latour’s criticisms of social constructivism. However, this issue has been given ample coverage elsewhere; see, for example, Bloor (1999). 2 Latour uses actants interchangeably with, amongst other things, ‘entelechies’, ‘monads’, ‘agents’, and ‘forces’.

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In Pandora’s hope Latour interprets Heidegger as being a technological determinist. According to Latour, Heidegger perceives technology to be a unique and superior monster, having as its sole aim the rationalisation and stockpiling of nature. In this characterisation of Heidegger’s views Latour appears to be have misunderstood the thrust of the Heideggerian critique. Latour sees Heidegger as dealing with the threat posed by technology itself, in all its material manifestations : hence Latour summarises Heidegger as saying that ‘man . . . is possessed by technology’, that ‘technology dominates all’ (Latour, 1999, p. 176). If technology itself were the focus of his critique, then Heidegger’s account might indeed be read as the views of technological determinist. Yet Heidegger makes explicit in his work that it is the essence of technology which is his focus, and, moreover, that the essence of technology is not equivalent to technological artefacts themselves (Heidegger, 1977, p. 4). The essence of technology, instead, is the particular understanding that modern, western human beings have of the world and their place in it. This understanding is characterised by our regard for entities as ‘standing reserve’: resources available solely for the purposes of regulation, measurement, and control. Heidegger calls this way of disclosing the world ‘Gestell’ or ‘enframing’. It should be noted that when Heidegger describes enframing as the essence of technology, “essence” is not used in the Platonic sense of ‘genus’ or ‘essentia’: that which endures permanently as a ground. Rather, Heidegger traces the German for ‘essence’ (Wesen) to wahren which means ‘to endure’ and to gewahren which means ‘to grant’. The essence of technology is seen as a revealing of the world that is ‘granted’ to us by “Being”, and is beyond our immediate control. In turn, “Being” is neither to be understood as a metaphysical ground, nor as a god nor as any entity, but instead as the realm of unconcealment in which ‘at any given time the real shows itself or withdraws’ (Heidegger, 1977, p. 323). Being is to be differentiated from beings, which are entities in the world (trees, humans, rocks, works of art, machines), and instead should be recognised as the condition for encountering such beings. The threat that technology holds, then, has nothing to do with technological artefacts. Rather, it lies in the potential that the enframing mode has for reducing our thinking so that we will come to regard reality solely through the lens of technological ordering. In this way, the enframing mode gives rise to ‘calculative thinking’ in which we come to represent entities purely in terms of their availability for use in production or consumption (Heidegger, 1966, p. 56). Heidegger argues that while the enframing mode is the culmination of western metaphysical thinking, it is neither inevitable not unalterable. Heidegger’s solution to the problem of the enframing mode is to articulate a new way in which Being can be revealed that does not take the form of ordering and controlling nature. This stance clearly undermines Latour’s view that Heidegger’s approach is that of a technological determinist. In The question concerning technology, Heidegger makes explicit reference to the fact that the enframing is not ‘the fate of our age, where “fate” means the inevitableness of an unalterable course’ (Heidegger, 1977, p. 25). He also makes it clear, however, that he does not subscribe to the alternative view of technology as socially constructed. On the contrary, he argues that it is one of the illusions created by the enframing attitude that ‘everything man encounters exists only in so far as it is his

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construct’ (Heidegger, 1977, p. 27). This in turn leads to the “final delusion”, the reification of the human subject to the point where ‘it seems as though man everywhere and always encounters only himself’ (Heidegger, 1977, p. 27). Here we find clear echoes of Latour’s criticisms of the social constructivist view. Hence for both Heidegger and Latour, we cannot adequately understand technology by looking towards arguments proffered by social and technological determinists. Instead, they contend that to uncover the roots of the enframing attitude we need to examine the traditional distinction made between subject and object. Thesis 2: The present (mis)understanding of technology is due to a continued commitment to the subject–object distinction A defining feature of both Latour and Heidegger’s stances is a rejection of the subject–object dichotomy. According to Latour, the aim of epistemology has been to frame universal principles of rationality that allow us to state what knowledge consists in for any given experience of reality. The notion of rationality employed by various accounts has not been univocal. In particular, in recent times, the idea of rationality has been relativised by sociologists and made contingent upon interests, social groupings, and so on. Yet all these accounts contain the common assumption that there exist independent spheres of cognition and natural reality. This dichotomy between the cogitating subject and the object of its knowledge forms the metaphysical bedrock of traditional philosophical accounts of knowledge. In Latour’s view this epistemological divide shapes the modernist view that ‘science and technology allow minds to break away from society to reach objective nature, and to impose order on efficient matter’ (Latour, 1999, p. 194). Such a view reduces our conception of artefacts to being either acted upon or else as acting upon humans, producing the dichotomy between social and technological determinism. Latour’s main concern is to “liberate” artefacts from the passivity that this dichotomy imposes on them. In Heidegger’s work the focus on the subject–object distinction takes the role of a thoroughgoing critique of western metaphysical thought. In Being and time (1997) he stresses the inadequacy of the subject–object distinction on the grounds that it fails to capture the basic relation of human beings to the world. His central point here is that the world is not encountered by us in its totality as an object. Rather, human beings or “Dasein” encounter things in the world unreflectively, in the context in which those entities are meaningful to us (that is, in terms of our projects, values, concerns, and so on). This practical, ‘ready-to-hand’ mode of encountering, he argues, is ontologically prior to a ‘present-at-hand’ mode, in which particular properties or features of entities are isolated for scientific or philosophical investigation. In his later work, Heidegger shifts away from the idea of the ready-to-hand as our fundamental way of engaging with the world, recognising its similarity to the instrumentalist mode of engagement that he criticises in his work on technology. Heidegger’s concern in his later work is that technology, as a way of revealing, ‘objectifies’ the world, and encourages man, the reified subject, to be one who ‘exalts himself to the posture of lord of the earth’ (Heidegger, 1977, p. 27). This view is reflected in all areas in which the technological mode reigns, including the sciences,

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which ‘set[s] up nature to exhibit itself as a coherence of forces calculable in advance’ (Heidegger, 1977, p. 21) and historiography, which makes the historical accessible as an object. It is also revealed in certain modern social practices such as “networking” in which friendship is reduced to valuing others in terms of their social utility. Like Latour, Heidegger attempts to frame a more original and basic way of disclosing the world that is prior to the distinction between subject and object. In the next sectioni I shall discuss what this alternative mode of disclosure consists in for each of them. Thesis 3: The ‘solution’ is to find an alternative account that replaces the subject–object dichotomy As I have shown, technology per se is not the key problem for Latour and Heidegger: both are more concerned with overcoming the subject–object dichotomy. For Heidegger, as for Latour, the aim of an alternative conception of technology is to reveal humankind’s hubris and to point to an alternative to the subject-centred view of the world. Latour argues that for a better understanding of technology we need to do away with the political settlement that has set up the distinction between subject and object (mind/world, nature/society). This distinction, in his view, is inherently unstable: the sheer complexity and multiplicity of our interactions with non-humans challenge all attempts to order them within the subject–object framework. Instead of thinking of the world as made up of human subjects reflecting and acting upon passive objects, we should consider it as being made up entirely of actants. Latour portrays actants as teleological beings that come into existence only through their engagement with other actants (Sturdy, 1991, p. 164). In Pandora’s hope, for example, Latour describes how, within the realm of scientific practice, actants interact with one another in order to become recognised entities, and to achieve a relatively stable position in a whole network of interactions. While Pasteur enrols the yeast in his effort to defeat the chemical theory of fermentation and to prove his mettle as a scientist, the yeast concurrently enrols Pasteur (with the help of allies such as glassware, assistants, and so on) to provide them with an opportunity to emerge as bona fide substances. As is the case in the case of the speed bump, Latour uses the case of Pasteur and his experiments to demonstrate the reciprocal way in which humans and non-humans interact. After Pasteur’s experiments with yeast, reality is no longer constituted by exactly the same entities: instead, we have ‘a (partially) new Pasteur, a (partially) new yeast, and a (partially) new Academy . . . all congratulating one another on the success of the yeast experiments’ (Latour, 1999, p. 126). Latour’s monistic account aims at showing that contrary to the traditional epistemological view, our knowledge of reality is a direct, dynamic, and unmediated engagement with other entities. Contrary to accounts that presuppose a unidirectional relationship between human agents and technological and scientific artifacts, Latour’s view emphasises the way that humans, as actants, both act and are acted upon by other entities.

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From this perspective, Latour’s views bear striking similarities to Heidegger’s account, which advocates that human beings understand the world in terms of a context larger than that of its own making. (This account, representative of Heidegger’s later views, is a move away from his earlier conception of world as a referential totality for Dasein, which still places Dasein in the role of subject around which everything else is built). As we have seen, Heidegger is concerned with the narrowness of the enframing mode, which reveals the world purely as available for human beings’ manipulation, calculation, and ordering. Heidegger does not advocate, however, that we try to do away with technology, or calculative thinking altogether: it is too much part of our lived reality to be simply renounced. Instead he offers two related ways of overcoming this enframing mode. First, we can gain a freer relation to it by understanding that the technological mode is a historically constituted understanding. According to Heidegger, the technological worldview is the culmination of a metaphysical tradition beginning with Plato, and as such is a historically contingent way of viewing the world. Once we recognise the contingency of this way of thinking, we are freed up to embrace an alternative way of disclosing reality. The second and more critical way of overcoming the enframing mode is to embrace a way of understanding Being in terms of the inter-relatedness between four basic elements: ‘mortals’ (defined by their finitude and their limited role in the cosmos), ‘gods’ (deities), ‘earth’ (that which is prior to human production), and ‘sky’ (the natural elements, seasons, and suchlike) (Heidegger, 1993, p. 351). This “fourfold” is best understood through works of art, the Greek temple being one example. Such an entity functioned for the Greeks as a cultural clearing through which the activities that shaped what it meant to be Greek (sacrifice, ritual, birth, death) were understood. The unconcealment of being through such a work of art reveals the interconnectedness of the four principal causes of any artefact: the role of craftsman/technician, the purpose and value of the object produced, the material from which it is produced, and the form that it will finally take. This account challenges the prominence of the human subject as the sole and primary cause in the production of artefacts, and the understanding of artefacts solely in terms of their utility. Through the work of art we no longer see things as the effects of efficient causes, but rather as openings in which ‘things appear as what they most profoundly are, in some sense, prior to human willing and making’ (Feenberg, 1999, p. 184). Unlike Latour, Heidegger does not use the language of co-production of humans and non-humans. Nonetheless, his conception of artefacts as openings which reveal the interconnectedness of the four causes is not so far removed from Latour’s conception of techniques as produced by the interaction between humans and non-humans. Moreover, as Feenberg has suggested, Heidegger’s notion of a work such as a temple as something that gathers, rather than as an entity with an essence, marks a move ‘from a substance metaphysics to a network metaphysics, a sort of field theory of things’ (Feenberg, 1999, p. 195). Like Latour’s artifacts, Heidegger’s things are the nodes in a network that connect together and reveal the elements—both human and non-human—that meaningfully structure a world (rituals, religion, the seasons, death, and so on). As Dreyfus elaborates, it is against such a background of interaction

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‘that we come to understand what counts as things, what counts as human beings, and ultimately what counts as real’ (Dreyfus, 1995, p. 100).

Part II In this Section I highlight some differences in both the form and the content of Latour and Heidegger’s work, before offering some critical comments on how far each of them has succeeded in giving an alternative to traditional accounts of technology. Actants vs. enframing Latour and Heidegger can be seen to have a shared interest in the representation of technological artefacts as objects. In this section, I will briefly discuss how this common focus belies differences in their basic concerns and motivations. The aim of Latour’s argument is to liberate artefacts from their role as alien objects. By contrast, Heidegger’s aim is to liberate humans from their singular way of disclosing the world. Consequently, their criticisms are targeted at different elements. The protagonists in Latour’s story are primarily sociologists (namely, those who would continue to explain artefacts in terms of society) whilst Heidegger’s account speaks to scientists, technologists, consumers (those ‘caught up’ in the enframing mode of thinking). Similarly, both Latour and Heidegger allow political consideration to impact upon their views in entirely different ways. For Latour, the division of the metaphysical landscape between subject (mind, society) and object (nature) can itself be traced back to a political rather than a philosophical concern. This concern, expressed in Plato’s Gorgias, regards how to deal with irrationality, immorality, and political disorder, or how to ‘avoid the threat of mob rule that would make everything lowly, monstrous and inhuman’ (Latour, 1999, p. 13). Socrates’ victory over Callicles settled this question once and for all, whereupon Reason triumphed over Rhetoric and became the final means of settling questions of politics. Latour describes this settlement as bringing inhumanity to bear on inhumanity: the use of objective (‘inhuman’) laws to control those considered inhuman (such as animals, women, and the general masses). More important to Latour, however, is the way in which this essentially political settlement has been brought to bear on science. In science, as in politics, the view that ‘we need . . . to confirm and strengthen the vision of a rationally understandable world if we are to protect ourselves from the irrational tendencies that still beset humanity’ has prevailed (Weinberg quoted in Latour, 1999, p. 216). The consequences in the world of science are the same as in politics: the exclusion of anything ‘inhuman’ (such as machines, speed bumps, or yeast) from positions of agency and control and the search for methods by which to filter out “subjective” and “social” influences so that we might frame a wholly “objective” account of reality. Latour’s ostensible aim is to offer an alternative to the sociological account of science and technology. In so doing, he hopes to develop an account that ‘de-

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politicises’ our view of science and technology. However, we should not thereby see Latour as being motivated by apolitical considerations. On the contrary, the aim of giving a de-politicised account has the effect of justifying that account in essentially political terms. In other words, in attempting to find a new settlement that frees science from politics Latour is in effect being political. This is not to say that Latour would disagree with one calling his justifications political. He is, in fact, quite frank about his political motivations. In Pandora’s hope, for example, he describes his aims as that of formulating a new account of scientific practice that ‘redefines political order as that which brings together stars, prions, cows, heavens and people’ (Latour, 1999, p. 261). Heidegger, in contrast to Latour, does not indicate what, if any, political influences contribute to his view of technology, nor what political message we might infer from his work. On the contrary, he would have us believe that his justifications are purely ontological. Heidegger’s explicit aim is to replace the enframing mode with ‘a more original revealing’ and hence ‘to experience the call of a more primal truth’ (Heidegger, 1977, p. 28). Yet is it sufficient to leave Heidegger’s work on technology at this: an ontological critique of technology? Many have argued that some of Heidegger’s comments reveal a more deeply political strain of thinking. There are two main ways in which Heidegger’s account of technology has been said to have a political dimension. Firstly, it has been argued that his account reflects a deeply antimodernist, and anti-democratic strain of thinking. Secondly, it has been suggested that Heidegger’s view of technology is related to his political commitment to National Socialism. I will focus only on the first of these two topics—Heidegger’s anti-modernism—since the latter aspects of Heidegger’s work have received full treatment elsewhere,3 whilst the former provide an interesting point of contrast to Latour’s views. As Julian Young (1997) points out, much of Heidegger’s thought reflects the antimodernist movement that gathered momentum in Germany from the latter part of the nineteenth century onwards. This movement considered influences such as industrialism, (parliamentary) democracy, secularism, and internationalism as inimical to traditional society. It instead advocated a rural culture based on ‘agricultural and craft modes of production and characterised by rigid social hierarchies, . . . personal relations of dependence, a religious world view and a shape and style of life rooted in a particular region’ (Young, 1997, p. 27). Heidegger’s comments on the encroachment of modern technology on traditional communities in the Black Forest reveal his valuing of traditional, volkisch ideals. He laments, for example, that Black Forest residents are more enthralled by radio and television than by the natural elements that surround them and the conventions and customs of their native world (Heidegger, 1966, p. 48). In the same work he remarks that even in a society which ‘shines in the radiance of advance, advantages and material good, where human rights are respected and where civil order is maintained’ still the technological mode of calculation and ordering exists. This suggests that, in Heidegger’s view, liberal

3

See Zimmerman (1990).

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democratic values are not the solution to overcoming the enframing mode, but instead are part and parcel of that way of thinking. Heidegger’s anti-modernist stance and Latour’s call for us to reassess our relationship to technology not only reflect different political agendas, but also offer an interesting contrast, in so far as Heidegger’s solution is to minimise our dependence on technological artifacts whilst Latour’s is to accept the myriad ways in which we are dependent. Discussion We are now in a position to assess both Latour and Heidegger’s alternatives to the traditional accounts of technology. We have seen that Latour and Heidegger’s accounts are motivated by very different concerns, although in the final analysis, each advocates a less ‘humanistic’ ontological view. Latour’s thesis is that humans and non-humans are, in some symmetrical sense, actors in a political, ethical, experimental, social network. Heidegger’s thesis is that human understanding is itself ‘appropriated’ by Being, which transcends the merely human. I would now like to consider how far each of them succeeds in offering a less subject-centred account. Latour’s position Considerable doubts have been raised regarding Latour’s monistic account.4 His ostensible aim in Pandora’s hope ‘is not to extend subjectivity to things, to treat humans like objects, to take machines for social actors, but to avoid using the subject–object distinction at all in order to talk about the folding of humans into non humans’ (Latour, 1999, p. 194). Latour, it seems, wants to use a new semiotic vocabulary—one that does not implicitly re-invoke the distinction between subject and object—to redress the existing asymmetry between humans and non-humans. Yet this new language simply does not seem up to this task. Contrary to his ostensible aims, Latour ends up establishing symmetry only by granting subjectivity to objects. There is no better illustration of this than in Latour’s analysis of the speed bump, where we are told that a speed bump is an actant because it acts as a hybrid of engineer–law-maker–policeman to redirect our goals, articulate intentions etc. What makes the speed bump more than just ‘shapeless matter’ is its possession of a more robust kind of agency than mere causal agency. This is found in its ability to ‘manipulate’, ‘enrol’ and ‘mobilise’ humans and other non-humans, and in short, to behave in essentially the same way that human subjects have always been said to have been able to. The speed bump is seen as ‘more than an object’, in short, by virtue of its having properties formerly reserved for human actors. It thus appears that the move towards symmetry is to be affected by endowing non-humans with an agency that, as Latour is well aware, only serves to preserve the distinction between actor and acted-upon, subject and object. In this way, Latour does not suc-

4

See Bloor (1999), Amsterdanska (1990).

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ceed in moving beyond the subject–object dichotomy, and what is worse, humans are still the standard measure of agency to which non-humans are elevated. Heidegger’s position The early Heidegger of Being and time, like Latour, sought a new vocabulary for describing human beings outside of the subject–object distinction. However the later Heidegger, concerned with the technological enframing, would have seen this quest for a new vocabulary as reminiscent of the kind of controlling and ordering that marks the technological mode of thinking. The later Heidegger’s alternative, as we have seen, is to advocate that we adopt a more meditative attitude: one that lets beings be in a way that is no longer mediated by human goals. Does Heidegger fare better than Latour when it comes to redressing the asymmetry of the subject–object distinction? It seems that Heidegger fails, for different reasons, to frame an adequately non-subject centred account. His suggestion, as we have seen, is that we adopt a more meditative attitude towards technology, one that allows us to ‘let technological devices enter our lives and at the same time leave them outside’ (Heidegger, 1966, p. 54). This attitude can be effected if we first of all open ourselves to the way in which the world is revealed as an interrelated whole, shaped not only by humans, but also by elements beyond human making and doing. Our ontological account needs to be reconfigured by placing the human subject less at the centre of things. This reconfiguration is something that Heidegger recognised he failed to address in his earlier account of Dasein. In his later work on technology, therefore, Heidegger no longer talks of Dasein appropriating Being in either an authentic or inauthentic way, and instead talks of Being as appropriating humans. Yet he cannot give an account that adequately portrays the inter-relatedness of thing human and non-human as long as human beings still hold a privileged position in his ontology. In his work on technology Heidegger remains committed to the idea that we hold such a rarefied position, since it remains the case that it is through humans and no other entities that Being is revealed. In one of the last explications of his views, his 1966 interview with Der spiegel, Heidegger affirms that ‘the world cannot be what it is or the way that it is through man, but neither can it be without man . . . Being . . . needs man for its revelation, preservation and formation’ (Heidegger, 1976, p. 278). Thus, in Heidegger’s account, as much as in Latour’s, humans maintain an ontological mastery over non-humans.

Conclusion In this paper I have shown that the main similarity between Latour and Heidegger’s concern with our relationship to technology revolves around the distinction between subject and object. This concern leads them both to a rejection of social constructivism and technological determinism and to formulate alternatives that sidesteps this distinction. Latour argues for a more symmetrical way of viewing the interaction between humans and artefacts, whilst Heidegger offers an approach reco-

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gnising the interconnectedness between human and non-human entities. In so far as the human subject remains the frame of reference in each of their accounts, they have failed in their own terms to provide a radically less human-centric framework. Nevertheless, their arguments offer a reasonable starting point for rethinking our relationship to technology.

Acknowledgements I am indebted to Martin Kusch for his many helpful comments on early drafts of this paper.

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