Lorenzo De Stefano

This paper endeavors to explore the potential development of an ecology and an ethics tailored to the contemporary technological era, drawing upon Heidegger’s notion of Ereignis (Event). In pursuit of this objective, the study critically examines the alterations introduced by Heidegger’s work Beitrage zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) within the framework of his preceding ontological ideas and the interplay between Sein (Being) and Dasein (Existence). Furthermore, the paper engages with Heidegger’s perspective on the history of metaphysics and the question of technology, with an aim towards elucidating the possibility of a “new beginning” in philosophical thinking. The conceptual framework that emerges from this exploration forms the basis for a novel post-metaphysical understanding of the world, shedding light on an alternative mode of human-thing relations, distinct from the prevailing instrumentalism inherent in the technological age.

Only a catastrophe could save us. Being-towards-death in the era of the ecological crisis The aim of this essay is to develop a theoretical background to approach the problem of climate change, starting from the question of death as theorized by Heidegger in his masterpiece Being and Time. In order to do that, I start from the concept of the Anthropocene in relation with the problem of human and natural history and introducing the Heideggerian concept of history as epiphenomenon of temporal structure of the Dasein. On this basis, the being-toward-death, the as exposed in the abovementioned work, will help to provide a hermeneutic criterion to approach an ethic of the catastrophe.

The problem of technology cannot be separated from the problem of man, his nature and his determination. This essay surveys the nexus man-technology in the philosophical perspective of G. Anders, hybridized with André Leroi-Gourhan’s empiric anthropology. Anders philosophical concepts such as promethean gap and Weltfremdheit are investigated following the line of human evolution, that set itself as a process of gradual exoneration from nature in which technology and language play an essential role.