Peter Sloterdijk’s Philosophy of Technology

From Anthropogenesis to the Anthropocene

Author(s)

  • Matheus Ferreira de Barros Pontifical Catholic University
  • Marco Pavanini Durham University
  • Pieter Lemmens Radboud University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.54195/technophany.13602

Keywords:

Philosophy of technology; Peter Sloterdijk; Anthropocene; Philosophical Anthropology; Contemporary Continental Philosophy

Abstract

In the present work, we aim to expose the central tenets of the philosophy of technology which underlines the work of the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk. Beginning from his early works and also mapping his philosophical influences, we show how he incidentally started theorising technology while still profoundly engaged with critical theory in the 1980s, but along the 1990s, passed through an anthropological turn, which made possible a concept of technology that has its foundations in both Heidegger’s existential philosophy and German philosophical anthropology in general, but also emphasising the long biological-evolutionary process of the human species itself. This perspective then enables us to highlight a powerful philosophical techno-anthropology that deals with the genesis of the human as sphero-poietic species having evolved into a biosphero-poietic geoforce and the future planetary challenges put in front of us by the Anthropocene. With this, we aim to contribute to current debates in the philosophy of technology, offering a techno-philosophical reading of an (in our view) decisive and yet under-explored author in this field.

Author Biographies

  • Matheus Ferreira de Barros, Pontifical Catholic University

    Matheus Ferreira de Barros is a PhD student at the Department of Philosophy—Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and guest researcher at Institute for Science in Society at Radboud University, the Netherlands. Currently his research is about philosophy of technology, focusing on the work of Peter Sloterdijk and Martin Heidegger.

  • Marco Pavanini, Durham University

    Marco Pavanini is a PhD student and teaching assistant at Durham University, UK, alongside its Centre for Culture and Ecology. His research concerns the relationship between technology and human existence, with a particular focus on the role played by technologies in both shaping the process of human evolution and structuring scientific knowledge about this process.

  • Pieter Lemmens, Radboud University

    Pieter Lemmens teaches philosophy and ethics at the Institute for Science in Society at Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He has published on themes in philosophy of technology, philosophical anthropology and (post)phenomenology, and on the work of Heidegger, Sloterdijk, and Stiegler. Current interests are the planetarisation of technology, the technosphere and the renewal of philosophy of technology in the age of the Anthropocene

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Published

2023-05-13

Issue

Section

General Articles

How to Cite

Ferreira de Barros, Matheus, Marco Pavanini, and Pieter Lemmens. 2023. “Peter Sloterdijk’s Philosophy of Technology: From Anthropogenesis to the Anthropocene”. Technophany, A Journal for Philosophy and Technology 1 (2): 1-40. https://doi.org/10.54195/technophany.13602.

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