- Title Pages
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Part One Philosophy of Technology Today
- One Borgmann's Philosophy of Technology
- Two Philosophy of Technology: Retrospective and Prospective Views
- Part Two Evaluating Focal Things
- Three Focal Things and Focal Practices
- Four Technology and Nostalgia
- Five Focaltechnics, Pragmatechnics, and the Reform of Technology
- Six Borgmann's <i>Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen:</i> On the Prepolitical Conditions of a Politics of Place
- Seven On Character and Technology
- Part Three Theory in the Service of Practice
- Eight The Moving Image: Between Devices and Things
- Nine Farming as Focal Practice
- Ten Design and the Reform of Technology: Venturing Out into the Open
- Eleven Nature by Design
- Part Four Extensions and Controversies
- Twelve Technological Ethics in a Different Voice
- Thirteen Crossing the Postmodern Divide with Borgmann, or Adventures in Cyberspace
- Fourteen Technology and Temporal Ambiguity
- Fifteen Trapped in Consumption: Modern Social Structure and the Entrenchment of the Device
- Sixteen From Essentialism to Constructivism: Philosophy of Technology at the Crossroads
- Seventeen Philosophy in the Service of Things
- Eighteen Reply to My Critics
- Afterword
- Index
Focal Things and Focal Practices
Focal Things and Focal Practices
- Chapter:
- (p.55) Three Focal Things and Focal Practices
- Source:
- Technology and the Good Life?
- Author(s):
Lawrence Haworth
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
This chapter examines the relationship between focal practices and focal things. The chapter's meditation on things and practices, with its thoughtfully selected and well-developed examples, appeals to those who might not know Borgmann's work firsthand and deepens and clarifies, with its subtle distinctions, any sophisticated reader's understanding of Borgmann's account of this matter. Technology's relationship with democracy is at best an uneasy one, especially given Borgmann's claim that our modern devices are not mere value-neutral instruments. Thus, technology may play a greater role in determining the character of the good life than any of the founders of the liberal democratic tradition imagined.
Keywords: focal practice, focal thing, Borgmann's work, technology, democracy, modern devices, good life
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- Title Pages
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Part One Philosophy of Technology Today
- One Borgmann's Philosophy of Technology
- Two Philosophy of Technology: Retrospective and Prospective Views
- Part Two Evaluating Focal Things
- Three Focal Things and Focal Practices
- Four Technology and Nostalgia
- Five Focaltechnics, Pragmatechnics, and the Reform of Technology
- Six Borgmann's <i>Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen:</i> On the Prepolitical Conditions of a Politics of Place
- Seven On Character and Technology
- Part Three Theory in the Service of Practice
- Eight The Moving Image: Between Devices and Things
- Nine Farming as Focal Practice
- Ten Design and the Reform of Technology: Venturing Out into the Open
- Eleven Nature by Design
- Part Four Extensions and Controversies
- Twelve Technological Ethics in a Different Voice
- Thirteen Crossing the Postmodern Divide with Borgmann, or Adventures in Cyberspace
- Fourteen Technology and Temporal Ambiguity
- Fifteen Trapped in Consumption: Modern Social Structure and the Entrenchment of the Device
- Sixteen From Essentialism to Constructivism: Philosophy of Technology at the Crossroads
- Seventeen Philosophy in the Service of Things
- Eighteen Reply to My Critics
- Afterword
- Index
