In the volume's penultimate entry, Dreyfus and Spinosa contend that, despite some appearances to the contrary, Heidegger is neither a "nostalgic romantic" nor akin to later romantics who focus on loss and destruction, itself a technological reaction to technology, of a piece with the project of mastering--and thereby succumbing--to it. The problem for Heidegger, Dreyfus and Spinosa submit (somewhat precipitously, in my view), is not so much the destruction of nature and culture or a self-indulgent consumerism as it is the exclusive hold of a certain style of practices of revealing people and things, practices of technicity that inhibit our openness to those people and things, while suppressing alternatives. The key to technicity's dominance is the endless transformability of people and things, both construed as part of a standing-reserve, reserved for no one in particular. The very antithesis of anything conspiratorial, the metaphysical shroud of modern technology prevails over everything with the single, amoral dictate of making the most of possibilities. In Dreyfus and Spinosa's apt formulation: "We thus become part of a system that no one directs but which moves towards the total mobilization and enhancement of all beings, even us". The situation is not hopeless. Japanese culture allegedly attests to the possibility of using technology without taking over its understanding of being, and the history of Western thinking shows that this understanding, like other understandings of being, is not inevitable but received. Beyond recognizing technicity for what it is, namely, a relative, historical understanding of being, Heidegger's positive response to technology consists in, not simply accepting the mystery of the gift of this understanding, but also protecting "endangered species of practices," engaging in marginal ("focal") practices that resist optimization. After sketching Heidegger's account of these practices, centered around some saving power of an everyday thing, in terms of the four elements: earth, sky, mortals, divinities, Dreyfus and Spinosa elaborate how the account applies significantly to use of a highway bridge or computer. Though use of them absents us from local worlds, it can, by the same token, also make us sensitive to their multiplicity so long as we recognize that such use discloses only one possible world and "we maintain skills for disclosing other kinds of local worlds". Dreyfus and Spinosa conclude by noting that Heidegger in a late seminar abandoned the ontological difference, reflecting his appreciation of the impediment that a unified understanding of being presents to "the gathering of local worlds". It warrants mentioning that Heidegger takes issue with the ontological difference already in the Beiträge (1936-38).

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