Verbeek distinguishes his views from Heidegger’s widely influential philosophy of technology, building on several analyses of Heidegger that have been offered (e.g. Feenberg, Dreyfus, and Ihde). The project of Heidegger’s later philosophy in works such as “The Question Concerning Technology” and “The Origin of the Work of Art” is the attempt to uncover the general mode through which reality becomes disclosed to us (1971; 1977). As Verbeek puts it, “Reality always already” is “in a certain way when human beings enter a relation with it-being always already has a meaning for them” (2005, 55). These days, Heidegger observes, reality is disclosed as a “standing reserve,” as a resource available to be tapped for human ends. This mode of disclosure is dangerous since it limits us to seeing our world, and even ourselves, only as means to ends. While others have criticized Heidegger’s view as totalizing, abstract, or nostalgic, Verbeek claims that the real problem with this position is that it relies on faulty transcendental reasoning, taking limited instances of our experience to count for all possible relations to technology.

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