Abstract

The almost complete publication of Heidegger’s university courses and unpublished works of the 1930s and 1940s allows us to reconstruct the genesis of his reflection on modern technology. The first public statements about this subject, which date back to the Bremen Lectures and the famous Munich conference The Question Concerning Technology, gave the impression of a sudden “Technical turn”, but today we are able to retrace the long maturation – which lasted almost twenty years – of this theme, which would become central and dominant in Heidegger’s thought, starting from the period following the Second World War. Heidegger admitted that the early reading of Ernst Jünger’s Total Mobilization and The Worker played a decisive role both in his ontological conception of the technology and in his original interpretation of Nietzsche, of the will to power and nihilism, which he undertook in these years. Starting with Jünger, Heidegger was able to grasp the ontological value and totalitarian character of modern technology, which influenced the Epoch of Totalitarianism as well as the present day.