Abstract

LYRA, Edgar. The technologization of death: philosophy, science and poetry. Nat. hum. [online]. 2017, vol.19, n.2, pp. 114-133. ISSN 1517-2430.

Since the 1960s, a significant number of authors - health professionals, sociologists, historians - have examined the changes in the representations of death and dying in the scenario of technological hegemony. The starting point of this paper is an article written in 2005 by the Italian Franco Carnevale. He sees in Heidegger's philosophy a support for thinking death in a key other than that of the occupation with technical palliatives or the search for its definitive overcoming. The idea is to put Heideggerian thinking in dialogue with an wider universe of studies on death. We priorize the analysis of Being toward Death in Being and Time, transposed to the recent technological scene with the help of the considerations about the essence of contemporary technique formulated in The Question Concerning Technology. Also poetry, in the figure of the late writings of the Alagoan poet Lêdo Ivo, is brought to this conversation. Amidst the new "enframings" of death promoted by its recent "technologization", we expect that, in a rather preliminary way, reverberations may emerge that encourage the discussion about our finitude, pari passu, the revitalization of the Heideggerian questioning on the essence of the technique.

Keywords : Heidegger; death; technology; medicine; poetry.

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