Toward a Phenomenology of Addiction: Embodiment, Technology, Transcendence

Frank Schalow

Oct 2017 · Contributions to Phenomenology Book 93 · Springer

About this ebook

This book addresses an epidemic that has developed on a global scale, and, which under the heading of “addiction,” presents a new narrative about the travails of the human predicament. The book introduces phenomenological motifs, such as desire, embodiment, and temporality, to uncover the existential roots of addiction, and develops Martin Heidegger’s insights into technology to uncover the challenge of becoming a self within the impulsiveness and depersonalization of our digital age.

By charting a new path of philosophical inquiry, the book allows a pervasive, cultural phenomenon, ordinarily reserved to psychology, to speak as a referendum about the danger which technology poses to us on a daily basis. In this regard, addiction ceases to be merely a clinical malady, and instead becomes a “signpost” to exposing a hidden danger posed by the assimilation of our culture within a technological framework.

About the author

Frank Schalow is Professor of Philosophy and University Research Professor at the University of New Orleans. He is the author of Heidegger and the Quest for the Sacred (Springer, 2001), and editor of Heidegger, Translation, and the Task of Thinking: Essays in Honor of Parvis Emad (Springer, 2011). Frank Schalow serves as co-editor of the international journal Heidegger Studies; in April, 2015, he received the “Excellence in Research Award” by the University Honors Program of the University of New Orleans.