Heideggerian conception of the artifact in Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik

Abstract

In his course Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. Welt-Endlichkeit-Einsamkeit (1929/1930) Heidegger devises a distinction between organ and tool whose objective is to characterize organism in order to compare it to man. The objective of this article is to examine the limits between the organic and the artificial in order to determine to what extent such distinctions —although they could be considered marginal in the German philosopher's work— can contribute to understand the ontological status of artefacts. This paper tries to show how these Heideggerian thesis about the distinction organ/tool can be reinterpreted in a coherent way through the idea of technical design.