Skip to content
Coordinates of ThoughtHome of Philosophy
Join

Thinker · TH-0129

Don Ihde

Don Ihde was an American philosopher who taught for most of his career at Stony Brook University. Building on Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, he…

FollowStart a topic about Don Ihde

1934 – 2024 · Stony Brook, New York

Traditions: American

Schools: Phenomenology

Don Ihde was an American philosopher who taught for most of his career at Stony Brook University. Building on Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, he developed 'postphenomenology', a way of studying how technologies mediate human experience of the world. His typology of human–technology relations has become a standard framework in the philosophy of technology and science and technology studies.

Key ideas

  • Technologies mediate how the world appears to us; they are not neutral tools.
  • Human–technology relations include embodiment, hermeneutic, alterity and background relations.
  • Every technological mediation amplifies some features of experience and reduces others.
  • Phenomenology must be empirically informed and attentive to particular technologies.

Major works

  • Listening and Voice (1976)
  • Technics and Praxis (1979)
  • Technology and the Lifeworld (1990)
  • Postphenomenology (1993)

In the conversation

In the Coordinates

The questions of philosophy where Don Ihde takes a place, from The Coordinates of Thought.