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BOOK REVIEWS 247realized. Changes that are detrimental to this process are morally unacceptable. Thissolution may be charged with anthropocentrism. However, it is no more anthropocentricthan the interpretation of place as our mode of being-in-the-world.

In fact Heidegger seems to play only a heuristic role here. The main theses of thebook are Aristotelian: things possess qualitative and quantitative properties, and we areable to cognize them. That is, we are able to discover truth, even if-since ourunderstanding is finite and aspectual-it always includes some measure of forgetting anderror (139). And having discovered truth we should follow it in our praxis. Even for thisone thesis Stefanovic's book is certainly worth reading.

AGNIESZKA LEKKi\-KOWALIKFaculty of Philosophy

Catholic University of Lublin

Focal LengthsTechnology and the Good Life?ERlc HIGGS, ANDREW LIGHT & DAVID STRONG (Eds) Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000 xii + 392 pp., cloth: $65.00; paper: $25.00 This book serves at least two stated purposes. The first and most apparent one is as acritical reader on Albert Borgmann's philosophy of technology. The second, equallyimportant but less foregrounded purpose is to "[address] the problems at work inphilosophy of technology today," (373) which the editors see as stemming from the lackof recognition that existing work in philosophy of technology is accorded by philosophyin general, and the isolation and lack of encouragement that individuals have in pursuingit. The inter- and intra-disciplinary connections of philosophy of technology has notbeen broad enough (7), and it has lacked focus and orientation (17). This book intendsto rectify that. To do justice to the book, then, both purposes must be assessed.As a critical reader of Albert Borgmann's work on technology, this book is head andshoulders above anything else available. Faint praise, perhaps, in that there really is littleelse apart from scattered reviews, papers, and conference discussions, but I do not meanthe praise faintly. It really is useful, especially for someone who is familiar withBorgmann and the debates that have surrounded his work. The papers explore a broadrange of issues in philosophy of technology (and necessarily also environmental philosophy), from a wide variety of perspectives ranging from sympathetic to critical (althoughnone are dismissive). The editors have chosen contributors and themes wisely, and whilesome contributions are stronger than others, there is not a weak essay in the volume.

The book is organized into four sections. Section one gives an overview of the stateof philosophy of technology, and places Borgmann's work in the overall scheme. DavidStrong and Eric Higgs give as good an introduction to Borgmann's seminal distinctionbetween devices and focal things as could be imagined, while Paul Durbin gives a brief

and useful overview of the field, and Borgmann's place in it.The second section, "Evaluat ing Focal Things," consists of five contributions whichaddress Borgmann's positive agenda for the future of technology. These papers meth-

odically assess the idea of focal things, ijhding models to account for it (LawrenceHaworth), addressing the most tempting/objection, that they are merely Heideggerianpre-technological romanticism (Gordon Brittan), comparing focal things to other accounts of technology, particularly "pragmatechnics" (Larry Hickman), accounting for

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248 BOOK REVIEWSthe seeming political conservativism within his work (Andrew Light), and unearthing theoverlooked, though central issue of character (Carl Mitcham). This is a robust and usefulsection, as Borgmann himself recognizes-he spends most of his time in his replyresponding to these papers and the issues they raise.

The third section, "Theory in the Service of Practice," attempts to apply Borgmann'sthought to specific examples. This seems to me to be the most interesting section of thevolume. The notion of focal practice is extended and criticized in relation to film (PhillipFandozzi), farming (Paul Thompson), the design of technology Gesse Tatum) andecological restoration (Eric Higgs). Considering how focal practices might be understood(and criticized) in these contexts makes them more readily applicable in other contexts.Thompson's article is particularly useful in this regard.

The fourth section, "Extensions and Controversies," contains six papers whichcritique aspects of Borgmann's thought. These critiques range from those which eitherrecover positive human experience from or think more critically about technologyBorgmann would tend to classify as "devices" (Diane Michelfelder, Douglas Kellner,Andrew Feenberg), to those which question the context in which engagement with focalpractices might occur (Mora Campbell, Thomas Michael Power). As more of anextension than a controversy, David Strong imagines what philosophy might look like ifit took seriously Borgmann's preoccupation with things, not only as technological entitiesbut as philosophical ones as well.

As a systematic reflection on Borgmann's work, then, this collection is successful.But what of the second purpose? I happen to spend much of my time in a field (Africanphilosophy) which suffers from the same kind of lack of recognition that the editors ofthis book identify. These are the questions I hear: Does Africa really have a philosophy?Is it no t just a "negative" philosophy, one which begins from exclusion? Do you reallywant to work in a field where no one in "real" philosophy knows the major figures? Oftenwhen Africa is "rediscovered" by someone in "mainstream" philosophy, they don't dotheir homework and the careful work of Africans and others over time is ignored. Thecolonizer has landed, ready to plunder resources, claim the terra incognita, ignore orsuppress the locals and move on. Sound familiar?

But there are differences. Africa doesn't cross the consciousness of most people,while technology is so imbedded that it is hard to make it an object of reflection in amanner other than either "gee-whiz" or "doom and gloom." Even philosophers think theyalready know about technology, whereas they don't know and don't care about Africa.So I can identify with the feelings of marginalization expressed in the introductionand afterword. But what does this book change? More to the point, what would theeditors like it to change? Perhaps, following David Strong, this book is an exercise in"philosophy in the service of things." But who will listen?

I have observed from working in African philosophy that, while this area is eithersubsumed under existing philosophical history, or dismissed as irrelevant or pointless, thischanges when it is actually able to make a positive contribution to the rest of philosophy,to (in Deleuze's words) "create new concepts." Of course, the problem is still gettinganyone to listen, but other previously marginalized sub-disciplines have walked this pathbefore-feminism, for example. The key for feminists was to bridge the gaps, to find thelocal ways of communicating across the disciplinary barriers. Strong is probably right,that "the history of philosophy needs to be rethought in terms of focal things" (331). Thatis a new contribution-but how, other than by producing in-house conversations, willthis new concept become something more than a way of highlighting the unreflectivenessof the mainstream?

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BOOK REVIEWS 249This book is a good start. The next step is to move from identifying sub-disciplinarymarginalization, to thinking about where the profitable local, non-internal conversationsmight exist.

BRUCE JANZDepanment of Philosophy

Augustana University CollegeThe Infinitude of the Final SolutionContemporary Portrayals of Auschwitz: Philosophical ChallengesAlAN ROSENBERG, JAMES R. WATSON & DETLEF LINK (Eds)New York: Humanity Books, 2000355 pp., cloth: $70.00The Holocaust refuses to end. It refuses to be over; we remain caught and entangled inits repercussions and for some in this text, this simulataneous lack of intelligibility andmeaning as well as its overwhelming character will forever be ahead of us-to come. Forothers, the Holocaust provides an eerie and uncanny platform from which we launchourselves anew, although shattered, transformed and stripped of illusions. We, in theWest in particular, must continue to create art, renew religion, write, memorialize andtestify to the genocides of today as well as yesterday. For these, the impulses areinextricably a mixture of the moral and political.

For yet another group of notable writers of this collection, the Holocaust leaves us,if it ever leaves us, in crisis-this crisis, these crises, are not only of Modernism and theEnlightenment, of humanism, but also for the work of postmodernism. We still do nothave the tools or the motifs to comprehend the testimonies, the eyewitness accounts, orthe historicity of the Holocaust events themselves. That they are a part of the futureperfect-what will have been-is only another ironic twist of the dangling corpse whichHeidegger foresaw in spite of himself and his own dangerous entanglement withNazism. What will the Holocaust have been? This is perhaps the question of this textand one which every essay attempts to address.Although originally a collection of conference papers, this text reads as fiveself-contained subsections. We move from issues of witnessing, testimony and the trialsof posttnodern and post-Holocaust subjectivity to the moral and ethical dimensions ofgenocide-both past and present. From here we take up Adorno's challenge to art andpoetry, to artists and poets, to create after Auschwitz. This section considers kitsch,eelan's work and the images of people labeled by numbers in the camps. The fourthsection focuses on the issues of historicity and memory and the problems of forgettinginherent in temporality. The last part turns again to the issues of crisis in representationand the stubborn defiance the Holocaust maintains as we attempt still to grasp it insome meaningful or encompassing way. What slips away from our grasp, what will nevercome (back) into focus is the subject of the discourse here.

The dilemma for Debra Bergoffen revolves around the unthinkable, unintelligible,and hence meaningless character she attributes to the "Final Solution." She argues forthe term "Final Solution" rather than "Shoah" or "Holocaust" since the latter entail atheological reference to sacrifice, to the burning of an offering to God as a part of aneconomy of life and death. The "Final Solution" neither offers nor instantiates any sucheconomy. Her essay speaks throughout of the inadequacy of any language, any approach, any story to the events of te Final Solution. It remains, she claims, forever