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 Heideggers 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.

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

Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. Everydayness and the Norm of Addictive Practices.- Chapter 3. The Phenomenon of the Body and the Hook of Addiction.- Chapter 4. Self-Deception and Co-Dependency.- Chapter 5. Technology and the Rise of the Artifice.- Chapter 6. From Theology to Therapy:  A Genealogical Approach.- Chapter 7. In Search of a Discourse:  The Path of Recovery.- Chapter 8. From Excess to Economy:  Taking Ownership.