The Soul in the Technical Age, first published in 1957 in the legendary book series Rowohlt's German Encyclopedia, is the best-selling and arguably the most-read book by Arnold Gehlen, whose impact made him an influential diagnostician of the young Federal Republic. This concise interpretative attempt, which also provides a cultural theory of modernity, is made accessible again here in an affordable standalone edition. The starting point is the thesis of two "absolute cultural thresholds": one being the settlement of humans in the Neolithic period, and the other the process of industrialization. For Gehlen, technology is part of the anthropological basic equipment of humans, this "deficient being" that relies on artificiality and relief in managing its existence. As cultural characteristics of modernity, he identified a tendency towards "de-sensualization" and its spread.