The Essence of Technology and the Holocaust

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since bringing-forth is a type of revealing, Heidegger is now in a position to conclude

that If we inquire, step by step, into what technology, represented as means, actually
is, then we shall arrive at revealing. The possibility of all productive manufacturing
lies in revealing (QCT: 12). And it is this particular insight which cements the inner
coherence of the essay and in turn allows us to get some purchase on the question as to
how/why Heidegger compares the Holocaust, factory farming and atomic bombs from
the standpoint of their shared essence. They indicate something about the unique
way we are thrown into the world and interpret it and project according to a filtering
apparatus which is designated in advance, Gestell.
We can chart the essays course as follows then: Heidegger determines that the
conventional definition of technology reduces to an instrumental one. He further
insists that the instrumental definition of technology is insufficient insofar as it doesnt
yet capture the essence of technology. He concedes that the instrumental definition is
correct, but not yet true and proposes to analyse further the notion of instrumentality itself. In delving deeper into the notion of instrumentality, Heidegger reminds
us that the notion is derived from the idea of causality. However, it is a long-standing
convention that we tend to think of causality in purely efficient terms, that is, we think
of causality in terms of effects or consequents and the ground or cause of those same
effects/consequents. Heidegger is quick to note however that the notion of causality
initially involved four ways in which objects or things were thought to be caused or
produced. That is, causality was more holistically conceived; the Greeks had a fourfold
understanding of causality as an activity that resulted in various objects, works of
art, manufactured items and so on. The Greeks further conceived of this fourfold
responsibility for the production of something as a kind of occasioning and any such
occasioning as, if you like, a way of allowing something to come to presence, to be
revealed.10 Even nature (physis) involves this kind of bringing-forth or revealing:
The modes of occasioning, the four causes, are at play, then, within bringingforth. Through bringing-forth, the growing things of nature as well as whatever
is completed through the crafts and the arts come at any given time to their
appearance.
But how does bringing-forth happen, be it in nature or in handwork and
art? What is the bringing-forth in which the fourfold way of occasioning plays?
Occasioning has to do with the presencing [Anwesen] of that which at any time
comes to appearance in bringing-forth. Bringing-forth brings hither out of
concealment forth into unconcealment. Bringing forth comes to pass only insofar
as something concealed comes into unconcealment. This coming rests and moves
freely within what we call revealing [das Entbergen]. The Greeks have the word
aletheia for revealing. The Romans translate this with veritas. We say truth and
usually understand it as the correctness of an idea. (QCT: 1112)

Heidegger argues then that the essence of technology belongs to the realm of truth,
that is, that the essence of technology is a kind of revelation or unconcealment:
Every bringing-forth is grounded in revealing. Bringing-forth, indeed, gathers
within itself the four modes of occasioning causality and rules them