MIDTERMS
TOPIC
• Human Flourishing
In terms of science and technology
• Technology as a Way of
Revealing (Martin Heidegger)
• Validity of Science
In Progress and De-development
(Jason Hickel)
• The Good Life
• When Technology and Humanity
Cross
ASSESSMENT
Activity #1: Artwork Presentation
Activity #2: Short Essay
Assignment #1: Guide Questions
Quiz #1
Assignment #2: The Village of the
Watermills (Short Film) Guide Questions
Activity #3: Role Play/Skit
Quiz #2
Technology as a Way of
Revealing
The Question Concerning Technology by Martin Heidegger
Objectives
At the end of this lesson, the students should be able to:
• differentiate the essences of technology and modern technology;
• discuss and illustrate the dangers of modern technology; and
• explain why art is the saving power of modern technology.
Activity |The Human Person in the Face of Modern Technology

Make an artwork that helps reveal who the human person is in the face
of modern technology.

CRITERIA
Beauty and message of artwork 10 pts
Philosophizing, weaving together the 10 pts
elements of Heidegger’s thought
Human Flourishing in terms of S&T
• Science and technology continuously seep into the way people go
about their daily lives.
• However, the omnipresence of science and technology must not eclipse
the basic tenets of ethics and morality.
• Instead, it should allow the human person to flourish alongside scientific
progress and technological development.
Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)
• German philosopher who was part of the
Continental tradition of philosophy
• sternly opposes positivism and
technological world domination
• joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in 1933
• his membership to the Nazi Party made him
controversial
• focused on ontology or the study of being
or dasein
More info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br1sGrA7XTU
The Essence of Technology
“We shall be questioning concerning technology, and in so doing we should
like to prepare a free relationship to it. The relationship will be free if it
opens our human existence to the essence1 of technology.”

1. One of Heidegger’s principal aims in his essay is to seek the true meaning of
essence through or by way of the “correct” meaning.
The Essence of Technology
The Essence of Technology
In his treatise, The Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger (1977)
explains the two widely embraced definitions of technology:
1. Instrumental definition: Technology is a means to an end.
• In this context, technology is viewed as a tool available to individuals,
groups, and communities that desire to make an impact on society.
• Technology is an instrument aimed at getting things done.
The Essence of Technology
In his treatise, The Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger (1977)
explains the two widely embraced definitions of technology:
2. Anthropological definition: Technology is a human activity.
• To achieve an end and to produce and use a means to an end is, by
itself, a human activity.
• The production or invention of technological equipment, tools and
machines, the products and inventions, and the purpose and functions
they serve are what define technology.
Technology as a Way of Revealing
Heidegger envisioned technology as a way of revealing – a mode of
‘bringing forth’.
• Poiésis – refers to the act of bringing something out of concealment.
• by bringing something out of concealment, the truth of that something is
revealed.
• Aletheia – translated as unclosedness, unconcealedness, disclosure, or
truth.
Technology as a Way of Revealing
• Thus, for Heidegger, technology is a form of poiésis – a way of
revealing that unconceals aletheia or the truth.
• This is seen in the way the term techné is understood in different
contexts.
• In philosophy, techné resembles the term episteme that refers to the human
ability to make and perform.
• Techné also encompasses knowledge and understanding.
• In art, it refers to tangible and intangible aspects of life.
• The Greeks understood techné in the way that it encompasses not only
craft, but other acts of the mind, and poetry.
Technology as Poiésis: Does Modern
Technology Bring Forth or Challenge Forth?
• Heidegger posited that both primitive crafts and modern technology
are revealing.
• However, he explained that modern technology is revealing not in the
sense of bringing forth or poiésis.
• “The revealing that rules in modern technology is a challenging, which
puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it should supply energy
which can be extracted and stored as such”.
Technology as Poiésis: Does Modern
Technology Bring Forth or Challenge Forth?
• Modern technology challenges forth, because it makes people think to
do things faster, more effectively, and with less effort.
• It prompts people into dominating and enframing the earth’s natural
resources.
• Challenging forth reduces objects as standing reserve or be disposed of
by those who enframe them – humans.
Bringing Forth vs Challenging Forth
• The field that the peasant formerly cultivated and set in order appears
differently than it did when to set in order still meant to take care of and
maintain. The work of the peasant does not challenge the soil of the field.
• Agriculture is now the mechanized food industry. Air is now set upon to
yield nitrogen, the earth to yield ore, ore to yield uranium, for example;
uranium is set up to yield atomic energy, which can be unleashed either
for destructive or for peaceful purposes.
Enframing as Modern Technology’s Way of
Revealing
• Heidegger distinguished the way of revealing of modern technology
by considering it as a process of enframing.
• Humankind’s desire to control everything, including nature is captured in
this process.
• By putting things, in this case nature, in a frame, it becomes much easier
for humans to control it according their desires.
Enframing as Modern Technology’s Way of
Revealing
• Enframing, according to Heidegger, is akin to two ways of looking at
the world:
1. Calculative thinking – humans desire to put an order to nature to
better understand and control it.
2. Meditative thinking – humans allow nature to reveal itself to them
without the use of force or violence.
• Calculative thinking tends to be more commonly utilized, primarily
because humans' desire to control due to their fear of irregularity.
Enframing as Modern Technology’s Way of
Revealing
• Enframing, then, is a way of ordering (or framing) nature to better
manipulate it.
• Enframing happens because of how humans desire for security, even if
it puts all of nature as a standing reserve ready for exploitation.
• Modern technology challenges humans to enframe nature.
• Thus, humans become part of the standing reserve and an instrument of
technology, to be exploited in the ordering of nature.
Enframing as Modern Technology’s Way of
Revealing
• The role humans take as instruments of technology through enframing is
called destining.
• In destining, humans are challenged forth by enframing to reveal what
is real.
• However, this destining of humans to reveal nature carries with it the danger of
misconstruction or misinterpretation.
The Dangers of Technology
• The dangers of technology lie in how humans let themselves be
consumed by it.
• As mere tenants on Earth, people must not allow themselves to be
consumed by technology lest they lose the essence of who they are as
human beings.
The Dangers of Technology
• In this sense, humans are in danger of becoming merely part of the
standing reserve or, alternatively, may find themselves in nature.
• Recognizing its dangers of technology requires critical and reflective
thinking on its use.
Example:
Social media
• Pros: efficient and convenient way of communication
• Cons: invasion of privacy, proliferation of fake news
The Dangers of Technology
• However, the real threat of technology comes from its essence, not its
activities or products.
• The correct response to the danger of technology in the technology is
not simply dismissing technology altogether.
• Heidegger explained that people are delivered over to worst possible
way when they regard it as something neutral.
• “The essence of technology is by no means anything technological.”
– M. Heidegger (1977).
Art as the saving Power
• Necessary reflection upon and confrontation with technology are
required in order to proactively address the dangers of technology.
• Friedrich Hölderlin, a German poet quoted by Heidegger, said: “But
where danger is, grows the saving power also.” (1977, p. 14).
• Following this, the saving power can be traced exactly where the danger is – in
the essence of technology.
Art as the saving Power
• Heidegger proposed art as the saving power and the way out of
enframing: “And art was simply called techne. It was a single, manifold
revealing” (1977, p. 18).
• Heidegger saw art as an act of the mind, i.e., a techne, that protected
and had great power over the truth.
• Art encourages humans to think less from a calculative standpoint
where nature is viewed as an ordered system.
• it inspires meditative thinking where nature is seen as an art and that, in all of
art, nature is most poetic.
Questioning as the Piety of Thought
• Heidegger concluded his treatise on technology by saying:
“The closer we come to the danger, the more brightly do the ways into the
saving power begin to shine and the more questioning we become. For
questioning is the piety of thought.”
• For Heidegger, there is unparalleled wisdom gained only when humans
are able to pause, think, and question what is around them.
• Humans are consumed by technology when they are caught upon
enframing.
Questioning as the Piety of Thought
• Heidegger posited that it is through questioning that humans bear
witness to the crises that a complete preoccupation with technology
brings, preventing them from experiencing the essence of technology.
• Thus, humans need to take a step back and reassess who they were,
who they are, and who they are becoming in the midst of technology in
this day and age.
Activity |The Human Person in the Face of Modern Technology

Make an artwork that helps reveal who the human person is in the face
of modern technology.

CRITERIA
Beauty and message of artwork 10 pts
Philosophizing, weaving together the 10 pts
elements of Heidegger’s thought
Activity |The Human Person in the Face of Modern Technology