1-Martin Heidegger

TECHNOLOGY AS A MODE OF
REVEALING
The Question Concerning
Technology
Questioning

For the sake of

“preparing” a free
relationship

A free relationship is one

that opens our existence,
our Da-Sein to the
essence of technology
 Dasein- is a German word that means "being there" or
"presence"

- (German: da "there"; sein "being"), and is often translated

into English with the word "existence".
 Technology is not the same as, not equivalent to the
essence of technology
 “the essence of technology is by no means anything
technological”
 But, for Heidegger :

- “Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to

technology”

- This constraint is true “whether we passionately affirm

or deny it”
 According to traditional philosophy, we can ask
the question of essence by asking “what”
something is.
 Technology is
 a means to an end – Instrumental definition
 a human activity -- Anthropological definition
 Both definitions are “correct” but the correct is
not the same as the true…
Causality
 Technology brings about change causally!!!
 The cause is what is responsible for the effect, and the
effect is indebted to the cause

 The unifying notion is that of starting something on its

way to arrival
 Being responsible is an inducing to go forward
Bringing Forth
 The bringing forth which underlies causality is a bringing
out of concealment
 This revealing is what the Greeks call truth
 Technology brings forth as well, and it is a revealing
 This is seen in the way the Greeks understood techne,
which encompasses not only craft, but other acts of the
mind, and poetry
Controlling Technology
 We seek to master  This is problematic in
technology the event (and
 I.e., as Heidegger says, Heidegger will defend
we seek to “’get’ this point) that
technology ‘spiritually in technology might be
hand.’ … The will to something other than a
mastery becomes all the “mere means”
more urgent the more  We need a free relation
technology threatens to to technology
slip from human  And we can seek the
control.” true by way of the
correct.
The Four Causes (Aristotle’s exploration of the
fourfold nature of causality
1. causa materialis --- hyle -- the “material”
2. causa formalis --- eidos – the form or shape
3. Causa finalis -- telos – that for which it is for
4. causa efficiens*
 not quite translatable, this would be the logos, but Heidegger seeks to
explore this in terms of the working circumspection of the worker
 causa efficiens
 For us today this is the exclusive meaning of causality

 Heidegger explores this in terms of language (our English word

is indebted to the latin)
 German: Ursache, Latin, causa, Greek aition
The Craftsman – Silversmith
Tools, of a kind
 Hammering
“Holding a hammer properly enables one to use the hammer to accomplish what
one has to do with the hammer. But this is other than bending the hammer to one's
own will. The hammer will do best what one will if one conforms one's use to the
intrinsic design of the hammer, heft, shape, etc. (conformity with respect to the
appropriate grip, the angle and arc of the swinging stroke, even the kind of nail
employed, surely the position of the same). In the case of hammering, there is
always a great bit of freedom -- one can use the side of the hammer's head or the
shaft for hammering; if it is a claw hammer and one is a performance artist, say, one
can use the sharp edge of the claw. But even here the condition of the range of use is
'decided' or constrained by the tool and the task even in the last unlikely because
(not albeit) unwieldy case. This is what Heidegger in Being and Time referred to as
equipmental totality (SZ 68). With more sophisticated machines, anything
mechanically driven for example, especially all things electronic, the range of play is
increasingly reduced. “
 B. Babich in British Journal of Phenomenology. 30/1 (January 1999): 106
The Craftsman – Silversmith
The Four Causes: Didactic Illustration
“Verschuldetsein”
 That to which something else is indebted
 This is Heidegger’s key reflection on:

- techne as bringing forth in

- en alloi as through an other
- physis, understood as bursting into bloom,
unfolding from itself
Revealing
 Every bringing forth is grounded in revealing
 Thus Heidegger here makes clear that technology
is “no mere means” but a mode or revealing, that
is, of bringing forth into unconcealment –
aletheia
 In this sense, techne is something poietic
 And as Heidegger emphasizes techne is also a
kind of knowing or episteme
Technlogy as Poeisis:
The essence of modern technology

 Not a bringing forth

 Instead it is what Heidegger calls a challenging forth into
revealing
Modern Technology
 Both primitive crafts and modern technology are revealing
 But the revealing of modern technology is not a bringing-
forth, but a challenging-forth
 It challenges nature, by extracting something from it and
transforming it, storing it up, distributing it, etc.
Setting Upon
 The setting upon characteristic of modern technology
challenges forth the energy of nature as an expediting in two
ways
 Unlocks and exposes
- (“Physics sets nature up” )
 And the economic: maximum yield, minimum expense
demands stockpiling
 The result Heidegger calls Bestand : standing reserve which is
far more than simply reserves that one happens to have on hand
 The Standing-Reserve
 Modern technology takes all of nature to stand in reserve for
its exploitation
 Man is challenged to do this, and as such he becomes part of
the standing reserve
 Man becomes the instrument of technology, to be exploited
in the ordering of nature
Setting Upon
 The setting upon characteristic of modern technology
challenges forth the energy of nature as an expediting in two
ways
 Unlocks and exposes
- (“Physics sets nature up” )
 And the economic: maximum yield, minimum expense
demands stockpiling
Setting Upon
 The challenging claim which gathers man thither to order the
self-revealing (this would be nature) in the mode or guise of
so much “standing reserve”
 This should not be equated with the array of technological
apparatus in our world (329: “It is the way in which the acutal
reveals itself as standing reserve.”)
 This becomes the way on which we are embarked: “our
destiny” (329)
Examples of such “setting upon”

Hydroelectric plant (and environs)

Strip mining
 Two windmill typs

Even the
wind can be
set upon….
Great birds of prey,
1000s and 1000s of them,
who cannot see the
churning vanes
accumulate around the
circumference
of such wind-farms …
(USA Today 25/1/2004)
Süleyman’s Bridge at Mostar, first built in
1566
Mostar Bridge, 1993
Rebuilt as a tourist attraction
Heidegger’s reference point
Gestell - Enframing
 Gathered by the challenging that sets upon the
human being in order to reveal the real as
standing reserve in accord with appearances
 Heidegger coins the term Ge-Stell on the model (a
rather elusive one on the first reading) of Gebirge
(the chaining of mountain ranges) and Gemut
(what disposes one in one’s disposition)
 The Ge-stell is a putting into a framework or
configuration as standing reserve of everything that
is summoned forth.
Enframing
 It is not man that orders nature through technology, but
a more basic process of revealing
 The challenge of this revealing is called “enframing”
 In enframing, the actual is revealed as a standing-reserve
 This is “historically” prior to the development of science
 Enframing is the essence of technology
 Heidegger applied the concept of Gestell to his
exposition of the essence of technology. He
concluded that technology is fundamentally
Enframing (Gestell). As such, the essence of
technology is Gestell. Indeed, "Gestell, literally
'framing', is an all-encompassing view of
technology, not as a means to an end, but rather a
mode of human existence".
Ackerbau Zitat – Example from
Agriculture
 Ein Landstrich wird gestellt… An area is en-
framed
 

Heidegger’s claim is that such a manufacture of corpses is “in essence the same”as strip
mining, factory farming, etc.
But where danger is, grows
The saving power also.
Friedrich Hölderlin
One must raise a further question,
beyond questioning after technology to
raise the question of what Heidegger,
who thinks the danger [Gefahr]
together with the notion of Ge-Stell,
might mean by speaking of Hölderlin’s
saving power [das Rettende].
See “The Origin of the Work of
Art”– here he continues:
 Because the essence of technology is nothing technological,
essential reflection upon technology and decisive
confrontation with it must happen in a realm that is, one the
one hand, akin to the essence of technology and, on the
other, fundamentally different from it.
Such a realm is art. But only if reflection upon art, for its part,
does not shut its eyes to the constellation of truth,
concerning which we are questioning… For questioning is
the piety of thought. (340-341)
The essence of technology
is nothing technological
Heidegger
Destining
 Men are sent upon the way of revealing the actual as a
standing-reserve
 So enframing, and hence technology, is a “destining”
 The destining of man to reveal nature carries with it the
danger of misconstrual
The Danger
 Man is in danger of becoming merely part of the
standing-reserve
 Alternatively, he may find only himself in nature
 Most importantly, he may think that the ordering of the
world through technology is the fundamental mode of
revealing
 So the real threat of technology comes from its essence,
not its activities or products
The Saving Power
 The poet Hölderlin writes that the saving power grows
where danger is
 The saving would allow a bringing-forth that is not a
challenging-forth (things would reveal themselves not just as
standing-reserve)
 Both technology and bringing-forth grow out of “granting,”
which allows revealing
Art as Saving Power
 Poetry and other arts have the power to reveal, in the sense
of “bringing-forth”
 Poetry is included in the Aristotelian techne, and is akin to
modern technology
 But it is also fundamentally different from technology
 It may be the best means for getting at the essence of
technology itself
Heidegger’s grave, St. Martin’s Church Graveyard, Messkirch