The Essence of Technology and the Holocaust

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people in it) in technological ways and how the world was revealed to them as such, we
cannot suddenly abandon the question as to why people would actively pursue a policy
of genocide. Understanding the revealing at work in the technological world tells us a
lot about the how but less about the why! And while I cannot agree with the strategy
and foundational premises of Goldhagens hugely controversial book, he is right about
one thing: we cannot simply explain away the complicity of hundreds of thousands of
men and women. Inveterate antisemitism clearly did exist in Germany and it played
an undeniable role in facilitating the plans for and indeed the implementation of the
Final Solution. That being said, xenophobia remains a problem in many countries
around the world and it has been a prevailing issue that litters the pages of our history
books and yet not all of these problems lead to genocide and certainly none have ever
led to the level of mass extermination which took place under Nazi rule. Xenophobia
on its own then, doesnt really account for the Holocaust! Neither, however, will an
account of the revelatory ordinances of the essence of technology do the trick; that
account doesnt tell us why one group of people came to look on another group of
people as no-longer-people. Coming to grips with the problem of discrimination and
the concomitant failure in terms of empathy and recognition, remains a problem, even
if we do begin to get some sense of how we tend to reduce everything in the world to
problems to be solved through technological means. The question of how we come to
look on other people as vermin, after all, is not answered by Heideggers discussion of
technologys essence; rather it sheds some light on how people have disposed of the
same problems in the technological age.
So, we must dispel the myth that Heidegger is saying that there is no difference
between the mass production of crops or meat and the systematic extermination
of millions of people! He insists that they are the same thing in essence. Heidegger
suggests that the essence of technology is nothing technological. He is critical of the
traditional concept of essence. For Heidegger, the essence of something is what holds
sway within it such that it appears as what it is. Heidegger believes that the mechanized food industry, the Holocaust, the splitting of the atom, nuclear bombs, have as
their common feature a technological backdrop. That is, regardless of the moral status
of what happens or is done, they involve a technological way of revealing the world, or
people or energy or animals. That is not to say that Heidegger is morally equating the
consumption of animals with genocide.30 What he is saying, I would submit, is that
the essence of technology, Gestell, holds sway as what is common in their approach to
situations which we would never have conceived of in that way before. They indicate a
mode of revealing the world or people or animals hitherto unimaginable. The fact that
we were able to reveal a people, in this instance the Jews, in such a way, might well be
more morally repugnant than any of the other examples mentioned. But there is also
something terribly sinister in looking for solutions to military problems through the
unleashing of natures stored up and harnessed power and thereby eradicating entire
cities. The mass production of meat itself represents a change in the way we look at
animals and their habitats. The point is that all of them have at their core a way of
revealing the world which Heidegger is trying to call attention to. It is not a moral
judgment to the effect that there are no qualitative differences. He is drawing attention
to the fact that each of them involves a very specific and disturbing way of revealing.