Martin Heidegger’s ‘The Question Concerning Technology’The Essence of Technology

• Technology can be viewed as a means to an end (instrumental).

• Or it can be viewed as human activity (anthropological).
• Both are correct, but neither touches the essence of technology.
• What is the essence of technology?
• We are blinded to it when we think of it as something neutral.
Causality
• Technology brings about change causally.
• The cause is what is responsible for the effect, and the effect is indebted to the cause.
• According to Aristotle, there are four ways in which this relation holds.
• The unifying notion is that of starting something on its way to arrival.
• Being responsible is an inducing to go forward.
A. CAUSA MATERIALIS
B. CAUSA FORMALIS
C. CAUSA EFFICIENS
D. CAUSA FINALIS
Bringing Forth
• The bringing forth – poeisis – which underlies causality is a bringing out of concealment.
• This revealing is what the Greeks call truth –aletheia.
• 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.
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.The essence of modern technology
• Not a bringing forth (in the sense of poiesis)
• Too impatient/violent/urgent we might note here that this violence applies as much to the information-
age as to the machine-age
• Instead it is what Heidegger calls a challenging forth into revealing.
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.
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.
This enframing that challenges forth and sets upon nature in a way of looking at reality. This is like
putting nature in a box or in a frame so that it can be better understood and controlled according
topeople’s desires. Poeisis is concealed in enframing as nature is viewed as an orderable and calculable
systems of information.
Art As A Way Out Of Enframing
Enframing, as the mode of revealing in modern technology, tends to block Poeisis. The poetry that is
found in nature can no longer be easily appreciated when nature is enframed. In modern technology, the
way of revealing is no longer poetic; it is challenging. Heidegger proposes art as a way out of this
enframing. With art, we are better able to see the poetic in nature in reality. It leads us away from
calculative thinking and towards meditative thinking. Through meditative thinking, we will recognize that
nature is art par excellence.
Hence, nature is the most poetic. The Poeisis of the fine arts was also called Techne.
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 human person being swallowed by technology
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 standingreserve).
• 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. Because the essence of
technology is nothing technological, essential reflection upon technology and decisive confrontation with
it must happen in a realm that is, on 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.
Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics

Aristotle (384-322)
 Originally from Macedon
 Arrived Athens in 367, Student of Plato
 Left Athens in 347, taught Alexander
 Returned to Athens 334, founded Lyceum
 Left Athens in 323, after death of Alexander
 Works on topics: biology, physics, logic, music and art, politics, ethics, etc.
 Wrote dialogues, but only lecture notes survive
 Considered “The Philosopher” in Middle Ages
Nichomachean Ethics
 A treatise on the nature of moral life and human happiness, based on the unique essence of human
nature
 Named after one of Aristotle’s sons who is thought to have edited it from lecture notes.
Outline
 The Greatest Good: Eudaimonia
 Eudaimonia and the Human Soul
 The Virtues
 “The Golden Mean”
The Greatest Good: Eudaimonia
Every action aims at some good
Some actions aim at an instrumental good
Some actions aim at an ultimate good
Ultimate goods are better than instrumental goods
Instrumental goods (ends) are aimed at only insofar as they are for the sake of something else
Ultimate goods (ends) are aimed at for their own sakes.
Ultimate Good?

Candidates
1. Pleasure
2. Wealth
3. Fame & Honor
4. Happiness

Critiques
 Transient, not complete
  Only instrumental, not self-sufficient
 Depends on others, not self-sufficient
 Complete and self-sufficient
Happiness?
 Eudaimonia
1. Well-being or doing well
2. “activity of the soul in accordance with virtue or excellence” (EN I.7)
 More complete than merely feeling good or joyful
 Feeling well in all aspects of life
Eudaimonia and the Human Soul
 Human happiness must be uniquely human, or a distinct human function.
 Consider the structure of the psyche:
1. nutritive, sensitive, and rational parts
2. Which is uniquely human?
 Only the rational element is distinctive of humans.
 So, human happiness consists of a rationally directed life…a whole life…
Aristotle’s Tripartite Soul

The Virtues
 A virtue (areté) is what makes one function well; usually understood as a disposition or state of a person.
 Conditions for virtue: fortune and success
 Basic necessities, good birth, friends, wealth, good looks, health, etc.
Types of virtue
 Virtues of thought: wisdom, comprehension, etc.
 Achieved through education and time
 Virtues of character: generosity, temperance, courage, etc.
 Achieved by habitual practice
 Both should be in accord with reason and are needed for Eudaimonia.
“The Golden Mean”
 Virtue is ruined by excess and deficiency (in feelings and action)
 Consider health
 So, is learned by the mean of excess and deficiency
 A balance or intermediate between extremes
  But a “relative” mean*
 Not a geometric or arithmetic average…
 A mean relative to the person, the circumstances, as well as the right emotional component (EN II.3 and
II.6)
Courage

 The right action and emotional response in the face of danger

 Fool-heartiness or rashness is an excess of the emotional and/or proper action; (doesn’t properly
appreciate the danger, not fearful)
 Cowardice is the deficiency of proper emotion (motive) and action; (the danger is over-appreciated,
too fearful)

Some Virtues & Means

Basic Model