--- Heidegger: The Question Concerning Technology

--- Martin Heidegger

- German philosopher and a seminal thinker in the continental tradition of philosophy
- One of the most original and important philosophers of the 20th century.
- “The Question Concerning Technology” -- addresses modern technology and its essence
as an instrumental way of revealing the world.
- Heidegger’s understanding of technology was based on its essence.

--- Heidegger’s View on the Essence of Technology

1. Technology is not something we make; it is a mode of being or of revealing.
Technological things have their own way of presenting themselves with their presence,
endurance; connections as parts and as a whole in the world they operate.
2. People do not normally think of as technological, such as gods and history.
3. It is primarily a matter of modern and industrial technology. Heidegger is less concerned
with the ancient and old tools and techniques that antedate modernity; the essence of
technology is revealed in factories and industrial processes, not in hammers and plows.
4. Technology is not simply the practical application of natural science. Instead, modern
natural science can understand nature in the characteristically scientific manner only
because nature has already, in advance, come to light as a set of calculable, orderable
forces – that is to say, technologically.

--- Heidegger’s Two Characteristics of Modern Technology as a Revealing Process

1. The mode of revealing modern technology is challenging.
o Things are revealed of brought forth by challenging or demanding them. It is
putting to nature the unreasonable demand that it supplies energy that can be
extracted and stored. It sees nature as an object manipulation and not anymore as
autonomous reality demanding respect and admiration.
o Example: a. Mining technology of today wherein nature was at risk of supplying
increased demand of sourcing out energy. b. Flower blossoming and fading as a
nature’s way of revealing
2. Modern technology as a revealing process is that of challenging, which bring forth the
energy of nature as “expediting.” Expediting- means to hasten the movement of
something. It is also a process of revealing inasmuch as it “unlocks” and “exposes”
something.

--- Heidegger uses a technical word to name the things that are revealed in modern technology as
“standing in reserve”. Things as standing in reserve are not “objects.” Objects, on the other
hand, are things that “stand against us” as things with autonomy. They are revealed mainly in
human thinking and do not allow further manipulations. Things as standing in reserve, on the
other hand, are called to come forth in challenging and expediting. They are reduced into the
object lessness of modern technology. Nothing anymore “stands against us” as objects of
autonomy and wonder. Everything is regressed into an interlocking of things that yield what man
wants whenever he demands them to do so. Even nature is now revealed as standing in reserve
and not anymore objects of autonomy.

--- Heidegger’s “En-framing as the Essence of Modern Technology” (Leongson)…

--- Summary