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Dr. Jayanti P.Sahoo/CHU/FYUP/BA(H)/III/23/04/2016

The Question Concerning Technology (Heidegger)
Q. 1. Critically analyze and examine Heidegger’s views on the Question
concerning technology?
Or
“The relationship will be free if it opens our existence to the essence of technology.
Do you agree with Heidegger? Discuss.

Heidegger understands the Question Concerning Technology (Here after QCT) as

essentially linked to the question of being. Technology, he argues, points to
something essential about the constitution of our ontology, our way of being-in-
the-world (see also my posts on Heidegger’s Being and Time and “Letter on
Humanism”).  What compelled him to write on technology lies in his observation
that “everywhere [in Europe], [man] remain[s] unfree and chained to technology,”
(QT, 287) a situation in which the more technology advances itself the more it
“threatens to slip from human control” (QT, 289).  Hence, a questioning of
technology became necessary and urgent for Heidegger because modern
technology brought with it a new way of ordering the world, which he saw as
contaminating man’s authentic sense of being, thus signaling a certain crisis at bay
in European industrial modernity.  Although Heidegger’s essay is a text of
philosophy, we can say it is also a work of critique in precisely the way he calls
our attention to the (ontological and social) crisis brought out by modern
technology’s new, albeit distorting, ways of ordering the world and hence also the
reorganization of our cognitive perception of reality.  Seeing the rise of modern
technology’s dominance as tantamount to the sundering of man’s essential relation
to being, Heidegger undertakes a questioning of technology in order to trace back a
more primary meaning that has been lost and forgotten in technological modernity.
Heidegger begins his essay "The Question Concerning Technology" by examining
the relationship between humans and technology. Heidegger calls this relationship
a "free relationship”. If this relationship is free, it "opens our human existence to
the essence of technology". This essence of technology, however, has nothing to
do with technology. Rather, as Heidegger suggests, "the essence of a thing is
considered to be what the thing is". According to Heidegger, it is necessary to find
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truth, for "only the true brings us into a free relationship with that which concerns
us from its essence". This truth is sought "by the way of the correct".
Heidegger examines two definitions of technology.
 Firstly, "technology is a means to an end".(QCT)
 Secondly, he proposes that "technology is a human activity".(QCT)
These two definitions are the instrumental and anthropological definitions.
However, these definitions have nothing to do with the essence of technology;
rather it simply says what technology is.
The relationship between humans and technology is dependent on the notion
of instrumentality. This, Heidegger relates to his first definition of technology, that
it is a means to an end. From here, Heidegger attempts to define instrumentality,
but to do so must question causality. To examine causality, Heidegger discussed
the four Aristotelian causes: causa materialis, the material cause; cause formalis,
the formal cause; causa finalis, the final cause; and cause efficiens, the effect or
efficient cause.[4] The craftsman is vital in uniting these four causes. To explain
this, Heidegger uses the example of a silver chalice. Each element works together
to create the chalice in a different manner:
Thus four ways of owing hold sway in the sacrificial vessel that lies ready before
us. They differ from one another, yet they belong together. ... The four ways of
being responsible bring something into appearance. They let it come forth into
presencing. They set it free to that place and so start it on its way, namely into its
complete arrival.
Distinction between Bringing-forth and Challenging-forth
Heidegger made a distinction between bringing –forth and challenging –forth.
Bringing-forth is the mode of revealing that corresponds to ancient craft. When
these four elements work together to create something into appearance, it is
called bringing-forth. This bringing-forth comes from the Greek poeisis, which
"brings out of concealment into unconcealment".This revealing can be represented
by the Greek word aletheia, which in English is translated as truth. This truth has
everything to do with the essence of technology because technology is a means of
revealing the truth.
Modern technology, however, has its own particular mode of revealing, which
Heidegger calls challenging-forth. Modern technology, however, differs
from poeisis. Heidegger suggests that this difference stems from the fact that
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modern technology "is based on modern physics as an exact science". The

revealing of modern technology, therefore, is not bringing-forth, but
rather challenging-forth. To exemplify this, Heidegger draws on the Rhine River as
an example of how our modern technology can change a cultural symbol.
Thinking in the mode of challenging-forth is very different from thinking in the
mode of bringing-forth: when challenging-forth, one sets upon the elements of a
situation both in the sense of ordering (i.e. setting a system upon) and in a more
rapacious sense (i.e. the wolves set upon the traveler and devoured him). In
bringing-forth, human beings were one important element among others in the
productive process; in challenging-forth, humans control the productive process.
Efficiency is an additional important element of thinking in the mode of
challenging forth; the earth, for example, is set upon to yield the maximum amount
of ore with the minimum amount of effort. Essentially, challenging-forth changes
the way we see the world—as Michael Zimmerman pointedly remarks, ‘To be
capable of transforming a forest into packaging for cheeseburgers, man must see
the forest not as a display of the miracle of life, but as raw material, pure and
simple’ (1977, p. 79).Production in the mode of challenging-forth reveals objects
that have the status of standing-reserve. Objects that have been made standing-
reserve have been reduced to disposability in two different senses of the word: (1)
They are disposable in the technical sense; they are easily ordered and arranged.
Trees that once stood chaotically in the forest are now logs that can be easily
counted, weighed, piled, and shipped. (2) They are also disposable in the
conventional sense; like diapers and cheap razors, they are endlessly
replaceable/interchangeable and have little value. To further his discussion of
modern technology, Heidegger introduces the notion of standing-reserve. Modern
technology places humans in standing-reserve. To explain this, Heidegger uses the
example of a forester and his relationship to the paper and print industries, as he
waits in standing reserve for their wishes.
Heidegger once again returns to discuss the essence of modern technology to name
it Gestell, which he defines primarily as a sort of enframing:
Enframing means the gathering together of that setting-upon that sets upon man,
i.e., challenges him forth, to reveal the real, in the mode of ordering, as standing-
reserve. Enframing means that way of revealing that holds sway in the essence of
modern technology and that it is itself not technological.
Once he has discussed enframing, Heidegger highlights the threat of technology.
As he states, this threat "does not come in the first instance from the potentially
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lethal machines and apparatus of technology".Rather, the threat is the essence

because "the rule of enframing threatens man with the possibility that it could be
denied to him to enter into a more original revealing and hence to experience the
call of a more primal truth". This is because challenging-forth conceals the process
of bringing-forth, which means that truth itself is concealed and no longer
unrevealed. Unless humanity makes an effort to re-orient itself, it will not be able
to find revealing and truth.
It is at this point that Heidegger has encountered a paradox: humanity must be able
to navigate the dangerous orientation of enframing because it is in this dangerous
orientation that we find the potential to be rescued. To further elaborate on this,
Heidegger returns to his discussion of essence. Ultimately, he concludes that "the
essence of technology is in a lofty sense ambiguous" and that "such ambiguity
points to the mystery of all revealing, i.e., of truth".
The question concerning technology, Heidegger concludes, is one "concerning the
constellation in which revealing and concealing, in which the coming to presence
of the truth comes to pass". In other words, it is finding truth. Heidegger presents
art as a way to navigate this constellation, this paradox, because the artist, or the
poet as Heidegger suggests, views the world as it is and as it reveals itself.