Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Concerning Technology
What is technology? What is its essence?
Common man’s answer: “To make life easier” (e.g. microwave, tv,
aircon, laptop, iphone, etc.)
• When one encompasses both poiesis and techne, one can reveal to
us. So based on all of these information, it is safe to say that
technology’s essence is that it reveals aletheia or truth to us.
Heidegger uses the silver chalice to convey a causality, but can this
concept apply to Modern Technology?
Modern Technology goes beyond causality and it has also changed the
pattern, revealing something quite different and radically new.
“It is too revealing. Only when we allow our attention to rest on this
fundamental characteristic does that which is new in modern
technology show itself to us. (Heidegger).”
• How is modern technology any different?
“But the windmill does not unlock energy from the air currents in order
to store it. (Heidegger).”
The windmill is technology that satisfies humans without hurting nature.
And what Heidegger imposes here is that perhaps we need more of these
technologies.
Then on the other end of the spectrum, man challenges resources when he mines
coal or when he cultivates his farm soil:
“Agriculture is now the mechanized food industry. Air is now set upon to yield
nitrogen, the earth to yield ore, ore to yield uranium, for example’ uranium is set
upon to yield atomic energy, which can be released either for destruction or for
peaceful use. (Heidegger).”
When we challenge nature’s resources, we always want the maximum yield at the
minimum expense.
• Now, this is where it gets tricky, Heidegger often uses the term bestand or
the standing reserve, to essentially describe how man perceives resources.
Man no longer sees them for what they actually are but instead sees them
as ways to fulfill man’s needs.
Heidegger uses the Rhine River, a famous
European river as an example.
He argues that man no longer sees the Rhine for what it is—a
large body of water, a river—so we don’t see it as these:
But instead we see the Rhine as these:
• Instead a hydroelectric plant is introduced into the Rhine to produce
electricity for man.
Man does not see the river’s natural tendencies but rather sees only
the power it will give to him. And therefore, he sees it as a standing
reserve.
• Another term Heidegger frequently uses is gestell or enframing. We
challenge and see things as standing reserves because we are
constantly enframing everything around us:
• Does this mean that we see the entire world as our standing reserve?
• Let’s look at the contemporary example that eloquently addresses the
standing reserve, gestell, or “enframing” and also Heidegger’s
concern about the danger of technology
• We see how we went to the peak of human survival, we still use or
enframe the universe as an alternate home. We’ve completely
destroyed Mother Earth because we continue to enframe and see it
as our standing reserve:
“The close we come to the danger, the more brightly do the ways into
the saving power begin to shine and the more questioning we become.
For questioning is the piety of thought (Heidegger).”