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.
Identify the corresponding causes of each.
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 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.
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 The 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.
 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 standing-
reserve).
• 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. (340-341)
 Group Activity
• Form a group of three, choose a piece of art
that ‘reveals’ the human person in the midst
of technology, discuss the piece of art in
relation to general concepts on Martin
Heidegger’s ‘The Question Concerning
Technology,’ and present your piece of art
and summary of discussion in front of the
class.