Martin Heidegger

The Question Concerning

Technology
With thanks to Professor B. Babich, Fordham
University
Technology is not the same as, not equivalent to the essence
of technology
“the essence of technology is by no means anything
technological”
But, and here Heidegger invokes Rousseau, indirectly to be
sure:
“Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology”
This constraint is true “whether we passionately affirm or
deny it” ((311))
“But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible
way when we regard it as something neutral”
According to traditional philosophy, we can ask the
question of essence by asking “what” something is.
Technology is
a means to an end – Instrumental definition
a human activity -- Anthropological definition
Both definitions are “correct” but the correct is not
the same as the true… (312)
Controlling Technology
 We seek to master  This is problematic in the
technology event (and Heidegger
 I.e., as Heidegger says, will defend this point)
we seek to “’get’ that technology might be
technology ‘spiritually in something other than a
hand.’ … The will to “mere means”
mastery becomes all the  We need a free relation
more urgent the more to technology
technology threatens to  And we can seek the true
slip from human by way of the correct.
control.”
The Four Causes (313-4)
causa materialis --- hyle -- the “material”
causa formalis --- eidos – the form or shape
Causa finalis -- telos – that for which it is for
causa efficiens*
• not quite translatable, this would be the logos, but
Heidegger seeks to explore this in terms of the working
circumspection of the worker
 causa efficiens (315-316)
For us today this is the exclusive meaning of causality
Aristotle’s exploration of the fourfold nature of causality
is thus alien to us
Heidegger explores this in terms of language (our English
word is indebted to the latin)
German: Ursache, Latin, causa, Greek aition
 The Craftsman – Silversmith here
(315)
The German überlegen (which Heidegger interprets to
mean something like “bring about by reflecting”)---
renders the Greek λογος for Heidegger and corresponds
to in Latin letters now, apo-phainesthai, “to bring forth
into appearance”
This can best be illustrated with reference to Heidegger’s
discussion of the tool in his first and most important work,
Being and Time
Tools, of a kind
 Hammering
“Holding a hammer properly enables one to use the hammer to
accomplish what one has to do with the hammer. But this is other than
bending the hammer to one's own will. The hammer will do best what
one will if one conforms one's use to the intrinsic design of the
hammer, heft, shape, etc. (conformity with respect to the appropriate
grip, the angle and arc of the swinging stroke, even the kind of nail
employed, surely the position of the same). In the case of hammering,
there is always a great bit of freedom -- one can use the side of the
hammer's head or the shaft for hammering; if it is a claw hammer and
one is a performance artist, say, one can use the sharp edge of the claw.
But even here the condition of the range of use is 'decided' or
constrained by the tool and the task even in the last unlikely because
(not albeit) unwieldy case. This is what Heidegger in Being and
Time referred to as equipmental totality (SZ 68). With more
sophisticated machines, anything mechanically driven for example,
especially all things electronic, the range of play is increasingly
reduced. “
 B. Babich in British Journal of Phenomenology. 30/1 (January 1999): 106
The Four Causes: Didactic Illustration
“Verschuldetsein”
That to which something else is indebted (316)
This is Heidegger’s key reflection on techne as
bringing forth in and through an other, en alloi,
and as distinguished from
physis, understood as bursting into bloom,
unfolding from itself (37) 1
Revealing
Every bringing forth is grounded in revealing
Thus Heidegger here makes clear (p. 317) that
technology is “no mere means” but a mode or
revealing, that is, of bringing forth into
unconcealment – aletheia (318-9)
In this sense, techne is something poietic
And as Heidegger emphasizes techne is also a
kind of knowing or episteme
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 (320)
Setting Upon
The setting upon characteristic of modern technology
challenges forth the energy of nature as an expediting
in two ways
Unlocks and exposes (“Physics sets nature up” (321))
And the economic: maximum yield, minimum expense
demands stockpiling
The result Heidegger calls Bestand (332): standing
reserve which is far more than simply reserves that one
happens to have on hand…[Vorrat]
Examples of such “setting upon”

Hydroelectric plant (and environs)

Strip mining
 Two windmill typs

Even the
wind can be
set upon….
Great birds of prey,
1000s and 1000s of them,
who cannot see the
churning vanes
accumulate around the
circumference
of such wind-farms …
(USA Today 25/1/2004)
Süleyman’s Bridge at Mostar, first built in 1566
Mostar Bridge, 1993
Rebuilt as a tourist attraction
Heidegger’s reference point
Gestell - Enframing
 Gathered by the challenging that sets upon the human
being in order to reveal the real as standing reserve in
accord with appearances
 Heidegger coins the term Ge-Stell (324) on the model (a
rather elusive one on the first reading) of Gebirge (the
chaining of mountain ranges) and Gemut (what disposes
one in one’s disposition)
The Ge-stell is a putting into a framework or configuration
as standing reserve of everything that is summoned forth
(325)
Setting Upon
The challenging claim which gathers man thither to
order the self-revealing (this would be nature) in the
mode or guise of so much “standing reserve”
This should not be equated with the array of
technological apparatus in our world (329: “It is the
way in which the acutal reveals itself as standing
reserve.”)
This becomes the way on which we are embarked:
“our destiny” (329)
Ackerbau Zitat – Example from Agriculture
Ein Landstrich wird gestellt… An area is en-framed
 The context for the Ackerbau quote:
Ein Landstrich wird gestellt, auf Kohle nämlich und
Erze, die in ihm anstehen. Das Anstehen von
Gestein ist vermutlich schon im Gesichtskreis eines
solchen Stellens vorgestellt und auch nur aus ihm
vorstellbar. Das anstehende und als solches schon
auf ein Sichstellen abgeschätzte Gestein wird
herausgefordert und demzufolge herausgefördert.
Das Anstehen von Gestein ist vermutlich
schon im Gesichtskreis eines solchen Stellens
vorgestellt und auch nur aus ihm vorstellbar.
herausgefördert.


Durch ein solches Bestellen wird das Land zu einem
Kohlenrevier, der Boden zu einer Erlagererstätte –
Note Heidegger’s later marginal comment: Der Boden,
Land – heimatlose des Bestandes!
 Note the comparison between atomic energy
and agricultural industry:
 Bestellen ist schon andere Art als jenes wodurch vormals der Bauer seinen
Acker bestellte. Das bäuerliche Tun fordert den Ackerboden nicht heraus; es
giebt vielmehr die Saat den Wachstumskräften anheim; es hütet sie in ihr
Gedeihen. Inzwischen ist jedoch auch die Feldbestellung in das gleiche Be-
stellen ubergegangen, das die Luft und auf Stickstoff, den Boden auf Kohle
und Erze stellt, das Erz auf Uran, das Uran auf Atomenergie, diese auf
bestellbare Zerstörung
 Cultivating is now a different kind of thing than what the farmer used to do
with his field. The famer’s activity did not challenge his field; he entrusted
his seeds much more to the power of growing. They were protected in their
development for good or worse. In the meantime, the fields have come to be
cultivated in the same manner as is nitrogen is destructively extracted from
air, as coal and ore are from the earth, as uranium from ore, as atomic energy
from uranium.
Im Wesen das selbe wie …
 Ackerbau ist jetzt motorisierte Ernährungsindustrie, im
Wesen das Selbe wie die Fabrikation von Leichen in
Gaskammern und Vernichtungslagern, das Selbe wie die
Blockade und Aushungerung von Ländern, das selbe wie
die Fabrikation von Wasserstoffbomben.
Agriculture is now a motorized feeding-industry,
essentially the same as the fabrication of corpses in gas
chambers and the death camps, the same as the
blockade and starvation of countries, the same as the
making of hydrogen bombs.
 

Heidegger’s claim is that such a manufacture of corpses is “in essence the same”as strip
mining, factory farming, etc.
But where danger is, grows
The saving power also.
Friedrich Hölderlin (333)
One must raise a further question, beyond
questioning after technology to raise the
question of what Heidegger, who thinks the
danger [Gefahr] together with the notion of
Ge-Stell, might mean by speaking of
Hölderlin’s saving power [das Rettende].
See “The Origin of the Work of
Art”– here he continues:
Because the essence of technology is nothing
technological, essential reflection upon technology and
decisive confrontation with it must happen in a realm
that is, one 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)
The essence of technology
is nothing technological
Heidegger
Heidegger’s grave, St. Martin’s Church Graveyard, Messkirch