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
technology the event (and
 I.e., as Heidegger says, Heidegger will defend
we seek to “’get’ this point) that
technology ‘spiritually in technology might be
hand.’ … The will to something other than a
mastery becomes all the “mere means”
more urgent the more  We need a free relation
technology threatens to to technology
slip from human  And we can seek the
control.” true by way of the
correct.
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.
herausgefordert und demzufolge 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 r
eflection upon technology and decisive confrontation with it must hap
pen in a realm that is, one the one hand, akin to the essence of techno
logy and, on the other, fundamentally different from it.
Such a realm is art. But only if reflection upon art, for its part, does not s
hut its eyes to the constellation of truth, concerning which we are que
stioning… 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