The essence of technology

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The English word “essence” is derived from the Latin term “essentia,” and is an old
word in the philosophical tradition generally used to signify the universal character or
“nature” of a thing that is held in common across many instances. The German word
“Essenz,” as with the English word “essence,” more or less carries over this Latin
term without much modification. However, Heidegger does not here use the word
Essenz. Rather, he uses the German word Wesen, a word that can also be translated
“essence” as it is in our translation, but which contains shades of meaning that are lost
in the ordinary Latin notion of “essentia.”

For Heidegger, Wesen does not refer to some common universal feature. Rather, he
uses this word to translate the Greek word phusis, which means “emergence” or
“coming forth into manifestation.” For the Greeks, phusis named the spontaneous
emergence into appearance that characterized nature as opposed to human production
and artifact. Heidegger wants to indicate this sense of emergence. Whereas the
traditional philosophical notion of “essence” can refer to something universal that
doesn’t actually appear, Heidegger’s word Wesen refers to a certain kind of
appearance. Specifically, it names the way in which a being shows itself as the being
that it most properly is. In other words, in later writings such as this one Heidegger
uses the term Wesen to signify what he had earlier called

“Being.” Given the peculiar shades of meaning Heidegger gives to this term, simply
translating it with the English word “essence” without comment would be

potentially misleading. But we really do not have a better English word to use here.
We might try to preserve the verbal sense Heidegger wants us to hear by inventing a
word like “essencing” to translate Wesen, but since that makes for awkward English
we’ll just have to stick with the customary word “essence.” So just as we had to avoid
mistakenly thinking of Being as a very large being, so now we have to avoid
mistakenly thinking of “essence” as a universal common characteristic. We will need
to keep this meaning in mind whenever we encounter the English word “essence” in
our translation.

Because by “essence” we mean the way in which something is manifest when it

shows itself as the being that it most properly is, attending phenomenologically to the
thing itself means that we have to be careful to avoid confusing a derivative manner
of appearance with the “essential” one. That is, we have to avoid mistaking semblance
for truth. This is why Heidegger says that “technology” is not the same thing as the
essence (Wesen) of technology. The essence of technology is not itself something
technological. As long as we just stare at technological things, we will never
experience the essence of technology. To put it another way, particularly when it
comes to something like “technology,” we have a lot of cultural baggage that already
tells us what it is and why it’s there, and so if we just look at technological artifacts –
whether in amazement or trepidation or some combination of both – we will likely
overlook the manner of

appearance that most properly belongs to it. One of the most prevalent ideas about
technology that tends to get in the way, as Heidegger takes pains to show in this essay,
is the instrumental definition of it as a means to an end.

As we can already see, our discussion of technology cannot avoid a discussion of the
words used to talk about it and the commonly assumed definitions of it. Because we
cannot avoid a consideration of language whenever we try to think about something at
a more than superficial level, Heidegger writes, “All ways of thinking lead through
language.” The language we speak and the words we use carry implications that must
be made explicit so that we don’t make naïve assumptions simply because we have to
speak in certain ways. Through an examination of language along with careful
phenomenological attention devoted to the way “technology” shows itself in the
world, Heidegger hopes to lead us to the point where we can open ourselves to the
essence of technology and experience the technological – technological things –
within the ontological framework that determines the way they show themselves as
the beings that they most properly are.

Heidegger claims that we are not free if we cannot think in an essential way. If I don’t
think the essence of technology, I am “unfree and chained” to it. It then determines
me. This is so “whether we passionately affirm or deny it.” Merely reacting against
the technological is to fail to think its essence just as much as mindlessly believing in
“progress.” Thus here we clearly see that Heidegger is not the “anti-technological”
philosopher he is often portrayed to be. However, the worst thing of all according to
him is to regard technology as something merely neutral, something which we can use
for good or bad but which is in itselfv merely indifferent to what it is used for. He
thinks that this conception of technology as a neutral thing blinds us to its essence.

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