Martin Heidegger

The Question Concerning Technology

Martin Heidegger 26 September 1889 26 May 1976

Questioning
for the sake of preparing a free relationship A free relationship is one that opens our existence, our Da-Sein, to the essence of technology Key here is the nature of questioning

Again: questioning for the sake of preparing a free relationship to technology

(A free relationship is one that opens our existence, our DaSein, to the essence of technology, an essence that is nothing technological).

 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 alludes to Rousseau, Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology This constraint is true whether we passionately affirm or deny it (p. 4)

 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, for Heidegger, is not the same as the true

Controlling Technology
We seek to master technology I.e., as Heidegger says, we seek to get technology spiritually in hand. The will to mastery becomes all the more urgent the more technology threatens to slip from human control. This is problematic in the event (and Heidegger will defend this point) that might be something other than a mere means We need a free relation to technology And we can seek the true by way of the correct.

The Four Causes

causa materialis --- hyle causa formalis --- eidos Causa finalis -- telos 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
For us today this is the exclusive meaning of causality Aristotles 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
The German berlegen --- renders the Greek [logos] for Heidegger and corresponds to apo-phainesthai: to bring forth into appearance This can best be illustrated with reference to Heideggers discussion of the tool in his first and most important work, Being and Time

Tool being: Zeug

1. Silver causa materialis

2. Shape or form causa formalis 3. Purpose of the chalice (for the Catholic mass, for Kiddush, etc.) causa finalis

4. Silversmith: causa efficiens

Verschuldetsein
That to which something else is indebted This is Heideggers 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

Revealing
Every bringing forth is grounded in revealing Thus Heidegger here makes clear (p. 12) that technology is no mere means but a mode or revealing, that is, of bringing forth into unconcealment 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 revealing

Two windmill typs

Wind farms and raptor mortality

Heideggers reference points

Setting Upon
The setting upon characteristic of modern technology challenges forth the energy of nature as an expediting in two ways
Unlocks and exposes & the economic: maximum yield, minimum expense demands stockpiling. The result Heidegger calls Bestand: standing reserve which is far more than simply reserves one happens to have on hand[Vorrat]

Hydroelectric plant

Setting upon

Strip mining

SleymanS Bridge at moStar, built in 1566

Mostar Bridge, 1993

And rebuilt (now as a tourist attraction)

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 on the model (a rather elusive one on the first reading) of Gebirge (the chaining of mountain ranges) and Gemut (what disposes one in ones disposition) One can also draw a connection here to Heideggers lecture to the Club of Bremen on Gefahr.

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

But where danger is, grows The saving power also.

- Friedrich Hlderlin

What Heidegger means by the danger

Hlderlins Gefahr is not the same as what we might more routinely and just as gravely regard as the dangers of technology Heideggers danger concerns the array of possibilities for thinking and for questioning

possibilities technology threatens to close off.

. For questioning is the piety of thought.