The Question Concerning Technology

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Martin Heidegger

• The Question Concerning Technology
• With thanks to Professor B. Babich, Fordham
  University

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• 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))

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• 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)

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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 technology 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.

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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

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causa efficiens (315-316)

• 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

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The Craftsman Silversmith here (315)

• The German überlegen (which Heidegger interprets
  to mean something like bring about by
  reflecting)--- renders the Greek ????? for
  Heidegger and corresponds to in Latin letters
  now, 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

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Tools, of a kind
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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

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The Four Causes Didactic Illustration
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Verschuldetsein

• That to which something else is indebted (316)
• 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 (37) 1

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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

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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)

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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
  handVorrat

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Examples of such setting upon
Hydroelectric plant (and environs)
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Strip mining
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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)
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Süleymans Bridge at Mostar, first built in 1566
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Mostar Bridge, 1993
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Rebuilt as a tourist attraction
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Heideggers reference point
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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 ones disposition)
• The Ge-stell is a putting into a framework or
  configuration as standing reserve of everything
  that is summoned forth (325)

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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)

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Ackerbau Zitat Example from Agriculture

• Ein Landstrich wird gestellt An area is
  en-framed

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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.

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Das Anstehen von Gestein ist vermutlich schon im
Gesichtskreis eines solchen Stellens vorgestellt
und auch nur aus ihm vorstellbar.
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Das anstehende und als solches schon auf
ein Sichstellen abgeschätzte Gestein wird
herausgefordert und demzufolge herausgefördert.

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• Durch ein solches Bestellen wird das Land zu
  einem Kohlenrevier, der Boden zu einer
  Erlagererstätte Note Heideggers later marginal
  comment Der Boden, Land heimatlose des
  Bestandes!

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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
  famers 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.

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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.

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Heideggers claim is that such a manufacture of
corpses is in essence the sameas strip mining,
factory farming, etc.
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• 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 Hölderlins saving
power das Rettende.
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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)

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• The essence of technology is nothing
  technological
• Heidegger

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Heideggers grave, St. Martins Church Graveyard,
Messkirch