Angela & Adam: Heidegger's "The Question Concerning Technology"

Heidegger:

Exploring the essence of technology. The 'instrumental' definition of technology, namely that it is a human activity and means to an end is brought up and questioned. Four traditional 'causae' are defined, and it is shown that the one primarily linked to the idea of 'cause' (efficiens), is in fact only one part of an object being created. The craftsperson or artist in effect 'gathers' all the causes in the making of something, thus 'revealing' their natures. In Heidegger's terms, they are 'brought forth into presencing', a poetic process. Poesis is this brining forth into presence, Physis being the bringing forth of something into itself.

Modern technology brings forth in a different way: it is a 'setting-upon', an order to yield something. This is described as 'challenging-forth'. In this mode of revealing, objects are seen not in their nature as objects, but as 'standing-reserve' - containers of potential for action, energy or material.

We ask who is the agent of this 'challenging-forth as standing-reserve', and the obvious answer is humanity. But now we point out that humans themselves are challenged-forth by natural needs into this action. Is humanity therefore also standing-reserve? The answer is no, because humanity is more primally challenged-forth than nature:

"Yet precisely because man is challenged more originally than are the energies of nature, i.e. into the process of ordering, he never is transformed into mere standing reserve."

However, it is quickly pointed out that the 'unconcealment itself', or the context in which this act of ordering takes place is not a human creation, but rather: "he finds himself everywhere already brought into the unconcealed. The unconcealment of the unconcealed has already come to pass whenever it calls man forth into the modes of revealing alloted to him."

From this we see that the instrumental definition of technology is untenable, since it is not a strictly human endeavor, nor strictly a means to an end.

We introduce a new term: Ge-stell, or Enframing. Enframing is the mode of revealing that technology engages in. We also discuss the historical relationship between science (physics) and technology. The latter is chronologically after the former, and seems to depend on it. Modern physics, however in its "realm of representation remains inscrutable and incapable of being visualized" is "challenged forth by the rule of Enframing, which demands that nature be orderable as standing-reserve". Cause in this case is reduced to reporting of standing-reserves.

Enframeing is described as dangerous since "man ... is continually approaching the brink of the possibility of pursuing and pushing forward nothing but what is revealed in ordering" - "the danger can remain that in the midst of all that is correct the true will withdraw". In other words, the danger is that we lose the chance to experience the world in its true essence, as everything is seen in terms of its standing-reserve, rather than its nature as object. (Here we have Heidegger's concept of the 'true', regarding essence, rather than the merely factually correct).

The combination of destining and Enframing is regarded as a 'supreme danger', since humans, regarding the world only as standing-reserve, and reduced to being only the orders of such, are in danger of becoming standing-reserve themselves. Humans see the world only in terms of themselves, yet lose all sight of their own essence. Not only this, but it prevents or conceals other modes of revealing (poeisis), and thus truth.

There is also a 'saving-power' which grows in accordance to Enframing itself, and in order to retrieve it, we must understand technology in its essence. We must, in other words, understand all technology by its common essence of Enframing. It is carefully pointed out that this essence lies in its mode of revealing, "having the character of destining, namely, the way that challenges forth", rather than in being an apparatus or tool, or being the concept of such things. When conscious of this essence as Enframing, we can realise that we are "needed and used for the safekeeping of the coming to presence of truth". We can not accomplish this through "human activity", but through "human reflection". Techne, in it's traditional meaning, applied to the practice of arts, since arts were seen as revealing of truth (Poeisis), and it is the essence of art that grants this saving power.

...Verbeek coming soon...