The Question Concerning Technology

Heidegger, Martin. “The Question Concerning Technology.” The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Trans. William Lovitt. New York: Garland, 1977.

- “Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it” (4).
- If we regard technology as neutral, we are blind to its essence.
- Two common statements regarding technology:

1. Technology is a means to an end.
2. Technology is a human activity.

- Technology is a contrivance or, in Latin, instrumentum.
- “Wherever instrumentality reigns, there reigns causality” (6). Four causes:

1. causa materialis: matter out of which
2. causa formalis: shape into which
3. causa finalis: the end to which the material or form is put
4. causa efficiens: that which brings about the effect

- “What technology is, when represented as a means, discloses itself when we trace instrumentality back to fourfold causality” (6).
- Causa, from Latin cadere (to fall), translates Greek aition, that to which something else is indebted (7).
- The four causes are responsible for that which lies ready before us. The four ways of being responsible bring something into appearance. Being responsible is this starting something on its way into arrival (9).
- Poiesis: a bringing-forth. Physis: arising of something from out of itself. Physis is poiesis in its highest sense (10).
- The essence of technology has everything to do with revealing. “The possibility of all productive manufacturing lies in revealing. Technology is a way of revealing. It is the realm of revealing, i.e., of truth. (12)
- Technikon: that which belongs to techne, skills and activities of craftsmen, arts of the mind, fine arts.
- Techne, according to Aristotle, opens up; it reveals that which does not bring itself forth. For Heidegger, “It is as revealing, and not as manufacturing, that techne is a bringing-forth” (13).
- “What is modern technology? It too is a revealing.” “The revealing that rules in modern technology is a challenging, which puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy that can be extracted and stored as such” (14).
- Setting-upon as expediting: it unlocks and exposes; it drives toward maximum yield, minimum expense. For instance, coal is stock-piled; it is on call; challenged for heat; ordered to deliver steam to keep a factory running. (15)
- “The revealing that rules throughout modern technology has the character of a setting-upon, in the sense of a challenging-forth.” Ways of revealing: energy: unlocked, transformed, stored up, distributed, switched.
- On the standing-reserve in modern life: “Everywhere everything is ordered to stand by, to be immediately at hand, indeed to stand there just so that it may be on call for a further ordering” and “it designates nothing less than the way in which everything presences that is wrought upon by the challenging revealing” (17).
- “Modern technology as an ordering revealing is, then, no merely human doing” (19).
- Enframing: “We now name that challenging claim which gathers man thither to order the self-revealing as standing reserve: ‘Ge-stell’ [Enframing]” (19). Enframing is fundamentally a calling-forth, a gathering so as to reveal. Gestell is a common German word, meaning a kind of apparatus, e.g. a bookrack, also a skeleton. “Enframing means the gathering together of that setting-upon which sets upon man, i.e., challenges him forth, to reveal the real, in the mode of ordering, as standing reserve” (20). The implication of Enframing is that man in the technological age is challenged forth into revealing (21). At another point Heidegger says that Enframing is “the way in which the real reveals itself as standing-reserve” (23).
- This definition of Enframing has an important implication for Heidegger: “The merely instrumental, merely anthropological definition of technology is therefore in principle untenable And it cannot be rounded out by being referred back to some metaphysical or religious explanation that undergirds it” (21).
- The essence of modern technology is already in mathematical physics, which precedes it: “The modern physical theory of nature prepares the way first not simply for technology but for the essence of modern technology. For already in physics the challenging gathering-together into ordering revealing holds sway” (22).
- Destining: sending-that-gathers which first starts man upon a way of revealing, “Enframing belongs within the destining of revealing” (25).
- “The destining of revealing is as such, in every one of its modes, and therefore necessarily, danger.” “The destining of revealing is in itself not just any danger, but danger as such.” (26)
- Taking everything as standing-standing reserve, man comes to take himself also as standing-reserve. The consequence of this, and being in italics emphasizes its importance, is that “nowhere does man today any longer encounter himself, i.e., his essence” (27).
- “What is dangerous is not technology […] The essence of technology, as a destining of revealing, is the danger” (28).
- “The essence of technology is in a lofty sense ambiguous. Such ambiguity points to the mystery of all revealing, i.e., of truth” (33).
- In the end, Heidegger suggests that above all it is necessary to continue questioning technology: “For questioning is the piety of thought” (35).