Heidegger and the Question Concerning Technology

First Thought:

Heidegger starts by leading us into the type of questioning that he thinks has been neglected, in this case, the questioning of the essence of technology. He points out that it is nothing technological in the sense that it is not machinery or tools, rather it can be seen as a way of revealing. The ancient Greek word for revealing in Heidegger's sense is aletheia. From this point we have two possibilities for unconcealment, of revealing; the first is poiesis, the bringing-forth and the second is enframing, Gestell, a type of revealing that can be seen more as a challenging of the world, by man's domination as subject, who conceives of the world through science, over object. Revealing can be seen as how things come into being; either on their own (en heautoi) or by another (en alloi). The tree, for example, comes into being out of itself. We humans may be the caretakers, gardeners, nurturers and may set the tree up straight and help it along its way, but we are not the makers of the tree. This is simple enough for us to understand. But what of a table? We are given four causes - materialis (matter/material) - in this case the wood from a certain type of tree, formalis (shape) - a family dining table, finalis (the end that determines the previous two) - the family meal, the gathering of the family around a table - this determines where the family is and thus the available wood, how big the family is, the size, the shape etc, and the causa efficiens - the bringing about of the table, informed by the other 3, and en alloi (by another) in this case. When these four causes are all co-responsible and co-existent, we may have the original root of technology, techne, the arts and activities of the craftsman, the arts of the mind and the fine arts. Techne is a bringing-forth, a poiesis, that allows the material and the craftsman integrity. The opposite would be a modern day, mass-produced table, whose causes are never co-responsible; rather than a specific end in mind, there is a general telos - anyone willing to pay for the table is the desired end, the material must be easy to mass-produce and is often inorganic, the shape must be exactly reproducible every time, and the maker is often a machine, with no knowledge of the end or means (itself). How did we get to this stage? What broke up the four causes? Heidegger points to enframing and man as being challenged forth to conceive of the world as standing-reserve. This means that nature is seen in its predetermined potentiality - solely as potential for man's endeavours, whose potential is predetermined in a scientific, orderable and calculable way. The standing-reserve is the world as regulated, secured resource at the ready for man's and science's further ordering. Man is not solely responsible for this; he is not to blame. Neither is Heidegger asking us to ignore or reject technology. Man must be brought back into his essence, his role in the four causes. Enframing covers other ways of revealing (namely poiesis) and the danger lies in our not being able to conceive of the world differently. Man is Dasein, the beings able to comprehend the idea of being, thus caretakers, nurturers. We must come back into a relationship with the world that is respectful. When man is "meditating, striving, shaping and working, entreating and thinking, he finds himself everywhere brought into the unconcealed." To have a continued and diligent relationship to the world, to respect the four causes as co-responsible, thus to respect the material, shape, end and oneself as co-creator, is to no longer see the world as simply standing by waiting for man to do something with it. This attitude applies not just to energy resources, or made things, but to everything, to the world and to humans. One of the dangers is seeing ourselves as standing-reserve, and we need only think of the holocaust, the gulag, and in a more ordinary context, the deskilled labourer who need not even know what is being created or who will one day use it, what materials are being used etc. As humans, we become part of the orderable, less creator or causa efficiens than manipulated manipulator, part of an increasingly complex and fragmented set of causes.