The Question Concerning Technology

For Martin Heidegger broadly, the question of being formed the essence of his philosophical inquiry. In "The Question Concerning Technology", Heidegger sustains this inquiry, but turns to the particular phenomenon of technology, seeking to derive the essence of technology and humanity’s role of being with it. Heidegger originally published the text in 1954, in "Vorträge und Aufsätze".

Discussion of Terminology

An opening to understanding his discussion is the somewhat mythical concept of "that which precedes all: the earliest" (327). For Heidegger, everything has an essence, yet that essence is concealed to humans. To access this essence, we must engage in "a painstaking effort to think through still more primally what was primally thought"; this is "not the absurd wish to revive what is past, but rather the sober readiness to be astounded before the coming of the dawn" (327). The ideal, then, is the "bringing-forth," in Greek poiesis: bringing-forth is to challenge the unconcealment of the essence, rather than to accept the concealed, what we see without or before poiesis. Heidegger writes:

"Bringing-forth brings out of concealment into unconcealment. Bringing-forth propriates only insofar as something concealed comes into unconcealment. This coming rests and moves freely within what we call revealing [das Entbergen] . The Greeks have the word aletheia for revealing. The Romans translate this with veritas. We say “truth” and usually understand it as correctness of representation. (317)"

The ideal here is the attainment of "truth," or "correctness of representation," because the forms we see are figures of concealed histories; the true forms are concealed, and only through "unconcealment," or the removal of that which is concealed, can we access the truth.

Heidegger turns to technology, the nominative subject of the essay, etymologically: the word stems from the Greek techne, which is "the name not only for the activities and skills of the craftsman but also for the arts of the mind and the fine arts" (318). For the Greeks, techne was intimately linked to poiesis, the poetic, and thus linked to the "bringing forth" so essential in the pursuit of aletheia/veritas/truth.

Technology, in its modern form, is thought more as manufacturing; in revealing the Greek origins of the modern term, Heidegger initiates his discussion of technology – "It is as revealing, and not as manufacturing, that techne is a bringing-forth … Technology comes to presence in the realm where revealing and unconcealment take place, where aletheia, truth, happens" (319). In this initiation, he performs his argument, by bringing-forth the concealed roots of the word "technology." In doing so, he asserts that modern technology, as with techne, is a bringing-forth, a revealing. Focusing his terminology further, he writes, "the revealing that rules modern technology is a challenging" (320). Now, Heidegger aligns a slew of terms all of which are modes toward aletheia/veritas/truth – "bringing-forth [Her-vor-bringen] " (317), "unconcealment" (317-318), 'revealing [das Entbergen] " (318) "challenging [Herausfordern] " (320).

Unconcealing his questioning concerning technology further, Heidegger aims centrally at defining the modern technology’s essence, which he names "Gestell [enframing] " (324). Here, "Enframing means the gathering together of the setting-upon that sets upon man, i.e. challenges him forth, to reveal the actual, in the mode of ordering, as standing-reserve" (325). Put somewhat more lucidly, enframing refers to the calling out, impelling, or challenging forth, of humans to reveal, or unconceal the "actual" (the aletheia/veritas/truth) as ever-present and "on call" (322) (the "standing-reserve"). Put differently, "Enframing, as a challenging-forth into ordering, sends into a way of revealing. Enframing is an ordaining of destining, as is every way of revealing. Bringing-forth, poiesis, is also a destining in this sense" (330). Enframing is “destining”, from which "the essence of all history is determined" (329). Enframing is the essence of modern technology, for Heidegger, because he roots modern technology in techne: it is a means for sourcing true forms and ideas that exist before the figures we perceive.

Hydroelectric Power Plant v. The Water Wheel

Heidegger employs these two man-made inventions as examples of how technology has fundamentally altered man's relationship not only to the earth, but also to Being itself. In effect, the distinction between these two man-made entities is elemental to the overall understanding of different epochs of Being. In one sense, the water wheel comes from an older or primordial period of Being whereby man merely sought to use the distinctive forces of nature in a more harmonious fashion when compared to the monstrosity that is the hydroelectric power plant. Although it would appear that Heidegger demonstrates preferential treatment for the ancient or older modes of man's relationship to the earth and Being, he never quite says it in a direct manner. The construction and development of the hydroelectric power plant along the Rhine River brings about a series of revelations relating to the meaning of Being. Man has set about to challenge nature, and therefore, modern technology is the means and activity through which this challenge comes into existence. The following passage truly captures the heart of what Heidegger means by this challenge.

The hydroelectric plant is set into the current of the Rhine. It sets the Rhine to supplying its hydraulic pressure, which then sets the turbines turning. This turning sets those machines in motion whose thrust sets going the electric current for which the long-distance power station and its network of cables are set up to dispatch electricity. In the context of the interlocking processes pertaining to the orderly disposition of electrical energy, even the Rhine itself appears to be something at our command. [Martin Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology," "Basic Writings" Ed. David Krell (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993), 321.]

This passage essentially asserts that although the meaning of Being appears to be more obscured as technology becomes increasingly complex, it is still there. One has to look a bit closer at the specific processes involved with modern machinery in order to capture a small piece of the essence of Being. So whenever a man switches on a light, he ought to recognize that the energy required to power the light is one distinct process with respect to the bringing-forth of Being. We, as human beings, have elementally, if not permanently, altered our relationship to Being through the advent of modern technological undertakings. And what's more is that there is nothing too technological about the true essence of technology, as Heidegger has shown that technology's ultimate essence resides in a rather poetic dwelling near the truth of Being. [Ibid, 340.]

The Role of Humans

Therein lies the crucial question of Heidegger’s argument: what is the role of humans in enframing, in unconcealing and revealing the truth? Heidegger engages with this question for the remainder of the essay, for humanity’s passive or active engagement with modern technology defines its “danger” or “saving power.” “As the one who is challenged forth in this way, man stands with the essential realm of enframing” (329). Enframing is the putting-in-position of man to reveal the actual as original; if enframing is the essence of modern technology (328), then the essence of modern technology is this putting-in-position of man to reveal the actual as original and still present, if concealed.

Yet the role of humans is nevertheless limited. The truth exists outside of human work, and so he only “takes part in ordering as a way of revealing…the unconcealment itself, within which ordering unfolds, is never a human handiwork” (324). Put differently, “Does such revealing happen somewhere beyond all human doing? No. But neither does it happen exclusively in man, or definitively through man” (329). Enframing is “never human handiwork”, does not happen “beyond all human doing”, and yet does not happen “in man” or “through man” -- perhaps because of this ambiguity of human agency in enframing, Heidegger sees great potential for both danger and saving power in human engagement with modern technology. Indeed, it is so imperative because “man becomes truly free only insofar as he belongs to the realm of destining and so becomes one who listens, though not one who simply obeys (330). Humans are incarcerated because we do not know the origins; to find them, we must ‘listen but not simply obey.’ But freedom is only the means to the true aim, for “to occurrence of revealing, i.e. truth, freedom stands in the closest and most intimate kinship” (330).

Supreme Danger or Saving Power

Whether modern technology realizes its (or humans realize technology’s) “supreme danger” or “saving power” seems to lie with humans ability to listen, reflect, and witness. The grave danger emerges from humans standing “so decisively in subservience to on [sic] the challenging-forth of enframing that he does not grasp enframing as a claim, that he fails to see himself as the one spoken to, and hence also fails in every way to hear in what respect he ek-sists, in terms of his essence, in a realm where he is addressed, so that he can never encounter only himself” (332). For Heidegger, “enframing is a claim”, as a declamation or a claim on land, and humans’ inability or unwillingness to ‘listen, but not obey’ (330) to the challenging-forth of modern technology represents the greatest danger, for then the technology becomes determinant of its truth, rather than humans becoming cognizant of concealed truth.

Conversely, the key to realizing the “saving power” of modern technology lies in pondering, and witnessing, its “essential unfolding”, the unfolding of its essence. Rather than becoming “transfixed in the will to master it [technology as instrument] ” (337), “when … we ask how the instrumental unfolds essentially as a kind of causality, then we experience this essential unfolding as the destining of a revealing” (338). As Heidegger turns to the potential “saving power” of modern technology, his diction becomes admittedly “in a lofty sense ambiguous” – at the end of the essay, truth becomes a “constellation, the stellar course of the mystery” (338-339). Etymologically, in German konstellation finds kinship with the German for enframing, Gestell, suggesting their alignment. Imagistically, Heidegger conjures the night sky, innumerable points of light immeasurably distant from human perception; each point, if possible to challenge-forth, would lead towards “the growing light” (338) and the “shining forth” (339) of an individual star, immeasurably bright, with its own origin, Heidegger’s “the earliest”. Yet, we also know that many of the stars in the night sky of today have long since died, lost their source of light, suggesting that while pondering the essential unfolding of modern technology may escape danger, and may hold saving power, it may not lead us to ultimate truth.

Sources

Martin Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology", from "Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings from 'Being and Time' (1927) to 'The Task of Thinking' (1964)'", Revised and expanded edition, edited, with general introduction and introductions to each selection by David Farrell Krell. Harper:San Francisco.