Die Frage nach der Technik(2000) Martin Heidegger
Preliminary remark:
Heidegger’s philosophy is very much carried by an ontogenetically oriented use of language in German. He uses language not only as an instrument, but even more as a material for the search for knowledge. One of Heidegger’s methods is to bring to the foreground, among the phenomena of everyday German language, the deeper layers of meaning of a word which, in his view, expose the essence of a phenomenon or a process. This guided by ancient Greek concepts of meaning. It is therefore difficult to translate the present review, more so the quotations, into English (or to translate Heidegger’s writings in general into English). I did it to the best of my knowledge. Please, take this translation with more than just a grain of salt, as the terminology Heidegger developed cannot be transferred precisely into English.
Summary:
Heidegger places technology in a way of unconcealment, which processually brings something into appearance and therefore strives towards knowledge and truth. The process of unconcealment, which is bound to technology, is characterized by a position, which is aimed at plannability and maximization, which turns phenomena from an object into a provision and subjects them to a process of supplying. As a substructure of this making available, Heidegger refers to the “Ge-stell”. This specific Heideggerian term relates to a configuration of meaning which determines the conceptualization of a phenomenon. Heidegger sees the Ge-stell very critical.
The predominance of this Ge-stell
“hides the unconcealment as such and with it that in which unconcealment, i.e. truth, takes place. The image hides the appearing and the working of the truth. The destiny (Geschick), which sends into the supplying, is thus the outermost danger. The dangerous is not the technique. There is no demony of technology, but there is the secret of its essence. The essence of technology, as a destiny (Geschick) of unconcealing, is the danger.” (S. 28-29)
It was not the overpowering machines that posed the danger:
“The real threat has already attacked man in his essence. The rule of the Ge-stell threatens with the possibility that man could be denied to enter into a more original unconcealment and thus to experience the encouragement of a more initial truth. Thus, then, where the Ge-stell rules, there is danger in the highest sense.” (S. 29)
And:
“The essence of technology threatens the unconcealment, threatens with the possibility that all unconcealment will be absorbed in supplying and everything will present itself only in the unconcealment of the provision.” (S. 34)
so that a turn to a “more initial truth” is not possible. In this way, a kind of making available, pragmatic classification and reification of the phenomena under consideration as well as of the human being takes the place of the discovering cognition. To this end, Heidegger repeatedly cites examples that can be seen in today’s language as ecological questions.
At the same time, however, in the sense of Hölderlin, “the saving” also arises from this constellation:
Heidegger points out that the “challenging into the supplying of the real as existence” still remains a sending, that is, man has an important part in this dynamic. The human being is a part of the granting that sets the process in motion, so that it can continue, so that it becomes effective as a destiny.
Man is understood here as a dynamizing factor, but not as a causal one. He is “embedded” in something that he can neither invent nor even make of his own accord”, which, as it were, first constitutes him as a human being. But he can change this destiny (Geschick). Here the most intimate, indestructible affiliation of man in the granting comes to light, provided that we begin in our part to pay attention to the essence of technology.” (S. 33)
Actively, man has to ask the question about technology in a differentiated way: “The question about technology is the question about the constellation in which unconcealment and concealment, in which the essence of truth takes place.” (S. 34)
In this way, namely by questioning and observing, the essence of technology “contains the possible rise of the saving”. (p. 33) Here, it is not human action and achievement that point to the saving, but reflection and questioning.
Are different ways of uncovering very close to each other, whereby not the technology as uncovering led to the event of the truth. The attention, reflection and questions concerning the human granting open the way to the Greek-antique understanding of Techné: “Once Techné was also called the bringing forth of the true into the beautiful”. In this way, namely by questioning and observing, the essence of technology “contains the possible rise of the saving”. (p. 33) Here, it is not human action and achievement that point to the saving, but reflection and questioning. Are different ways of unconcealment very close to each other, whereby not the technology as unconcealment led to the event of the truth. The attention, reflection and questions concerning the human conceding to open the way to the Greek-antique understanding of Techné: “Once Techné was also called the bringing forth of the true into the beautiful”. This can only be achieved if we as human beings do not abandon ourselves to the image of technology and surrender what has come into being to the existing situation, but rather practice a granting, towards the “other possibility that the frenetic pace of technology will settle everywhere”.
“another possibility, that everywhere the frenetic pace of technology settles in, until one day the essence of technology takes effect in the event of truth through all technicality. (S. 36)
(…)
Because the essence of technology is nothing technical, the essential reflection on technology and the decisive confrontation with it must take place in an area that is related to the essence of technology on the one hand and yet fundamentally different from it on the other. Such an area is art. Of course, this is only the case if artistic reflection, for its part, does not close itself off to the constellation of truth we are asking about. So asking we testify the plight that we do not yet experience the essence of technology before all technology, that we do not preserve the essence of art before all aesthetics. However, the more questioningly we reflect the essence of technology, the more mysterious the essence of art becomes. The more we approach the danger, the brighter the ways into the saving begin to shine, the more questioning we become. For questioning is the piety of thought.” (S. 36)
Here, according to Heidegger, a possibility emerges to approach technology to art “questioningly” and thereby to break through its momentum, which prevails in its Ge-stell. At the same time, however, the question of technology (i.e., the technology that is opened up in a questioning manner) shows in the impetus of unconcealing that field where the human conceding must bring artistic reflection into play in order to find its way to a more initial truth without ebbing away into mere supply.
The solution (“salvation”) therefore lies in art and philosophy, not in natural science: Heidegger assumes a tautological-paradoxical core of natural science:
“Its way of imagining imitates nature as a calculable connection of forces. Modern physics is not experimental physics because it sets up apparatuses to interrogate nature, but vice versa: because physics, already as pure theory, sets up nature to present itself as a predictable connection of forces, that is why the experiment is supplied, namely to interrogate whether nature thus set up presents itself and how it presents itself.” (S. 22)
And adds:
“Because the essence of modern technology is based in the Ge-stell, therefore this must use the exact natural science. This creates the deceptive appearance that modern technology is applied natural science. This appearance can hold its ground as long as neither the origin of the essence of modern science nor even the essence of modern technology is sufficiently inquired into.” (S. 24)
Conclusion:
In the contemplation of art and the artistic and in the active effort to oppose its acting effects (ihr “Wesendes”) to the inherent dynamic of the Ge-stell: this path of thought Heidegger sees as the starting point for a “free relationship” to technology. Heidegger here consciously and almost completely renounces both a subject-object and a cause-effect dichotomy. He unfolds his critique of the dehumanization through technology by means of reciprocal constellation concepts, and an interaction of dynamics in the mode of interdependent configurations. This almost comes close to an oikos-thinking, and is further developed by thinkers like McLuhan and Postman in a media-ecological (one could also say: apparatus-ecological) way, where the apparatus (the formed technology) is a determinant of an environments relationship and interdependencies. In contrast to McLuhan, Heidegger assigns the human being a directing, changing role in this process.
Sabine Breitsameter,
h_da, Faculty of Media
Martin Heidegger, „Die Frage nach der Technik*“, in: Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Hrg.), Gesamtausgabe. I. Abteilung: Veröffentlichte Schriften 1910-1976, Band 7, Vorträge und Aufsätze, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2000, S. 5-36.