An Introduction to Heidegger's The Question Concerning Technology

By HerodoteanDreams

Note: citations and page references are taken from David Krell’s Basic Writings

Introduction: This is a companion piece to my introduction to Heidegger’s “On the Origin of the Work of Art; in this piece I wish to introduce the reader to Heidegger’s “The Question Concerning Technology.” Heidegger’s essay has three parts: 1) an introductory part discussing the way in which our understanding of causality has changed over time; 2) the way in which the revealing of technology has transformed our relationship with the earth in such a way as to alienate and objectify us, even to such an extent that we allow ourselves to be thought of in terms of standing-reserve; 3) an evaluation of the concept of essence in terms of the historical process of unfolding, which includes an analysis of freedom.

The title and first paragraph of the work may be considered surprising for the following reason: the bulk of the essay focuses on the essence of technology instead of technology, as the title might have lead us to expect; in fact, we aren’t equipped even to understand what is meant in the first paragraph until we have read through the entire essay. We might explain the shift from technology to the essence of technology by the simple fact that people wanting to understand technology must look to the essence of technology; while from the standpoint of ordinary speech this move might be surprising, it is not surprising from the standpoint of a member of a philosophy department, which is to say that when we see in the third part that the concept of “essence is problematic,” we see that the very language brought into speech by professional or academic “philosophers” is part of the problem. As in the Origin of the Work of Art, the status of contemporary language itself is part of the problem. Regarding the second point, that we cannot understand the first paragraph until we understand the third part, this shows that just as in the previous essay, so in this essay the work of Heidegger unfolds as old concepts are reevaluated and new language is introduced. Much of what I said about my introduction to the previous essay could be said about this essay: in short, we don’t know what Heidegger means until we reach the end, but we can’t just skip to the end because the process of getting to the end performs a pedagogical function.

Part One: When distinguishing technology from the essence of technology, Heidegger butts up against the ordinary instrumental and anthropological definitions of technology in which technology is a means and a human activity. And just as Heidegger had attacked our tendency to equate the correct with the true in the first part of the art essay, albeit at the end of the first part, so he challenges our conception of the truth in the first part of “Question Concerning Technology.” The ordinary understanding of technology is correct but not true because it does not uncover the essence of technology. While we would expect Heidegger, then, to turn to the essence of technology, he pauses to review the way we understand causation. We only understand why he does this after he does it, so keep in mind that Heidegger himself expects the reader to think that this apparent digression comes out of nowhere.

The four causes are taken by Heidegger from the first book of Aristotle’s Metaphysics (although as an aside they are suggested in the explanation of why Socrates turned away from the direct investigation of nature in Plato’s Phaedo). “For centuries philosophy has taught that there are four causes: 1) the causa materialis, the material, the matter out of which, for example, a silver chalice is made; 2) the causa formalis, the form, the shape into which the material enters; 3) the causa finalis, the end, for example, the sacrificial rite in relation to which the required chalice is determined as to its form and matter; 4) the causa efficiens, which brings about the effect that is the finished, actual chalice, in this instance, the silversmith.” Note that the example he uses is the chalice, an example with religious connotations; by the end of the essay, we will see that technology blocks the religious passions. At any rate, Heidegger very reasonably asks what unifies the four causes; as distinct causes, their relationship would seem to be solely correlative, which is to say of no logical connectedness—and this seems to be borne out by the fact that we isolate and emphasize the efficient cause at the expense of the other causes, above all final causality. But this is to understand causes in terms of “that which is borne out, effected or resulted,” which is to say that Heidegger considers our very understanding of the Aristotelian causes to be flawed—especially regarding the final or telic causes. When this is viewed as “purpose or aim” it is no wonder that this cause in particular is dropped in scientific investigation as it is hard or impossible to see what purpose anything other than artifacts have without having recourse to religious claims—again, the example of “chalice” is deliberately chosen because to anyone outside of the religion associated with that particular chalice, it would be viewed as an abomination or a decorated cup. One cannot see a chalice as a chalice and think of it as a mere object. However, when Heidegger redefines telos as that which gives bounds or completes, while it now makes a little more sense to think of non-artifacts as having teloi, the Greek conception of telos, as understood by Heidegger, has the effect of objectifying anything that is contemplated in this manner, as he attempts to show by comparing physis, poiesis, and, in the second part, techne.

In the previous essay, Heidegger had discussed techne at the beginning of the third part and skipped over explicit analysis of poiesis. That we are inquiring into technology is the reason why the contemplation of techne receives more attention and at an earlier place relative to the whole. Heidegger’s understanding of the Greek conception of physis, which we would generally translate as “nature” and from which our “physics” has its etymologic origin, is characterized as something arising out of itself, and this conception of physis is closely linked to Heidegger’s “unfolding.” By contrast, the Greeks included both the artificial and the natural within poiesis, understood by Heidegger as “bringing-forth.” Bringing forth is much more vibrant than the normal translation of “making,” which is a bastardized version of poiesis. By discussing the difference between physis and poiesis, Heidegger is able to direct our attention to the concept of bringing-forth out of concealment—bringing-forth out of concealment is the bridge to the second part of this essay and why Heidegger discussed Aristotelian causes in the first place.

Part Two: That techne belongs to bringing forth or poiesis is the root of our contemporary objectification of everything. And as he had done in the previous essay, Heidegger links techne with aleuthia, ordinarily translated as “truth,”—but in this essay he holds off discussing the role of history as related to the concept “essence” to draw out the difference between the way techne revealed itself to the Greeks and the way of technology—although that both are different manners of revealing would seem to force one to draw the conclusion that they are both true for their historical time. Again, techne is a revealing understood as a bringing forth—the Greek technician does not make or force, he draws out into unconcealment. Modern technology is also a revealing—I want to emphasize that Heidegger does consider modern technology to be a revealing because, again, I consider this to be a source of tension in his thought, namely, that to the extent that each historical time has its own revealing and covering, Heidegger is wary of making timeless moral judgments along the lines of “better and worse” or “noble and base” but, on the other hand, he clearly detests what technology has done and wishes for a “more primally granted revealing.”

At any rate, to understand the essence of technology is to see that “the revealing that holds sway throughout modern technology does not unfold into a bringing-forth in the sense of poiesis. The revealing that rules in modern technology is a challenging, which puts to nature the unreasonable [!] demand that it supply energy which can be extracted and stored as such.” Note that Heidegger calls this demand that technology puts to nature unreasonable. However we understand the tension within the thought of Heidegger, it by no means precludes him from making judgments about the revealing of technology. So why is it unreasonable? It must be unreasonable to challenge nature to supply energy that can be extracted and stored. This challenging of technology is a setting-upon that unlocks and exposes for the sake of storing or holding on call, transforming that which we used to work with into that which we exploit or command. Again, Heidegger calls this monstrous. It is monstrous in part because it transforms our relationship with nature into one of antagonism and, as we see, leads to humans themselves being considered as standing reserve (think human resource department). And frankly, on a personal note, I think it is hard to see how someone could disagree with Heidegger about this, and I also think that our advanced electronics—computer, phone, internet—only serve to exacerbate the problems he is describing. Amazon alienates from products of use, the obesity problem seems linked to all of this, etc. This essay is much more popular and well-known than “The Origin of the Work of Art” precisely because Heidegger is able to articulate what so many of us think and feel. And I emphasize this because many agree with this aspect of his thought even if they disagree with his historicism, that is, to understand the thought of Heidegger one must understand the relationship between technological revealing and the historical process of unfolding but that the evaluation of the concept of essence in relation to historical unfolding occurs after the analysis and criticism of technology seems to me to imply that the evaluation and criticism can, as such, be separated from the treatment of historical unfolding. What I want to stress here is that Heidegger does an incredible job of refuting the thought that technology is neutral in the secondary sense that it can be used both for aims we like or dislike—that it completely changes our relationship with nature and ways of life I take to be completely and immediately compelling—even those who disagree that this is monstrous seem to agree on this point at least.

In the companion piece, we had seen that Heidegger was critical of the subject/object dichotomy but the concept of “standing-reserve” is something worse and distinct: “What kind of unconcealment is it, then, that is peculiar to that which results from this setting-upon that challenges? Everywhere everything is ordered to stand by, to be immediately on hand, indeed to stand there just so that it may be on call for a further ordering. Whatever is ordered about in this way has its own standing. We call it the standing-reserve.” So where does this leave man and what is man’s relationship to the standing-reserve? “Only to the extent that man for his part is already challenged to exploit the energies of nature can this revealing that orders happen. If man is challenged, ordered, to do this, then does not man himself belong even more originally than nature within the standing-reserve?” It looks at first as though technology transforms man himself into standing-reserve. Heidegger thinks the situation is actually worse than that: “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.” Man, in one sense viewed as standing-reserve, in another sense becomes enslaved to standing-reserve in the sense that he finds himself—this process is presented as totally out of the hands of the individual—he finds himself enslaved to the standing-reserve as its orderer: Thus when man, investigating, observing, pursues nature as an area of his own conceiving, he has already been claimed by a way of revealing that challenges him to approach nature as an object of research, until even the object disappears into the objectlessness of standing-reserve.”

 Heidegger has a particular word for the way the challenging of nature gathers man with a view to ordering the self-revealing as standing-reserve: Ge-stell or en-framing. 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. Enframing means the way of revealing that holds sway in the essence of modern technology and that is itself nothing technological.” Enframing is contrasted with the producing and presenting associated with poiesis, that which lets what presences come forth into unconcealment. Considering that earlier Heidegger had made a comparison between the hydroelectric dam and the watermill, one might expect Heidegger to choose a contrasting example along those lines; however, we should recall that when describing Aristotetlian causation, his example had been the chalice. Here we are presented with another religious example—not a mere statue but a statue in a temple—and, aside from whatever animosity we may feel to the revealing that is enframing on its own terms, the religious example used within the revealing that is poiesis shows us what is lost. That is, not only is enframing pernicious on its own terms, but it is also pernicious in that coming forth into unconcealment seems to be what is needed for a genuine religious experience. “In enframing the unconcealment propriates in conformity with which the work of modern technology reveals the actual as standing-reserve. This work is therefore neither only a human activity nor a mere means within such activity. The merely instrumental, merely anthropological definition of technology is therefore in principle untenable. And it may not be rounded out by being referred back to some metaphysical or religious explanation that undergirds it.” Technology blocks our access to genuine religious experience.

How is the whole understood if not through religion, or what is our conception of nature under these circumstances? “Modern science’s way of representing pursues and entraps nature as a calculable coherence of forces. Modern physics is not experimental physics because it applies apparatus to the questioning of nature. The reverse is true. Because physics, indeed already as pure theory, sets nature up to exhibit itself as a coherence of forces calculable in advance, it orders its experiments precisely for the purpose of asking whether and how nature reports itself when set up in this way. But, after all, mathematical science arose almost two centuries before technology. How, then, could it have already been set upon by modern technology and placed in its service? The facts testify to the contrary. Surely technology got under way only when it could be supported by exact physical science. Reckoned chronologically, this is correct. Thought historically, it does not hit upon the truth.” The inverse relationship between chronology and history in this case is jarring and hard to understand. Heidegger’s claim is that while modern science occurred prior to modern technology in time, even though enframing had not revealed itself at the outset of modern science, modern science is the sounding note that a new process of revealing, again, that of enframing, is in play. That both of these relationships with nature are thought of in terms of revealing/concealing is the transition to the third and last part of the essay. Part of Heidegger’s justification for reversing the “correct” temporal relationship between modern physics and technological development is that “all coming to presence, not only modern technology, keeps itself everywhere concealed to the last.” This means that the way in which modern physics heralded the revealing of enframing could not have been seen at the time in which modern physics was developed. Heidegger’s understanding of the unfolding of history places man simply in the grips of a process that he can only see the meaning of much after the time in which it occurred chronologically. Heidegger downplays the knowing influence that the greatest human minds can achieve. While I think his point holds for the vast majority of humankind, as an aside, I have to say I disagree with him on this point and that the men who are responsible for the development of the new physics—Bacon and Descartes more than anyone else—not only were aware of the connection between the new physics and the phenomenon of enframing, that is, not only were they aware of the way in which this new revealing would block religious revealing, but they even intended this. I have to leave this claim as an assertion here—according to the thought of Heidegger, you should be aware that that which is earlier with regard to its rise into dominance becomes manifest to us men only later. By contrast, I consider Heidegger’s claim regarding the development of quantum physics as completely changing the aim of science to be fully borne out by the work of Heisenberg and a perfectly adequate representation of Heisenberg’s work. “If modern physics must resign itself ever increasingly to the fact that its realm of representation remains inscrutable and incapable of being visualized, this resignation is not dictated by any committee of researchers. It is challenged forth by the rule of enframing, which demands that nature be ordered as standing-reserve.” The quantification process of physics has developed to such an extent that quantum mechanics stands for the renunciation of the attempt to visualize what the complicated mathematics represents. Heisenberg is quite clear about this and one can see it immediately when one realizes that it is impossible to conceive of something behaving as a wave and a particle at the same time. In Heideggerian terms: “It seems as though causality is shrinking into a reporting—a reporting challenged forth—of standing reserves that must be guaranteed either simultaneously or in sequence.”

Part Three: At this point, it would seem that we have gotten to the essence of technology. Abstracting from the other work of Heidegger, if this essay ended at this point, with the exception of the language used in the very first paragraph, I think this essay would commonly be held to be complete, and would be just as famous as it is. So—what is the necessity of the third part and what is it about the third part that makes this a unified and complete work? In the thought of Heidegger, we could not understand our relationship to the essence of technology, if we did not understand that this very way of putting the question—what is our relationship to the essence of technology?—is highly problematic, which is even to say wrong. “Enframing is the gathering together which belongs to that setting-upon which challenges man and puts him in a position to reveal the actual, in the mode of ordering, as standing-reserve. As the one who is challenged forth in this way, man stands within the essential realm of enframing. He can never take up a relationship to it only subsequently. Thus the question as to how we are to arrive at a relationship to the essence of technology, asked in this way, always comes too late. But never too late comes the question as to whether we actually experience ourselves as the ones whose activities everywhere, public and private, are challenged forth by enframing. Above all, never too late comes the question as to whether and how we actually admit ourselves into that wherein enframing itself essentially unfolds.” On the grounds that only now are we able to see what the essence of technology is, are we able to understand essence as revealing. “The essence of modern technology starts man upon the way of that revealing through which the actual everywhere, more or less distinctly becomes standing-reserve. ‘To start upon a way’ means ‘to send’ in our ordinary language. We shall call the sending that gathers, that first starts man upon a way of revealing, destining. It is from this destining that the essence of all history is determined.” One benefit that the essence of technology has provided for us, at this historical moment, is that it allows us to better under essence as destining of revealing. “Always the unconcealment of that which is goes upon a way of revealing. Always the destining of revealing holds complete sway over men.”

The third part of this essay is necessary not only to reveal what is wrong with enframing, but also the historically revealed revelation about history and the possibility for freedom and salvation intertwined with this revelation. “Freedom governs the free space in the sense of the cleared, that is to say, the revealed. To the occurance of revealing, i.e., of truth, freedom stands in the closest and most intimate kinship. All revealing belongs within a harboring and a concealing. But that which frees—the mystery—is concealed and always concealing itself. All revealing comes out of the free, goes into the free, and brings into the free. The freedom of the free consists neither in unfettered arbitrariness nor in the constraint of mere laws. Freedom is that which conceals in a way that opens to light, in whose clearing shimmers the veil that hides the essential occurrence of all truth and lets the veil appear as what veils. Freedom is the realm of the destining that at any given time starts a revealing on its way.” The interpretation of this passage is incredibly difficult, as perhaps indicated by Heidegger’s use of “the mystery”—my greatest difficulty in understanding this passage is whether freedom is meant as simply being in tune with that which is revealed—an interpretation that would seem to need to be discarded as denied by Heidegger’s hostility toward the revealing of technology—or if freedom, as a kind of awareness of the veil—is something only available when the historicity of revealing is historically revealed—a solution that would seem to need to be discarded because it would limit freedom extensively. What seems clearer is that the ordinary process of revealing limits man to the derivation of standards on the basis of what has been revealed—which is to say that while morality is historically conditioned by what is revealed—a fundamentally mysterious process—that this is the case has been revealed in this historical period precisely because of the destructive capacity of enframing. That we experience the danger of the reduction of God even to an efficient cause helps us see this. The danger of the destining of revealing—what hitherto had been spoken of in the old-fashioned terms of essence—is precisely that the destining of revealing will be taken as essence or as timeless. And as I have said a number of times, we have to wonder about the status of this awareness. However this may be, our particular destining of revealing—enframing—brings with it the danger that it will prevent future revealings. Not only would this lead to the degradation of man as the orderer of the standing-reserve, but it would entail the loss or transformation of the Heideggerian insight, which is to say that if enframing really did block all future revealings, then enframing really would become an essence. Heidegger believes that if we lose sight of this insight into the historicity of revealing, then this horror scenario will be enacted: “Man stands so decisively in subservience to 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.” Again, (333) the rule of enframing threatens man with the possibility that it could be denied to him to enter into a more original revealing and hence to experience the call of a more primal truth.        Now, to the extent that it would be desirable to experience the call of whatever this more primal truth may entail, it is hard to see why we shouldn’t simply state that whatever that more primal truth may be it is surely better—better according to some standard outside of what is determined by the historical process of unfolding. This is just another way of stating the difficulty in the thought of Heidegger. However this may be, enframing is the extreme danger that may nevertheless have a kind of saving power growing within it—which is simply to say that it might be the case that man might not be so entrenched within the revealing that is enframing that another revealing wouldn’t unfold out of enframing. And this possibility leads to the passionate affirmation of the dignity of man: “For the saving power lets man see and enter into the highest dignity of his essence. This dignity lies in keeping watch over the unconcealment—and with it, from the first, the unconcealment—of all essential unfolding on this earth.” At bottom, the tension that I have observed throughout my observations so far may have to be resolved simply by recourse to something at bottom mysterious: (338) The essence of technology is in a lofty sense ambiguous. Such ambiguity points to the mystery of all revealing, that is, of truth. Heideggers claims that when we look into the ambiguous essence of technology, we behold the constellation, the stellar course of the mystery. Looking into this constellation summons us to hope in the growing light of the saving power. You should observe that at this point, toward the end of the essay, the language of Heidegger becomes more poetic or even prophetic than it has been. Heidegger’s role is something like that of a lesser prophet in the sense that he is clearing room for a new more primally granted revealing: (339) “human reflection can ponder the fact that all saving power must be of a higher essence than what is endangered though at the same time kindred to it. But might there not perhaps be a more primally granted revealing that could bring the saving power into its first shining-forth in the midst of the danger that in the technological age rather conceals than shows itself?” Heidegger holds out hope that a new revealing could again bring forth into the beautiful. Technology is not only silent about the beautiful, but it deadens our experience of the beautiful and openness to the beautiful. Heidegger holds out hope for a return of the poetical, which is to say that a work of art in the broadest sense could herald a new revealing that again unfolds into the beautiful. Heidegger leaves it an open question whether this possibility can and will be borne out: “Could it be that the fine arts are called to poetic revealing? Could it be that revealing lays claim to the arts most primally, so that they for their part may expressly foster the growth of the saving power, may awaken and found anew our vision of, and trust in, that which grants?”

So: the two possibilities are the entrenchment of technology or a new revealing through art. The two essays we have considered point to each other in the sense that understanding each sheds light on the other. And Heidegger places his particular mode of inquiry on the side of art over and against technology. Just as technology blocks unfolding along religious lines, so it blocks questioning. By ending with the statement that “questioning is the piety of thought” Heidegger aligns his investigation with modes of revealing associated with religion. This is entirely appropriate to his manner of thinking. As I noted in the introduction to “The Origin of the Work of Art,” to emphasize the radical particularity of each historical mode of revealing is to radicalize or abstract from the content of a given religion’s claim to moments of historical importance. And while one could discover the importance of claims to particular historical moments in Greek religion, this aspect of the religion is not emphasized. Despite Heidegger’s preference for examples drawn from Greek religion, his emphasis on the role of history places his thought much closer to Christianity, with its claim to decisive historical moments, than either to Greek philosophic thought or religion. I have to leave it here as an open question whether his radical historicism translates into extreme historicism or relativism in his own thought. It certainly points in this direction. If history is a process of unfolding that relegates the truth about justice and nobility to a particular time period, it is hard to see by what principle one would make large cuts between historical time periods rather than short or sharp cuts, even between a given individual’s life. And if there is no higher standard of judging the justice and nobility of different unfoldings, then it is hard to see why one wouldn’t come to the conclusion that such judgments are simply impossible. In this sense, I consider us to be the heirs of the thought of Heidegger. On the one hand, we are in the grip of technology today even more than we were at the time of Heidegger’s writing. On the other hand, the radical historicism of Heidegger—whether it implies extreme historicism or relativism or not—has led to the development of relativistic claims at the intellectual level and these claims have trickled down into the political arena.