heideggers technologic
TRANSCRIPT
on
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on heidegger’s techno-logic
3
contents
1. introduction ................................................................................................................................ 7
2. being and time ........................................................................................................................ 11
3. the elephant in the room .................................................................................................... 19
4. impact factor ............................................................................................................................ 31
5. the being of beings ................................................................................................................. 37
6. nothing technological ........................................................................................................... 45
7. the question of agency .......................................................................................................... 65
postscript ................................................................................................................................... 91
references .................................................................................................................................. 94
image source info ................................................................................................................... 96
This book was created for
CMNS 802 : History of Communication studies
taught by Rick Gruneau
in the fall of 2012
at Simon Fraser University,
Vancouver BC, Canada.
DISCLAIMER
All images are used for
academic purposes only.
I do not intend to infringe
on copyright restrictions,
nor do I sell this academic
work for proit.
Hope you enjoy!
5
It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.
The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
“God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a WALL!”
The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, “Ho, what have we here,
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me ‘tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a SPEAR!”
The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a SNAKE!”
The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee
“What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain,” quoth he:
“Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a TREE!”
The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a FAN!”
The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
Is very like a ROPE!”
And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stif and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong! The
Blin
d M
en
an
d t
he
Ele
ph
ant
— J
oh
n G
od
fre
y Sa
xe (1
81
6-1
88
7)
7
On e co u l d a r g u e t h a t this is a book about elephants. In taking on the work of
inluential German philosopher Martin Heidegger, I feel like I have come face to face
with an imposing bull elephant in the Kingdom of Philosophical Animals. Heidegger’s lifelong
engagement with The Question of Being has generated a large body of complex philosophical
thought that is notoriously diicult to read, mainly because he continually seeks to either evade
or expand the conines of language in order to mediate a ‘clearing’ for—or a ‘poetic revealing’
of—Dasein in all its possibilities and historicity.
In my attempts to get a sense of Heidegger’s philosophical ‘essence’ —what is he ‘on about’
and why—I frequently felt like one of the blind men trying to describe the elephant from a very
limited perspective. In light of the work of those who have invested a lifetime engaging with
his thought, my few months of considering a very small part of his oeuvre is bound to be but a
snapshot in time.
introduction
9
Any kind of engagement with the life and thought of Martin Heidegger leads to the inevi-
table encounter with a disturbing ‘elephant in the room’—that of Heidegger’s association with
fascism and his brief yet active involvement with Hitler’s Nazi party in the context of World War
II. Heidegger’s personal history has raised the important question of whether his philosophy
is inherently fascist and should be rejected on such grounds. For some it is, for others his work
is forever ‘tainted by ailiation,’ and then there are those who acknowledge the signiicance
of Heidegger’s work in the history of western philosophy, and whose work has followed in
Heidegger’s wake.
In the pages that follow I will share a ‘travel journal’ of my philosophical safari through
Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of technology. Rather than presenting my research in the form
of a conventional research paper, I chose for an approach that sets up a parallel play between
the chapter content and a wide range of digressions—quotes and images, metaphors and
representations, humour and critique—with the intent of creating spaces where diference can
emerge.
All entries are necessarily brief, yet intend to touch on important issues of relevance to
contemporary approaches to philosophy of technology—in the context of which Heidegger’s
work continues to be both thought-provoking and inluential.
11
being and time
12 13
resumes teaching at University of Freiburg
Sein und Zeit
professor of philosophy at the University of Freiburg
1950–51
1928–33
SOURCE: Davis, 2010, pp. 260-264
1927
1954 19661947
WO
RLD
WA
R I
Heidegger is born and raised in Messkirch, a rural Catholic town in southwest Germany
Heidegger dies at age 87
studies theology at the University of Freiburg—switches to philosophy in 1911
professor of philosophy at the University of Marburg
works as Edmund Husserl’s assistant —U of Freiburg
professor emeritus at University of Freiburg
guest lecturer, University of Freiburg
Heidegger prohibited from teaching as part of ‘denaziication’ process
rector of the University of Freiburg
member of the NAZI party
Die Frage nach der Technik Der Spiegel interviewDie Kehre
professor of philosophy at the University of Freiburg
WO
RLD
WA
R II
1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980
1909–14
1914–18
1889 19761923–28
1919–23
1951–58
1958–67
1946–491933–34
1940–45
1933–45
1928–33 1923–33Heidegger’s students include Hannah Arendt, Günther Anders, Hans Jonas, Miki Kiyoshi, Karl Löwith, Charles Malik, Herbert Marcuse, Ernst Nolte and Emmanuel Levinas
life line
14 15
The only thing of interest regarding the person of a philosopher is this:
He was born on such and such a date, he worked and he died.
Martin Heidegger—Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie (1924)
It s e e m s i r o n i c t h a t the philosopher who argued the socio-historical
embeddedness of all human existence should trivialize its relevance in relation
to his own philosophical praxis. The fact that Heidegger discards the speciic social, historical
and cultural contexts that shape the work of a philosopher testiies to the speciic historical
time and scholarly traditions in which he himself lived and functioned. And like the profound
contextuality of any human existence, Heidegger’s personal biography and cultural context
shaped and infused what he wrote about and how.
Heidegger was born in Messkirch—a small conservative, Catholic town in the rural south-
west region of Germany—less than 100 kilometers away from the city of Freiburg where he
would later study and teach. From 1903–1909 Heidegger’s path of learning was directed
towards entering the priesthood. He initially attended a Catholic seminary and began a trial
period as Jesuit novitiate in Tisis, Austria. In 1909, Heidegger studied theology and philosophy
at the Theological Seminary of the University of Freiburg. Here he encountered the work of
German phenomenologist Edmund Husserl and German hermeneutic philosopher Wilhelm
Dilthey. His frail health—a “nerve and heart condition”—caused Heidegger to discontinue
his training for the priesthood in February 1911. After a recovery period in his home town
of Messkirch, Heidegger then returned to the University of Freiburg where he subsequently
focused his studies on philosophy.
After earning his habilitation in 1916 with a thesis on the work of medieval philosopher
John Duns Scotus, Heidegger began his work as assistant to Edmund Husserl. During these
years, he also taught (as an unpaid assistant professor) courses in Aristotelianism and Scho-
lastic philosophy. In March 1917, Heidegger married Elfriede Petri, who would be his life-long
companion and with whom he parented two sons—Jörg (born: 1920) and Hermann (born:
1921). Around 1922, his wife Elfriede presented Heidegger with the Todtnauberg mountain
cabin that was to become Heidegger’s favorite place for thinking and writing for the remainder
of his life.
Although he referred to himself as a Christian theologian up until 1921, Heidegger became
increasingly intentional about separating his philosophy and work as a philosopher from the
realm of faith and theology. After converting from Catholicism to Protestantism around the
time of his marriage to Petri, Heidegger eventually professed himself to be atheist as to be
otherwise would be incompatible with his own philosophy. From 1923–1928 Heidegger taught
philosophy at the University of Marburg. The 1927 publication of Heidegger’s ‘magnum opus’
Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) caused his star to rise in the irmament of German philosophical
scholarship. In 1928, Heidegger was invited to take Husserl’s place as professor of philosophy at
the University of Freiburg.
In March of 1933, two months after Hitler’s appointment as Germany’s Chancellor,
Heidegger was elected rector of the University of Freiburg in the wake of a political conlict that
resulted in the dismissal of his predecessor. Heidegger became a member of Hitler’s Nationalso-
zialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) on May 1, 1933, and retained his party membership
until the end of World War II. After a year of actively lobbying for a National Socialist revolu-
tion in general and Hitler’s Nazi party in particular, Heidegger resigned his position as rector
16 17
on April 23, 1934, in the wake of much conlict and resistance from his colleagues and from
Nazi government oicials who were “generally wary of Heidegger’s ‘eccentric, vague, scizoform
[sic], and in part already schizophrenic thinking” (Erich Jänsch as cited in Feldman, 2011, p. 188).
Disillusioned with the movement, Heidegger distanced himself from “the ideological doctrine
of biological racialism” advocated and implemented by Hitler’s Nazi party while emphatically
holding to the “‘social’ and ‘national’ virtues” that, for him, constituted the “inner strength and
greatness of National Socialism” (Heidegger as cited in Feldman, 2011, p. 185).
After World War II, the Allied forces banded together in an initiative to rid German and
Austrian society of all manifestations—people and organizations—of National Socialist
ideology. In December of 1945, Heidegger too was called in for questioning by the Freiburg
denaziication committee and was prohibited from teaching for several years (1945–49), during
which time he sufered a nervous breakdown. After he was deemed to have been a Mitläufer —
someone who ‘followed along’ without actively participating in Nazi atrocities—Heidegger was
able to resume his teaching at the University of Freiburg in 1949. He was subsequently awarded
emeritus status in 1951 and continued publishing his work while also lecturing across Germany
and in several other European countries (predominantly in France). Heidegger did not travel
much outside of Germany. In 1970 he sufered a minor stroke from which he recovered fully.
After this, Heidegger focused his attention towards organizing his manuscripts. In 1976 he died
at his home in Freiburg and was buried two days later in his hometown of Messkirch.
When considering Heidegger’s biography, a few themes seem to emerge. First, Heidegger’s
life and philosophy reveal a ‘disposition’ towards contemplation. Whether it involves his steps
towards entering the priesthood, his love for the life of the mind and philosophy, his beloved
times at the secluded Todtnauberg mountain cabin, or the ainity of his thought with Buddhist
philosophy, all relect a man who valued solitary contemplation and a retreat from the hubbub
of modern life which he viewed as a subversion of authentic being-in-the-world. Second,
Heidegger’s life and work resonate with a romantic connection to his German roots and a
strong sense of nationalism. Whether one considers his commitment to place through living
most of his life within the same 150 kilometer radius, his commitment to a perceived lineage
between ancient Greek philosophy and Germany’s culture and spiritual destiny, or his overt
and emphatic support of National Socialism in the years leading up to World War II, all point to
a man who seemed to wholeheartedly believe in the words of Germany’s national anthem—
Deutschland, Deutschland über alles [tr: Germany ‘above all else’ or ‘over everything’]. Bambach
(2010) writes:
Heidegger genuinely put his faith in the possibilities aforded by the National Socialist
revolution, which he viewed as only the precursor and precondition for a second onto-
logical revolution that would bring the German Volk [People] to its proper historical
mission as the saving force in the history of the West. (p. 104, emphasis added)
It is Heidegger’s ainity and ailiation with fascism in general and Hitler’s National Socialism
in particular that leads me to the troubling ‘elephant in the room’ when engaging with any of
Heidegger’s thought in relation to the question of being and the question concerning tech-
nology.
19
the elephant in the room
21
s a political ideology whose fortunes depend extensively upon the degree
to which a contemporary society is experienced as being in a state of
profound crisis, the meteoric rise of fascism during the collapse of
the Weimar Republic after 1929 becomes easier to comprehend. Yet
despite the rapid increase in trans-class support for Nazism as the
Depression struck home, it is of essential importance to note that
this was not the only strand of fascism prevalent in Germany at
the time. A disparate assortment of intellectuals grouped by Armin Mohler under
the title ‘Conservative Revolutionaries’ (hereafter CR) due to their championing
of traditional (and decidedly anti-Enlightenment) culture and longing for an
extensive spiritual renewal in Germany– also embraced the same Weltanschauung
as National Socialism. Despite their highly diverse theories of the origins behind
Germany’s infirmity, these figures were connected by their distaste for Nazism’s
use of political coercion to rehabilitate Germany. They also eschewed the NSDAP’s
institutionalised violence and ‘vulgar’ biological determinism in favour of
persuasion through the force of cultural ideas, which they felt alone could reclaim
Germanic hegemony in Europe. Furthermore, these bourgeois radicals generally
resisted the populist shift of National Socialism following its political reorientation,
namely toward contesting elections after 1925. That the CR essentially felt Nazism
to be gallant in theory but errant in practice can be summarised in Mohler’s
retrospective description of these thinkers as ‘the Trotskyites of the German
Revolution’. This suggests that the CR’s more enlightened course would have
avoided the travesty of Hitlerism, while simultaneously managing to relativise the
uniqueness of Nazi crimes by equating it to Stalinism.
Against this backdrop of diverse and often isolated fascist intellectuals, proffering
vague philosophical solutions to the Socio-economic travails of Post-Imperial
Germany, the ‘Heidegger case’ loses much of its singularity.
(Feldman, 2010, p. 176)
“How is it that a philosopher who has been called by many
the greatest thinker of the twentieth century was in fact a Nazi?”
(Steiner, 2000)
He i d e g g e r ’s G e r m a n y wa s a n a t i o n i n c r i s i s , a country in desperate need
of a ‘saviour.’ The fall of the German Empire following World War I (1914-1918)
led to the formation of the Weimarer Republik, a parliamentary representative democracy.
These post-war years (1919–1923) were marked by social and political turmoil and by a
severe economic crisis connected to Germany’s inability to meet the required reparation
payments demanded by the ‘war guilt clauses’ as stipulated in the Treaty of Versailles.
An allegiance between Germany and American inancial institutions ofered a temporary respite
during the Goldene Zwanziger [Golden Twenties] in which Germany experienced a brief cultural
renaissance (1924–1929). Because of its dependence on American money, Germany was one
of the hardest hit nations in the wake of the 1929 Wall Street Crash. The deeply felt economic
distress and political unrest that followed in its wake generated momentum for Hitler’s National
Socialist party to rise to power.
Hitler described Nazism as a movement that brought together the “national resolve” from
the “bourgeois tradition,” and a “living, creative Socialism” from the “materialism of the Marxist
dogma” (Hitler, Domarus, & Romane, 2007, p. 173). Nazi propaganda sought to inspire people to
come together in a common purpose, to stand as one in the face of adversity, to embrace the
innate greatness of the German people, and to reclaim its place on the global stage. A sense of
belonging to the German Volk and a strong romanticism towards the Deutsche Heimat [home,
homeland] featured prominently in many Nazi propaganda materials (e.g., Leni Riefenstahl’s
well-known ilm Triumph of the Will). In spite of a year in which the Nazi party failed to win
23
a convincing majority, Adolf Hitler was eventually appointed Reich Chancellor in January of
1933—the year that would be the most controversial year of Heidegger’s life and career.
Heidegger was elected rector of the University of Freiburg on April 21, 1933. Feldman (2011)
points out that “Heidegger was at the centre of intrigues forcing the removal of the previous
rector, an ‘avowed democrat’ named von Mollendorf, after less than a fortnight in oice” (p.
184). Although Heidegger was already identiied as “spokesman” for the Nazi Party in an internal
Party report by April 9, 1933 (p. 184), he oicially joined Hitler’s NSDAP a few weeks later—on
May 1, 1933. On May 27, 1933, Heidegger delivered his controversial and politically charged
rectorial address—The Self-Assertion of the German University—at the University of Freiburg. The
opening lines of his speech express well how Heidegger viewed his position as rector as one of
“spiritual leadership:”
The assumption of the rectorate is the commitment to the spiritual leadership of this
institution of higher learning. The following of teachers and students only awakens
and strengthens through a true and common rootedness in the essence of the German
university. This essence, however, only gains clarity, rank, and power if the leaders, irst
and foremost and at any time, are themselves led—led by the relentlessness of that
spiritual mission that forces the destiny of the German people into the shape of its history.
(Heidegger, 1990, p. 3, emphasis added).
Bambach (2010) points out that Heidegger saw his position as rector as “the unique oppor-
tunity to shape the National Socialist movement in an originary philosophical way, to become
the Führer of the German university, which he [saw] as the catalyst for revolutionary change” (p.
103). Taking position against the rationalism and empiricism of Enlightenment humanism and
modern science, Heidegger (1990) emphatically argued for a return to the Greek understanding
of science as philosophia—as a questioning which unlocks “the highest form of knowing,” which
25
We live in an era of technology. The racing tempo
of our century afects all areas of our life.
There is scarcely an endeavour that can escape
its powerful inluence. Therefore the danger unques-
tionably arises that modern technology will make
men soulless. National Socialism never rejected or
struggled against technology. Rather, one of its main
tasks was to consciously airm it, to ill it inwardly
with soul, to discipline it and to place it in the
service of our people and their cultural level.
National Socialist public statements used to refer to the
steely romanticism of our century. Today this phrase has
attained its full meaning. We live in an age that is both
romantic and steellike…. National Socialism understood how
to take the soulless framework of technology and ill it with the
rhythm and hot impulses of our time.
E xce r p t f r o m a s p e e c h b y J o s e p h G o e b b e l s — p r o p a g a n d a
m i n i s t e r f o r Ad o l f H i t l e r ’s r e g i m e — a t t h e o p e n i n g o f t h e B e r l i n
A u t o S h o w, Fe b r ua r y 1 7 , 1 9 3 9
The German farmer stands in between two great
dangers today: the one danger is the American economic
system—Big Capitalism! ... It enslaves man under the
slogans of progress, technology, rationalization, standard-
ization, etc. ... The other danger is the Marxist system of
Bolshevism. It knows only the State economy ... it brings
the rule of the tractor, it nationalizes the land and creates
mammoth factory-farms.
E xce r p t f r o m a N a z i e l e c t i o n ca m p a i g n p o s t e r
The German people [...] works at its fate by
opening its history to all the overwhelming
world-shaping powers of human existence and
by continually ighting for its spiritual world anew. Thus
exposed to the most extreme questionableness of its own
existence, this people wills to be a spiritual people. It demands
of itself and for itself that its leaders and guardians possess the
strictest clarity of the highest, broadest, and richest knowledge.
“ T h e s e l f - a s s e r t i o n o f t h e G e r m a n U n i v e r s i t y ” ( 1 9 3 3 )
M a r t i n H e i d e g g e r
27
“unfolds its most authentic strength to unlock the essential in all things” and “forces our vision
to focus, with the utmost simplicity, on the inevitable” (p. 3). Bambach (2010) writes:
In this pro-vocative call to his fellow Germans to heed their vocation as the only Volk
capable of recovering the originary power of the irst Greek beginning, Heidegger
clearly emphasizes the necessity of submission, sacriice and self-renunciation, even
as he interprets all of this as a necessary part of wilful self-assertion. […] And it is this
“massive voluntarism” (as Derrida terms it) that has emerged as one of the deining
characteristics of Heidegger’s early commitment to National Socialism in the name of
the “Volk”, “spirit (Geist)” and “will”: three terms whose meaning will profoundly change
as Heidegger becomes ever more disenchanted with “oicial” National Socialism
(Derrida 1989:37; Davis 2007:65-99). (p. 107)
In his 1966 interview with Der Spiegel—a German national news weekly—Heidegger
commented that it became obvious to him by the end of 1933 that he would be unable to “carry
through the pending renewal of the University against either the resistance of the academic
community or [the opposition of ] the Party (Sheehan, 1981, p. 52). He resigned from the
rectorate on April 23, 1934. Although Heidegger’s active involvement with Hitler’s Nazi party
could be viewed as short-lived—an ailiation that he is reported to have called “the greatest
stupidity of my life” (p. 110)—his commitment to what he in 1935 calls “the inner truth and
greatness of this movement [National Socialism]” (Bambach, 2010, p. 109) appears to extend
beyond the historical bounds of WW II and Nazi party politics.
Feldman (2005, p. 176) argues that Heidegger can be considered as “a case study in the
attraction that many intellectuals experienced (and some continue to experience) regarding
the collective myth of sociocultural decline and renewal, arguably constituting the ‘ineliminable
29
D E R S P I E G E L | D A T U M : 3 1 . M A I 1 9 7 6 B E T R . : H E I D E G G E R
SPIEGEL To summarize then: In 1933, as an unpolitical person in the strict sense, if not in
the broad sense, you became involved...
HEIDEGGER: ...by way of the University...
SPIEGEL: Yes, by way of and through the University you became involved with the politics
of this supposedly new era. After about a year you relinquished the function
you had taken over. But in 1935, in a course that in 1953 was published as
Introduction to Metaphysics, you said: “What today”—this was, therefore,
1935— “is bandied about as the philosophy of National Socialism but has
absolutely nothing to do with the inner truth and greatness of this movement
(namely, with the encounter between technicity on the planetary level and
modern man) casts its net in these troubled waters of ‘values’ and ‘totalities’.”
Did you add those parenthesized words for the first time in 1953, i.e., at the time
of the publication, in order to explain to the reader of 1953, so to speak, in what
way you saw the “inner truth and greatness of this movement” (i.e., of National
Socialism) in 1935—or did you have this explanatory parenthesis already there
in 1935?
HEIDEGGER: The parenthesis stood in my [original] manuscript and corresponded precisely
to my conception of technicity at that time, and not yet to the later explication
of the essence of technicity as “pos-ure” (Ge-Stell). The reason I did not read
the phrase publicly was that I was convinced of the proper understanding
of my listeners, although stupid people, informers and spies understood it
differently—and also wanted to.
SPIEGEL Surely you would include here the communist movement?
HEIDEGGER: Yes, unquestionably—insofar as that, too is a form of planetary technicity.
SPIEGEL Americanism also?
HEIDEGGER: Yes, I would say so. Meantime, the last 30 years have made it clearer that the
planet-wide movement of modern technicity is a power whose magnitude in
determining [our] history can hardly be overestimated. For me today it is a
decisive question as to how any political system—and which one—can be
adapted to an epoch of technicity. I know of no answer to this question. I am not
convinced that it is democracy.
core’ of fascism.” Citing the work of Roger Griin, Feldman identiies an “emerging consensus
within ‘fascist studies’” that proposes a deinition of ‘generic fascism’ centering on the notion of
some kind of core myth:
While extremely heterogeneous in the speciic ideology of its many permutations,
in its social support, in the form of organisation it adopts as an anti-systemic move-
ment, and in the type of political system, regime, or homeland it aims to create, generic
fascism draws its internal cohesion and afective driving force from a core myth that
a period of perceived decadence and degeneracy is imminently or eventually to give
way to one of rebirth and rejuvenation in a post-liberal new order. (p. 176)
Within this deinition of fascism, Heidegger’s various ‘essentialisms’—his advocacy for a
“poetic-ontological interpretation of an apolitical Volksreligion” (Bambach, 2010, p. 112), his
“German exceptionalism” (p. 113), his concern with authenticity in relation to the question of
being, his transcendentalist use of language, his critique of modern science and technology and
his lack of faith in democracy—do constitute a troubling basis upon which those who do not
accept their “spiritual mission” are at risk of being labeled as “stupid people, informers and spies”
and could be disregarded —or discarded—accordingly.
Although I agree that Heidegger’s work can be understood as embodying fascist tendencies,
I understand and value his contribution in the wider context of the history of western thought
as an important catalyst for that which followed—a critical movement towards discourses of
diference through the critical questioning and deconstruction of metanarratives of any kind
and the abuses of power that frequently follow in their wake.
31
impact factor
33
It i s w e l l b e y o n d t h e s co p e o f t h i s p r o j e c t to present an extensive analysis of
Heidegger’s signiicance in relation to contemporary philosophical discourse in general
and the philosophy of technology in particular. However, a brief relection on several core ideas
will highlight how Heidegger’s thought bridges a transition from philosophical traditions that
seek out transcendental essences and the discourses of diference that emerged in Heidegger’s
wake.
Davis (2010) points out that Heidegger “radically rethought concepts as time, space,
the self (Dasein), interpersonal relations, things, the world, language, truth, art, tech-
nology and the divine” (p. 12). He identiies four key concepts that shape Heidegger’s philo-
sophical enframing of the world. First, Heidegger argued that “being itself essentially occurs
temporally and historically,” that “human existence is not simply immersed in the present, but also
lives towards the future and back towards the past” (p. 7). Second, in his focus on identifying the
conditions of possibility for the being of being [das Sein des Seiendes]—Heidegger claimed that
“human being—as Dasein [literally ‘being-there’]—is the site of the occurrence of being” (p. 7) and
that being should be thought of as a relational phenomenon: being is being-in-a-world. Third,
Heidegger considered the truth of being in terms of revealing and concealing. Therefore, “being
never reveals (or ‘de-conceals’, entbirgt) itself completely” (p. 9). Reality as it presents itself to us
is but one unfolding of all that is and could be. This claim is central to Heidegger’s philosophy of
technology as a mode of world disclosure—reality presents itself as a selective, instrumentalized
revealing of the world as resource for human use and control. Finally, Heidegger understood
Way back when—the world
it seemed so simple then,
in black and white
as we would reason wrong from right
safe and secure we would hang on to the answers.
But now, today— older and wiser they say
knowing less than yesterday.
Here we are—stuck in the middle
solving the riddle of life.
helma sawatzky
1996
35
language as “the house of being,” as providing “the parameters of a realm wherein humans can
meaningfully dwell” (p. 10). These four core ideas capture a revolution in the western thinking
of being. They move away from any ‘on the outside looking in’ kind of understanding of human
consciousness and situate human beings slap-bang in the middle of a material and historical
world in which people and things are active participants in a process of world making.
Heidegger’s particular concern with language reveals itself throughout his writings, in
which “his aim is to recover access to ‘those original “wellsprings” out of which the traditional
categories and concepts were in part genuinely drawn’” (p. 11). Heidegger’s hermeneutic
phenomenology frequently expresses itself in unusual ways through (re)appropriating or
deconstructing words in order to get at the various ‘doings’ of language. This intentional ‘making
strange’ of language is an important part of the reason why, on the one hand, many people
ind Heidegger’s work so diicult to access, and, on the other hand, meaning is un/folded in
diferent ways, creating opportunities for seeing things diferently.
Heidegger’s thought has greatly inluenced many domains within Western philosophy—
phenomenology (e.g., the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre), hermeneutics
(e.g., Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur), critical theory (e.g., Herbert Marcuse), psycho-
analysis (e.g., Jacques Lacan), theology and Derridian deconstruction—to name but a few. By
emphasizing the historical and profoundly hermeneutic dimensions of being-in-the-world,
Heidegger’s thought cleared the way for critically engaging the life world as socio-historical
context in terms of discourse—how stories of class, race or gender unfold a world in particular
ways. It fostered a critical engagement with culture and communications in terms of consid-
ering which stories are told about what by who, how and why, and who beneits.
37
the being of beings
39
he forgetting of being, according to Heidegger, began with
Plato. While for the Presocratics ‘being’ still meant ‘emerging out
of concealment into unconcealment,’ for Plato it began to mean
‘essence.’ ‘Being’ meant embodying an idea, which forms the
‘essence’ of the entity. In the Middle Ages the forgetting of being
took a new path. After Greek and Christian thought intersected,
‘being’ began to mean ‘shaped by God.’ ‘Coming to be’ was then
no longer conceived as an emerging out of unconcealment, but as an act of creation
carried out by God—‘being’ was understood as the efect of a cause rather than as
the ‘happening’ of the transition from concealment into unconcealment. God as the
ground of all beings came to be understood as a being Himself—a fatal confusion,
according to Heidegger, even when God is conceived as the highest being, the ens
summon.
At the beginning of modern philosophy Rene Descartes moved further still,
regarding this appeal to an extra-mundane ground as superluous: ‘being’ for him
meant to be an object for a subject, rex extensa as opposed to res cogitans. The
capstone of the forgetting of being, as far as philosophy goes, was set into place
by Friedrich Nietzsche, in whose work ‘being’ merely means ‘being usable for the
Will to Power.’ This last meaning of being, according to Heidegger, inds its material
realization in modern technology. Being comes to mean: available for production
and manipulation, raw material, ‘standing reserve.’
(Verbeek, 2005, p. 51-52)
He i d e g g e r ’s a p p r o a c h t o p h e n o m e n o l o g y is frequently described as existential
and hermeneutic. Both these terms identify key dimensions in which Heidegger’s
thought critically distances itself from the transcendental phenomenology of his long-term
mentor and colleague Edmund Husserl. Husserl’s phenomenology—the study of ‘phenomena’
or the appearance of things from a irst person point of view—was based on the possibility of a
transcendental point-of-view on the part of the phenomenologist in order to get at the essence
of the phenomenon under consideration:
In order to uncover this sphere of the transcendental subjectivity at all, the philoso-
pher, beginning his meditation with a natural attitude, must undertake that change
in attitude which Husserl calls phenomenological epochē or transcendental phenom-
enological reduction. […] [W]hat is grasped in the epochē is the pure life of conscious-
ness in which and through which the whole objective world exists for me, by virtue of
the fact that I experience it, perceive it, remember it, etc. (Schuetz, 1967, p. 455)
Heidegger fundamentally disagreed with Husserl and argued that “historically situated
existence in its facticity is thoroughly hermeneutical,” which, as Kisiel (2010) points out, stands
in stark opposition to “any sort of theoretical I or transcendental ego abstracted in Cartesian
fashion from its vital context, thereby denuded of its world, dehistoricized and devitalized”
(p. 19, emphasis added). Heidegger argued that philosophical practice was wrong to assume
consciousness—a thinking ‘I,’ the Cartesian ego—as its ground zero. He emphasized the need to
irst consider the conditions of possibility for the formation of what we refer to as a ‘conscious-
41
ness’ that is able to bring into language its perceptions and experiences. Heidegger called this
“pre-theoretical primal domain of being” Da-sein [tr: Being-there] (p. 19). In Being and Time,
Heidegger elaborates the existential facticity and ‘thrown-ness’ [Geworfenheit] of Dasein, which
Kisiel (2010) captures well:
The sense of thrownness, colloquially put, is the potentially stunning realization that
I ind myself thrown into a world I did not make and into a life I did not ask for. […] as
Heidegger puts it, ‘the being of Dasein breaks forth as the naked [and pure fact] ‘that
it is and has to be.’ (p. 25)
According to Heidegger, Dasein does not start as a transcendental consciousness that
relects on a world that exists outside of itself. Rather, our being takes shape as ‘being-in-the-
world‘ through our inter-action with a material and historical ‘world’ that preceded us and
within which we ind meaning. Kenny (2007) eloquently describes the relational and inter-
active dimensions of Dasein:
The primitive element of Dasein is ‘being-in-the-world’, and thinking is only one way
of engaging with the world: acting upon it and reacting to it are at least as important
elements. Dasein is prior to the distinction between thinking and willing or theory and
practice. Dasein is caring about (besorgen). Dasein is not a res cogitans, but a res curans:
not a thinking thing, but a caring thing. Only if I have some care about, or interest in,
the world will I go on to ask questions about it and give answers to those questions in
the form of knowledge-claims. (p. 84)
Dasein as ‘care’ unfolds as a relational, meaningful structure that is profoundly temporal: It
unfolds in the here/now through “being-toward” and “being-with” others in a “world of taking
care of things,” a world that is shared. It exists in an interpretive and meaningful relation to
43
a lived past—the realm of moods, memories, culture, history— and in its temporal trajec-
tory as “being-towards-death,” Dasein reaches in “anticipatory resoluteness” towards a future.
(Heidegger, 2010, pp. 125-126; 236; 305).
Heidegger’s concept of reality and our relation to it is crucial in understanding his philos-
ophy of technology. For Heidegger, reality exists as a world of matter and living things. However,
our knowing of the world will always constitute a selective, historically situated perspective of
what is and how it takes on meaning. Verbeek (2005) explains how our perception of our world
unfolds as a hermeneutic relation to what is:
Reality is not something absolute that human beings can ever know once and for all;
it is relative in the most literal sense of the word—it exists only in relations, Reality is in
itself inaccessible for human beings. As soon as we perceive or try to understand it, it is
not ‘reality in itself’ anymore, but ‘reality for us.’ (p. 50)
Heidegger understands the relation of human Dasein to the real in terms of concealing and
revealing (or un-concealment). At any given time, our relation to Dasein constitutes a ‘selective
unfolding’ that is, as Verbeek (2005) points out, “to a great extent shaped by ‘the way of uncon-
cealment’ that holds sway in a particular epoch” (p. 50), and that is “never ixed for all time, but
changes throughout history” (p. 51). For Heidegger, modern technology constitutes a particular
way of revealing reality and our relationship to it—one in which the world appears to presents
itself as a standing reserve for human control and consumption.
45
nothing technological
49
The essence of technology
is by no means anything technological.
Thus we shall never experience
our relationship to the essence of technology
so long as we merely conceive
and push forward the technological,
put up with it, or evade it.
Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology,
whether we passionately affirm or deny it.
But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way
when we regard it as something neutral;
for this conception of it, to which today
we particularly like to do homage,
makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology.
Martin Heidegger
The question concerning technology (1954)
Thus when man, investigating, observing, ensnares 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, 1977, p. 19)
Wh e n H e i d e g g e r a r g u e s t h a t the essence of technology is “nothing
technological,” he takes a similar approach as he does in his analysis of human
Dasein. Rather than focusing on speciic technological artifacts, Heidegger questions
their conditions of possibility: what kind of human-world relation—or historically shaped
understanding of being— makes it possible for such devices to come into existence in the irst
place?
In his 1954 essay The question concerning technology, Heidegger elaborates his analysis
of what he sees as the historical shifts in the articulations of being that made it possible for
modern technologies to come into existence. Through what can be considered as his ‘trademark
approach’—a series of in-depth etymological and philosophical analyses that draw on both
Greek and German vocabulary and concepts—Heidegger describes how the instrumentaliza-
tion of human making moved from wholistic praxis to machine-driven production. He makes
this argument by contrasting the ancient Greek understanding of technē (craft) and poiēsis
(creation or poetic revealing) to the monodimensional instrumentality that characterizes indus-
trial modes of production. Whereas the realm of craft enfolds technical, aesthetic and ethical
dimensions and the act of creation takes shape as a kind of respectful collaboration between
51
the craftsman and his materials, modern technologies, Heidegger(1977) argues, enact a human-
world relation that “challenges forth:”
The revealing that rules throughout modern technology has the character of a
setting-upon, in the sense of a challenging-forth. That challenging happens in that
the energy concealed in nature is unlocked, what is unlocked is transformed, what
is transformed is stored up, what is stored up is, in turn, distributed, and what is
distributed is switched about ever anew. Unlocking, transforming, storing, distrib-
uting, and switching about are ways of revealing. But the revealing never simply
comes to an end. Neither does it run of into the indeterminate. The revealing
reveals to itself its own manifoldly interlocking paths, through regulating their
course. This regulating itself is, for its part, everywhere secured. Regulating and
securing even become the chief characteristics of the challenging revealing.
(p. 16)
This particular mode of being that “sets upon” us, “challenges [us] forth, to reveal the real, in
the mode of ordering, as standing reserve” (p. 20), Heidegger refers to as Ge-stell or Enframing.
With the word Ge-stell, Heidegger points to an assemblage of words within the German
language that all share the root concept stellen [tr: to place, to set], which, for Heidegger, capture
the essence of modern technology:
Stellen embraces the meanings of a whole family of verbs: bestellen (to order, command;
to set in order), vorstellen (to represent), sicherstellen (to secure), nachstellen (to
entrap), verstellen (to block or disguise), herstellen (to produce, to set here), darstellen
(to present or exhibit), and so on. In these verbs the various nuances within stellen are
reinforced and made speciic. All these meanings are gathered together in Heidegger’s
53
unique use of the word that is pivotal for him, Gestell (Enframing). (Heidegger, 1977, p.
15, footnote)
Heidegger’s view of technology does not look at technological artifacts through a lens of
either instrumentalism—technology is a neutral tool—or determinism—technology does things
to us whether we want those to happen or not—but rather considers an ontological ground that
makes it possible (and logical) for such technologies to develop. This ontological argument is
central to Heidegger’s critique of Enlightenment humanism and modern science. Heidegger
argues that the objectiication of nature and a conception of human consciousness as an entity
external to it laid the groundwork for a mode of being in which humans understand their being-
in-the-world in terms of a subject/object relationship—as being in control of a world in which
anything can be demystiied and controlled through rational analysis and empirical science,
and in which everything is there for human use and control. Heidegger argued that Friedrich
Nietzsche’s notion of the Will to Power signiied a coming to fruition of this instrumentalized
‘way of unconcealment’ that dominates modernity. Hence, the essence of technology is nothing
technological, but rather an Enframing, a Gestalt—a igure or coniguration—“in which the real
reveals itself as standing reserve” (p. 23).
Heidegger(1977) argues that technology is a monodimensional unfolding of the real that
“banishes man into that kind of revealing which is an ordering” and that “drives out every other
possibility of revealing” (p. 27). Within the challenging forth and “destining” of the Ge-stell,
humans lose their connection to more authentic ways of being, to the point that they are
subsumed by it and are “nothing but the orderer of the standing reserve […] to the point where
[they themselves] will have to be taken as standing-reserve” (p.26-27):
55
I am amaximizing machine
In truth, however, precisely nowhere does man today any longer encounter himself, i.e., his
essence. Man stands so decisively in attendance on the challenging-forth of Enframing
that he does not apprehend 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, from out
of his essence, in the realm of an exhortation or address, and thus can never encounter
only himself. (p. 27)
Understanding technology as Enframing presents a signiicant conundrum. If Technology
indeed constitutes our world—a particular unfolding of the real in which human beings can
no longer imagine being otherwise—and if this particular mode of being is inauthentic and
harmful, to the world then how can we escape this ‘matrix’ and exist in a free relation to tech-
nology? Heidegger(1977) turns to realm of art as his deus ex machina (pun intended):
Such a realm is art. But certainly only if relection on art, for its part, does not shut its
eyes to the constellation of truth after which we are questioning. Thus questioning,
we bear witness to the crisis that in our sheer preoccupation with technology we do
not yet experience the coming to presence of technology, that in our sheer aesthetic-
mindedness we no longer guard and preserve the coming to presence of art. Yet the
more questioningly we ponder the essence of technology, the more mysterious the
essence of art becomes. The closer we come to the danger, the more brightly do the
ways into the saving power begin to shine and the more questioning we become. For
questioning is the piety of thought. (p. 35)
Ironically, Heidegger instrumentalizes art to do a particular job. Unlike more common
understandings of what art might be for, Heidegger once again turns to the Greeks to enlighten
us about the true essence of art. He argues that art is not primarily about aesthetic experience,
57
but that its purpose is to mediate a “poetic revealing” of truth and essence, of authentic Dasein
(p. 35). Unfortunately, most of the artistic production in Heidegger’s lifetime—whether in litera-
ture or the visual arts—fell hopelessly short of this spiritual destiny. Heidegger saw fewer and
fewer possibilities for the poetic revealing in which he had placed his hope for change.
ONLY A GOD C AN SAVE US
In the Spiegel interview of 1966 (which was, on Heidegger’s request, published posthu-
mously in May of 1976) Heidegger concluded that contemporary literature is “largely destruc-
tive” (Sheehan, 1981, p. 57), that he did “not see anything about modern art that points out
a way [for us]” (p. 64), that “the role of philosophy in the past has been taken over today by
the sciences,” and that “cybernetics” is the new ‘philosophy’ (p. 59). His conclusion that neither
philosophy nor individual action can turn this epochal tide leads to the rather pessimistic
exhortation that “only a god can save us.” Heidegger states:
If I may answer briely, and perhaps clumsily, but after long relection: philosophy will
be unable to efect any immediate change in the current state of the world. This is true
not only of philosophy but of all purely human relection and endeavor. Only a god
can save us. The only possibility available to us is that by thinking and poetizing we
prepare a readiness for the appearance of a god or for the absence of a god in [our]
decline, insofar as in view of the absent god we are in a state of decline. (p. 57)
Because Heidegger brought his analyses of tools and later technology to an onto-
logical conclusion, it became virtually impossible to escape his own path of thinking.
His conception of technology as Enframing is so all-encompassing, that he could no longer
see the trees for the forest. This kind of metanarrative confounds the possibility of change in
the here/now as the only true change involves a transformation of an epochal mode of being
59
of entire civilizations. In response to Heidegger’s comments that any real, essential change
may take 300 years to unfold, the Spiegel interviewer expressed his profound frustration —and
mine—with this rather disengaged and passive ‘bottom line’:
We understand very well. However, since we do not live 300 years hence but here and
now, silence is denied us. The rest of us—politicians, halfpoliticians, citizens, journal-
ists, etc.—must constantly make decisions. We must adapt ourselves to the system
in which we live, must seek to change it, must scout out the narrow openings that
may lead to reform, and the still narrower openings that may lead to revolution. We
expect help from philosophers, even if only indirect help—help in roundabout ways.
And now we hear only: I cannot help you. (p. 60).
These words touch on a major point of critique that was frequently directed at Heidegger’s
‘techno-ontology’ in the decades following the 1954 publication of The question concerning
technology—the absence of agency in face of the Ge-stell.
MORPHEUS: Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know
something. What you know, you can’t explain. But you feel it.
You felt it your entire life. That there’s something wrong with the
world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there. Like a splinter in
your mind - driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought
you to me. Do you know what I’m talking about?
NEO: The Matrix.
MORPHEUS: Do you want to know what it is?
NEO: Yes.
MORPHEUS: The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this
very room. You can see it when you look out your window or
when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to
work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is
the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from
the truth.
NEO: What truth?
MORPHEUS: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into
bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A
prison for your mind.
65
the question of agency
67
Loo
kin
g in
to t
he
pai
nti
ng
(de
tail)
(2
00
0) —
Teu
n H
ock
s
“Resistance is useless.”
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
He i d e g g e r ’s a n a l y s i s o f t e c h n o l o g y as a historical mode of world disclosure
identiies many important points of consideration in relation to our being-in-the-
world. However, his conclusions at the end of his path through thinking appear to lead us down
a dead-end road in which all there is left for us to do is to wait ‘for a god to save us.’ This apparent
absence of agency—personal, cultural, political—is a core concern in a range of critical analyses
of Heidegger’s philosophy of technology. I will conclude my ‘philosophical safari’ with a
discussion of several important points of critique on Heidegger’s understanding of technology
as Enframing. The question of agency—the capacity for human freedom of action—and the
need for approaches that make room for diference and multiplicity will guide the way on this
last leg of my journey.
Dutch philosopher of technology Peter-Paul Verbeek(2005) ofers a thorough and fair anal-
ysis of Heidegger’s path through thinking as it develops over time, analyzing both its strengths
and ambiguities. Verbeek identiies three core concerns that frequently surface in critiques of
Heidegger’s philosophy of technology, and emphasizes that these criticisms are most often
directed at the conclusions of Heidegger’s analysis rather than at the analysis itself:
His work is said to be monolithic because he allows no room in his approach for an
alternative technological practice; abstract because he single-mindedly focuses on
technological thinking rather than on concrete technologies, and nostalgic because
69
he often contrasts the present unfavorably with the exalted past. (Verbeek, 2005, p.
60, emphasis added)
These three points of critique efectively capture the problematic ‘end game’ of Heidegger’s
‘techno-ontology.’ Because the Gestell functions as an epochal matrix for being, it forever eludes
our grasp. Because technology is theorized as the ontological ground for our ‘modern’ lives, it
seems to belong to a diferent order—one that cannot be touched by the actions of one or
more people in the here and now. Because Heidegger’s alternatives to this undesirable state of
afairs seem to only exist in the context of another epoch of being, we are ‘essentially hooped’
and left to mourn the loss of what may not be recovered in our lifetime.
CONTEX TUALIT Y
Before engaging in greater depth with these speciic points of critique, it is important to
emphasize that contemporary ideas of what philosophy is are very diferent from the context in
which Heidegger’s scholarship took shape. His work emerged in the context of a “transcenden-
talist” tradition (Verbeek, 2005, p. 71), an understanding of philosophy as “a universal style of
thinking,” engaging with what were understood to be “atemporal” concepts (Ihde, 2010, p. 14).
Throughout Heidegger’s oeuvre it seems as if he has one leg in the camp of immutable essences
and the other in the camp of historical, contextual and ever-changing praxis. His life-long fasci-
nation with the question of being (rather than that of individual beings) seems to have nudged
him increasingly towards a more metaphysical inale, in spite of his early phenomenological
commitment to anchor his philosophy in “the things themselves.” Heidegger’s philosophy of
technology, like any other is, as Ihde (2010) puts it, a “fallibilist, contingent, and socially histor-
ical” practice (p. 14).
1900 Modern escalator........................................................................................... Charles Seeberger1905 Theory of Relativity ............................................................................................. Albert Einstein1906 Electronic amplifying tube .................................................................................... Lee Deforest1907 Invention of colour photography ................................................................ Lumière brothers1910 First talking motion picture ............................................................................... Thomas Edison1921 Lie detector ............................................................................................................... John Larson1923 Television .......................................................................................... Vladimir Kosma Zworykin1926 Liquid fueled rockets ................................................................................... Robert H. Goddard1931 Electron microscope ...................................................................... Max Knott and Ernst Ruska1932 Polaroid photography ............................................................................... Edwin Herbert Land1933 FM radio ............................................................................................. Edwin Howard Armstrong1934 Monopoly game ...................................................................................................Charles Darrow1936 Colt revolver .............................................................................................................. Samuel Colt1937 Photocopier ..................................................................................................... Chester F. Carlson1938 Ballpoint pen .............................................................................................................. Ladislo Biro1939 First successful helicopter ..................................................................................... Igor Sikorsky1940 Color television ................................................................................................... Peter Goldmark1941 First software controlled computer ......................................................................Konrad Zuse1942 First electronic digital computer ..................................... John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry1944 Kidney dialysis machine .......................................................................................... Willem Kolff1945 Atomic bomb ....................................................... Robert Oppenheimer / Manhattan Project1946 Microwave oven .....................................................................................................Percy Spencer1947 Transistor ................................................................................ Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley1950 Credit card ..........................................................................................................Ralph Schneider1951 Video tape recorder ........................................................................................ Charles Ginsburg1952 Hydrogen bomb...................................................................................................... Edward Teller1953 Transistor radio ...............................................................................................Texas Instruments1954 Oral contraceptives ................................................................................................. Frank Colton1957 Fortran computer language .............................................................................. IBM computers1959 Microchip ...................................................................................... Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce1960 Halogen lamp ........................................................................................................ Fredrick Moby1962 Audio cassette ................................................................................................. Phillips Company1965 Compact disk...........................................................................................................James Russell1968 Computer mouse ...........................................................................................Douglas Engelbart1969 Arpanet (first internet) ................................................. Advanced Research Projects Agency1970 Floppy disk ...............................................................................................................Alan Shugart1971 Liquid crystal display (LCD) ..............................................................................James Fergason1972 Word processor ........................................................................................................................ IBM1974 Post-it notes ..................................................................................................................Arthur Fry1976 Laser printer ............................................................................................................................. IBM
71You
do
n’t
un
de
rsta
nd
| Sh
arin
g is
th
e la
w |
The
lan
d o
wn
s it
self
(20
01
) — S
and
ra S
em
chu
k &
Jam
es
Nic
ho
las
Heidegger wrote in the context of the rise of “industrial technology—machinic, gigantic,
mechanical, systemic and complex” (Ihde, 2010, p. 19)—technologies developed for the mass-
processing of raw materials. Even though he may not have subscribed to this idea speciically,
Heidegger wrote at a time when the notion of autonomous technology—of “runaway technology
that exceeds, ‘Frankenstein-like,’ its inventor’s control”(p. 19)—was well-circulated. Another
common notion in relation to modern technology in Heidegger’s time and place was that of the
“’disenchantment’ and ‘desacralization’ of nature (p. 7). These types of sentiments seem to infuse
Heidegger’s take on ‘modern’ technologies such as the hydroelectric power plant. Heidegger
also wrote against the dramatic historical and political realities of immense conlict and war.
His lifetime enfolds three wars—the irst and second World War, and the nuclear threat of the
Cold War era.
It is important to point out that Heidegger wrote as man of some privilege and inluence,
especially in the years before and during WWII. He was also a man who preferred a solitary
existence ‘close to nature’ over the hustle and bustle of modern urban centres. All these life
experiences on some level resonate in his work and give it a distinct historical lavour, in spite of
its abstract and ‘universal’ style.
MONOLITHIC
The monolithic character of the Ge-stell has to do with the fact that Heidegger does not
consider technology on the ontic level—that of individual technological artifacts—but as an
epochal ontology which Ihde (2010) ironically refers to as a “one size its all” approach (p. 114).
Within this ‘matrix-like’ coniguration, individual technological artifacts appear as mere “mani-
festations” of that singular, all-encompassing “form of world-disclosure” (Verbeek, 2005, p. 62).
Ihde(2010) points out that such a “metaphysical—and reductionist—turn determines from the
73
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 look into that
which grants and our trust in it?
Martin Heidegger
The question concerning technology (1954)
beginning the reason all technologies are reduced to the same analysis” (p. 119). The inherent
circularity of technology as Enframing leaves no room for diference and multiplicity in terms of
experience or practice, culture or context. Feenberg(2010) points out that within the Heidegge-
rian Ge-stell it becomes impossible to “discriminate between electricity and atom bombs, agri-
cultural techniques and the Holocaust” (p. 25), as all are mere expressions of a ‘techno-logic’ that
unfolds the material world as standing reserve for human ordering and control. Verbeek (2005)
emphasizes the critical importance of engaging individual technologies on their own terms:
While Heidegger might be right that a speciic, technological way of interpreting
reality (on the ontological level) is required for modern technology to come about,
we should also conclude that the role of technology (on the ontic level) in our culture
cannot be understood in terms of this speciic way of interpreting only. When they are
used, technologies may make it possible for human beings to have a relation with reality
that is much richer than those they have with a manipulable stock of raw materials. (p. 66,
italics added)
Ihde (2010) emphatically concludes that “there is no essence of technology although there
are many ‘technologies’” (p. 119). In order to move beyond Heidegger’s monolithic approach to
technology, it is literally ‘of the essence’ that we are intentional about pluralizing our language
and thereby our ways of thinking—technologies, enframings, orderings, practices, experiences,
relations—it is quite remarkable what a single letter can accomplish in terms of opening up a
world of diferent possibilities. And Heidegger knew this.
75
ECO
LOG
ICA
L IM
PAC
T I:
The
Plig
ht
of
the
Urb
an F
ore
st (
20
06
) — A
lina
Iljas
ova
& H
elm
a Sa
wat
zky
ABSTR AC T
Because Heidegger engages technology only on the ontological level—as ‘Technology’—
any serious analysis of individual technologies is missing. This absence of an engagement with
concrete technological artifacts as they are used in myriad contexts supports the second claim
frequently lodged against Heidegger’s philosophy of technology—that it is abstract.
One wonders what would have happened if Heidegger had engaged individual techno-
logical artifacts with the same sensibility that he brought to his analysis of everyday tools and
equipment in Being and Time. For example, Heidegger’s concept of “ready-at-hand” (Zuhanden-
heit; also translated as ‘handiness’)—“the way of being a tool or piece of equipment has when in
use”—considers the way in which things participate in world disclosure, how things are useful
to human beings, how they refer to what they bring about , and how they “play [ ] a role in ‘the
public world’(Verbeek, 2005, p. 79). Within this frame of thought, technological artifacts can be
considered for the ways in which they unfold human being-in-the-world. Heidegger’s concept
of the “present-at-hand” (Vorhandenheit) is particularly compelling in the context of ‘computer
culture’. Present-at-hand refers to those situations in which a thing that generally goes unno-
ticed is—or becomes—“objectively present,” an experience that occurs when something breaks
down. Just consider how our world grinds to a halt when our computer crashes or when we ind
ourselves ‘of the grid.’
Verbeek (2005) makes some important observations about the increasingly “transcen-
dentalist perspective” in Heidegger’s thought from his early work—e.g., Being and Time
(1927)—to his late work —e.g., The Thing (1950), Building, Dwelling, Thinking (1951) and The
question concerning technology (1954)— a signiicant change in Heidegger’s engagement of
the question of being, a change Heidegger himself referred to as Die Kehre (The Turn). The ‘early’
77
T H E R E D W H E E L B A R R O W
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
william carlos williams
1923
Heidegger explored the question of being in a very down-to-earth way, considering “the things
themselves” as “a way of revealing the world instead of a reduction of our access to it” (p. 80). As
Heidegger increasingly focuses on the history of being, he moves away from analysis anchored
in concrete artifacts towards an understanding of equipment as a revealing of historically situ-
ated “sendings of being.” Verbeek concludes that, in the inal tally, Heidegger ends up overem-
phasizing historicity (p. 82), and argues that his earlier approach ofers a more “fruitful point
of departure for a philosophy of technology that takes artifacts seriously, both as a material
culture in which reality acquires new meanings and as objects that provide human beings with
new means of actualizing their existence” (p. 76). This need to consider individual technological
artifacts in terms of the many diferent ways in which they mediate human being-in-the-world
lies at the heart of various post-phenomenological research initiatives (See also Ihde 1990,
1993, 2008, 2009 and Verbeek, 2005).
NOSTALGIC
The third point of critique brought to bear on Heidegger’s work is that of nostalgia or
romanticism. This important critique inds its origins in the examples Heidegger uses in The
question concerning technology in terms of technology as Enframing or Ge-stell. He compares
and contrasts ‘older’ craft-based technologies such as a windmill to ‘modern’ technologies such
as a hydroelectric plant in order to argue that the latter violates nature whereas the former
works with it :
And yet the revealing that holds sway throughout modern technology does not
unfold into a bringing-forth in the sense of poiēsis. The revealing that rules in modern
technology is a challenging [Herausfordern], which puts to nature the unreasonable
demand that it supply energy that can be extracted and stored as such. But does this
79
Cu
t w
ith
th
e k
itch
en
kn
ife
(1
91
9) —
Han
nah
Ho
ch
not hold true for the old windmill as well? No. Its sails do indeed turn in the wind; they
are left entirely to the wind’s blowing. But the windmill does not unlock energy from
the air currents in order to store it. (Heidegger, 1977, p. 14)
Throughout this essay, Heidegger argues that technologies belonging to the domain of
pre-industrial craft-based praxis constitute more authentic forms of human Dasein, whereas
modern technologies are monodimensional in essence. Verbeek (2005) makes an important
observation in noting that “Heidegger measures tradition and modernity with diferent scales”
(p. 75), one historical and the other ahistorical:
When analyzing traditional artifacts he uses an ahistorical perspective, while he
approaches modern technologies using a historical perspective. […] The way in which
a technological object reveals reality is, therefore, in the irst instance [the hydroelec-
tric plant] historically sent by being, while in the second instance [the old waterwheel
in the Rhine] it is represented as a fundamental event that can be veiled by a purely
technological way of thinking (p. 72)
Ihde argues that there is “no diference in kind, only a diference in degree” between
the waterwheel and the hydroelectric plant as both ‘challenge forth’ the Rhine to release its
hydraulic pressure (Ihde as cited in Verbeek, 2005, p. 68, emphasis added). Modern technolo-
gies introduce the variable of scale, which frequently involve an “ampliication of power that
make [its impacts] global rather than regional (Ihde, 2010, p. 84). Ihde (2010) further contends
that Heidegger’s analyses are “historically thin with respect to both the histories of science and
technology,” that his “deep romanticism […] blinds him to the variety of aspects of technolo-
gies that more phenomenologically could have been better discerned,” and that his “selective
revealing obscures a much darker concealing with respect to his valorized technologies” (p. 27).
81
e ve r y t o o l i s a we a p o n
— i f yo u h o l d i t r i g h t .
ani difranco
1993
I f I h a d a h a m m e r
I ’d h a m m e r i n t h e m o r n i n g
I ’d h a m m e r i n t h e e ve n i n g
A l l o ve r t h i s l a n d
I ’d h a m m e r o u t d a n g e r
I ’d h a m m e r o u t a wa r n i n g
I ’d h a m m e r o u t l o ve
b e t we e n my b r o t h e r s a n d my s i s t e r s
A l l o ve r t h i s l a n d
lee hays & pete seeger
1958
In this respect, Heidegger’s philosophy of technology does exactly that which he attributes to
the Ge-stell—that of presenting a reductive, monodimensional enframing of human Dasein by
way of technologies.
POLITICS OF THE AR TIFAC T
Aside from the charges that Heidegger’s philosophy of technology is abstract, monolithic
and nostalgic, another common issue to arise is the seeming absence of a concrete political
dimension to Heidegger’s thought. Throughout the essay on technology, much is expressed
in verbs that refer to various ‘cosmic actions’—e.g., revealing, concealing, challenging forth,
enframing. However, the doer of all these ‘doings’ is never a concrete ‘somebody somewhere,’
but always a deferred, abstract entity over which human beings appear to have little or no
control. Heidegger also fails to mention the fact that things play important parts in systems of
power, that things enable some human beings to “order” and “challenge forth” others. Nowhere
does this appear more immediate and troubling than when one person points a gun at another.
By contrasting Heidegger’s analysis of an ancient Greek Temple to a ‘Heidegger-like’ analysis
of a contemporary Long Island nuclear power plant, Ihde (2010) makes the following important
point with regards to artifactual politics:
I contend that the diference is not simply the diference between the nostalgic roman-
ticism of the Greek temple and the urgent and fearful presence of the nuclear plant.
Rather, it lies in what is left out, concealed, or unsaid in the Heideggerian account. What
is left out […] is what Langdon Winner has called the “politics of the artifact.” For us,
that dimension of the thingly is more vividly present in the nuclear plant than in the
lost civilization of the Greeks only because it is nearer to us.” (p. 82, emphasis added)
83
Ihde therefore argues that Heidegger’s romanticism is possible only because the objects
upon which it lingers are no longer connected to an active political and frequently contested
context. Verbeek (2005) makes a similar point from a slightly diferent angle, pointing out that
Heidegger considers ‘things past’ from an ahistorical and essentializing perspective:
One can be nostalgic only when one thinks that something essential has been lost, and
that becomes problematic precisely when one thinks historically, for then something
can only be essential within a historical context rather than ahistorically. From a purely
historical perspective, classical technē and modern technology would be historical
phases in the relation of humans to being, and neither could claim to be more funda-
mental than the other. (p. 72)
The historical dimension of being is a socio-political dimension of being as much as it is a
cultural dimension of being. Therefore, one of the irst questions in relation to the Heideggerian
Gestell as an enframing that presents nature and human beings as a “vast resource well” should
be, as Ihde (2010) emphasizes, “for who, or for what end?” (p. 82).
85
das Ding dingt
THINKING FOR WARD ABOUT TECHNOLOGY
A philosophical analysis of the role of technology in the modern world
cannot rest with reducing technology to forms of interpretation,
but needs to devote its attention as well to the ways in which speciic technologies and arti-
facts help to shape speciic forms of praxis and interpretation.
It needs to think “forward” rather than “backward” about technology.
( Verbeek, 2005, p. 67)
In many ways, Heidegger’s philosophy of technology as elaborated in The Question
concerning Technology stands ‘guilty as charged’ in terms of being monolithic, abstract
and nostalgic. This, however, does not diminish its signiicant impact on several contem-
porary approaches to philosophy of technology. It seems as if Heidegger’s essay on tech-
nology—apart from profoundly confounding many of its readers—brought about an
engagement with—or struggle through—his thought that frequently meandered back to
his more ‘down to earth’ engagement with tools and equipment in Being and Time. Verbeek
(2005) points out that Heidegger’s historical and hermeneutic approach to philosophy was
pivotal in making a ‘clearing’ for the postmodern impetus by “approaching being as changeable
rather than static, and thus the ‘essence’ of things as contingent, resting on a historically deter-
mined conception of being” (p. 73).
Today technology is a fact of life. It is no longer something we can merely consider from
afar. Technologies are integrated in the way we are as never before. We increasingly act, react,
experience and relect through our technologies. In turn, these technologies facilitate and
mediate experiences and practices that would not be possible otherwise. Now perhaps more
than ever, any relevant philosophy of technology should, as Verbeek (2005) emphasizes, “take
87
concrete technological tools, instruments and devices seriously” (p. 67) and carefully consider
the diferent ways in which our technologies mediate world disclosure:
From a hermeneutical perspective, artifacts mediate human experience by trans-
forming perception and interpretive frameworks, helping to shape the way in which
human beings encounter reality. The structure of this kind of mediation involves
ampliication and reduction; some interpretive possibilities are strengthened while
others are weakened. From an existential perspective, artifacts mediate human exis-
tence by giving concrete shape to their behaviour and the social context of their exis-
tence. This kind of mediation can be described in terms of translation, whose structure
involves invitation and inhibition; some forms of involvement are fostered while others
are discouraged. Both kinds of mediation, taken together, describe how artifacts help
shape how humans can be present in the world and how the world can be present for
them. (p. 195, emphasis added)
While acknowledging that modern technology tends to amplify certain modes of being—
which Feenberg identiies as “instrumentalization,” “diferentiation of modern technological
practice,” and the “disenchantment of nature” (p. 185)—contemporary approaches to philos-
ophy of technology steer clear of the transcendental grand inale of Heidegger’s analysis of
Technology as Enframing, in order to make room for multiplicity of praxis and to recover socio-
political agency for human beings in the here-now.
An impetus towards taking technologies seriously by doing actual phenomenological
research into the lives of artifacts in terms of how they mediate human being-in-the-world
found its initial thrust in the work of Don Ihde, and ‘self-identiies’ as post-phenomenology. Ihde’s
phenomenologically and historically grounded analyses ofer frameworks for understanding a
89
wide range of diferent human-technology relations, as well as concepts like multistability that
capture how technologies do not have a single essence, but rather—like a Necker cube—can
take on diferent identities in diferent contexts of use, (Ihde, 1990, pp. 144-146). Verbeek’s
“postphenomenological perspective” focuses on the moral dimensions of technological design:
Technologies are not merely functional objects that also have dimensions of style and
meaning; they mediate the relations between human beings and their world, and
thereby shape human experiences and existence. Technologies help determine how
people act, so that it is not only people but also things who give answers to the clas-
sical moral question, ‘How to live?’ (Verbeek, 2005, pp. 235-236)
Whereas Verbeek’s perspective addresses the level of individual technological artifacts,
Feenberg’s critical theory of technology explores the socio-political and ecological dimensions
of “rationalized technical practice” (Feenberg, 2010, p. 182). Following Heidegger and Marcuse,
Feenberg argues that modern technology is “increasingly alienated from everyday experience”
(p. xvii). Whereas lived experience incorporates a complex of technical as well as ethical and
aesthetic dimensions, “rationalized technical practice”—especially as it unfolds in the context
of capitalism—tends to function according to a decidedly diferent logic, one that lacks such
“normativity” (p. 217). In light of the looming environmental crisis, Feenberg poses what he
considers a crucial question in terms of a “radical critique of technology,” “Could it be that our
technology, or at least the speciic way in which we are technological, threatens us with self-
destruction?” (p. 186). Feenberg advocates the need for “technological reform,” for actively and
critically anchoring technological practice in a normative base where “fact” and “value” are
joined (p. 209).
91
Un
in
ish
ed
pai
nti
ng
in i
nis
he
d p
ho
tog
rap
h(s
) 2n
d A
pri
l 19
82
(19
82
) — D
avid
Ho
ckn
ey
A common thread running through these approaches to philosophy of technology seems in
some way connected to Heidegger’s analysis of technē as “undiferentiated practice”(Feenberg,
2010, p. 190), as lived experience that incorporates technical alongside ethical and aesthetic
considerations into a meaningful unfolding of our human Dasein. And that is where the ball
started rolling for Heidegger in the 1920s, when he engaged the question of being. Heidegger
argued that our world is but one historically shaped unfolding from the real, one that involves a
dynamic of revealing and concealing.
I would like to end my journey with what Heidegger himself identiied as the essence of
human being-in-the-world—that of care. Care takes many forms. Of course, it can inspire a self
centered existence in which all actions gather towards oneself and one’s own. However, care is
also the most life- and world-changing dimension of human Dasein.
Care understands itself in relation to others and to a world, both of which are fragile. Care
reaches out. Care drives the desire for change. Care motivates the extra mile. Care goes above
and beyond. Care inspires hope.
And for my inal ‘ten cents worth’—and I say it because I care—the greatest crime that any
philosophy or theory can commit against humanity is to destroy hope.
93
Co
nst
ruct
ion
sit
es
ph
ase
II: P
ho
en
ix c
om
ple
x (d
eta
il) (
20
12
) — H
elm
a Sa
wat
zky
l l m e t a n a r ra t i v e s a s i d e – one does wonder if Heidegger wasn’t onto something
really big in arguing that technology renders human beings as standing reserve. It
seems to me that an entire generation of people is now caught up in the call to incessantly
broadcast presence through platforms like Twitter and Facebook, as if one’s existence is quanti-
ied and validated ‘in real time’ through one’s daily tweet quota and status updates.
For all its wonderful afordances, the cultural expectation which is mediated, facilitated and
ampliied by technology is for human beings to function as a kind of ‘standing reserve’ at the
beckoning ping of others. And one does wonder if there might be something to the quest for
‘authentic Dasein,’ for conscious choices and boundaries in relation to the call of the machine.
And just because computers can run 24/7, doesn’t mean that human beings can or should. After
all, lifetime is still in limited supply.
postscript
94 95
Bambach, C. (2010). Heidegger, National Socialism and the German People. In B. W. Davis (Ed.), Martin
Heidegger key concepts (pp. 102-115). Durham: Acumen. Retrieved from http://proxy.lib.sfu.ca/
login?url=http://site.ebrary.com/lib/sfu/Doc?id=10553844.
Davis, B. W. (2010). Martin Heidegger: Key concepts Key concepts (pp. xvi, 288 p.). Retrieved from
http://proxy.lib.sfu.ca/login?url=http://site.ebrary.com/lib/sfu/Doc?id=10553844
Feenberg, A. (2010). Between reason and experience: Essays in technology and modernity.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Feldman, M. (2005). Between Geist and Zeitgeist: Martin Heidegger as Ideologue of ‘Meta-
political Fascism’. Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 6(2), 175-198. doi:
10.1080/14690760500181545
Heidegger, M. (1977). The question concerning technology, and other essays (1st ed.). New York:
Harper & Row.
Heidegger, M. (1990). The self-assertion of the German University (1933). In G. Neske & E. Kettering
(Eds.), Martin Heidegger and National Socialism (1st American ed., pp. 5-13). New York, NY:
Paragon House.
Heidegger, M. (2010). Being and time (1926). New York: State University of New York Press.
Hitler, A., Domarus, M., & Romane, P. (2007). The essential Hitler: Speeches and commentary.
Wauconda, Ill.: Bolchazy-Carducci Pub.
Ihde, D. (1990). Technology and the lifeworld: From garden to earth. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press.
Ihde, D. (1993). Postphenomenology: Essays in the postmodern context. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern
University Press.
Ihde, D. (2008). Introduction: Postphenomenological Research (Vol. 31, pp. 1-9).
Ihde, D. (2009). Postphenomenology and technoscience: The Peking University lectures. Albany:
SUNY Press.
Ihde, D. (2010). Heidegger’s technologies Postphenomenological perspectives Perspectives in conti-
nental philosophy (pp. xii, 155 p.). Retrieved from http://proxy.lib.sfu.ca/login?url=http://site.
ebrary.com/lib/sfu/Doc?id=10420274
Janicaud, D. (1989). Heidegger’s Politics: Determinable or Not?. Social Research, 56(4), 819-847.
Kenny, A. (2007). Philosophy in the modern world. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kisiel, T. (2010). Hermeneutics of facticity. In B. W. Davis (Ed.), Martin Heidegger: Key concepts (pp.
17-32). Durham: Acumen. Retrieved from http://proxy.lib.sfu.ca/login?url=http://site.ebrary.
com/lib/sfu/Doc?id=10553844.
Schuetz, A. (1967). Phenomenology and the social sciences. In J. J. Kockelmans (Ed.), Phenom-
enology: The philosophy of Edmund Husserl and its interpretation (pp. 450-472.). Garden City,
N.Y.: Anchor Books.
Seubold, G. n. (1986). Heideggers Analyse der neuzeitlichen Technik. Freiburg: K. Alber.
Sheehan, T. (1981). Heidegger, the man and the thinker. Chicago: Precedent.
Steiner, A. (2000). The Case of Martin Heidegger, Philosopher and Nazi, Part 1: The Record, from
http://intsse.com/wswspdf/articles/2000/apr2000/heid-a03.pdf
Verbeek, P.-P. (2005). What things do: Philosophical relections on technology, agency, and design.
University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press.
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