Technology As A Way of Revealing

Technology as a Way of
Revealing
Intended Learning Outcomes
1 2 3
Differentiate the Discuss and illustrate Explain why art is the
essence of technology the dangers of saving power of
and the essence of modern technology. modern technology.
modern technology.
Let’s watch this video to get to know more about Martin
Heidegger:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br1sGrA7XTU
Martin Heidegger’s
‘The Question
Concerning
Technology’ (1977)
• Technology can be viewed as a means to an end
(instrumental).
• Or it can be viewed as human activity
(anthropological).
The Essence of • Both are correct, but neither touches the essence
Technology of technology.
• What is the essence of technology?
• We are blinded to it when we think of it as
something neutral.
Causality
• Technology brings about change causally.
• The cause is what is responsible for the
effect, and the effect is indebted to the
cause.
• According to Aristotle, there are four ways
in which this relation holds.
• The unifying notion is that of starting
something on its way to arrival.
• Being responsible is an inducing to go
forward.
Aristotle's Four
Causes
• Material Cause (Causa Materialis) -
the stuff out of which something is
made.
• Formal Cause (Causa Formalis) - the
defining characteristics of (e.g.,
shape) the thing.
• Final Cause (Causa Finalis) - the
purpose of the thing.
• Efficient Cause (Causa Efficiens) -
the antecedent condition that
brought the thing about.
Bringing Forth
• The bringing forth – poeisis – which
underlies causality is a bringing out of
concealment.
• This revealing is what the Greeks call truth
– aletheia.
• Technology brings forth as well, and it is a
revealing.
• This is seen in the way the Greeks
understood techne, which encompasses
not only craft, but other acts of the mind,
and poetry.
Modern Technology
• Both primitive crafts and modern

technology are revealing.
• But the revealing of modern
technology is not a
bringing-forth, but a
challenging-forth.
• It challenges nature, by
extracting something from it and
transforming it, storing it up,
distributing it, etc.
The essence of
modern technology
Not a bringing
forth (in the sense
of poiesis)
Instead it is Modern
what technology
Heidegger
calls a
is too
challenging impatient/
forth into violent/
revealing. urgent.
We might note here

that this violence
applies as much to the
information-age as to
the machine-age
Let’s critique
this science
photo.
• What issue is depicted in

the photo?
• Does the photo evoke a
‘bringing forth’ or a
‘challenging forth’?
• Justify your claim.
Science Photos –
Critiquing Session
Science Photo 1
Science Photo 2
• Modern technology takes all of nature
to stand in reserve for its exploitation.
The • Man is challenged to do this, and as
such he becomes part of the standing
Standing-Reserv reserve.
e • Man becomes the instrument of
technology, to be exploited in the
ordering of nature.
Enframing
• Enframing means the gathering together of that

setting-upon which sets upon man, i.e., challenges him
forth, to reveal the real, in the mode of ordering, as
standing-reserve.
• It is not man that orders nature through technology, but a
more basic process of revealing.
• The challenge of this revealing is called “enframing”.
• In enframing, the actual is revealed as a standing-reserve.
• This is “historically” prior to the development of science.
• Enframing is the essence of technology.
Destining
• Men are sent upon the way of revealing the
actual as a standing-reserve. So enframing,
and hence technology, is a “destining”.
• Technology is not our fate, we are not
necessarily compelled along an unaltered
and inevitable course because “enframing
belongs within the destining of revealing”
and destining is “an open space” where man
can “listen and hear” to that which is
revealed.
• The destining of man to reveal nature
carries with it the danger of misconstrual.
The Danger
• Man is in danger of becoming

merely part of the standing-reserve.
Alternatively, he may find only
himself in nature.
• Most importantly, he may think that
the ordering of the world through
technology is the fundamental
mode of revealing.
• So the real threat of technology
comes from its essence, not its The human person being
activities or products. swallowed by technology
The Saving
Power
• The poet Hölderlin writes that
the saving power grows where
danger is.
• The saving would allow a
bringing-forth that is not a
challenging-forth (things would
reveal themselves not just as
standing-reserve).
• Both technology and
bringing-forth grow out of
“granting,” which allows
revealing.
Art as Saving Power
• Poetry and other arts have the
power to reveal, in the sense of
“bringing-forth”.
• Poetry is included in the Aristotelian
techne, and is akin to modern
technology.
• But it is also fundamentally different
from technology.
• It may be the best means for getting
at the essence of technology itself.
Because the essence of technology is nothing
technological, essential reflection upon technology
and decisive confrontation with it must happen in a
realm that is, on the one hand, akin to the essence of
technology and, on the other, fundamentally
different from it.
Such a realm is art. But only if reflection upon art, for

its part, does not shut its eyes to the constellation of
truth, concerning which we are questioning… For
questioning is the piety of thought (Heidegger, 1977,
pp. 340-341).

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Technology as a Way of

• Both primitive crafts and modern

We might note here

• What issue is depicted in

• Enframing means the gathering together of that

• Man is in danger of becoming

Such a realm is art. But only if reflection upon art, for

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