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TECHNOLOGY Hans Ruin

Up until the mid-nineteenth century, the as the defining issue of our time. question and problem of technology was not Ortega y Gasset in Spain, Nikolai Berdjajev seen as an issue of great philosophical inter- in Russia (and France), Oswald Spengler, est. It is in the social philosophy of Marx and Ernst Jünger, and Ernst Cassirer in Germany, other left Hegelians that one can first see a and many others take part in the discussion genuine shift among philosophers in this of the meaning and consequences of the tech- respect. The modes of production and thus nologizing of culture. The culmination of the the very technical means of life are now seen Second World War brought the whole mat- as cultural forces in their own right, and thus ter to yet another level. The atomic bomb as influencing the thoughts, experiences, and marked a new step in both the technological self-understanding of a society. In 1877 Ernst and the spiritual evolution of humankind. It Kapp, a philosopher and a contemporary of now had the ability to abolish life on earth Marx, publishes the first book with the title as such. With the parallel discovery of the “Outline for a ” human genome, humanity appeared to have (Grundlinien einer Philosophie der Technik), fulfilled the ancient phantasies of a demi- where he launches the idea of the tool as an urge that in his hands had the power and the “organ-extension” of man. techne to create and destroy life. With the First World War the question The first phase of this discussion takes takes on another urgency. The war was not place when Heidegger is developing his own only a human and cultural disaster of previ- version of phenomenology as existential ously unseen dimensions. It was also an expe- ontology. Yet, in his early published works, rience of how the machinery of war somehow including Being and Time, the question of seemed to have taken over the lives of men, technology does not stand forth as a funda- and made them into its servants rather than mental concern. It is not until the early 1950s its masters. Together with the rapid and con- that he explicitly and publicly takes on the vulsive industrialization of the West it contrib- question of technology as a philosophical uted to bringing the question of technology to theme in its own right. He then gives several the forefront of the cultural and philosophi- public lectures on this theme, which are then cal debates in postwar Europe. edited into the immensely influential essay In the 1920s many European philosophers “The Question Concerning Technology” and intellectuals turn their interest toward in 1954. Here he describes the essence of

353 TECHNOLOGY technology as “enframing” (Ge-stell) and as and development of his phenomenological the defining characteristic of our age. Techne ontology and its inner tensions that one can in its double legacy, as both technology and make better sense of it, and also that one can as , is here presented as the source of the formulate relevant criticisms. greatest danger but also as a potentially sav- As a short historical background it is ing power, as both Gefahr and Rettung. To helpful to rehearse a few basic points from contemplate (besinnen) this situation is a , who remained the main reference crucial task for philosophy, perhaps even its for Heidegger on this issue throughout his life. greatest responsibility in the present. In his In book six of Nicomachean , Aristotle last words to his colleagues and friends in provides the first known philosophical defini- America in 1976, the year of his death, he tion of techne: “A techne is a rational quality writes that contemplating technology is the concerned with making, that reasons truly” most important task if we are to counter the (1140a). The translation of techne is here a forgetfulness of being. philosophical problem in itself. The stand- For a long time it was believed that the ard Latin translation of techne was always problem of technology was something that ars, and following this it was rendered in the belonged only to Heidegger’s later work. But modern Latinized European languages as with the publication of his lectures from the art, and in the Germanic languages as Kunst 1920s onward it has become clear that his (where the etymology points back toward a interest in and perspective on this problem verb for and ability, kunna). In must be seen in a new light. First of all, he some translations of Aristotle we find the was greatly influenced by the earlier cultural extended translation “art or technical skill,” and philosophical debate about the role and to mark the difference from art in the more meaning of technology, in particular by the modern aesthetic sense. But it is important writings of Ernst Jünger. Also, the problem of to note that Aristotle and the Greeks did not the technical and its effect on language and clearly distinguish between what we think of thinking is something that guides his criti- as technology on the one hand and the fine cal assessment of the history of metaphysics on the other. Techne was essentially the from the very earliest writings onward. name for a creative and productive form of Heidegger’s essay on the question of tech- knowledge, an intellectual virtue comparable nology is today the single most quoted paper to other intellectual virtues, notably scien- in the field of Science and Technology Studies. tific knowledge and wisdom. As such it also One reason that it has become so influential had something to do with truth. In another is that it seeks to capture the problem of the famous and somewhat enigmatic passage technical on such an extremely general level, from the same text, Aristotle writes: “There both philosophically and historically, con- are five ways in which the soul achieves necting it with the meaning and development truth (aletheuein), namely through techne, of the metaphysical and philosophical tradi- scientific knowledge, , wisdom, and tion as such. Yet, because of how intricately intelligence” (1139b). it is folded into his overall philosophical The meaning of this statement has been the problematic, it is often poorly understood. It source of much debate. Whatever Aristotle is only by locating its analyses and conclu- meant, its importance for Heidegger’s sions in the broader context of the emergence understanding of technology can hardly be

354 TECHNOLOGY overestimated. The relation between techne one according to which Greek metaphysics and truth and the disclosure of being is a built its fundamental conceptual structure. question that guides his attempts to think Only by becoming critically aware of what technology philosophically from the very we could thus call a certain technical bias in earliest lectures. Throughout this trajectory, the very construction of metaphysical lan- the double legacy of techne, as both art and guage, can we also engage in an exploration technology, will also generate shifting con- directed toward other, complementary, and stellations. We will come back to it as we supposedly also more fundamental senses of proceed, but with this background in mind I being. now turn to how the problem of technology This conclusion is not simply a descrip- first appears in his work. tive hypothesis that concerns the first emer- In 1922, Heidegger composed a survey gence of a metaphysical conceptuality. It also article to summarize the interpretations of holds a critical potential. For in questioning Aristotle on which he had been working the validity of the original conceptual con- for several years (PIA). The dense text can figuration it also opens up a space for criti- be read as a condensed outline of Being and cal reflection on the inherited understanding Time five years before its publication. It also and meaning of being that will continue to contains some very important remarks on the direct his critical questioning of inherited technical that anticipates his later thinking. metaphysics. He stresses here the importance of analyzing When Heidegger publishes Being and Time how the vocabulary of early Greek meta- five years later, the core of its argument is the physics is created, and what its guiding mod- critique of a substance metaphysics, which els and motives are. As an example he turns understands being along the line of what is to how Aristotle conceptualizes substance, present-at-hand (Vorhandenheit). The con- Greek ousia. When designating the most nection to the earlier analysis of the “tech- fundamental nature of being by this term, nical” roots of metaphysics is not, however, Aristotle has been guided, Heidegger argues, obvious at first glance. In Being and Time, by an understanding of being as something the explicit theme of technology and techne created in , as a Hergestelltsein, a is hardly mentioned. It is clear from some “being-fabricated.” The German word is remarks in passing that he attaches a some- important here, for it marks the first in a long what negative sense to the technical. When sequence of concepts forged around the root discussing the phenomenological method, he verb stellen, to place or put, at the extension emphasizes, for example, that it should not of which he eventually coins that of Ge-stell. be understood along the lines of a “techni- In Greek metaphysics being is thought in cal device” (GA 2, 27/BT, 26). And in a later its general essence as something produced passage from the book he makes a distinc- that is then grasped in language through its tion between what he calls a “genuine reflec- eidos, its visibility. This way of making being tion on method” from “empty discussions of appear and stand forth, and thus to be true, technology” (GA 2, 303/BT, 290). In order Heidegger continues, is the way of techne or to ground this vaguely negative conception technics. So the technological understand- of the technical we need to see it in the con- ing of being is in fact what we could call the text of the larger project in BT, its criticism basic model of understanding being, and the of modern Cartesian substance ontology,

355 TECHNOLOGY and how it carries on the basic connection distanced and objectifying modern Cartesian between a technical approach to being and understanding of nature in modernity. This is metaphysical language. what permits him to speak of readiness-to- In Being and Time the critique of sub- hand, Zuhandenheit, as a more original stance ontology does not, unlike the earlier manifestation of being than present-at-hand, draft, take its starting point in a Greek “tech- Vorhandenheit. nical” sense of being. Instead it points to From one perspective the ontology Cartesian metaphysics as the root of seeing developed in Being and Time could thus being as a pure extension in space. Heidegger be described as a pragmatist ontology of uses Descartes’ famous example of a piece the artifact and the tool, since the being of of wax to demonstrate his point. By reduc- readiness-to-hand is argued to be more fun- ing the object to its pure extension in space, damental than the secondary and theoreti- Descartes has abstracted it from its immedi- cally mediated present-at-hand of the simply ate surroundings, in order to visualize it only contemplated object of nature. It has also as a calculable material extension. been interpreted in this way, especially by In order to “destruct” this understanding some of Heidegger’s American readers. of thingness, Heidegger turns to the Greek Even though the rationale behind his word for “thing,” which is pragmata, signify- analysis was to critically reflect on the form ing etymologically “that with which we are of objectification of nature that emerges concerned.” These entities are not meaningless with modern science and its metaphysics, its extensions in space, but always contextually implications nevertheless remain problem- meaningful in terms of a surrounding world atic, not least for Heidegger himself. For if of concerns. They are, he says, “readiness-to- nature is understood along the model of a hand,” Zuhandenheit. Their understanding useful thing or readiness-to-hand, then the and meaningfulness presupposes precisely phenomenological analysis would seem to that they are not objectified, but rather lived reinstall a subjectivist and anthropocentric in their spontaneous referential context. determination of the world that it sought to From this perspective it is possible for him to transcend. If we read Being and Time from develop his analysis of “world” as something this angle we can also sense why he subse- more than simply a constellation of material quently adopted a critical distance toward entities. The primary phenomenon of world its analyses. is a lived, meaningful referential context, into This is the case in particular in the essay which we are always already thrown. “Origin of the Work of Art” from 1935.This From the viewpoint of the earlier critique is his most important statement on Art, but of substance metaphysics this is a bit confus- as such it is also an important statement on ing. Through his interpretations of Aristotle the technical, since art or Kunst goes back to he had reached the conclusion that Greek the same Greek word techne. Readers often instrumental and technical understanding fail to fully appreciate the interconnected- of being accounts for a kind of elementary ness of the question of art and technology forgetfulness in the history of metaphysics. in Heidegger’s work. But here, in the art- But now the artifact, tool or equipment, work essay, he literally builds his argument as in Greek pragmata, is instead presented by pitting the two senses of ancient techne as a critical contrast in relation to a more against one another. In seeking to expand

356 TECHNOLOGY his earlier critique of substance ontology, he metaphysics as the matrix for thinking being states that the true being of an artwork can- as a disconnected entity, in a way that comes not be grasped along the model of objective to the fore in modernity, where the truth or present-at-hand entities, as Vorhandenheit. event of being is covered over and domesti- However, neither can it be understood along cated in a representational and objectifying the model of the useful tool or readiness-to- (technical) understanding. At the same time, hand, as Zuhandenheit. Nor indeed can techne as art emerges as a unique avenue nature be understood along any of these toward thinking the event of truth, in a way models. For natural being is rather charac- that does not objectify being, but rather per- terized by an elusive way of self-containment mits it to prevail in its own essence, in its dual (Eigenwuchsig), a kind of auto-emergence. nature as presence and absence at once. As When we turn to the artwork, however, we shall see shortly, the 1953 essay on tech- it turns out that it in fact differs from all nology brings this confrontation between the of these three types of being. Instead it is a two forms of techne to an even higher level. special way of bringing together and letting In the years that follow upon the Artwork appear the being of nature, not consuming it essay, from the mid-1930s onward, Heidegger as a raw material for the purpose of its own embarks on a huge undertaking, to reassess utility, but rather by letting it appear and the entire movement and inner motivation come to presence. It is in this sense that the of German idealism and its legacy, including artwork can be a “happening of truth.” Nietzsche. From an initial positive appre- In contrast to the analysis in Being and ciation of both Schelling and Nietzsche as Time, the mode of equipment or usefulness attempts to escape from the confines of met- is thus here what lies in the way of grasp- aphysics in its traditional form, he gradually ing the genuine phenomenon of nature. On reaches the conclusion that not only all of the other hand, this truth can be discerned German idealism, but also Nietzsche himself, through the event of the artwork. As a work are ultimately symptoms of a more encom- of truth, the artwork is what reveals the passing metaphysical development. The true deeper meaning of nature that is concealed legacy of metaphysics is a will to power and as long as nature is interpreted only through domination that brings everything under the traditional—technologically oriented— its yoke, and that finds its concretization in matrix of matter and form. So in the place of modern technology, especially in its relation techne as artifact, the essay opts for techne as to nature. artwork. From the viewpoint of the Artwork His own radicalized attempt to abandon essay, there is thus also a positive possibility the confines of Western thinking is mani- emanating from the Greek techne, not as the fested most dramatically in his writings instrument of immediate life concerns, but as from the mid-1930s onward, notably in the poetic bringing forth of something into Contributions to Philosophy and Besinnung its presence. (GA 65 and GA 66). In these posthumously At this stage in Heidegger’s thinking the published works we find the first steps in his two conflicting modes of techne thus begin critical assessment of technology as a world to structure his thinking in a cross-wise, chi- shaping power, a power that is about to astic way. Techne in the sense of the fabri- transform the sense of nature, leading to a cated artifact functions from the inception of forgetfulness of being (GA 65, 277). Here he

357 TECHNOLOGY also tries to develop new modes of thought, command nature,” herausgefordert die Natur as well as a series of new concepts. Central herauszufördern (VA, 21/BW, 320). This is for the former attempt is to shape a mode the concentrated formulation behind the idea of thinking that avoids the objectification of Ge-stell as the essence of technology. It of conceptual thought, by including its own manifests itself as a demand inherent in man “belonging” to that which is thought. In himself and as a consequence of his freedom, these experimental works, written mostly in and through which he takes control over under the years of dictatorship, Heidegger nature and over himself. It is a “destiny,” but elaborates many of the thoughts that will not in the sense of being ordained by a supe- eventually surface in his postwar lectures and rior power, but as a way in which humans writings. It is a question of saying things so encounter nature and themselves. as to call forth the attention of the listener to As such a destiny it is not given once and how she has already been claimed by what for all, but rather as something toward which she is trying to think. we can seek to establish a more free rela- In the 1953 lecture on technology this tion. By listening to its claim or its demand strategy and therapy is at the heart of its (Anspruch), and by permitting it to resonate argument and style. Unlike the common as such, it can also become a “freeing claim” approach to the philosophical question of (VA, 29/BW, 331). For this reason the Ge-stell technology, Heidegger holds that the essence constitutes a fundamentally ambiguous situ- of something is not simply the answer to its ation. From a superficial perspective the con- fundamental what. In the case of technol- cept and diagnosis itself may appear only ogy the standard answer is that technol- as an anti-modernist and even reactionary ogy is a means to an end, an instrument assessment of the present. But Heidegger’s for action, or as in the earlier theorists an point is that it also contains new possibilities “organ-projection.” But against this stand- of experiencing this very modernity, if we are ard response, he suggests that we look able to listen to the way that it speaks in and instead for how technology brings about its through us. truth. Then we do not only ask for the truth The danger inherent in the Ge-stell also about technology, but rather for the truth of holds a saving potential. In his later writ- and through technology. ings, Heidegger would often quote the lines At this stage he also recalls the passage from Hölderlin’s Patmos, “But where dan- from the referred to ger is, grows the saving power also.” In the above, according to which “techne is a way essay on technology this quotation holds a of making true.” He uses it to convey the very special place, for it summarizes the way point that techne has to do with bringing in which he wants the Ge-stell to be under- about the true, in the sense of letting some- stood, namely as an “ambiguous” situation thing come into its appearance, and thus of of danger and saving at once. The latter pos- disclosing it. The primary way in which tech- sibility rests, however, on the condition that nology discloses nature is as “exploitation,” man can reach a thoughtful and reflective or a “commanding,” as Herausfordern. It dis- relation to that which is, as it is disclosed in closes nature as that which can and should the Ge-stell. be commanded. But not only that, it also At the very end of the essay he explic- discloses man to himself as “commanded to itly takes up this ambiguity in terms of the

358 TECHNOLOGY aforementioned double inheritance of the which were known by the Greeks also as Greek techne. Once, he says, techne also techne. But this is only possible on the condi- meant the “bringing forth of the true into the tion that philosophy thinks the technological beautiful” (VA, 38/BW, 339). To the hope of condition to its end. So at the end of it all it is technology belongs this possibility of bring- as if techne comes forward to reveal a liber- ing it back to a sense of a poietic disclosure, ating perspective on that which is, liberating first carried and made possible in , it, as it were, from itself.

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