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The Tragic Double Bind of Heidegger's Techne

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The Tragic Double Bind of Heidegger's Techne The Tragic Double Bind of Heidegger’s Techne DAVID EDWARD TABACHNICK I. Despite the fact that “the tragic” is an important theme in Heidegger, there are few specific discussions of tragedy in his work. While he often refers to tragic poets and playwrights, he nowhere explicitly analyzes the concept of the tragic or provides a theory of tragedy (Gelvin 555). Nonetheless, some scholars have had success locating the larger significance of tragedy in Heidegger (e.g., see Gelvin; Schürmann; McNeill; Schmidt). Schürmann, for one, understands Heidegger’s description of human existence as indicative of a tragic “double bind,” suggesting an irreconcilable denial and embrace of fate. In this paper, I further explore this “double bind” in Heidegger’s discussion of techne, technical knowledge, as it relates to the revealing of technology.1 On the one hand, Heidegger identifies Plato’s articulation of techne as the foundation upon which contemporary technology builds. And, according to Heidegger, technology is “the extreme danger” that “threatens man with the possibility that it could be denied to him to enter into a more original revealing and hence to experience the call of a more primal truth” (“The Question” 333). Yet, on the other hand, technology also holds within it a “saving power” that may push us to recapture the “original Greek essence of science” which, I will argue, is akin to a pre-Platonic techne that may allow us to return to a more authentic way of being, free of the aforementioned danger of technology. “Thus,” Heidegger decides, “the essential unfolding of technology harbors in itself what we least suspect, the possible rise of the saving power” (“The Question” 337). So, oddly, techne is both the start and the finish of, the contagion and the cure for, the most profound threat to human existence. PhaenEx 1, no. 2 (fall/winter 2006): 94-112 © 2006 David Edward Tabachnick - 95 - David Edward Tabachnick It seems then, for Heidegger, that not all technai are built the same: one techne endangers and another techne saves. In An Introduction to Metaphysics, for example, he presents techne as a way for humans to be reminded of their impotence in the face of overwhelming nature or physis. This radical interpretation of techne is derived from an analysis of the choral “ode to man” in Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone. Here are a few lines from Heidegger’s translation: He set sail on the frothing waters amid the south winds of winter . and [he] hunts the beasts of the wilderness and the native creatures of the sea . And he has found his way to the resonance of the word, and to wind-swift all-understanding, and to the courage of rule over cities (Heidegger, Metaphysics 146-165; Sophocles lines 332-75).2 On the surface, the ode to man might be taken as the story of man’s steady technical development and achievement, as he moves from primitive sailor, to prehistoric hunter, to a builder of great cities. By this account, the ode mirrors our traditional, anthropological, understanding of the accumulation of new knowledge and skills over generations, leading us inexorably to our present technological age. However, Heidegger flatly dismisses this interpretation. Rather than the story of a progressive escape from or mastery of nature, Heidegger understands the sailing, hunting, and city building described in the ode not as representative stages of human development but as places or “scenes of disclosure” for the breaking in of what he calls the “overpowering.” Remarkably, he dismisses the idea that early humans built their boats, their spears and arrows, their houses and cities primarily for the purposes of transportation, procuring food, and finding shelter. Instead, these things were first and foremost built as means to commune with nature, highlighting or bringing to light the primal truth of existence or Being.3 This is all the more strange in that Heidegger also sees these products of techne in their initial articulation as violence against nature. The sailor, by harnessing and manipulating the wind and water, is coercing the elements to do his bidding. Likewise, the farmer, hunter and city builder are taking hold of the movement of nature and violently imposing form onto it. But this imposition of form is merely temporary. Eventually, the violence of techne is countered by the violent return of - 96 - PhaenEx the movement of nature: these products of techne become targets of nature’s wrath, destroyed or swept away by the very elements they temporarily harnessed. The products of techne are “scenes of disclosure” in the sense that, through their destruction, human beings come to recognize the temporality of all things and come to think about or question the authentic or primal truth of all of existence. So, by sailing we bring to light the overpowering force of the sea, by hunting we highlight the overpowering pain of hunger, and by building cities that inevitably fall to some sort of disaster we recognize the power of nature to destroy all the more. In all of these things, the limits and finitude of beings come to light through a pushing back by nature. Presumably, without the building of technical products, this coming to light, this disclosure would not occur. Of course, this description of techne is not so strange when considered within the larger context of Heidegger’s work. In Being and Time, he identifies humans as Dasein, the being with the unique capacity to ask the question of Being. And, in his “Letter on Humanism,” he writes: Man is not the lord of beings. Man is the shepherd of Being. Man loses nothing in this ‘less’; rather, he gains in that he attains the truth of Being. He gains the essential poverty of the shepherd, whose dignity consists in being called by Being itself into the preservation of Being’s truth (245). Here, we can see a parallel between Heidegger’s fundamental ontology, where he describes our relationship to Being, and his description of techne as a “scene of disclosure” that highlights the nature of existence. Just as Dasein shepherds or attends to the revelation of Being rather than controls its revealing, in our building we are not trying to master nature or become “the lord” of the things we build, but are instead inviting Being to show, bring-forth, or un-conceal itself, again serving as the “shepherd of Being.” But, as will be discussed below, technology as “enframing” does seek a lording over and total mastery of nature. Plainly, there is something profoundly tragic going on here. We humans have been given the uncanny capacity to use tools and build, not for our own good, advancement or betterment, but as a way for existence to be understood or thought as fleeting, in flux, coming into being and going - 97 - David Edward Tabachnick out of being. Even though it is difficult to believe the earliest humans had any sense that by making fire or building a wheel or a mud hut they were participating in such a process, from Heidegger’s perspective, experiences of cold, pain, hunger, and fear that spurred such inventiveness were necessary for a revealing of Being. We all must suffer in order for Being to be revealed (to be shepherded) in this unique way. What is more, our efforts to hinder or halt this suffering though the building of artifacts (things that might endure the fluctuations of the natural world) give nature the opportunity to “overpower” and thus once again highlight the temporality of existence. So, rather than allowing us to escape from the painful limitations of nature, techne is an invitation to nature’s destructive power. Our technical products are merely temporary impositions of form onto matter, and they are destined to be violently taken back into the manifold of the natural world. We need not limit this analysis to the ode to man. Other ancient texts similarly describe the transient character of our artifacts. For example, the great wall of the Achaeans in Homer’s Iliad seems to be a scene of disclosure for the overpowering: Built against the will of the immortals The wall could not endure for long … … It is destined to disappear from the landscape without a trace: Apollo and Poseidon will cover it with water and bury it in sand (12.10–33). The powerful wall is built against the gods only to be overpowered by the gods. Again, techne is violence against nature and an invitation or openness to nature.4 Likewise, the city of Thebes, the setting for Antigone, is itself indicative of this tragic double bind of creation and destruction. Creon defies the gods with his emergency decree banning the traditional performance of sacred burial rites for his nephew Polyneices, an apparent traitor to his city. But, by introducing this hubristic law, he invites destruction into the city. Clare Pearson Geiman explains that “Human activity as techne, then, is caught in a paradoxical necessity. On one hand, it must order the possibility and standards of justice and governance on a human level. On the other, it must respond to a higher ordinance that - 98 - PhaenEx compels the continual destruction and reforming of such orders” (171). In other words, all forms of human making, whether of boats and spears or of laws and politics are caught in a tragic paradox— the technical imposition of human order is the spur for the violent renewal of the natural order. This explains the strange warning found in the fourth and final stasimon of the ode to man: “When he weaves in the laws of the land, and the justice of the gods that binds his oaths together he and his city rise high—but the city casts out that man who weds himself to inhumanity thanks to reckless daring” (Sophocles, 368-375).
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