helma sawatzky

on heideggers
techno-logic

contents
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.

1. introduction ................................................................................................................................ 7
2. being and time ........................................................................................................................ 11
3. the elephant in the room .................................................................................................... 19

DIS C LA IMER

4. impact factor ............................................................................................................................ 31

All images are used for

5. the being of beings ................................................................................................................. 37

academic purposes only.

I do not intend to infringe
on copyright restrictions,

6. nothing technological ........................................................................................................... 45

7. the question of agency .......................................................................................................... 65

nor do I sell this academic

work for proit.

postscript ................................................................................................................................... 91
references .................................................................................................................................. 94

Hope you enjoy!

image source info ................................................................................................................... 96

helma@helmasawatzky.com

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 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 Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,

Said: Een 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 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 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!

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!

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 Blind Men and the Elephant John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887)

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.

introduction

n e co uld a rg ue th 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. Heideggers 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 foror a poetic revealing
ofDasein in all its possibilities and historicity.
In my attempts to get a sense of Heideggers philosophical essence what is he on about
and whyI 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.

Any kind of engagement with the life and thought of Martin Heidegger leads to the inevitable encounter with a disturbing elephant in the roomthat of Heideggers association with
fascism and his brief yet active involvement with Hitlers Nazi party in the context of World War
II. Heideggers 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 Heideggers work in the history of western philosophy, and whose work has followed in
Heideggers wake.
In the pages that follow I will share a travel journal of my philosophical safari through
Martin Heideggers 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 digressionsquotes and images, metaphors and
representations, humour and critiquewith 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 technologyin the context of which Heideggers
work continues to be both thought-provoking and inluential.

being and time

11

life line

192833

192833

192333

Heideggers students
include of
Hannah
Arendt, Gnther Anders, Hans Jonas, Miki Kiyoshi,
professor
philosophy
Karl Lwith, Charles
Herbert
Marcuse, Ernst Nolte and Emmanuel Levinas
at theMalik,
University
of Freiburg

professor of philosophy
at the University of Freiburg

191923
works as Edmund Husserls
assistant U of Freiburg

1889

190914

Heidegger is born and raised in

Messkirch, a rural Catholic town
in southwest Germany

studies theology at the

professor of philosophy at
University of Freiburg
the University of Marburg
switches to philosophy in 1911

192328

1930

Die Kehre

Die Frage nach der Technik

Der Spiegel interview

194649

1976

Heidegger prohibited
from teaching as part of
denaziication process

Heidegger dies
at age 87

194045

1920

1966

rector of the
University of
Freiburg

1940

WORLD WAR II

1910

WORLD WAR I

1900

1954

193334

191418

1890

1947

195158
professor emeritus at
University of Freiburg

1950

1960

195867
guest lecturer,
University of Freiburg

1927

193345

195051

Sein und Zeit

member of the NAZI party

resumes teaching at
University of Freiburg

SOURCE: Davis, 2010, pp. 260-264

12

13

1970

1980

The only thing of interest regarding the person of a philosopher is this:

After earning his habilitation in 1916 with a thesis on the work of medieval philosopher

He was born on such and such a date, he worked and he died.

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-

Martin HeideggerGrundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie (1924)

lastic philosophy. In March 1917, Heidegger married Elfriede Petri, who would be his life-long
companion and with whom he parented two sonsJrg (born: 1920) and Hermann (born:

the philosopher who argued the socio-historical

1921). Around 1922, his wife Elfriede presented Heidegger with the Todtnauberg mountain

embeddedness of all human existence should trivialize its relevance in relation

cabin that was to become Heideggers favorite place for thinking and writing for the remainder

se e m s

iron ic

th at

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, Heideggers personal biography and cultural context
shaped and infused what he wrote about and how.

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

Heidegger was born in Messkircha small conservative, Catholic town in the rural south-

otherwise would be incompatible with his own philosophy. From 19231928 Heidegger taught

west region of Germanyless than 100 kilometers away from the city of Freiburg where he

philosophy at the University of Marburg. The 1927 publication of Heideggers magnum opus

would later study and teach. From 19031909 Heideggers path of learning was directed

Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) caused his star to rise in the irmament of German philosophical

towards entering the priesthood. He initially attended a Catholic seminary and began a trial

scholarship. In 1928, Heidegger was invited to take Husserls place as professor of philosophy at

period as Jesuit novitiate in Tisis, Austria. In 1909, Heidegger studied theology and philosophy

the University of Freiburg.

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 healtha nerve and heart conditioncaused 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.

In March of 1933, two months after Hitlers appointment as Germanys 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 Hitlers Nationalsozialistische 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 revolution in general and Hitlers Nazi party in particular, Heidegger resigned his position as rector

14

15

on April 23, 1934, in the wake of much conlict and resistance from his colleagues and from

philosophy, all relect a man who valued solitary contemplation and a retreat from the hubbub

Nazi government oicials who were generally wary of Heideggers eccentric, vague, scizoform

of modern life which he viewed as a subversion of authentic being-in-the-world. Second,

[sic], and in part already schizophrenic thinking (Erich Jnsch as cited in Feldman, 2011, p. 188).

Heideggers life and work resonate with a romantic connection to his German roots and a

Disillusioned with the movement, Heidegger distanced himself from the ideological doctrine

strong sense of nationalism. Whether one considers his commitment to place through living

of biological racialism advocated and implemented by Hitlers Nazi party while emphatically

most of his life within the same 150 kilometer radius, his commitment to a perceived lineage

holding to the social and national virtues that, for him, constituted the inner strength and

between ancient Greek philosophy and Germanys culture and spiritual destiny, or his overt

greatness of National Socialism (Heidegger as cited in Feldman, 2011, p. 185).

and emphatic support of National Socialism in the years leading up to World War II, all point to

After World War II, the Allied forces banded together in an initiative to rid German and
Austrian society of all manifestationspeople and organizationsof National Socialist
ideology. In December of 1945, Heidegger too was called in for questioning by the Freiburg

a man who seemed to wholeheartedly believe in the words of Germanys national anthem
Deutschland, Deutschland ber alles [tr: Germany above all else or over everything]. Bambach
(2010) writes:

denaziication committee and was prohibited from teaching for several years (194549), during

Heidegger genuinely put his faith in the possibilities aforded by the National Socialist

which time he sufered a nervous breakdown. After he was deemed to have been a Mitlufer

revolution, which he viewed as only the precursor and precondition for a second onto-

someone who followed along without actively participating in Nazi atrocitiesHeidegger was

logical revolution that would bring the German Volk [People] to its proper historical

able to resume his teaching at the University of Freiburg in 1949. He was subsequently awarded

mission as the saving force in the history of the West. (p. 104, emphasis added)

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.

It is Heideggers ainity and ailiation with fascism in general and Hitlers National Socialism
in particular that leads me to the troubling elephant in the room when engaging with any of
Heideggers thought in relation to the question of being and the question concerning technology.

When considering Heideggers biography, a few themes seem to emerge. First, Heideggers
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
16

17

the elephant in the room

19

How is it that a philosopher who has been called by many

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
Germanys infirmity, these figures were connected by their distaste for Nazisms
use of political coercion to rehabilitate Germany. They also eschewed the NSDAPs
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 Mohlers
retrospective description of these thinkers as the Trotskyites of the German
Revolution. This suggests that the CRs 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)

the greatest thinker of the twentieth century was in fact a Nazi?

(Steiner, 2000)

e id e gg e r s G e r m a ny wa s a n a tio n in cr isis, 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 (19191923) were marked by social and political turmoil and by a
severe economic crisis connected to Germanys 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 (19241929). 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 Hitlers 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 Riefenstahls
well-known ilm Triumph of the Will). In spite of a year in which the Nazi party failed to win
21

a convincing majority, Adolf Hitler was eventually appointed Reich Chancellor in January of
1933the year that would be the most controversial year of Heideggers 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 Hitlers NSDAP a few weeks lateron
May 1, 1933. On May 27, 1933, Heidegger delivered his controversial and politically charged
rectorial addressThe Self-Assertion of the German Universityat 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 ledled 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 opportunity to shape the National Socialist movement in an originary philosophical way, to become
the Fhrer 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 philosophiaas a questioning which unlocks the highest form of knowing, which
23

he German farmer stands in between two great

dangers today: the one danger is the American economic
systemBig Capitalism! ... It enslaves man under the
slogans of progress, technology, rationalization, standardization, 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.
Excerpt from a Nazi ele c tion ca mpa ign p oster

he 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.
The self- asser tion of the G erman Universit y (1933)
Mar tin Heidegger

e 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 unquestionably 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.
Excerpt

from

sp e e ch

by

Joseph

Go ebb elspropaga nda

minister for Adolf Hitler s regime at the op ening of the B erlin

Auto Show, Februa r y 17, 1939

25

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 Heideggers 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 Spiegela German national news weeklyHeidegger
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 Heideggers active involvement with Hitlers Nazi party
could be viewed as short-livedan 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

27

D E R S P I E G E L | D AT 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 todaythis 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 1935or 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
differentlyand also wanted to.

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 movement, 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, Heideggers various essentialismshis 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 democracydo 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 discardedaccordingly.
Although I agree that Heideggers work can be understood as embodying fascist tendencies,

SPIEGEL

Surely you would include here the communist movement?

HEIDEGGER:

Yes, unquestionablyinsofar as that, too is a form of planetary technicity.

SPIEGEL

Americanism also?

as an important catalyst for that which followeda critical movement towards discourses of

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 systemand which onecan be
adapted to an epoch of technicity. I know of no answer to this question. I am not
convinced that it is democracy.

diference through the critical questioning and deconstruction of metanarratives of any kind

I understand and value his contribution in the wider context of the history of western thought

and the abuses of power that frequently follow in their wake.

29

impact factor

31

Way back whenthe 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 arestuck in the middle
solving the riddle of life.

t is we ll b e yo n d th e sco p e o f th is p roj e c t to present an extensive analysis of

Heideggers 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 Heideggers thought bridges a transition from philosophical traditions that
seek out transcendental essences and the discourses of diference that emerged in Heideggers
wake.
Davis (2010) points out that Heidegger radically rethought concepts as time, space,
the self (Dasein), interpersonal relations, things, the world, language, truth, art, technology and the divine (p. 12). He identiies four key concepts that shape Heideggers philo-

helma sawatzky
1996

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 beingas 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 Heideggers philosophy of
technology as a mode of world disclosurereality presents itself as a selective, instrumentalized
revealing of the world as resource for human use and control. Finally, Heidegger understood
33

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.
Heideggers 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). Heideggers 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 Heideggers work so diicult to access, and, on the other hand, meaning is un/folded in
diferent ways, creating opportunities for seeing things diferently.
Heideggers 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), psychoanalysis (e.g., Jacques Lacan), theology and Derridian deconstructionto name but a few. By
emphasizing the historical and profoundly hermeneutic dimensions of being-in-the-world,
Heideggers thought cleared the way for critically engaging the life world as socio-historical
context in terms of discoursehow stories of class, race or gender unfold a world in particular
ways. It fostered a critical engagement with culture and communications in terms of considering which stories are told about what by who, how and why, and who beneits.

35

the being of beings

37

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 Godbeing 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 Himselfa 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.

e id e gg e r s a p p ro a ch to p h e n o m e n o lo g y is frequently described as existential

and hermeneutic. Both these terms identify key dimensions in which Heideggers

thought critically distances itself from the transcendental phenomenology of his long-term
mentor and colleague Edmund Husserl. Husserls phenomenologythe study of phenomena
or the appearance of things from a irst person point of viewwas 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 philosopher, beginning his meditation with a natural attitude, must undertake that change
in attitude which Husserl calls phenomenological epoch or transcendental phenomenological reduction. [] [W]hat is grasped in the epoch is the pure life of consciousness 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

(Verbeek, 2005, p. 51-52)

consciousnessa thinking I, the Cartesian egoas 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-

39

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-theworld 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 interactive 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
41

a lived pastthe realm of moods, memories, culture, history and in its temporal trajectory as being-towards-death, Dasein reaches in anticipatory resoluteness towards a future.
(Heidegger, 2010, pp. 125-126; 236; 305).
Heideggers concept of reality and our relation to it is crucial in understanding his philosophy 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 wordit 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 unconcealment 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 itone in which the world appears to presents
itself as a standing reserve for human control and consumption.

43

nothing technological

45

Thus when man, investigating, observing, ensnares nature as

an area of his own conceiving, he has already been claimed by a way of revealing

The essence of technology

that challenges him to approach nature as an object of research,

is by no means anything technological.

until even the object disappears into the objectlessness of standing-reserve.

Thus we shall never experience

our relationship to the essence of technology

(Heidegger, 1977, p. 19)

so long as we merely conceive

and push forward the technological,
put up with it, or evade it.

h e n H e id e gg e r a rg ue s th 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

Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology,

their conditions of possibility: what kind of human-world relationor historically shaped

whether we passionately affirm or deny it.

understanding of being makes it possible for such devices to come into existence in the irst

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.

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
approacha series of in-depth etymological and philosophical analyses that draw on both
Greek and German vocabulary and conceptsHeidegger describes how the instrumentalization of human making moved from wholistic praxis to machine-driven production. He makes
this argument by contrasting the ancient Greek understanding of techn (craft) and poisis

Martin Heidegger

(creation or poetic revealing) to the monodimensional instrumentality that characterizes indus-

The question concerning technology (1954)

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

49

the craftsman and his materials, modern technologies, Heidegger(1977) argues, enact a humanworld 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, distributing, 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 Heideggers
51

unique use of the word that is pivotal for him, Gestell (Enframing). (Heidegger, 1977, p.
15, footnote)
Heideggers view of technology does not look at technological artifacts through a lens of
either instrumentalismtechnology is a neutral toolor determinismtechnology does things
to us whether we want those to happen or notbut rather considers an ontological ground that
makes it possible (and logical) for such technologies to develop. This ontological argument is
central to Heideggers 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 beingin-the-world in terms of a subject/object relationshipas 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
Nietzsches 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 Gestalta igure or conigurationin 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):

53

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

I am a

spoken to, and hence also fails in every way to hear in what respect he ek-sists, from out

maximizing machine
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 worlda particular unfolding of the real in which human beings can
no longer imagine being otherwiseand 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 technology? 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 aestheticmindedness 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,

55

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 Heideggers lifetimewhether in literature or the visual artsfell 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 A N SAVE US
In the Spiegel interview of 1966 (which was, on Heideggers request, published posthumously in May of 1976) Heidegger concluded that contemporary literature is largely destructive (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 ontological 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
57

of entire civilizations. In response to Heideggers comments that any real, essential change
may take 300 years to unfold, the Spiegel interviewer expressed his profound frustration and
MORPHEUS:

Let me tell you why youre here. Youre here because you know

minewith this rather disengaged and passive bottom line:

something. What you know, you cant explain. But you feel it.
You felt it your entire life. That theres something wrong with the

We understand very well. However, since we do not live 300 years hence but here and

world. You dont know what it is, but its there. Like a splinter in

now, silence is denied us. The rest of uspoliticians, halfpoliticians, citizens, journal-

your mind - driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought

ists, etc.must constantly make decisions. We must adapt ourselves to the system

you to me. Do you know what Im talking about?

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

NEO:

The Matrix.

MORPHEUS:

Do you want to know what it is?

And now we hear only: I cannot help you. (p. 60).

NEO:

Yes.

These words touch on a major point of critique that was frequently directed at Heideggers

MORPHEUS:

The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this

expect help from philosophers, even if only indirect helphelp in roundabout ways.

techno-ontology in the decades following the 1954 publication of The question concerning
technologythe absence of agency in face of the Ge-stell.

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.

59

60

61

the question of agency

65

Resistance is useless.
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

e id e gg e r s a n a lysis o f te ch n o lo 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 agencypersonal, cultural, politicalis a core concern in a range of critical analyses
of Heideggers philosophy of technology. I will conclude my philosophical safari with a
discussion of several important points of critique on Heideggers understanding of technology
Looking into the painting (detail) (2000) Teun Hocks

as Enframing. The question of agencythe capacity for human freedom of actionand 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 analysis of Heideggers 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
Heideggers philosophy of technology, and emphasizes that these criticisms are most often
directed at the conclusions of Heideggers 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

67

1900
1905
1906
1907
1910
1921
1923
1926
1931
1932
1933
1934
1936
1937
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1944
1945
1946
1947
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1957
1959
1960
1962
1965
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972
1974
1976

Modern escalator........................................................................................... Charles Seeberger

Theory of Relativity ............................................................................................. Albert Einstein
Electronic amplifying tube .................................................................................... Lee Deforest
Invention of colour photography ................................................................ Lumire brothers
First talking motion picture ............................................................................... Thomas Edison
Lie detector ............................................................................................................... John Larson
Television .......................................................................................... Vladimir Kosma Zworykin
Liquid fueled rockets ................................................................................... Robert H. Goddard
Electron microscope ...................................................................... Max Knott and Ernst Ruska
Polaroid photography ............................................................................... Edwin Herbert Land
FM radio ............................................................................................. Edwin Howard Armstrong
Monopoly game ...................................................................................................Charles Darrow
Colt revolver .............................................................................................................. Samuel Colt
Photocopier ..................................................................................................... Chester F. Carlson
Ballpoint pen .............................................................................................................. Ladislo Biro
First successful helicopter ..................................................................................... Igor Sikorsky
Color television ................................................................................................... Peter Goldmark
First software controlled computer ......................................................................Konrad Zuse
First electronic digital computer ..................................... John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry
Kidney dialysis machine .......................................................................................... Willem Kolff
Atomic bomb ....................................................... Robert Oppenheimer / Manhattan Project
Microwave oven .....................................................................................................Percy Spencer
Transistor ................................................................................ Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley
Credit card ..........................................................................................................Ralph Schneider
Video tape recorder ........................................................................................ Charles Ginsburg
Hydrogen bomb...................................................................................................... Edward Teller
Transistor radio ...............................................................................................Texas Instruments
Oral contraceptives ................................................................................................. Frank Colton
Fortran computer language .............................................................................. IBM computers
Microchip ...................................................................................... Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce
Halogen lamp ........................................................................................................ Fredrick Moby
Audio cassette ................................................................................................. Phillips Company
Compact disk...........................................................................................................James Russell
Computer mouse ...........................................................................................Douglas Engelbart
Arpanet (first internet) ................................................. Advanced Research Projects Agency
Floppy disk ...............................................................................................................Alan Shugart
Liquid crystal display (LCD) ..............................................................................James Fergason
Word processor ........................................................................................................................ IBM
Post-it notes ..................................................................................................................Arthur Fry
Laser printer ............................................................................................................................. IBM

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 Heideggers
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 orderone that cannot be touched by the actions of one or
more people in the here and now. Because Heideggers 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.
CONT E X T UA L IT 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 Heideggers scholarship took shape. His work emerged in the context of a transcendentalist 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 Heideggers 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 fascination 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. Heideggers philosophy of
technology, like any other is, as Ihde (2010) puts it, a fallibilist, contingent, and socially historical practice (p. 14).

69

Heidegger wrote in the context of the rise of industrial technologymachinic, gigantic,

mechanical, systemic and complex (Ihde, 2010, p. 19)technologies developed for the massprocessing of raw materials. Even though he may not have subscribed to this idea speciically,

You dont understand | Sharing is the law | The land owns itself (2001) Sandra Semchuk & James Nicholas

Heidegger wrote at a time when the notion of autonomous technologyof runaway technology
that exceeds, Frankenstein-like, its inventors control(p. 19)was well-circulated. Another
common notion in relation to modern technology in Heideggers time and place was that of the
disenchantment and desacralization of nature (p. 7). These types of sentiments seem to infuse
Heideggers 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 warsthe 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.
M ONOL IT H IC
The monolithic character of the Ge-stell has to do with the fact that Heidegger does not
consider technology on the ontic levelthat of individual technological artifactsbut 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 manifestations of that singular, all-encompassing form of world-disclosure (Verbeek, 2005, p. 62).
Ihde(2010) points out that such a metaphysicaland reductionistturn determines from the

71

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
Could it be that the fine arts are called

experience or practice, culture or context. Feenberg(2010) points out that within the Heidegge-

to poetic revealing?

rian Ge-stell it becomes impossible to discriminate between electricity and atom bombs, agri-

Could it be that revealing

lays claim to the arts most primally,
so that they for their part
may expressly foster

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,

the growth of the saving power,

we should also conclude that the role of technology (on the ontic level) in our culture

may awaken and found anew

cannot be understood in terms of this speciic way of interpreting only. When they are

our look into that

which grants and our trust in it?

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

Martin Heidegger
The question concerning technology (1954)

are many technologies (p. 119). In order to move beyond Heideggers monolithic approach to
technology, it is literally of the essence that we are intentional about pluralizing our language
and thereby our ways of thinkingtechnologies, enframings, orderings, practices, experiences,
relationsit is quite remarkable what a single letter can accomplish in terms of opening up a
world of diferent possibilities. And Heidegger knew this.

73

A BST R AC T
Because Heidegger engages technology only on the ontological levelas 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
ECOLOGICAL IMPACT I: The Plight of the Urban Forest (2006) Alina Iljasova & Helma Sawatzky

frequently lodged against Heideggers philosophy of technologythat it is abstract.

One wonders what would have happened if Heidegger had engaged individual technological artifacts with the same sensibility that he brought to his analysis of everyday tools and
equipment in Being and Time. For example, Heideggers concept of ready-at-hand (Zuhandenheit; also translated as handiness)the way of being a tool or piece of equipment has when in
useconsiders 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. Heideggers 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 unnoticed isor becomesobjectively 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 transcendentalist perspective in Heideggers thought from his early worke.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 Heideggers engagement of
the question of being, a change Heidegger himself referred to as Die Kehre (The Turn). The early

75

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

T HE R E D WHE E LB A R R OW

in concrete artifacts towards an understanding of equipment as a revealing of historically situated sendings of being. Verbeek concludes that, in the inal tally, Heidegger ends up overem-

so much depends

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

upon

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

a red wheel

lies at the heart of various post-phenomenological research initiatives (See also Ihde 1990,
1993, 2008, 2009 and Verbeek, 2005).

barrow

NOSTA LGIC
The third point of critique brought to bear on Heideggers work is that of nostalgia or

glazed with rain

romanticism. This important critique inds its origins in the examples Heidegger uses in The
water

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 :

beside the white

And yet the revealing that holds sway throughout modern technology does not

chickens.

unfold into a bringing-forth in the sense of poisis. The revealing that rules in modern
william carlos williams

technology is a challenging [Herausfordern], which puts to nature the unreasonable

1923

demand that it supply energy that can be extracted and stored as such. But does this

77

not hold true for the old windmill as well? No. Its sails do indeed turn in the wind; they
are left entirely to the winds 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 hydroelectric plant] historically sent by being, while in the second instance [the old waterwheel

Cut with the kitchen knife (1919) Hannah Hoch

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 technologies 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 Heideggers 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 technologies 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).

79

In this respect, Heideggers philosophy of technology does exactly that which he attributes to
the Ge-stellthat of presenting a reductive, monodimensional enframing of human Dasein by

I f I h a d a h a m m er

way of technologies.
Id h a m m er i n t h e m o rni ng
P OL IT ICS OF T H E A R T IFAC T
Id h a m m er i n t h e eveni ng
Aside from the charges that Heideggers philosophy of technology is abstract, monolithic
A l l over t h i s l a n d

and nostalgic, another common issue to arise is the seeming absence of a concrete political
dimension to Heideggers thought. Throughout the essay on technology, much is expressed

Id h a m m er o ut da ng er

in verbs that refer to various cosmic actionse.g., revealing, concealing, challenging forth,
enframing. However, the doer of all these doings is never a concrete somebody somewhere,

Id h a m m er o ut a wa rni ng

but always a deferred, abstract entity over which human beings appear to have little or no
Id h a m m er o ut l ove

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

b et we en my bro t h ers a nd my si sters

does this appear more immediate and troubling than when one person points a gun at another.

A l l over t h i s l a n d

By contrasting Heideggers 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:

lee hays & pete seeger

1958

ever y to o l i s a wea p o n
I contend that the diference is not simply the diference between the nostalgic romani f yo u ho l d i t ri g ht.

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

ani difranco
1993

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)

81

Ihde therefore argues that Heideggers 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 techn and modern technology would be historical
phases in the relation of humans to being, and neither could claim to be more fundamental 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).

83

T H INKING F OR WA RD A BOUT T E CH NOLOGY

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 artifacts 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, Heideggers 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-

das Ding dingt

porary approaches to philosophy of technology. It seems as if Heideggers essay on technologyapart from profoundly confounding many of its readersbrought about an
engagement withor struggle throughhis 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 Heideggers 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 determined 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
85

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 transforming 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 existence by giving concrete shape to their behaviour and the social context of their existence. 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 philosophy of technology steer clear of the transcendental grand inale of Heideggers analysis of
Technology as Enframing, in order to make room for multiplicity of praxis and to recover sociopolitical 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. Ihdes
phenomenologically and historically grounded analyses ofer frameworks for understanding a
87

wide range of diferent human-technology relations, as well as concepts like multistability that
capture how technologies do not have a single essence, but ratherlike a Necker cubecan
take on diferent identities in diferent contexts of use, (Ihde, 1990, pp. 144-146). Verbeeks
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 classical moral question, How to live? (Verbeek, 2005, pp. 235-236)
Whereas Verbeeks perspective addresses the level of individual technological artifacts,
Feenbergs 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 practiceespecially as it unfolds in the context
of capitalismtends 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 selfdestruction? (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).

89

A common thread running through these approaches to philosophy of technology seems in

some way connected to Heideggers analysis of techn as undiferentiated practice(Feenberg,
2010, p. 190), as lived experience that incorporates technical alongside ethical and aesthetic

Uninished painting in inished photograph(s) 2nd April 1982 (1982) David Hockney

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-worldthat of care. Care takes many forms. Of course, it can inspire a self
centered existence in which all actions gather towards oneself and ones 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 worthand I say it because I carethe greatest crime that any
philosophy or theory can commit against humanity is to destroy hope.

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Construction sites phase II: Phoenix complex (detail) (2012) Helma Sawatzky

postscript

ll m e ta n a r ra tive s a sid e one does wonder if Heidegger wasnt 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 ones existence is quantiied and validated in real time through ones 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, doesnt mean that human beings can or should. After
all, lifetime is still in limited supply.

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references
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Ihde, D. (2008). Introduction: Postphenomenological Research (Vol. 31, pp. 1-9).

Davis, B. W. (2010). Martin Heidegger: Key concepts Key concepts (pp. xvi, 288 p.). Retrieved from
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Ihde, D. (2010). Heideggers technologies Postphenomenological perspectives Perspectives in continental philosophy (pp. xii, 155 p.). Retrieved from http://proxy.lib.sfu.ca/login?url=http://site.
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