Heidegger and the Thinking of Technology
“The Question Concerning Technology” is such a massive landmark text that if one wishes to say something meaningful about it, they would do well to narrow down their focus. For the purposes of this blog, I intend to read solely in terms of the relationship between humans and the earth that are explored in the text, while also acknowledging that this is merely one of many elements at play in the text. The title of the text can be deceptive. One picks up this essay expecting to read about technology but instead finds themselves reading about thinking. Why? Technology, for Heidegger, has such a grip on us as to affect us on the very level of thought. The typical formulation of man as master of technology, of technology as instrument external to man, is for Heidegger insufficient. We have become chained to it, the very tools that were meant to expand our freedom and strengthen our mastery of nature has itself become the master of us, has limited our freedom. He however does not say this as a luddite, in fact he explicitly states that to simply do away with technology would only increase its mastery over us. Rather, he argues that modern technology constitutes a new way of thinking, distinct from and worse than the thinking that was at play in ancient handicraft. Technology, as techne, represents a revealing for Heidegger. In the primitive forms, this meant that the maker of something would reveal what was envisioned ahead of time (like a silver chalice), by subsuming the four causes under a single act of bringing about. This aspect of revelation in modern technology takes on a far more dangerous character. What is revealed through it is always the standing-reserve of things, the ways in which things exist as resources at our disposal. This constitutes an entirely new way of thinking about the world, an entirely new way in which the things in the world reveal themselves to us. This even goes beyond the actual use of technology and permeates our way of thinking about nature and even about each other, as we see in his mention of “human resources” as an embodiment of this way of thought.
Once this is made clear, its implications with regards to our relationship with nature becomes clear. Nature no longer reveals itself to us as something entirely other than us, as something which, like a peasant who merely tills the field, we modestly seek to live within. Rather, the field reveals itself to us as a potential source of coal, the river reveals itself to us as a potential source of hydroelectric power, and the very air we breathe reveals itself as a potential source of nitrogen. Technology constricts us in such a way that we are trapped within this mode of thought, all other ways in which the world could reveal itself to us are precluded. The earth no longer presents itself to us as a home, as something within which we encounter as objects, but rather merely as a source of energy, as a means to our subjective ends.
A charge that this essay is susceptible to is that of reification. A marxist, in particular, reading this may very well find that Heidegger is taking phenomena that are a result of particular historical developments in capitalism as an ontological, essential element of ourselves in our world-historical moment. In fact, in his essay The Principle of Identity, Heidegger goes as far as to claim that man’s being has become indistinguishable from technology. What is merely a phase in a material historical process has become a new mystified absolute reality about the human condition. Instead of our thinking changing due to mass changes in production and daily life brought about by modern technology, our thinking, to Heidegger, changed before modern technology came about. This, to the marxist critic, would not only halt any serious attempt to address the problem, but would also reflect a limited way of thinking that is unable to see outside of the frame imposed on it by the historical moment. In other words, a marxist could see this as nothing but a description of the limited way of thinking that this era of capitalism has imposed.
I would address such a criticism by making the point that, despite his horrible real life political views, Heidegger’s views in this essay are not entirely incompatible with a marxist view on technology and the exploitation of nature. The Frankfurt School, for example, often discussed the idea of “instrumental reason,” a form of reason that solely uses itself, and everything around it, as means to an end that is predetermined, or not necessarily contemplated by reason. Heidegger makes a similar point in observing that thinking, for technological humans, reveals everything as something standing reserve, something to be stored and used as a resource. An inquiry modes of thinking is undoubtedly necessary in order to understand the developments in and issues surrounding modern technology. While a marxist critic would perhaps be right in saying that more specific analyses of historical and economic forces need to be considered, such things can also benefit from the more theoretical analysis offered by Heidegger.
Questions to consider: Can and should we separate this essay from Heidegger’s fascist political beliefs?
Word Count: 881
Work Cited
Heidegger, Martin. “The Question Concerning Technology” Basic Writings, Edited by David Farrell Krell, Harper Collins, 1993, pp. 308–341.
