Human Flourishing in Science and Technology

Chapter 4

What is technology?

Martin Heidegger

*German Philosopher

• presented an early version of this essay as a series of lectures at the Bremen Club in late
1949

• 1953, he delivered a lecture entitled "The Question Concerning Technology" to the Bavarian
Academy of Fine Arts

"In what follows we shall be questioning concerning technology. . ."

- to investigate technology in order to prepare us for a "free relationship" to it

- how "we“ currently relate to technology, how we think about it, what we imagine it to be

“Thus we shall never experience our relationship to the essence of technology so long as we
merely conceive and push forward the technological, put up with it, or evade it. Everywhere we
remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it.”

How do we generally think about technology?

means to an end/ getting things done = “instrumental”

human activity = “anthropological”

They are not yet true, the essence of technology is something else entirely

"The will to mastery becomes all the more urgent the more technology threatens to slip from human
control" (289).

How humanity stands in relation to technology

*Any attempt to "get something done" has an effect on something else

*Causality

Ex. Silver chalice:

causa materialis "material/matter" - silver

causa formalis "logos/form" - chalice curved form

causa efficiens "the process" - silversmith

causa finalis "final effect" - sacrificial rite

The chalice here has been produced in order to be used in a particular kind of activity

Telos = defining boundaries; purpose

What, then, is technology, if it is neither a means to an end nor a human activity?

responsibility and indebtedness

The silversmith is responsible for the chalice; the chalice is "indebted" to the silversmith

the four "ways of being responsible" help it to "arrive" there

Poiesis “bringing-forth”, related to "being responsible“

Aletheia "unveiling" or "revealing or truth“

Technology, according to Heidegger is “a way of revealing”

How can technology be ‘a way of revealing’?

“Reality”

not absolute that human beings can ever know once and for all

it exists only in relations. Reality ‘in itself’, therefore, is inaccessible for human beings. As soon as we
perceive or try to understand it, it is not ‘in itself’ anymore, but ‘reality for us.’

reality is ‘revealed’ in a specific way

How can technology be ‘a way of revealing’?

technology is the way of revealing that characterizes our time

specific way, in which humans take power over reality

modern technology is rather a ‘forcing into being’

Technology reveals the world as raw material, available for production and manipulation

Why is technology not a human activity?

there is something wrong with the modern, technological culture

‘age of technology’ reality can only be present as a raw material (as a ‘standing reserve’)

the technological way of revealing was not chosen by humans

our understanding of the world - our understanding of ‘being’, of what it means ‘to be’ - develops
through the ages

understanding of ‘being’, according to Heidegger, is to be seen as the ultimate danger

humans will also interpret themselves as raw materials

Every attempt to climb out of technology throws us back in

What shall we do?

“the will not to will”

We need to open up the possibility of relying on technologies while not becoming enslaved to
them and seeing them as manifestations of an understanding of being.