Heidegger, Martin (1954). The question concerning technology.
In the first paragraph of his essay, Heidegger states his purpose as to ask questions about technology (since questioning builds a way and “the way is thinking”) and thereby to “build a free relationship to” technology, where a “free relationship” is defined as a relationship that allows a person to grasp the “essence” of technology. Once a person grasps the essence of technology, that understanding will enable the person to “experience the technological within its own bounds.” Using what he considers the commonly accepted definition of technology as a “means and a human activity” as his point of departure, Heidegger embarks on a long argument about how although this definition may be “correct,” it is not “true” (Heidegger, 2003, pp. 253); and if it is not true, then a person whose understanding is limited to this definition only does not grasp the “essence” of technology and therefore does not have a free relationship to it. Heidegger points out that although the “essence” of something has since ancient times been understood to mean what a thing is, his notion of the “essence” of something requires that the “essence” be “true.” Since Heidegger has already stated he does not believe the commonly accepted “instrumental and anthropological definition of technology” to be “true,” he is obligated to explain why – and his explanation involves rationalizing how words and concepts, when considered a certain way, become other words and concepts that become other words and concepts until Heidegger has arrived at his destination, a destination where an “instrument” equals a “means” equals a cause equals one of the “four causes” known since at least Aristotle’s time equals “to be responsible for” equals “to reveal” equals “technology” as a “way of reveling” equals “truth.” At this destination, if one has followed Heidegger’s rationalizations and accepts them, then one is prepared for the next leg of the journey; and on this next leg, Heidegger promises “another whole realm for the essence of technology will open itself up to us” (Heidegger, 2003, pp. 253-255).
Heidegger guides us into and through this new realm by employing again a host of linguistic transformations (or etymologies or derivations, if one prefers) that begin with “the revealing” becoming “a challenging” (perhaps equivalent to “the will to mastery) with humans as the creators of “modern technology” based upon science and physics (as opposed to pre-scientific or artisanal technology) that “puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy which can be extracted and stored” and used as a means toward some end that consists, essentially, of “driving on to the maximum yield at the minimum expense” (Heidegger, 2003, p. 256). It appears, then, that for Heidegger the realm of technology we have now entered presupposes an inexplicable force, but he does not call it an inexplicable force. Perhaps the inexplicable force is what at the beginning of his essay he calls a “will to mastery” that becomes “a revealing” that becomes “a challenging” that becomes an “enframing.” Heidegger admits his use of the term “enframing” is unique and he elaborates that it “means the gathering together of the setting-upon that sets upon man, i.e., challenges him forth, to reveal the actual, in the mode of ordering, as standing reserve” (Heidegger, 2003, p. 258). Standing reserve here seems to mean to Heidegger what is commonly considered stored or surplus material or human resources that could be deployed to attain some objective. At this point in his essay, Heidegger proposes the “essence of modern technology starts man upon the way” of revealing that discloses to man how “the actual everywhere” is standing reserve – and, perhaps most important – Heidegger makes another linguistic leap (or draws another linguistic circle, so to speak) and introduces the term “destining” which he says is “the sending that gathers,” and apparently defines in different (but equally abstract) terms an aspect of what he earlier called the “enframing” (Heidegger, 2003, p. 260) and what I proposed may be called the inexplicable force. Heidegger never calls anything an inexplicable force, however, choosing rather to travel in what appear to be infinitely spiraling loops of terms conveniently defined by other terms Heidegger defined until the last term he defines is defined by the first term he defined and he arrives at the same place from which he departed. In this case, that place of departure is “the essence of technology” and that essence is “ambiguous” and “such ambiguity points to the mystery of all revealing, i.e. of truth” (Heidegger, 2003, p. 263).