HEIDEGGER AND CYBERNETICS _______________ A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of San Diego State University _______________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in Philosophy _______________ by Alexander J. Misthos Spring 2018
SDSU Template, Version 11.1Master of Arts
iv
The technological-scientific rationalization ruling the present age
justifies itself every day more surprisingly by its immense
results. But this says nothing about what first grants the
possibility of the rational and the irrational. The effect proves
the correctness of technological-scientific rationalization. But is
the manifest character of what is exhausted by what is
demonstrable? Does not the insistence on what is demonstrable block
the way to what is?
Perhaps there is a thinking that is more sober-minded than the
incessant frenzy of rationalization and the intoxicating quality of
cybernetics. One might aver that it is precisely this intoxication
that is extremely irrational.
--Martin Heidegger, The End of Philosophy and The Task of
Thinking
v
San Diego State University, 2018
The following is an attempt to elucidate an often overlooked yet
fundamental aspect of Martin Heidegger’s (1889-1976) philosophy of
technology—his thoughts concerning cybernetics. Cybernetics is an
interdisciplinary field comprised of the theory of control,
communication, and organization in self-regulating systems. Many of
the theoretical frameworks upon which general systems theory is
built have their origins in cybernetic research, and the two fields
are so closely related that one term is often used as a synonym for
another. In order to understand the role of cybernetics in
Heidegger’s philosophy of technology I will attempt to explain a
thesis that he began repeating towards the end of his career—that
cybernetics has replaced philosophy in Western civilization. This
proposition will have to be understood in the context of
Heidegger’s philosophy of technology generally. Once a basis for
understanding what Heidegger means by saying that cybernetics has
replaced philosophy has been established it will then be possible
to turn to the wider Heideggerian corpus in order to assess the
extent of Heidegger’s engagement with cybernetics. It will be
established that the role of cybernetics in the end of philosophy
and the onward march of technology has to be considered of major
importance for Heidegger. It will further be demonstrated that
Heidegger was engaging with this new science on its own terms by
reading his interpretation of cybernetics alongside the texts of
the American mathematician and founder of cybernetics Norbert
Wiener (1894-1964). It is my hope that in the end I shall have
established that Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of technology
constitutes a serious and still relevant engagement with the
bleeding edge techno-scientific developments of his day (which is
not far removed from our own, and indeed, anticipates many of our
contemporary problems with technology). The ultimate goal of this
project is to establish that an understanding of Heidegger’s
confrontation with cybernetics is critical for a thorough
engagement with his philosophy of technology, and that his concerns
have only become more prescient as time has passed.
vi
1 SCIENCE, “TECHNOLOGY,” AND TRUTH IN BEING AND TIME
........................6
2 TECHNOLOGY AS METAPHYSICS
.......................................................................21
3 CYBERNETICS AND THE END OF
PHILOSOPHY...............................................41
4 THE ESSENCE OF GE-STELL, THE END OF PHILOSOPHY, AND THE “SAVING
POWER”
....................................................................................................56
5 HEIDEGGER ON
CYBERNETICS............................................................................80
REFERENCES
......................................................................................................................118
vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to take this opportunity to thank specifically several
individuals whose
assistance was absolutely essential for me in the completion of
this thesis. Firstly, I would
like to thank all of my current and former friends and mentors who
have assisted me along
the way towards my development as a modestly competent thinker and
scholar. I would also
like to thank my parents for their material support and toleration
of my dismally imprudent
decision to pursue philosophy academically. To Dr. Peter Atterton,
without whose guidance
and instruction in the English academic virtues of intellectual
temperance, clarity, and rigor
in all things, this project would perhaps have come into being as a
hoary mess of loose
connections and gnomic proclamations, thank you. To Dr. Mark
Wheeler, whose mentorship
and hyper-active example have encouraged me to believe that it is
still possible today to
think and to be as an authentic lover of wisdom, whatever that
means—thank you. I regret
not taking more advantage of the limited time we shared at this
institution. To my good
friend Brandon K. White, whose thorough instruction in argument,
the dialectic, and
ontology have been indispensable in steering me towards a less
wrong path in the search for
truth, thank you. As regards this thesis, your etymological
expertise and help in translating
certain passages was indispensable.
1
INTRODUCTION
OUR QUESTIONABLE RELATIONSHIP TO TECHNOLOGY It has become
absolutely banal in the present age to remark that society has
been
profoundly (if not fundamentally) altered by the advance of modern
technology. However,
just because an idea has become rote does not at all mean that it
has been adequately
understood. Can philosophy in any capacity have anything to say to
us that might be
instructive in our present situation? It might seem upon first
impression, especially to
modern, empirically minded persons, that the answer is no. Such
persons might suppose that
it would be more proper to appeal to scientists and technicians
themselves in order to arrive
at a clear understanding of what is happening today with
technology. Then again, technical
experts are often remiss to indulge too deeply in conversations
about the “bigger picture”
with what is going on with technology—often out of laudable
methodological aversions to
overstepping the bounds of what can be said with a high degree of
rigor and expertise. All the
same, voices have begun to emerge in recent years from prominent
enough positions within
the technical-scientific community to merit some pause for
reflection about our current
situation.
The rapid pace at which technology and science have been advancing
in recent times
has generated much high-flying speculation concerning what new
possibilities technology
will open up for humanity in the near future. Google's Director of
Engineering, Ray
Kurzweil, is an exemplary champion of this contemporary attitude.
In the preface of his
bestselling book, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend
Biology (2005),
Kurzweil frames his vision of the future of technology by invoking
Arthur C. Clarke's third
law, which states that “any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from
2
magic.”1 Kurzweil then immediately goes on to stretch this
reference to the most extreme
possible limit in appealing to the example of “J. K. Rowling's
Harry Potter stories”2 as
examples of “not unreasonable visions of our world as it will exist
only a few decades from
now.”3 Kurzweil is on record claiming that Google will be capable
of uploading human
minds to computer servers sometime around the mid-2040s when he
predicts that the
“Singularity”—the point when machine intelligence eclipses human
intelligence and
amplifies in a runaway process of exponential growth—will happen.
Kurzweil also believes,
if we are to take him at his words in The Singularity is Near that
“the ultimate destiny of the
Singularity and of the universe” is that:
In the aftermath of the Singularity, intelligence, derived from its
biological origins in human brains and its technological origins in
human activity, will begin to saturate the matter and energy in its
midst. It will achieve this by reorganizing matter and energy to
provide an optimal level of computation...to spread out from its
origin on Earth...the “dumb” matter and mechanisms of the universe
will be transformed into exquisitely sublime forms of intelligence,
which will constitute the sixth epoch in the evolution of patterns
of information.4
It is easy to dismiss these remarks about human technology giving
birth to a divine
computer that rearranges the cosmos for the purposes of its sublime
computations as
exuberant flights of fancy not worthy of serious consideration—and
this should be done. Is
Kurzweil really a solitary eccentric though? To be sure, his views
exist out on an extreme
fringe. Even without directly concerning oneself with Singularity
theory there are many
unique challenges being posed to society by its currently existing
technical artifice—to say
nothing of more even-tempered yet still incredible sounding
near-future forecasts.
Environmental degradation and man-made earthquakes rate as only
some of the problems
currently posed to us by our own technology. To say that nothing
significant will happen or
1 Arthur C. Clarke, “Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of
Imagination,” in Profiles of the Future: An Enquiry into the Limits
of the Possible, rev. ed. (New York: Harper, 1973), 12-21.
2 Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend
Biology (New York: Viking, 2005), 23.
3 Ibid.
3
is happening seems almost as absurd as Kurzweil's
“Singularitarianism.” How can we arrive
at a basis for evaluating the meaning of modern technology in a
sober, even-handed manner?
Perhaps science could be expected to intervene in order to help us
understand what is
going on with technology? In the journal Nature (September 2013) a
team from the
University of Miami, the CEO of Nanex LLC5, and a co-representative
of the “Complex
Systems Center” at the University of Vermont and the MITRE
Corporation published a paper
they had co-authored entitled “Abrupt Rise of New Machine Ecology
beyond Human
Response Time.” The abstract informs readers that:
Society's techno-social systems are becoming ever faster and more
computer- oriented. However, far from simply generating faster
versions of existing behaviour, we show that this speed-up can
generate a new behavioural regime as humans lose the ability to
intervene in real time. Analyzing millisecond-scale data for the
world's largest and most powerful techno-social system, the global
financial market, we uncover an abrupt transition to a new all
machine phase characterized by large numbers of subsecond extreme
events. The proliferation of these subsecond events shows an
intriguing correlation with the onset of the system-wide financial
collapse in 20086
The findings are claimed by the team to be “consistent with an
emerging ecology of
competitive machines...and highlight the need for a new scientific
theory of subsecond
financial phenomena.”7 Both of these propositions should seem
counter-intuitive at first
glance according to what we shall call the “common-sense”
understanding of the relationship
between scientific understanding and the technological sphere. By
the “common-sense”
understanding of the relationship between science and technology,
we mean to express the
“received view that technology owes its birth to science. Modern
technology emerged only
5 Nanex is a software engineering firm based in Chicago, Illinois
that appears to specialize in providing streaming real-time market
data for all financial market transactions. The CEO of Nanex, Eric
Scott Hunsander, has become vocal in his opposition to some aspects
of the high-frequency trading system. This is of course the system
that the study under consideration looked at specifically.
6 Neil Johnson, Guannan Zhao, Eric Hunsader, Hong Qi, Nicholas
Johnson, Jing Meng, and Brian Tivnan, “Abrupt Rise of New Machine
Ecology Beyond Human Response Time,” Scientific Reports 3, no. 2627
(September 2013), doi:10.1038/srep02627.
7 Ibid.
4
when science let itself avail in a specific area.”8 As scientific
understanding increases, so too
does the ability to create new technologies. Finally, these
technologies in turn allow us to
make more accurate descriptions of the natural world from where we
draw our scientific
conclusions and in turn make even further technological advances.
Is it not strange, then, that
we are now running into situations where we don't need new science
to create new
technology, but instead need scientific research to describe the
behavior of currently existing
technology? This fact seems to raise suspicions about the
common-sense view of the
relationship between science and technology.
It appears unavoidable to draw the conclusion that something quite
strange is going
on with technology, and that our common-sense understanding might
prove more of a
hindrance than a helpful guide to what is going on. It is not the
purpose of this project to
resolve definitively any particular question about contemporary
technology or within the
philosophy of technology or the philosophy of science. What I do
propose, however, is to
provide an interpretation of a philosopher whose thoughts on human
understanding, science,
and technology, can help us on the way towards grasping closer to
the root the problems we
are encountering today—in a world that we are constantly being
reassured is absolutely
overflowing with various technological disruptions. It is my
intention that in doing so it will
become easier to assess in a sober, deliberate manner what is
really going on with modern
technology.
What is to follow will be an attempt to understand in depth the
philosophy of
technology of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). For our present
purposes, the clarification of
the role of cybernetics in Heidegger's philosophy of technology
will be the principal aim. In
particular, we hope to elucidate the meaning of the particular
claim that Heidegger began
making towards the end of his career that cybernetics had replaced
philosophy in Western
society. Heidegger's philosophy of technology cannot be explained
in isolation from his
primary philosophical project, which is the phenomenological
investigation of the question of
8 Lin Ma and Jaap Van Brakel, “Heidegger’s Thinking on the ‘Same’
of Science and Technology,” Continental Philosophy Review 47, no. 1
(March 2014): 24, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-014-9287-z.
5
the meaning of Being. The principal goal of phenomenological
inquiry is to arrive at a
standpoint where one can describe phenomena as they appear, in
themselves, without any
theoretical distortions such as have bewitched philosophers since
time immemorial.
Heidegger's own notion of what phenomenology is will be exposited
when we introduce
some essential passages from his early magnum opus Being and Time
that will help us
understand the arguments developed in his later philosophy of
technology (Chapter One).
Once an adequate understanding of Heideggerian phenomenology has
been provided
from our exposition of Being and Time our attention will then be
turned to the matter at hand.
It will become apparent that already in the 1940s Heidegger saw
that there was something
qualitatively different (even uncanny) about modern technology as
opposed to all hitherto
human artifice. Fundamentally, for Heidegger, what was essential to
modern technology was
not so much the particular machines or techniques employed, but a
process that he foresaw
escalating into an unavoidable, planetary crisis. At the center of
this story about humanity's
emerging relationship with its new technology is an often neglected
yet fundamental
argument about the role of the science of cybernetics in the
unfolding of Heidegger's
planetary technological drama. Heidegger's argument about the
essence of technology will be
the focus of Chapters Two and Four, whereas his discussion of the
role of cybernetics in the
broader scope of his argument about technology will be directly
treated in Chapters Three
and Five.
BEING AND TIME
Our objective is to provide an analysis of the role of cybernetics
in Martin
Heidegger's philosophy of technology. Insofar as the piece that is
to be our focus in Chapter
Three, “The End of Philosophy and The Task of Thinking,” begins by
announcing that it
“belongs to a larger context...the attempt undertaken again and
again...to shape the question
of Being and Time in a more primordial fashion”9, it is clear that
some exposition of the
overall project and some of the phenomenal findings of Being and
Time cannot be avoided.
In order to set this reading of Heidegger's philosophy of
technology in its proper context, at
the outset, a survey of several key ideas from his early treatise
Being and Time shall be made.
In the following, Heidegger's concern with (and insistence on the
priority of) the question of
the meaning of Being, some of his early concerns with the sciences,
what he says about
Worldhood, Nature, and equipment, as well as his conceptions of
phenomenology and truth,
shall be elucidated as these topics appear in Being and Time.
Accomplishing this will provide
us with a basis for understanding Heideggerian philosophy broadly,
and particularly as it
relates to the ideas that shall be taken up from his later
proclamations concerning cybernetics.
The explicit goal of Being and Time (1927) is to raise the question
of the meaning of
Being and set a contemporary inquiry into the question on secure
footing. A peculiar
difficulty arises at the outset for Heidegger concerning this
question of the meaning of Being.
9 Martin Heidegger, “The End of Philosophy and the Task of
Thinking,” in Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (Abingdon,
United Kingdom: Routledge, 2010), 373.
7
Since the entire project of Being and Time is an attempt to arrive
at a position of clarity
regarding the meaning of Being, it must therefore be the case that
at the outset we cannot put
forward an adequate account of what Being is. The question of the
meaning of Being then
seems to be bewitched by a certain intractable circularity. How can
what it means 'to be' be
clarified without already presupposing beforehand a notion of what
'to be' means in the first
place? This apparent circularity concerning the definition of the
word 'is,' serves, along with
a plurality of other factors both historically concrete and
philosophically logistical, to shroud
the question in great obscurity at the outset.
Aside from the inherent difficulty of the question, Heidegger is
also concerned with
the factors that have led to the generally sanctioned neglect of
and forgetting of the question
of Being. It is said that ontology (the philosophical study of
being as such) can be dispensed
with because the question of the meaning of Being is hopelessly
abstract, or its answer is
self-evident and inconsequential—since we all already understand
what we mean whenever
we use the word Being. In order to raise the question of the
meaning of Being in the first
place then, Heidegger suggests that it is necessary to understand
the historical conditions that
have led to this neglect and forgetting of the question of Being.
The attempt to clarify the
meaning of Being and the attempt to disentangle oneself from the
forgetting of Being
eventually become co-dependent lines of thought in an explicit way
at the end of the first half
of Being and Time, and this in such a way as they seemingly remain
so intertwined
throughout the rest of Heidegger's thought.
When Heidegger discusses Being he is not simply referring to the
totality of extant
entities. The question of the meaning of Being should not be
thought to be synonymous with
more colloquial questions such as “What does it all mean?” or “What
is the meaning of life?”
Instead, what he wants to clarify is what it means for entities to
be what they are. In this
sense it would then be helpful to keep in mind that Heidegger views
himself as being at the
same time in conversation with the history of Western ontology,
while his philosophy is also
an attempt to get at the question of Being from outside the
traditional metaphysics of
Western ontology. The nature of the question of the meaning of
Being then requires a method
which one can use to raise this question without recourse to the
metaphysical errors of the
tradition or falling into the trap of simply writing off the
question of Being as trivial or
8
obvious. These concerns lead Heidegger to propose that a
philosophical anthropology is
necessary to concretely work on the question of Being:
If the question about Being is to be explicitly formulated and
carried through in such a manner as to be completely transparent to
itself, then any treatment of it in line with the elucidations we
have given requires us to explain how Being is to be looked at, how
its meaning is to be understood and conceptually grasped...Looking
at something, understanding and conceiving it, choosing, access to
it—all these ways of behaving are constitutive for our
inquiry...Thus to work out the question of Being adequately, we
must make an entity—the inquirer—transparent in his own
Being.10
In order to investigate the question of Being, Heidegger proposes
that a position of
clarity must be arrived at concerning the hermeneutic situation in
which the question of
Being is raised. In order to accomplish this, a phenomenological
analysis of the human being
(or as it is referred to in Being and Time 'Dasein,' which
literally translates to 'being there' or
'existence') in terms of the basic structures of its average
everyday existence is to be
undertaken. This was originally intended only to be the initial
phase of the attempt to clarify
and reawaken the question of Being. Once the existential structure
of Dasein was thus
clarified, this existential analysis would provide a basis from
which it would be possible to
establish “time as the possible horizon for any understanding
whatsoever of Being.”11
Ostensibly, once an understanding of the relationship between
temporality and Being had
been established, this would provide the basis for what Heidegger
called the
phenomenological 'destruction' of the history of ontology. The
theme of the relationship
between temporality and Being as well as attempts to re-interpret
and break down various
systems and figures in the history of Western metaphysics would
both remain operative
throughout Heidegger's writings after abandoning the project of
Being and Time. He would
never return to complete Being and Time, only completing two out of
three divisions that
were to comprise the first part of the two-part treatise.
Regardless of its incompleteness
10 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and
Edward Robinson (London:SCM Press, 1962), 26-7.
11 Ibid., 19.
9
relative to the initial design of the treatise, Being and Time is
nonetheless the essential
starting point for understanding Heidegger's thought and
methodology. The two extant
divisions provide a crucial if not exhaustive account of
Heidegger's philosophical
anthropology and the phenomenological method from which the rest of
his thought develops.
It might appear counter intuitive at first glance that one should
attempt to conduct an
ontological investigation using phenomenology. One might suppose
that ontology is more
concerned with things as they are in themselves whereas the term
phenomenology might in a
Kantian fashion be thought of as concerned more with phenomena in
the sense of qualia or
the contents of the subjective experience. Yet Heidegger insists,
in the introduction to Being
and Time, that “only as phenomenology, is ontology possible.”12
Heidegger clarifies his
conception of phenomenology in the introduction of Being and Time
by a means of an
etymological interpretation of the terms phenomenon (from the Greek
φαινμενον
[phainomenon]) and λγος (logos). Heidegger's interpretation of
logos will be considered
later on as part of our exposition of his conception of truth. This
discussion of logos pre-
figures the discussion of truth that takes place in section 44 of
Being and Time and cannot be
fully taken account of without presenting Heidegger's argument that
truth is unconcealment.
For our present purposes, it will be sufficient simply to explain
Heidegger's definition of
'phenomenon.'
Heidegger breaks down the stems of the Greek term phainomenon in
order to arrive at
the formulation that a phenomenon is “that which shows itself in
itself.”13 This definition of
phenomenon maintains the notion that phenomena are generally
available to experience
while emphasizing that the phenomenon is what shows itself as it
is. Therefore, phenomena,
for Heidegger, are not simply to be considered sensible intuitions
or qualia. Instead he draws
a distinction between phenomena and appearances, as well as
semblances. An appearance,
according to Heidegger, does not show itself, but rather the
appearance is that which shows
12 Ibid., 60.
13 Ibid., 51.
something other than itself. Put more concretely, “all indications,
presentations, symptoms,
and symbols have this basic formal structure of appearing.”14 While
the phenomenon is that
which shows itself in itself, an appearance is “the
showing-itself.”15 Phenomena are not
appearances, but every appearance is contingent upon phenomena
insofar as appearances are
what show, or indicate phenomena. Finally, in addition to phenomena
and appearances, there
are also semblances. A semblance is simply something which shows
itself as something that,
in itself, it is not.
For Heidegger, the question of Being exerts priority not merely
over philosophy.
Rather, the obscurity shrouding this question hangs over all
theoretical work, in particular
(but not limited to) the natural sciences. Against what could be
considered a modern
conception of theoretical enterprise that considers each discipline
to be self-sufficient except
in trivial or minor cases, Heidegger's attitude seems decidedly
more scholastic—perhaps
somewhat informed by his Catholic education and upbringing. In the
introduction to Being
and Time he suggests that the advancement of a science to a point
where it becomes “capable
of a crisis in its basic concepts”16 indicates that the sciences
are not ontologically self-
sufficient. Revolutions in the basic concepts of a science
(exemplified in Kuhn's theory of
scientific paradigm shifts) suggest that in accordance with the
principle of sufficient reason
(that nothing is without reason), no science is sufficient to
provide a total justification of its
own ontology. The question of Being fills the vacuum in these cases
because it:
aims...at ascertaining the a priori conditions not only for the
possibility of the sciences which examine entities as entities of
such and such a type...but also for the possibility of those
ontologies themselves which are prior to the ontical sciences and
which provide their foundations. Basically, all ontology, no matter
how rich and firmly compacted a system of categories it has at its
disposal, remains blind and perverted from its ownmost aim, if it
has not first adequately
14 Ibid., 52.
15 Ibid., 53.
16 Ibid., 29.
11
clarified the meaning of Being, and conceived this clarification as
its fundamental task.17
We should take a moment to briefly explain the term “ontic,” which
was introduced
here in the above quotation. Heidegger draws a distinction between
the ontological and the
ontic. Ontological considerations are concerned with entities in
their being what they are.
Considerations of the essence of an entity or thing are ontological
since they are concerned
with the Being of beings. The remainder of considerations and
accidental propositions are
simply ontic:
Ontology can contribute only indirectly towards advancing the
positive disciplines as we find them today. It has a goal of its
own, if indeed, beyond the acquiring of information about entities,
the question of Being is the spur for all scientific
seeking.18
With respect to the theoretical activity of the sciences “Being and
Time grounds and
limits the sciences by showing that the theoretical attitude is a
modification of everyday
understanding.”19 So then, in addition to the claim Heidegger makes
with respect to the
necessity of arriving at some clarity on the question of Being for
the sciences, insofar as they
undergo ontological reflection to develop their taxonomies or
reformulate their basic
concepts, the existential analytic of Being and Time seeks to limit
scientific conceptual
overreach by demonstrating that scientific objectivity is itself
founded on a more everyday
comportment that belongs to what he calls our Being-in-the-world.
This criticism of what
Heidegger calls presence-to-hand [Vorhandenheit] hinges in part on
an account of equipment
that is central to his analysis of worldhood and environmentality
in chapter three of division
one of Being and Time. Examining this account in closer detail will
serve the double purpose
of providing some insight into Heidegger's later account of
technology (insofar as it builds
17 Ibid., 31.
18 Ibid., 77.
19 Trisha Glazebrook, Heidegger's Philosophy of Science (New York:
Fordham University Press, 2000), 42.
12
upon and breaks from this early account of equipment) and
understanding his
phenomenological criticism of Cartesian mathematical-scientific
ontologies.
For Heidegger, the world is not what is commonly supposed if this
term is defined as
the totality of what exists, either in the actual world or the
possible worlds of modal logic.
Rather, the world is a constitutive element of Dasein's
Being-in-the-world. Heidegger defines
the term 'world' as “that 'wherein' a factical Dasein as such can
be said to live”20 citing as
examples the private 'domestic' world of the individual as well as
the public sphere of society
at large. A world is the ontic object of Dasein's existential
structure of worldhood. To say
that worldhood is an existential structure of Dasein is simply to
say that, whatever the
particular concrete variations of worlds between Daseins, Dasein
itself is always in a world a
priori. Heidegger should not be taken here to be denying the
reality of nature. Instead,
Heidegger simply wishes to indicate that rather than being
exhaustive of worldhood “Nature
is itself an entity which is encountered within the world and which
can be discovered in
various ways and at various stages.”21
Heidegger's account of Dasein's world emphasizes the unity of
Dasein's experience
of, and relationship to, the world. This unity of experience should
not, however, be thought
of along the lines of a Kantian apperception of sensible
intuitions, but instead, as the totality
of instrumental relationships between entities in Dasein's
environment about which it is first
and foremost concerned. In opposition to the prejudice that access
to reality is granted
through impartial rational calculation, Heidegger asserts that “the
kind of dealing which is
closest to us is...not a bare perceptual cognition, but rather that
kind of concern which
manipulates things and puts them to use, and this has its own kind
of 'knowledge'.”22 His
claim here is not simply that concernful comportment towards
entities that are to be put to
various uses is simply one mode of being alongside others that
Dasein can switch between
20 Heidegger, Being and Time, 93.
21 Ibid., 92.
22 Ibid., 95.
13
freely. In an important sense this mode of concernful comportment
is “the way in which
everyday Dasein is”23 at a fundamental level. In order to attest to
the phenomenal primacy of
instrumentality and concern, Heidegger offers forward as evidence
that the Greek term for
things is πργματα (pragmata). Pragmata is the root for our English
word 'pragmatic' and
originally also contains the connotations of utility that the
English 'thing' and German 'Ding'
lack.
Now that we have briefly outlined the Heideggerian conception of
worldhood and the
original disposition of Dasein to its world as one of concern it is
now possible to outline
Heidegger's account of the totality of equipment. The account of
equipment provided in
Being and Time pre-figures in important ways Heidegger's later
account of modern
technology. As Richard Cohen puts it, “the source of Heidegger's
later “question of
technology” is to be found in the earlier analyses in Being and
Time of...the world as a
“totality of equipment.”24 For now we shall merely present the
account of the totality of
equipment here. Once the later argument of technology is also
exhibited it will become
possible to examine these accounts side by side. Not only will the
structural symmetries and
divergences between the account of equipment and Heidegger's later
thought concerning
technology be of importance to take note of. More critical still
will be to arrive at an
understanding of how, clear symmetries notwithstanding, the account
of the totality of
equipment in Being and Time is put forward as a corrective to the
present-at-hand Cartesian
notion of the world as res extensa, while the account of technology
put forward in
Heidegger's later writings describes technological metaphysics as a
danger to our very Being.
Equipment is defined by Heidegger as “those entities which we
encounter in
concern.”25 However, it would be wrong to think of each item of
equipment as an
23 Ibid., 96.
24 Richard Cohen, “Heidegger's Dasein-Analytic of Instrumentality
in Being and Time and the Thinking of the ‘Extreme Danger’ of the
Question of Technology, and Frederick Tonnies’ Community and
Society,” Philosophy Today 54, no. S52 (January 2010): 92.
25 Heidegger, Being and Time, 97.
14
independent entity. Since equipment is supposed to be understood in
terms of pragmatic
instrumental relations or reasoning, an entity only constitutes an
equipment in relation to a
wider context of the totality of equipment. For example, a hammer
as hammer is only what it
is insofar as it is available to serve the purpose of hammering.
This implies that there is
something to be hammered, which further implies some end goal for
the sake of which the
hammering is done, for example the construction of a house of which
the end is to provide
shelter. The being of the object as a mere res extensa begins and
ends with the objects'
particular geometrical dimensions within the coordinates of the
world as a plane of space-
time. No such isolation of entities can be correctly affirmed in
the instrumental reason of the
totality of equipment, insofar as instrumentality is concerned with
means that are necessarily
for the sake of some ends, which are not themselves ends in
themselves. This is what is
meant when Heidegger says that “taken strictly, there 'is' no such
thing as an equipment. To
the Being of any equipment there always belongs a totality of
equipment, in which it can be
this equipment that it is.”26 When we take hold of the hammer as a
piece of equipment
belonging to a totality of instrumental assignments and references
we are encountering and
understanding the hammer as what it is in what Heidegger calls a
ready-to-hand mode
(Zuhandenheit), as distinguished from the present-at-hand mode of
representing it as this iron
attached to this wood.
This discussion of the totality of equipment, which circumscribes
the world of entities
as encountered in readiness-to-hand, leads to a brief discussion of
Nature in the context of the
role of materials within the totality of equipment. In addition to
formal teleological
references of equipment towards other facets of the totality of
equipment, there is also a
reference to materials used and produced for various ends.
Heidegger maintains that these
materials even before they have been fashioned into tools are
already ready-to-hand in an
important sense:
26 Ibid.
15
In equipment that is used, 'Nature' is discovered along with it by
that use—the 'Nature' we find in natural products. Here, however,
“Nature” is not to be understood as that which is just
present-at-hand, nor as the power of Nature. The wood is a forest
of timber, the mountain a quarry of rock; the river is water-
power, the wind is 'in the sails'...If its kind of Being as
ready-to-hand is disregarded, this 'Nature' itself can be
discovered and defined simply in its pure presence-at-hand. But
when this happens, the Nature which 'stirs and strives', which
assails us and enthralls us as landscape, remains hidden. The
botanist's plants are not the flowers of the hedgerow; the 'source'
which the geographer establishes for a river is not the 'springhead
in the dale'.27
One might consider at the outset that Heidegger's discussion of the
totality of
equipment and the ready-to-hand mode of Being-in-the-world applies
only within the
enclosure of anthropogenic artifices and activities. This could be
taken to imply that, outside
of the dominion of immediate human practical activity, nature
persists in a present-at-hand
way, as “the botanist's plants”28 for instance. However, Heidegger
instead situates nature
within the totality of equipment through an appeal to the materials
it provides as being
already part of Dasein's environs. In the above Heidegger is using
the term environment to
mean simply surroundings rather than the ecosystem that is commonly
associated with the
term in ecological discourse, for which the term Nature is
employed. Nature is not primarily
something we encounter present-at-hand as an astronomer preoccupied
with their
observations and calculations. This naturalistic conception of
nature is instead a founded
mode of understanding the world that requires abstraction from the
everyday world of
concern in order to take form.
A point that shall be taken up for consideration later with respect
to what Heidegger
says about Nature here is the introduction of a third mode of
conceiving of it neither as
present-at-hand, nor as ready-to-hand, but instead as “the power of
Nature.”29 While the
power of Nature is here mentioned in passing, the process of the
unlocking of latent energies
in Nature will play an important role in Heidegger's later argument
about technological
27 Ibid., 100.
16
metaphysics. Additionally, in the later account it will be
precisely the subjugation of nature
to instrumental ends that becomes an issue for Heidegger. While the
technological
domination of nature is clearly predicated on the subjection of
nature to calculability and
present-at-hand understanding, the ultimate result is a metaphysics
of endless instrumentality.
Nature in the later account is not taken merely as present-at-hand,
but rather its essence is
cached out in a network of instrumental relations, not unlike
materials within the totality of
equipment of Being and Time. This is seemingly in contradiction
with the claim in Being and
Time that we must encounter Nature as ready-to-hand in order to
have this more primary
engagement with it as it is in itself. These considerations can
only be fully considered after
an exposition of Heidegger's later account of modern technology is
given, however.
We shall now turn our attention to Heidegger's doctrine of truth.
Without a clear
understanding of how Heidegger conceives of truth as distinct from
the traditional
correspondence theory of truth, the entirety of his thought,
including his later philosophy of
technology, will remain unclarified. This theory of truth is
articulated as part of the central
argument in Being and Time, appearing respectively in the
introduction during his discussion
of phenomenology, and receiving a more extended exposition at the
end of division one.
Heidegger explicates his understanding of phenomenology as a method
of philosophy by
providing an interpretation of the notions of phenomenon and logos,
which provide the
etymological roots of the term phenomenology. The topic of truth
first appears in Being and
Time during the consideration of logos provided during this
clarification of phenomenology.
The Greek word logos is often translated as 'word', 'discourse',
and 'reason.'
Heidegger interprets logos generally as an activity or process
where through language we let
something be seen. Logos can either be true or false according to
this conception of it.
However, Heidegger insists that with respect to truth and falsehood
“here everything depends
on our steering clear of any conception of truth which is
constructed in the sense of
'agreement'.”30 Heidegger suggests that in the Greek concept of
logos truth is not simply
30 Ibid., 56.
constituted by technical agreement between mental representations
or the meanings of
linguistic terms and a state of affairs in the world. He contends
instead that the concept of
truth operative in logos is more accurately understood through a
transliteration of the Greek
word for truth, λθεια (alethia), as unconcealment. Under this
conception of truth “the
'Being-true' of the λγος [logos]”31 directly implies that “the
entities of which one is talking
must be taken out of their hiddenness...that is, they must be
discovered.”32 Conversely,
falsehood is not for Heidegger simply disagreement between
propositions and states of
affairs in the actual world. Accordingly, “Being false (ψεδεσθαι
[pseudesthai]) amounts to
deceiving in the sense of covering up...: putting something in
front of something (in such a
way as to let it be seen) and thereby passing it off as something
which it is not.”33 In putting
forward this interpretation of truth as unconcealment, Heidegger is
able to situate truth and
falsehood into a dynamic of revealing and hiddenness that presents
falseness as a positive
phenomenon and truth becomes presented as a privation of a covering
up in the sense of a
freeing from concealment, or a dis-covering.
In order to get a clearer picture of what Heidegger is attempting
to undercut with this
definition of truth as unconcealment (alethia), as well as what is
at stake in this formulation,
we shall now turn to the exposition of this concept that is
presented in section 44 of Being
and Time. Heidegger formulates his concept of truth in opposition
to the correspondence
theory of truth that has held sway in Western thought as far back
as antiquity. A large part of
the argument in Being and Time is an attack on Cartesian modernism,
and in particular the
subject-object distinction underlying it. In addition to presenting
a distorted and artificial
model of our experience of the world that does not hold up to
phenomenological inspection,
this modernism is likewise bolstered by a conception of truth
bewitched by intractable
31 Ibid.
18
theoretical difficulties that do not accurately present how truth
functions as a phenomenon in
the world.
The traditional conception of truth says that truth is an agreement
between a concept
or proposition, and the thing about which the concept or
proposition is referring. Heidegger
draws attention to the inadequacy of this correspondence theory by
asking “with regard to
what do intellectus and res agree?”34 In unpacking the formulation
of truth as agreement
between a judgment and a real state of affairs, Heidegger
identifies the difficulty of
explaining what the precise meaning of agreement is as a problem of
the interaction between
the judgment “as an ideal content”35 and the thing about which the
judgment is made as
something real—and therefore not ideal. Instead of attempting to
provide an account of how
ideal representations can interact with or become related to real
entities in order to produce
an agreement that is true, Heidegger proposes to attend directly to
the phenomenon of
demonstration in order to clarify this problem of agreement.
In the act of demonstrating or confirming an assertion about an
entity, what is known
after the assertion has come to be demonstrated is not the
correctness of a subjective mental
representation. This is because “asserting is a way of Being
towards the Thing itself that is”
and “to say that an assertion “is true” signifies that it uncovers
the entity as it is in itself.”36
That we can say even prior to the explicit demonstration of the
truth of an assertion that the
assertion was about the entity itself and not instead about a
mental representation of that
entity. Rather than agreement mediating an intellectual
representation to a state of affairs in
reality, truth has the structure of an immanent relationship
between phenomena that show
themselves and Dasein.
In order to illustrate his point about assertion Heidegger employs
the example of a
person who makes an assertion about a picture hanging on a wall
they are not currently
34 Ibid., 258.
35 Ibid., 259.
36 Ibid., 260-261.
19
observing, and then verifying that assertion. This person makes the
true assertion “that 'the
picture on the wall is hanging askew'”37 with their back turned to
the wall. When they turn
around, they demonstrate to themselves that the assertion about the
picture on the wall is
actually correct. It is indeed hanging askew. In confirming the
assertion about the picture, the
agreement between “our 'knowledge' or 'what is known'”38 can only
be said to subsist as far
as the expression “what is known” is understood in a way that “is
phenomenally
appropriate.”39 What would be phenomenally inappropriate would be
to understand “what is
known” as the mental representations of the picture the person may
have in mind when
making the assertion about the picture before looking at the real
picture itself. The assertion
is not in any way mediated by a mental representation, for this
would be to say that the
agreement between knowledge and what is known means that the
assertion was really about
qualia, in which case the assertion would have to be qualified
along the lines 'I will see a
subjective representation of a picture hanging askew on a wall'
instead of simply 'the picture
is hanging askew'. If one does not understand the truth of the
assertion as representing
agreement between the knowledge of the entity and the entity
itself, this results in an
unnecessary multiplication of mediating subjective representations
in between our assertions
and the real phenomena about which the correspondence theory also
asserts propositions are
ultimately about. For Heidegger, truth is instead a process where
phenomena show
themselves as they are directly to human beings without mediation
by any intermediary
metaphysical entities.
Having provided this summary exposition of several key concepts and
arguments
from Being and Time it should now be possible to turn our attention
to the later writings.
After providing an exposition of Heidegger's philosophy of
technology (Chapter Two), we
shall turn our attention to his proclamation from the posthumously
published Der Spiegel
37 Ibid., 260.
20
interview that cybernetics is the queen of the (logistical)
sciences. This will be done by
looking at “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking” in
which Heidegger himself
explicitly unpacks this claim about cybernetics (Chapter Three).
After this, the significance
of cybernetics as an event in the history of Western metaphysics
will be assessed through
several other places in his writing where he explicitly addresses
the role of cybernetics.
21
TECHNOLOGY AS METAPHYSICS
In this chapter we shall attempt to provide a clarification of
Heidegger's account of
technology as it is explicated in his 1949 lecture “The Question
Concerning Technology.”
This will lay the groundwork for understanding the role technology
plays in Heidegger's later
thought, help us understand developments in his thinking about the
question of Being that
took place after abandoning the project of completing Being and
Time, and finally allow us to
raise the question of the central place the field of cybernetics in
his later thought.
At the outset of “The Question Concerning Technology” Heidegger
declares that his
aim is “to prepare a free relationship”40 to technology where “The
relationship will be free if
it opens our human existence to the essence of technology.”41 At
the outset, then, the reader
should be aware that this is not to be a disinterested cataloging
of the nature of technology,
but that the argument Heidegger is about to lay out for us is
specifically aimed at in some
way making possible a certain relationship to technology, which
presumably at present does
not exist. A second clarification is also immediately necessary to
take note of. The free
relationship between human beings and technology that is supposedly
being prepared can
only be realized if such a relationship “opens our human existence
to the essence of
technology.”42 At stake then is not simply our relationship to
technology in terms of the way
we use technology—in which case the philosophical preparation of a
“free” relationship to
40 Martin Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology,” in The
Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William
Lovitt (New York: Harper, 1977), 3.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
22
technology might read something like a laundry list of moral dos
and don'ts. Instead we are
specifically called by Heidegger to consider the relationship
between human beings and the
essence of technology. This is what is meant by Heidegger when he
says that “technology is
not equivalent to the essence of technology.”43 A brief discussion
of the notion of essence
and the way in which Heidegger employs it is thus called for before
developing Heidegger's
account of technology.
In the present age the notion of essence has been subject to much
abuse and
misunderstanding. Without getting into common misunderstandings
about the traditional
ontological distinction between existentia and essentia, it is
important to note that
Heidegger's notion of essence builds on this distinction in
important ways that will become
obvious when his argument about the essence of technology is
developed. Heidegger lets us
know that he has something like the traditional notion of essence
in mind in saying that
“according to ancient doctrine, the essence of a thing is
considered to be what the thing is.
We ask the question concerning technology when we ask what it
is.”44 In ontology the notion
of essence is traditionally meant to indicate the 'what it is' of a
given thing, and this is
generally cached out in terms of a discussion of what kind of thing
that particular thing is.
Generally, these sorts of accounts rely on a distinction between
accidental and essential
properties of a given thing. At the present moment, I might feel
cold and utter the phrase 'I
am cold.' This does not mean that my essence is to be cold, and
this is clearly enough
understood when at a later point I am no longer cold, yet the fact
that I am no longer cold
does not change the fact that I am what I am as a human being in
any way. My coldness was
accidental to my being, rather than being essential. I am what I am
regardless of whether or
not I am hot or cold. The semantics of this example might be a
little confusing, but this is an
accident of the English language. Had I given this example in
French instead, for instance, 'I
am cold' would become 'j'ai froid'' where the verb avoir (to have)
serves the function of the
43 Ibid., 4.
23
'to be' in the English phrase. Those properties that can be
subtracted from an entity without
thereby causing it to no longer be the kind of being that it is are
considered accidental.
Heidegger appeals to the traditional account in his own discussion
of essence at the
beginning of “The Question Concerning Technology” in saying that
“when we are seeking
the essence of 'tree,' we have to become aware that That which
pervades every tree, as tree, is
not itself a tree that can be encountered among all the other
trees.”45 The essence of the tree
is that in virtue of which we understand the tree to be a
tree.
It would be an error, however, to presume that Heidegger himself
subscribes to the
traditional account of essence. Within “The Question Concerning
Technology” itself he
argues that the notion of essence will fail adequately to describe
the essence of technology if
it is thought of in the traditional manner in which essential
properties of beings organize
those beings within a genus-species relationship. What, then, is
Heidegger's notion of
essence? How can it be that in attempting to formulate the essence
of technology that the
answer Heidegger arrives at does not present to us an argument
establishing a universal of
which all technological artifacts are particulars in which this
universal is instantiated? This
question is one that has only arisen because I have not followed
Heidegger's argument
establishing the essence of technology step by step. The open
questions surrounding
Heidegger's notion of essence can be answered by appealing to
another text in which
Heidegger directly addresses this issue.
Trisha Glazebrook provides a helpful summary of Heidegger's account
of what he
takes essence to be in her book entitled Heidegger's Philosophy of
Science. Since Being and
Time, Heidegger's thought has sought to arrive at a more primordial
understanding of Being,
and an important part of this task is to strip away centuries of
misunderstandings that
Heidegger diagnoses as stemming from a transformation of philosophy
and ontology in the
West into metaphysics, where Being itself becomes represented as if
it were itself a being.
45 Ibid.
Glazebrook illustrates how Heidegger's conception of essence is
derived from this reading of
the history of Western philosophy in the following passage, which
is reproduced here in full:
In Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger argues that “essence”
becomes ambiguous when Plato interprets being as ιδα [idea]. It is
with Plato that “essence” comes to mean that something is and what
something is, the ambiguity that makes the distinction between
essentia and existentia possible. But, argues Heidegger, the
“substantive 'Wesen' did not originally mean 'whatness,' quiddity,
but enduring as presence” (IM 72/EM 55). When Plato changes its
meaning to “whatness,” φσις [physis] no longer means what is, but
rather means a copy, a mere appearance (IM 183-84/EM 140).
Heidegger seeks to retrieve the earlier meaning of φσις, and hence
an earlier possibility of essence, in the notion of enduring
presence.46
The traditional ontological conception of essence is rooted in the
Platonic conception
of the Being of beings as ιδα, or form. In the Platonic metaphysics
a distinction is drawn
between the form of a thing that determines what it is and the
matter, which appears in one
form or another. In order to get behind this metaphysical
conception of Being, Heidegger, in
his Introduction to Metaphysics, seeks to analyze the etymology of
the word Being starting
all the way back from its Indo-Germanic roots. According to
Heidegger the word “Being”
(across Latin, Greek, and German) can be traced back to two
Indo-Germanic roots.
According to his argument, “the oldest and authentic stem word is
es, Sanskrit asus, life, the
living...the self-standing”47 This stem is also the root of the
Greek eimi (to be, live) and einai
(present infinitive of eimi) as well as the Latin esse (to be) and
finally the German ist (is) and
sein (being). The other root of the word “Being” is the
Indo-Germanic bhu. The Greek φσις
[physis] relies on this stem, which emerges in the Greek as phuo.
Heidegger translates the
Greek stem phuo as “to emerge, to hold sway, to come to a stand
from out of itself and to
remain standing,”48 as opposed to the traditional interpretation
that simply interprets it as
“growing.” Heidegger then turns his attention to the stem of the
German word for Being
46 Glazebrook, Heidegger's Philosophy of Science, 212.
47 Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Gregory
Fried and Richard Polt (New Haven, CT, USA: Yale University Press,
2000), 75.
48 Ibid.
25
(sein), wes. In “The Question Concerning Technology” the German
Wesen is at first
deployed in its conventional contemporary meaning as essence. In
his Introduction to
Metaphysics Heidegger argues that if one looks to the etymology of
the term Wesen, then it
becomes clear that this term did not indicate whatness or quidditas
(i.e. essence according to
the traditional ontological account) but rather “enduring as
present.”49 This original meaning
of essence has been buried over by the metaphysics of Plato that
conceives of the Being of
beings as eternal immaterial forms, where the Being of beings
becomes itself a being as an
identifiable universal that is accessible to the intellect by way
of dialectical examination.
This superficial summary of Heidegger's account of essence as
presence undoubtedly
leaves many questions dangling in the air. The precise steps in the
argument and the meaning
of its conclusion probably remain obscure at this point, if not
downright confusing.
Fortunately, in turning to the argument in “The Question Concerning
Technology” we find
that Heidegger presents us with a concrete example illustrating
both the explanatory power of
his notion of essence as presence, as well as an account of the
intimate relationship between
coming to presence and Being. I will now attempt to explicate
Heidegger's argument
establishing the essence of technology in “The Question Concerning
Technology.” I will
have to do this by following Heidegger's argument move by move in
order to show how each
step builds off of the previous moves in the argument and
ultimately serve to allow him to
arrive at his conclusion that the essence of technology is what he
calls “Enframing” [Ge-
stell].
For all of the novelty of Heidegger's account of essence and his
persistent attempts at
getting outside of the history of philosophy in order to recover
some form of pre-
metaphysical understanding of being, the argument establishing the
essence of technology in
“The Question Concerning Technology” follows a format reminiscent
of many of the
Platonic dialogues. Initially a preliminary common-sense definition
of technology is put
forward, then the true essence of technology is teased out of this
merely correct first
49 Ibid., 76.
26
formulation. As we shall see, however, the essence of technology is
not arrived at through the
submission of proposed definitions of this essence to various
dialectical refinements. The
initial, merely correct definition of technology Heidegger puts
forward is that it is “a means
to an end”50 and “a human activity.”51 While this instrumental
definition of technology is
undeniably correct, Heidegger maintains that it does not in and of
itself help us in
understanding the essence of technology. In order to move to a
deeper understanding of
technology by starting with this merely correct formulation of
technology as “an
instrumentum,”52 it is necessary to examine the notion of
instrumentality in further detail.
Instrumentality, being defined by relationships between means to
their respective ends,
necessarily rests upon some kind of notion of causality in order to
establish some grounds
upon which certain means can be deployed to produce (or rather,
cause) certain ends.
Heidegger's analysis of the notion of causality with respect to
technology will eventually lead
to a discussion of truth from the standpoint of which it will
become possible for him to
formulate the essence of technology.
Heidegger's discussion of causality does not center on the modern
conception of
causality purely as physical cause and effect, such as is
considered in the work of Hume.
Instead, the discussion of causality is broached by way of a
discussion of Aristotle’s doctrine
of causality. According to the Aristotelian doctrine, every entity
has four causes. The four
causes are the material cause, the formal cause, the efficient
cause, and the final cause. In the
case of a pencil, the material cause would be the wood, graphite,
eraser rubber, and so on, out
of which the pencil was constructed. The formal cause of a pencil
would just simply be the
form (in the Platonic sense) that the object takes, in this case
the form of a pencil, its “pencil-
ness.” The efficient cause of a pencil is the pencil maker.
Generally, the efficient cause of a
50 Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology,” 4.
51 Ibid.
52 Ibid., 5. Lovitt provides here an instructive footnote in which
he clarifies that “Instrumentum signifies that which functions to
heap or build up or to arrange.” This is significant since it
foreshadows Heidegger's concept of the standing-reserve
[Bestand].
27
thing is whatever agency or power brings that thing into being, be
it an artifact of human
handiwork or a naturally occurring being. The final cause of a
thing being its telos, i.e., end
or purpose—the final cause of the pencil would be writing.
According to Heidegger's argument causality lets “what is not yet
present arrive into
presencing.”53 From the earlier discussion of Heidegger's account
of essence it should be
clear that what he means here is that causality indicates the
plurality of factors whereby
beings eventually come to be presented to us as the kinds of beings
that they are. From this
standpoint it becomes clear why Heidegger must make appeal to the
Aristotelian notion of
causality rather than the traditional modern conception of physical
cause and effect that
represents beings as merely present-at-hand matter. This
presentation of causality leads to a
discussion of the nature of how fourfold causality allows us to
understand how the four
causes “are unifiedly ruled over by a bringing that brings what
presences into appearance.”54
A definition of this “bringing” is to be found in Plato's Symposium
according to Heidegger,
who proceeds to formulate it by translating a line from Diomata's
speech (205b) as “every
occasion for whatever passes over and goes forward into presencing
from that which is not
presencing is poisis, is bringing forth.”55 This is obviously an
interpretive translation of
Plato based on Heidegger's own (partially) interpretive etymology
of the word “Being.” The
traditional translation of this line reads, “All creation or
passage of non-being into being is
poetry or making.”56 In Greek poisis, while formally being the word
for poetry (and the
word from which our term “poetry” is derived), is also understood
as any other kind of
making generally. The activity of a shoemaker is just as much
poisis as the activity of
Homer. Poitic becoming is not simply limited to human creation or
craftsmanship however,
but also the coming into being from non-being of natural entities.
Heidegger makes note of
53 Ibid., 10.
54 Ibid.
55 Ibid.
56 Plato, Symposium 205b in The Dialogues of Plato, trans. Benjamin
Jowett, vol. 1 (New York: Bantam Books, 1986), 330.
28
this in remarking that “physis also, the arising of something from
out of itself, is a bringing-
forth, poisis. Physis is indeed poisis in the highest sense.”57
Here then we can see
Heidegger establishing what he sees to be a more primordial, and,
importantly, intimate
connection between production, cause, and nature, through his
appeal to the Greek concept of
ποησις (poisis).
The next move in the argument is important because it is here where
Heidegger not
only establishes his grounds for claiming that technology is an
epoch of metaphysics, but the
next move will also be critical for understanding precisely how the
break between pre-
modern technology and the phenomenon of modern technology is to be
understood. Recall
that the formulation of poisis Heidegger provides is based on his
translation of Plato's
exposition of the concept. Poisis is supposed to be a
bringing-forth into presencing from
non-presence (absence). Contained already in this formulation then
is a presupposition that
whatever is being brought-forth is already in the very act of
coming into being, related to the
human being as the one for whom things can be present. No further
premises are needed for
Heidegger to take the next step in his argument, because coming
into presence already
necessarily implies coming out of concealment into unconcealment.
He is therefore allowed
to make the observation that poisis is not merely a descriptive
concept of the process of
production of objects, but more importantly it is a way in which
beings in the world can be
made known to us and appear before us. Once it has been established
that any coming to
presence necessarily takes place within “...what we call
revealing,”58 Heidegger wastes no
time in reminding us of his doctrine from section 44 of Being and
Time that truth is
unconcealment. A lengthy translator's note from Lovitt occasions
the relationship between
what has been translated as revealing [Entbergen] and what is
translated as unconcealment
[Unverborgenheit] in order to draw attention to the fact that the
revealing is meant to be
understood as the activity of unconcealing. It is also worth
briefly digressing to make the
57 Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology,” 10.
58 Ibid., 11.
29
point that there is an ambiguity in the term bergen, where not only
does it mean to conceal,
but also to shelter and to save or rescue. Heidegger will go on to
use this double meaning in
order to make some suggestive remarks about how we might be able to
eventually enter into
a free relationship with the essence of technology.
To briefly summarize the argument so far: it was said that
technology was a means to
an end. In order to understand what this instrumental definition of
technology could tell us
about the essence of technology it was necessary to examine the
fourfold Aristotelian
causality that grounds our understanding of this instrumentality.
In examining fourfold
causality it became apparent that causal accounts serve to help us
explain how that which is
not-yet is said to come into being. The type of making, or rather,
bringing of what is not-yet
into being that is under consideration was known to the Greeks as
poisis, of which physis is
a particular type of bringing. Somewhat clearer would be to use the
conventional expression
“making” for the activity of poisis, however there is a clear sense
in which when one
considers poisis in terms of its function as a mode of the
dispensation of truth, bringing-
forth is clearly preferable in order to avoid implying that Being
acts as some sort of Platonic
Demiurge. Bringing-forth implies that whatever is brought forth is
being brought forth into or
towards something, and that something turns out to be altheia, or
rather revealing—the
realm of truth, understood as unconcealment.
One might be forgiven for wondering what the non-trivial
significance of this is. In
this first step of the argument Heidegger is demonstrating that
instrumentality is dependent
on some notion of how it is that beings come into being out of
non-being, insofar as some
notion of causality is necessary to render instrumentality
intelligible. The process of
describing how the particular being in question is brought forth
into being cannot be
distinguished into an “objective” non-epistemological aspect where
the thing becomes what
it is and then by some separate process having to do with the
optical production of qualia it
becomes an object of human cognition, and thereby becomes an object
of correct or incorrect
propositions postulated by the human subject. Its bringing-forth is
already its appearance into
unconcealment. Its coming into being necessarily entails its
already coming into being within
the realm of truth, which is not separated from the phenomenal
world as in Kant. These
distinctions might seem purely academic until one considers that
the way in which a being
comes to be necessarily determines what it is—its what-ness or
essence. Now that Heidegger
30
has explicated the co-dependence of cause, production, and truth he
is able to from this
standpoint begin formulating his argument that “technology is a way
of revealing.”59
Heidegger establishes that technology is a mode of revealing by
returning to the
notion of poisis. This is done by considering the Greek root of the
word technology, techn.
Techn and epistm are two types of knowledge that designate in turn
practical know-how,
or the type of knowledge possessed by a craftsman relative to the
craft (techn), and
theoretical knowledge of the type possessed, for example, by
geometers (epistm).
Importantly, “techn is the name not only for the activities and
skills of the craftsman, but
also for the arts of the mind and the fine arts.”60 This means that
techn is originally in the
Greek understood as the mode of knowledge primarily concerned with
poitic production.
Heidegger characterizes techn as a mode of revealing that “reveals
whatever does not bring
itself forth and does not yet lie here before us”61 thereby
seemingly erasing any essential
distinction between the production of a particular being and the
revealing of that thing. This
move is seemingly pre-figured already in Being and Time where
Heidegger asserts the ready-
to-hand as the primordial mode in which beings in their being are
disclosed to Dasein as
opposed to the mode of being present-at-hand.
Heidegger established that technology is a mode of revealing in
providing his
interpretation of the relationship between techn and poisis. It
should be readily apparent
that this account does not describe how we ordinarily think about
technology today. Common
sense tells us that technology is a means to an end, and a human
activity. Heidegger has put
before us the Greek understanding of technology that under his
interpretation constitutes a
mode of the revealing of beings. Is techn then, the essence of
technology? No. The essence
of modern technology, while still taking the form of an essential
revealing, is something
altogether different from the poitic bringing-forth that has been
the subject of our attention
59 Ibid., 12.
60 Ibid., 13.
61 Ibid., 14.
31
up until now. Prima facie, it seems counter-intuitive for us to
suggest that the same kind of
revealing is operative in the activity of a pre-modern artisan and
a modern factory. Indeed, it
is banal to remark that modern machine technology has brought about
a revolution in the
nature of technological implements, or at the very least it has
multiplied and optimized these
implements to the point where it has ushered in a fundamentally
different historical epoch.
Heidegger indeed argues that an essential distinction between
pre-modern and
modern technology exists. Technology remains a mode of revealing.
However, this revealing
“does not unfold into a bringing-forth in the sense of poisis.”62
Heidegger argues that with
modern technology a process is underway whereby the very process of
revealing is being
interfered with at the most fundamental level, thereby distorting
the essence of everything
that comes to presence. This appears to be an extraordinary claim,
to be sure. In order to
evaluate this claim it is not enough to reject it out of hand as
being hyperbolic. The argument
must be considered on its own terms, and in the interest of doing
this we must now, as
Heidegger entreats us to do at the beginning of “The Question
Concerning Technology”,
“pay heed to the way, and not...fix our attention on isolated
sentences and topics.”63
How precisely is it that modern technology reveals entities in a
way that must be
distinguished from the poitic revealing of techn, which has just
been explicated above?
Heidegger begins by raising the objection that the account of techn
as a mode of revealing is
only tenable within the specificy of pre-modern artisanship and
that this account cannot “fit
modern machine-powered technology.”64 It is supposed that modern
technology must be
differentiated from pre-modern technology “because it is based on
modern physics as an
exact science.”65 This conception of the “received view that
technology owes its birth to
science [and that] Modern technology emerged only when science let
itself avail in a specific
62 Ibid.
32
area”66 is one that Heidegger will throw into question by
highlighting the way in which a
“mutual relationship between technology and physics”67 subsists—and
this in such a way
that it becomes apparent that modern physics itself is grounded in
the essence of technology.
We are getting ahead of ourselves here though. It has not yet even
been established what the
essence of technology even is.
Heidegger proceeds to paint a picture of the differences between
the poitic mode of
revealing that the first part of his argument was dedicated to
outlining and the kind of
revealing as he sees being connected to the fundamental
transformation that takes place in
modern technology. We are told at the outset that:
the revealing that holds sway throughout modern technology does not
unfold into a bringing-forth in the sense of poisis. The revealing
that rules in modern technology is a challenging [Heraustfordern],
which puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy
that can be extracted and stored as such.68
To illustrate this difference Heidegger examines the case of a
pre-industrial windmill.
The windmill does not challenge because “its sails...are left
entirely to the wind's
blowing...the windmill does not unlock energy from the air currents
in order to store it.”69 It
is this element of the unlocking of energy that is critical to
understanding how modern
technology is also a mode of revealing, and one that is indeed not
poitic. The key to
understanding the difference between bringing-forth and challenging
lies in the notion of
how in challenging energy is unlocked from nature and stored.
Heidegger goes on explicitly
to state that in this process of unlocking what was previously
dormant in nature becomes
unconcealed in saying:
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.
66 Ma and Van Brakel, “Heidegger’s Thinking on the ‘Same,’”
24.
67 Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology,” 14.
68 Ibid.
69 Ibid.
Unlocking, transforming, storing, distributing, and switching about
are ways of revealing.70
In the activity of unlocking energy that was previously concealed
the process of
unconcealment operative in challenging revealing does not merely
bring an entity into being
from non-being. Instead challenging revealing is operative
precisely in the sense that it
produces an excess of unconcealment, whereby energy concealed in
nature is unlocked,
stockpiled, and then deployed in turn to increase the stockpile.
Under this technological
revealing, all beings that have not yet been stockpiled are merely
awaiting to be extracted and
stockpiled, as if the Earth were simply one warehouse and the
process of mining was a
process whereby the ore is transferred from one stockpile to
another. Heidegger describes
this determination of beings as a “standing-reserve” (Bestand).
This process of constant
challenging revealing, stockpiling, and then mobilization of the
standing reserve in order to
effect yet more challenging revealing constitutes something like a
positive unconcealment
feedback loop, where the more energy is unconcealed or unlocked out
of nature the resulting
increase in productive forces leads to yet more energy being
extracted, transformed,
stockpiled, and deployed. It is precisely because challenging sets
the demand for more and
more energy on nature that Heidegger is able to make the claim that
with the advent of the
hydro-electric dam the coming to presence of the Rhine is
transformed into “a water power
supplier,” which “derives from out of the essence of the power
station.”71 The being of
beings becomes understood as standing-reserve, and even nature
itself becomes conceived as
merely untapped natural resources.
It is this circuit of surplus unconcealment and constant
stockpiling and transformation
that is distinctive of the mode of revealing that constitutes the
essence of technology.
Heidegger names this challenging mode of revealing Ge-stell, which
is translated
conventionally in English as either “Enframing” or “positionality.”
The term Ge-stell itself
shall be returned to in short order but first we should like to
draw our attention to the passage
70 Ibid., 16.
34
in which Heidegger initially formulates this term in order to
arrive at some clarity about
precisely what is supposed to be designated here:
Modern technology as an ordering revealing is, then, no merely
human doing...That challenging gathers man into ordering. This
gathering concentrates man upon ordering the real as
standing-reserve...That which primordially unfolds the mountains
into mountain ranges and courses through them in their folded
togetherness is the gathering that we call “Gebrig” [mountain
chain]. That original gathering from which unfold the ways in which
we have feelings of one kind or another we name “Gemüt”
[disposition]. We now name that challenging claim which gathers man
thither to order the self-revealing as standing-reserve: “Ge-
stell” [Enframing].72
There are two distinctive attributes of Enframing that distinguish
it from the kind of
revealing distinctive of techn, which we are now presented with an
opportunity to briefly
exhibit together side by side. The first element has already been
broached, that of the
continuous amplifying circuit in which energy is unlocked from
nature, whereby an
unconcealment comes to pass characterized not by bringing any
particular being into the
stock of human artifacts, but instead by the unlocking of pure
energy from out of nature
itself—which then sets in motion an ever-increasing circuit of
accumulation of natural
resources in a network of perpetual stockpiling, transformation,
and deployment. In this
technological circuit of production straightforward fourfold
causality becomes increasingly
difficult to appeal to for the process of production being
observed. Efficient causality is easy
enough to understand in the case of the activity of an individual
artisan. With modern
technology efficient causality disappears from direct control by a
single individual and
seemingly must be attributed to anonymous forces of production. The
transformation is also
apparent in the case of final causality. Consider the case of a
stockpile of coal, which is after
all the product of a coal mining operation. What is the final cause
of the coal? This is to be
determined at a later date. The coal is extracted with no final
cause in mind, simply to be
stockpiled as standing-reserve and given a proper function at a
later date.
72 Ibid., 19.
35
The process whereby fourfold causality slips from the grasp of the
human being and
the human being increasingly becomes a conduit facilitating the
continuation of the circuit of
challenging ever more resources for stockpiling into the
standing-reserve is called by
Heidegger “gathering.” The human being is not challenged directly
as a unit of standing-
reserve—yet. Rather than being directly challenged by Enframing
ourselves, we are gathered
into this circuit with no apparent end goal other than increasing
stockpiling and aimless
transformation of the standing-reserve. So then, taken together,
the positive unconcealment
feedback loop and the “gathering” of the human being in this
circuit designates the essence
of technology as that of a revealing Heidegger calls Ge-stell.
Since the essence of technology
is a mode of revealing, Heidegger's claim is that the essence of
technology is an epoch of
metaphysics—one in which we currently find ourselves seemingly
ensnared.
In returning to the subject of the relationship between modern
physics and modern
technology, Heidegger informs us that “modern physics is the herald
of Enframing”73 in the
sense that the operation it performs in quantifying nature lays the
groundwork for modern
machine-technology to arise. However, a certain priority is
maintained by the essence of
technology over modern physics since “modern science has become a
variety of technology
insofar as it embodies a notion of being as what is measurable and
thus posits nature into a
calculable objectivity, and insofar as the priority is given to
method and pre-determined
standards.”74 In The New Heidegger Miguel de Beistegui sees in
Heidegger's account of the
primacy of the essence of technology as determining modern science
an echo of what
Nietzsche called in The Will to Power “the victory of the
scientific method over science.”75
Already, then, the essence of technology as Enframing is present in
modern physics since the
modern conception of the physical world as res extensa “demands
that nature be orderable as
73 Ibid., 22.
74 Ma and Van Brakel, “Heidegger’s Thinking on the ‘Same,’”
38.
75 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. and ed. Walter
Kaufmann, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Penguin Random House,
1973), § 446. For the discussion from Beistegui see Miguel de
Beistegui, The New Heidegger (London: Bloomsbury, 2005),
102-103.
36
standing-reserve...that nature reports itself in some way or other
that is identifiable through
calculation and that it remains orderable as a system of
information.”76
Miguel de Beistegui makes an interesting point about the term
“Ge-stell,” which is
translated in English here as Enframing. He argues that “Ge-stell
is, quite literally, a
translation of the Greek systema.”77 He presents a rather
compelling argument for this
reading in breaking down the stems of both terms. The German Ge
indicates a gathering or
taking together of disparate parts, to lean on Heidegger's example
how the individual
mountains are said to constitute a chain. The Ge corresponds to the
Greek prefix “syn-,”
which means together. The German stellen means to stand or place
much in the same way
that the Greek istemi means to stand or set up. According to
Beistegui's reading, then,
Enframing not only sets up a planetary circuit of assemblages for
the mobilization and
stockpiling of the standing-reserve, but also the representational
system of technoscience
where nature is “orderable as a system of information.”78 Even
modern physics is under the
sway of the essence of technology:
The System designates the way in which things stand together at the
end of metaphysics, in the technological, and especially
technoscientific age. We speak today of physical, chemical and
biological systems, of ecosystems and information systems. We speak
of neural networks, research, media, commercial, political and
terrorist networks. What do these have in common? The fact that
they are considered from the point of view of their formal
structure, held together by the flow of information and