Heidegger on Technology

Aaron James Wendland, Christopher Merwin, Christos Hadjioannou, Aaron James Wendland, Christopher Merwin, Christos Hadjioannou, Aaron James Wendland, Christopher Merwin, Christos Hadjioannou

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781317200703
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

This collection offers the first comprehensive and definitive account of Martin Heidegger's philosophy of technology. It does so through a detailed analysis of canonical texts and recently published primary sources on two crucial concepts in Heidegger's later thought: Gelassenheit and Gestell. Gelassenheit, translated as 'releasement', and Gestell, often translated as 'enframing', stand as opposing ideas in Heidegger's work whereby the meditative thinking of Gelassenheit counters the dangers of our technological framing of the world in Gestell. After opening with a scholarly overview of Heidegger's philosophy of technology as a whole, this volume focuses on important Heideggerian critiques of science, technology, and modern industrialized society as well as Heidegger's belief that transformations in our thought processes enable us to resist the restrictive domain of modern techno-scientific practice. Key themes discussed in this collection include: the history, development, and defining features of modern technology; the relationship between scientific theories and their technological instantiations; the nature of human agency and the essence of education in the age of technology; and the ethical, political, and environmental impact of our current techno-scientific customs. This volume also addresses the connection between Heidegger's critique of technology and his involvement with the Nazis. Finally, and with contributions from a number of renowned Heidegger scholars, the original essays in this collection will be of great interest to students of Philosophy, Technology Studies, the History of Science, Critical Theory, Environmental Studies, Education, Sociology, and Political Theory.

1 The Task of Thinking in a Technological Age¹

Mark A. Wrathall

1. Ambivalence About Technology

There is no question that modern technology has brought tremendous benefits to humankind. By improving our capacity to supply the basic commodities of life (such as housing, food, clothing, and medical care), it has contributed to dramatic increases in health and wealth. Developments in technologies of transportation, building, and communication enrich our lives by opening up a multitude of new options for housing, work, and entertainment. Information technologies bypass old restrictions on the dissemination of knowledge, and are in the process of putting the whole sum of human science and learning at anyone’s fingertips. Technology has changed virtually every aspect of our lives. These changes are by and large experienced as improvements, because technology liberates us from unpleasant, time-consuming tasks, and liberates us for activities and opportunities unimaginable to previous generations or even to us ourselves in the not-so-distant past.

And yet, at a personal, anecdotal level, many people with whom I talk feel disquieted or even oppressed by technology. They find the rapid pace of technological change to be challenging and occasionally overwhelming. They report being paradoxically both more constantly in contact and simultaneously more isolated and alone as a result of the use of communication technologies. And many people worry that technology, in a myriad of small and subtle ways has invaded domains in which it not only doesn’t really belong. Think, for instance, of the way intimate relations are strained by “phubbing.” Besides such low-grade forms of frustration with technology’s tendency to invade domains from which it positively detracts, of course, there is also an intense anxiety provoked by the more spectacularly terrifying aspects of technological development—like the immense destructive forces wielded by a variety of state and non-state actors, or the growing power and ease with which biotechnology can be used to engineer the genome, social media can be used to mold public opinion, and governments and businesses can surveil and profile and manipulate their citizens and customers. But despite both the low-grade unease and intense anxieties that technology provokes, there is very little in the way of resistance to the ongoing expansion of our technological capabilities. This is perhaps because the initial euphoria and amazement at technological breakthroughs is intense and focused while the long-term effects on our form of life are diffuse and indistinct. As a result, it is hard to pinpoint at an individual level the way technology alters our preferences and our relationships with other people and with the world around us. It is also difficult for most people to see the social implications of any particular technological advance—for instance, the subtle reallocation or redistribution of harms, risks, and benefits across different groups that each incremental advance in technology brings along with it. In general, then, our recognition of the personal and social costs of technological developments lags far behind their adoption. And by the time we recognize how a particular technological innovation has altered our world, it is already so thoroughly woven into our practices that removing it would be unimaginably disruptive and costly.

It is little surprise, then, that so many people are profoundly ambivalent about technology. We’re enraptured and enthusiastic about the potential for life-enhancement that technology offers us, but many of us are also worried by a nagging sense that technology is “going too far.”

On Heidegger’s account of technology, our ambivalence ultimately is rooted in our pre-theoretic understanding of ontology—that is, in our sense that we distort ourselves and the entities we encounter in the world when we incorporate them into technological practices because those practices force us to impose on them a mode of being that doesn’t let them be in a way that is most their own. At first, Heidegger’s ontological analysis might strike one as too abstract and pallid to explain the anxieties we cataloged above. But on reflection, perhaps a significant aspect of our reaction to technology is rooted in the fact that, when technological practices find it so easy to manipulate, surveil, engineer, despoil, and destroy, this is only because humans and the natural world now show up to us as appropriately dealt with such ways. In characterizing our technological age, more fundamental than the proliferation of technological devices is the fact that all entities show up as apt objects for manipulation and control. When Heidegger claims that technology is a mode of revealing, he is pointing to just this changed way of entities showing up.

Most critical responses to Heidegger’s account of technology present some version of two primary arguments. The first is the charge that Heidegger’s apprehension about the advance of technology is rooted in an ontological conservatism. The second is the insistence that Heidegger’s ontological critique of technology results in a politically and socially debilitating form of fatalism.

According to the critics who raise the charge of ontological conservatism, Heidegger’s misgivings about technologization look like a nostalgic yearning for pre-technological modes of life—for instance, Black Forest peasantry, or ancient Greek polytheism. To the extent that the Heideggerian opposition to technology is rooted in such a nostalgia for bygone worlds and practices, it (like most other forms of conservative nostalgia) runs the risk of both understating the disadvantages of previous forms of life, and overstating the dangers of the present technological age. And, of course, it is possible that a distaste for technology is a reaction, not to the technological understanding of being as such, but to the current nascent state of advanced technology. For instance, a great deal of late 19th and early 20th century opposition to technology grew out of an anxiety that we humans were gradually being turned into mere “cogs in the machine” (a worry memorably depicted by Chaplin in Modern Times). This anxiety was appropriate to the role that human laborers were accorded by early industrial and mechanical forms of emerging technologies. Far more worrying now is the prospect that we humans are not even good enough to serve as mere cogs—the machines may soon dispense with us entirely. A pessimistic anxiety about the coming robot revolution might in turn be a shortsighted response to the current state of technological advancement. It is not, on the face of it, absurd to trust that there will be technological fixes for whatever problems each new technological development brings. Thus, the current state of technological advance can coherently be greeted either with a sense of progressive optimism or conservative pessimism. If the Heideggerian opposition to technology is to avoid appearing to be a curmudgeonly expression of the latter, betraying nothing more profound than a preference for a bygone form of life, we will need to argue convincingly that there is something important about us and the world that cannot be done justice within the technological mode of revealing.

The second main challenge to the Heideggerian critique of technology is the challenge of fatalism. If technology is not something we do, but rather a mode of disclosure that is not up to any of us, then it seems that we are helpless to change our circumstances. Heidegger himself describes technology as our “fate” or “destiny” (Geschick; see, e.g., GA 55: 202; GA 5, 289; GA 9: 340), and he asserts that

technology will never allow itself to be mastered, either positively or negatively, by a human doing … [It] will never allow itself to be overcome by men. That would mean, after all, that human beings are the master of being.

(GA 11: 116)

And yet, Heidegger also believes that a central task for our age is to prepare ourselves for the overcoming of technology. “The world civilization that is now only beginning will some day overcome the technological- scientific-industrial character” of our existence, he writes, but this overcoming will require a certain “preparedness of human beings.”²

The fatalist reading of Heidegger emphasizes passages like the former, and charges him with inconsistency whenever he makes claims like the latter. If Heidegger’s recommendations for resisting or overcoming technology are not to appear as, at best, superfluous or, at worst, incoherent, then we need to explain why the fatalistic-sounding passages don’t actually commit him to fatalism in the face of the growing technologization of the world. We’ll want to show how the fatalistic aspects of Heidegger’s view are, in fact, consistent with his emphasis on the need to prepare for an overcoming of technology. Of course, fatalism in the face of the accelerating spread of technology is a common feature of the ambivalence I outlined above. So there’s more at stake here than a merely scholarly dispute over Heidegger interpretation. I’d like to argue that Heidegger’s diagnosis of technology can explain both why we feel helpless to resist the technologization of the world, but also offers some insight into ways that we can prepare for overcoming the dangers of technology. Heidegger’s project aims to develop a more sober form of thoughtful engagement with technology, a form of engagement that is not at all ontologically conservative. But before I can say more about Heidegger’s positive project, I’d like to sketch out a Heideggerian response to both of the main lines of criticism—the charge of ontological conservatism and the charge of fatalism. This response depends on a proper understanding of what I call the universal and total grounds thesis (UTGT).

2. The Universal and Total Grounds Thesis

Heidegger articulates UTGT in passages like this:

metaphysics grounds an age, in that through a specific interpretation of what is and through a specific comprehension of truth it gives to that age the basis upon which it is essentially formed. This basis governs throughout all the appearances that distinguish the age.

(GA 5: 75)

I would reformulate the thesis in this way:

UTGT. Within each historical (metaphysical) age, there is a particular understanding of being in terms of which entities show up and make sense. This understanding of being is universal, meaning it determines every entity as such. It is also total, meaning it also governs every way that entities can relate to and interact with each other.

It is easy to see why such a thesis might create the appearance of fatalism. If a metaphysical understanding is both total and universal in the most expansive and absolute sense possible, one might naturally conclude that there is nothing we can do about it. So our first task is to specify more carefully what exactly is entailed in claiming that a metaphysic—a particular understanding of being—is universal and total.

We might note for starters that there seem to be obvious counter-examples to the idea that everything in our age is totally and universally technological in nature. For instance, although technology undoubtedly plays a decisive role in our world, there are communities, practices, and entities which are decidedly non-technological (think, for instance, of the Amish; some monastic orders; or indigenous populations in remote parts of the Amazon basin).

In addition, UTGT makes the transition between worlds enigmatic. Heidegger thinks that there has been a sequence of distinct metaphysical worlds—distinct in the sense that each one is organized around a different understanding of being. Each of these worlds, Heidegger believes, comes into existence, endures for a while, and then falls apart. But how can a new world arise or an old world break down if everything is universally and totally determined in terms of the understanding of being that prevails in the current world? Moreover, Heidegger clearly recognizes that different metaphysical worlds, each of which is universal and totalizing in its own right, can exist simultaneously side by side: “In the destiny of Being there is never a mere sequence [of epochs] one after another: now [the age of] Inventory (Gestell), afterwards ‘world and thing’; rather, there is always a passing by and simultaneity of the early and late” (GA 7: 176). He also holds that even within a particular metaphysical world, things can show up as not belonging to or fitting within that world.

On any charitable reading, then, it should be evident that Heidegger himself does not understand the universal and totalizing nature of a metaphysical world in simple-mindedly absolutist terms. We ought consequently to look for a way of thinking about the universal and totalizing character of a metaphysic that is consistent with Heidegger’s other claims about metaphysical epochs. The key to resolving the appearance of paradox is to see that UTGT is not primarily a thesis about what occurrent properties objects now possess; rather it is a thesis about a kind of “claim” or “demand” (Anspruch) that things (including us) stand under. At the birth of the modern age, for instance, Heidegger argues that “the claim (Anspruch) of pure reason came to predominate” and the way entities appear changed accordingly: “the most general determinations of the being of what is are to be projected on the ground and with the guidance of the most universal principles of pure reason” (GA 41, 119). From a modern perspective, the essential features of an entity are those in terms of which we can successfully reason about its interactions with other entities and thus secure it for scientific knowledge. The transition from the modern to the technological world was driven by a new claim coming to predominate in our experience of the world. “In all technological happenings (Vorgängen),” Heidegger argues, “a sense rules, a sense which lays claim (in Anspruch nimmt) to human actions and omissions, and which was not first invented and made by human beings” (GA 16: 526). What is characteristic of the technological age is not the demand or call to make everything knowable in accordance with the dictates of reason. Rather, the call that prevails is to reveal entities in terms of that about them which can render them reliably predictable and all ends smoothly achievable. The demand is not concerned with any particular substantive aim or goal or purpose, but rather with so organizing the world as to serve any aim whatsoever. Technology, as Heidegger puts it, discloses entities as amenable to “planning, calculation, arranging, breeding,” and it “makes demands on the entities that have come into its power in this way …, not with the intention of making progress toward a goal and ‘ideal,’ but rather for the sake of becoming itself” (GA 66: 26). A world in which everything shows up as organized “for the sake of becoming” is one in which no consequences are enduring, and in which no prior decisions constrain future actions—a world, that is, where we can at any moment revise our trajectory and revisit our choices. By arranging the world for the sake of becoming as such, technology discloses everything as an option. An option is something that can but need not be chosen. Moreover, choosing an option involves no genuine commitment to what is chosen. After the choice of one option, we are free to revisit the choice later and substitute another option for the one first selected. To “have options” is to retain our freedom.

Heidegger’s name for the basic ontological character of entities (including us humans) in the technological age is Bestand, perhaps best translated in this context as “stock”—as when we speak of the “stock” of consumable goods that are held in an inventory. In adopting this name for the ontological character of entities in the technological world, Heidegger points to the same defining elements as I do when I note that entities are increasingly experienced as options. When something is “in stock,” it is on hand and available for selection. Stock pieces are defined by their replaceability and mutual substitutability:

The stock-pieces are piece for piece the same. Their character as pieces demands uniformity. The uniformity of the pieces allows one piece to be substituted readily for the other, that means, to be set in the place of the other and thus be brought to its place. A stock-piece is replaceable by another. The piece is as a piece already set up toward replaceability.

(GA 79: 36–37)

Heidegger is careful to say that technological entities—“stock pieces”—are not indistinguishable or duplicate copies of one another. They are rather “uniform” or “the same” in the sense that we are just as satisfied by one as by the other, and thus are ready to substitute one for the other. And this, too, is a definitive characteristic of options: in choosing one option over another, there is no profound basis for the choice other than a passing whim—what I “feel like” at the moment.

In a technological age, then, the UTGT predicts that we will experience the world as calling on us or drawing us to transform everything into stock pieces, so that they can be placed into a vast inventory of options—a Gestell, in Heidegger’s terminology. (When Heidegger says that ours is an age of Gestell, he means that everything is...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Heidegger’s Thinking Through Technology
• 1 The Task of Thinking in a Technological Age
• 2 Im-position: Heidegger’s Analysis of the Essence of Modern Technology
• 3 Heidegger’s Critique of Techno-science as a Critique of Husserl’s Reductive Method
• 4 The Challenge of Heidegger’s Approach to Technology: A Phenomenological Reading
• 5 Letting Things Be for Themselves: Gelassenheit as Enabling Thinking
• 6 The Question Concerning the Machine: Heidegger’s Technology Notebooks in the 1940s–1950s
• 7 Heidegger’s Releasement From the Technological Will
• 8 Heidegger’s New Beginning: History, Technology, and National Socialism
• 9 Technology, Ontotheology, Education
• 10 Heidegger, Habermas, Freedom, and Technology
• 11 How Pertinent Is Heidegger’s Thinking for Deep Ecology?
• 12 Poetry and the Gods: From Gestell to Gelassenheit
• 13 Letting Beings Be: An Ecofeminist Reading of Gestell, Gelassenheit, and Sustainability
• 14 Machenschaft and the Audit Society: The Philosophy and Politics of ‘the Accessibility of Everything to Everyone’
• 15 Heidegger vs. Kuhn: Does Science Think?
• 16 Quantum Theory as Technology
• 17 Naturalizing Gestell?
• Contributors
• Index