Response+to+Heidegger


 * This Week’s Gathering**

Heidegger’s words are in **bold.**

//Wesen//—essence //An-wesen//—presencing //Ver-an-lassen//—conventionally, cause; related to let loose, set going. //Her-vor-bringen­//—bringing forth here //Entbergen//—conventionally, revealing; related to //bergen// (rescue, recover, secure, harbor, conceal). //Ent//: forth, out; a negating change //Wahr-heit//—truth; connotations of watching, guarding //Herausfordern//—challenge, call forth or summon to action, demand, provoke. Related to //fordern//, to demand, summon, challenge. //Her//: higher, //aus//: out, forth. Structurally, c.f. //hervorbringen//. //stellen//—set (upon, presumably with some preposition?)


 * “The current conception of technology, according to which it is a means and a human activity, can therefore be called the instrumental and anthropological definition of technology.**
 * Who would ever deny that it is correct? It is in obvious conformity with what we are envisioning when we talk about technology” (5).**

Yet he has a lot to add.


 * “The four causes are the ways, all belonging at once to each other, of being responsible for something else” (7).**


 * Long ago, after reading Aristotle, I remember discussing this in class. It made me sad that we now neglect all the other types of causality. We live in a causally-deprived world, sad and small. I like the idea that Aristotle’s four causes “belong at once to each other,” that are in fact not separable, as much as we like to imagine that //causa efficiens// is cause itself. A new breath of meaning seems breathed into the world when we permit the other causes to come along as well.**


 * “They differ from one another, yet they belong together. What unites them from the beginning?” (8)**


 * “Today we are too easily inclined either to understand being responsible and being indebted moralistically as a lapse, or else to construe them in terms of effecting. In either case we bar to ourselves the way to the primal meaning of that which is later called causality. So long as this way is not opened up to us we shall fail to see what instrumentality is, which is based on causality” (9).**

Failing to see what instrumentality is is important because that was the original issue at hand—whether and how our conventional definition of technology is correct. Heidegger unfolds technology step by step. One concept is necessary to understand another. Until we have a mountain of concepts, with their elegant linguistic interconnections which the brain refuses to completely master in a short few days of study…


 * “The four ways of being responsible bring something into appearance. They let it come forth into presencing [//An-wesen//]. They set it free to that place and so start it on its way, namely, into its complete arrival” (9).**

How is this different from the two incorrect conceptions of causality he sketched out above? Against the first incorrect definition, this new definition differs in two ways. First, there is no obvious moral element. Second, there is no sense of neglect or lapse. In fact, quite the opposite. The ways of causing let something “presence,” let it start. This is active, something //done//, not something left undone. Against the second false definition, it is harder to understand the difference between “letting something come forth into presencing” and “effecting.” For this perhaps we must wait for a better understanding of “presencing” of “starting on its way.”


 * “They let what is not yet present arrive into presencing. Accordingly, they are unifiedly ruled over by a bringing that brings what presences into appearance” (10).**

A new layer of understanding of the causes is added by the discussion of //poesis//. He translates Plato:


 * “ ‘Every occasion for whatever passes over and goes forward into presencing from that which is not presencing is //poesis//, is bringing-forth [//Her-vor-bringen//]” (10).**

This understanding of //poesis// surprised me. I would normally think that in order to make, there must be a maker. However, here //poesis// is imly a “bringing-forth;” there is no mention of a bringer. In fact, the causes “are unifiedly ruled over by a bringing.” Generally, the we do not think of the bringer as being //ruled// by the bringing. They simply let, they allow, the //poesis// to occur. From this, it would almost seem their role is more to prevent blockage, to create an open way.


 * “//Physis// also, the arising of something from out of itself, is a bringing-forth, //poesis//” (10).**

Again, poesis as a making without a maker, a bringing without a bringer. Nature, which clearly has no maker is also //poesis//.

Now on to the step, the next layer, the next constellation of related terminology:


 * “The modes of occasioning, the four causes, are at play, then, within bringing-forth….Bringing-forth comes to pass only insofar as something concealed comes into unconcealment. This coming rests and moves freely within what we call revealing [//das Entbergen//]” (11).**

This is truth—//aletheia//, //veritas//. We have gone from instrumentality (the conventional definition of technology), to causality (there are four types, it turns out), to bringing-forth, (//Her-vor-bringen//)to revealing (//Entbergen//), to truth. Somehow instrumentality, then, is related to truth…


 * “Technology is therefore no mere means. Technology is a way of revealing. If we give heed to this, then another whole realm for the essence of technology will open itself up to us. It is the realm of revelaing, i.e., of truth” (12).**


 * “This prospect strikes us as strange. Indeed, it should do so, should do so as spersistently as possible and with so much urgency that we will finally take seriously the simple question of what the name ‘technology’ means” (12).**


 * “It is as revealing, not as manufacturing, that //techne// is a bringing-forth” (13).**

Again, this notion counters the conventional understanding of //techne//, of //poesis//,and of bringing-forth, to some degree. The occur rather than are done.


 * “Technology is a mode of revealing. Technology comes to presence [//West//] in the realm where revealing and unconcealment take place, where //aletheia//, truth, happens” (13).**

This sounds very strange and counter-intuitive. Technology a mode of revealing, and revealing linked to truth? The conventional understanding is that science produces truth, true knowledge, and technology is “applied science;” it applies the principles ferreted out by science to the making, to the manufacturing of gadgets for some particular end (instrumentality). How does technology itself, as a mode of revealing, produce truth?

Heidegger immediately denies this relationship. Technology is dependent upon physics, but physics is also dependent upon technology, **“dependent upon technical apparatus and upon progress in the building of apparatus” (14).**


 * “Of what essence is modern technology that it happens to think of putting exact science to use?” (14).**


 * “And yet the revealing that holds sway throughout modern technology does not unfold into a bringing-forth in the sense of //poiesis//. The revealing that rules in modern technology is a challenging [//Herausfordern//], which puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy that can be extracted and stored as such” (14).**

Interestingly, when Heidegger unfolds this new constellation, he discusses the challenging (and hints at the “standing reserve”) in terms of //energy//. This brings the issue of energy consumption and use into a philosophical position of great importance. Also brings up examples of agriculture and mechanized food industry (15).


 * “This setting-upon [//Stellen//] that challenges forth the energies of nature is an expediting [****//Fördern//], and in two ways. It expedites in that it unlocks and exposes. Yet that expediting is always itself directed from the beginning toward furthering something else, i.e., toward driving on to the maximum yield at the minimum expense” (15).**

I wonder if //Fördern// is related to //Fordern//? It seems clear that Heidegger is playing on their similarity to connect “challenging” to “expediting,” to connect calling forth, ordering the natural world to ordering it to go //faster//, to goading it on to maximum efficiency. This also reminds me of Jacques Ellul’s definition of //technique// as the system which produces maximum efficiency. This is an obsession of technology. Or, it would seem, somehow fundamental to it…

But we only challenge the earth, because //we have been challenged//, called forth!

Sadly, I have to stop. It has been a valuable exercise and I would like to continue it sometime.