Then what are we to make of Heidegger’s writings on technology? Technology would seem to be a theme of second philosophy. Indeed, if ever there was a purely human affair, it is technology. Technology is a [9] matter of human inventiveness, and it is a way humans accomplish practical tasks. Technology seems to be absolutely human and instrumental, rather than god-like and theoretical. Technology has nothing to do with the gods and is not theory but, quite to the contrary, is the practical application of theory. Technology is concerned simply with ways and means, not with ultimate causes, and certainly not with Being itself. Technology would then seem to have no place in Heidegger’s theoretical philosophy of Being. Yet all this merely seems to be so, and for Heidegger the philosophy of technology is actually equivalent to first philosophy, since, for him, technology is nothing other than the knowledge of what it means to be in general. Like all ontological knowledge, technology is accomplished primarily by the gods, by the self-revelation of Being. Thus, to be Dasein, to be thea-horetical, to be technological, and to be ontological all mean exactly the same. They all mean to stand in a disclosive relation to Being itself.
This concept of technology as theoretical knowledge is not simply a new, idiosyncratic use of the term on Heidegger’s part. Quite to the contrary, it is a return to the old Greek understanding of techne:
Heidegger is here identifying techne, in its original sense, with wonder, the basic disposition of philosophy. For Heidegger, individual beings may be astonishing, marvelous, remarkable, but only Being itself is worthy of wonder. If techne has to do with wonder, then it is related to Being and to first philosophy. Furthermore, it is in techne, the passage says, that Being comes into its own, i.e., fulfills its self-disclosure. Techne is the human looking back in response to a more primordial “look” or self-disclosure. Thus techne does pertain to the gods; it is thea-horetical. What Heidegger means by “technology” (die Technik), or by the “essence of technology,” is techne in that sense.
Technology is then not the application of some more basic knowledge but is itself the most basic knowledge, namely, the understanding of what it means to be at all. On the other hand, technology itself can be applied. For example, science is an application of modern technology. Science is the research motivated by the self-disclosure of the essence of beings as orderable through calculation. Science presupposes this understanding of the Being of beings, and so science presupposes modern technology, which is nothing other than the theory of beings as essentially calculable. In turn, science itself can be applied, and that application issues in a certain sophisticated manipulation of beings, which is “technology” in the usual sense, namely, “the mechanical ordering of beings.”
Whence arises this theory of beings as orderable through calculation, a theory that leads to science and to modern, high-tech machinations? According to Heidegger, “in the essence of techne . . . , as the occurrence and establishment of the unconcealedness of beings, there lies the possibility of imperiousness, of an unbridled imposition of ends, which would accompany the absconding of the [original deferential attitude]” (ibid., 180/155).
Modern technology accompanies the absconding of the original attitude. Modern technology is not the cause of the absconding but is simply the most visible aftermath of that withdrawal. Modern technology is the theory that is motivated when humans no longer experience themselves as the looked upon. In other words, when the gods abscond, when they look upon humans not wholeheartedly but reticently, then human disclosive looking presents itself as autonomous, as subject to nothing of greater autonomy. An imperious theory thereby fills the void left by the deferential one, hubris replaces piety, unbridled imposition supplants respectful abetting, and the understanding of humans as possessors displaces the one of humans as Dasein. Humans thereby become subjects, the sovereign, imperious subjects. The theory of beings as orderable through calculation is a correlate of this imperiousness: to be imperious is precisely to take beings as submissive to an ordering imposed by humans. The imperiousness of modern technology is therefore evidence of the self-withholding of the gods, and it is as such that Heidegger takes up modern technology. He pursues the philosophy of technology out of his interest in the relation between humans and the gods, i.e., out of his sole interest in the disclosure of the meaning of Being. Consequently, Heidegger’s philosophy of technology is an exercise in first philosophy.
According to Heidegger, history has seen two basic forms of technology, two theories of the essence of beings in general, namely, ancient technology and modern technology. The history of these theories, the gradual supplanting of the first by the second, is grounded not in autonomous human choices but in what is for Heidegger a history of Being, namely a relative absconding of the gods after their original, more wholehearted, self-disclosure. The history of technology is thus, fundamentally, [11] a history of Being. The latter history is the domain of the autonomous events, and these motivate a certain technology, a certain outlook on the essential possibilities of beings, which in turn issues in a certain practice with regard to those beings. The practice that arose from the earlier theory was ancient handcraft, whereas modern, high-tech machinations derive from the subsequent technology. The essential difference in the two practices, however, does not lie in the sophistication of the means employed; that is, the difference is not that one practice uses simple hand tools, and the other one high-tech devices. The essential difference resides in the theory, in the attitude that underlies the use of the means: namely, a pious attitude toward the object of the practice, versus an imperious, hubristic, “unbridled imposition of ends.” By way of a preliminary illustration, let us consider counseling and farming, two practices offered by Aristotle as paradigms of the so-called efficient cause.
The ancient farmer and the ancient counselor were midwives. They respected the object to which their practice was directed, and their creative activity amounted merely to finding ingenious ways of letting this object come into its own. Thus the ancient farmer respected the seed and merely nursed it toward its own end. This “mere” nursing, of course, is not at all passive; farming requires intelligent, hard work. As to counseling, the prime example is, significantly, a father counseling his child, according to Aristotle. Counseling used to respect the one to be counseled and so required intimate acquaintance, such as a father might have of his child. Counseling took direction from the one counseled, took its end from the counseled, and was thereby a matter of “mere” rousing or abetting, instead of imposing.
In contrast, today’s farming and counseling are imperious; they are unbridled in imposing their own ends. Farming is becoming more and more not a respect for the seed but a genetic manipulation of it, a forcing of the seed into the farmer’s own predetermined ends. And counseling is being degraded into a casual dispensing of psycho-pharmaceuticals to almost complete strangers. Instead of respecting the counseled, counseling now imposes the counselor’s own ends on the other. Farming and counseling have indeed today become “efficient causes,” impositional causes, but they were not so for Aristotle.
In Heidegger’s view, it is not because high-tech drugs are available that modern counseling looks upon the counseled as an object to be imposed on. On the contrary, it is because the object is already disclosed as a patient, as something meant to undergo (pati) the imposition of the agent, that we are motivated to synthesize those drugs in the first place. Modern counseling is not impositional because it uses high-tech drugs; instead, it summons up such drugs because it is already impositional in outlook. More generally, modern technology does not disrespect the things [12] of nature because it uses impositional devices. On the contrary, the disclosure of nature as something to be disrespected and imposed on is what first calls up the production of those devices. Things do now look as if they were subject to our unbridled imposition of ends, but that is not because we now possess the means to impose our will on them. On the contrary, it was our view of ourselves as unbridled imposers that first motivated the fabrication of those means. It is the imperious theory that calls up the imperious means, and it is precisely this theory, and not the practice or the means, that embodies a challenging of the gods. It is as a theory that modern technology harbors the threat of nemesis.
For Heidegger, the prime danger of our epoch does emphatically not lie in the effects of modern technology, in high-tech things. In other words, the prime danger is not that technological things might get out of hand, that genetically manipulated crops might cause cancer, that laboratory-created life-forms might wreak havoc on their creators, or that humans might annihilate themselves in an accidental nuclear disaster. Something even more tragic is imminent; human beings are not so much in danger of losing their lives as they are in danger of losing their freedom, wherein lies their human dignity. That is the disintegration which accompanies arrogance. It is a threat deriving from the essence of technology, from the theory of ourselves as unbridled imposers and of nature as there to be imposed on.
This theory, according to Heidegger, places humans on the brink of a precipice. It is bound to bring disillusionment, most basically since it will eventually become obvious that humans, too, are part of nature and so are themselves subject to the same impositional causality they claimed to be the agents of. Then humans will view themselves as outcomes of environmental forces over which they have no control whatsoever. If imposition presents itself as the only possible mode of causality, then humans will either be the imposers or the imposed on, the controllers or the controlled. In either case, humans will be oblivious to genuine human freedom, unaware of the threats to that freedom, and therefore unable to protect it. The nemesis would then be to become enslaved to the very technology that promised freedom. Heidegger’s first philosophy is indeed concerned with obviating this slavery, and so, again, it can be called a humanism, though not an idolizing one.
The antidote to the danger of modern technology, according to Heidegger, is a return to ancient technology or, more precisely, to the essence of ancient technology. That is to say, Heidegger is not at all urging a return to the practice of ancient handcraft; he is not advocating an abandonment of power tools or high-tech things; he is not a romantic Luddite. But he is advocating the pious, respectful outlook, the non-chauvinistic theory, which is precisely the essence of ancient technology. In that theory, [13] human freedom does not amount to imposition but to abetting, nurturing, actively playing the role of Da-sein. Ancient technology is the theory of abetting causality, and it is that theory, rather than the practice of handcraft, that Heidegger sees as possessing saving power.
Theory is for Heidegger, to repeat, primarily a matter of the self-disclosure (or self-withholding) of truth or Being1. Thus a particular theory is not to be achieved by sheer human will power, and Heidegger is not, strictly speaking, urging us to adopt the ancient outlook. He is not urging humans to seize this viewpoint as much as he is hoping that it might bestow itself once again. That will indeed not come to pass without our abetting, and we need to prepare ourselves for its possible bestowal. Indeed, the preparation, the waiting, advocated by Heidegger will demand what he calls the most “strenuous exertions.” The proper human waiting is not at all passive. Nevertheless, the other beginning, the return of the ancient attitude, is primarily in the hands of the gods. It will arrive, if it does arrive, primarily as a gift of the gods. That is the meaning of Heidegger’s famous claim that “Only a god can save us.” And it is also the theme of his philosophy of technology.
Of course, truth never completely discloses or withholds itself to humans. To be Dasein is always to have an imperfect understanding of what it means to be. The goddess truth always veils herself to some extent. But the veils may be more or less lifted; Heidegger is saying that it is primarily the goddess herself who lifts them. ↩