Heidegger and Technology

Martin Heidegger urges questioning technology beyond common understanding.

• The instrumental and anthropological definition sees technology as a means and human activity.

Technology as Mode of Revealing

• Technological objects are means to an end operated by humans.
• The essence of technology is a way of bringing forth.
• Technology reveals truth by bringing forth or making something.
• Aletheia: unhiddenness, disclosure, or truth.
• Poiesis: bringing forth, bringing out, or revealing something.
• Techne: ancient Greek term meaning skill, art, or craft.
• Technology is a Poiesis that discloses truth.

Technology as Poiesis: Applicable to Modern Technology?

• Modern technology is characterized as a challenging forth, aggressive in activity.
• Mining is an example of challenging forth, setting upon the land to extract resources.

Questioning the Piety of Thought

• Questioning is fundamental and respectful in pursuing knowledge.
• Technology shapes perception but can narrow vision to utility and efficiency.
• Questioning challenges the status quo, stimulates critical thinking.
• Scientific inquiry exemplifies questioning for greater understanding.

Enframing: The Way of Revealing in Modern Technology

• Enframing challenges nature.
• Nature is put in a frame for better understanding and control.
• Poiesis is concealed as nature becomes an orderable system of information.
• Calculative thinking orders nature, while meditative thinking lets it reveal itself.

Human Person Swallowed by Technology

• Limits must be recognized, and humans should not be swallowed by technology.
• Losing essence by being consumed by modern technology.
• Holding onto convenience at the cost of the environment means technology has consumed our humanity.
• Where danger is, grows the saving power also." Friedrich Holderlin.
• Remaining unfree and chained by technology, whether passionately affirming or denying it.

Art as a Way of Enframing

• Enframing blocks poiesis.
• Art is proposed as a way out of enframing.
• Art helps to see poetry in nature, leading to meditative thinking.
• Meditative thinking reveals that nature is art excellence.
• Meditatively looking at technology questions its significance beyond instrumental use.
• Calculative thinking is becoming more important in the modern world.
• Meditative thinking provides a way to remain rooted in our essence.

Aristotle's Conception of Four Causes

• The four causes are:
  • causa materialis (the material)
  • causa formalis (the form)
  • causa finalis (the end)
  • causa efficiens (the effect)
• Aristotle's view remains mechanical, limiting disclosure of larger truth.
• Ancient Greeks saw cause as aition or indebtedness.
• Greeks revere the sun because indebted to it, not as a cause of energy.
• Action is responsible for bringing forth.