Heidegger sees the technological attitude of our age as neither inevitable nor natural and repeatedly attempts to think about ways of changing the relation into which modern technology and humans are placed together, ways in which humans could eventually develop a “free relation” to modern technology.
To the degree that the technological disclosure of the world, humans, and nature is something sent by Beyng itself and merely received by humans, it is historical and temporary in the sense that it can be overcome toward and into a different relation to entities, a non-metaphysical relation, according to Heidegger. Yet this task is neither simple nor possible within metaphysics. For it requires a different understanding of ourselves, of Da-sein, not as a rational animal, but as the clearing in the sense of being an openness into which entities enter, and within which there is a freedom pertaining to entities concerning how they are and how they decide their manifestation in the world.
Modern Technology and Ancient Greek Metaphysics
For Heidegger, modern technology is not wholly and only modern, for it belongs to what Ancient Greek metaphysics made possible in the first place; that is, it is rooted in the metaphysical thinking of Plato and Aristotle and in how they thought being in relation to making and producing, the making and producing of entities in the world. According to Heidegger’s reading of the history of Western metaphysics, this brings Plato and Aristotle close to techno-industrial nihilism and the thoughtlessness pertaining to it.
Heidegger says that Plato and Aristotle introduced a way of thinking of entities, according to which if anything is to be, it needs only to have a permanent relation with presence in the sense of being within presence and thus constantly present, and if anything is to be present, it must then undergo making and producing in the sense that to be present is to be made and produced.
This way of thinking of entities as being made and produced was later taken up by later theology and theological thinking in such a way that rendered God the first and most fundamental ground from out of which all making and producing arise and happen.
This fundamental grounding of entities was later taken up by Descartes’s thinking of the human being, the subject, as the ultimate ground of things. It is in Descartes’s philosophy that being as an entity in the world indicated and meant being an object made and produced by a subject grounding itself.
This subject-object relation was later modified by Leibniz, Schopenhauer, and eventually Nietzsche who argued that no thinking of the subject and subjectivity is complete without taking striving and will into consideration.
Heidegger links together Nietzsche’s the will to power, the ultimate ground grounding, making, and producing entities in Nietzsche’s thought, which, according to Heidegger, is the site in which the end of metaphysics offers itself in full, and Ancient Greek metaphysics in such a way that Nietzsche’s Overman is merely a possibility first opened up by Aristotle’s rational animal.
The Non-Technological Essence of Technology
Heidegger says that technology is not simply the availability and abundance of technological systems and gadgets; nor is it the utilization and production of machines and equipment, but is rather a manner of disclosure, a way in which everything in the world appears and offers itself as mere resources constantly ready, available, accessible, and disposable, and continuously awaiting, subject to, and in need of optimization, making, and ordering. Humans, too, cannot escape this mode of revealing in the sense that we ourselves have become at the end of metaphysics nothing but resources.
The German word for ‘technology’ is ‘Technik’ and the Greek word is ‘techne’ (τέχνη). Heidegger, in The Question Concerning Technology, says that there is a difference between the machines, equipment, tools, and systems that pervade and determine life in the present age and ‘techne’ (τέχνη), which is the manner of revealing in which all machines, equipment, tools, and systems are grounded; that is, that which makes all machines and every system possible in the first place.
Heidegger defines technology as “the manufacture and utilization of equipment, tools, and machines, the manufactured and used things themselves, and the needs and ends that they serve”. He says that this “belongs to what technology is. The whole complex of these contrivances is technology”.
Yet that which is seen as problematic by Heidegger in this definition is that it does not disclose or bring into view the essence of technology, which “is by no means anything technological”. In other words, this definition does not give proper thought to ‘techne’ (τέχνη), which is a mode of revealing, that is, a way in which ancient and modern gadgets, tools, and systems emerge and announce themselves.
Heidegger later links together modern technology with what he calls standing reserve (Bestand), which means that it belongs to technology that all entities in the world, including humans, are seen as nothing but standing reserve, that is, standing by, ready to be planned, used, stored, replaced, and offered in such a way that they are constantly available, ready, accessible, and disposable.
That all the entities in the world are seen as standing reserve is a sign that the subject-object relation itself has disappeared, which means that there are no objects for any subject and that the subject, as self-grounding, has undergone a change.
Heidegger refers to the way in which humans, nature, and the whole world are ordered and orderable as Ge-Stell (inventory). Yet Ge-Stell is not simply the name of technical systems, ordering devices, or dominant socioeconomic patterns that carry out the ordering of humans, nature, and the world. Ge-Stell refers to ‘techne’ (τέχνη), which, according to Heidegger, is “that mode of revealing which prevails in the essence of modern technology and which is itself nothing technological”. This means that Ge-Stell lets things appear as ordered and orderable, storable, usable, replaceable, plannable, and disposable.
In The Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger attempts to make clear the distinction between technology and its non-technological essence. He says that we must see and understand “what essences in technology, instead of merely staring at the technological. So long as we represent technology as an instrument, we remain held fast in the will to master it, we press on past the essence of technology.” For realizing this distinction makes possible the still unforeseeable overcoming of metaphysics together with the technological disclosure of entities.