Summary:Heidegger starts by establishing that technology is not neutral and that thinking in this way makes people blind to it (252). Then he establishes the interplay of four causality concepts—material, form, end, effect—before returning to technology by examining its linguistic roots as being a word that means both skill and fine art (253-255). The next part explores man and his use of technology/ordering and the relationship this has to revealing and world constructs. The end explores issues of freedom (from not ordering), revealing (and the danger associated with it), ending with a poetic turn by connecting techie and poiesis.Response:One of the most important ideas from the text for me was the comment about technology not being neutral (252). While I’d heard this idea before from other contexts, it was always in passing and I never really gave it much thought. I think that this time I was able to take the time and stop to think about what he was saying and what that meant. Initially I thought of technology solely in the context of computers, because I hadn’t gotten to the rest of the article yet, so this at first connected to my interests in new media and the ramifications of what that means in the classroom. By the end I had a clearer sense of the interplay between revealing and technology, though I’m still stumbling around with certain ideas from the text. I’d like to find a way to bring the idea that technology isn’t neutral conversation into the classroom, but I think that there are some other texts I’ll want to read beforehand.Related to that concept was the definition of techne as skill and art (255). As soon as I read his explanation, I thought that it made quite a lot of sense, even in my computer-based understanding of technology. It was able to incorporate the way I feel about composing in multiple methods. It takes skill to be able to do it, but to do it well takes a bit of artistry too. Heidegger connects it to the idea of “bringing-forth” and then to poetic. Of course, he explains, that’s only the first part of the origin. When he writes that it, like episteme, also has a sense of knowing, I thought that made sense in that sometimes when I’m creating something in another form, the process and product contribute to an overall knowing or understanding that I didn’t have before I started. Connections/Questions: At first I reacted a bit fearfully to the idea of danger being present in the freedom that Heidegger proposes. I was nervous at the idea of letting go of the ordering, even of language. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I’d struggled with that idea in a different context about two years ago, but then it was when I was learning Spanish. I had had a horrible experience learning Spanish in high school, so learning it again as an adult, I’d internalized the comments people would make about how people can’t learn languages as adults. My response to that was to try and break down the language and understand it in grammatical and vocabulary parts because that type of ordering was what familiar and comfortable. Thankfully, I had an amazing teacher who, though admiring my effort, said that she wasn’t going to grade on those components. She offered me freedom from worrying about the grade in the class, which I was concerned about for applying to doctoral programs, and instead she told me that what she was looking for was communication. She didn’t care if I got my point across as grammatically as possible, as isn’t the reality in English either, but that I was able to communicate my ideas, encouraging gestures, eye-contact, intonation, emphasis, etc., as forms as well vocabulary. Additionally, she stressed the relationship of a conversation that has to take place, meaning it wasn’t just words on a page where my perfect expression bore the burden of creating meaning all alone, but someone else was going to try to be understanding me. And so Spanish shifted for me into a place of freedom because I realized that language isn’t just about the words and that some of the communication tools I already know how to use in English can serve me well in Spanish too. Once I thought of this experience, Heidegger’s freedom concept, with all its surprise, mystery, and ambiguity clicked, and I saw how my own construction of order could determine what I thought about what was possible about the world, especially my own capacity to learn languages. What other constructs are shaping my world views without my awareness of them? |
Quotations:“Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception of it, to which we particularly like to pay homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology” (252).“[T]echne is the name not only for the activities and skills of the craftsman but also for the arts of the mind and the fine arts” (255). “Since man drives technology forward, he takes part in ordering as a way of revealing” (257). “Thus when man, investigating, observing, pursues nature as an area of his own conceiving, he has already been claimed by a way of revealing that challenges him to approach nature as an object of research, until even the object disappears into the objectlessness of standing reserve” (257). “Enframing means the gathering together of the setting-upon that sets upon man, i.e., challenges him forth, to reveal the actual, in the mode of ordering, as standing-reserve. Enframing means the way of revealing that holds sway in the essence of modern technology and that is itself nothing technological” (258). “Freedom is that which conceals in a way that opens to light, in whose clearing shimmers the veil that hides the essential occurrence of all truth and lets the veil appear as what veils. Freedom is the realm of the destining that any give time starts a revealing on its way” (260). “Enframing blocks the shining-forth and holding sway of truth” (261). “What is dangerous is not technology. Technology is not demonic; but its essence is mysterious. The essence of technology, as a destining of revealing, is the danger” (261). |
