1
The Question Concerning Technology
MARTIN HEIDEGGER
Source: The Question Concerning Technology (1977), pp 3–35
In what follows we shall be questioning concerning technology. Questioning
builds a way. We would be advised, therefore, above all to pay heed to the
way, and not to fix our attention on isolated sentences and topics. The way
is a way of thinking. All ways of thinking, more or less perceptibly, lead
through language in a manner that is extraordinary. We shall be questioning
concerning technology, and in so doing we should like to prepare a free relationship
to it. The relationship will be free if it opens our human existence to
the essence of technology.1 When we can respond to this essence, we shall be
able to experience the technological within its own bounds.
Technology is not equivalent to the essence of technology. When we are
seeking the essence of “tree,” we have to become aware that That which pervades
every tree, as tree, is not itself a tree that can be encountered among all
the other trees.
Likewise, the essence of technology is by no means anything technological.
Thus we shall never experience our relationship to the essence of technology so
long as we merely conceive and push forward the technological, put up with it,
or evade it. 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,2
to which today we particularly like to do homage, makes us utterly blind to the
essence of technology.
According to ancient doctrine, the essence of a thing is considered to be
what the thing is. We ask the question concerning technology when we ask
what it is. Everyone knows the two statements that answer our question. One
says: Technology is a means to an end. The other says: Technology is a human
activity. The two definitions of technology belong together. For to posit ends
and procure and utilize the means to them is a human activity. The manufacture
and utilization of equipment, tools, and machines, the manufactured and
used things themselves, and the needs and ends that they serve, all belong to
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what technology is. The whole complex of these contrivances is technology.
Technology itself is a contrivance, or, in Latin, an instrumentum.3
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. The instrumental definition
of technology is indeed so uncannily correct that it even holds for modern
technology, of which, in other respects, we maintain with some justification
that it is, in contrast to the older handwork technology, something completely
different and therefore new. Even the power plant with its turbines and generators
is a man-made means to an end established by man. Even the jet aircraft
and the high-frequency apparatus are means to ends. A radar station is of course
less simple than a weather vane. To be sure, the construction of a high-frequency
apparatus requires the interlocking of various processes of technical-industrial
production. And certainly a sawmill in a secluded valley of the Black Forest is a
primitive means compared with the hydroelectric plant in the Rhine River.
But this much remains correct: modern technology too is a means to an end.
That is why the instrumental conception of technology conditions every
attempt to bring man into the right relation to technology. Everything depends
on our manipulating technology in the proper manner as a means. We will, as
we say, “get” technology “spiritually in hand.” We will master it. The will to mastery
becomes all the more urgent the more technology threatens to slip from
human control.
But suppose now that technology were no mere means, how would it stand
with the will to master it? Yet we said, did we not, that the instrumental definition
of technology is correct? To be sure. The correct always fixes upon something
pertinent in whatever is under consideration. However, in order to be correct,
this fixing by no means needs to uncover the thing in question in its essence. Only
at the point where such an uncovering happens does the true come to pass.4 For
that reason the merely correct is not yet the true. Only the true brings us into a free
relationship with that which concerns us from out of its essence. Accordingly, the
correct instrumental definition of technology still does not show us technology’s
essence. In order that we may arrive at this, or at least come close to it, we must
seek the true by way of the correct. We must ask: What is the instrumental itself?
Within what do such things as means and end belong? A means is that whereby
something is effected and thus attained. Whatever has an effect as its consequence
is called a cause. But not only that by means of which something else is effected is
a cause. The end in keeping with which the kind of means to be used is determined
is also considered a cause. Wherever ends are pursued and means are employed,
wherever instrumentality reigns, there reigns causality.
For centuries philosophy has taught that there are four causes: (1) the causa
materialis, the material, the matter out of which, for example, a silver chalice is
made; (2) the causa formalis, the form, the shape into which the material
enters; (3) the causa finalis, the end, for example, the sacrificial rite in relation
to which the chalice required is determined as to its form and matter; (4) the
causa efficiens, which brings about the effect that is the finished, actual chalice,
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HEIDEGGER The Question Concerning Technology 3
in this instance, the silversmith. What technology is, when represented as a
means, discloses itself when we trace instrumentality back to fourfold causality.
But suppose that causality, for its part, is veiled in darkness with respect to
what it is? Certainly for centuries we have acted as though the doctrine of the
four causes had fallen from heaven as a truth as clear as daylight. But it might
be that the time has come to ask, Why are there just four causes? In relation to
the aforementioned four, what does “cause” really mean? From whence does it
come that the causal character of the four causes is so unifiedly determined that
they belong together?
So long as we do not allow ourselves to go into these questions, causality,
and with it instrumentality, and with the latter the accepted definition of technology,
remain obscure and groundless.
For a long time we have been accustomed to representing cause as that
which brings something about. In this connection, to bring about means to
obtain results, effects. The causa efficiens, but one among the four causes, sets
the standard for all causality. This goes so far that we no longer even count the
causa finalis, telic finality, as causality. Causa, casus, belongs to the verb cadere,
“to fall,” and means that which brings it about that something falls out as a
result in such and such a way. The doctrine of the four causes goes back to
Aristotle. But everything that later ages seek in Greek thought under the conception
and rubric “causality,” in the realm of Greek thought and for Greek
thought per se has simply nothing at all to do with bringing about and effecting.
What we call cause [Ursache] and the Romans call causa is called aition by the
Greeks, that to which something else is indebted [das, was ein anderes verschuldet].5
The four causes are the ways, all belonging at once to each other, of
being responsible for something else. An example can clarify this.
Silver is that out of which the silver chalice is made. As this matter (hyle), it is
co-responsible for the chalice. The chalice is indebted to, i.e., owes thanks to, the
silver for that out of which it consists. But the sacrificial vessel is indebted not
only to the silver. As a chalice, that which is indebted to the silver appears in the
aspect of a chalice and not in that of a brooch or a ring. Thus the sacrificial vessel
is at the same time indebted to the aspect (eidos) of chaliceness. Both the silver
into which the aspect is admitted as chalice and the aspect in which the silver
appears are in their respective ways co-responsible for the sacrificial vessel.
But there remains yet a third that is above all responsible for the sacrificial
vessel. It is that which in advance confines the chalice within the realm of consecration
and bestowal.6 Through this the chalice is circumscribed as sacrificial
vessel. Circumscribing gives bounds to the thing. With the bounds the thing
does not stop; rather from out of them it begins to be what, after production, it
will be. That which gives bounds, that which completes, in this sense is called
in Greek telos, which is all too often translated as “aim” or “purpose,” and so
misinterpreted. The telos is responsible for what as matter and for what as
aspect are together co-responsible for the sacrificial vessel.
Finally there is a fourth participant in the responsibility for the finished sacrificial
vessel’s lying before us ready for use, i.e., the silversmith – but not at all
because he, in working, brings about the finished sacrificial chalice as if it were
the effect of a making; the silversmith is not a causa efficiens.
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The Aristotelian doctrine neither knows the cause that is named by this
term nor uses a Greek word that would correspond to it.
The silversmith considers carefully and gathers together the three aforementioned
ways of being responsible and indebted. To consider carefully [iiberlegen]
is in Greek legin, logos. Legein is rooted in apophainesthni, to bring forward into
appearance. The silversmith is co-responsible as that from whence the sacrificial
vessel’s bringing forth and resting-in-self take and retrain their first departure.
The three previously mentioned ways of being responsible owe thanks to the
pondering of the silversmith for the “that” and the “how” of their coming into
appearance and into play for the production of the sacrificial vessel.
Thus four ways of being responsible hold sway in the sacrificial vessel that
lies ready before us. They differ from one another, yet they belong together.
What unites them from the beginning? In what does this playing in unison of
the four ways of being responsible play? What is the source of the unity of the
four causes? What, after all, does this owing and being responsible mean,
thought as the Greeks thought it?
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 also fail to see what instrumentality, which is based on causality, actually is.
In order to guard against such misinterpretations of being responsible and
being indebted, let us clarify the four ways of being responsible in terms of that
for which they are responsible. According to our example, they are responsible
for the silver chalice’s lying ready before us as a sacrificial vessel. Lying before
and lying ready (hypokeisthai) characterize the presencing of something that
presences. The four ways of being responsible bring something into appearance.
They let it come forth into presencing [An-wesen].7 They set it free to that
place and so start it on its way, namely, into its complete arrival. The principal
characteristic of being responsible is this starting something on its way into
arrival. It is in the sense of such a starting something on its way into arrival that
being responsible is an occasioning or an inducing to go forward [Ver-Anlassen].8
On the basis of a look at what the Greeks experienced in being responsible, in
aitia, we now give this verb “to occasion” a more inclusive meaning, so that it
now is the name for the essence of causality thought as the Greeks thought it.
The common and narrower meaning of “occasion” in contrast is nothing more
than striking against and releasing, and means a kind of secondary cause within
the whole of causality.
But in what, then, does the playing in unison of the four ways of occasioning
play? 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.
Plato tells us what this bringing is in a sentence from the Symposium
(205b): he¯ gar toi ek tou me¯ onton eis to on ionti hoto¯ioun aitia pasa esii poie¯sis.
“Every occasion for whatever passes over and goes forward into presencing from
that which is not presencing is poie¯sis, is bringing-forth [Her-vor-bringen].”9
It is of utmost importance that we think bringing-forth in its full scope and
at the same time in the sense in which the Greeks thought it. Not only handcraft
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manufacture, not only artistic and poetical bringing into appearance and concrete
imagery, is a bringing-forth, poie¯sis. Physis also, the arising of something
from out of itself, is a bringing-forth, poie¯sis. Physis is, indeed poie¯sis in the
highest sense. For what presences by means of physis has the bursting open
belonging to bringing-forth, e.g., the bursting of a blossom into bloom, in itself
(en heauto¯i). In contrast, what is brought forth by the artisan or the artist, e.g.,
the silver chalice, has the bursting open belonging to bringing-forth not in itself,
but in another (en allo¯i), in the craftsman or artist.
The modes of occasioning, the four causes, are at play, then, within bringingforth.
Through bringing-forth, the growing things of nature as well as whatever
is completed through the crafts and the arts come at any given time to their
appearance.
But how does bringing-forth happen, be it in nature or in handwork and art?
What is the bringing-forth in which the fourfold way of occasioning plays?
Occasioning has to do with the presencing [Anwesen] of that which at any given
time comes to appearance in bringing-forth. Bringing-forth brings hither out of
concealment forth into unconcealment. 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].10 The Greeks have
the word ale¯theia for revealing. The Romans translate this with veritas. We say
“truth” and usually understand it as the correctness of an idea.
But where have we strayed to? We are questioning concerning technology,
and we have arrived now at ale¯theia, at revealing. What has the essence of technology
to do with revealing? The answer: everything. For every bringing-forth is
grounded in revealing. Bringing-forth, indeed, gathers within itself the four
modes of occasioning – causality – and rules them throughout. Within its
domain belong end and means, belongs instrumentality.11 Instrumentality is considered
to be the fundamental characteristic of technology. If we inquire, step by
step, into what technology, represented as means, actually is, then we shall arrive
at revealing. The possibility of all productive manufacturing lies in revealing.
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 revealing, i.e., of truth.12
This prospect strikes us as strange. Indeed, it should do so, should do so as
persistently as possible and with so much urgency that we will finally take seriously
the simple question of what the name “technology” means. The word
stems from the Greek. Technikon means that which belongs to techne¯. We must
observe two things with respect to the meaning of this word. One is that techne¯
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. Techne¯ belongs to bringing-forth, to
poie¯sis; it is something poietic.
The other point that we should observe with regard to techne¯ is even more
important. From earliest times until Plato the word techne¯ is linked with the word
episte¯me¯. Both words are names for knowing in the widest sense. They mean to be
entirely at home in something, to understand and be expert in it. Such knowing
provides an opening up. As an opening up it is a revealing. Aristotle, in a discussion
of special importance (Nico-machean Ethics, Bk. VI, chaps. 3 and 4), distinguishes
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between episte¯me¯ and techne¯ and indeed with respect to what and how they reveal.
Techne¯ is a mode of ale¯theuein. It reveals whatever does not bring itself forth and
does not yet lie here before us, whatever can look and turn out now one way and
now another. Whoever builds a house or a ship or forges a sacrificial chalice reveals
what is to be brought forth, according to the perspectives of the four modes of occasioning.
This revealing gathers together in advance the aspect and the matter of
ship or house, with a view to the finished thing envisioned as completed, and from
this gathering determines the manner of its construction. Thus what is decisive in
techne¯ does not lie at all in making and manipulating nor in the using of means, but
rather in the aforementioned revealing. It is as revealing, and not as manufacturing,
that techne¯ is a bringing-forth.
Thus the clue to what the word techne¯ means and to how the Greeks defined
it leads us into the same context that opened itself to us when we pursued the
question of what instrumentality as such in truth might be.
Technology is a mode of revealing. Technology comes to presence [West] in
the realm where revealing and unconcealment take place, where ale¯theia, truth,
happens.
In opposition to this definition of the essential domain of technology, one
can object that it indeed holds for Greek thought and that at best it might apply
to the techniques of the handcraftsman, but that it simply does not fit modern
machine-powered technology. And it is precisely the latter and it alone that is
the disturbing thing, that moves us to ask the question concerning technology
per se. It is said that modern technology is something incomparably different
from all earlier technologies because it is based on modern physics as an exact
science. Meanwhile we have come to understand more clearly that the reverse
holds true as well: Modern physics, as experimental, is dependent upon technical
apparatus and upon progress in the building of apparatus. The establishing
of this mutual relationship between technology and physics is correct. But
it remains a merely historiographical establishing of facts and says nothing
about that in which this mutual relationship is grounded. The decisive question
still remains: Of what essence is modern technology that it happens to
think of putting exact science to use?
What is modern technology? It too is a revealing. Only when we allow our
attention to rest on this fundamental characteristic does that which is new in
modern technology show itself to us.
And yet the revealing that holds sway throughout modern technology does
not unfold into a bringing-forth in the sense of poie¯sis. The revealing that rules
in modern technology is a challenging [Herausfordern],13 which puts to nature
the unreasonable demand that it supply energy that can be extracted and stored
as such. But does this not hold true for the old windmill as well? No. Its sails do
indeed turn in the wind; they are left entirely to the wind’s blowing. But the
windmill does not unlock energy from the air currents in order to store it.
In contrast, a tract of land is challenged into the putting out of coal and ore.
The earth now reveals itself as a coal mining district, the soil as a mineral
deposit. The field that the peasant formerly cultivated and set in order
[bestellte] appears differently than it did when to set in order still meant to take
care of and to maintain. The work of the peasant does not challenge the soil of
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the field. In the sowing of the grain it places the seed in the keeping of the
forces of growth and watches over its increase. But meanwhile even the cultivation
of the field has come under the grip of another kind of setting-in-order,
which sets upon [stellt] nature.14 It sets upon it in the sense of challenging it.
Agriculture is now the mechanized food industry. Air is now set upon to yield
nitrogen, the earth to yield ore, ore to yield uranium, for example; uranium is
set upon to yield atomic energy, which can be released either for destruction or
for peaceful use.
This setting-upon 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. The coal that has been hauled out in some mining district has not
been supplied in order that it may simply be present somewhere or other. It is
stockpiled; that is, it is on call, ready to deliver the sun’s warmth that is stored
in it. The sun’s warmth is challenged forth for heat, which in turn is ordered to
deliver steam whose pressure turns the wheels that keep a factory running.
The hydroelectric plant is set into the current of the Rhine. It sets the Rhine
to supplying its hydraulic pressure, which then sets the turbines turning. This
turning sets those machines in motion whose thrust sets going the electric current
for which the long-distance power station and its network of cables are set
up to dispatch electricity.15 In the context of the interlocking processes pertaining
to the orderly disposition of electrical energy, even the Rhine itself
appears as something at our command. The hydroelectric plant is not built into
the Rhine River as was the old wooden bridge that joined bank with bank for
hundreds of years. Rather the river is dammed up into the power plant. What
the river is now, namely, a water power supplier, derives from out of the essence
of the power station. In order that we may even remotely consider the monstrousness
that reigns here, let us ponder for a moment the contrast that speaks
out of the two titles, “The Rhine” as dammed up into the power works, and
“The Rhine” as uttered out of the art work, in Hölderlin’s hymn by that name.
But, it will be replied, the Rhine is still a river in the landscape, is it not?
Perhaps. But how? In no other way than as an object on call for inspection by a
tour group ordered there by the vacation industry.
The revealing that rules throughout modern technology has the character of
a setting-upon, in the sense of a challenging-forth. That challenging happens in
that the energy concealed in nature is unlocked, what is unlocked is transformed,
what is transformed is stored up, what is stored up is, in turn, distributed, and
what is distributed is switched about ever anew. Unlocking, transforming, storing,
distributing, and switching about are ways of revealing. But the revealing
never simply comes to an end. Neither does it run off into the indeterminate.
The revealing reveals to itself its own manifoldly interlocking paths, through
regulating their course. This regulating itself is, for its part, everywhere secured.
Regulating and securing even become the chief characteristics of the challenging
revealing.
What kind of unconcealment is it, then, that is peculiar to that which comes
to stand forth through this setting-upon that challenges? Everywhere everything
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is ordered to stand by, to be immediately at hand, indeed to stand there just so
that it may be on call for a further ordering. Whatever is ordered about in this
way has its own standing. We call it the standing-reserve [Bestand].16 The word
expresses here something more, and something more essential, than mere
“stock.” The name “standing-reserve” assumes the rank of an inclusive rubric. It
designates nothing less than the way in which everything presences that is
wrought upon by the challenging revealing. Whatever stands by in the sense of
standing-reserve no longer stands over against us as object.
Yet an airliner that stands on the runway is surely an object. Certainly. We
can represent the machine so. But then it conceals itself as to what and how it is.
Revealed, it stands on the taxi strip only as standing-reserve, inasmuch as it is
ordered to ensure the possibility of transportation. For this it must be in its
whole structure and in every one of its constituent parts, on call for duty, i.e.,
ready for takeoff. (Here it would be appropriate to discuss Hegel’s definition of
the machine as an autonomous tool. When applied to the tools of the craftsman,
his characterization is correct. Characterized in this way, however, the machine
is not thought at all from out of the essence of technology within which it
belongs. Seen in terms of the standing-reserve, the machine is completely unautonomous,
for it has its standing only from the ordering of the orderable.)
The fact that now, wherever we try to point to modem technology as the
challenging revealing, the words “setting-upon,” “ordering,” “standing-reserve,”
obtrude and accumulate in a dry, monotonous, and therefore oppressive way,
has its basis in what is now coming to utterance.
Who accomplishes the challenging setting-upon through which what we
call the real is revealed as standing-reserve? Obviously, man. To what extent is
man capable of such a revealing? Man can indeed conceive, fashion, and carry
through this or that in one way or another. But man does not have control over
un-concealment itself, in which at any given time the real shows itself or withdraws.
The fact that the real has been showing itself in the light of Ideas ever
since the time of Plato, Plato did not bring about. The thinker only responded
to what addressed itself to him.
Only to the extent that man for his part is already challenged to exploit the
energies of nature can this ordering revealing happen. If man is challenged,
ordered, to do this, then does not man himself belong even more originally than
nature within the standing-reserve? The current talk about human resources,
about the supply of patients for a clinic, gives evidence of this. The forester who,
in the wood, measures the felled timber and to all appearances walks the same
forest path in the same way as did his grandfather is today commanded by
profit-making in the lumber industry, whether he knows it or not. He is made
subordinate to the orderability of cellulose, which for its part is challenged forth
by the need for paper, which is then delivered to newspapers and illustrated
magazines. The latter, in their turn, set public opinion to swallowing what is
printed, so that a set configuration of opinion becomes available on demand. Yet
precisely because man is challenged more originally than are the energies of
nature, i.e., into the process of ordering, he never is transformed into mere
standing-reserve. Since man drives technology forward, he takes part in ordering
as a way of revealing. But the unconcealment itself, within which ordering
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unfolds, is never a human handiwork, any more than is the realm through
which man is already passing every time he as a subject relates to an object.
Where and how does this revealing happen if it is no mere handiwork of
man? We need not look far. We need only apprehend in an unbiased way That
which has already claimed man and has done so, so decisively that he can only
be man at any given time as the one so claimed. Wherever man opens his eyes
and ears, unlocks his heart, and gives himself over to meditating and striving,
shaping and working, entreating and thanking, he finds himself everywhere
already brought into the unconcealed. The unconcealment of the unconcealed
has already come to pass whenever it calls man forth into the modes of revealing
allotted to him. When man, in his way, from within unconcealment reveals
that which presences, he merely responds to the call of unconcealment even
when he contradicts it. Thus when man, investigating, observing, ensnares
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.
Modern technology as an ordering revealing is, then, no merely human
doing. Therefore we must take that challenging that sets upon man to order the
real as standing-reserve in accordance with the way in which it shows itself.
That challenging gathers man into ordering. This gathering concentrates man
upon ordering the real as standing-reserve.
That which primordially unfolds the mountains into mountain ranges and
courses through them in their folded togetherness is the gathering that we call
“Gebirg” [mountain chain].
That original gathering from which unfold the ways in which we have feelings
of one kind or another we name “Gemüt” [disposition].
We now name that challenging claim which gathers man thither to order
the self-revealing as standing-reserve: “Ge-siell” [Enframing].17
We dare to use this word in a sense that has been thoroughly unfamiliar up
to now.
According to ordinary usage, the word Gestell [frame] means some kind of
apparatus, e.g., a bookrack. Gestell is also the name for a skeleton. And the
employment of the word Ge-stell [Enframing] that is now required of us seems
equally eerie, not to speak of the arbitrariness with which words of a mature
language are thus misused. Can anything be more strange? Surely not. Yet this
strangeness is an old usage of thinking. And indeed thinkers accord with this
usage precisely at the point where it is a matter of thinking that which is highest.
We, late born, are no longer in a position to appreciate the significance of
Plato’s daring to use the word eidos for that which in everything and in each
particular thing endures as present. For eidos, in the common speech, meant
the outward aspect [Ansicht] that a visible thing offers to the physical eye. Plato
exacts of this word, however, something utterly extraordinary: that it name
what precisely is not and never will be perceivable with physical eyes. But even
this is by no means the full extent of what is extraordinary here. For idea names
not only the nonsensuous aspect of what is physically visible.18 Aspect (idea)
names and is, also, that which constitutes the essence in the audible, the tasteable,
the tactile, in everything that is in any way accessible. Compared with the
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demands that Plato makes on language and thought in this and other instances,
the use of the word Gestell as the nàme for the essence of modern technology,
which we now venture here, is almost harmless. Even so, the usage now
required remains something exacting and is open to misinterpretation.
Enframing means the gathering together of that setting-upon which sets
upon man, i.e., challenges him forth, to reveal the real, in the mode of ordering,
as standing-reserve. Enframing means that way of revealing which holds sway
in the essence of modern technology and which is itself nothing technological.
On the other hand, all those things that are so familiar to us and are standard
parts of an assembly, such as rods, pistons, and chassis, belong to the technological.
The assembly itself, however, together with the aforementioned stockparts,
falls within the sphere of technological activity; and this activity always
merely responds to the challenge of Enframing, but it never comprises Enframing
itself or brings it about.
The word stellen [to set upon] in the name Ge-stell [Enframing] not only
means challenging. At the same time it should preserve the suggestion of
another Stellen from which it stems, namely, that producing and presenting
[Her- und Dar-stellen] which, in the sense of poie¯sis, lets what presences come
forth into unconcealment. This producing that brings forth – e.g., the erecting
of a statue in the temple precinct – and the challenging ordering now under
consideration are indeed fundamentally different, and yet they remain related
in their essence. Both are ways of revealing, of ale¯theia. In Enframing, that
unconcealment comes to pass in conformity with which the work of modern
technology reveals the real as standing-reserve. This work is therefore neither
only a human activity nor a mere means within such activity. The merely
instrumental, merely anthropological definition of technology is therefore in
principle untenable. And it cannot be rounded out by being referred back to
some metaphysical or religious explanation that undergirds it.
It remains true, nonetheless, that man in the technological age is, in a particularly
striking way, challenged forth into revealing. That revealing concerns
nature, above all, as the chief storehouse of the standing energy reserve.
Accordingly, man’s ordering attitude and behavior display themselves first in
the rise of modern physics as an exact science. Modern science’s way of representing
pursues and entraps nature as a calculable coherence of forces. Modern
physics is not experimental physics because it applies apparatus to the questioning
of nature. Rather the reverse is true. Because physics, indeed already as
pure theory, sets nature up to exhibit itself as a coherence of forces calculable in
advance, it therefore orders its experiments precisely for the purpose of asking
whether and how nature reports itself when set up in this way.
But after all, mathematical physics arose almost two centuries before technology.
How, then, could it have already been set upon by modern technology and
placed in its service? The facts testify to the contrary. Surely technology got under
way only when it could be supported by exact physical science. Reckoned chronologically,
this is correct. Thought historically, it does not hit upon the truth.
The modern physical theory of nature prepares the way first not simply for
technology but for the essence of modern technology. For already in physics
the challenging gathering-together into ordering revealing holds sway. But in it
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that gathering does not yet come expressly to appearance. Modern physics is
the herald of Enframing, a herald whose origin is still unknown. The essence of
modern technology has for a long time been concealing itself, even where
power machinery has been invented, where electrical technology is in full
swing, and where atomic technology is well under way.
All coming to presence, not only modern technology, keeps itself everywhere
concealed to the last.19 Nevertheless, it remains, with respect to its holding
sway, that which precedes all: the earliest. The Greek thinkers already knew
of this when they said: That which is earlier with regard to the arising that
holds sway becomes manifest to us men only later. That which is primally early
shows itself only ultimately to men.20 Therefore, in the realm of thinking, a
painstaking effort to think through still more primally what was primally
thought is not the absurd wish to revive what is past, but rather the sober readiness
to be astounded before the coming of what is early.
Chronologically speaking, modern physical science begins in the seventeenth
century. In contrast, machine-power technology develops only in the
second half of the eighteenth century. But modern technology, which for
chronological reckoning is the later, is, from the point of view of the essence
holding sway within it, the historically earlier.
If modern physics must resign itself ever increasingly to the fact that its
realm of representation remains inscrutable and incapable of being visualized,
this resignation is not dictated by any committee of researchers. It is challenged
forth by the rule of Enframing, which demands that nature be orderable as
standing-reserve. Hence physics, in all its retreating from the representation
turned only toward objects that has alone been standard till recently, will never
be able to renounce this one thing: that nature reports itself in some way or
other that is identifiable through calculation and that it remains orderable as a
system of information. This system is determined, then, out of a causality that
has changed once again. Causality now displays neither the character of the
occasioning that brings forth nor the nature of the causa efficiens, let alone that
of the causa formalis. It seems as though causality is shrinking into a reporting –
a reporting challenged forth – of standing-reserves that must be guaranteed
either simultaneously or in sequence. To this shrinking would correspond the
process of growing resignation that Heisenberg’s lecture depicts in so impressive
a manner. W. Heisenberg, “Das Naturbild in der heutigen physik,” in Die Künste
im technischen Zeitalter (Munich, 1954), pp. 43 ff.
Because the essence of modern technology lies in Enframing, modern technology
must employ exact physical science. Through its so doing, the deceptive
illusion arises that modern technology is applied physical science. This
illusion can maintain itself only so long as neither the essential origin of modern
science nor indeed the essence of modern technology is adequately found
out through questioning.
We are questioning concerning technology in order to bring to light our
relationship to its essence. The essence of modern technology shows itself in
what we call Enframing. But simply to point to this is still in no way to answer
the question concerning technology, if to answer means to respond, in the
sense of correspond, to the essence of what is being asked about.
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Where do we find ourselves brought to, if now we think one step further
regarding what Enframing itself actually is? It is nothing technological, nothing on
the order of a machine. It is the way in which the real reveals itself as standingreserve.
Again we ask: Does this revealing happen somewhere beyond all
human doing? No. But; neither does it happen exclusively in man, or decisively
through man.
Enframing is the gathering together that belongs to that setting-upon which
sets upon man and puts him in position to reveal the real, in the mode of ordering,
as standing-reserve. As the one who is challenged forth in this way, man
stands within the essential realm of Enframing. He can never take up a relationship
to it only subsequently. Thus the question as to how we are to arrive at
a relationship to the essence of technology, asked in this way, always comes too
late. But never too late comes the question as to whether we actually experience
ourselves as the ones whose activities everywhere, public and private, are
challenged forth by Enframing. Above all, never too late comes the question as
to whether and how we actually admit ourselves into that wherein Enframing
itself comes to presence.
The essence of modern technology starts man upon the way of that revealing
through which the real everywhere, more or less distinctly, becomes
standing-reserve. “To start upon a way” means “to send” in our ordinary language.
We shall call that sending-that-gathers [versammelde Schicken] which
first starts man upon a way of revealing, destining [Geschick].21 It is from out of
this destining that the essence of all history [Geschichte] is determined. History
is neither simply the object of written chronicle nor simply the fulfillment of
human activity. That activity first becomes history as something destined. [See
Vom Wesen der Wahrheit, 1930; 1st ed., 1943, pp. 16 ff. [English translation,
“On the Essence of Truth,” in Existence and Being, ed. Werner Brock (Chicago:
Regnery, 1949), pp. 308 ff.] And it is only the destining into objectifying representation
that makes the historical accessible as an object for historiography,
i.e., for a science, and on this basis makes possible the current equating of the
historical with that which is chronicled.
Enframing, as a challenging-forth into ordering, sends into a way of revealing.
Enframing is an ordaining of destining, as is every way of revealing.
Bringing-forth, poie¯sis, is also a destining in this sense.
Always the unconcealment of that which is22 goes upon a way of revealing.
Always the destining of revealing holds complete sway over man But that
destining is never a fate that compels. For man becomes truly free only insofar
as he belongs to the realm of destining and so becomes one who listens and
hears [Hörender], and not one who is simply constrained to obey [Höriger].
The essence of freedom is originally not connected with the will or even
with the causality of human willing.
Freedom governs the open in the sense of the cleared and lighted up, i.e., of
the revealed.23 It is to the happening of revealing, i.e., of truth, that freedom
stands in the closest and most intimate kinship. All revealing belongs within a
harboring and a concealing. But that which frees – the mystery – is concealed
and always concealing itself. All revealing comes out of the open, goes into the
open, and brings into the open. The freedom of the open consists neither in
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unfettered arbitrariness nor in the constraint of mere laws. Freedom is that
which conceals in a way that opens to light, in whose clearing there shimmers
that veil that covers what comes to presence of all truth and lets the veil appear
as what veils. Freedom is the realm of the destining that at any given time starts
a revealing upon its way.
The essence of modern technology lies in Enframing. Enframing belongs
within the destining of revealing. These sentences express something different
from the talk that we hear more frequently, to the effect that technology is the
fate of our age, where “fate” means the inevitableness of an unalterable course.
But when we consider the essence of technology, then we experience
Enframing as a destining of revealing. In this way we are already sojourning
within the open space of destining, a destining that in no way confines us to a
stultified compulsion to push on blindly with technology or, what comes to the
same thing, to rebel helplessly against it and curse it as the work of the devil.
Quite to the contrary, when we once open ourselves expressly to the essence of
technology, we find ourselves unexpectedly taken into a freeing claim.
The essence of technology lies in Enframing. Its holding sway belongs within
destining. Since destining at any given time starts man on a way of revealing,
man, thus under way, is continually approaching the brink of the possibility of
pursuing and pushing forward nothing but what is revealed in ordering, and
of deriving all his standards on this basis. Through this the other possibility is
blocked, that man might be admitted more and sooner and ever more primally to
the essence of that which is unconcealed and to its unconcealment, in order that
he might experience as his essence his needed belonging to revealing.
Placed between these possibilities, man is endangered from out of destining.
The destining of revealing is as such, in every one of its modes, and therefore
necessarily, danger.
In whatever way the destining of revealing may hold sway, the unconcealment
in which everything that is shows itself at any given time harbors the danger
that man may quail at the unconcealed and may misinterpret it. Thus where
everything that presences exhibits itself in the light of a cause-effect cóherence,
even God can, for representational thinking, lose all that is exalted and holy,
the mysteriousness of his distance. In the light of causality, God can sink to the
level of a cause, of causa efficiens. He then becomes, even in theology, the god of
the philosophers, namely, of those who define the unconcealed and the concealed
in terms of the causality of making, without ever considering the essential
origin of this causality.
In a similar way the unconcealment in accordance with which nature presents
itself as a calculable complex of the effects of forces can indeed permit correct
determinations; but precisely through these successes the danger can
remain that in the midst of all that is correct the true will withdraw.
The destining of revealing is in itself not just any danger, but danger as
such.
Yet when destining reigns in the mode of Enframing, it is the supreme danger.
This danger attests itself to us in two ways. As soon as what is unconcealed
no longer concerns man even as object, but does so, rather, exclusively as
standing-reserve, and man in the midst of objectlessness is nothing but the
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orderer of the standing-reserve, then he comes to the very brink of a precipitous
fall; that is, he comes to the point where he himself will have to be taken as
standing-reserve. Meanwhile man, precisely as the one so threatened, exalts himself
to the posture of lord of the earth. In this way the impression comes to prevail
that everything man encounters exists only insofar as it is his construct. This illusion
gives rise in turn to one final delusion: It seems as though man everywhere
and always encounters only himself. Heisenberg has with complete correctness
pointed out that the real must present itself to contemporary man in this way. “Das
Naturbild,” pp. 60 ff. In truth, however, precisely nowhere does man today any longer
encounter himself, i.e., his essence. Man stands so decisively in attendance on the
challenging-forth of Enframing that he does not apprehend Enframing as a claim,
that he fails to see himself as the one spoken to, and hence also fails in every way
to hear in what respect he ek-sists, from out of his essence, in the realm of an
exhortation or address, and thus can never encounter only himself.
But Enframing does not simply endanger man in his relationship to himself
and to everything that is. As a destining, it banishes man into that kind of revealing
which is an ordering. Where this ordering holds sway, it drives out every other
possibility of revealing. Above all, Enframing conceals that revealing which, in the
sense of poie¯sis, lets what presences come forth into appearance. As compared
with that other revealing, the setting-upon that challenges forth thrusts man into
a relation to that which is, that is at once antithetical and rigorously ordered.
Where Enframing holds sway, regulating and securing of the standing-reserve
mark all revealing. They no longer even let their own fundamental characteristic
appear, namely, this revealing as such.
Thus the challenging Enframing not only conceals a former way of revealing,
bringing-forth, but it conceals-revealing itself and with it That wherein unconcealment,
i.e., truth, comes to pass.
Enframing blocks the shining-forth and holding-sway of truth. The destining
that sends into ordering is consequently the extreme danger. What is dangerous is
not technology. There is no demonry of technology, but rather there is the mystery
of its essence. The essence of technology, as a destining of revealing, is the danger.
The transformed meaning of the word “Enframing” will perhaps become somewhat
more familiar to us now if we think Enframing in the sense of destining and
danger.
The threat to man does not come in the first instance from the potentially
lethal machines and apparatus of technology. The actual threat has already
affected man in his essence. The rule of Enframing threatens man with the possibility
that it could be denied to him to enter into a more original revealing and
hence to experience the call of a more primal truth.
Thus, where Enframing reigns, there is danger in the highest sense.
But where danger is, grows
The saving power also.
Let us think carefully about these words of Hölderlin. What does it mean
“to save”? Usually we think that it means only to seize hold of a thing threatened
by ruin, in order to secure it in its former continuance. But the verb “to
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HEIDEGGER The Question Concerning Technology 15
save” says more. “To save” is to fetch something home into its essence, in order
to bring the essence for the first time into its genuine appearing. If the essence of
technology, Enframing, is the extreme danger; and if there is truth in Hölderlin’s
words, then the rule of Enframing cannot exhaust itself solely in blocking all
lighting-up of every revealing, all appearing of truth. Rather, precisely the
essence of technology must harbor in itself the growth of the saving power. But
in that case, might not an adequate look into what Enframing is as a destining of
revealing bring into appearance the saving power in its arising?
In what respect does the saving power grow there also where the danger is?
Where something grows, there it takes root, from thence it thrives. Both happen
concealedly and quietly and in their own time. But according to the words
of the poet we have no right whatsoever to expect that there where the danger
is we should be able to lay hold of the saving power immediately and without
preparation. Therefore we must consider now, in advance, in what recpect the
saving power does most profoundly take root and thence thrive even in that
wherein the extreme danger lies, in the holding sway of Enframing. In order to
consider this, it is necessary, as a last step upon our way, to look with yet clearer
eyes into the danger. Accordingly, we must once more question concerning
technology. For we have said that in technology’s essence roots and thrives the
saving power.
But how shall we behold the saving power in the essence of technology so
long as we do not consider in what sense of “essence” it is that Enframing is
actually the essence of technology?
Thus far we have understood “essence” in its current meaning. In the academic
language of philosophy, “essence” means what something is; in Latin, quid.
Quidditas, whatness, provides the answer to the question concerning essence. For
example, what pertains to all kinds of trees – oaks, beeches, birches, firs – is the
same “treeness.” Under this inclusive genus – the “universal” – fall all real and
possible trees. Is then the essence of technology, Enframing, the common genus
for everything technological? If that were the case then the steam turbine, the
radio transmitter, and the cyclotron would each be an Enframing. But the word
“Enframing” does not mean here a tool or any kind of apparatus. Still less does it
mean the general concept of such resources. The machines and apparatus are no
more cases and kinds of Enframing than are the man at the switchboard and the
engineer in the drafting room. Each of these in its own way indeed belongs as
stockpart, available resource, or executer, within Enframing; but Enframing is
never the essence of technology in the sense of a genus. Enframing is a way of
revealing having the character of destining, namely, the way that challenges forth.
The revealing that brings forth (poie¯sis) is also a way that has the character of destining.
But these ways are not kinds that, arrayed beside one another, fall under
the concept of revealing. Revealing is that destining which, ever suddenly and
inexplicably to all thinking, apportions itself into the revealing that brings forth
and that also challenges, and which allots itself to man. The challenging revealing
has its origin as a destining in bringing-forth. But at the same time Enframing, in
a way characteristic of a destining, blocks poie¯sis.
Thus Enframing, as a destining of revealing, is indeed the essence of technology,
but never in the sense of genus and essentia. If we pay heed to this,
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something astounding strikes us: It is technology itself that makes the demand
on us to think in another way what is usually understood by “essence.” But in
what way?
If we speak of the “essence of a house” and the “essence of a state,” we do
not mean a generic type; rather we mean the ways in which house and state
hold sway, administer themselves, develop and decay – the way in which they
“essence” [Wesen]. Johann Peter Hebel in a poem, “Ghost on Kanderer Street,”
for which Goethe had a special fondness, uses the old word die Weserei. It
means the city hall inasmuch as there the life of the community gathers and village
existence is constantly in play, i.e., comes to presence. It is from the verb
wesen that the noun is derived. Wesen understood as a verb is the same as
währen [to last or endure], not only in terms of meaning, but also in terms of
the phonetic formation of the word. Socrates and Plato already think the
essence of something as what essences, what comes to presence, in the sense of
what endures. But they think what endures as what remains permanently [das
Fortwährende] (aei on). And they find what endures permanently in what, as
that which remains, tenaciously persists throughout all that happens. That
which remains they discover, in turn, in the aspect [Aussehern] (eidos, idea),
for example, the Idea “house.”
The Idea “house” displays what anything is that is fashioned as a house.
Particular, real, and possible houses, in contrast, are changing and transitory
derivatives of the Idea and thus belong to what does not endure.
But it can never in any way be established that enduring is based solely on
what Plato thinks as idea and Aristotle thinks as to ti e¯n einai (that which any
particular thing has always been), or what metaphysics in its most varied interpretations
thinks as essentia.
All essencing endures. But is enduring only permanent enduring? Does the
essence of technology endure in the sense of the permanent enduring of an Idea
that hovers over everything technological, thus making it seem that by technology
we mean some mythological abstraction? The way in which technology
essences lets itself be seen only from out of that permanent enduring in which
Enframing comes to pass as a destining of revealing. Goethe once uses the mysterious
word fortgewähren [to grant permanently] in place of fortwähren [to
endure permanently]. “Die Wahlverwandtschaften” [Congeniality], pt. II,
chap. 10, in the “novelette Die wunderlichen Nachbarskinder [The strange
neighbor’s children]. He hears währen [to endure] and gewähren [to grant] here
in one unarticulated accord.24 And if we now ponder more carefully than we
did before what it is that actually endures and perhaps alone endures, we may
venture to say: Only what is granted endures. That which endures primaily out of
the earliest beginning is what grants.25
As the essencing of technology, Enframing is that which endures. Does
Enframing hold sway at all in the sense of granting? No doubt the question
seems a horrendous blunder. For according to everything that has been said,
Enframing is, rather, a destining that gathers together into the revealing that
challenges forth. Challenging is anything but a granting. So it seems, so long
as we do not notice that the challenges-forth into the ordering of the real as
standing-reserve still remains a destining that starts man upon a way of
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revealing. As this destining, the coming to presence of technology gives man
entry into That which, of himself, he can neither invent nor in any way make.
For there is no such thing as a man who, solely of himself, is only man.
But if this destining, Enframing, is the extreme danger, not only for man’s
coming to presence, but for all revealing as such, should this destining still be
called a granting? Yes, most emphatically, if in this destining the saving power is
said to grow. Every destining of revealing comes to pass from out of a granting and
as such a granting. For it is granting that first conveys to manthat share in revealing
which the coming-to-pass of revealing needs.26 As the one so needed and
used, man is given to belong to the coming-to-pass of truth. The granting that
sends in one way or another into revealing is as such the saving power. For the
saving power lets man see and enter into the highest dignity of his essence.
This dignity lies in keeping watch over the unconcealment – and with it, from
the first, the concealment – of all coming to presence on this earth. It is
precisely in Enframing, which threatens to sweep man away into ordering as
the supposed single way of revealing, and so thrusts man into the danger of the
surrender of his free essence – it is precisely in this extreme danger that the
innermost indestructible belongingness of man within granting may come to
light, provided that we, for our part, begin to pay heed to the coming to presence
of technology.
Thus the coming to presence of technology harbors in itself what we least
suspect, the possible arising of the saving power.
Everything, then, depends upon this: that we ponder this arising and that,
recollecting, we watch over it. How can this happen? Above all through our
catching sight of what comes to presence 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.
When, however, we ask how the instrumental comes to presence as a kind
of causality, then we experience this coming to presence as the destining of a
revealing.
When we consider, finally, that the coming to presence of the essence of
technology comes to pass in the granting that needs and uses man so that he
may share in revealing, then the following becomes clear:
The essence of technology is in a lofty sense ambiguous. Such ambiguity
points to the mystery of all revealing, i.e., of truth.
On the one hand, Enframing challenges forth into the frenziedness of ordering
that blocks every view into the coming-to-pass of revealing and so radically
endangers the relation to the essence of truth.
On the other hand, Enframing comes to pass for its part in the granting that
lets man endure – as yet unexperienced, but perhaps more experienced in the
future – that he may be the one who is needed and used for the safekeeping of
the coming to presence of truth.27 Thus does the arising of the saving power
appear.
The irresistibility of ordering and the restraint of the saving power draw
past each other like the paths of two stars in the course of the heavens. But precisely
this, their passing by, is the hidden side of their nearness.
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When we look into the ambiguous essence of technology, we behold the constellation,
the stellar course of the mystery.
The question concerning technology is the question concerning the constellation
in which revealing and concealing, in which the coming to presence of
truth, comes to pass.
But what help is it to us to look into the constellation of truth? We look into
the danger and see the growth of the saving power.
Through this we are not yet saved. But we are thereupon summoned to hope
in the growing light of the saving power. How can this happen? Here and now
and in little things, that we may foster the saving power in its increase. This
includes holding always before our eyes the extreme danger.
The coming to presence of technology threatens revealing, threatens it with
the possibility that all revealing will be consumed in ordering and that everything
will present itself only in the unconcealedness of standing-reserve.
Human activity can never directly counter this danger. Human achievement
alone can never banish it. But human reflection can ponder the fact that all saving
power must be of a higher essence than what is endangered, though at the
same time kindred to it.
But might there not perhaps be a more primally granted revealing that could
bring the saving power into its first shining forth in the midst of the danger, a
revealing that in the technological age rather conceals than shows itself?
There was a time when it was not technology alone that bore the name techne¯.
Once that revealing that brings forth truth into the splendor of radiant appearing
also was called techne¯.
Once there was a time when the bringing-forth of the true into the beautiful
was called techne¯. And the poie¯sis of the fine arts also was called techne¯.
In Greece, at the outset of the destining of the West, the arts soared to the
supreme height of the revealing granted them. They brought the presence,
[Gegenwart] of the gods, brought the dialogue of divine and human destinings, to
radiance. And art was simply called techne¯. It was a single, manifold revealing. It
was pious, promos, i.e., yielding to the holding-sway and the safekeeping of truth.
The arts were not derived from the artistic. Art works were not enjoyed aesthetically.
Art was not a sector of cultural activity.
What, then, was art – perhaps only for that brief but magnificent time? Why
did art bear the modest name techne¯? Because it was a revealing that brought forth
and hither, and therefore belonged within poie¯sis. It was finally that revealing
which holds complete sway in all the fine arts, in poetry, and in everything poetical
that obtained poie¯sis as its proper name.
The same poet from whom we heard the words
But where danger is, grows
The saving power also.
says to us:
. . . poetically dwells man upon this earth.
The poetical brings the true into the splendor of what Plato in the Phaedrus
calls to ekphanestaton, that which shines forth most purely. The poetical
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HEIDEGGER The Question Concerning Technology 19
thoroughly pervades every art, every revealing of coming to presence into the
beautiful.
Could it be that the fine arts are called to poetic revealing? Could it be that
revealing lays claim to the arts most primally, so that they for their part may
expressly foster the growth of the saving power, may awaken and found anew
our look into that which grants and our trust in it?
Whether art may be granted this highest possibility of its essence in the
midst of the extreme danger, no one can tell. Yet we can be astounded. Before
what? Before this other possibility: that the frenziedness of technology may
entrench itself everywhere to such an extent that someday, throughout everything
technological, the essence of technology may come to presence in the
coming-to-pass of truth.
Because the essence of technology is nothing technological, essential reflection
upon technology and decisive confrontation with it must happen in a
realm that is, on the one hand, akin to the essence of technology and, on the
other, fundamentally different from it.
Such a realm is art. But certainly only if reflection on art, for its part, does
not shut its eyes to the constellation of truth after which we are questioning.
Thus questioning, we bear witness to the crisis that in our sheer preoccupation
with technology we do not yet experience the coming to presence of technology,
that in our sheer aesthetic-mindedness we no longer guard and
preserve the coming to presence of art. Yet the more questioningly we ponder
the essence of technology, the more mysterious the essence of art becomes.
The closer we come to the danger, the more brightly do the ways into the
saving power begin to shine and the more questioning we become. For questioning
is the piety of thought.
Notes
1. “Essence” is the traditional translation of the German noun Wesen. One of
Heidegger’s principal aims in this essay is to seek the true meaning of essence
through or by way of the “correct” meaning. He will later show that Wesen does not
simply mean what something is, but that it means, farther, the way in which something
pursues its course, the way in which it remains through time as what it is.
Heidegger writes elsewhere that the noun Wesen does not mean quidditas originally,
but rather “enduring as presence” (das Währen als Gegemoart). (See An Introduction
to Metaphysics, trans. Ralph Manheim [New York: Doubleday, 1961], p. 59.) Wesen
as a noun derives from the verb wesen, which is seldom used as such in modern
German. The verb survives primarily in inflected forms of the verb sein (to be) and
in such words as the adjective anwesend (present). The old verbal forms from which
wesen stems meant to tarry or dwell. Heidegger repeatedly identifies wesen as “the
same as währen [to last or endure].” (See p. 30 below and SR 161.) As a verb, wesen
will usually be translated here with “to come to presence,” a rendering wherein the
meaning “endure” should be strongly heard. Occasionally it will be translated “to
essence,” and its gerund will be rendered with “essencing.” The noun Wesen will
regularly be translated “essence” until Heidegger’s explanatory discussion it
reached. Thereafter, in this and the succeeding essays, it will often be translated
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with “coming to presence.” In relation to all these renderings, the reader should
bear in mind a point that is of fundamental importance to Heidegger, namely, that
the root of wesen, with its meaning “to dwell,” provides one integral component in
the meaning of the verb sein (to be). (Cf. An Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 59.)
2. “Conception” here translates the noun Vorstellung. Elsewhere in this volume,
Vorstellung will usually be translated by “representation,” and its related verb
vorstellen by “to represent.” Both “conception” and “representation” should suggest
a placing or setting-up-before. Cf. the discussion of Vorstellung in AWP131–132.
3. Instrumentum signifies that which functions to heap or build up or to arrange.
Heidegger here equates it with the noun Einrichtung, translated “contrivance,”
which can also mean arrangement, adjustment, furnishing, or equipment. In
accordance with his dictum that the true must be sought by way of the correct,
Heidegger here anticipates with his identification of technology as an instrumentum
and an Einrichtung his later “true” characterization of technology in terms of
setting-in-place, ordering, Enframing, and standing-reserve.
4. “Come to pass” translates sich ereignet. For a discussion of the fuller meaning of the
verb ereignen, see T 38 n. 4, 45.
5. Das, was ein anderes verschuldet is a quite idomatic expression that here would mean
to many German readers “that which is the cause of something else.” The verb verschulden
actually has a wide range of meanings – to be indebted, to owe, to be guilty,
to be responsible for or to, to cause. Heidegger intends to awaken all these meanings
and to have connotations of mutual interdependence sound throughout this passage.
6. Literally, “confines into” – the German preposition in with the accusative.
Heidegger often uses this construction in ways that are unusual in German, as they
would be in English. It will ordinarily be translated here by “within” so as to distinguish
it from “in” used to translate in with the dative.
7. By writing An-wesen, Heidegger stresses the composition of the verb anwesen, translated
as “to presence.” The verb consists of wesen (literally, to continue or endure)
with the prepositional prefix an- (at, to, toward). It is man who must receive presencing,
man to whom it comes as enduring. Cf. On Time and Being, trans. Joan
Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), p. 12.
8. Ver-an-lassen is Heidegger’s writing of the verb veranlassen in noun form, now
hyphenated to bring out its meaning. Veranlassen ordinarily means to occasion, to
cause, to bring about, to call forth. Its use here relates back to the use of anlassen (to
leave [something] on, to let loose, to set going), here translated “to start something
on its way.” Anlassen has just been similarly written as an-lassen so as to emphasize
its composition from lassen (to let or leave) and an (to or toward). One of the functions
of the German prefix ver- is to intensify the force of a verb. André Préau
quotes Heidegger as saying: “Ver-an-lassen is more active than an-lassen. The ver-, as
it were, pushes the latter toward a doing [vers un faire].” Cf. Martin Heidegger,
Essais et Confe¯rences (Paris: Gallimard, 1958), p. 16 n.
9. The full gamut of meaning for the verb hervorbringen, here functioning as a noun,
includes to bring forth or produce, to generate or beget, to utter, to elicit. Heidegger
intends that all of these nuances be heard. He hyphenates the word in order to
emphasize its adverbial prefixes, her (here or hither) and vor- (forward or forth).
Heidegger elsewhere makes specific the meaning resident in Her-vor-bringen for him
by utilizing those prefixes independently. Thus he says (translating literally),
“Bringing-forth-hither brings hither out of concealment, forth into unconcealment”
(cf. below, p. 11); and – after identifying working (wirken) and her-vor-bringen – he
says that working must be understood as “bringing hither – into unconcealment,
forth – into presencing” (SR 161). Because of the awkwardness of the English
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HEIDEGGER The Question Concerning Technology 21
phrase “to bring forth hither,” it has not been possible to include in the translation
of her-vor-bringen the nuance of meaning that her- provides.
10. The verb entbergen (to reveal) and the allied noun Entbergung (revealing) are unique
to Heidegger. Because of the exigencies of translation, entbergen must usually be
translated with “revealing,” and the presence of Entbergung, which is rather infrequently
used, has therefore regrettably been obscured for want of an appropriate
English noun as alternative that would be sufficiently active in meaning. Entbergen
and Entbergung are formed from the verb bergen and the verbal prefix ent-. Bergen
means to rescue, to recover, to secure, to harbor, to conceal, Ent- is used in German
verbs to connote in one way or another a change from an existing situation. It
can mean “forth” or “out” or can connote a change that is the negating of a former
condition. Entbergen connotes an opening out from protective concealing, a harboring
forth. For a presentation of Heidegger’s central tenet that it is only as protected
and preserved – and that means as enclosed and secure – that anything is set free to
endure, to continue as that which it is, i.e., to be, see “Building Dwelling Thinking”
in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row,
1971), p. 149, and cf. p. 25 below.
Entbergen and Entbergung join a family of words all formed from bergen –
verbergen (to conceal), Verborgenheit (concealment), das Verborgene (the concealed),
Unverborgenheit (unconcealment), das Unverborgene (the unconcealed) – of which
Heidegger makes frequent use. The lack of viable English words sufficiently numerous
to permit a similar use of but one fundamental stem has made it necessary to
obscure, through the use of “reveal,” the close relationship among all the words just
mentioned. None of the English words used – “reveal,” “conceal,” “unconceal” –
evinces with any adequacy the meaning resident in bergen itself; yet the reader
should be constantly aware that the full range of connotation present in bergen
sounds for Heidegger within all these, its derivatives.
11. Here and elsewhere “belongs within” translates the German gehört in with the
accusative (literally, belongs into), an unusual usage that Heidegger often employs.
The regular German construction is gehört zu (belongs to). With the use of “belongs
into,” Heidegger intends to suggest a relationship involving origin.
12. Heidegger here hyphenates the word Wahrheit (truth) so as to expose its stem, wahr.
He points out elsewhere that words with this stem have a common derivation and
underlying meaning (SR 165). Such words often show the connotations of attentive
watchfulness and guarding that he there finds in their Greek cognates, horao¯, o¯ra,
e.g., wahren (to watch over and keep safe) and bewahren (to preserve). Hyphenating
Wahrheit draws it overtly into this circle of meaning. It points to the fact that in truth,
which is unconcealment (Unverborgenheit), a safekeeping carries itself out. Wahrheit
thus offers here a very close parallel to its companion noun Entbergung (revealing; literally,
harboring forth), built on bergen (to rescue, to harbor, to conceal). See n. 10,
above. For a further discussion of words built around wahr, see T 42, n 9.
13. Herausfordern means to challenge, to call forth or summon to action, to demand
positively, to provoke. It is composed of the verb fordern (to demand, to summon, to
challenge) and the adverbial prefixes her- (hither) and aus- (out). The verb might be
rendered very literally as “to demand out hither.” The structural similarity between
herausfordern and her-vor-bringen (to bring forth hither) is readily apparent. It serves
of itself to point up the relation subsisting between the two modes of revealing of
which the verbs speak – modes that, in the very distinctive ways peculiar to them,
occasion a coming forth into unconcealment and presencing. See below, 29–30.
14. The verb stellen (to place or set) has a wide variety of uses. It can mean to put
in place, to order, to arrange, to furnish or supply, and, in a military context, to
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challenge or engage. Here Heidegger sees the connotations of herausfordern (to challenge,
to call forth, to demand out hither) as fundamentally determinative of the
meaning of stellen, and this remains true throughout his ensuing discussion. The
translation of stetten with “to set upon” is intended to carry this meaning. The connotations
of setting in place and of supplying that lie within the word stellen remain
strongly present in Heidegger’s repeated use of the verb hereafter, however, since the
“setting-upon” of which it speaks is inherently a setting in place so as to supply.
Where these latter meanings come decisively to the fore, stellen has been translated
with “to set” or “to set up,” or, rarely, with “to supply.”
Stellen embraces the meanings of a whole family of verbs: bestellen (to order,
command; to set in order), vorstellen (to represent), sicherstellen (to secure), nachstellen
(to entrap), verstellen (to block or disguise), herstellen (to produce, to set
here), darstellen (to present or exhibit), and so on. In these verbs the various
nuances within stellen are reinforced and made specific. All these meanings are
gathered together in Heidegger’s unique use of the word that is pivotal for him, Gestell
(Enframing). Cf. pp. 19 ff. See also the opening paragraph of “The Turning,”
pp. 36–37.
15. In these two sentences, in order to show something of the manner in which
Heidegger gathers together a family of meanings, a series of stellen verbs – stellen
(three times), herstellen, bestellen – have been translated with verbal expressions
formed around “set.” For the usual meanings of these verbs, see n. 14.
16. Bestand ordinarily denotes a store or supply as “standing by.” It carries the connotation
of the verb bestehen with its dual meaning of to last and to undergo. Heidegger
uses the word to characterize the manner in which everything commanded into
place and ordered according to the challenging demand ruling in modern technology
presences as revealed. He wishes to stress here not the permanency, but the orderability
and substitutability of objects. Bestand contrasts with Gegenstand (object; that
which stands over against). Objects indeed lose their character as objects when they
are caught up in the “standing-reserve.” Cf. Introduction, p. xxix.
17. The translation “Enframing” for Ge-stell is intended to suggest, through the use of
the prefix “en-,” something of the active meaning that Heidegger here gives to the
German word. While following the discussion that now ensues, in which
Enframing assumes a central role, the reader should be careful not to interpret the
word as though it simply meant a framework of some sort. Instead he should constantly
remember that Enframing is fundamentally a calling-forth. It is a “challenging
claim,” a demanding summons, that “gathers” so as to reveal. This claim
enframes in that it assembles and orders. It puts into a framework or configuration
everything that it summons forth, through an ordering for use that it is forever
restructuring anew. Cf. Introduction, pp. xxix ff.
18. Where idea is italicized it is not the English word but a transliteration of the Greek.
19. “Coming to presence” here translates the gerund Wesende, a verbal form that
appears, in this volume, only in this essay. With the introduction into the discussion
of “coming to presence” as an alternate translation of the noun Wesen (essence),
subsequent to Heidegger’s consideration of the meaning of essence below (pp. 30 ff.),
occasionally the presence of das Wesende is regrettably but unavoidably obscured.
20. “That which is primally early” translates die anfängliche Frühe. For a discussion of
that which “is to all present and absent beings . . . the earliest and most ancient at
once” – i.e., Ereignen, das Ereignis – see “The Way to Language” in On the Way to
Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), p. 127.
21. For a further presentation of the meaning resident in Geschick and the related verb
schicken, cf. T 38 ff., and Introduction, pp. xxviii ff.
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22. dessen was ist. On the peculiar significance of das was ist (that which is), see T 44 n. 12.
23. “The open” here translates das Freie, cognate with Freiheit, freedom. Unfortunately
the repetitive stress of the German phrasing cannot be reproduced in English, since
the basic meaning of Freie – open air, open space – is scarcely heard in the English
“free.”
24. The verb gewähren is closely allied to the verbs währen (to endure) and wahren (to
watch over, to keep safe, to preserve). Gewähren ordinarily means to be surety for, to
warrant, to vouchsafe, to grant. In the discussion that follows, the verb will be
translated simply with “to grant.” But the reader should keep in mind also the connotations
of safeguarding and guaranteeing that are present in it as well.
25. Nur a Gewährte währt. Das anfänglich aus der Frühe Währende ist das Gewährende.
A literal translation of the second sentence would be, “That which endures primally
from out of the early. . . .” On the meaning of “the early,” see n. 20 above.
26. Here and subsequently in this essay, “coming-to-pass” translates the noun Ereignis.
Elsewhere, in “The Turning,” this word, in accordance with the deeper meaning
that Heidegger there finds for it, will be translated with “disclosing that brings into
its own.” See T 45; see also Introduction, on xxxvi-xxxvii.
27. “Safekeeping” translates the noun Wahrnis, which is unique to Heidegger. Wahrnis
is closely related to the verb wahren (to watch over, to keep safe, to preserve), integrally
related to Wahrheit (truth), and closely akin to währen (to endure) and
gewähren (to be surety for, to grant). On the meaning of Wahrnis, see T 42, n. 9 and
n. 12 above.
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