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Brian Kemple

Techne, Physis, and Technology: Aristotle and Heidegger

What is the relationship between technology, as it is understood today, and techne as a

concept of Aristotle's philosophy? Typically, techne is translated as “art,” a term which covers a

multiplicity of meanings. It refers not only to the fine arts, but also to any technical skill wherein

the perfection of the activity consists not principally in the activity itself, but in the work

produced.1 On the other hand, “technology,” as it is generally used today, is the name given to

any particular artifacts which are the results of the employment of the aforementioned technical

skills. The concept of “technology” as a whole carries the connotation of a continued refinement

of the products of technical skill, of development and progress; oftentimes, in contemporary

usage, the term refers specifically to those products which have come about since the industrial

revolution, i.e., modern technology, products which run on electrical power. There is, however,

no significant difference in kind from antiquated to current technology; the windmill is no less

technological than the wind turbine. Each device harnesses the energy of the natural world for

the use of man.

If we understand techne to mean “art,” broadly construed, it does not seem to exclude this

general meaning of technology. Indeed, the two are genuinely related in a number of ways.

Neither contains within its meaning a final end or goal as a perfection of itself, for each is a

cause of something which does not result in a perfection of its cause, except accidentally, but

which reaches its goal only in a transmission of the good to some exterior result: techne to the

1 This is true, although more remotely, even of that sense of techne which pertains to the using of a product

described at Physics 194b 1-8.

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production of artifacts—a process wherein the completion of the technological product marks a

terminus for techne’s activity—and technology to the continual increase of access, collection,

transmission, and deployment of resources, for purposes both pragmatic (such as motorized

farming equipment) and pleasurable (such as television). Both tend to result in some production:

technology, though not in every instance, as the means to harnessing and dispensing energy; and

techne as in some way either a cause of the skill, or the skill itself, to produce artifacts, often

technological, by and for some intentional betterment of human life. Thus, while it is clear that

there is some difference, since techne is a cause of technology, the two appear to be very

intimately related: much like a hand and a hammer are related to the act of driving a nail.

Contrariwise, physis, perhaps the most central notion within Aristotelian philosophy,

although also a means of production, lacks any evident intentions—on a level comparable to

human intention, at least—in those things which develop from it as a cause.2 Both physis and

techne are causes of a thing's coming-to-be, but in rather different ways. The former is an

evidently unconscious and somewhat chaotic procedure which has nevertheless produced an

ordered result of incredible complexity and subtlety, not only in the intricacy of living beings but

also the inorganic cosmos as a whole;3 whereas the latter is explicitly intentional and imposes its

own order from the outset. Based upon the understanding of techne given above—i.e., as a

technical skill consisting in the bringing-into-being of an artifact—it would seem that, with the

recent advancements in biological engineering, gene manipulation, and quantum physics, techne

2 The question of the teleology of physis and ta physika, although crucial, is not possible to address in this paper.

For an excellent discussion of inorganic teleology in an Aristotelian understanding, see Oderberg, David S. 2008.

Teleology: Inorganic and Organic. The assertion of a teleology of inorganic beings as though it is not different in

kind from the teleology of organic, conscious organic, and moral beings is certainly problematic, and certainly gives credence to those who reject all natural teleology in favor of a teleonomic or atelic universe; such is, however, to

quote Oderberg, “an egregious misreading of Aristotle.” (259). 3 Considered, for instance, the ubiquity of the Fibonacci sequence in nature: from the branching of trees (which

makes the reception of sunlight more efficient throughout the day) to heads of flowers and the spiral of the Milky

Way.

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will soon be able to replicate or even improve upon the effects of physis, which is a force that is

often destructive to the works and lives of human beings.4 In many ways, however, the

fundamental differences between physis and techne as causes have been obfuscated. If the

causality of physis in producing the beings of nature is seen as the collision of various external

forces, then it becomes nothing more than a powerful and mechanistic but unintelligent and

clumsy kind of techne: this conceiving of physis on the model of techne results in an unnatural

conflation which gives rise to what Heidegger calls “technological thinking.”5 Given our

rudimentary conceptions of physis and techne, there is evidence to support the lack of true

distinction between the kinds of causality of the two. Basic organs have been grown from adult

stem cells in a lab, and more complex organs are being worked on even now. Whole animals

have been cloned. Moreover, if man learns someday to harness and control the potencies of the

subatomic natural world, then the production of matter-with-mass, under any number of

configurations, may actually be possible as a consequence of technological mastery. If the

natural world, the product of physis, is so malleable in its response to techne, what objections can

there be to the notion that techne ought to guide, direct, and accelerate the slower and more

chaotic progress of physis? Why should techne not usurp the role of the architectonic productive

cause, given the technological capability and the possibility of obviating nature’s indifference to

human lives and works?

4 E.g., through disease, genetic deficiencies, and natural disasters. 5 There are many causes of this having come to pass: philosophical, social, and cultural. Others have written on the

history technological thinking; Engelmann, for instance, ascribes the advent of mechanism and reductionism to the

epistemological shift following modernity; Oderberg attributes the rejection of Aristotelian metaphysics and final

causes to “a mechanistic picture of nature bolstered by Newtonian physics and general corpuscularianism” which shunned Aristotelianism “with an almost visceral distaste bordering… on the pathological.” Cf. Engelmann,

Edward. 2007. “The Mechanistic and the Aristotelian Orientations toward Nature and Their Metaphysical

Backgrounds,” International Philosophical Quarterly 47 (2): 187-189 and Oderberg, David S. 2008. Teleology:

Inorganic and Organic. In Contemporary Perspectives on Natural Law., ed Ana Marta González, 259-279.

Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company: 259.

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To the contrary, we propose that the appropriation of the causality proper to physis does

not and cannot belong to techne; and that, in fact, the above interpretations of the Aristotelian

concepts of physis and techne, based upon the standard translations as “nature” and “art,” while

not wholly incorrect, are not sufficiently developed. In order to grasp Aristotle's meaning of

both terms more penetratingly, and to avoid the errors following from an oversimplified

understanding, we suggest looking to the interpretation of Martin Heidegger. While not without

their own difficulties and errors, Heidegger's analyses of physis and techne bring certain insights

which are illuminating against the contention of technological thinking and which every

philosophical tradition should take into serious consideration. In two important essays, “The

Question Concerning Technology” and “The Essence and Concept of Physis in Aristotle’s

Physics B, I” Heidegger gives his novel approach to interpreting Aristotle’s works, which should

aid in acquiring a deeper understanding of both the natural world and human beings’ role within

it. Specifically, in the former essay he makes important distinctions between technology or

technological thinking and techne as a virtue of the mind, and in the latter essay between techne

and physis, following in Aristotle’s footsteps. In part, however, because of his enigmatic style

and deliberately jarring translations of Greek, the precise meaning of his interpretation is not

always clear. It is our intention to unravel some of this confusion and show how Heidegger’s

approach to the Aristotelian concepts of physis and techne, and his warnings against an

increasingly technological society, may provide a clearer picture in an increasingly blurry world.

Key Terms

What are the true meanings of physis and techne for Aristotle? Heidegger’s method of

interpretation often depends upon finding an implicit significance in the numerous instances in

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which Aristotle contrasts one against the other. Already, this indicates to us something which

should not be overlooked: that what is crucial for understanding both concepts, in the

Heideggerian approach, is that aspect in which they are similar to each other: namely, as causes

of production, for things cannot be specifically opposed if not in some way generically the same.

Speaking broadly, the distinction which Heidegger draws between them is one which might be

gleaned by any philosophical novice on his first reading of Aristotle: namely, that techne is a

cause of a perfection or production by means of transitive action, a perfection of something

outside of itself, while physis is a cause of a perfection or production which is in some way

immanent. The reasoning behind Heidegger’s conclusion, however, is unique, and provides an

understanding of the two conceptions which in turn allows the distinction between techne and

technology to be established.

To understand this process of reasoning, we must unravel the interpretative translations

of Greek upon which Heidegger insists; translations which he admits are “the interpretation

proper”.6 We will examine three key terms: arche, ousia, and kinesis.7 For the sake of brevity,

much of the discussion has been omitted in this version of the paper. Succinct accounts of key

terms can be found, however, on the handout.

The first of our key terms, arche, is translated narrowly as “beginning and control,” and

more broadly as “origin and ordering.” Heidegger states that “origin” and “ordering,” as

characteristic of an arche, are essentially united. He subsequently modifies the translation to

6 Heidegger, Martin. 1998. “On the Essence and Concept of Physis in Aristotle's Physics B, I.” In Pathmarks., ed.

William McNeill, 183-230. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press: 188. Hereafter abbreviated ECP. 7 That is not to say that there are no other words which Heidegger subjects to the same interpretive translation that

are important—such as energeia or entelecheia—but these can be more easily explained, at least insofar as they are

related to the understanding of physis and teche, having grasped the meanings of arche, ousia, and kinesis.

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“ordering origin” and “originating ordering,” in order to emphasize this unity.8 This twofold

translation emphasizes not only that an arche is a principle as a beginning, but one which persists

in directing the reality of that which it causes. Nor is “ordering origin” or “originating ordering”

in any way contrary to the notion transmitted by the more common translation of arche,

“principle,” at least as it is commonly understood by students of Aristotle—yet Heidegger’s

translation is certainly more specific: whereas one might misunderstand “principle” to refer only

to an efficient cause, “ordering origin” or “originating ordering” indicates that, while the arche is

not wholly identical with that of which it is a principle, its causality as a cause of the specific

being of a thing simultaneously and persistently provides an orientation or ordering of that which

is its effect.9 Consequently, whatever has an arche also has a telos, and the telos of a thing

conversely indicates its arche.

Heidegger’s translation of ousia comes from his understanding of the Greek etymology,

of which he does not here give a defense, but of which a defense can be made.10 What has come

to be commonly translated into Latin as substantia and into English as “substance” is rendered

by Heidegger as Seiendheit, “Beingness.” To be an ousia is to be a being having its own

principle of Being: that which causes itself to be present; what is “self-presenting” or “self-

8 ECP, 189: “Arche means, at one and the same time, beginning and control. On a broader and therefore lower scale

we can say: origin and ordering. In order to express the unity that oscillates between the two, we can translate arche

as originating ordering and as ordering origin.” 9 For example, a biologist might say that the use of ATP by enzymes is a principle in biological processes; this,

however, would be incorrect if we understand principle as arche and arche as “originating ordering” or “ordering

origin.” One could, however, say that the principle is in a way virtually present in its effects; virtual not in the

modern sense of “simulated,” but rather in the sense of presence by a contact of one action upon another. 10 Joe Sachs discusses this issue in the introduction to his translation of the Metaphysics, xxxvi-xxix. With a similar

process, but arriving at a different result, Sachs translates ousia as “thinghood” when referring to the general notion

of substance, and as “individual thing” where it is used to specify a particular substantial being. While this certainly

includes some advantages and lends a perspicacity to a reading of the text over Heidegger’s rendering, Heidegger’s translation of ousia as “Beingness” does not fall exactly under Sachs’ criticism (namely, that it fails to “match up

with the “what” identified with ousia at 1017a 23-29 – xxxviii). For the “Beingness” of an individual thing entails

not only the fact of its existence or the fact of any given kind of existence (i.e., substantial or accidental), but, for

Heidegger, it’s “presencing” or being-intelligible as some kind of actuality, by virtue of its morphe. This important

point will be explored in the following pages.

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presencing.” In other words, it is not simply the fact of a thing being presented, but what is most

fundamentally responsible for any given presence; something which is stable and which

underlies the fluctuations which we observe with our senses.

Kinesis is translated not simply as “movement,” but rather as “movedness”—which, like

Beingness, is not understood principally as a term applied to a particular reality (as, for instance

“a being,” “a substance,” “a motion”), but what might be called an essential characteristic.11

This translation circumvents the rejection of Aristotelian physics in favor of modern physics,

both classical and quantum, which operate in an empiriological method: for if we understand

mobile being not to be simply the state of a being-in-motion, but rather the essential possibility

of being-moved, then the method of quantification has no bearing upon our conception of such

mobile being.12 If we understand Aristotle as does Heidegger, we see that he grasped the truth of

the underlying principle, despite being at times incorrect about certain particular issues.13 The

fact that there is no innate tendency in the rock to move downwards does not affect the fact that

the rock can be moved; that rocks in the deep of space may be at rest in no way alters the fact

that they might be put into motion. The “natural tendency” of a rock to move “downwards” or of

fire to move “upwards” is nothing other than this essential movedness being put into some act

consequent to nature. The tension between being-at-rest and being-in-motion supply the

essential notion of kinesis as movedness: only that which is at rest can be put into motion, and

only that which is in motion can come to a state of rest.

11 ECP, 189. 12 Cf. Glazebrook, Trish. 2000. “From Physis to Nature, Techne to Technology: Heidegger on Aristotle, Galileo, and

Newton” in Southern Journal of Philosophy, 38 (1): 107: “This means for Aristotle, Heidegger rightly sees, that physis is teleological. Ta physika move toward their own end. Heidegger’s insight goes much deeper than the

obvious reading of Aristotle’s teleology, that fire moves upward toward the periphery of the cosmos while earth

moves down toward the center. Heidegger has captured the richness of the Aristotelian cosmos.” 13 Cf. Kronz, Frederick M. 1990. “Aristotle, the Direction Problem, and the Structure of the Sublunar Realm,” The

Modern Schoolman, vol. 67 (May): 247.

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Physis as Arche

Both physis and techne are, in a certain way, ordering origins of things coming into

being, of beings which are produced. There are, however, two fundamental differences in the

ways in which they are such principles: for whereas techne is an arche of the production of a

being, it is only an arche of the process of producing—once the act of producing ceases, once the

thing is brought to its perfection, techne ceases to be an arche. The product inevitably has some

sort of arche of its own—put into it, in some fashion, by techne, but not solely by techne. A

house, for instance, ultimately continues to be a house, to hold the shape which makes it to be a

house, not only because the architectural plan arranged all of its parts in such a way, but because

of natural forces such as gravity acting upon the wood and bricks so that they mutually restrain

one another from collapsing. Techne is not responsible for these natural forces.

Contrariwise, physis is an arche through and through; it never ceases being an ordering,

even in the case of the destruction or decomposition of some individual ousia—for what results,

what remains, still remains within the domain of physis as what is giving it its ordering. Thus,

whereas techne cannot be said to be the arche of an ousia, at least insofar as an ousia is

something which presences itself, physis, as a persistent arche is indivisible from each and

every ousia: “Nature then is what has been said, and as many things have a nature as have such a

source.”14 Consequently, Heidegger asserts that the “decisive principle that guides Aristotle’s

interpretation of physis declares that physis must be understood as ousia, as a kind and mode of

14 Aristotle. 1995. Physics. Trans. Joe Sachs. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutger's University Press: 192b 32.

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presencing,” and gives a provisional definition of the essence of physis as “the origin and

ordering of the movedness of what moves from out of itself and toward itself.”15

Having stated that physis is in some way the primary ordering cause of mobile being

which presences itself, and that questioning whether or not such a thing as physis exists is

frivolous,16 Aristotle goes on to investigate in Physics B.1, what it is within the composition of

each such ousia that is responsible for the stability of its presencing: that is, what is physis

properly speaking. The candidates are matter (hyle), form (morphe), and some combination of

the two; as a proponent of the first, Aristotle takes up the doctrine of Antiphon, who taught that

the principle of the stable presencing of substances are the elements. To argue for this, Antiphon

noted that if a bed is planted in the ground and anything is grown from it, it would not be another

bed, but a tree—that is, wood, which was thought to be composed from the element of earth.

The bed, as an artifact, is indeed present, but only as the incidental result of the ordering put into

it by the artificer. The ordering of the elements is not what causes the stable presencing of an

ousia, but rather the elements themselves are what persist.17 Antiphon’s view is, in this regard,

no different from those who do not see a fundamental difference between physis and techne

considered as causes of production: since neither physis as form nor techne is, according to this

view, the cause of the stability of ousia neither can be the ultimate cause of its being-present.

Each cause of production merely introduces some order into something which is orderable, and

as such, are fundamentally the same.

15 ECP, 200. This “from out of itself and toward itself”, though it may sound enigmatic, is simply saying that

everything is per naturae towards its own fulfillment. It is comparable to Thomas’ treatment of essentia and naturae as near synonyms in De ente c.1, where the former is understood principally as that on account of which a

thing has being (habet esse), and the latter orients a thing towards its proper operation (habet ordinem ad propriam

operationem rei). 16 Physics 193a 3-9. 17 Physics 193a 9-21.

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Aristotle, curiously enough, does not explicitly reject Antiphon’s teaching. Indeed, he

seems to accept it, on at least some level, but as an inadequate explanation. Although Aristotle

does not elaborate explicitly on how Antiphon’s doctrine is lacking, Heidegger gives four

interpretative reasons why it is inadequate:

1. Physical beings are not simply ousia as what is stable-in-presencing, but

essentially or fundamentally mobile beings; kinesis is indivisible from what it

is to be an ousia having physis as a principle. In Antiphon’s understanding,

“all character of movement, all alteration and changing circumstantiality

(rythmos) devolves into something only incidentally attaching to beings.”18

2. While ousia does include stability in its conception, Antiphon’s doctrine is

myopically focused on the “always-already-underlying” (hypokeimenon

proton). As such;

3. The other indivisible aspect of ousia, presencing, is omitted. “What we mean

here is not mere presence, and certainly not something that is exhausted

merely in stability; rather: presencing, in the sense of coming forth into the

unhidden, placing itself into the open. One does not get at the meaning of

presencing by referring to mere duration.”19

4. Because Antiphon is trying to explain the meaning or truth of what it is to be a

physical being through particular beings, it results in his understanding kinesis

as incidental and exaggerating stability to the point of excluding presencing

from the meaning of ousia.

Aristotle, however, despite the seeming truth of Heidegger’s interpretation, does not reject

Antiphon’s understanding. Indeed, he says that in “one way then, nature is spoken of thus, as the

first material underlying each of the things that have in themselves a source of motion and

change”; as will become clear, though, he does not accept Antiphon’s understanding as

sufficient. The Philosopher goes on to add: “but in another way [nature is spoken of] as the

form, or the look that is disclosed in speech.”20

The last clause of this sentence—the look that is discloesd in speech—Heidegger insists

is the key to understanding form; in his own translation of Physics B.1, it is rendered, “as the

18 ECP, 208. 19 ECP, 208. 20 Physics, 193a 28-31.

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appearance, (namely, that) which shows itself for our addressing it.”21 We understand form by

the eidos, the invisible “look” of a thing, which is what appears to us, such that it may be

addressed—that is, the eidos is understood in relation to the logos, the articulable intelligibility

of a thing.Heidegger states that we ought to understand form or morphe not simply as a static

being; a shape, structure, or demarcation upon fundamentally unstructured matter but rather as

“placing into the appearance” which emphasizes first that form is involved in the presencing of

ousia, and second that as placing into, form is a kind of movedness; both of which, crucial to the

Aristotelian notion of physis, are lacking in Antiphon’s account.22 This interpretative translation

of Heidegger, of morphe as “placing into the appearance,” anticipates the relationship between

morphe, eidos, and logos; for as Aristotle proceeds:

We would not yet say anything to be according to art if it is only potentially a bed

and does not yet have the look of a bed, nor that it is art, and similarly not in the

case of things composed by nature. For what is potentially flesh or bone does not

yet have its own nature, until it takes on the look [eidos] that is disclosed in

speech [logos], that by means of which we define when we say what flesh or bone

is, and not until then is it by nature.23

Although it is a truth which is not fully elucidated in the works of Aristotle until Metaphysics

book IX, matter is here shown to be in some way the principle of potentiality in physical beings;

we do not speak of things as being of a kind—such as a thing of art or a thing of nature—until

they are actually, such that they have the look or appearance, the eidos, which we can disclose or

unconceal and thus present in speech. Without this look, such a thing would not be self-

presencing; and mere elements or matter of themselves do not present a look or have an eidos.

We do not identify a bed or a tree simply as being wood apart from its being made present in the

21 ECP, 208. The “look that is disclosed in speech” and “that which shows itself for our addressing it” are

interpretive translations (of Sachs and Heidegger, respectively) for eidos. 22 ECP, 211. 23 Physics, 193a 31-b3. Emphasis added.

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form of a bed or a tree. Without form, we would never know matter; we would never know the

elements; this truth pervades the largest structures in the universe to the most minute particles.

Thus not only is not the case that matter is the first arche of the physical being, but also the

composite; for physis is an arche, whereas the composite is subsequent to and dependent upon

the activity of the form upon the matter.24

This unconcealing or revelation of an eidos is, Heidegger argues here (and in many other

places in his corpus), the essence of logos. To very briefly summarize Heidegger’s meaning: “In

the Greek definition of the essence of the human being, legein”—which Heidegger translates

literally as “to collect” or “to gather”—“and logos mean the relation on the basis of which what

is present gathers itself for the first time as such around and for human beings.”25 Dunamis,

potency, which Heidegger translates as “appropriateness for…”,26 and of which matter is a

principle, is shown to be insufficient to produce a physical being, a being which presences itself,

for the logos does not “gather up” what is merely potentially and not actually present. There

must be some cause of the thing having its eidos which can subsequently be addressed. Only

that which is the energeia (the “being-at-work”) or entelecheia of an ousia gives to it this look

and allows for it to be disclosed in speech. Of these two terms, energeia and entelecheia, the

latter more perfectly encapsulates the two fundamental criteria of what it is to be a physical

ousia; namely (1) the movedness essential to such beings and (2) the stable presencing in an

appearance. The term itself, made up by Aristotle quite literally for lack of a better word, is a

tricky one to translate: Heidegger renders it “having-itself-within-its-end” and Sachs “being-at-

24 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, In physicorum, lib.2, lec.2, n.152: “Posset autem aliquius credere quod quia materia dicitur natura et etiam forma, quod compositum possit dici natura; quia substantia dicitur de forma et materia et de

composito. Sed hoc excludit dicens quod compositum ex materia et forma, ut homo, non est ipsa natura, sed est

aliquid a natura; quia natura habet rationem principii, compositum autem habet rationem principiati.” 25 ECP, 213. 26 ECP, 214.

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work-staying-itself.”27 The latter emphasizes stable-presencing and completion, whereas the

former indicates the arche-telos relationship which entails the placing itself into a relation with

its own end28 that is necessary to the essential movedness of a physical being. Regardless of how

it is translated, it is here, within the notion of entelecheia, that Heidegger locates the previously-

mentioned purest manifestation of movedness, active rest: “the movedness of a movement

consists above all in the fact that the movement of a moving being gathers itself into its end,

telos, and as so gathered within its end, ‘has’ itself: en telei echei, entelecheia, having-itself-in-

its-end.”29

The primary example of such a “gathering itself into its end” within the realm of physical

beings is that which is the result of genesis; for generation, although it has an incipient moment,

is nevertheless a process of a sort, not of the generator, but of what is being generated; an

energeia a-teles, a being-at-work-not-yet-completed. Genesis, which results in a substantial

thing being placed into an appearance such that it can be disclosed in speech, is concomitant with

the actuality realized by form. It is for this reason, viz., that form understood as substantial

form is the principle of all such being-at-work and of coming-into-being, that Heidegger

translates morphe as “placing into the appearance” or even “self-placing into the appearance.” It

is on account of morphe, the result of genesis and thus the principle of a stable and completed

27 While cumbersome, each does have an advantage over the typical Latin rendering as actualitas, which in no way

differentiates entelecheia from the translation of energeia. For more on this, specifically concerning the ways in

which Heidegger translates in his lectures on Metaphysics IX 1-3, see Achim Oberst, “Heidegger’s Appropriation of

Aristotle’s Dunamis/Energeia Distinction,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 78, no.1, 35. 28 ECP, 222-224. The full explanation of this idea, the “from itself, toward itself” is riddled with typically

Heideggerian terminology and translations which would take too long to explain here. The key sentence, from 223,

reads: “Physis is odos ex physeos eis physin, the being-on-the-way [odos] of a self-placing thing [physical being/ousia] toward itself as what is to be pro-duced [telos], and this in such a way that the self-placing is itself

wholly of a kind with the self-placing thing to be pro-duced.” The relationship between motion or movedness and

entelecheia as it pertains to physis is an important one for Heidegger. Cf. Glazebrook, “From Physis to Nature,

Techne to Technology,” 101-104. 29 ECP, 217.

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being, that there is a look or an appearance, an eidos which can be subsequently disclosed in

speech.30

To summarize Heidegger on physis: morphe is the arche of a physical being, which is a

being characterized by ousia, “Beingness” understood as the stable presencing of a being

essentially in movedness, which movedness is exemplified by entelecheia, the result of morphe

“bringing along”, i.e., generating a being from the hyle which has an appropriateness for such a

stable-presencing. Or, if we wish to translate this into less enigmatic terminology: physis is a

productive cause of relatively-permanent mobile beings, or substances, which make themselves

known as objects of sense and intellect through their appearances, i.e., their accidents, within

material reality. While there are many more things which could be said about Heidegger’s

interpretation of Aristotle, in order to keep our focus upon the distinctions between the causality

of physis and the causality of technological thinking as a usurper of physis, we ought now to turn

our attention to the true nature of techne and its misappropriation in technological thinking.

Techne and Technological Thinking

The tendency mentioned in the introduction to conflate techne and technology is

unfortunate; for in so doing, the reality and purpose of techne is obfuscated.31 Technology as a

whole comprises the realm of artifacts; and as a way of thinking, that which results in the

production of artifacts, of things which are for the sake of something else, of means to an end.

When technological thinking comes to determining that end itself, it has wholly abdicated from

30 ECP, 219: “Therefore, because morphe is, in essence, entelecheia, and thus is ousia to a greater degree, then

likewise morphe intrinsically is mallon physis. The placing into the appearance more fulfills what physis is: the being of the kinumenon kath auto.” 31 For instance, see Garrett, Jan Edward. 1987. “Aristotle's Nontechnical Conception of Techne.” The Modern

Schoolman 64 (May): 283-94. In this article, Garrett rejects the instrumentality of techne and insists upon it being a

perfection which is in turn the “cause of perfection in objects” (290). This understanding of techne is fundamentally

flawed, and easily conflates with the kind of technological thinking against which Heidegger argues.

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the kind of thinking which is proper to techne. For certainly in Aristotle, techne is a kind of

thinking. It is listed among the intellectual virtues, which, in the interpretation of Heidegger, are

all modes of disclosure, of “unconcealment”—his literal translation of aletheia, which depends

upon the etymology of lethe as concealment and the a- prefix as privative. Whereas prudence or

practical judgment—though, like techne, deals with contingent matters—is concerned with and

determinative of the telos of its activity, techne is a know-how in which the end of its activity

belongs to another realm. Prudence, right reason about things to be done, has an arche which

has as its object a reflexive disclosure: that of the right way of being for man himself.32 Techne,

contrariwise, is transitory; as an arche, it ceases to be precisely when it reaches its telos, when

the artifact is produced. Its perfection is outside of itself, in the artifact, to which it is related as

cause, but extrinsically.

Techne is a know-how that is the arche of some poiesis, of some making. Thus, when the

poiesis stops, such that the work, the ergon, which is produced through poiesis is outside or

beyond the poiesis of techne, we see that the telos of the work does not belong to the techne or

the poiesis, but within that for-the-sake-of-which the artifact is to be used. Shoes are caused by

the techne of the shoemaker, who, understanding their purpose, introduces some ordering form to

some appropriate matter—but the telos of shoes, to aid the protection of the feet for walking,

etc., while it may be a guiding principle which informs the techne, resides in something outside

the process of production. That something which is good for protection of the feet should be

produced is not an insight of techne itself. Rather, techne is the know-how of the ordering of

what is appropriate for (i.e., some material in potency to) such protection.33 Yet this know-how

32 Cf. Heidegger, Martin. 1997. Plato's Sophist. Trans. Richard Rojcewicz and Andre Schuwer. Bloomington, IN:

Indiana University Press: 34-37. 33 Ibid. 29: “The shoe is made for wearing and is for someone. This double character entails that the ergon of the

poeisis is something produced for further use,f or man. Techne therefore possesses the ergon as an object of its

Kemple 16

is not mere production, or merely for the sake of production, or even something which

necessarily results in production, but is rather a kind of unconcealing: namely, of how it is that

that which does not bring itself forth (as happens in the case of physis) can be brought forth.34

How to produce something which protects the foot, for instance, is not something given directly

by physis, nor is the conversion of the force of flowing water into electrical power; each requires

a specific disclosure or unconcealing in order to be brought forth.35

But what characterizes technological thinking, although dependent upon techne, is not the

revealing of techne; rather it is “a challenging, which puts to nature the unreasonable demand

that it supply energy which can be extracted and stored as such.”36 Where techne is, although

not incapable of being abused, essentially a kind of know-how which is towards the revealing of

something for the sake of the good of man according to right reason (and thus ultimately subject

to prudence), technological thinking is a challenging which seeks to dominate nature for the sake

of imposing upon it some pre-conceived ordering.37 Such a challenging may be incited by a

aletheiuein only as long as the ergon is not yet finished. As soon as the product is finished, it escapes the dominion

of techne: it becomes the object of the use proper to it. Aristotle expresses this precisely: the ergon is ‘para’ (cf.

Nic. Eth. I, 1, 1094a4f). The ergon, as soon as it is finished, is para, ‘beside,’ techne. Techne, therefore, is

concerned with beings only insofar as they are in the process of becoming.” 34 Heidegger, Martin. 1977. “The Question Concerning Technology.” In Basic Writings., ed. David Farrell Krell,

283-317. New York, NY: Harper & Row: 295: “Techne is a mode of aletheuein. 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

terms of the four modes of occasioning [i.e., the four causes]. 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 revealing mentioned before. It is as revealing, and not as

manufacturing, that techne is a bringing forth.” Hereafter referred to as QCT. 35 Cf. QCT, 295: “Techne is a mode of aletheuein. 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 terms of the four modes of

occasioning [i.e., causality]. 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 revealing mentioned before. It is as revealing, and not as manufacturing, that techne is a

bringing forth.” 36 QCT, 296. 37 Cf. Maritain, Jacques. 1959. The Degrees of Knowledge. Trans. Gerald B. Phelan. New York, NY: Charles

Scribner’s Sons. 3: “Three centuries of empirio-mathematicism have so warped the intellect that it is no longer

Kemple 17

desire to improve man’s condition in life, to ease the burden of labor and/or to increase pleasure.

This challenging once adopted, however, alters the relationship between human beings and

physis. Rather than engaging the beings of nature as things to be disclosed and understood, the

challenge of technological thinking to nature is for the latter to become a “standing-reserve,” i.e.,

resources to be used for human projects. This challenging, Heidegger claims, has been heralded

since the dawn of classical physics:

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.

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 orders its

experiments precisely for the purpose of asking whether and how nature reports

itself when set up in this way.38

The experimental framework of the empiriological approach to investigation is such that it sets

up in advance a conclusion for which it is looking. The question of its investigation, then, is not

“What is the nature of this?” but “How can we make X do Y?” or “How can we achieve Z with

X and Y?”

Because the method of technological thinking consists in the subjugation of the natural

world to the designs of man, “the illusion 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

interested in anything but the invention of apparatus to capture phenomena—conceptual nets that give the mind a

certain practical dominion over nature, coupled with a deceptive understanding of it; deceptive, indeed, because its

thought is resolved, not in being, but in the sensible itself. By advancing in this fashion, not by linking new truths to

already acquired truths, but by substituting new apparatus for outmoded apparatus; by handling things without understanding them; by gaining ground against the real bit by bit, patiently, through victories that are always

piecemeal and provisory—by acquiring a secret taste for the matter with which it conspires—thus has the modern

intellect developed within this lower order of scientific demiurgy a kind of manifold and marvellously specialized

touch as well as wonderful instincts for the chase.” 38 QCT 303.

Kemple 18

though man everywhere and always encounters only himself.”39 When technological thinking

becomes prevalent, man begins to see things only insofar as they are objects for him; their

existences in themselves, their proper essences, are no longer objects of revelation, but only their

usefulness. Given a technological interpretation of physis, such that there is no essential

difference between the product of physis and that of techne, that the former is simply an

“autonomous artifact,” then there is no distinct good in understanding the interior principle of a

physical being for its own sake.40 In the terminology of Being and Time, the readiness-to-hand

of what is encountered within the world utterly prevails over their presence-at-hand.

In other words, what results from technological thinking is what Heidegger terms the Ge-

stell or “enframing.” This 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 that

is an ordering. Where this ordering holds sway, it drives out every other possibility of

revealing.”41 The dominance of technological thinking is such that it precludes any revelation of

facts which do not fit into its own plans; the truth of beings is put aside: “Above all, enframing

conceals that revealing which, in the sense of poiesis, lets what presences come forth into

appearance.”42 Poiesis is something Heidegger considers to belong not only to techne, but also

39 QCT, 308. 40 Cf. Engelmann, Edward. 2007. “The Mechanistic and the Aristotelian Orientations toward Nature and Their

Metaphysical Backgrounds,” International Philosophical Quarterly, in passim but especially 200: “Unlike the

Aristotelian scientist, therefore, the mechanical philosopher is not interested in apprehending an inner principle for

its own sake, since the inner principle of an autonomous artifact does not itself exist for its own sake. Rather, the

mechanist is interested in finding the inner cause only for the sake of explaining the phenomenal effect for the sake

of which the inner cause exists.” There is, as Heidegger shows, an extra dimension to this desire to finding the inner

cause, namely the incorporation of the phenomenal effects into the plan of a technological project. 41 QCT, 302. 42 QCT, 309. Cf. Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge. 3: But, at the same time, [the modern intellect] has

wretchedly weakened and disarmed itself in the face of the proper objects of the intellect, which it has abjectly

surrendered. It has become quite incapable of appreciating the world of rational evidences except as a system of

well-oiled gears.”

Kemple 19

to physis; each produces and each brings forth, but in different ways.43 Each also allows for the

revealing of something previously unknown, for an expansion of knowledge: techne on the part

of human beings and physis as the principle of stable-presencing. Contrariwise, technological

thinking, the ordering and harnessing of the natural world—including human beings

themselves—as resources or a “standing-reserve” threatens man’s essential relation to truth: for

genuine poiesis and genuine aletheia do not serve the task of imposing upon the world a

subjugating order but rather serve to make the world known; not controlled, but cared for.

“Man,” Heidegger claims elsewhere, “is not the lord of beings. Man is the shepherd of Being.”44

Conclusion

Accepting Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotle’s notions of physis and techne, we can

perceive an answer to the question which we posed at the beginning of this essay: what is it that

prevents techne understood as technological mastery from overcoming physis as the guiding

productive force of the world? Physis is not productive simply in the sense of making or

ordering what is already present, but is productive as the arche of stable presencing; whereas

techne, as a mode of unconcealment of that which does not have its arche of presencing in itself

is something other than the notion of technological mastery which seeks to reveal things only

insofar as they are useful for man. To understand techne as technological mastery is to

misunderstand the relationship between man’s technologically productive capabilities and that

technology itself by illicitly conflating the two.

43 QCT, 293: “Physis also, the arising of something from out of itself, is a bringing-forth, poiesis. Physis is indeed

poiesis in the highest sense. For what presences by means of physis has the bursting open belonging to a bringing-

forth, e.g., the bursting of a blossom into bloom, in itself (en heautoi).” 44 Heidegger, Martin. 1977. “Letter on Humanism”. In Basic Writings., ed. David Farrell Krell. New York, NY:

Harper & Row. 221.

Kemple 20

Upon reflection, it can be seen that this issue—the relationship between physis, techne,

and technological thinking—is one of importance for the larger issue of teleology as a whole,

both as regards the moral and intellectual lives of human beings and as regards the cosmos,

organic and inorganic alike. Technology of itself, though certain inventions may be easily

abused, does not threaten the well-being of humanity; but technological thinking does. In order

to comport ourselves properly towards the understanding and use of things, both natural and

artificial, we must understand the interior principles behind their being. Whether we perceive

things through a genuinely disclosive approach which expands the horizons of our knowledge, or

through a technological plan of mastery which rejects all disclosure that is not pertinent to the

project, dramatically impacts the orientation we take in our actions.

As such, it must be stated that even if man does learn to manipulate the natural world so

masterfully that he is able to generate living beings from non-living matter, he is not in any way

“overcoming” physis; rather, he is placing things in such a way that physis as the arche of such a

producing takes over and begins to produce itself. This is the irreplaceable reality of physis.

Neither techne understood properly nor technology can be the fundamental cause of stable

presencing. Moreover, neither techne in itself nor technology in itself can serve as anything but

an external instrumental means for man’s pursuit of the truth; and indeed, the danger of

technological thinking or a society dominated by technological concerns is that it obscures from

man this fundamental pursuit of truth which is constitutive of his very nature.

Kemple 21

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