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on heidegger’s techno-logic helma sawatzky on heidegger’s techno-logic

Heideggers Technologic

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Page 1: Heideggers Technologic

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on heidegger’s techno-logic

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contents

1. introduction ................................................................................................................................ 7

2. being and time ........................................................................................................................ 11

3. the elephant in the room .................................................................................................... 19

4. impact factor ............................................................................................................................ 31

5. the being of beings ................................................................................................................. 37

6. nothing technological ........................................................................................................... 45

7. the question of agency .......................................................................................................... 65

postscript ................................................................................................................................... 91

references .................................................................................................................................. 94

image source info ................................................................................................................... 96

This book was created for

CMNS 802 : History of Communication studies

taught by Rick Gruneau

in the fall of 2012

at Simon Fraser University,

Vancouver BC, Canada.

DISCLAIMER

All images are used for

academic purposes only.

I do not intend to infringe

on copyright restrictions,

nor do I sell this academic

work for proit.

Hope you enjoy!

[email protected]

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5

It was six men of Indostan

To learning much inclined,

Who went to see the Elephant

(Though all of them were blind),

That each by observation

Might satisfy his mind.

The First approached the Elephant,

And happening to fall

Against his broad and sturdy side,

At once began to bawl:

“God bless me! but the Elephant

Is very like a WALL!”

The Second, feeling of the tusk,

Cried, “Ho, what have we here,

So very round and smooth and sharp?

To me ‘tis mighty clear

This wonder of an Elephant

Is very like a SPEAR!”

The Third approached the animal,

And happening to take

The squirming trunk within his hands,

Thus boldly up and spake:

“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant

Is very like a SNAKE!”

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,

And felt about the knee

“What most this wondrous beast is like

Is mighty plain,” quoth he:

“Tis clear enough the Elephant

Is very like a TREE!”

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,

Said: “E’en the blindest man

Can tell what this resembles most;

Deny the fact who can,

This marvel of an Elephant

Is very like a FAN!”

The Sixth no sooner had begun

About the beast to grope,

Than seizing on the swinging tail

That fell within his scope,

“I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant

Is very like a ROPE!”

And so these men of Indostan

Disputed loud and long,

Each in his own opinion

Exceeding stif and strong,

Though each was partly in the right,

And all were in the wrong! The

Blin

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— J

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On e co u l d a r g u e t h a t this is a book about elephants. In taking on the work of

inluential German philosopher Martin Heidegger, I feel like I have come face to face

with an imposing bull elephant in the Kingdom of Philosophical Animals. Heidegger’s lifelong

engagement with The Question of Being has generated a large body of complex philosophical

thought that is notoriously diicult to read, mainly because he continually seeks to either evade

or expand the conines of language in order to mediate a ‘clearing’ for—or a ‘poetic revealing’

of—Dasein in all its possibilities and historicity.

In my attempts to get a sense of Heidegger’s philosophical ‘essence’ —what is he ‘on about’

and why—I frequently felt like one of the blind men trying to describe the elephant from a very

limited perspective. In light of the work of those who have invested a lifetime engaging with

his thought, my few months of considering a very small part of his oeuvre is bound to be but a

snapshot in time.

introduction

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9

Any kind of engagement with the life and thought of Martin Heidegger leads to the inevi-

table encounter with a disturbing ‘elephant in the room’—that of Heidegger’s association with

fascism and his brief yet active involvement with Hitler’s Nazi party in the context of World War

II. Heidegger’s personal history has raised the important question of whether his philosophy

is inherently fascist and should be rejected on such grounds. For some it is, for others his work

is forever ‘tainted by ailiation,’ and then there are those who acknowledge the signiicance

of Heidegger’s work in the history of western philosophy, and whose work has followed in

Heidegger’s wake.

In the pages that follow I will share a ‘travel journal’ of my philosophical safari through

Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of technology. Rather than presenting my research in the form

of a conventional research paper, I chose for an approach that sets up a parallel play between

the chapter content and a wide range of digressions—quotes and images, metaphors and

representations, humour and critique—with the intent of creating spaces where diference can

emerge.

All entries are necessarily brief, yet intend to touch on important issues of relevance to

contemporary approaches to philosophy of technology—in the context of which Heidegger’s

work continues to be both thought-provoking and inluential.

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being and time

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12 13

resumes teaching at University of Freiburg

Sein und Zeit

professor of philosophy at the University of Freiburg

1950–51

1928–33

SOURCE: Davis, 2010, pp. 260-264

1927

1954 19661947

WO

RLD

WA

R I

Heidegger is born and raised in Messkirch, a rural Catholic town in southwest Germany

Heidegger dies at age 87

studies theology at the University of Freiburg—switches to philosophy in 1911

professor of philosophy at the University of Marburg

works as Edmund Husserl’s assistant —U of Freiburg

professor emeritus at University of Freiburg

guest lecturer, University of Freiburg

Heidegger prohibited from teaching as part of ‘denaziication’ process

rector of the University of Freiburg

member of the NAZI party

Die Frage nach der Technik Der Spiegel interviewDie Kehre

professor of philosophy at the University of Freiburg

WO

RLD

WA

R II

1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980

1909–14

1914–18

1889 19761923–28

1919–23

1951–58

1958–67

1946–491933–34

1940–45

1933–45

1928–33 1923–33Heidegger’s students include Hannah Arendt, Günther Anders, Hans Jonas, Miki Kiyoshi, Karl Löwith, Charles Malik, Herbert Marcuse, Ernst Nolte and Emmanuel Levinas

life line

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14 15

The only thing of interest regarding the person of a philosopher is this:

He was born on such and such a date, he worked and he died.

Martin Heidegger—Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie (1924)

It s e e m s i r o n i c t h a t the philosopher who argued the socio-historical

embeddedness of all human existence should trivialize its relevance in relation

to his own philosophical praxis. The fact that Heidegger discards the speciic social, historical

and cultural contexts that shape the work of a philosopher testiies to the speciic historical

time and scholarly traditions in which he himself lived and functioned. And like the profound

contextuality of any human existence, Heidegger’s personal biography and cultural context

shaped and infused what he wrote about and how.

Heidegger was born in Messkirch—a small conservative, Catholic town in the rural south-

west region of Germany—less than 100 kilometers away from the city of Freiburg where he

would later study and teach. From 1903–1909 Heidegger’s path of learning was directed

towards entering the priesthood. He initially attended a Catholic seminary and began a trial

period as Jesuit novitiate in Tisis, Austria. In 1909, Heidegger studied theology and philosophy

at the Theological Seminary of the University of Freiburg. Here he encountered the work of

German phenomenologist Edmund Husserl and German hermeneutic philosopher Wilhelm

Dilthey. His frail health—a “nerve and heart condition”—caused Heidegger to discontinue

his training for the priesthood in February 1911. After a recovery period in his home town

of Messkirch, Heidegger then returned to the University of Freiburg where he subsequently

focused his studies on philosophy.

After earning his habilitation in 1916 with a thesis on the work of medieval philosopher

John Duns Scotus, Heidegger began his work as assistant to Edmund Husserl. During these

years, he also taught (as an unpaid assistant professor) courses in Aristotelianism and Scho-

lastic philosophy. In March 1917, Heidegger married Elfriede Petri, who would be his life-long

companion and with whom he parented two sons—Jörg (born: 1920) and Hermann (born:

1921). Around 1922, his wife Elfriede presented Heidegger with the Todtnauberg mountain

cabin that was to become Heidegger’s favorite place for thinking and writing for the remainder

of his life.

Although he referred to himself as a Christian theologian up until 1921, Heidegger became

increasingly intentional about separating his philosophy and work as a philosopher from the

realm of faith and theology. After converting from Catholicism to Protestantism around the

time of his marriage to Petri, Heidegger eventually professed himself to be atheist as to be

otherwise would be incompatible with his own philosophy. From 1923–1928 Heidegger taught

philosophy at the University of Marburg. The 1927 publication of Heidegger’s ‘magnum opus’

Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) caused his star to rise in the irmament of German philosophical

scholarship. In 1928, Heidegger was invited to take Husserl’s place as professor of philosophy at

the University of Freiburg.

In March of 1933, two months after Hitler’s appointment as Germany’s Chancellor,

Heidegger was elected rector of the University of Freiburg in the wake of a political conlict that

resulted in the dismissal of his predecessor. Heidegger became a member of Hitler’s Nationalso-

zialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) on May 1, 1933, and retained his party membership

until the end of World War II. After a year of actively lobbying for a National Socialist revolu-

tion in general and Hitler’s Nazi party in particular, Heidegger resigned his position as rector

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on April 23, 1934, in the wake of much conlict and resistance from his colleagues and from

Nazi government oicials who were “generally wary of Heidegger’s ‘eccentric, vague, scizoform

[sic], and in part already schizophrenic thinking” (Erich Jänsch as cited in Feldman, 2011, p. 188).

Disillusioned with the movement, Heidegger distanced himself from “the ideological doctrine

of biological racialism” advocated and implemented by Hitler’s Nazi party while emphatically

holding to the “‘social’ and ‘national’ virtues” that, for him, constituted the “inner strength and

greatness of National Socialism” (Heidegger as cited in Feldman, 2011, p. 185).

After World War II, the Allied forces banded together in an initiative to rid German and

Austrian society of all manifestations—people and organizations—of National Socialist

ideology. In December of 1945, Heidegger too was called in for questioning by the Freiburg

denaziication committee and was prohibited from teaching for several years (1945–49), during

which time he sufered a nervous breakdown. After he was deemed to have been a Mitläufer —

someone who ‘followed along’ without actively participating in Nazi atrocities—Heidegger was

able to resume his teaching at the University of Freiburg in 1949. He was subsequently awarded

emeritus status in 1951 and continued publishing his work while also lecturing across Germany

and in several other European countries (predominantly in France). Heidegger did not travel

much outside of Germany. In 1970 he sufered a minor stroke from which he recovered fully.

After this, Heidegger focused his attention towards organizing his manuscripts. In 1976 he died

at his home in Freiburg and was buried two days later in his hometown of Messkirch.

When considering Heidegger’s biography, a few themes seem to emerge. First, Heidegger’s

life and philosophy reveal a ‘disposition’ towards contemplation. Whether it involves his steps

towards entering the priesthood, his love for the life of the mind and philosophy, his beloved

times at the secluded Todtnauberg mountain cabin, or the ainity of his thought with Buddhist

philosophy, all relect a man who valued solitary contemplation and a retreat from the hubbub

of modern life which he viewed as a subversion of authentic being-in-the-world. Second,

Heidegger’s life and work resonate with a romantic connection to his German roots and a

strong sense of nationalism. Whether one considers his commitment to place through living

most of his life within the same 150 kilometer radius, his commitment to a perceived lineage

between ancient Greek philosophy and Germany’s culture and spiritual destiny, or his overt

and emphatic support of National Socialism in the years leading up to World War II, all point to

a man who seemed to wholeheartedly believe in the words of Germany’s national anthem—

Deutschland, Deutschland über alles [tr: Germany ‘above all else’ or ‘over everything’]. Bambach

(2010) writes:

Heidegger genuinely put his faith in the possibilities aforded by the National Socialist

revolution, which he viewed as only the precursor and precondition for a second onto-

logical revolution that would bring the German Volk [People] to its proper historical

mission as the saving force in the history of the West. (p. 104, emphasis added)

It is Heidegger’s ainity and ailiation with fascism in general and Hitler’s National Socialism

in particular that leads me to the troubling ‘elephant in the room’ when engaging with any of

Heidegger’s thought in relation to the question of being and the question concerning tech-

nology.

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the elephant in the room

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s a political ideology whose fortunes depend extensively upon the degree

to which a contemporary society is experienced as being in a state of

profound crisis, the meteoric rise of fascism during the collapse of

the Weimar Republic after 1929 becomes easier to comprehend. Yet

despite the rapid increase in trans-class support for Nazism as the

Depression struck home, it is of essential importance to note that

this was not the only strand of fascism prevalent in Germany at

the time. A disparate assortment of intellectuals grouped by Armin Mohler under

the title ‘Conservative Revolutionaries’ (hereafter CR) due to their championing

of traditional (and decidedly anti-Enlightenment) culture and longing for an

extensive spiritual renewal in Germany– also embraced the same Weltanschauung

as National Socialism. Despite their highly diverse theories of the origins behind

Germany’s infirmity, these figures were connected by their distaste for Nazism’s

use of political coercion to rehabilitate Germany. They also eschewed the NSDAP’s

institutionalised violence and ‘vulgar’ biological determinism in favour of

persuasion through the force of cultural ideas, which they felt alone could reclaim

Germanic hegemony in Europe. Furthermore, these bourgeois radicals generally

resisted the populist shift of National Socialism following its political reorientation,

namely toward contesting elections after 1925. That the CR essentially felt Nazism

to be gallant in theory but errant in practice can be summarised in Mohler’s

retrospective description of these thinkers as ‘the Trotskyites of the German

Revolution’. This suggests that the CR’s more enlightened course would have

avoided the travesty of Hitlerism, while simultaneously managing to relativise the

uniqueness of Nazi crimes by equating it to Stalinism.

Against this backdrop of diverse and often isolated fascist intellectuals, proffering

vague philosophical solutions to the Socio-economic travails of Post-Imperial

Germany, the ‘Heidegger case’ loses much of its singularity.

(Feldman, 2010, p. 176)

“How is it that a philosopher who has been called by many

the greatest thinker of the twentieth century was in fact a Nazi?”

(Steiner, 2000)

He i d e g g e r ’s G e r m a n y wa s a n a t i o n i n c r i s i s , a country in desperate need

of a ‘saviour.’ The fall of the German Empire following World War I (1914-1918)

led to the formation of the Weimarer Republik, a parliamentary representative democracy.

These post-war years (1919–1923) were marked by social and political turmoil and by a

severe economic crisis connected to Germany’s inability to meet the required reparation

payments demanded by the ‘war guilt clauses’ as stipulated in the Treaty of Versailles.

An allegiance between Germany and American inancial institutions ofered a temporary respite

during the Goldene Zwanziger [Golden Twenties] in which Germany experienced a brief cultural

renaissance (1924–1929). Because of its dependence on American money, Germany was one

of the hardest hit nations in the wake of the 1929 Wall Street Crash. The deeply felt economic

distress and political unrest that followed in its wake generated momentum for Hitler’s National

Socialist party to rise to power.

Hitler described Nazism as a movement that brought together the “national resolve” from

the “bourgeois tradition,” and a “living, creative Socialism” from the “materialism of the Marxist

dogma” (Hitler, Domarus, & Romane, 2007, p. 173). Nazi propaganda sought to inspire people to

come together in a common purpose, to stand as one in the face of adversity, to embrace the

innate greatness of the German people, and to reclaim its place on the global stage. A sense of

belonging to the German Volk and a strong romanticism towards the Deutsche Heimat [home,

homeland] featured prominently in many Nazi propaganda materials (e.g., Leni Riefenstahl’s

well-known ilm Triumph of the Will). In spite of a year in which the Nazi party failed to win

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a convincing majority, Adolf Hitler was eventually appointed Reich Chancellor in January of

1933—the year that would be the most controversial year of Heidegger’s life and career.

Heidegger was elected rector of the University of Freiburg on April 21, 1933. Feldman (2011)

points out that “Heidegger was at the centre of intrigues forcing the removal of the previous

rector, an ‘avowed democrat’ named von Mollendorf, after less than a fortnight in oice” (p.

184). Although Heidegger was already identiied as “spokesman” for the Nazi Party in an internal

Party report by April 9, 1933 (p. 184), he oicially joined Hitler’s NSDAP a few weeks later—on

May 1, 1933. On May 27, 1933, Heidegger delivered his controversial and politically charged

rectorial address—The Self-Assertion of the German University—at the University of Freiburg. The

opening lines of his speech express well how Heidegger viewed his position as rector as one of

“spiritual leadership:”

The assumption of the rectorate is the commitment to the spiritual leadership of this

institution of higher learning. The following of teachers and students only awakens

and strengthens through a true and common rootedness in the essence of the German

university. This essence, however, only gains clarity, rank, and power if the leaders, irst

and foremost and at any time, are themselves led—led by the relentlessness of that

spiritual mission that forces the destiny of the German people into the shape of its history.

(Heidegger, 1990, p. 3, emphasis added).

Bambach (2010) points out that Heidegger saw his position as rector as “the unique oppor-

tunity to shape the National Socialist movement in an originary philosophical way, to become

the Führer of the German university, which he [saw] as the catalyst for revolutionary change” (p.

103). Taking position against the rationalism and empiricism of Enlightenment humanism and

modern science, Heidegger (1990) emphatically argued for a return to the Greek understanding

of science as philosophia—as a questioning which unlocks “the highest form of knowing,” which

Page 13: Heideggers Technologic

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We live in an era of technology. The racing tempo

of our century afects all areas of our life.

There is scarcely an endeavour that can escape

its powerful inluence. Therefore the danger unques-

tionably arises that modern technology will make

men soulless. National Socialism never rejected or

struggled against technology. Rather, one of its main

tasks was to consciously airm it, to ill it inwardly

with soul, to discipline it and to place it in the

service of our people and their cultural level.

National Socialist public statements used to refer to the

steely romanticism of our century. Today this phrase has

attained its full meaning. We live in an age that is both

romantic and steellike…. National Socialism understood how

to take the soulless framework of technology and ill it with the

rhythm and hot impulses of our time.

E xce r p t f r o m a s p e e c h b y J o s e p h G o e b b e l s — p r o p a g a n d a

m i n i s t e r f o r Ad o l f H i t l e r ’s r e g i m e — a t t h e o p e n i n g o f t h e B e r l i n

A u t o S h o w, Fe b r ua r y 1 7 , 1 9 3 9

The German farmer stands in between two great

dangers today: the one danger is the American economic

system—Big Capitalism! ... It enslaves man under the

slogans of progress, technology, rationalization, standard-

ization, etc. ... The other danger is the Marxist system of

Bolshevism. It knows only the State economy ... it brings

the rule of the tractor, it nationalizes the land and creates

mammoth factory-farms.

E xce r p t f r o m a N a z i e l e c t i o n ca m p a i g n p o s t e r

The German people [...] works at its fate by

opening its history to all the overwhelming

world-shaping powers of human existence and

by continually ighting for its spiritual world anew. Thus

exposed to the most extreme questionableness of its own

existence, this people wills to be a spiritual people. It demands

of itself and for itself that its leaders and guardians possess the

strictest clarity of the highest, broadest, and richest knowledge.

“ T h e s e l f - a s s e r t i o n o f t h e G e r m a n U n i v e r s i t y ” ( 1 9 3 3 )

M a r t i n H e i d e g g e r

Page 14: Heideggers Technologic

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“unfolds its most authentic strength to unlock the essential in all things” and “forces our vision

to focus, with the utmost simplicity, on the inevitable” (p. 3). Bambach (2010) writes:

In this pro-vocative call to his fellow Germans to heed their vocation as the only Volk

capable of recovering the originary power of the irst Greek beginning, Heidegger

clearly emphasizes the necessity of submission, sacriice and self-renunciation, even

as he interprets all of this as a necessary part of wilful self-assertion. […] And it is this

“massive voluntarism” (as Derrida terms it) that has emerged as one of the deining

characteristics of Heidegger’s early commitment to National Socialism in the name of

the “Volk”, “spirit (Geist)” and “will”: three terms whose meaning will profoundly change

as Heidegger becomes ever more disenchanted with “oicial” National Socialism

(Derrida 1989:37; Davis 2007:65-99). (p. 107)

In his 1966 interview with Der Spiegel—a German national news weekly—Heidegger

commented that it became obvious to him by the end of 1933 that he would be unable to “carry

through the pending renewal of the University against either the resistance of the academic

community or [the opposition of ] the Party (Sheehan, 1981, p. 52). He resigned from the

rectorate on April 23, 1934. Although Heidegger’s active involvement with Hitler’s Nazi party

could be viewed as short-lived—an ailiation that he is reported to have called “the greatest

stupidity of my life” (p. 110)—his commitment to what he in 1935 calls “the inner truth and

greatness of this movement [National Socialism]” (Bambach, 2010, p. 109) appears to extend

beyond the historical bounds of WW II and Nazi party politics.

Feldman (2005, p. 176) argues that Heidegger can be considered as “a case study in the

attraction that many intellectuals experienced (and some continue to experience) regarding

the collective myth of sociocultural decline and renewal, arguably constituting the ‘ineliminable

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29

D E R S P I E G E L | D A T U M : 3 1 . M A I 1 9 7 6 B E T R . : H E I D E G G E R

SPIEGEL To summarize then: In 1933, as an unpolitical person in the strict sense, if not in

the broad sense, you became involved...

HEIDEGGER: ...by way of the University...

SPIEGEL: Yes, by way of and through the University you became involved with the politics

of this supposedly new era. After about a year you relinquished the function

you had taken over. But in 1935, in a course that in 1953 was published as

Introduction to Metaphysics, you said: “What today”—this was, therefore,

1935— “is bandied about as the philosophy of National Socialism but has

absolutely nothing to do with the inner truth and greatness of this movement

(namely, with the encounter between technicity on the planetary level and

modern man) casts its net in these troubled waters of ‘values’ and ‘totalities’.”

Did you add those parenthesized words for the first time in 1953, i.e., at the time

of the publication, in order to explain to the reader of 1953, so to speak, in what

way you saw the “inner truth and greatness of this movement” (i.e., of National

Socialism) in 1935—or did you have this explanatory parenthesis already there

in 1935?

HEIDEGGER: The parenthesis stood in my [original] manuscript and corresponded precisely

to my conception of technicity at that time, and not yet to the later explication

of the essence of technicity as “pos-ure” (Ge-Stell). The reason I did not read

the phrase publicly was that I was convinced of the proper understanding

of my listeners, although stupid people, informers and spies understood it

differently—and also wanted to.

SPIEGEL Surely you would include here the communist movement?

HEIDEGGER: Yes, unquestionably—insofar as that, too is a form of planetary technicity.

SPIEGEL Americanism also?

HEIDEGGER: Yes, I would say so. Meantime, the last 30 years have made it clearer that the

planet-wide movement of modern technicity is a power whose magnitude in

determining [our] history can hardly be overestimated. For me today it is a

decisive question as to how any political system—and which one—can be

adapted to an epoch of technicity. I know of no answer to this question. I am not

convinced that it is democracy.

core’ of fascism.” Citing the work of Roger Griin, Feldman identiies an “emerging consensus

within ‘fascist studies’” that proposes a deinition of ‘generic fascism’ centering on the notion of

some kind of core myth:

While extremely heterogeneous in the speciic ideology of its many permutations,

in its social support, in the form of organisation it adopts as an anti-systemic move-

ment, and in the type of political system, regime, or homeland it aims to create, generic

fascism draws its internal cohesion and afective driving force from a core myth that

a period of perceived decadence and degeneracy is imminently or eventually to give

way to one of rebirth and rejuvenation in a post-liberal new order. (p. 176)

Within this deinition of fascism, Heidegger’s various ‘essentialisms’—his advocacy for a

“poetic-ontological interpretation of an apolitical Volksreligion” (Bambach, 2010, p. 112), his

“German exceptionalism” (p. 113), his concern with authenticity in relation to the question of

being, his transcendentalist use of language, his critique of modern science and technology and

his lack of faith in democracy—do constitute a troubling basis upon which those who do not

accept their “spiritual mission” are at risk of being labeled as “stupid people, informers and spies”

and could be disregarded —or discarded—accordingly.

Although I agree that Heidegger’s work can be understood as embodying fascist tendencies,

I understand and value his contribution in the wider context of the history of western thought

as an important catalyst for that which followed—a critical movement towards discourses of

diference through the critical questioning and deconstruction of metanarratives of any kind

and the abuses of power that frequently follow in their wake.

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impact factor

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33

It i s w e l l b e y o n d t h e s co p e o f t h i s p r o j e c t to present an extensive analysis of

Heidegger’s signiicance in relation to contemporary philosophical discourse in general

and the philosophy of technology in particular. However, a brief relection on several core ideas

will highlight how Heidegger’s thought bridges a transition from philosophical traditions that

seek out transcendental essences and the discourses of diference that emerged in Heidegger’s

wake.

Davis (2010) points out that Heidegger “radically rethought concepts as time, space,

the self (Dasein), interpersonal relations, things, the world, language, truth, art, tech-

nology and the divine” (p. 12). He identiies four key concepts that shape Heidegger’s philo-

sophical enframing of the world. First, Heidegger argued that “being itself essentially occurs

temporally and historically,” that “human existence is not simply immersed in the present, but also

lives towards the future and back towards the past” (p. 7). Second, in his focus on identifying the

conditions of possibility for the being of being [das Sein des Seiendes]—Heidegger claimed that

“human being—as Dasein [literally ‘being-there’]—is the site of the occurrence of being” (p. 7) and

that being should be thought of as a relational phenomenon: being is being-in-a-world. Third,

Heidegger considered the truth of being in terms of revealing and concealing. Therefore, “being

never reveals (or ‘de-conceals’, entbirgt) itself completely” (p. 9). Reality as it presents itself to us

is but one unfolding of all that is and could be. This claim is central to Heidegger’s philosophy of

technology as a mode of world disclosure—reality presents itself as a selective, instrumentalized

revealing of the world as resource for human use and control. Finally, Heidegger understood

Way back when—the world

it seemed so simple then,

in black and white

as we would reason wrong from right

safe and secure we would hang on to the answers.

But now, today— older and wiser they say

knowing less than yesterday.

Here we are—stuck in the middle

solving the riddle of life.

helma sawatzky

1996

Page 18: Heideggers Technologic

35

language as “the house of being,” as providing “the parameters of a realm wherein humans can

meaningfully dwell” (p. 10). These four core ideas capture a revolution in the western thinking

of being. They move away from any ‘on the outside looking in’ kind of understanding of human

consciousness and situate human beings slap-bang in the middle of a material and historical

world in which people and things are active participants in a process of world making.

Heidegger’s particular concern with language reveals itself throughout his writings, in

which “his aim is to recover access to ‘those original “wellsprings” out of which the traditional

categories and concepts were in part genuinely drawn’” (p. 11). Heidegger’s hermeneutic

phenomenology frequently expresses itself in unusual ways through (re)appropriating or

deconstructing words in order to get at the various ‘doings’ of language. This intentional ‘making

strange’ of language is an important part of the reason why, on the one hand, many people

ind Heidegger’s work so diicult to access, and, on the other hand, meaning is un/folded in

diferent ways, creating opportunities for seeing things diferently.

Heidegger’s thought has greatly inluenced many domains within Western philosophy—

phenomenology (e.g., the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre), hermeneutics

(e.g., Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur), critical theory (e.g., Herbert Marcuse), psycho-

analysis (e.g., Jacques Lacan), theology and Derridian deconstruction—to name but a few. By

emphasizing the historical and profoundly hermeneutic dimensions of being-in-the-world,

Heidegger’s thought cleared the way for critically engaging the life world as socio-historical

context in terms of discourse—how stories of class, race or gender unfold a world in particular

ways. It fostered a critical engagement with culture and communications in terms of consid-

ering which stories are told about what by who, how and why, and who beneits.

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37

the being of beings

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39

he forgetting of being, according to Heidegger, began with

Plato. While for the Presocratics ‘being’ still meant ‘emerging out

of concealment into unconcealment,’ for Plato it began to mean

‘essence.’ ‘Being’ meant embodying an idea, which forms the

‘essence’ of the entity. In the Middle Ages the forgetting of being

took a new path. After Greek and Christian thought intersected,

‘being’ began to mean ‘shaped by God.’ ‘Coming to be’ was then

no longer conceived as an emerging out of unconcealment, but as an act of creation

carried out by God—‘being’ was understood as the efect of a cause rather than as

the ‘happening’ of the transition from concealment into unconcealment. God as the

ground of all beings came to be understood as a being Himself—a fatal confusion,

according to Heidegger, even when God is conceived as the highest being, the ens

summon.

At the beginning of modern philosophy Rene Descartes moved further still,

regarding this appeal to an extra-mundane ground as superluous: ‘being’ for him

meant to be an object for a subject, rex extensa as opposed to res cogitans. The

capstone of the forgetting of being, as far as philosophy goes, was set into place

by Friedrich Nietzsche, in whose work ‘being’ merely means ‘being usable for the

Will to Power.’ This last meaning of being, according to Heidegger, inds its material

realization in modern technology. Being comes to mean: available for production

and manipulation, raw material, ‘standing reserve.’

(Verbeek, 2005, p. 51-52)

He i d e g g e r ’s a p p r o a c h t o p h e n o m e n o l o g y is frequently described as existential

and hermeneutic. Both these terms identify key dimensions in which Heidegger’s

thought critically distances itself from the transcendental phenomenology of his long-term

mentor and colleague Edmund Husserl. Husserl’s phenomenology—the study of ‘phenomena’

or the appearance of things from a irst person point of view—was based on the possibility of a

transcendental point-of-view on the part of the phenomenologist in order to get at the essence

of the phenomenon under consideration:

In order to uncover this sphere of the transcendental subjectivity at all, the philoso-

pher, beginning his meditation with a natural attitude, must undertake that change

in attitude which Husserl calls phenomenological epochē or transcendental phenom-

enological reduction. […] [W]hat is grasped in the epochē is the pure life of conscious-

ness in which and through which the whole objective world exists for me, by virtue of

the fact that I experience it, perceive it, remember it, etc. (Schuetz, 1967, p. 455)

Heidegger fundamentally disagreed with Husserl and argued that “historically situated

existence in its facticity is thoroughly hermeneutical,” which, as Kisiel (2010) points out, stands

in stark opposition to “any sort of theoretical I or transcendental ego abstracted in Cartesian

fashion from its vital context, thereby denuded of its world, dehistoricized and devitalized”

(p. 19, emphasis added). Heidegger argued that philosophical practice was wrong to assume

consciousness—a thinking ‘I,’ the Cartesian ego—as its ground zero. He emphasized the need to

irst consider the conditions of possibility for the formation of what we refer to as a ‘conscious-

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41

ness’ that is able to bring into language its perceptions and experiences. Heidegger called this

“pre-theoretical primal domain of being” Da-sein [tr: Being-there] (p. 19). In Being and Time,

Heidegger elaborates the existential facticity and ‘thrown-ness’ [Geworfenheit] of Dasein, which

Kisiel (2010) captures well:

The sense of thrownness, colloquially put, is the potentially stunning realization that

I ind myself thrown into a world I did not make and into a life I did not ask for. […] as

Heidegger puts it, ‘the being of Dasein breaks forth as the naked [and pure fact] ‘that

it is and has to be.’ (p. 25)

According to Heidegger, Dasein does not start as a transcendental consciousness that

relects on a world that exists outside of itself. Rather, our being takes shape as ‘being-in-the-

world‘ through our inter-action with a material and historical ‘world’ that preceded us and

within which we ind meaning. Kenny (2007) eloquently describes the relational and inter-

active dimensions of Dasein:

The primitive element of Dasein is ‘being-in-the-world’, and thinking is only one way

of engaging with the world: acting upon it and reacting to it are at least as important

elements. Dasein is prior to the distinction between thinking and willing or theory and

practice. Dasein is caring about (besorgen). Dasein is not a res cogitans, but a res curans:

not a thinking thing, but a caring thing. Only if I have some care about, or interest in,

the world will I go on to ask questions about it and give answers to those questions in

the form of knowledge-claims. (p. 84)

Dasein as ‘care’ unfolds as a relational, meaningful structure that is profoundly temporal: It

unfolds in the here/now through “being-toward” and “being-with” others in a “world of taking

care of things,” a world that is shared. It exists in an interpretive and meaningful relation to

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a lived past—the realm of moods, memories, culture, history— and in its temporal trajec-

tory as “being-towards-death,” Dasein reaches in “anticipatory resoluteness” towards a future.

(Heidegger, 2010, pp. 125-126; 236; 305).

Heidegger’s concept of reality and our relation to it is crucial in understanding his philos-

ophy of technology. For Heidegger, reality exists as a world of matter and living things. However,

our knowing of the world will always constitute a selective, historically situated perspective of

what is and how it takes on meaning. Verbeek (2005) explains how our perception of our world

unfolds as a hermeneutic relation to what is:

Reality is not something absolute that human beings can ever know once and for all;

it is relative in the most literal sense of the word—it exists only in relations, Reality is in

itself inaccessible for human beings. As soon as we perceive or try to understand it, it is

not ‘reality in itself’ anymore, but ‘reality for us.’ (p. 50)

Heidegger understands the relation of human Dasein to the real in terms of concealing and

revealing (or un-concealment). At any given time, our relation to Dasein constitutes a ‘selective

unfolding’ that is, as Verbeek (2005) points out, “to a great extent shaped by ‘the way of uncon-

cealment’ that holds sway in a particular epoch” (p. 50), and that is “never ixed for all time, but

changes throughout history” (p. 51). For Heidegger, modern technology constitutes a particular

way of revealing reality and our relationship to it—one in which the world appears to presents

itself as a standing reserve for human control and consumption.

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45

nothing technological

Page 25: Heideggers Technologic

49

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, to which today

we particularly like to do homage,

makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology.

Martin Heidegger

The question concerning technology (1954)

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.

(Heidegger, 1977, p. 19)

Wh e n H e i d e g g e r a r g u e s t h a t the essence of technology is “nothing

technological,” he takes a similar approach as he does in his analysis of human

Dasein. Rather than focusing on speciic technological artifacts, Heidegger questions

their conditions of possibility: what kind of human-world relation—or historically shaped

understanding of being— makes it possible for such devices to come into existence in the irst

place?

In his 1954 essay The question concerning technology, Heidegger elaborates his analysis

of what he sees as the historical shifts in the articulations of being that made it possible for

modern technologies to come into existence. Through what can be considered as his ‘trademark

approach’—a series of in-depth etymological and philosophical analyses that draw on both

Greek and German vocabulary and concepts—Heidegger describes how the instrumentaliza-

tion of human making moved from wholistic praxis to machine-driven production. He makes

this argument by contrasting the ancient Greek understanding of technē (craft) and poiēsis

(creation or poetic revealing) to the monodimensional instrumentality that characterizes indus-

trial modes of production. Whereas the realm of craft enfolds technical, aesthetic and ethical

dimensions and the act of creation takes shape as a kind of respectful collaboration between

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51

the craftsman and his materials, modern technologies, Heidegger(1977) argues, enact a human-

world relation that “challenges forth:”

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, distrib-

uting, and switching about are ways of revealing. But the revealing never simply

comes to an end. Neither does it run of 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.

(p. 16)

This particular mode of being that “sets upon” us, “challenges [us] forth, to reveal the real, in

the mode of ordering, as standing reserve” (p. 20), Heidegger refers to as Ge-stell or Enframing.

With the word Ge-stell, Heidegger points to an assemblage of words within the German

language that all share the root concept stellen [tr: to place, to set], which, for Heidegger, capture

the essence of modern technology:

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 speciic. All these meanings are gathered together in Heidegger’s

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53

unique use of the word that is pivotal for him, Gestell (Enframing). (Heidegger, 1977, p.

15, footnote)

Heidegger’s view of technology does not look at technological artifacts through a lens of

either instrumentalism—technology is a neutral tool—or determinism—technology does things

to us whether we want those to happen or not—but rather considers an ontological ground that

makes it possible (and logical) for such technologies to develop. This ontological argument is

central to Heidegger’s critique of Enlightenment humanism and modern science. Heidegger

argues that the objectiication of nature and a conception of human consciousness as an entity

external to it laid the groundwork for a mode of being in which humans understand their being-

in-the-world in terms of a subject/object relationship—as being in control of a world in which

anything can be demystiied and controlled through rational analysis and empirical science,

and in which everything is there for human use and control. Heidegger argued that Friedrich

Nietzsche’s notion of the Will to Power signiied a coming to fruition of this instrumentalized

‘way of unconcealment’ that dominates modernity. Hence, the essence of technology is nothing

technological, but rather an Enframing, a Gestalt—a igure or coniguration—“in which the real

reveals itself as standing reserve” (p. 23).

Heidegger(1977) argues that technology is a monodimensional unfolding of the real that

“banishes man into that kind of revealing which is an ordering” and that “drives out every other

possibility of revealing” (p. 27). Within the challenging forth and “destining” of the Ge-stell,

humans lose their connection to more authentic ways of being, to the point that they are

subsumed by it and are “nothing but the orderer of the standing reserve […] to the point where

[they themselves] will have to be taken as standing-reserve” (p.26-27):

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55

I am amaximizing machine

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. (p. 27)

Understanding technology as Enframing presents a signiicant conundrum. If Technology

indeed constitutes our world—a particular unfolding of the real in which human beings can

no longer imagine being otherwise—and if this particular mode of being is inauthentic and

harmful, to the world then how can we escape this ‘matrix’ and exist in a free relation to tech-

nology? Heidegger(1977) turns to realm of art as his deus ex machina (pun intended):

Such a realm is art. But certainly only if relection 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. (p. 35)

Ironically, Heidegger instrumentalizes art to do a particular job. Unlike more common

understandings of what art might be for, Heidegger once again turns to the Greeks to enlighten

us about the true essence of art. He argues that art is not primarily about aesthetic experience,

Page 29: Heideggers Technologic

57

but that its purpose is to mediate a “poetic revealing” of truth and essence, of authentic Dasein

(p. 35). Unfortunately, most of the artistic production in Heidegger’s lifetime—whether in litera-

ture or the visual arts—fell hopelessly short of this spiritual destiny. Heidegger saw fewer and

fewer possibilities for the poetic revealing in which he had placed his hope for change.

ONLY A GOD C AN SAVE US

In the Spiegel interview of 1966 (which was, on Heidegger’s request, published posthu-

mously in May of 1976) Heidegger concluded that contemporary literature is “largely destruc-

tive” (Sheehan, 1981, p. 57), that he did “not see anything about modern art that points out

a way [for us]” (p. 64), that “the role of philosophy in the past has been taken over today by

the sciences,” and that “cybernetics” is the new ‘philosophy’ (p. 59). His conclusion that neither

philosophy nor individual action can turn this epochal tide leads to the rather pessimistic

exhortation that “only a god can save us.” Heidegger states:

If I may answer briely, and perhaps clumsily, but after long relection: philosophy will

be unable to efect any immediate change in the current state of the world. This is true

not only of philosophy but of all purely human relection and endeavor. Only a god

can save us. The only possibility available to us is that by thinking and poetizing we

prepare a readiness for the appearance of a god or for the absence of a god in [our]

decline, insofar as in view of the absent god we are in a state of decline. (p. 57)

Because Heidegger brought his analyses of tools and later technology to an onto-

logical conclusion, it became virtually impossible to escape his own path of thinking.

His conception of technology as Enframing is so all-encompassing, that he could no longer

see the trees for the forest. This kind of metanarrative confounds the possibility of change in

the here/now as the only true change involves a transformation of an epochal mode of being

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59

of entire civilizations. In response to Heidegger’s comments that any real, essential change

may take 300 years to unfold, the Spiegel interviewer expressed his profound frustration —and

mine—with this rather disengaged and passive ‘bottom line’:

We understand very well. However, since we do not live 300 years hence but here and

now, silence is denied us. The rest of us—politicians, halfpoliticians, citizens, journal-

ists, etc.—must constantly make decisions. We must adapt ourselves to the system

in which we live, must seek to change it, must scout out the narrow openings that

may lead to reform, and the still narrower openings that may lead to revolution. We

expect help from philosophers, even if only indirect help—help in roundabout ways.

And now we hear only: I cannot help you. (p. 60).

These words touch on a major point of critique that was frequently directed at Heidegger’s

‘techno-ontology’ in the decades following the 1954 publication of The question concerning

technology—the absence of agency in face of the Ge-stell.

MORPHEUS: Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know

something. What you know, you can’t explain. But you feel it.

You felt it your entire life. That there’s something wrong with the

world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there. Like a splinter in

your mind - driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought

you to me. Do you know what I’m talking about?

NEO: The Matrix.

MORPHEUS: Do you want to know what it is?

NEO: Yes.

MORPHEUS: The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this

very room. You can see it when you look out your window or

when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to

work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is

the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from

the truth.

NEO: What truth?

MORPHEUS: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into

bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A

prison for your mind.

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65

the question of agency

Page 34: Heideggers Technologic

67

Loo

kin

g in

to t

he

pai

nti

ng

(de

tail)

(2

00

0) —

Teu

n H

ock

s

“Resistance is useless.”

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

He i d e g g e r ’s a n a l y s i s o f t e c h n o l o g y as a historical mode of world disclosure

identiies many important points of consideration in relation to our being-in-the-

world. However, his conclusions at the end of his path through thinking appear to lead us down

a dead-end road in which all there is left for us to do is to wait ‘for a god to save us.’ This apparent

absence of agency—personal, cultural, political—is a core concern in a range of critical analyses

of Heidegger’s philosophy of technology. I will conclude my ‘philosophical safari’ with a

discussion of several important points of critique on Heidegger’s understanding of technology

as Enframing. The question of agency—the capacity for human freedom of action—and the

need for approaches that make room for diference and multiplicity will guide the way on this

last leg of my journey.

Dutch philosopher of technology Peter-Paul Verbeek(2005) ofers a thorough and fair anal-

ysis of Heidegger’s path through thinking as it develops over time, analyzing both its strengths

and ambiguities. Verbeek identiies three core concerns that frequently surface in critiques of

Heidegger’s philosophy of technology, and emphasizes that these criticisms are most often

directed at the conclusions of Heidegger’s analysis rather than at the analysis itself:

His work is said to be monolithic because he allows no room in his approach for an

alternative technological practice; abstract because he single-mindedly focuses on

technological thinking rather than on concrete technologies, and nostalgic because

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69

he often contrasts the present unfavorably with the exalted past. (Verbeek, 2005, p.

60, emphasis added)

These three points of critique efectively capture the problematic ‘end game’ of Heidegger’s

‘techno-ontology.’ Because the Gestell functions as an epochal matrix for being, it forever eludes

our grasp. Because technology is theorized as the ontological ground for our ‘modern’ lives, it

seems to belong to a diferent order—one that cannot be touched by the actions of one or

more people in the here and now. Because Heidegger’s alternatives to this undesirable state of

afairs seem to only exist in the context of another epoch of being, we are ‘essentially hooped’

and left to mourn the loss of what may not be recovered in our lifetime.

CONTEX TUALIT Y

Before engaging in greater depth with these speciic points of critique, it is important to

emphasize that contemporary ideas of what philosophy is are very diferent from the context in

which Heidegger’s scholarship took shape. His work emerged in the context of a “transcenden-

talist” tradition (Verbeek, 2005, p. 71), an understanding of philosophy as “a universal style of

thinking,” engaging with what were understood to be “atemporal” concepts (Ihde, 2010, p. 14).

Throughout Heidegger’s oeuvre it seems as if he has one leg in the camp of immutable essences

and the other in the camp of historical, contextual and ever-changing praxis. His life-long fasci-

nation with the question of being (rather than that of individual beings) seems to have nudged

him increasingly towards a more metaphysical inale, in spite of his early phenomenological

commitment to anchor his philosophy in “the things themselves.” Heidegger’s philosophy of

technology, like any other is, as Ihde (2010) puts it, a “fallibilist, contingent, and socially histor-

ical” practice (p. 14).

1900 Modern escalator........................................................................................... Charles Seeberger1905 Theory of Relativity ............................................................................................. Albert Einstein1906 Electronic amplifying tube .................................................................................... Lee Deforest1907 Invention of colour photography ................................................................ Lumière brothers1910 First talking motion picture ............................................................................... Thomas Edison1921 Lie detector ............................................................................................................... John Larson1923 Television .......................................................................................... Vladimir Kosma Zworykin1926 Liquid fueled rockets ................................................................................... Robert H. Goddard1931 Electron microscope ...................................................................... Max Knott and Ernst Ruska1932 Polaroid photography ............................................................................... Edwin Herbert Land1933 FM radio ............................................................................................. Edwin Howard Armstrong1934 Monopoly game ...................................................................................................Charles Darrow1936 Colt revolver .............................................................................................................. Samuel Colt1937 Photocopier ..................................................................................................... Chester F. Carlson1938 Ballpoint pen .............................................................................................................. Ladislo Biro1939 First successful helicopter ..................................................................................... Igor Sikorsky1940 Color television ................................................................................................... Peter Goldmark1941 First software controlled computer ......................................................................Konrad Zuse1942 First electronic digital computer ..................................... John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry1944 Kidney dialysis machine .......................................................................................... Willem Kolff1945 Atomic bomb ....................................................... Robert Oppenheimer / Manhattan Project1946 Microwave oven .....................................................................................................Percy Spencer1947 Transistor ................................................................................ Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley1950 Credit card ..........................................................................................................Ralph Schneider1951 Video tape recorder ........................................................................................ Charles Ginsburg1952 Hydrogen bomb...................................................................................................... Edward Teller1953 Transistor radio ...............................................................................................Texas Instruments1954 Oral contraceptives ................................................................................................. Frank Colton1957 Fortran computer language .............................................................................. IBM computers1959 Microchip ...................................................................................... Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce1960 Halogen lamp ........................................................................................................ Fredrick Moby1962 Audio cassette ................................................................................................. Phillips Company1965 Compact disk...........................................................................................................James Russell1968 Computer mouse ...........................................................................................Douglas Engelbart1969 Arpanet (first internet) ................................................. Advanced Research Projects Agency1970 Floppy disk ...............................................................................................................Alan Shugart1971 Liquid crystal display (LCD) ..............................................................................James Fergason1972 Word processor ........................................................................................................................ IBM1974 Post-it notes ..................................................................................................................Arthur Fry1976 Laser printer ............................................................................................................................. IBM

Page 36: Heideggers Technologic

71You

do

n’t

un

de

rsta

nd

| Sh

arin

g is

th

e la

w |

The

lan

d o

wn

s it

self

(20

01

) — S

and

ra S

em

chu

k &

Jam

es

Nic

ho

las

Heidegger wrote in the context of the rise of “industrial technology—machinic, gigantic,

mechanical, systemic and complex” (Ihde, 2010, p. 19)—technologies developed for the mass-

processing of raw materials. Even though he may not have subscribed to this idea speciically,

Heidegger wrote at a time when the notion of autonomous technology—of “runaway technology

that exceeds, ‘Frankenstein-like,’ its inventor’s control”(p. 19)—was well-circulated. Another

common notion in relation to modern technology in Heidegger’s time and place was that of the

“’disenchantment’ and ‘desacralization’ of nature (p. 7). These types of sentiments seem to infuse

Heidegger’s take on ‘modern’ technologies such as the hydroelectric power plant. Heidegger

also wrote against the dramatic historical and political realities of immense conlict and war.

His lifetime enfolds three wars—the irst and second World War, and the nuclear threat of the

Cold War era.

It is important to point out that Heidegger wrote as man of some privilege and inluence,

especially in the years before and during WWII. He was also a man who preferred a solitary

existence ‘close to nature’ over the hustle and bustle of modern urban centres. All these life

experiences on some level resonate in his work and give it a distinct historical lavour, in spite of

its abstract and ‘universal’ style.

MONOLITHIC

The monolithic character of the Ge-stell has to do with the fact that Heidegger does not

consider technology on the ontic level—that of individual technological artifacts—but as an

epochal ontology which Ihde (2010) ironically refers to as a “one size its all” approach (p. 114).

Within this ‘matrix-like’ coniguration, individual technological artifacts appear as mere “mani-

festations” of that singular, all-encompassing “form of world-disclosure” (Verbeek, 2005, p. 62).

Ihde(2010) points out that such a “metaphysical—and reductionist—turn determines from the

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73

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?

Martin Heidegger

The question concerning technology (1954)

beginning the reason all technologies are reduced to the same analysis” (p. 119). The inherent

circularity of technology as Enframing leaves no room for diference and multiplicity in terms of

experience or practice, culture or context. Feenberg(2010) points out that within the Heidegge-

rian Ge-stell it becomes impossible to “discriminate between electricity and atom bombs, agri-

cultural techniques and the Holocaust” (p. 25), as all are mere expressions of a ‘techno-logic’ that

unfolds the material world as standing reserve for human ordering and control. Verbeek (2005)

emphasizes the critical importance of engaging individual technologies on their own terms:

While Heidegger might be right that a speciic, technological way of interpreting

reality (on the ontological level) is required for modern technology to come about,

we should also conclude that the role of technology (on the ontic level) in our culture

cannot be understood in terms of this speciic way of interpreting only. When they are

used, technologies may make it possible for human beings to have a relation with reality

that is much richer than those they have with a manipulable stock of raw materials. (p. 66,

italics added)

Ihde (2010) emphatically concludes that “there is no essence of technology although there

are many ‘technologies’” (p. 119). In order to move beyond Heidegger’s monolithic approach to

technology, it is literally ‘of the essence’ that we are intentional about pluralizing our language

and thereby our ways of thinking—technologies, enframings, orderings, practices, experiences,

relations—it is quite remarkable what a single letter can accomplish in terms of opening up a

world of diferent possibilities. And Heidegger knew this.

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75

ECO

LOG

ICA

L IM

PAC

T I:

The

Plig

ht

of

the

Urb

an F

ore

st (

20

06

) — A

lina

Iljas

ova

& H

elm

a Sa

wat

zky

ABSTR AC T

Because Heidegger engages technology only on the ontological level—as ‘Technology’—

any serious analysis of individual technologies is missing. This absence of an engagement with

concrete technological artifacts as they are used in myriad contexts supports the second claim

frequently lodged against Heidegger’s philosophy of technology—that it is abstract.

One wonders what would have happened if Heidegger had engaged individual techno-

logical artifacts with the same sensibility that he brought to his analysis of everyday tools and

equipment in Being and Time. For example, Heidegger’s concept of “ready-at-hand” (Zuhanden-

heit; also translated as ‘handiness’)—“the way of being a tool or piece of equipment has when in

use”—considers the way in which things participate in world disclosure, how things are useful

to human beings, how they refer to what they bring about , and how they “play [ ] a role in ‘the

public world’(Verbeek, 2005, p. 79). Within this frame of thought, technological artifacts can be

considered for the ways in which they unfold human being-in-the-world. Heidegger’s concept

of the “present-at-hand” (Vorhandenheit) is particularly compelling in the context of ‘computer

culture’. Present-at-hand refers to those situations in which a thing that generally goes unno-

ticed is—or becomes—“objectively present,” an experience that occurs when something breaks

down. Just consider how our world grinds to a halt when our computer crashes or when we ind

ourselves ‘of the grid.’

Verbeek (2005) makes some important observations about the increasingly “transcen-

dentalist perspective” in Heidegger’s thought from his early work—e.g., Being and Time

(1927)—to his late work —e.g., The Thing (1950), Building, Dwelling, Thinking (1951) and The

question concerning technology (1954)— a signiicant change in Heidegger’s engagement of

the question of being, a change Heidegger himself referred to as Die Kehre (The Turn). The ‘early’

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77

T H E R E D W H E E L B A R R O W

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.

william carlos williams

1923

Heidegger explored the question of being in a very down-to-earth way, considering “the things

themselves” as “a way of revealing the world instead of a reduction of our access to it” (p. 80). As

Heidegger increasingly focuses on the history of being, he moves away from analysis anchored

in concrete artifacts towards an understanding of equipment as a revealing of historically situ-

ated “sendings of being.” Verbeek concludes that, in the inal tally, Heidegger ends up overem-

phasizing historicity (p. 82), and argues that his earlier approach ofers a more “fruitful point

of departure for a philosophy of technology that takes artifacts seriously, both as a material

culture in which reality acquires new meanings and as objects that provide human beings with

new means of actualizing their existence” (p. 76). This need to consider individual technological

artifacts in terms of the many diferent ways in which they mediate human being-in-the-world

lies at the heart of various post-phenomenological research initiatives (See also Ihde 1990,

1993, 2008, 2009 and Verbeek, 2005).

NOSTALGIC

The third point of critique brought to bear on Heidegger’s work is that of nostalgia or

romanticism. This important critique inds its origins in the examples Heidegger uses in The

question concerning technology in terms of technology as Enframing or Ge-stell. He compares

and contrasts ‘older’ craft-based technologies such as a windmill to ‘modern’ technologies such

as a hydroelectric plant in order to argue that the latter violates nature whereas the former

works with it :

And yet the revealing that holds sway throughout modern technology does not

unfold into a bringing-forth in the sense of poiēsis. The revealing that rules in modern

technology is a challenging [Herausfordern], which puts to nature the unreasonable

demand that it supply energy that can be extracted and stored as such. But does this

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79

Cu

t w

ith

th

e k

itch

en

kn

ife

(1

91

9) —

Han

nah

Ho

ch

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. (Heidegger, 1977, p. 14)

Throughout this essay, Heidegger argues that technologies belonging to the domain of

pre-industrial craft-based praxis constitute more authentic forms of human Dasein, whereas

modern technologies are monodimensional in essence. Verbeek (2005) makes an important

observation in noting that “Heidegger measures tradition and modernity with diferent scales”

(p. 75), one historical and the other ahistorical:

When analyzing traditional artifacts he uses an ahistorical perspective, while he

approaches modern technologies using a historical perspective. […] The way in which

a technological object reveals reality is, therefore, in the irst instance [the hydroelec-

tric plant] historically sent by being, while in the second instance [the old waterwheel

in the Rhine] it is represented as a fundamental event that can be veiled by a purely

technological way of thinking (p. 72)

Ihde argues that there is “no diference in kind, only a diference in degree” between

the waterwheel and the hydroelectric plant as both ‘challenge forth’ the Rhine to release its

hydraulic pressure (Ihde as cited in Verbeek, 2005, p. 68, emphasis added). Modern technolo-

gies introduce the variable of scale, which frequently involve an “ampliication of power that

make [its impacts] global rather than regional (Ihde, 2010, p. 84). Ihde (2010) further contends

that Heidegger’s analyses are “historically thin with respect to both the histories of science and

technology,” that his “deep romanticism […] blinds him to the variety of aspects of technolo-

gies that more phenomenologically could have been better discerned,” and that his “selective

revealing obscures a much darker concealing with respect to his valorized technologies” (p. 27).

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81

e ve r y t o o l i s a we a p o n

— i f yo u h o l d i t r i g h t .

ani difranco

1993

I f I h a d a h a m m e r

I ’d h a m m e r i n t h e m o r n i n g

I ’d h a m m e r i n t h e e ve n i n g

A l l o ve r t h i s l a n d

I ’d h a m m e r o u t d a n g e r

I ’d h a m m e r o u t a wa r n i n g

I ’d h a m m e r o u t l o ve

b e t we e n my b r o t h e r s a n d my s i s t e r s

A l l o ve r t h i s l a n d

lee hays & pete seeger

1958

In this respect, Heidegger’s philosophy of technology does exactly that which he attributes to

the Ge-stell—that of presenting a reductive, monodimensional enframing of human Dasein by

way of technologies.

POLITICS OF THE AR TIFAC T

Aside from the charges that Heidegger’s philosophy of technology is abstract, monolithic

and nostalgic, another common issue to arise is the seeming absence of a concrete political

dimension to Heidegger’s thought. Throughout the essay on technology, much is expressed

in verbs that refer to various ‘cosmic actions’—e.g., revealing, concealing, challenging forth,

enframing. However, the doer of all these ‘doings’ is never a concrete ‘somebody somewhere,’

but always a deferred, abstract entity over which human beings appear to have little or no

control. Heidegger also fails to mention the fact that things play important parts in systems of

power, that things enable some human beings to “order” and “challenge forth” others. Nowhere

does this appear more immediate and troubling than when one person points a gun at another.

By contrasting Heidegger’s analysis of an ancient Greek Temple to a ‘Heidegger-like’ analysis

of a contemporary Long Island nuclear power plant, Ihde (2010) makes the following important

point with regards to artifactual politics:

I contend that the diference is not simply the diference between the nostalgic roman-

ticism of the Greek temple and the urgent and fearful presence of the nuclear plant.

Rather, it lies in what is left out, concealed, or unsaid in the Heideggerian account. What

is left out […] is what Langdon Winner has called the “politics of the artifact.” For us,

that dimension of the thingly is more vividly present in the nuclear plant than in the

lost civilization of the Greeks only because it is nearer to us.” (p. 82, emphasis added)

Page 42: Heideggers Technologic

83

Ihde therefore argues that Heidegger’s romanticism is possible only because the objects

upon which it lingers are no longer connected to an active political and frequently contested

context. Verbeek (2005) makes a similar point from a slightly diferent angle, pointing out that

Heidegger considers ‘things past’ from an ahistorical and essentializing perspective:

One can be nostalgic only when one thinks that something essential has been lost, and

that becomes problematic precisely when one thinks historically, for then something

can only be essential within a historical context rather than ahistorically. From a purely

historical perspective, classical technē and modern technology would be historical

phases in the relation of humans to being, and neither could claim to be more funda-

mental than the other. (p. 72)

The historical dimension of being is a socio-political dimension of being as much as it is a

cultural dimension of being. Therefore, one of the irst questions in relation to the Heideggerian

Gestell as an enframing that presents nature and human beings as a “vast resource well” should

be, as Ihde (2010) emphasizes, “for who, or for what end?” (p. 82).

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85

das Ding dingt

THINKING FOR WARD ABOUT TECHNOLOGY

A philosophical analysis of the role of technology in the modern world

cannot rest with reducing technology to forms of interpretation,

but needs to devote its attention as well to the ways in which speciic technologies and arti-

facts help to shape speciic forms of praxis and interpretation.

It needs to think “forward” rather than “backward” about technology.

( Verbeek, 2005, p. 67)

In many ways, Heidegger’s philosophy of technology as elaborated in The Question

concerning Technology stands ‘guilty as charged’ in terms of being monolithic, abstract

and nostalgic. This, however, does not diminish its signiicant impact on several contem-

porary approaches to philosophy of technology. It seems as if Heidegger’s essay on tech-

nology—apart from profoundly confounding many of its readers—brought about an

engagement with—or struggle through—his thought that frequently meandered back to

his more ‘down to earth’ engagement with tools and equipment in Being and Time. Verbeek

(2005) points out that Heidegger’s historical and hermeneutic approach to philosophy was

pivotal in making a ‘clearing’ for the postmodern impetus by “approaching being as changeable

rather than static, and thus the ‘essence’ of things as contingent, resting on a historically deter-

mined conception of being” (p. 73).

Today technology is a fact of life. It is no longer something we can merely consider from

afar. Technologies are integrated in the way we are as never before. We increasingly act, react,

experience and relect through our technologies. In turn, these technologies facilitate and

mediate experiences and practices that would not be possible otherwise. Now perhaps more

than ever, any relevant philosophy of technology should, as Verbeek (2005) emphasizes, “take

Page 44: Heideggers Technologic

87

concrete technological tools, instruments and devices seriously” (p. 67) and carefully consider

the diferent ways in which our technologies mediate world disclosure:

From a hermeneutical perspective, artifacts mediate human experience by trans-

forming perception and interpretive frameworks, helping to shape the way in which

human beings encounter reality. The structure of this kind of mediation involves

ampliication and reduction; some interpretive possibilities are strengthened while

others are weakened. From an existential perspective, artifacts mediate human exis-

tence by giving concrete shape to their behaviour and the social context of their exis-

tence. This kind of mediation can be described in terms of translation, whose structure

involves invitation and inhibition; some forms of involvement are fostered while others

are discouraged. Both kinds of mediation, taken together, describe how artifacts help

shape how humans can be present in the world and how the world can be present for

them. (p. 195, emphasis added)

While acknowledging that modern technology tends to amplify certain modes of being—

which Feenberg identiies as “instrumentalization,” “diferentiation of modern technological

practice,” and the “disenchantment of nature” (p. 185)—contemporary approaches to philos-

ophy of technology steer clear of the transcendental grand inale of Heidegger’s analysis of

Technology as Enframing, in order to make room for multiplicity of praxis and to recover socio-

political agency for human beings in the here-now.

An impetus towards taking technologies seriously by doing actual phenomenological

research into the lives of artifacts in terms of how they mediate human being-in-the-world

found its initial thrust in the work of Don Ihde, and ‘self-identiies’ as post-phenomenology. Ihde’s

phenomenologically and historically grounded analyses ofer frameworks for understanding a

Page 45: Heideggers Technologic

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wide range of diferent human-technology relations, as well as concepts like multistability that

capture how technologies do not have a single essence, but rather—like a Necker cube—can

take on diferent identities in diferent contexts of use, (Ihde, 1990, pp. 144-146). Verbeek’s

“postphenomenological perspective” focuses on the moral dimensions of technological design:

Technologies are not merely functional objects that also have dimensions of style and

meaning; they mediate the relations between human beings and their world, and

thereby shape human experiences and existence. Technologies help determine how

people act, so that it is not only people but also things who give answers to the clas-

sical moral question, ‘How to live?’ (Verbeek, 2005, pp. 235-236)

Whereas Verbeek’s perspective addresses the level of individual technological artifacts,

Feenberg’s critical theory of technology explores the socio-political and ecological dimensions

of “rationalized technical practice” (Feenberg, 2010, p. 182). Following Heidegger and Marcuse,

Feenberg argues that modern technology is “increasingly alienated from everyday experience”

(p. xvii). Whereas lived experience incorporates a complex of technical as well as ethical and

aesthetic dimensions, “rationalized technical practice”—especially as it unfolds in the context

of capitalism—tends to function according to a decidedly diferent logic, one that lacks such

“normativity” (p. 217). In light of the looming environmental crisis, Feenberg poses what he

considers a crucial question in terms of a “radical critique of technology,” “Could it be that our

technology, or at least the speciic way in which we are technological, threatens us with self-

destruction?” (p. 186). Feenberg advocates the need for “technological reform,” for actively and

critically anchoring technological practice in a normative base where “fact” and “value” are

joined (p. 209).

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91

Un

in

ish

ed

pai

nti

ng

in i

nis

he

d p

ho

tog

rap

h(s

) 2n

d A

pri

l 19

82

(19

82

) — D

avid

Ho

ckn

ey

A common thread running through these approaches to philosophy of technology seems in

some way connected to Heidegger’s analysis of technē as “undiferentiated practice”(Feenberg,

2010, p. 190), as lived experience that incorporates technical alongside ethical and aesthetic

considerations into a meaningful unfolding of our human Dasein. And that is where the ball

started rolling for Heidegger in the 1920s, when he engaged the question of being. Heidegger

argued that our world is but one historically shaped unfolding from the real, one that involves a

dynamic of revealing and concealing.

I would like to end my journey with what Heidegger himself identiied as the essence of

human being-in-the-world—that of care. Care takes many forms. Of course, it can inspire a self

centered existence in which all actions gather towards oneself and one’s own. However, care is

also the most life- and world-changing dimension of human Dasein.

Care understands itself in relation to others and to a world, both of which are fragile. Care

reaches out. Care drives the desire for change. Care motivates the extra mile. Care goes above

and beyond. Care inspires hope.

And for my inal ‘ten cents worth’—and I say it because I care—the greatest crime that any

philosophy or theory can commit against humanity is to destroy hope.

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Co

nst

ruct

ion

sit

es

ph

ase

II: P

ho

en

ix c

om

ple

x (d

eta

il) (

20

12

) — H

elm

a Sa

wat

zky

l l m e t a n a r ra t i v e s a s i d e – one does wonder if Heidegger wasn’t onto something

really big in arguing that technology renders human beings as standing reserve. It

seems to me that an entire generation of people is now caught up in the call to incessantly

broadcast presence through platforms like Twitter and Facebook, as if one’s existence is quanti-

ied and validated ‘in real time’ through one’s daily tweet quota and status updates.

For all its wonderful afordances, the cultural expectation which is mediated, facilitated and

ampliied by technology is for human beings to function as a kind of ‘standing reserve’ at the

beckoning ping of others. And one does wonder if there might be something to the quest for

‘authentic Dasein,’ for conscious choices and boundaries in relation to the call of the machine.

And just because computers can run 24/7, doesn’t mean that human beings can or should. After

all, lifetime is still in limited supply.

postscript

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Bambach, C. (2010). Heidegger, National Socialism and the German People. In B. W. Davis (Ed.), Martin

Heidegger key concepts (pp. 102-115). Durham: Acumen. Retrieved from http://proxy.lib.sfu.ca/

login?url=http://site.ebrary.com/lib/sfu/Doc?id=10553844.

Davis, B. W. (2010). Martin Heidegger: Key concepts Key concepts (pp. xvi, 288 p.). Retrieved from

http://proxy.lib.sfu.ca/login?url=http://site.ebrary.com/lib/sfu/Doc?id=10553844

Feenberg, A. (2010). Between reason and experience: Essays in technology and modernity.

Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Feldman, M. (2005). Between Geist and Zeitgeist: Martin Heidegger as Ideologue of ‘Meta-

political Fascism’. Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 6(2), 175-198. doi:

10.1080/14690760500181545

Heidegger, M. (1977). The question concerning technology, and other essays (1st ed.). New York:

Harper & Row.

Heidegger, M. (1990). The self-assertion of the German University (1933). In G. Neske & E. Kettering

(Eds.), Martin Heidegger and National Socialism (1st American ed., pp. 5-13). New York, NY:

Paragon House.

Heidegger, M. (2010). Being and time (1926). New York: State University of New York Press.

Hitler, A., Domarus, M., & Romane, P. (2007). The essential Hitler: Speeches and commentary.

Wauconda, Ill.: Bolchazy-Carducci Pub.

Ihde, D. (1990). Technology and the lifeworld: From garden to earth. Bloomington: Indiana University

Press.

Ihde, D. (1993). Postphenomenology: Essays in the postmodern context. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern

University Press.

Ihde, D. (2008). Introduction: Postphenomenological Research (Vol. 31, pp. 1-9).

Ihde, D. (2009). Postphenomenology and technoscience: The Peking University lectures. Albany:

SUNY Press.

Ihde, D. (2010). Heidegger’s technologies Postphenomenological perspectives Perspectives in conti-

nental philosophy (pp. xii, 155 p.). Retrieved from http://proxy.lib.sfu.ca/login?url=http://site.

ebrary.com/lib/sfu/Doc?id=10420274

Janicaud, D. (1989). Heidegger’s Politics: Determinable or Not?. Social Research, 56(4), 819-847.

Kenny, A. (2007). Philosophy in the modern world. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kisiel, T. (2010). Hermeneutics of facticity. In B. W. Davis (Ed.), Martin Heidegger: Key concepts (pp.

17-32). Durham: Acumen. Retrieved from http://proxy.lib.sfu.ca/login?url=http://site.ebrary.

com/lib/sfu/Doc?id=10553844.

Schuetz, A. (1967). Phenomenology and the social sciences. In J. J. Kockelmans (Ed.), Phenom-

enology: The philosophy of Edmund Husserl and its interpretation (pp. 450-472.). Garden City,

N.Y.: Anchor Books.

Seubold, G. n. (1986). Heideggers Analyse der neuzeitlichen Technik. Freiburg: K. Alber.

Sheehan, T. (1981). Heidegger, the man and the thinker. Chicago: Precedent.

Steiner, A. (2000). The Case of Martin Heidegger, Philosopher and Nazi, Part 1: The Record, from

http://intsse.com/wswspdf/articles/2000/apr2000/heid-a03.pdf

Verbeek, P.-P. (2005). What things do: Philosophical relections on technology, agency, and design.

University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press.

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Photo installation by Sandra Semchuk and James Nicholas.

PAGE 74 Ecological Impact I (2006)

Site speciic performance by Alina Iljasova and Helma Sawatzky

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PAGE 90 Uninished painting in inished photograph(s) 2nd April 1982 (1982) — David Hockney

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