The Question Concerning Heidegger’s Critique of
Subjectivity:
Reflections on the Essence of Science, Technology,
and the Modern Age
Matthew Schreiber
Earlham College
Senior Thesis, 2001-2002
“All distances in time and space are shrinking.
Man now reaches overnight, by plane, places which formerly took weeks and
months of travel. He now receives instant information, by radio, of events
which he formerly learned about only years later, if at all. The germination
of growth of plants, which remained hidden throughout the seasons, is now
exhibited publicly in a minute, on film. Distant sites of the most ancient
cultures are shown on film as if they stood this very moment amidst today’s
street traffic. Moreover, the film attests to what it shows by presenting
also the camera and its operators at work. The peak of this abolition of
every possibility of remoteness is reached by the television, which will
soon pervade and dominate the whole machinery of communication” (The Thing)
[1]In the
opening passage of his 1950 lecture The Thing, Heidegger brings
to attention the radical transformation of the way in which the world makes
itself present to humans through technology. Not only do humans have the
capacity to manipulate their environment through unprecedented technological
capabilities, but the world itself becomes understood in and through modern
science. Now more than ever, media and mass communication make it possible
to know the events and conditions of the world in such a manner
that determines the way in which we understand being.
This investigation
strives to understand science and technology such that they have come to
define existence in the modern epoch. In so doing, I draw predominantly
from Martin Heidegger’s writings on technology in The Question Concerning
Technology and Other Essays, viz., “The Question Concerning Technology”,
“The Age of the World Picture”, and “Science and Reflection”. To orient
the direction of Heidegger’s overarching investigation, I first raise the
common issue that is central to all of these essays the relationship between
technology, science, and modernity. Revolving around the question of being,
Heidegger’s project strives to show how any questioning into the essence
of technology must step back from the scope of technology. In so doing,
Heideggershows how science and technology did not emerge from the ether,
nor have they always been present as epistemological possibilities. Rather,
Heidegger argues that the advent of science and technology happened in
accordance with a particular way in which human being conceived itself
as subject. For Heidegger, the dominance of science and technology in modernity
is based on the condition that human being is understood as a subject.
Along
with subjectivity, Heidegger also claims that the arrival of the world
picture and representation mark the Western world’s transition into modernity,
and sets the scene for the infusion of science. Furthermore, I demonstrate
the ways in which the configuration of the modern subject supports the
scientific worldview through the mechanism of research. In this portion
of the paper, I asses Heidegger’s claim that “science is the theory of
the real” in light of the transformation from the pre-modern conception
of human existence to an understanding of human being as subject.
Central
to Heidegger’s thesis on technology is the concept of Enframing [Ge-stell].
The second half of this paper will focus largely on Ge-stell as
a way of grasping what is such that it is subsumed into what Heidegger
calls standing-reserve. Specifically, I strive to bring out Heidegger’s
conception of the world as standing-reserve in modernity and its impact
upon the revelation of being. I argue that it is within Heidegger’s presentation
of standing reserve that his critique of technology crystallizes, insofar
as Ge-stell orients being in such a way that technology slips beyond
control of the subject. I thereby support Heidegger’s claim that technology
in modernity resists a characterization as merely a human activity.
I include
three other voices in this discussion on the nature of standing-reserve,
technology, and subjectivity: William and Harriet Brundage Lovitt, Hubert
L. Dreyfus, and Trish Glazebrook. Consideration of the arguments presented
in Heidegger’s work in conjunction with issues raised in secondary literature
lead me to conclude that: (1) the emergence of subjectivity is the condition
for the possibility of the scientific world view, (2) Heidegger opposes
the coupling of subjectivity and technology by arguing that Ge-stell
exceeds human subjectivity, and (3) Heidegger claims that subjectivity
as a philosophical position cannot be sustained, as technology exceeds
control of the subject. Finally, I raise the possibility of reflection
as a potential solution to the holding-sway of the scientific worldview
upon all horizons of human being, and thereby situate Heidegger’s critique
of technology in terms of a call to rethink being in the modern age.
Technology, Science, and the Foundation of Modernity
“Science is one way, and indeed one decisive way,
in which all that is presents itself to us. Therefore we must say: The
reality within which man of today moves and attempts to maintain himself
is, with regard to its fundamental characteristics, determined on an increasing
scale by and in conjunction with what we call Western European science”
(SR 156).
Science
seems to be everywhere, yet its nature is elusive. It is infused into our
language and our ways of seeking truth. It carries with it an aura of certainty
and impenetrable concretion, as scientific method provides a structure
of verification and securing through which the modern world approaches
the question of being. In politics, economics, and healthcare, science
has replaced earlier methods of operation to establish itself as “
the
theory of the real” (SR
[2]).
“Pure science, we claim,
is ‘disinterested’” (SR 167). As disinterested, it seems that science coolly
describes the nature of the universe with objective precision. Research
allocates information, from which conclusions are drawn in accordance to
a set of specified rules. The success of the sway held by science lies
in the contention that these internal rules are not invented by a group
of individuals, but discovered in their predetermined validity.
In this sense, science is simultaneously for no one, yet it is for everyone.
Its origins cannot be traced back to a point at which it came into being,
because it has always been there, lying in concealment. Heidegger challenges
the common perception of science as an atemporal system for making claims
about reality, and explains science as a kind of revelation of being
within a specific historical context whose metaphysical presuppositions
could sustain a scientific world-view. Heidegger argues that at the dawn
of science, humans already approached things in such a way that allowed
science to take hold as a legitimate model through which truth becomes
known.
“Chronologically speaking, modern physical science begins in the seventeenth
century, In contrast, machine-power technology develops only in the second
half of the eighteenth century. But modern technology, which for chronological
reckoning is the later, is, from the point of view of the essence holding
sway within it, the historically earlier” (The Question Concerning Technology
[3]).
Technology is often viewed as the tools of human beings, or as “a means
to an end” that is seemingly grounded in scientific methodology (QCT 4).
Science, on the other hand, is perceived as the dominant epistemological
framework of modernity, with technology as the application of science.
Heidegger, however, wants to question this priority in terms of the question
of being. Rather than understanding science as the foundation from which
a conception of being is transformed, Heidegger strives to see the emergence
of science as a result of a certain way that being comes into presence.
As such, technology is grasped as a way of being, rather than a practical
application of scientific achievements.
Science, nonetheless,
extends from a conception of
what is that grounds scientific methodology
as the dominant way in which the modern subject understands its condition.
Technology, therefore, is not a means to an end, but “a way of revealing”
that enables science to become the epistemological framework that characterizes
the modern epoch (QCT 12). Moreover, the extent to which science
is employed to understand the world is itself not determined by those who
live by its principles. Beyond its practical application science has had
an even deeper impact upon human existence. As the dominant epistemological
framework of modernity, science exceeds a characterization as a “tool”
of the modern epoch. Human beings do not determine the sway of science
according to their own will. Rather, the extent to which science is used
to describe the nature of being is determined by something more primordial
than human volition. As Hubert Dreyfus claims, “The drive to control everything
is precisely what we do not control” (CC
[4])
Heidegger’s Method of Investigation
“If we succeed in reaching the metaphysical ground
that provides the foundation for science as a modern phenomenon, then the
entire essence of the modern age will have to let itself be apprehended
from out of that ground” (AWP 117).
For Heidegger, inquiring into the essence of science
and technology is inquiring into the essence of modernity. For precisely
this reason, Heidegger’s investigation into the essence of science is a
precarious task that requires a type of questioning that does not already
presuppose the very methodologies it seeks to put into question. As the
nature of reality is determined more and more through the lens of science,
the question of its nature approaches us with increasing urgency. The essence
of science, however, cannot be grasped by science itself. “Physics as physics
can make no assertions about physics. All the assertions of physics speak
after the manner of physics” (SR 176). Physics cannot speak about
the methodology of physics as such, it can only follow a pre-established
method of operation.
To question
into the essence of science, therefore, Heidegger must look beyond the
epistemological presuppositions that structure modern knowing. In looking
beyond the scope of science, however, Heidegger must also explain how it
is that science became the way of understanding in modernity. Thus
a revealing investigation of essence science and technology must fully
engage the presuppositions of modern scientific knowing in such a way that
accounts for its dominance, yet simultaneously sets such a dominance in
terms of a more fundamental element of human existence.
Heidegger
strives to understand science and technology in terms of their emergence
within a specific historical context. Not only does Heidegger want to show
the historical origins of modern science, he wants to reveal the conceptual
foundations of an age that is able to support the rise of scientific method
and allows for it to endure as the dominant way of understanding being.
Heidegger outlines three different periods in history that are characterized
by the manner in which truth is revealed within a particular conceptual
matrix respective to that time. These three stages (viz., ancient, medieval,
and modern) are distinguished from one another to the extent that each
period provides a context in which being is understood. Heidegger’s historical
analysis is not an attempt explain science in terms of an efficient cause,
as much as it is a project that strives to articulate the different ways
that human beings understand themselves and the situations in which they
exist.
The Foundations of Modernity: The World Picture,Subjectivity,
and Representation
What, then, are the defining characteristics of modernity such that science
becomes the dominant way of understanding being? For Heidegger, this question
begins at an examination of its very formulation. That is, in questioning
the nature of modernity, we invoke an understanding of the world that emerges
with the modern age itself: the world picture (AWP 128). In “world
picture”, world is the all-encompassing totality of that which is. “The
name [‘world’] is not limited to cosmos, to nature. History also belongs
to the world. Yet even nature and history, and both interpenetrating in
their underlying and transcending of one another, do not exhaust the world.
In this designation the ground of the world is meant also” (AWP 129). Thus
the modern world is nothing less than an entirety whose scope encompasses
all facets of existence.
As picture, the world is set forth such that it can be understood as a
comprehensible unity. “Picture” for Heidegger transcends the colloquial
definition of a delimited representation that exists within a greater context.
Heidegger claims that the world picture is the context in which
representation can occur. To “get the picture” is to place one’s self towards
a way of understanding what is. Heidegger adopts this conception of picture
to illustrate how the world picture is not simply a presentation brought
before a person, but the very manner in which that person conceives reality.
Rather than a representation of the world, the world picture is an understanding
of the world as a systematic matrix that can be framed within the limits
of human knowledge.
“Where the world becomes
a picture, what is, in its entirety, is juxtaposed as that for which man
is prepared and which, correspondingly, he therefore intends to bring before
himself and have before himself, and consequently intends in a decisive
sense to set in place before himself. Hence world picture, when understood
essentially, does not mean a picture of the world but the world conceived
and grasped as picture (AWP 129).
If the
emergence of the world picture is a distinguishing feature of modernity,
how is it that human thinking transformed to accommodate such an epistemological
framework? According to Heidegger, to say that the world picture changed
in the transition from pre-modernity to modernity is itself a misnomer.
A conception of the world as entirety is itself an understanding that could
only unfold in a manner of thinking unique to the scientific age. “The
world picture does not change from an earlier medieval one into a modern
one, but rather the fact that the world becomes picture at all is what
distinguishes the essence of the modern age” (AWP 130). According to Heidegger,
in ancient Greek thought, “the world” as that which is, is approached by
human presence. Knowing is characterized by a process of opening one’s
self so as to apprehend that which lies in existence. Such an apprehension
is not a collection of representations from world that is set over and
against the subject. Rather, Heidegger claims that the Greek conception
of human being exposes one in such a way that one is receptive to what
is. “To be beheld by what is, to be included and maintained within its
openness and in that way to be borne along by it … that is the essence
of man in the great age of the Greeks” (AWP 131).
Likewise,
the medieval conception of being was not one that could be subsumed into
a world picture. In the Middle Ages, being was understood in terms of its
position towards God, the creator of all that was. Although one would orient
one’s self according to one’s rank within an epistemological structure,
the whole of that structure could never be accessed by the individual in
terms of a world picture. This inability to conceive of the world as picture
is not due to a lack of transparency about the “reality” of the world.
Rather, Heidegger argues that the very conception of reality was transformed
between the Middle Ages and Modernity such that it could be understood
as a world picture (AWP 130).
Considering that the
world picture characterizes the way in which modernity understands itself,
and that no previous age could sustain the existence of a world picture,
how is that the world picture became the epistemological model exclusive
to the modern age? Moreover, how is it that the arrival of the world picture
provides a foundation for an understanding of being that is based upon
science and technology? First, the modern world is understood as a unified
collection of objects. Although the world is grasped as an entirety, it
is presented to us via particulars. Object, or Gegenstand, becomes
for the first time a way in which the real becomes present as “that which
stands over against” the subject (SR 162).
In the
realm of science, conclusions about the nature of the universe are made
from observations of interacting objects. Consistent results within a laboratory
are used to provide evidence about the way that things work. Without an
underlying presupposition that inferences can be drawn from observation
of particular objects to reveal general characteristics about the world,
science could not exist (SR 168). Herein lies a vital distinction that
I would like to draw out regarding the way in which science came to define
the modern age. Science, as an epistemological method, did not generate
a world picture in which humans began to conceive of the world as it was
presented as objects. On the contrary, I argue that science itself became
possible through a prior understanding of the world as objectified.
Historically, Heidegger cites the genesis of grasping the world as object
with Descartes’ pronunciation of the Cogito[5]
(AWP 127). With the Cogito, human being is separated from the world insofar
as the subject is freed from the objects that surround it. At the same
time, however, “I” as subject has access to objects via representation
through the senses. Likewise, “I” as the locus of knowledge has a twofold
significance as both subject and object. On the one hand “I” signifies
the individual; a personal self-referent that is distinct from others.
Yet the “I” is a universal designation; any thinking thing can claim its
status. The Cartesian “I” assimilates the vital aspects of both subject
and object. It bears the subjective personal applicability juxtaposed with
objective universal validity. Descartes’ Cogito is simultaneously a particular
and the universal, subject and object. Moreover, it delineates a roadmap
from which every individual can access Truth. It is precisely this realization
that grounds the advent of the world picture and the rise of the scientific
world-view. Scientific method emerges as a natural progression from the
Cogito. It is a framework in which any participant that follows the rules
of the system necessarily ends up in the same place.As the “I” against which the
world is presented, human being as subject is created for the first time
as an entity distinct from its context. With the emergence of the subject,
the possibility of knowledge is turned inward towards the constitution
of the thinking being. “The essence of the modern age can be seen in the
fact that man frees himself from the bonds of the Middle Ages in freeing
himself to himself” (AWP 127). This freedom of one’s self to one’s self
signifies the interplay of subjectivism and objectivism that constitute
the “I” as the epistemological intersection that defines human existence
in modernity. Trish Glazebrook writes, “That human being becomes subject
and the thing object are simultaneous events for Heidegger” (HPS[6]).
Human essence is thereby transformed into the modern subject, the existential
foundation for the scientific world-view. Heidegger’s conception of the
Greek subiectum, as “that-which-lies-before”, signifies a congregation
of what is that makes itself present. The modern subject, on the
other hand, subsumes the Greek subiectum into itself, as both source
and collector of what is. “Man becomes that being upon which all that is,
is grounded as regards the manner of its Being and its truth. Man becomes
the relational center if that which is as such” (AWP 128). As that which
lies before itself, the subject is situated within the world picture, yet
the subject is the precondition of the existence of the world picture itself.
The locus of the knower and the mediatior of objects of knowledge, the
subject grasps the world through representation.
Representation;
vor-stellen, is “to bring what is present at hand
before oneself as something standing over against, to relate it to oneself,
to the one representing it, and to force it back into the relationship
to oneself in the normative realm” (AWP 131). A process of putting-forth
that which stands against the subject, representation is the conduit between
subject and object that characterizes modern knowing. It binds both entities
into a conceptual model that makes possible the rise of the world picture.
Through representation, the subject conceives of the world as an accessible
totality of objects. “Wherever we have the world picture, an essential
decision takes place regarding what is, in its entirety. The Being of whatever
is, is sought and found in the representedness of the latter” (AWP 130).
Representation simultaneously allows for the possibility of knowledge in
modernity, and delimits the scope of
what is according to the structure
of subject-based epistemology. The world picture is defined insofar as
what is makes itself present over and against the subject as objects.
Experience that cannot be validated within a representational context is
excluded from the world as picture. Such exclusion does not demarcate non-representational
presence as belonging to a separate existent domain that is simply different
than the world picture. On the contrary, that which cannot be subsumed
into a representational framework becomes precluded from existence. “Whatever
is, is considered to be in being only to the degree and to the extent that
it is taken into and referred back to this life, i.e., is lived out, and
becomes life-experience” (AWP 134). As an entirety whose existence is determined
through representation, the world picture is defined only by that which
stands against the subject as other.
The “Theory of the Real” and the Ongoing Activity of Research
A methodology made possible by the advent of subjectivity and the world
picture, science becomes the formal epistemological foundation of the modern
epoch. In “Science and Reflection”, Heidegger writes, “Science is the
theory of the real” (SR 157). Although this assertion may provide an
adequate definition when understood in the proper context, the statement
says very little on its own. Heidegger, therefore, strives to understand
the etymological and conceptual roots of the ideas at hand. “Reality [Wirklichkeit]
means, then, when thought sufficiently broadly: that which, brought forth
hither into presencing, lies before; it means the presencing, consummated
in itself, of self-bringing-forth” (SR 160). Sharing the same Indo-Germanic
stem as the German word for work [Werk], “the real” must be originally
understood as an active presencing that stands out in unconcealment. Following
Aristotle, however, the real begins to be understood as consequence to
an efficient cause (SR 161). It loses its elusive connotation as presence,
and is transformed into a kind of factual certainty. In modernity, the
real is understood as that which stands in secure concretion through representation.
“The real now shows itself as object, as that which stands over against
[Gegen-stand] (SR 162).
The theory of the real,
modern science is a lens whose scope is determined by that which presences
as object. As theory, science approaches objects as a medium through
which objects come to presence. It is a way of seeing objects such that
they can be arranged within a schema. From the Greek theorian, to
engage in theory is “to look attentively on the outward appearance wherein
what presences becomes visible and, through such sight – seeing – to linger
with it” (SR 163). Theory, understood by the Greeks, is a relationship
to appearances in a way that allows things to become present.
The manner in which theory approaches what is, however, is altered
as theory becomes the vehicle of modern science (SR 166). According to
Heidegger, attentive looking is transformed into observation as the securing
mechanism of theory. As observation, modern theory engages in a process
of striving. From trachten; to strive, observation [Betrachtung],
carries with it an element “to work one’s way toward something,
to pursue it, to entrap it in order to secure it” (SR 167). In so doing,
Heidegger posits that theory delineates a plan of admissible elements beforewhat
is makes itself present as itself.
“Theory makes secure at any given time a region of the real as its object-area.
The area-character of objectness is shown in the fact that it specifically
maps out in advance the possibilities for the posing of questions” (SR
169). Science, therefore, as the theory of the real, must be understood
as a way of approaching being such that its manner of observation seeks
out what is to the extent that it can be subsumed in representation as
that which stands against the subject. As a theory whose scope is limited
to the objectness of the real, it would seem that science proves to be
insufficient as a method for knowing the true nature of being. After all,
science operates on the very presupposition that the world can be understood
through careful observation of causal relationships that exist between
objects. “[Science] stakes everything on grasping the real purely. It does
not encroach upon the real in order to change it. Pure science, we proclaim
is ‘disinterested’” (SR 167).
Heidegger, however, claims that modern science as a striving for objectness
does not invalidate it as a method for grasping the real. On the contrary,
it is in science’s inherent refining of things into objects that “corresponds
to a fundamental characteristic of the real itself” (SR 167). Although
delimited into the realm of objects, that which appears under the lens
of science is not a distorted phantasm. The object of science is
the way in which being reveals itself in the modern age. Through the process
of research, the compiling of data, and the corroboration of theories,
science provides a nexus through which the modern subject grasps being
as objectified.
“Science sets upon the real. It orders it into place to the end that at
any given time the real will exhibit itself as an interacting network,
i.e., in surveyable series of related causes. The real thus becomes surveyable
and capable of being followed out in its sequences. The real becomes secured
in its objectness” (SR 167-168).
This setting upon the real
happens in and through the process of research, and fuels the holding-sway
of science. As science provides the rules through which objects are engaged
in representation, research constitutes the field of references at the
disposal of the scientist. The third member of the modern trinity (next
to subjectivity and the world picture) research as
ongoing activity
allows science to direct its scope towards specialized object-areas (AWP
123). Through research, science leaves its position as merely theoretical
and grasps being as objects. Engaged in ongoing activity, the researcher
burrows through the real and collects it for scientific study. Itself not
reflective or conclusive in nature, research is the link between theory
and practice of science; it subsumes the world into a structure of representation.
“Ongoing activity becomes mere busyness whenever in the pursuing of its
methodology, it no longer keels itself open on the basis of an ever-new
accomplishing of its projection-plan, but only leaves that plan behind
itself as a given; never again confirms and verifies its own self-accumulating
results and the calculation of them, but merely chases after such results
and calculations” (AWP 138).
For Heidegger, research grounds science as the arbiter of the truth of
being. Research positions the past and future as accessible by science
through calculation. The researcher reaches everywhere, yet all of his/her
data can be organized within the static, ordered principles of science.
Thus research makes the breadth of science infinite in that it classifies
every surveyable object into a unified schema, yet reveals the limitations
of science insofar as it can only address the existence of what is as objects.
“Through this [representation], whatever is comes to a stand as object
and in that way alone receives the seal of Being” (AWP 132). According
to the rules of research, whatever cannot be represented as object is itself
not in being, as research delimits the realm of what is real under the
scrutiny of science.
A sampling of minerals from the surface of the moon and a case study of
an autistic four-year old seem to be drastically different endeavors, yet
both approaches are bound together as objects of research. As objects of
research, however, conclusions drawn within the context of each scenario
result from careful observation of the way in which the object reacts to
stimuli. For all intents and purposes, science does not recognize a qualitative
difference between a moon rock and a four-year old child. “Knowing, as
research, calls whatever is to account with regard to the way in which
and the extent to which it lets itself be put at the disposal of representation”
(AWP 126).
A method through which being reveals itself as objects, science provides
a systematic framework through which the modern subject understands being.
Such a presentation of science, in and of itself, appears as a mode of
revealing the objectness of the real. Science, however, never rests within
the confines of such a designation. As the theory of the real, science
has somehow become the singular medium through which truth in the modern
age must be transmitted. Under the guise of atemporal universal validity,
science looks through a key hole but claims panopticism. In forgetting
the difference between the objectness of the real and being proper, the
modern subject commits patricide, erasing the very ground from which science
emerged. That is, science as a way in which being is revealed obscures
its own origin in being when it is misconstrued as the exclusive
epistemological framework.
The flaw from which science
oversteps its own limitations, however, is not inherent in science itself.
Rather, science conceals being only when it denies the existence of anything
that lies beyond the breadth of its scope. Such concealment stems from
the establishment of science as the sole judge that determines “the real”
within modernity. The dominance of science cannot be accounted for by science
itself. Science cannot explain how being conceives of itself such that
science came to be the most ascendant way of thinking about being.As such,
the holding-sway of science is necessarily grounded in an aspect of being
within the modern age that precedes science, yet undergirds the scientific
program with persuasive conviction.
Ge-stell: the Essence of Technology and The Emergence of Standing-Reserve
How is it that the modern epoch understands science, a methodology delimited
to the object sphere of the real, such that it has come to deny the existence
of its very foundations? To answer this question, we must turn away from
science and look back towards the constitution of the modern subject, in
the configuration of the relationship between the Cartesian “I” and the
things that surround it. I argue that Heidegger claims that the scientific
program evolves first from a way that the subject approaches being in terms
of a technological understanding of the world. In “The Question Concerning
Technology”, Heidegger strives to understand the essence of modern technology
in its relation to being. As that which accounts for the inception of technology,
the essence of technology is necessarily not technological (QCT 4). Rather,
the essence of technology resides in Heidegger’s conception of Ge-stell,
or
Enframing.
“Enframing is the gathering together that belongs to that setting-upon
which sets upon man and pits him in position to reveal the real, in the
mode of ordering, as standing reserve” (QCT 24).
As the essence of technology,
Enframing is not a common essential characteristic in all technology, nor
is it a genus. A “way of revealing”, Enframing is a manner of unconcealment
as truth (aletheia). It is a way in which being reveals itself through
a particular ordering of things. The ordering of Ge-stell
is obviously
not a physical ordering, but a positioning of one’s thinking such that
it includes one’s surroundings as a realm of possible manipulation. Enframing
transforms the real into standing-reserve (QCT 24). As standing-reserve,
things become potentialities at the disposal of human beings. At its inception,
the modern world becomes a collection of useable objects ready at hand
for the subject.
What is unique to modernity, I believe, is not that human being makes use
of its environment through technological mechanisms. Rather, the difference
in the modern understanding of one’s surroundings is that the world is
grounded in and through its potential usefulness to the subject. Energy
from natural resources is not simply used for a particular means to an
end, but stored up in transistors, granaries, and wells, awaiting future
use (Lovitt
[7]).
Heidegger raises the example of the hydroelectric station that is constructed
on the Rhine. “It sets the Rhine to supplying its hydraulic pressure, which
then sets the turbines turning … In the context of the interlocking processes
pertaining to the orderly disposition of electrical energy, even the Rhine
itself appears as something at our command” (QCT 16.).
In the positioning of things into standing reserve, it seems that human
being becomes the arbiter of nature as a collection of objects ripe for
manipulation at the whims of the modern subject. Crucial in this investigation,
however, is the distinction between the perception of control over
technology, and the position of the modern subject as subjected to
technology. It is my contention that the readiness-at-hand of the standing-reserve
must not be misconstrued as a human control over Ge-stell. As an
ordering that “sets upon man”, Enframing is not a willed activity in which
humans engage. Enframing does not happen beyond the precinct of human existence,
yet it does not happen “exclusively in man, or decisively through
man”
(QCT 24). Although its origins may not originate within human existence,
the scope of Enframing certainly encompasses the way in which the subject
understands itself. In the holding-sway of Enframing, the subject comprehends
human existence itself as standing-reserve.
The Objectified Subject: Human Existence As Standing-Reserve
Herein lies a key question in Heidegger’s task to reveal the essence of
the modern age, viz., how does the essence of technology as Ge-stell
change the way in which being becomes present? Signified by the Cartesian
“I”, the paradoxical status of the modern subject is revisited in terms
of the possibility of self-knowledge. The organizing principle around which
the scientific worldview is formulated, the human subject is subjected
(thrown under) to the same set of rules that is used to define the natural
world. Enframing presumes total access, yet on that very presumption, human
being as subject precludes the possibility of encountering itself in its
essence as pre-objectified.
“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” (QCT 27).
Human existence itself
is transformed into standing-reserve in the modern epoch. A burgeoning
field of knowledge, the social sciences evaluate human behavior in terms
of causal relationships between objects. Medical science transforms human
life into an object to be ordered within the controlled conditions of the
laboratory. Science, to say the least, is compelling. Countless lives have
been saved, improved, and made possible under the gaze of scientific inquiry.
Yet in the presence of science lies the shadow of that which fails to be
seen as object. The more exacting science becomes, the more it becomes
blind to those aspects of existence that cannot be placed under a lens.
It is in this exactitude that science makes its promise of total access
to what is, yet it is precisely within this exactitude that science fails
to deliver such a promise. Science itself is not obscuring in nature, insofar
as it articulates causal relationships between objects. As the distinguishing
character of modernity, however, science has never restricted its domain
to objects while maintaining the existence of presence that cannot be verified
through a representational schema. In a failure to access that which cannot
be measured, science erases the very possibility of immeasurable being.
Science does not merely claim to reveal the nature of objects, it claims
that it will reveal the world as object.
The Holding-Sway of Enframing As the Locus of Danger in Modernity
Science is therefore objective in the purest sense, in that it deals exclusively
with objects. It neglects to take into account those elements of existence
that resist quantification, and thereby fails to put into question the
nature of its own existence as a historically constituted methodology whose
foundations are grounded upon a pre-objective understanding of the real.
“Where Enframing holds sway, regulating and securing of the standing-reserve
mark all revealing. They no longer even let their own fundamental characteristic
appear, namely, this revealing as such” (QCT 27).
Perhaps the most troubling facet of modernity does not lie in the inadequacy
of science, but in very constitution of the modern subject as the foundation
for such inadequacy. Technology does not go away when we stop driving cars,
just as science does not cease to dictate our lives if we decide to become
abstract painters. Science was able to make itself present on the precondition
of subjectivity. It is not a map that can be discarded and replaced. It
mirrors the very configuration of ourselves as modern subjects. As that
which gave rise to a technological understanding of the world, and thereby
to science itself, Enframing is the root of both benefit and danger that
accompanies technology. As a destining, Enframing dominates what is
in such a way that denies the possibility of presence as a non-representational
bringing-forth. “Enframing blocks the shining-forth and holding-sway of
truth. The destining that sends into ordering is consequently the extreme
danger. What is dangerous is not technology. There is no demonry of technology
but rather there is the mystery of its essence” (QCT 28). Where Enframing
reigns, it ceases to be a way in which being reveals itself, and obscures
the possibility of truth.
Moreover, I argue that the danger of Enframing lies in its role as the
ground of science. As the foundation from which truth is revealed through
representation, Enframing is
a way in which unconcealment occurs.
Yet it is precisely because of this reason that Enframing has gained such
prevalence, and has thereby set modernity out of balance and into its precarious
position. Enframing brings to science a commitment to order. The scientific
experiment depends entirely on the possibility of control. Success results
when things go according to plan, when the hypothesis is verified with
a minimum number of variables. Deviation from such order has no neutral
significance; it is an opposition to truth as it can be known by science.
Thus through Enframing, order is imported under the guise of seeking truth.
Such ordering becomes dangerous precisely because it is mistaken for the
pursuit of truth, rather than a formality derived from other spheres of
being.
“[
T]
he
danger, namely, Being in itself
endangering itself in the truth of its coming to presence, remains veiled
and disguised, this disguising is what is most dangerous in the danger.
In keeping with this disguising of the danger through the ordering belonging
to Enframing, it seems time and time again as through technology were a
means in the hands of man. But, in truth, it is the coming to presence
of man that is now being ordered forth to lend a hand to the coming to
presence of technology” (TT
[8]
37).
Thus being is put into danger in its relationship to technology because
technology itself goes beyond the control of the modern subject. Science
ceases to be a way of revealing being and becomes an discursive activity
in which subjects participate. Researchers and scientists gather data and
draw conclusions not because it speaks to a need within human existence,
but because it adds to the corpus of scientific knowledge.
More severe in impact than
merely misdirected investigation, I believe that the disguise of being
and the holding sway of science culminate in such a way that is counterproductive
to revealing truth. Countless times, science has been used to legitimize
a claim whose merit would hardly stand on its own. This is not necessarily
because those who use science to validate such claims do so in bad faith,
but because science is grasped as a methodology whose project lies separate
from human existence. Driven by a desire to make a new “discovery” about
the nature of objects, many scientists have abandoned their consciences
as human beings for the cause of science.
A claim legitimized by modern priority, “the cause of science” is paradoxical
in nature. On the one hand, science is a natural extension of the Cartesian
“I”. It defines the condition of the modern epoch, and through it being
reveals itself in its objectness. Yet when an avenue is followed solely
in pursuit of the acquiring of scientific knowledge, science becomes divorced
from its connection to human existence as unconcealment. Rather than an
invocation of scientific knowledge for the cause of understanding existence,
a pursuit grounded “for the cause of science” exists primarily to support
itself and to secure its own future.
The development of nuclear
weaponry, the most obvious example, provides a poignant case in which technology,
severed from the voice of humanity, comes to determine the destiny of human
existence. Under the illusion of a designation as the extension of human
capabilities, technology itself transforms human beings into an extension
of itself. Science loses its significance as revealing that characterizes
the modern condition, and Enframing becomes the self-reinforcing ordering
that dominates consciousness.
“As soon as what is unconcealed no longer concerns man even as object,
but does so, rather, exclusively as standing-reserve, and man in the midst
of objectlessness is nothing but the orderer of the standing-reserve, then
he comes to the very brink of a precipitous fall; that is, he comes to
the point where he himself will have to be taken as standing-reserve. Meanwhile
man, precisely as the one so threatened, exalts himself to the posture
of lord of the earth” (QCT 27).
Blind to the shortcomings
of the scientific worldview, the modern subject sacrifices its own possibility
for encountering being in the name of scientific progress. All the while,
science is exalted as the exclusive way in which truth becomes known. While
anxiety, depression, and the seemingly inane nature of existence seem to
characterize the social condition of the modern subject, science triumphs
forward to combat these apparent “chemical imbalances” with the development
of more effective drugs. While modern science is applauded for the invention
of new anti-depressants, rarely is it scrutinized as the possible cause
of that which stifles being from coming forth.
As standing-reserve, being is ordered in and through the means of technology.
As the object of science, the subject understands itself in its objectness
as it grasps other objects. Yet as subject, part of modern being is hidden
from the lens of science. Science cannot take up into examination that
facet of being whose character cannot be represented as object. Science,
therefore addresses a facet of human existence, but not being as such.
It is this dual nature of modern human being as both subject and object
that sheds light on the role of technological achievement in the modern
age.
“Intrinsic to technology is an urgent proceeding
always toward some confidently foreseen goal. Preoccupied with itself and
supremely confident in itself as worthy of perpetuation, technology advances
from undertaking to undertaking … Transpiring thus, as ever in train toward
some envisioned goal, technology focuses its attention on usefulness” (Lovitt
225).
In this passage, Lovitt and Lovitt articulate the nature of technology
as a usefulness applied towards an end. On the horizon of the modern
epoch, technology offers itself as a solution to the world’s problems.
More efficient transportation, more effective food production, and the
possible cure of disease place technological advancement as the very mechanism
through which progress happens. The notion of progress attained through
the means of technology, however, must be understood beyond the scope of
the modern scientific program if the implications of technology are to
be realized in terms of being as such. “Progress”, as a perpetual striving
towards through technological means, becomes
stasis in light
of the larger process of the revelation of being. In its pledge to the
horizon of human potentiality, technology locks being into a representational
schema that precludes a more primordial transformation than those offered
within the context of the scientific paradigm. In its promise for the future,
technology fails to make anything present. Rather, it sustains itself in
the name of future possibilities.
With the advent
of the combustible engine, the automobile guaranteed to bring with it unprecedented
ease of travel, and with it peace of mind. Yet with the arrival of the
car came the demand for highway systems, safety mechanisms, gas stations,
and mobile phones. In such development, the object-world of the subject
has been radically transformed, yet the subject remains unsatisfied, continually
seeking consolation in newer objects of production. Technological progress
does not enable society to become more human. On the contrary, the infusion
of technology in every aspect of our lives brings human existence closer
to a mechanized nexus of order. Technology, therefore, has not brought
to presence the unconcealment of being as much as it has grounded itself
as a self-perpetuating promise of improvement. Lovitt grounds the inadequacy
of technology on its very essence as usefulness that is predicated on a
conception of what is as standing-reserve.
In the domain of
technology, everything – whether natural feature of sophisticated artifact,
whether person or art work or idea – is viewed solely in terms of the place
it occupies in a continually proliferating complex. Everything possesses
significance only insofar as it is seen and is taken charge of as something
useful for the serving of an end beyond itself. Technological using is
a derogating employment that, arising out of intense purposefulness, leaves
no place for true self-presenting” (Lovitt 229).
In the essay “Heidegger on the Connection Between Nihilism, Art, Technology,
and Politics”, Hubert Dreyfus pushes the concept of standing-reserve to
the extent that objectivism and subjectivism are subsumed into a schema
that culminates to an imminent nihilism. Dictated through a purely technological
schema, the world described by Dreyfus is one in which life functions with
methodic efficiency solely for the sake of technological advancement. “In
this technological perspective, ultimate goals like serving God, society,
our fellows, or even ourselves no longer make sense to us. Human beings
on this view, become as resource to be used – but more important, to be
enhanced – like any other” (CC 306).
Although in terms that are somewhat less stark than those of Dreyfus, Heidegger
describes how “both subject and object are sucked up in standing-reserves”
in such a way that the object is no longer simply controlled by the subject
(SR 173). This is not to say that standing-reserve annihilates the distinction
between subject and object by regressing to a pre-subjective understanding
of the thing. Rather, the subject/object distinction culminates as a self-sufficient
standing constituted by the subsumption of subject and object. In so doing,
Heidegger demonstrates how “the nature of technology does not depend on
subjects understanding and using objects”, but that technology itself transcends
the subject’s manipulation of the object (HBF
[9]).
To illustrate the nature of things as standing reserve, Heidegger introduces
the example of the modern commercial airplane. “Revealed, it stands on
the taxi strip only as standing-reserve, inasmuch as it is ordered to ensure
the possibility of transportation. For this it must be in its whole structure
and in every one of its constituent parts, on call for duty, i.e., ready
for takeoff” (QCT 17). In such a context, the airplane is not an object,
but a possibility identified within a context of transportation. The airplane
is not even a tool at the control of humans as much as it is an “efficient
cog in the transportation system” (CC 306). Not only does the airplane
lose its status as object, according to Dreyfus, but humans cease to be
subjects, and merely become entities that fill the space inside the plane’s
cabin.
In
Heidegger’s
Philosophy of Science, Trish Glazebrook examines the relationship between
subjectivity and standing-reserve such that conceptual priority of technology
over science is put into question. While Glazebrook takes into account
the passages in “The Question Concerning Technology” that explicitly deny
a conception of technology as “applied science”, Glazebrook maintains,
“whereas technology reveals beings as standing-reserve, science reveals
them first as object” (HPS 209).
“It is science that determines the thing as object; and it is the object
that figures in representational thinking. Technology as a way of revealing
depends on representational thinking, that is, on scientific objectivity
… Without the scientific object, therefore, technology would not be possible”
(HPS 223, 243)
I
agree with Glazebrook’s thesis to the extent that grasping the world as
standing-reserve presupposes the presence of subjectivity, but I disagree
with her claim that a conception of the world as object can be designated
as necessarily “scientific” and the ordering of objects into standing-reserve
as “technological”. To take up again the example of the airliner, the possibility
of conceiving the airplane as standing-reserve certainly relies on the
initial culmination of scientific theory and principles that allowed for
its construction. Science, however, relies on the possibility of conceiving
a thing as object before it can be employed as a way of understanding what
is. Before science appeared, human being began to grasp itself as the Cartesian
“I”, and the world as picture. As explained earlier, a conception of the
modern subject relies fundamentally on an ordering of the world as
Ge-stell,
the essence of technology. Science, a methodology through which objects
are arranged, becomes possible only after being understands itself in terms
of this enframing
[10].
By claiming that science grounds technology because standing-reserve presupposes
subjectivity, Glazebrook fails to recognize that science itself stems from
a more primordial conception of being. The emergence of subjectivity is
indeed the precondition for the rise of science, but to characterize the
subject/object distinction as scientific is like calling the Virgin Mary
a Christian.
The Shadow of Modern Science and the Possibility Of Non-
Representational Thinking
Although science orders the object world with exacting precision, it fails
to respond to the basic questions of being. More than a failure to respond,
science as the modern epistemology erases the possibility of such
questions in its refusal to accept their presence as that which cannot
be arranged as objects. In striving for unmediated certainty, science overlooks
the principle that is the precondition for its very possibility as a way
in which truth is revealed: all scientific knowledge is necessarily
mediated through a structure of representational knowing (SR 167).
Despite the inability of representational thinking to acknowledge the real
beyond the objective realm, being reveals itself through the very inadequacy
of science. The modern subject, surrounded by objects manufactured by the
means of technology, experiences a lacking. This lacking cannot be accounted
for through calculation, for it is an absence of presence. Likewise its
cannot be identified nor pointed at, as it surrounds that which shows itself
through representation. Although Enframing squelches non-representational
presence by its sheer ignorance of it, being emerges between the seams
of the scientific worldview.
“This becoming incalculable remains the invisible shadow that is cast around
all things everywhere when man has been transformed into subiectum
and the world into picture … [T]he shadow is a manifest, though impenetrable,
testimony to the concealed emitting of light. In keeping with this concept
of shadow, we experience the incalculable as that which, withdrawn from
representation, is nevertheless manifest in whatever is, pointing to Being,
which remains concealed “ (AWP 135, 154) The shadow signifies that
aspect of being that resists objectification, yet is still present in its
obscurity. It hints at being excluded from the realm of objects, and in
so doing reminds the subject that the scope of representational thinking
cannot encompass the most fundamental facets of being. Yet at the same
time, science is not an “attitude” that can be changed, nor is it a game
whose rules can be manipulated at will. Enframing, as the essence of technology
and the scientific worldview, is inherent in the very constitution of the
subject.
Thus the modern subject finds itself in a peculiar position in regards
to its dissatisfaction with technology. Technology is unavoidable; it lies
in the very center of modern thinking. Yet if the subject is constructed
around the same foundations as science itself, how can one avoid the pitfalls
of representational thinking and approach being in an unobscuring manner?
This question reaches the core of Heidegger’s critique of technology, and
reveals the possibility of transformation of the modern subject such that
technology is not drawn upon to define the nature of Being. Technology
itself can be neither affirmed nor denied, as it is present in the existential
condition of the human subject. In revealing its essence, however, Heidegger
strives to bring to light the fundamental presuppositions of the modern
paradigm.
“But when we consider the essence of technology … we are already sojourning
within the open space of destining, a destining that in no way confines
us to a stultified compulsion to push on blindly with technology or, what
comes to the same thing, to rebel helplessly against it and curse it as
the work of the devil. Quite to the contrary, when we once open ourselves
expressly to the essence of technology, we find ourselves unexpectedly
taken into a freeing claim” (QCT 25-26).
Thus the
question of technology must be approached in the process of reflection.
Only then may it become possible that a conception of what is transforms
such that it admits those aspects of being that cannot be subsumed into
a representational framework. Engaging in reflection, one must step back
from the method of acquiring scientific certainty and seriously put into
meditative questioning the nature and context of our own fundamental presuppositions.
Conclusion
Fifty years after Heidegger first presented his lectures in The Question
Concerning Technology and Other Essays, the urgency to grasp the significance
of technology burns with unprecedented intensity. In his task to unconceal
the essence of technology, and thereby the heart of modernity, Heidegger
has opened a possibility for an understanding of science and technology
such that the destiny of human life rests on the way in which human being
understands his/her existence. I argue that Heidegger’s critique of technology
is not one that reveals technology to be dangerous as such, but rather,
articulates how a particular (albeit common) understanding of technology
can obscure the revelation of being. I think that Heidegger conceives of
technology as volatile: on one hand, it is consistent with the constitution
of the modern subject, and through it, being is revealed in modernity.
Because modern knowing characterizes a way in which being is revealed,
however, the modern subject, with the assistance of science, has deified
technology so that being is defined insofar as it can be represented through
a schematic understanding of objects. Such a distortion of
science is not simply a misunderstanding, but is consistent with the very
constitution of the modern subject and the logic inherent in the modern
age. Thus to approach technology in such a way that does not endanger
being, one must not condemn technology, but reconfigure one’s conception
of his/her own constitution such that technology is no longer understood
to be capable of solving the fundamental problems of life. Hubert Dreyfus
writes, “Heidegger’s concern is the human distress caused by the
technological understanding of being, rather than the destruction
caused by specific technologies” (CC 305). Human being must realize
that science and technology are constituted through being, yet limit being
to its narrowness of scope. Where science strives for a continually narrowing
method of verification such that conclusions can be drawn with perpetually
sharpened precision, Heidegger calls for a widening in scope, and
a continual reexamination of the principles by which we deem a claim to
be true or false. Only then can being express itself in such a way that
reflects the dynamism of human experience.
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