Yes, first of all I have to say that I am not against technology. I have not spoken against technology, nor about the so-called demonic of technology, but I try to understand the essence of technology. And if you quote this thought, with the danger of the atomic bomb and an even greater danger of technology, I think of what is developing today as biophysics.
That we will in foreseeable times... Martin Heidegger is one of the most well-renowned philosophers of all time. As he is primarily known for his work Being in Time, there is a whole host of other work that does not get the attention it truly deserves. One of those underrated works is The Question Concerning Technology.
This video over the question concerning technology is a part 2 follow-up to Being in Time. While I want to make this video as accessible as possible to all people who haven't really learned the theory surrounding Being in Time, it is helpful understanding Being in Time and the backdrop he uses in approaching the question concerning technology. So if part 1 and Heidegger's work Being in Time interest you, feel free to take some time to watch that video first, as I made Being in Time as easy as I possibly could.
Yet, if this does not interest you, I will make this as accessible as humanly possible for you. As being in time is one of the single most important pieces of philosophy in the 20th century, I still find Heidegger's essay on the question concerning technology to be one of the best works in philosophy and one of the very best critiques of modernity that we have. As Heidegger is really known for his phenomenology and his existentialism, I find that this essay really lends itself towards critical theory.
And as we see that this work is not a separation of phenomenology or existentialism, it fundamentally changes the makeup of how we view the modern condition and how we view being with technology. Our prior conceptions with technology was one of exterior systems. We ultimately saw technology as a mere separate entity from us.
As Heidegger rejects the separation of object and subject, the separation of you and the world, Heidegger also rejects the separation of technology and us. To Heidegger, humans are questioning beings. Within being and the fundamental care and interaction as human beings, questioning and curiosity is woven within that framework.
This is why the fundamental meaning of technology is so important. In a weird way, we are technology and technology is us. So what is technology and what does technology mean? To Heidegger, to understand technology, we ultimately need to understand the essence of technology. When concerning technology, we don't typically think about the essence.
We think about how that technology affects us, the utility of the specific technology at hand, and the like. And while these questions are not bad questions, and they are necessary to some extent, Heidegger ultimately wants us to look directly at the essence of technology. You may be watching this on a computer monitor.
You may be watching this on a smartphone. And when asked about the essence of technology, you may use a smartphone. You may use a monitor as an example. of the essence of technology. But an example of an actual physical form of technology isn't actually the essence of technology.
To Heidegger, we as humans are actually kind of blind to technology. Heidegger quotes this as follows, we will never experience our relationship to the essence of technology so long as we merely represent and pursue the technological. Heidegger is trying to convey that so long as we remain in a certain attitude towards technology, towards its ultimate utility. its purpose.
We will never be able to truly understand technology, its essence, and even its relation to us. There's something else Heidegger wants to dispel. We have this common notion in society that technology is something neutral, that it holds absolutely no moral baggage to it.
Heidegger rejects this outright and claims that technology has all kinds of baggage to it. Technology changes the entire trajectory of society as a whole, and with that, in no possible realm, Could technology simply be a means? No realm could technology simply be a neutral tool. It's important to understand that Heidegger is approaching this question of technology as a metaphysical endeavor.
He wants to understand the fundamental essence of technology while also not rejecting the prior notions of technology actually being an external means and human activity. In Heidegger's eyes, the metaphysical essence of technology does not have to contradict the truth surrounding technology. the means of technology and the human activity around it. Ultimately, he is trying to convey that it is true that technology is a tool Technology is a means and ultimately technology is a form of human activity. Yet he also wants to convey that that actually doesn't get at the essence of technology and that both of these viewpoints don't necessarily have to be wrong and contradict one another.
So moving forward, there are three essential claims that Heidegger is making in the question concerning technology. One being that technology is not a mere instrument. It's not a mere neutral tool.
It is ultimately a way of understanding the world. The second is technology is not necessarily a human activity alone, but technology ultimately develops beyond human control and almost beyond human comprehension. And then the third is technology is the actual highest danger. It is something that we must use extreme caution towards, not necessarily in a physical sense, but in a metaphysical and conceptual sense, that we risk.
seeing the world only through a technological lens. So technology as a means of understanding the world. Let's dive into that. To identify the essence of technology, it is to ultimately lay bare technology as a clearing. In Heideggerian terminology, a clearing is something that reveals itself to us.
Like when you're in the middle of the woods and there is a clearing to an open field, conceptually a clearing is a way of exposing an idea. A good visual of this is the human metaphor of a light bulb going off when you understand something. Technology operates in this way.
Technology sways our being, our Dasein, as a way of understanding the world, as a way of exposing more. Heidegger quotes this as follows, Technology is therefore no mere means. Technology is a way of revealing. If we give heed to this, then another whole realm for the essence of technology will open itself up to us.
It is the realm of revealing, i.e. of truth. It can reveal things about us. It can reveal things of technology that we didn't once know. Heidegger ultimately places a lot of emphasis on revealing meaning for us as well through the lens of technology. So as a technological revelation, Heidegger also focuses on how we interact with the world, our being, in a modern technological context.
In this modern technological context, the world is partitioned away into what Heidegger calls a standing reserve. What Heidegger means by standing reserve is that the world is essentially one large resource waiting to be used, waiting to be processed. In the present, the resource-focused world is already so ingrained into our being that even hearing something like, the world is one large resource waiting to be exploited, waiting to be used, does not even seem problematic in the slightest too many.
Yet, let's take a step back and understand the potential benevolence of this very outlook. Going back to being in time, understanding the unity between you, the world, the plants, the animals, in this standing reserve context, in this modern outlook, we see that we run the risk of partitioning ourselves away. In pre-modernity, there was a fundamental relationship that Heidegger recognized between nature and people, that the trees were my home, that ultimately the trees were used to create a home. that if I needed to light a fire, that the trees were available to me in that relationship.
In a standing reserve, not so much. The trees, the resources, themselves become an abstraction. There is no relationship to you whenever the only concern is how much money am I going to make from these trees?
How much money and utility is going to come from this plot of land? Heidegger notices that when there is no relational context to how you interact with the world, it festers elsewhere. If the trees, if the soil, if the water... are all resources to be used?
How about people? Given the unity between all, what will stop us from looking at humans in the exact same context? As an abstraction used to make money, used to garner utility.
This is an ultimate danger in what technology poses to us, and ultimately what modernity failed to grasp. And these are only the most visceral of examples. Modes of communication, organization, have all been affected from this technological mode of being. Friendly gatherings aren't mere friendly gatherings anymore. These inner human affairs are partitioned away into networking.
They're partitioned away into career gain. This removes the same notion of friendly relationships, of authentic companionship. And while Heidegger would certainly admit that these relationships can still exist, but in this technological mode of being, this realm of human stock, this realm of hyper productivity, we may only view humans and companionship as a means of utility. How about the semantics and the language structure surrounding organizations? We see businesses, we see corporations completely partition people away into resources.
We see that the departments that manage these people are actually called human resources or HR. In this context, we see that these executives, these CEOs, these business owners don't really see their employees as people. They see them as actual tangible resources.
In this way, this is how technology is not a mere neutral tool. It is a clearing. It is a revelation of human interaction in the world and an ultimate arbiter of change in this regard. By revealing beings as no more than the measurable and the manipulatable, Technology ultimately reduces beings into not-beings, as Heidegger put.
As people, as plants, as animals, our standing reserve, we lose the very core element of what makes us beings. That is our relationship to one another, and our direct importance to one another. Because if there is more of us, if there are just more trees, there's more water, we have a standing reserve of more.
Therefore, we lose our sacred elements as beings. Not only this, but we ultimately lose concern over the actual power that nature harnesses. As we become more technologically adept, as we grow as a species, we almost come into play as a war-like entity against nature, where the ultimate technological goal is to harness nature.
The ultimate technological goal is to control it. Pre-industrial societies did not used to look at nature like this. We looked at nature as a way in how we can work with it. Heidegger refers to these different modes of revealing. of working with nature and controlling nature as poesis.
The poesis of the past, the revealing of nature of the past, was more in line with poetry in Heidegger's eyes. And in the poesis of today, it is much more brutal, it is much more jagged, and it is much less human in his eyes. To Heidegger, the pre-industrial trades of the past reflect this.
Heidegger writes, if he is to become a true cabinetmaker, he makes himself answer and respond above all, to the different kinds of wood, and to the shapes slumbering within wood, to wood as it enters into man's dwelling with all the hidden riches of its essence. In fact, this relatedness to wood is what maintains the whole craft. Without that relatedness, the craft will never be anything but empty busywork. Any occupation with it will be determined exclusively by business concerns.
Every handicraft, all human dealings, are constantly in that danger. Heidegger is claiming that the poesis of today does not concern itself with relationships. Its concern is productivity, its concern is utility, and ultimately its concern is of business dealings.
Therefore, that direct relationship with nature is often lost. Again, technology offers itself up as a revelation, as a way and means of understanding, rather than just a neutral tool. Further, it offers itself up as a state of mind. A state of mind that has completely encapsulated the West in Heidegger's eyes. This mindset threatens the authenticity of our lives.
It threatens our relationship. And one of the most important points, according to Heidegger, is how it makes us complacent to existential danger. With this mindset, we could ruin ourselves. Think about 2020. How often do we hear every other month about the limited amount of time left we have to fix climate change? In this technological mode of being, we don't really have to worry about climate change.
Because whenever climate change happens in the next 30 to 40 years, well, guess what? We'll have the technological capability in dealing with that. But Heidegger would ask the question, how would you know that? How would you know that we would actually have the technological capability 20 to 30 years later?
In a paradoxical sense, he'd point out the sheer hypocrisy in thinking this while also abiding by science. We create an almost unscientific warship in science. Heidegger points out that there is an ultimate irresponsibility in how we deal with technology today, with our central attitude towards it, and our basic utilization of it. Further, he would argue that our lack of understanding of the essence and the metaphysical way of technology is even more harmful.
In the end, Heidegger is not anti-science. He's not anti-technology. Rather, he wants to fight against the actual technological modes of being that encapsulates the West. In a weird way, he believes that this technological way of being will actually kill itself in the end.
Mimicking the Marxist accelerationism of capitalism, ironically enough, Heidegger believes that people will understand the sacredness of pre-industrial society and that even with our modern technology, we will still be able to find a way to live like we did before. The question concerning technology ultimately is a critique of our modern ways of being and an inquiry into the metaphysical nature of technology. It's again important to note that Heidegger is not anti-technology.
Rather, he is against the sheer attitude around technology, the hyper-obsession with resources, and the hyper-obsession with productivity that comes with that attitude. As Heidegger pointed out, technology is not technological. Technology is a mode of being, and it's a mode of revealing.
We should view the question concerning technology as a reminder to look deeper into something. That the metaphysical may not be dead, and that we should not become complacent with technology. We should not rely on the idea that technology will solve every single existential crisis. And further, we should examine our relationships closer.
We should not partition important things like technology away into a neutral arbiter or a neutral tool, as we can potentially jeopardize everything that makes us human and the very meaning that encompasses our humanity. Hey guys, thank you guys so much for watching. I wanted to give a quick message.
This video probably came out a little bit later than what I would have wanted. I've been doing a collaboration with the YouTuber OneDime over a specific political topic. And you guys will see that. Ultimately, I have a really important video coming up after this and a really important announcement and request from you guys. So be on the lookout for that.
Ultimately, again, thank you very much for watching this. This video is extremely difficult to make as in traditional Heideggerian fashion. It was super difficult to decipher, but hopefully I pulled this off.
Hopefully I was able to make something really easy digestible without watering it down uh so ultimately guys uh feel free to uh check out my twitch uh this whole background right here is actually sort of set up for twitch it's a uh subscribe board so if any of you guys ever subscribe i'm gonna put you on that board i actually have ran out of room which is actually wonderful news i ran out of the room so i'm gonna start putting sticky notes or something like that but if you guys want to subscribe i'll put you on the board um also check out my instagram i always post clips Stuff like that, pictures, miscellaneous stuff, feel free to follow me on Twitter as well. Yeah, so ultimately, thank you guys so much for watching.