Martin Heidegger | Question Concerning Technology (part 1) | Existentialist Philosophy & Literature
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Channel: Gregory B. Sadler
Views: 39,245
Rating: 4.9264216 out of 5
Keywords: Lecture, Lesson, Talk, Education, Student, College, University, Sadler, Martin Heidegger (Author), Philosophy, Metaphysics, Modernity, Modern, Technology (Professional Field), Techne, Craft, Knowledge, Manufacture, Creation, Questioning, Existentialism (Literary Movement), Existential, Existence, Crisis, Being, Meaning, Phenomenology (Idea), Means and Ends, German, Four Causes, Formal, Final, Material, Efficient, Work, Aristotle (Author), Instrument, Physics (Idea), Aletheia, Truth, Nature, Human Being, Dasein
Id: 4rzYhOOOw40
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Length: 63min 39sec (3819 seconds)
Published: Thu Jan 09 2014
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Sadler is incredibly informative and I highly recommend checking-out the rest of his videos.
The Question Concerning Technology is, in my understanding, one of the most important essays that Heidegger wrote - I would contest that it is one of the most important essays of the past century. I say this for several reasons.
I say this, first of all, due to the general problems surrounding the idea that the Hard Sciences, in their utilization of mathematics and technology, provide an indefinite improvement in our quality of life. To be clear though, Heidegger does not explore the idea that the hard-sciences "make progress" but focuses on how it is that we think of their impact in regard to the aforementioned "quality" of life (pun). In specific, the idea that the utilization of technology is a neutral "tool" that we take-up and "use" is severely called into question; throughout the essay Heidegger shows how it is that our Thinking and Use of technology, as though it is neutral, actually occludes the CONDITIONING effects that our thinking and utilization of technology have on us and our conception of other modes-of-being. In showing that technology is not a neutral operation one is able to suggest that what it is that modern technology does to us may not necessarily be favorable, especially when considering the OTHER ways in which other disciplines, themselves, condition our being. Heidegger clears a space for other modes of being, other ways of thinking, and suggests that their "general" occlusion from modernity is actually a display of the paucity of philosophical thought: that it is a lack of an appropriate philosophical characterization of truth that allows technology to "grip us" in the way that it currently seems to.
Secondly, in providing a revised notion of truth qua Aletheia, Heidegger continues in sync with many of his later works. In particular, calling-into-question the metaphysics of presence and also shedding-light on ways in which we are conditioned in our being by other modes of truth (art and poetry for example).
Thirdly, and I think most importantly in regard to criticism, the way that Heidegger is able to frame the conception of Standing Reserves, in my understanding, provides a basis for a systematic criticism of global-capitalism in its instrumental and pervasive structures. Particularly insofar as resources and persons are reified merely in their capacity to produce as part of a system; persons, in their being as persons, are, in essence, stripped of their being-in-time, restricted to the present moment, and thought merely as cogs in machines - as are resources, environments, relationships, and the like. Furthermore, the conception of standing-reserves also mirrors the ways in which money and mathematics is utilized in modernity as the most efficient and prevalent (and thereby pervasive) way of understanding the world - by "boiling it down" to mere "bits and bytes" with quantifiable values in the present.
To quip, the way in which STEM fields (shitfight engage) tend to teach, operate, and be perceived by established economic structures falls under heavy criticism here. Particularly because of the ideology (I say this having bought the argument that technology is not a "neutral" thing but is an "ideological apparatus") that surrounds the aforementioned idea that participation and promulgation will "continue to provide" "improvements" in our "quality" of life. It ought to be an indicator of Heidegger's accuracy that we can look at some current news articles that discuss STEM students as mere "human resources" and that they are cogs in an economic apparatus that controls the valuation of students and other fields of study - referring to forms of education and people as though they are MERELY products with a value in a marketplace and that their adherence as such is what provides them value: what does not adhere to the apparatus lacks value (the humanities).
Furthermore, analytic philosophy in general, with its emphasis on "using" language combined with formal logics also falls under implicit criticism here; particularly due to the tendency to, again, "boil" language down to bits and bytes and fit them together as though they are neutral and thereby at our control - when, in actuality, we participate "in" language (and forms of otherness, like technology) and are conditioned by it - and in this sense we are not necessarily "at the helm" so to speak. Heidegger makes the poetic gesture in these regards that humans are not the Lords of Being, but are the Shepherds of Being.
If you are critical of capitalist ideology and its apologists this is definitely an essay and perspective to have at your disposal!
Thank you very much Mr Sadler! I hoped that you would choose this theme some time! I really enjoy your great videos!
The first 30 minutes were relatively clear. My understanding:
Technology = making things
But is it ? find out in the next episode.