In Heidegger Studies vol. 18 (2002), 115-128.

The Destiny of Technology: Modern Science and Human Freedom in the Later Heidegger

Rex Gilliland, Birmingham-Southern College

When we read Heidegger’s lectures Insight into That Which Is (1949) and The Thing (1950) once again, the underlying theme is still striking: According to Heidegger, the invention of the airplane and the radio may bring the distant corners of the world within reach in far less time than was formerly possible, but this does not mean that we have brought things into nearness. Modern technology may remove distances (Entfernungen, Abstände), but it does not grasp the essence of the nearness (Nähe) and remoteness (Ferne) of things because the latter never arises as a question for it (see GA 79:3-4; GA 7:167-168/Th 165-166).[1] By elucidating the difference between these two ways of relating to the thing, Heidegger raises not only the issue of the essence of the thing, but also the issue of the essence of technology.[2] However, some may wonder whether Heidegger’s discussion of technology is still relevant today, given the many scientific and technological advancements that have occurred in recent decades. His references to the radio, the airplane, machine technology, and the hydrogen bomb seem somewhat facile in an age of space exploration, cell phones, and the internet. Technological innovations such as the particle accelerator and gene sequencing have enabled science to penetrate into the microstructure of the organic and inorganic, opening up new vistas for the representation and manipulation of beings. Has the essence of technology and science changed in the last fifty years?

The datedness of Heidegger’s examples and the tireless pace of scientific advancement appear to confirm Heidegger’s claims about the essence of technology instead of undermining them. The novelty of such examples is wearing off even faster today, which suggests that our ability to be enchanted by technological innovation is decreasing: Current discoveries make much less of an impact today than did the invention of the radio, airplane transportation, and the nuclear bomb. We are less surprised by new innovations because we have grown to expect them, and are so impatiently focused on how science promises to improve our lives in the future that the current cutting edge of technology is experienced as little more than a stopgap measure whose limitations are painfully apparent. Does our decreasing ability to experience wonder in the face of technology not confirm Heidegger’s claim that the human being is “continually approaching the brink of the possibility of pursuing and pushing forward nothing but what is revealed in ordering (Bestellen), and of deriving all of its standards on this basis” (GA 7:26-27/QCT 26)?

This danger is what Heidegger earlier calls machination (Machenschaft). According to Heidegger, machination is the total disappearance of enchantment and questioning. In machination, beings are reduced to that which is re-presentable and makeable (machbar), what can be calculated and manipulated (see GA 65:108-109, 123-127/CP 76, 86-88).[3] The extinction of wonder is, for Heidegger, the culmination of the type of technological thinking so prevalent today in the sciences. The danger of machination can be seen in the contemporary scientific inquiry into the nature of human being, an issue that has long generated some of the greatest difficulties for scientists. Cognitive science attempts to explain human behavior by studying such things as the architecture of the brain, the nature of language, memory, perceptions and motor function, as well as the possibility of simulating human intelligence with computers. What is common to the various forms of research conducted under the rubric of cognitive science is the general assumption that human cognition, at least in principle, is representable in much the same way as other natural beings. Though not all cognitive scientists espouse material eliminativism or epiphenomenalism, the attempt to uncover the basic elements that determine human activity threatens to reduce human being into something that we no longer experience as wonderous.

What does Heidegger have to say about the way that science and technology conceal the mysterious and unique presencing of beings, especially that of the human being? What response to science and technology does he develop in his thought? In this paper, we will explore these questions by considering how Heidegger raises the issue of human freedom in his discussion of technology. This may sound strange, because is it not the case that, in his later thought, Heidegger critiques the notion of the will and subsumes human agency to the granting of being? Does Heidegger’s thinking not turn from Dasein to the history of being? The claim that Heidegger jettisons the notion of human freedom in his later thought may be the prevailing view, but Heidegger’s discussion of technology suggests otherwise. This is seen especially in the 1953 lecture The Question Concerning Technology, where Heidegger examines the difference between destiny (Geschick) and fate (Schicksal). At the beginning of the lecture, Heidegger states that his purpose here is to prepare a free relationship to technology. What this relationship reveals about the essence of technology and the possibility of human freedom is something we will consider in detail. Does the historical transformation of the essence of technology in another beginning have anything to do with human decision? Is the destiny of technology intrinsically connected to the human being?

In addition, the question arises as to whether Heidegger’s response to modern science and technology is merely critical. Richard Rorty stated recently that “Heidegger had considerable contempt for the natural sciences.”[4] Is this an overstatement of Heidegger’s critique of modern science, or does science, for Heidegger, lack a destiny? Does Heidegger’s critique of science leave a space open for scientific and technological innovation and for the possibility of a scientific respect for the question of being? We will consider these questions surrounding Heidegger’s ‘philosophy of science’ briefly by way of conclusion.

As we have seen, Heidegger begins the lecture The Question Concerning Technology by introducing the issue of freedom. At the outset, he states that his purpose in the lecture is to prepare a free relationship to technology, a relationship that “opens our Dasein to the essence of technology” (GA 7:7/QCT 3). What is free about this relationship to technology and how is it distinguished from other ways of relating to technology? Heidegger provides a hint of the direction in which he will develop this issue when he states that “the essence of technology,” in contrast to the way it is prevalently understood, “is by no means anything technical.” According to Heidegger, when we relate to technology as something technical, our relationship to it is not free. “Everywhere we remain unfree, chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny technology” or “regard it as something neutral” (GA 7:7/QCT 4). As this suggests, the openness to the essence of technology that characterizes a free relationship to technology is significantly different from the usual ways of relating to technology. The latter treat technology as something technical and, as a result, the essence of technology is not experienced. But what is this openness to the essence of technology, and why does it constitute a free relationship to technology? What is the essence of technology if it is not something technical?

These questions reemerge later in the lecture after a discussion of modern physics and the current conception of technology, which we must trace by way of preparation. According to Heidegger, technology is presently defined in a way that is “instrumental and anthropological.” Technology is defined as something produced by human beings to serve the ends that they posit for themselves (GA 7:7-8/QCT 4-5). It is on this basis that it is often asked whether we are properly mastering technology or whether technology is slipping out of our control (GA 7:8/QCT 5). However, as Heidegger points out, this definition of technology is severely limited because it fails to distinguish between the hand crafts and modern machine-powered technology. If it is only the latter that threatens to overwhelm us and become our master, what specifically is it about modern technology that makes this possible? As Heidegger notes, it is said that the relationship of modern technology to modern physics is what sets modern technology apart from earlier forms of technology. According to this view, modern technology is based on modern physics (GA 7:14-15/QCT 13-14). The conceptual and mathematical foundation of the latter provides a degree of precision that allows modern technology to manipulate nature to an extent previously unforeseen. Heidegger does not agree, however, that the essence of modern technology is found in modern science. Instead, he maintains that the reverse is the case: Although “modern technology must employ exact physical science,” the claim that “modern technology is applied physical science” is a deceptive illusion (GA 7:24/QCT 23).

Heidegger’s claim may appear strange to us because, as he notes, modern physics arose almost two centuries prior to the development of machine-powered technology (GA 7:22-23/QCT 21-22). In his discussion of the essence of modern technology, however, Hediegger is not only challenging the priority of modern science, but also the claim that technology is a human creation. According to Heidegger, what distinguishes modern technology from earlier forms of technology is that the former is a challenging (Herausfordern), “which puts to nature the unreasonable demand [Forderung] that it supply energy that can be extracted and stored as such” (GA 7:15/QCT 14).[5] Although earlier forms of technology used nature in order to bring forth (Hervorbringen) certain products, they still let nature presence in its own way. Modern technology, in contrast, challenges nature by reducing it to standing reserve (Bestand), to a mere resource for energy. The presencing of beings has changed because they are now only revealed as something orderable (bestellbar) (GA 7:17-18/QCT 17). The difference between modern technology and the previous forms of technology, for Heidegger, is the scope and degree to which beings become a resource for technology. But is this not exactly what is made possible by modern physics?

We might also wonder why modern technology is not a human creation. Heidegger foresees this objection when he writes that although the human being is the one that “accomplishes the challenging framing [stellen] through which what we call the real is revealed as standing reserve,” and does this by representing, arranging, and managing various beings in this way or that, the human being does not have control over the way that the real is revealed. “Only to the extent that the human being for its part is already challenged to challenge the energies of nature can this ordering revealing happen” (GA 7:18/QCT 18). According to Heidegger, the human being “always accords [entspricht] with the exhortation [Zuspruch] of unconcealment even when it contradicts [widerspricht] the latter. Thus, if the human being, investigating, observing, pursues nature as an area of human representing, then the human being is already claimed by a manner of revealing that challenges it to tackle nature as an object of research” (GA 7:19/QCT 19). The challenging that reveals the real as standing reserve is no merely human activity. Heidegger names this challenging claim ‘enframing’ (Ge-stell). According to Heidegger, enframing is the essence of technology and is itself nothing technical (GA 7:20-21/QCT 19-20).

But what about the chronological precedence of modern physics? In addition, if mathematical physics is a discovery of human beings, does this not suggest that modern technology is a human creation? Heidegger argues that the chronological priority of modern physics is misleading. The priority is correct when it is calculated in historiology (Historie). However, if it is thought historically (geschichtlich), it becomes apparent that the essence of modern technology – enframing – already holds sway in modern physics (GA 7:23/QCT 22). According to Heidegger, modern physics prepares the way for the essence of modern technology, but not technology itself. The essence of technology not only has its roots in something that vastly precedes modern physics,[6] but it also, in incipient form, is the guiding impulse behind modern physics. Heidegger argues that modern physics represents nature mathematically because the ordering comportment of human beings emerges in it. “[A]lready in physics the challenging gathering-together into ordering-revealing holds sway. But in it that gathering does not yet come expressly to appearance. Modern physics is the herald of enframing, a herald whose origin is still unknown” (GA 7:23/QCT 22; see GA 7:22/QCT 21).

Does this mean that modern technology and modern physics are not human discoveries? If so, what does this imply about the possibility of human freedom? Heidegger takes up these questions in the pivotal passage of The Question Concerning Technology in an attempt to further elucidate the essence of technology as enframing. He does this by returning to the issue that he raised at the beginning of the lecture, namely, the possibility of a free relationship to technology. As we saw above, Heidegger states that the essence of technology is nothing technical. Seen in the context of his discussion of modern physics, this claim makes more sense. The essence of modern technology is found neither in power machinery nor in the apparati that modern physics applies to nature (GA 7:22, 24/QCT 21, 23). Rather, it is found in enframing, the challenging that makes possible anything technical because it reveals beings as standing reserve. A free relationship to technology is a relationship to technology as enframing. But how does one prepare for such a relationship to technology? Why is this relationship free and the relationship to technology as something technical unfree?

Elucidating the nature of a free relationship to technology is much more difficult for Heidegger than explaining why the prevalent relationship to technology is unfree. The relationship to technology as something technical is unfree because we are dominated by enframing. However, the converse is not the case in a free relationship: It consists neither in human mastery over enframing nor in freedom from enframing. Heidegger’s notion of a free relationship to technology is difficult to grasp because he effaces the schematic boundaries found in the traditional concepts of freedom. Key to Heidegger’s treatment of both of these issues is the distinction he introduces between destiny (Geschick) and fate (Schicksal). According to Heidegger, enframing is a destiny for human beings. It is a gathering-sending (versammelndes Schicken) that “brings the human being to a way of revealing” (GA 7:25/QCT 24). As we saw above, Heidegger maintained earlier in the lecture that the human being is challenged and claimed by enframing. Although the human being has some leeway in representing and managing beings, within enframing it has no control over the fact that beings are revealed as standing reserve (GA 7:18-19/QCT 18-19). As a form of destiny, enframing determines the general possibilities of unconcealment.

As this suggests, there is a place for human freedom within Heidegger’s notion of destiny, though the notion of freedom here is much more constrained than the one found in the common view that technology is a human creation. According to Heidegger, revealing does not occur “somewhere beyond all human activity,” though “it occurs only in the human being and not authoritatively through the human being” (GA 7:24/QCT 24). Although the human being is an essential moment in unconcealment, the general manner in which beings are revealed is something beyond human control. However, Heidegger’s claim is misleading if one interprets it to mean that due to the finitude of human freedom, human decision is limited to relatively unimportant, i.e., ontic, matters. If that were the case, there would be no difference between destiny and fate, and history (Geschichte) in Heidegger’s sense would be impossible. According to Heidegger, we often hear the claim that “technology is the fate of our age, where ‘fate’ means the inevitableness of an unalterable course.” However, as a destiny, enframing “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” (GA 7:26/QCT 25-26; see SG 157-158/PR 93-94). If enframing were the fate of human beings then we would be unfree: Though fatalism leaves open the possibility of responding to technology in a variety of ways, none of these ways have any significant bearing on the history of technology. On this view, it is technology and not the human being that guides the course of our age. Paradoxically, the opposition between fatalism and traditional concepts of human freedom is not as strong as we might suppose. Although the fatalistic definition of the essence of technology is different than the claim, seen above, that technology is the discovery of human beings, the two are by no means incompatible.

If destiny challenges and claims human beings, how does it differ from the compulsion of an unalterable course? Heidegger writes, “The destiny of revealing always holds complete sway over human beings. But that destiny is never the portentous consequence of a coercion [das Verhängnis eines Zwanges]. For the human being becomes truly free only insofar as it belongs [gehört] to the realm of destiny, and so becomes one who listens and hears [Hörender], and not one who is in bondage [Höriger]” (GA 7:26/QCT 25). Belonging to the realm of destiny requires that one listen and respond to destiny. It demands a sensitivity to the way that one is called forth in the claim that destiny places on us. But the fact that one does not blindly accept or helplessly rebel against technology does not explain why this is a freeing claim instead of the compulsion of an unalterable course. Additionally, in the following paragraphs, where Heidegger discusses the issue of freedom most explicitly, it is unclear whether he still has human freedom in mind. After stating that “The essence of freedom is originarily not connected with the will or even with the causality of human willing” (GA 7:26/QCT 25), Heidegger proceeds to describe freedom in terms of its relation to truth, to which freedom “stands in the closest and most intimate kinship.” According to Heidegger, “Freedom governs the free in the sense of the cleared, i.e., the revealed.” “Freedom is the realm of the destiny that at any given time starts a revealing on its way” (GA 7:26/QCT 25). Is freedom, as a moment of destiny, different from the human being – who belongs to destiny? If so, what distinguishes destiny from fatalism besides the responsiveness to destiny found in the former? How does human freedom emerge out of the freeing claim of destiny?

The fact that, up to this point in the lecture, freedom was always human freedom – the freedom found in a possible relationship of human beings to the essence of technology – might suggest that Heidegger still has human freedom in mind. However, Heidegger’s description of freedom in its relation to truth should give us pause. Is this freedom the freedom of being, as it is often interpreted – a freedom of which human beings are not originarily a part? Given the prominence of the issue of truth in The Question Concerning Technology, perhaps a look at Heidegger’s earlier discussions of truth will help us to clarify the nature of this freedom. Cross-referencing these texts is justified by the fact that Heidegger cites his 1943 essay On the Essence of Truth when he introduces the notion of destiny. And Heidegger paraphrases this essay in his discussion of freedom when he writes, “The freedom of the free consists neither in unfettered arbitrariness nor in the constraint of mere laws” (GA 7:26/QCT 24-25; W 84/ET 145). In the 1943 essay, there is a similar ambiguity about whether freedom is human. Heidegger states that “The human being does not ‘possess’ freedom as a property. At best the reverse holds true: Freedom, the ek-sistent, revealing Da-sein, possesses the human being” (W 85/ET 145). The passage just quoted might suggest that freedom in this sense is not something human. However, if we carefully consider Heidegger’s discussion of freedom in this essay, it will become apparent that this is not the case. According to Heidegger, freedom as letting beings be (Seinlassen von Seiendem) is not “neglect and indifference but rather the opposite. To let be is to engage oneself [Sicheinlassen] with beings.” Letting be is not “the mere management, preservation, tending, and planning of the beings in each case encountered or sought out.” Letting be is letting beings be “as the beings that they are.” In other words, letting be takes its standard from the beings themselves (W 83-84/ET 144). This engagement with beings is very similar to the responsiveness to the destiny of unconcealment that Heidegger discusses in The Question Concerning Technology. Heidegger contrasts letting beings be with covering up and distorting beings by not letting them be as the beings they are (W 86/ET 146), which corresponds in turn with the relationship to technology that – due to its lack of responsiveness to the essence of technology – is not free.

In On the Essence of Truth, Heidegger states that it is “ek-sistent Da-sein that lets beings be” (W 85/ET 145). At issue is the relationship of the human being to Da-sein: Is Da-sein merely the ground of the human being, or is it the human being in a more originary sense (see W 84/ET 145)? Is freedom as letting be outside of the control of human beings, or is it something that possesses us when we decide to reveal beings in an originary manner? Heidegger suggests the latter in the subsequent paragraphs when he states that it is human beings that ek-sist and let beings be (W 86/ET 146). At the same time, this is not to suggest that freedom and Da-sein are merely human, are merely under human control. According to Heidegger, they grant the inner directive of revealing and conserve the essential possibilities of history for us (W 86/ET 146; see W 84-85/ET 145-146). The engagement with beings is not merely a matter of human decision. As we have seen, human freedom requires responsiveness not only to beings but also to the destiny of unconcealment. According to Heidegger, “The rare and simple decisions of history arise from the way the originary essence of truth essences” (W 86/ET 146). Human decision is not made in a vacuum but is engagement with the destiny of unconcealment. At the same time, Heidegger states, as we have seen, that freedom is neither unfettered arbitrariness nor the constraint of mere laws (GA 7:26/QCT 25). This entails that there are no specific rules governing the engagement with destiny, a point we will return to below.

If this is so, how is engaging with or responding to destiny a free relationship to the essence of technology? The question of whether the free relationship to enframing is in some fundamental sense human freedom is a question about the possibility of destiny developing into something other than enframing and what place human freedom might have in this. As Heidegger indicates, enframing is not the first way that destiny has revealed itself, and it will not necessarily be the last. According to Heidegger, pre-modern technology revealed in the manner of poi/hsij, bringing forth (GA 7:25/QCT 24-25). In addition, he raises the possibility that destiny could reveal itself in a way more originary than enframing (GA 7:35/QCT 34). Is human freedom relevant to this possibility? The question whether human freedom belongs essentially to the possible emergence of a new beginning in history can be explored within the context of The Question Concerning Technology by turning to Heidegger’s notion of danger. What sort of historical possibility does danger point toward? While discussing the notion of destiny, Heidegger states that destiny (Geschick) “determines the essence of all history [Geschichte]. History is neither simply the object of historiography nor the fulfillment of human activity. Human activity first becomes historical as something destined” (GA 7:25/QCT 25). If human decision is only historical when it responds to destiny, what possibilities for historical humanity does destiny offer us? Heidegger raises this issue by introducing the notion of danger, a notion he develops through the remainder of the lecture. According to Heidegger, destiny always carries a danger with it. It does so because it places the human being between two possibilities, the possibility of losing itself in the current way of revealing and that of being admitted more originarily into the essence of unconcealment. In the latter, the human being experiences “its needed belongingness to revealing as its human essence.” Within the context of enframing, the danger is that the human being will “pursue and put forward only what is revealed in ordering and take all of its standards from here” (GA 7:26-27/QCT 26). By comporting to all beings, including human beings, as standing reserve, the human being is in danger of falling prey to what Heidegger earlier referred to as machination – the disappearance of enchantment and questioning. The danger, for Heidegger, is that every other possibility of revealing will be driven out and concealed (GA 7:27-28/QCT 26-27).

It is in the possibility of being admitted more originarily into the essence of unconcealment that human freedom arises most clearly. How is this a way of relating to enframing as the essence of technology, and how is this a free relationship? To what extent is the human being able to decide between the two possibilities of destiny? Heidegger elucidates the second possibility of destiny by turning to Hölderlin’s famous words, “But where danger is, also grows the saving power.” According to Heidegger, the possibility of destiny revealing itself in a more originary way arises from the saving power. Enframing, since it is a way that destiny reveals, harbors in itself not only the danger but also the saving power – the possibility of its own overcoming (Verwindung).[7] How immanent is this possibility? Despite the fact that the saving power is found already in enframing, one should not assume that “we should be able to lay hold of it immediately and without preparation” (GA 7:29-30/QCT 28-29). The human being belongs to revealing insofar as it engages with destiny in the form of enframing. The saving power is not something that we can simply choose to release. According to Heidegger, “Human activity can never directly counter” and “by itself can never banish” the danger (GA 7:35/QCT 33).

Then how, if at all, does human freedom belong to the historical possibility that destiny will reveal itself in a more originary way? According to Heidegger, destiny is a granting – even in the form of enframing – because it “gives the human being entry into that which the human being can, by itself, neither discover nor even make” (GA 7:32/QCT 31). Although human beings did not create enframing or the possibility of another beginning, Heidegger suggests that human engagement is an essential moment in the overcoming of enframing. Destiny grants to the human being a “share in revealing,” a share “that is needed by the enownment of revealing.” The human being belongs to the enownment of revealing as “the one who is needed for the preservation of the essence of truth,” and it is here that the human being enters into the highest dignity of its essence (GA 7:33-34/QCT 32-33). As this indicates, Heidegger’s statement, seen above, that revealing “occurs only in the human being and not authoritatively through the human being” (GA 7:24/QCT 24) is misleading if it is taken to suggest that the human being is merely a passive participant in revealing. Although the human being does not control the emergence of another beginning in history, this historical occurance is not possible without the decision to share in revealing by engaging with the destiny of unconcealment. The danger of enframing arises from the possibility that the human being will abandon its free essence and will reveal beings merely as standing reserve (GA 7:33/QCT 32). By deciding to respond to destiny and ask the question of being, the human being keeps open the possibility that destiny will reveal itself in a more originary way.[8]

In the free relationship to technology, according to Heidegger, the human being is not helplessly dominated by technology because it experiences technology as enframing rather than something technical. The human being experiences how enframing determines the way in which beings are revealed, but is also aware that enframing is not the only possible essence of technology. This relationship to technology is free because the human being, by engaging with enframing, prepares for the possibility of a transformation in the essence of technology. The occurance of this transformation, i.e., another beginning of the history of being, is not under our control since it can only be granted by the destiny of being. However, as Heidegger indicated, it will not occur without preparation, without the preservation of the essence of truth. The latter is a task for us. The free relationship to technology is a prerequisite for the transformation of the essence of technology.

As this indicates, The Question Concerning Technology is transformative in the same way as On the Essence of Truth. In the remark that he added to the latter, Heidegger states that by leading us in stages from the traditional conception of truth as correctness to a more originary conception of truth, the essay “accomplishes a transformation” in its questioning (W 97/ET 154). The same can be said about The Question Concerning Technology. The lecture gradually transforms our relationship to technology as something technical into the preparation for the emergence of the saving power. Our relationship to technology is transformed into responsiveness and engaging – a thoughtful questioning of technology. Heidegger states at the end of the lecture that “The more we draw near [nähern] to the danger, the more brightly do the ways of the saving power begin to shine and the more questioning we become. For questioning is the piety of thought” (GA 7:36/QCT 35). Not questioning for its own sake, but the originary questioning that takes place as an engagement with destiny (see US 175-175/NL 72).

But what does it mean to respond to and engage with destiny? How does one prepare for the occurrence of another beginning? As we noted above, Heidegger states that human freedom is not “the constraint of mere laws” (GA 7:26/QCT 25). There are no strict rules to guide the engagement with destiny. Engagement should be responsive in the sense of letting destiny reveal itself as what it is, letting it unfold in its unique essence. But engagement is not arbitrary, despite the fact that there are no strict rules to guide it, because it is sensitive to destiny. This may bring to mind Heidegger’s notion of Gelassenheit, which he describes as being between passivity and activity (G 35/CCP 61). However, it also raises the same basic question that surrounds Heidegger’s earlier notion of authenticity: How can Dasein, as a thrown being, respond to the call of conscience in a way that preserves the uniqueness peculiar to the moment of vision?[9] How do we think the relationship of human freedom to the granting that is beyond its control? How do we enter into that which lies between arbitrariness and brute necessity? This rich yet difficult question is a constant theme in Heidegger’s work.

Ultimately, the question of the free relationship to destiny is a question for us. The only appropriate response to this question is to seek a free relationship to destiny, i.e., to take part in the revealing of the destiny of technology through engaging with its essence as enframing. By doing this, we prepare for the possibility that destiny will reveal itself in a more originary way. Similarly, the question whether modern science and technology have a destiny is a question that can be broached only through an engagement with science and technology in their current form. To determine whether modern science and technology contain possibilities that lead outside the domain of machination is something that can only be carried out by engaging with and unfolding their possibilities. Since the attempt to establish a free relationship to modern science is really a topic for another essay, we will conclude with a brief look at some of Heidegger’s remarks on this matter.

For Heidegger, does modern science have a destiny? Rorty’s claim that Heidegger had “considerable contempt for the natural sciences” would suggest not. However, Heidegger’s critical remarks on many issues are frequently read in a merely negative sense. These readers do not consider whether Heidegger’s response to what he is criticizing is more subtle than a simple rejection of it. This is not only the case with Heidegger’s remarks on modern science and technology, but also with his criticisms of causality, the will, and metaphysics. Heidegger has these sorts of readings in mind when he writes in the Letter on ‘Humanism’, “Because we are speaking against ‘humanism’ people fear a defense of the inhuman and a glorification of barbaric brutality. For what is more ‘logical’ than that for somebody who rejects humanism, nothing remains but the affirmation of inhumanity?” (W 176-177/LH 263; see W 177-179/LH 264-265).

That Heidegger’s critique of modern science does not entail a rejection of science can be seen in various aspects of our discussion of The Question Concerning Technology. Though Heidegger argues that the essence of modern technology does not arise out of modern physics, his discussion of the latter is hardly contemptuous or dismissive. In fact, he acknowledges the historical importance of modern physics in the initial emergence of enframing (see GA 7:22-23/QCT 21-22). On the question of the destiny of modern science, it is possible to draw parallels from Heidegger’s treatment of technology. As we have seen, Heidegger distinguishes the free relationship to modern technology from the common rejection of the latter “as the work of the devil” (GA 7:7, 26/QCT 4, 26). If Heidegger is not recommending that we abandon modern technology, it is likely that he is not recommending this about modern science either. Where would we experience enframing if not in modern science and technology? And if we can only engage with destiny through a relationship to enframing, does this not suggest that enframing – and that through which we experience enframing – are essential to the possibility that destiny will reveal itself in a more originary way?

In The Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger argues that modern science, like modern technology, is grounded in enframing. The claim that science is grounded in something more originary, that science is a derivative discipline incapable of conceiving its own essence, goes back at least as far as Being and Time (see SZ 11-13) and is a constant theme in Heidegger’s thought. However, this claim is not a contemptuous rejection of the sciences but an attempt to identify their limits and to trace the relationship of the sciences to philosophical thinking. Although Heidegger is critical of claims made about the sciences and their discoveries that display an ignorance of these limits, as seen in his discussions of machination and enframing, he also leaves open the possibility of a free relationship to science. In the Beiträge (1936-1938), Heidegger discusses reflection (Besinnung) on science, a form of thinking similar to the responsiveness to destiny discussed above. According to Heidegger, reflection on science is only possible today by means of grasping science historically as one possibility of unfolding grounded in the truth of being, and considering the impulses that determine the essence of modern science in its present form (GA 65:144/CP 100). In reflection, science is not conceived as something present at hand, whose essence can be captured in representation. Rather, science is thought in terms of its grounding in the truth of being, as something that continues to unfold from out of this ground.

Heidegger takes this issue up again in the 1953 lecture Science and Reflection, a lecture that is closely related to The Question Concerning Technology. In this lecture, Heidegger examines in detail how the various sciences reduce nature into standing reserve and why the essence of science is inaccessible to the sciences (see GA 7:53-62/SR 171-179). But what is most interesting for us is what Heidegger suggests about the possibility of a free relationship to science. Heidegger describes reflection as “releasement [Gelassenheit] into what is worthy of question” (GA 7:63/SR 180), and he writes, at the end of the lecture, “Even if the sciences, precisely in following their ways and using their means, can never press forward to the essence of science, every researcher and teacher of the sciences, every human being pursuing a way through a science, can indeed move, as a thinking being [Wesen], on various levels of reflection and can keep reflection vigilant” (GA 7:65/SR 181-182; see also GA 65:96-97/CP 66-67). According to Heidegger, although science is not the highest form of reflection, it is still possible for those involved with the sciences to remain open to what is worthy of question in science. Scientists might not engage with the essence of science as enframing or reflect on the possibility that destiny will reveal itself in a more originary way in science. However, by keeping in mind that the essence of science is not itself scientific and that science emerges through impulses that arise from a more originary ground, one can sustain an openness to the non-machinational possibilities of science and preserve the wonder of what science can reveal to us about beings. Ultimately, the question whether these possibilities will unfold themselves or whether science will myopically turn its back upon its destiny is a question for us. For only if we raise the question of the essence of science will we prepare the way for a free relationship to science, a relationship that helps to preserve and unfold science’s destiny. Only by engaging with the essential possibilities of science can we experience its destiny in the transformation to another beginning, and not by turning our backs on science or naively trumpeting its advancement.

Endnotes