Heidegger and Danger

Let us now return to the philosophical reflection initiated above and connect Ortega’s thought with that of Martin Heidegger, who begins by asserting that the essence of technology is not itself something technical, but involves something far deeper and ontological in the human condition. Heidegger describes technology as a fourfold action that metaphysically goes far beyond the merely instrumental sphere in which it is usually placed. Using his characteristic style, which plays with the agglutinative qualities of the German language, Heidegger argues that the technical consists of a fourfold phenomenon: it begins as an uncovering or revealing of something preexisting (Bestellen) that is hidden within us. This revealing constitutes a challenge (stellen), which is answered by subsequent production (herstellen) and representation (darstellen). These linguistic constructions are more profound than they may appear.

To produce is to bring into evidence, to reveal; therefore, technology also appears to us as a disclosure or unveiling of truth. What is true can be technical. Heidegger coins a neologism for this entire complex, also based on the German root stellen, with the prefix Ge indicating a passive participle: Gestell, the essence of technology, especially modern technology. Without the neologistic nuance, Gestell also means “shelf” or “scaffolding,” and likewise “structure.”

The revealing implicit in technological action does not occur essentially in the human being or through him alone. It also challenges and reveals the human, desacralizes him, and places him within the very domain of the Gestell. It thus becomes impossible to choose a position with respect to technology, since in this sense it also encompasses us. We reach the conclusion that this destiny (Geschick) is not only the greatest danger to which we are exposed, but danger par excellence. Beyond its metaphysical aspects, this danger lies in the fact that the human increasingly advances along the path of becoming a resource, a Bestand, a component of the Gestell.

This again turns Ortega’s claim that the human adapts the world to himself, rather than adapting to it as animals do through evolution. Here, once more, it is the human, as part of the Gestell, who is adapted to this new world of the artificial, created by himself. The cycle of enantio-poiesis closes upon itself or, as Hegel would say, we find a dialectical synthesis on a “higher plane.”

We thus find ourselves prisoners of this artificial world, the Gestell, which we ourselves have created but no longer control. The Gestell distances us from our optical nature, transforms us into instruments of a system we have produced, and suggests that there is no possible exit from this tragic circuit. The proposed remedy appears somewhat weak, resembling resignation. Whereas mystics often reject modern life outright, Heidegger proposes that we live calmly and detached within it, seeking salvation, or at least existential tranquility, in art. Ortega is more optimistic, granting us greater room for maneuver. We must do what is our ethical obligation once we recognize ourselves as human: to formulate a life program. The question is what that program will be.

What is called consumer feudalism consists precisely in enthusiastically accepting the triumph of instrumental technology and allowing the Gestell to take over. The technological system that encompasses us, the Gestell, tends to make us increasingly dependent. This is a serious symptom of marked techno-dependence.

Indeed, one of the consequences of the current predominance of the technological world over the natural world is that we are increasingly dependent on the products of modern technology. As the productivity of human activity and its level of technification increase, production relies on numerous specialists in each field, and the isolated individual becomes ever less capable of producing what is necessary for survival. Human beings thus become increasingly techno-dependent for mere subsistence. At the same time, technology has become so complex that the vast majority no longer understands it and is reduced to a posture comparable to that of the primitive human who, faced with natural phenomena he cannot control but that determine his life, adopts an attitude of reverence, distrust, and resentment.

Heidegger’s theory of the Gestell allows for a form of technological analysis that has a certain appeal. When placed at the service of hydroelectric power generation, the same river ceases to be a simple element of the landscape and becomes what we will later call a “Technological Object.”

We have dwelled in some detail on the thought of Ortega y Gasset and Heidegger because they represent, at the philosophical level, two extreme positions. A power plant, moreover, is only one link in a chain that includes the transmission network of the generated energy and the multiple activities of its consumers. Finally, the landscape itself becomes incorporated as a source of hydraulic energy and ceases to be merely an object of contemplation, becoming a source of energy and a tourist destination. It too enters into the Gestell, which ultimately comes to encompass the entire Earth. In this sense, we can say that the whole Earth is now a vast Technological Object.

The problem of defining the limits of the Technological Object as a system, within the analytical framework of General Systems Theory, will be taken up in subsequent chapters. There we will see that, to make analysis possible, it is necessary to establish a pragmatic distinction between system and environment. In this philosophical discussion, however, we seek only to emphasize the lack of limits derived from what Heidegger and other critics of contemporary technology perceive as an invasion by technology into domains where it should not reign supreme.