The sciences affect contemporary architecture in many ways. At the level of technic, the results of the research in the natural sciences, such as chemistry, could easily be applied by technology to develop new and more suitable building materials such as class and steel. Giedion traced the development of structural steel and its effect on modern architecture.’ When he points out that the Severn Bridge (1775-1779) in England was not a great achievement as architecture which the Church of the Fourteen Saints in Bamberg, Germany (1743-1772) was, he indicates also the time when the impact of the results of modern science and its application in technology ere felt:
The church (Vierzehnheiligen) stands on the highest level reached by architecture in its period, it also stands at the end of that architecturall tradition. None of its features points ahead into the future. This simply constructed bridge, for all its lack of interest as a work of art and even as a problem in architecture, opens a path for developments of great importance.
The development which began with the Severn Bridge continues today as High-Tech-Architecture. The Centre Pompidou in Paris (1974-1976), by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, and the Hong Kong-Shanghai Bank Building (1988) by Foster and Associates, testify to that. Charles Jencks would probably classify these two buildings as Late-Modern. With the Severn Bridge, designed and built solely by engineers, builders began to realize that important structures did not necessarily have to employ traditional architectural forms to become significant, and to be carriers of meaning. Up to the end of the Baroque age, architectural forms were to a large extent mere variations of the Greek orders, such as Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. That was the convention of architecture. In the 1920s the realization that authentic architecture could be done
without that convention, reached its first climax. It would be a mistake, however, to consider the new building materials, such as reinforced concrete, steel and glass as the sole cause of the rise of modern architec-ture, as the causa efficiens, philosophers would say. There are three other causes, which may clarify to us in what way modern architecture is due to the new building materials. The first of the three is thecausa materialis, the material out of which things are made; second, the causa finalist the end or purpose for which a thing is made; and finally, the causa formalis, which is the form or shape into which the materials enter. It is easy to see that the causa materialis, finalis, and formalis are related to technic,function, and form, in that order. Heidegger admits that the doctrine of the four causes goes back to Aristotle, but later thought placed too much emphasis on the causa efficiens:
The doctrine of the four causes goes back to Aristotle. But everything that later ages seek in Greek thought under the conception and rubric ‘causality’ in the realm of Greek thought’ and for Greek thought per se has simply nothing at all to do with bringing about and effecting. What we call cause [Ursache) and the Romans call causa is called aition by the Greeks, that to
which something else is indebted [das, was ein anderes verschuldet]. The four courses are the ways, all belonging at once to each other, of being responsible for something else.’
_For sometime we have been blaming many of our present ills, such as air and soil pollution, holes in ozone lavers, green house effect, etc., on our pursuit of science and technology. It is obvious that our greed and lack of concern for others are also to b lame. In turning from chemistry to physics, we should at this point give credit to our structural engineers, who developed the findings of a portion of physics, such as mechanics and dynamics, into powerful tools to analyze and predict with great accuracy the sizes and composition of building elements such as beams and columns. If we now direct our attention to the level of function, we find that the study of biology, especially the biology of man, becomes important. Research in this area, applied to preventive medicine, is of. tremendous value to mankind. The architectural environment should foster and not stifle physical and emotional health. Le Corbusier and Richard Neutra were well aware of the impact of health factors on architectural design.
Next, as we deal with architectural form, we shall realize that the influence of the sciences on it has reached utmost complexity. The natural sciences we mentioned previously, such as chemistry, physics and biology, influence form indirectly, via technic and function. The importance of the historical sciences at the level of form can hardly be over-estimated. Philip Johnson was aware of that. “We cannot not know history,” he once said. That applies, of course, to history in general and, in particular, to the history of art and architecture. The Bauhaus educators are often blamed for having eliminated the study of history from the architectural curriculum. They were genuinely concerned with the degenerated and diminished forms of the architectural historicism of their time in which the spirit of the age, which according to them was the spirit of science and technology, could no longer be recognized. But the study of architectural history need not be neglected. We need only look at the literary works of two prominent critics who were close to the modern. movement, Giedion and Pevsner, to be.convinced of that.’ It was natural for the work of art and architecture to become objects of scientific investigations. The Germans call that endeavor die Kunstwissenschaft. Mikel Dufrenne has given us an overview of the different approaches in that endeavor in Main Trends inAesthetics and the Sciences of Art.’ The contribution entitled “Architecture and Town-planning” by Frangoise Choay provides valuable information up to the 1960’s.6 The influence of the behavioral sciences on architectural design and form is well-documented in Creating Architectural Theory, by Jon Lang.’ His bibliography is an impressive list of works available on this subject. Studies of psychology, anthropology and sociology, perhaps in that order of importance, have contributed to a better under-standing of architectural form and its relation to meaning. It may, seem somewhat arbitrary of me in this respect, to single out the works of Edward T. Hall’ and Konrad Lorenz, but I do so because their investigations left a deep impression on me. Is theology also a science, a rational explanation of our faith in the Divine? Religion and its varied manifestations became, likewise, an object of scientific research and comparative studies on the subject abound. Needless to say, religious beliefs have influenced, and perhaps still influence, architectural form.
If we look back at the contribution and influence of the sciences on teehnic, func¬tion and form in architecture, it will become clear that the contribution to technic isconcrete and direct. The architectural designer accepts willingly the information provided by the structural. engineers and other technical consultants, such as mechanical, electrical and plumbing experts. At the level of function the influence becomes less direct and less tangible. At this stage, the -designer must take a more active role. At the level of form, which involves varied and very complex influences, the designer must take on still more responsibility. He gets active assistance in the solution to technical problems, even to some extent in the solution of functional ones, but the solution to problems of form are almost entirely left to him. f think we are justified in turning to philosophers forguidance in our attaining a better understanding of what happens at the level of form. That being the case, I shall now return to Heideaaer and Gadamer for further clarification on the role of science in the creation of architectural form. But before I do that, I would like to mention briefly some oft¬repeated objections. Some may ask: how can philosophers like Heidegoer and Gadamer speak in such simplistic ways about the natural sciences, when every scientist knows that this field is so ‘hopelessly fragmented that it makes no sense to talk about the natural sciences as a unified field? Next, the natural sciences are not, as. very recent developments show, as objective and deterministic as philosphers would want us to believe. Natural sciences can at best produce only close estimates of truth, and what remains are only “islands of determinism.
To these general objections is linked a more specific one against Heidegger. The prominent physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsaecker maintains that Heidegger was “unable to recognize what in the sciences gives them their privileged rank.”” Despite these and other similar objections levelled against contemporary philosophers, I find it worthwhile to consider the thinking of Heidegger, Gadamer, and Derrida on questions of science and technology. If ours is indeed the.age of science and technology,. its spirit should then find expression in architectural form. In the paragraphs that follow i will, therefore, look at science and technology from a philosophical point of view. The other possibility, making the creative act of the designer, the producer of architectural form, an object of scientific investigation, i will refrain from pursuing.’.’ My preference for a philosophical investigation, and for Heideyger as a “collaborator”_ in particular, opens up the possibility of arriving at the origin of the phenomenon of science and technology, and.its effect on our thinking and behavior. All this, I hope, will shed additional light on the questions of architectural form and meaning.
PHILOSOPHY AND-SCIENCE
“To read Heidegger is to set out on an adventure,” says William Lovitt,’~ whom i consider one of the best interpreters of Heidegger’s philosophy in the English language. The German philosopher often leads us along long winding roads, and in this process we get the impression that we are lost. But Heidegger himself is never lost; with him we discover along the road that many things are not what we Initially thought them to be, and one of these surprises is the “true” relationship between science and technology.”
According to Heideyger, technology is not a consequence and further development of the natural sciences, as we commonly believe. It is more likely that it is the other way around, that technology and what underlies if, the Greek techne, comes first. When we considered Gadamer’s interpretation of mimesis (imitation) as recognition, we saw that he went back beyond Plato to Pythagoras for a more profound explana¬tion. Heidegger does the same in the present case. Originally, techne for the Greeks was: “Knowing through making;” it was a knowing which was at once making and seeing and, the other way around, seeing and making. Only with Plato, “Knowing through thinking,” was introduced as the episteme. Socrates, according to Heic-gger, stands in “the draft” of that transition.
Techne, which is knowing through making or doing, is accomplished when one founds a state, tills the earth, erects a statue or temple, fashions a silver chalice, or makes a poem or a philosophical statement. By accomplishing fechne, the early Greek man accepts the reality (which we will for the time being equate with the E=:ng o` which Heidegger speaks) which offers itself to him, and then he moves into it in order to arrest it, and to shape it according to his present skills. In doing that, mar, trines Being or reality previously hidden, into the open; he makes it appear as it is. For Heidegger, man has to do. this to mak€ the truth appear. As mentioned, for Heidegger iruth is not so much a conformity or agreement of reality and mind as an unccnceal¬ment (Entbergen), or disclosure of Being. We can see that Heidegger’s understa.-ldinc of truth goes beyond that of Plato, who introduced knowing through thinking and truth as conformity, into the philosophical debate.
To the ancient Greeks, Being is that which presents itself to man’s apprehendinc. Being is, therefore, a ruling, a happening, powerful and lasting. As an act of making itself present, Being accomplishes itself as “unconcealment.” Yet, true Being ha.)pens simultaneously, as both concealing and unconcealing. The appearing can only take place through knowing, and this knowing is provided by techne.
Through techne man confronts the confusing reality. Through his knowing he becomes superior to reality. In the making-seeing process he comprehends the various relationships existing in reality. He cuts into the given structure, and reassembles the component parts W letting something new stand forth as present.
Such a bringing forth into genuine appearing and being present is making or wirken, in Heidegger’s words. Such an act of producing is letting a work stand forth as manifest and present, and thereby a Being happens and reveals what is in Being. Greek temple, v.g., as it stands, confers upon everything to which it relates the parti¬cular kind of appearing proper to it. Their God becomes present through the temple. Man’s relationship to this God, to his fellowmen, and to the natural surroundings comes clearer into focus. Such a work gathers everything to itself,-and so reveals everything for what it is; in other words, it lets meaning take place. It sets up a world. Architects of the 1960s and 1970s, in their search for meaning in architecture, turned to semiology for guidance. May I submit that at this level Heideceer’s ph:!oso¬phy is a good starting point. The concept of knowing through making, and of truth as self-disclosure of Being, attribute to reality a force and power which it loses when it is replaced by knowing through thinking. Then the force and power shifts from reaiity to the thinking subject. Kahn was aware of the original force and power of Being, when he stated that he wanted the spaces to be what they wanted to be. Let us see how the similarity of thought between Heidegger and Kahn is expressed in Lovitt’s interpretation:
When man acts in power to invade the reality that imposes itself upon him and disclose it for what it is, he is actually responding to the claim of Being that summons him to accord with it so as to allow it its self-revealing by creating the thing brought forth that lets world happen.
I think Kahn would agree, it we define architectural design as “responding, to the claim of Being ‘to let world happen.” The shift which occurred through Pla;o was, indeed, fundamental. Before him, the experience of Being happened in uniqueness: after him it happened in likeness, in which Being resides. The idea, the constitutive aspect, that is common to many particular entitles, is regarded as their Being. Know¬ing is no longer accomplished through making, which is techne, but through thinking,
which is episteme. By the same token, truth is no longer unconceatment or disclosure of Being, but becomes adaequatio, a9reement beywqgn mind and rcality. Here for Me first time the difference between techne and the technological, which belongs to the episfeme, appears.
In the succeeding ages after Plato, the experience of Being as a working, that is, a creative gathering of participating elements, gives way to. an experience o’ Eeing as working, which brines about an effect by a cause. In Christian theology, God becomes the highest cause, the Platonic ideas are located in the mind of God. They are the pro¬totype of all created things, which now have their being from the ranked’orders of creation, which correspond to their creator, who has preordained them. Thus, likeness, not uniqueness, defines Being, and knowing is no longer making. It is, rather; the knowing of the Christian doctrine, based on the revea!ed word of the Holy Scriptures, which brings salvation. That is what medieval man was concerned about. There was no need to venture into the unknown.
If the shift introduced by Plato, expressed “Knowing through thinking,” was of primary impcr,ance, another shift, perhaps equally important, was the one initiated by Galileo, “Knowing through observation.”-When the authority of the Church began to crumble, Descartes found a new basis for certainty within himself: Cogito ergo sum.
To Descartes, the self-knowing, accomplished by self-consciousness, is his being, and what his self-consciousness sets clearly and distinctly before itself, is brought thereby into Being. That means, all that which is in Being, including man, is now thatwhich stands as the object over and against man, and found within his consciousness as the knowing subject. It is again likeness, not uniqueness, which is decisive in defining Being of whatever is. The reality of corporeal substances, which for Descartes consists in extension, is the measurable character common to all corporeal entities. Here the dominance of modern technology finds its standpoint at the same time that mathematical physics appears as a modern science.
Methematicai physics is not the cause of modern machine technology, but its fore¬runner because in it the characteristics peculiar to technology are, already present. Modern technology, like the techne of the Greeks to which it is related, is skilled making that brings something into Being. But two points need to be stated: first, the making of machine technology does not come into direct contact with reality as techne did. The pushing of buttons and moving of levers in modern technological production shows that. And second, what is produced is not a work in which Being appears in its uniqueness. Being has withdrawn itself, but that withdrawal brings about an exaltation and importance to man as a subject which remained previously unknown. Man now stands in manipulative relation to everything that is, but at the same time he distances himself as a consequence of the direct engagement with Being. Almost nowhere does man experience Being, for Being has withdrawn.
Modern science, as a further development of knowing through thinking, does not confront us with reality in its full power but only as a network of calculable causes and effects. Science makes everything appear in a particular kind of order, but if never brings forth something that is unique or genuinely new, as techne did. It is, therefore, not surprising that Heidegger considers modern science to be essentially mathemati¬cal. But here again he surprises us. We generally believe that we arrive at the abstract notion of number, let us say: 1, 2, 3, etc., by abstracting them from things to which we have attached them. We believe that it is easier for a child to count, v.g., three apples, :han to get the notion of three without the. apples or other objects.. Heidegger dis¬agrees. We can only count three apples, or three of anything, he says, because we have already the notion of threeness, thereby allowing the world to exhibit examples of it. (Here we are reminded of the relationship which exists,, according to Pythagoras, between’the order of the cosmos, the order of music, and the order of the soul.) To show that this is so, Heidegger takes us for another philosophical adventure, which I consider one of the best. In typical fashion, he starts out in What is a Thing with _the Greek ta mathemata, but he immediately cautions us that “the facts are not always where the words are.”” Ta mathemata meant to the Greeks that which can be learned and can be taught. There is a connection between the mathematical and the numerical. But the numerical is something mathematical, and not the other way around. No proof is given at this point.
If things can be learned, the learning consists in a kind of grasping and appropriat¬ing_ But strictly speaking, things cannot be lea.rned. We can learn only their use, v.g., the use of a rifle. Appropriation occurs ‘through use. That is practicing, which is only one kind of learning. Through this kind of learning we become familiar with the thing. But in this process ourlearning is extended beyond the immediate aspect of use. In the case of the rifle, we may learn about ballistic mechanics and chemical reactions. We may also learn how the rifle actually works. We do not need to know all these in order to be able to use a rifle.
The familiarity with the thing may increase to the point where we may actually be able to produce the thing. Then we knaw what the thing is. But we knew that already, to some extent, when we began to use a thing, such as a rifle. We must know it; other¬wise, we would not recognize the thing as a rifle. The essence of learning is, therefore, recognition. We recognize things from what we already knew about them in advance. The mathematical is, therefore, about things which we already know. We do not get it out of the things; we bring it to them. Here, then, is the proof that the numerical is something mathematical. When.we see three apples, we recognize them as three, but that “threeness” does not come from the apples, chairs or any other things. We can grasp three things only if we know “three” already. In grasping the number 3 as such, we expressly recognize something which, in some way, we already have “Genuine learning is therefore recognition.” And what is learnable is number. That is why the numerical is mathematical, which means learnable. Things do not help us to grasp “three”or “threeness.”
The numerical is the most familiar form of the mathematical. But the essence of the mathematical does not lie in number as a means of determining “how much,” in the way the natural sciences use numbers. The mathematical is a fundamental position which we take towards things, by which we take things as already given to us. The mathematical is, then, the fundamental presupposition of the knowledge of things. This reflection on the essence of the mathematical was necessary, says Heidegger, to show that the basic character of modern science is mathematical. We may call the mathematical a fore-structure or prejudice in the sense of prejudgment of what we already know of the natural sciences.
I went through HeideggEr’s somewhat lengthy argumentation, which he calls a short reflection, for two reasons:
1. I wanted to show that the basic structure of art and science is the same. We ob¬served Gadamer’s attempt to establish a framework, which could accommodate both objective and non-objective art. We learried how he went beyond Plato to Pythagoras, and found there, that pure number accounts for the order of the cosmos, the order of music, and the orderof the soul. Heidegger, in similar fashion, finds that the numerical belongs-to the mathematical, which is the basic structure of the exact sciences.
2. When Gadamer went beyond mimesis (imitation) as conceived by Aristotle and Plato to Pythagoras, :he showed that imitation is essentially recognition. Cognition which is knowledge or genuine learning is basically recognition of what we already know. This is how wq attain truth in art. Heidegger shows that this is. also the case in science. Genuine learning is recognition of what we already know.
I had originally intended to discuss here also the views of Gadamer on science and technology. I will have to forego that at this point. Instead, I would like to refer you to a handsome volume of nine articles by Gadamer with a translator’s introduction. The book is entitled”, reason in the age of Science. Having given that recommendation, I intend to proceed now to the notion of technology as it may affect architeciural thought.
TECHNOLOGY AND GESTELL
We mentioned that modern science brines us in contact with rRaaity as a network of calculable causes and effects. Mathematics is not only the basis, but also the too! of modern science. We also know that Heidegoer does not think of modem technology as
a consequence and application of modem science. Techne and the technological precede science.
Modern technology is based on prediction and calculation. To modem technotoey the natural world appears as a well-,-,pring of resources which can be turned into energy and usable things. And yet, for Heideager, modem technology remains essentially a mode of revealing, such as techne was. Technology is not an instrument of man’s making, but a phenomenon, a manifestation of its Being, -which determines all of Western history.
The revealing of modern technology is a “challenging”_(herausfordern), a:phenomenon that puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy that can be extracted and stored. The earth reveals itself, v.g., as a coal mining district, the soil as unused deposit. The field of the peasant farmer that was cultivated and set in order (bestelli), appears in a different way to the food industry. The farmer cared for the land and maintained it. The land yielded its fruit at its own pace,. and the amount it produced on its own terms. The technology of the food industry, on the other hand, makes demands, sets itself upon and over the earth, to extort maximum yield at minimum cost. The “letting-be” of the peasant farmer is replaced by the “making demands.” .
The setting-upon nature by challenging it, results in nature yielding more than what is immediately needed. The coal, v.g., is stockpiled; that means it is made ready to deliver the sun’s warmth stored in it whenever needed. The sun’s warmth is challenged for its heat, which in turn is “ordered” to deliver steam through which the wheels. of a factory are made to move and produce things for use.
The setting-upon nature through modern science has also fundamentally changed man’s relations.hip to the world, to resources and to things. There.is no more room for man’s caring relationship, which allows nature to be fully itself. Instead, man is now incessantly planning and demanding to extort more, to amass more resources. In mass-producing things for use, he no longer creates things in their uniqueness; he produces things that are unable to gather unto themselves everything that surrounds them. Through modern technology man produces a “standing-.reserve” (Bestand) of things, in which all uniqueness is lost. What kind of revealing or unconcealment takes place in this process? Here are Heidegger’s words:
What kind of unconcealment is it, then, that is peculiar to that which comes to stand forth through this setting-upon that challenges? Everywhere everything is ordered to stand by, to be immediately at hand, indeed to stand there just so that it may be on call for a further,ordering. Whatever is ordered about in this way has its own standing. We call it the standingreserve [Bestand]. The word expresses here something more, and something more essential, than mere ‘stock’. The name ‘standing-reserve’ assumes the rank of an inclusive rubric. It designates nothing less than the way in which everything presences that is wrought upon by the challenging reveati-el Whatever stands by in the sense of standing-reserve
Two results become clear. First of all, in the standing-reserve, things lose their character as unique objects. That means, they have no longer the power to reveal. The things of the standing-reserve do not convey meaning anymore. When we live in a world in which most things we encounter are the things of the sta..nding-reserveand not original-objects; we should not be surprised to see our world become meaningless. Secondly, man, who thinks he is in charge of this setting upon, challenging, producing and ordering process, becomes himself part-of the standing-reserve: The man in the lumber industry, to use an example from Heidegger, is made subordinate to the orderabilityflf cellulose, which for its part is challenged by the need for paper, which is then delivered to produce newspapers and illustrated magazines. When things do not reveal anymore, and man cannot confront things as original objects because he has become part of. them in the standing-reserve, man must fea! alienated from his world which no.longer speaks to him. And yet, according to Heideggef, although man is challenged earlierthan theenergies of nature, he is never transformed completely into a mere standing-reserve. Since man drives technology forward, hd takes part in ordering it as away of revealing. But the unconcealment, in which the ordering unfolds, is neverjust a human accomplishment. Here is how Heidegger puts it:
Modern technology as an ordering revealing is, then, no merely human doing. Therefore we must take that challenging that sets upon man to order the real as standing-reserve in accordance with the way in which it shows Itself. That challenging gathers man into ordering. ‘This gathering con- centrates man upon ordering the real as standing-reserve,
At this point Heidegger introduces a difficult term, and that is the word Gestell. Translators disagree on how to translate it into English, and Heidegger himself says that he’dares to use this word in a sense that has been thoroughly unfamiliar up to now. But we cannot do without this term, if we want to know how Heidegger understands modern technology.
In dealing with the word Gestell, which Lovitt translates into “en-framing” while others simply say “framework,” the problem arises because the term has connotations which are difficult to duplicate in any other language. Heidegger considers Gestell that challenging claim which gathers man to order the self-revealing of the real as standingreserve. In ordinary language the word Gesiell is an assembly of parts, put together for a practical purpose such as a bookrack. Gestel! can also mean skeleton. For our purpose it is, important to realize that Heidegger compares his Gestell with the “idea’: of Plato, who took eidos, which originally meant the outward aspect (Ansicht) a thing offered to the physical eye. Plato then used the word in a way which had been thoroughly unfamiliar up to his time. The image or picture of a physical thing received a non-physical interpretation. Heidegger is aware that he is attempting a similar transformation. ,
The word Gestell contains stellen, a very common word with many meanings such as to put, to place, to set. Heidegger takes the meaning of sich sfellen, to challenge, as the principal meaning which would give his Gesfell the desired new interpretation. There is another composite meaning of stellen as her-stellen and dar-stellen, of producing and presenting, which is close to the Greek poiesis, the process which makes and reveals. But there is a fundamental difference between the producing that brings forth original things, such as erecting a temple, and en-framing which is the challenging claim which gathers man to order the self-revealing of the real as standingreserve. And yet, they remain related in their essences. Both are ways of revealing, of alethela, of truth, of disclosure, of unconcealment of Being.
in en-framing unconcealment takes place in conformity with which modem technology reveals the real as standing-reserve. Since en-framing gathers man, it calls
upon him and sets upon him (fordern), and places him (stellen) in position to reveal the real by way of ordering the real as standing-reserve. That is man’s destiny (Geschick). En-framing ordains this destiny, but destiny is never fate that compels. Man retains his ireadom in his destiny as the one who listens and hears as Hoerender, and not as the one who is constrained to obey as Hoeriger. –
For modern man his destiny to reveal is not just a danger, but danger as such, because truth can be concealed. This danger manifests itself in two different ways:
1. When that which is unconcealed are no longer objects, but only things of the standinz-reserve, and when man is only the orderer of the standing-reserve in an objectiess world, he comes to the point of being absorbed by the standing-reserve.
2. Man, since he is threatened by the standing-reserve, creates for himself the illusion that he is the lord of the earth. Everything that man encounters is taken to be of his own making. That leads to the ultimate delusion: man believes that. everywhere and always he encounters only himself. The truth, however, is that “nowhere does man today any longer encounter himself, i.e., his essence.”2′ –
But that is not all. En-framing does not only endanger man in his relationship: to himself and to everything that is, his world; it also shuts out all other kinds of revealing. It conceals not only a formerway of revealing, of bringing forth, but also revealing itself, and with it that wherein unconcealment, i.e., truth comes to pass. En-framing then blocks the shining-forth and holding sway of truth. In this sense en-framing is destiny and the greatest danger. There is no danger in technology as such; there is no derrion in the machinery and products of technology; but the essence of technology with its destiny to reveal harbors the danger. In Heidegger’s words: .
The threat to man does not come in the first instance from the potentially lethal machines and apparatus of technology. The actual threat has already affected man in his essence. The rule of En-framing threatens man with the possibility that it could be denied to him to enter into a more original revealing and hence to experience the call of a more primal truth.
At this point, Heidegger turns from a pessimist of modern technology into an optimist, or at least into a man of hope. In doing this, significantly enough, he turns to poetry by quoting Hoelderlin:
But where danger is, grows The saving power also.
In typical fashion, Heidegger points out that to save means not only to seize hold of a thing which is threatened by ruin, but also “to fetch something home into its essence, in order to bring the essence for the first time into its genuine appearing.””
If the essence of technology, en-framing, is the extreme danger, and if there is truth in Hoelderlin’s words, then the rule of en-framing cannot exhaust itself solely in blocking all lighting-up, every revealing, and all appearing of truth. Rather, the essence of technology must contain in itself the growth of the saving power.
After Heidegger has given us a new meaning of to save as to fetch something home into its essence, in the sense, perhaps, of restoring or making whole – the word to save is related to the Latin salus, German heil – he gives us also a new meaning of essence. In the academic language of philosophy essence means what something is, Yuiddifas in Latin. For example, the essence of a tree is that which pertains to all kinds of trees, to oaks, firs, etc., that is the “tree-ness.” Under this inclusive term, which philosophers call genus and is a “universal,” fall all real and possible trees. But the essence of technology, which is enframing, is not a genus or universal, under which all things technological fall, because en-framing is not a steam engine or radio transmitter; it is neither a tool not an instrument, nor an apparatus produced with the help of a tool. En-framing is a way of revealing through challenging. Here essence is to be understood, not as a-genus, but as something which makes things endure or last. According to Plato, it is only the idea of a house, v.g., which endures separately from the actual house. For him, that is the essence. But is the essence of technology as permanently enduring as the idea? Heidegger asks. Again, with the help of a poet, this time Goethe, he explains that what endures is that which has been granted and he comes to the following conclusion:
Only what is granted endures. That which endures primally out of the earliest beginning is what grants.”
.
Now comes the difficult question: can en-framing, which is a challenging, be at the same time a granting? These two terms seem to be contradictory. We have seen that it is man’s destiny to be challenged, to make what is real in the standing-reserve reveal itself. But that destiny is also -a granting, because it is only man who can make that self-revealing of the real happen. In that destiny the saving power grows:
The granting that sends in one way or another into revealing is as such the saving power. For the saving power lets man see and enter into the highest dignity’of his essence. This dignity lies in keeping watch over the unconcealment -and with it, from the first, the concealment – of all coming to presence on this earth. It is precisely in Eniraming, which threatens to sweep man away into ordering as the supposed single way of revealing, and so thrusts man into danger of the surrender of his free essence – it is precisely in this extreme danger that the innermost indestructible belongingness of man within granting may come to fight, provided that we, for our part, begin to pay heed to the coming to presence of technology.2s
Technology, then, contains extreme danger, but it harbors also the saving power. The essence of technology is ambiguous or two-faced. On one hand, en-framing challenges man to order what blocks every other way of revealing, and in doing so, it endangers the essence of truth. On the other hand, en-framing also grants man the power to endure because man is needed for the safe-keeping and coming to presence of truth.
Heidegger concludes The Question Concerning Technology with a comparison between technology and the fine arts. There was a time, he says, when it was not technology alone that bore the name techne. The bringing forth of the true into the beautiful was also called techne, and the poiesis of the fine arts was called techne. In ancient Greece the arts were not derived from the artistic. Works of art were not enjoyed solely aesthetically. They were simply called techne, because they revealed through making, through poiesis. The poetical, which holds sway over all arts, has its origin here.
Could it be, then, asks Heidegger, that the fine arts are called to the task of poetic revealing, that revealing lies primarily with the arts, so that the arts may expressly foster the growth of the saving power? Heidegger, in what is perhaps his greatest insight, leaves this question open. Other philosophers and critics have overlooked or de-emphasized the “other possibility,” of which Heidegger’s speaks:
Whether art may be granted this highest possibility of Its essence in the midst of the extreme danger, no one can tell. Yet we can be astounded. Before what? Before this other possibility: that the frenziedness of tech nology may entrench itself everywhere to such an extent that someday, throughout everything technological, the essence of technology may come to presence in the coming-to-pass of truth.
Benang Merah 