Make it make sense
January 27, 2025 6:40 AM   Subscribe

I need to read Heidegger's "The Question Concerning Technology" for a class. I have made an attempt, and will of course keep attempting and looking for supplemental materials. In the meantime, do you happen to have tips on how to understand what this guy is actually saying?

I got maybe four pages in and realized I was just moving my eyes. I might as well be reading that "buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo" sentence over and over.
Favorite resources? Do I need to be drunk first? Give up on understanding original text and work off of resources analyzing the work?

Thank you.
posted by karasu to Religion & Philosophy (11 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
Not sure how you feel about it but .... I have a friend that constantly recommends non-fiction to me, but I really mainly read for fun and as an escape, so really just fiction.

I use chatgpt to summarize the books and author's main points for me so that we can still talk about them (he knows I do this).
posted by magnetsphere at 6:53 AM on January 27 [1 favorite]


The way I have dealt with this in the past is to summarize each sentence in my own words before moving on to the next one. Look up individual words if you have to but don't move on until you are certain you understand and can rephrase each sentence.

Googling "heidegger technology cliff notes" brings up quite a bit of explanatory notes. I have found that reading these summaries and such doesn't replace reading the original but does give you a leg up on actually understanding it.
posted by blnkfrnk at 8:00 AM on January 27 [4 favorites]


I'd read the Wikipedia article summary first in an attempt to give myself some framework for understanding what's going on the book.
posted by gregr at 8:05 AM on January 27 [3 favorites]


Heidegger is a difficult writer. There's often a fairly simple point (even an obvious one, once you've got hold of it) in the centre of what he's written, but he's done his best to obscure it through very very specific & novel uses of common words (e.g. Being).

The SEP entry might be useful: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/#Tec

From which: "The primary phenomenon to be understood is not technology as a collection of instruments, but rather technology as a clearing that establishes a deeply instrumental and, as Heidegger sees it, grotesque understanding of the world in general."

Obvs he means something v specific here by "clearing" - it's a way in which an aspect of Being discloses itself as itself. This wiki entry is a good look-up guide to some of these special meanings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heideggerian_terminology
posted by rd45 at 8:48 AM on January 27 [8 favorites]


“We need to be clear. Heidegger in no way dismissed what the Nazis called the “Jewish question (Judenfrage)” as a barbarous prejudice far beneath the dignity of philosophy. He aimed to reframe this “question” in the light of his philosophical concerns about the modern West’s supposed “uprooting” of all things from their meanings, through technology.” [theconversation]:
the word Gestell [frame] means some kind of apparatus, e.g., a bookrack. Gestell is also the name for a skeleton. And the employment of the word Gestell [enframing] that is now required of us seems equally eerie...
posted by HearHere at 9:01 AM on January 27


I don't have any particular resources for this essay, but I will share a bit about how I read things like this. When I read theory or philosophy or dense texts in general, I find that I am constantly engaging in a sort of back-and-forth conversation in my mind, which helps me understand and process what I'm reading. For example, let's take the second paragraph here: "Technology is not equivalent to the essence of technology. When we are seeking the essence of 'tree,' we have to become aware that what pervades every tree, as tree, is not itself a tree that can be encountered among all the other trees." As I read this paragraph, I'm thinking something like this:

Ok, he's setting up two buckets here -- "technology" and "essence of technology". What do I imagine would fall into each bucket? Let's suppose that the "technology" bucket is for solid, real, touchable things like levers and steam engines and satellites. Then the "essence of technology" bucket holds ... I guess it holds whatever levers and steam engines and satellites all have in common, right? What is that exactly? I know it when I see it, but how would I describe it? I guess I would think of all these things as human-made tools. Is that what he means?

Now he goes on to create two more buckets -- "tree" and "essence of tree". And the way he describes the difference between them is roughly parallel to what I supposed he meant by "technology" and "essence of technology," so it seems like I'm following him. Furthermore, he's invoking a whole system here -- "noun" (aka person, place, thing, or concept) and "essence of noun" as being two separate things. I seem to remember that's an established concept -- didn't Plato have something to say about that? Yes, Wikipedia says "Essence" is a thing in philosophy. I won't get too deep into that just yet, but I'll hold onto it in case I need to come back to it. Let's continue and see where Heidegger goes.


A couple of paragraphs down, he talks about technology as "a contrivance--in Latin, an instrumentum." Here I might say to myself...

"Contrivance" is an old-fashioned word. Let me look up that definition to be sure I've got the nuances. Ok, it's got two meanings--"the use of skill to bring something about or create something." or "a device, especially in literary or artistic composition, which gives a sense of artificiality". I think the first meaning is more likely to be the relevant one here, but I do think of artificiality--aka, the quality of being produced by human art--as being related to the essence of technology. I'll put a pin in that and see if he returns to that idea. And then this Latin word "instrumentum"--an instrument is essentially a tool, right? So this is kind of supporting my theory from before that the essence of technology is that of a human-made tool.

That's what my brain is doing as I'm reading -- trying to break apart what he's saying into component parts, making little theories of what I think he's saying and seeing if they're validated as we go forward, coming up with specific examples to illuminate general/abstract statements, etc. I definitely look up words and concepts that I'm not 100% certain I understand, or that I want more nuance on. I may even make myself little diagrams or doodles or Venn diagrams to help illustrate ideas. As I go, I add to or re-evaluate or revise theories that I've previously developed about the text. Often, the author will set you up with a whole theory that seems to be flawless, and then throw in a whole lot of complications that make you realize it's not as solid as you thought. This is ok -- even fun! It's almost like a joke -- you need the setup to create expectations, before you hit 'em with the punchline that disrupts those expectations.

It takes a much longer time to read in this way, but without this kind of conversation between myself and the author, it all becomes buffalo buffalo buffalo.

If you're having trouble starting this internal conversation, there's a meta-cognition framework called DSRP (Distinctions, Systems, Relationships, Perspectives) that might provide some useful prompts. Here are the guiding questions from that framework:
Distinctions
What is __________?
What is not __________?
Systems
Does _________ have parts?
Can you think of _________ as a part?
Relationships
Is ________ related to __________?
Can you think of ________ as a relationship?
Perspectives
From the perspective of __________, [insert question]?
Can you think about ____________ from a different perspective?

All of those strike me as useful starting points for questions to be asking yourself as you read through a text like this. Basically, every time you hit a word or idea that you don't immediately understand (and sometimes, even if you do), it's helpful to ask yourself some of these questions and see if you you can come up with some working theories.

I hope this is helpful, not just for this essay but for future forays into theory and philosophy!
posted by ourobouros at 9:34 AM on January 27 [10 favorites]


Without endorsing Heidegger's point of view, I'm going to gloss the first half for you in an informal 'explain it like I'm 5' way, because I bet this plus reading the rest for the vibes might be about all your instructor expects from you.

Let's not settle for a customary way of talking about technology, because the language we use has already in some sense settled the matter of what technology is. Specifically, we tend to focus on technology simply as a means or instrument. In thinking about how causation works, Aristotle did think about instruments as causes that make things happen, but he also thought about causation more widely. That's interesting, because he was thinking about causation without centuries of philosophy having settled the matter before him. So he could think about causation as a number of different things.

For example, a silver cup is caused to have certain properties thanks to the fact that it's made out of silver--silver is the material cause of the cup. A cup also has some essential properties as a cup in that it has to be shaped as a cup, not like a ring or something else--the cup's shape is its formal cause. A cup also has a purpose of holding liquid up to your lips in your hand, so its shape isn't strictly fixed as long as it can achieve that purpose--the cup's purpose is its final cause. And someone has to make the cup, but more specifically they have to know how to bring all these causes together and take action to make it--that activity of making it is its efficient cause.

Incidentally, Aristotle had a similarly wide view of truth. The most familiar kind of truth he described was truth that was logically verified. But knowing how to make something has its own kind of truth in that it is knowledge that causes something to exist. So know-how is a way of establishing something that is true. There's an important relationship there between bringing something forth and making something true, which we also saw when talking about the silversmith's know-how. Making things causes things that are true.

So if we want to understand modern technology--that is, the way all modern technologies are similar and also similar to older technologies--we should look in a similarly general way for how it makes things come to be true in the world too. Long story short, modern technology systematizes things by viewing them as similar kinds of things that can be held in a stockpile and put through a conversion process to extract something else on a massive scale.

For example, when we view the Rhine river as a natural resource we can use to extract hydroelectric power, we've framed the Rhine in a certain way that leaves out of the picture all kinds of things that the Rhine otherwise is--we've challenged a holistic understanding of the Rhine and turned it into a standing reserve of energy. Likewise, the lumber industry looks at a forest as a standing reserve of cellulose to be extracted for making paper. Those are actual examples from the essay, and an early version of the essay had another example that Heidegger deleted: the gas chambers used in the Holocaust.

So go ahead and read the rest of the essay about what all kinds of implications "Enframing" has, but keep that deleted example in the back of your mind as a serious problem for Heidegger. Like, who knows which among many reasons he might have deleted the example, but to my mind, "Enframing," etc., seems like a deeply, fundamentally inadequate way to talk about gas chambers--not least because Heidegger was a Nazi but also because Heidegger's view of technology doesn't make good sense of it and it's a worthwhile thing to understand about technology.
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:15 AM on January 27 [6 favorites]


This isn't about this text, but as a professor who often assigned readings I didn't expect my students to fully understand: sometimes coming up with a good question is as useful to class discussion as understanding the reading. So if you find yourself confused, that's OK - try to find a way to articulate your confusing as concretely as possible, i.e. "I'm confused because on p.5 he seems to be arguing [x] but then on p.7 says [y] which seems to contradict [x]."

Sometimes for dense texts it helps to just read the whole thing without stopping, accepting you don't totally get it, and then re-read again - once you know the overall structure of the text it's easier to read for comprehension.
posted by coffeecat at 1:15 PM on January 27 [2 favorites]


I haven’t watched this channel myself, but I know some folks (who themselves study philosophy/critical theory) who have spoken positively about these breakdowns. Might be helpful to get a YouTube lecture before your next lecture?

To engage with material like this, I definitely find it useful supplemental materials (like the link) to get a broad summary/understanding before coming back to the text. It’s not cheating! Heidegger in particular is super dense and most people require this sort of pre-supplemental material I’d wager.
posted by thebots at 7:43 PM on January 27 [1 favorite]


I think historical context may be especially important in understanding this essay.

In Dec. 1949, Heidegger presented the first version as a lecture, and in August of the same year, the Soviets exploded their first atom bomb.

I'd guess that most of his audience's questions concerning technology centered around humankind's future under the mushroom clouds of the arms race and the threat of nuclear annihilation.

If I were you I believe I'd find it amusing to see whether I could find evidence in the essay that Heidegger was addressing, in his singularly labyrinthine and indirect way, some aspects of that concern.
posted by jamjam at 11:02 PM on January 27 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: These answers have all been very very helpful! Thank you.
posted by karasu at 4:11 AM on February 1


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