![as words are general expressions; they express universals, concepts,
essences, the Being of things. Thus to be able to speak is a sign that one is
in touch with the realm of Being or, in other words, that one is “in the
truth.” To that extent, the metaphysical definition points to something
valid and is unobjectionable. The definition goes further, however, and in
Heidegger’s eyes it does not simply make the observation that humans
enjoy a relation to truth but also stipulates that relation as one of “pos-
sessing.” Now that is objectionable to Heidegger, and so his criticism
bears on what, to all appearances, is an utterly innocuous word in the
definition, Ò
ecw, “possess.”
To possess is to be the subject, the owner, the master. Heidegger’s
concern here is not that the metaphysical definition implies humans are in
complete possession of the truth; it does not imply that at all. But the de-
finition indeed intends to say that humans are the subjects of whatever
truth they do possess. Humans are the possessors of language in the sense
that the understanding of the essence of things, and the expression of
essences in words, are human accomplishments. Humans have wrested
this understanding; it is a result of their own research and insight. Hu-
mans are then, as it were, in control as regards the disclosure of truth; hu-
mans are the subjects, the agents, the main protagonists, of the disclosure.
That is the characteristic stance of metaphysics; metaphysics makes the
human being the subject. In other words, the human being is the subject
of metaphysics: again, not in the sense of the subject matter, but in the
sense of the agent of metaphysics, that which by its own powers accom-
plishes metaphysics, wrests the disclosure of truth or Being.
From a Heideggerian perspective, the “possessing” spoken of in the
metaphysical definition ought to be turned around. Accordingly, Heideg-
ger reverses the formula expressing the essence of a human being: from
zwæ
on lovgon Ò
Ò
econ to lovgoõ Ò
anqrwpon Ò
ecwn (EM, 184/137), from humans
possessing language to language possessing humans. Humans are not the
sovereign possessors, not the subjects of metaphysics, not the primary dis-
closers of truth. Instead, humans are the ones to whom truth is disclosed.
Referring to the metaphysical definition, Heidegger asks: “Is language
something that comes at all under the discretionary power of man? Is
language a sheer human accomplishment? Is man a being that possesses
language as one of his belongings? Or is it language that ‘possesses’ man
and man belongs to language, inasmuch as language first discloses the
world to man and thereby [prepares] man’s dwelling in this world?”
(PT, 74–5/59)
The attitude motivating these questions is the pre-Socratic one
whereby the gods (or, equivalently, truth, Being, language, the essence of
things in general) hold sway over human subjectivity. The full sense of this
holding sway is a nuanced one and will emerge in the course of our study
4 The Gods and Technology](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2642013-250722014256-4e9515cc/85/The-Gods-And-Technology-A-Reading-Of-Heidegger-Annotated-Edition-Heidegger-17-320.jpg)
![The Greeks experience the human look as a “taking up perceptu-
ally,” because this look is determined originally on the basis of a look
that already takes up man and . . . has the priority. With respect to
the [gods’] primordial look, man is “only” the looked upon. This
“only,” however, is so essential that man, precisely as the looked
upon, is first received and taken up into a relation to Being and is
thus led to perceive. (P, 160/108)
This passage says that the Greeks experienced themselves as the looked
upon, the ones to whom a self-disclosure of Being is addressed, not ones
who by their own efforts wrest a disclosure of the meaning of Being.
Human looking is not original but is a response—to a more original
being-looked-at. Thus the Greeks were not chauvinistic as regards theory.
For them, the main protagonists with respect to theory, with respect to
the disclosure of truth, or of the meaning of Being, are not humans but
the gods. Therefore, according to Heidegger, the word “theory” ulti-
mately breaks down into qeav- (“goddess”; specifically, the goddess truth)
and -Ò
wra (ora, “pious care”). Theory then names not merely a responsive
looking back upon the gods but a specifically deferential, solicitous look-
ing back. Theory is the “disclosive looking that abets truth” (das hütende
Schauen der Wahrheit) (WB, 47/165).
To be Dasein and to be theoretical are therefore equivalent—these
terms both refer to humans as the “there” of Being, as active, abetting re-
ceivers of the self-disclosure of truth. The theoretical is, of course, only
one characteristic of humans, but Heidegger’s philosophical concern with
humans does not extend beyond it. Heidegger’s is exclusively a first phi-
losophy, an ontology, a study of the meaning of Being, and not second
philosophy, not philosophical anthropology, not the study of humans as
such. Heidegger’s single philosophical theme, which he pursues with un-
precedented concentration, is Being (or its avatars, namely, the gods,
truth, essence, language, etc.). Only secondarily does Heidegger’s philos-
ophy attend to humans, and then only in a restricted way, i.e., merely as
Dasein, merely as the “there” of Being, merely as thea-horetical. Heideg-
ger thematizes humans only insofar as they relate to the gods, only as
privileged places for the self-disclosure of Being. He thematizes the place
of access only inasmuch as he is interested in the thing accessed, Being.
Heidegger’s philosophy then disregards the full phenomenon of the
human being. But that should occasion absolutely no reproach. Heideg-
ger does not deny that second philosophy is worthwhile. He simply does
not get beyond the more foundational questions, the ones of first philos-
ophy; he does not get beyond theory, in the original sense.
Then what are we to make of Heidegger’s writings on technology?
Technology would seem to be a theme of second philosophy. Indeed, if
ever there was a purely human affair, it is technology. Technology is a
8 The Gods and Technology](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2642013-250722014256-4e9515cc/85/The-Gods-And-Technology-A-Reading-Of-Heidegger-Annotated-Edition-Heidegger-21-320.jpg)
![matter of human inventiveness, and it is a way humans accomplish prac-
tical tasks. Technology seems to be absolutely human and instrumental,
rather than god-like and theoretical. Technology has nothing to do with
the gods and is not theory but, quite to the contrary, is the practical ap-
plication of theory. Technology is concerned simply with ways and
means, not with ultimate causes, and certainly not with Being itself. Tech-
nology would then seem to have no place in Heidegger’s theoretical phi-
losophy of Being. Yet all this merely seems to be so, and for Heidegger
the philosophy of technology is actually equivalent to first philosophy,
since, for him, technology is nothing other than the knowledge of what it
means to be in general. Like all ontological knowledge, technology is ac-
complished primarily by the gods, by the self-revelation of Being. Thus,
to be Dasein, to be thea-horetical, to be technological, and to be ontolog-
ical all mean exactly the same. They all mean to stand in a disclosive
relation to Being itself.
This concept of technology as theoretical knowledge is not simply a
new, idiosyncratic use of the term on Heidegger’s part. Quite to the con-
trary, it is a return to the old Greek understanding of techne:
What is wonder? What is the basic attitude in which the preserva-
tion of the wondrous, the Being of beings, unfolds and comes into
its own? We have to seek it in what the Greeks call tevcnh [techne].
We must divorce this Greek word from our familiar term derived
from it, “technology,” and from all nexuses of meaning that are
thought in the name of technology. . . . Techne does not mean “tech-
nology” in the sense of the mechanical ordering of beings, nor does
it mean “art” in the sense of mere skill and proficiency in proce-
dures and operations. Techne means knowledge. . . . For that is
what techne means: to grasp beings as emerging out of themselves in
the way they show themselves, in their essence, eidoõ [eidos], ijdeva
[idea]. . . . (GP, 178–79/154–155)
Heidegger is here identifying techne, in its original sense, with won-
der, the basic disposition of philosophy. For Heidegger, individual beings
may be astonishing, marvelous, remarkable, but only Being itself is wor-
thy of wonder. If techne has to do with wonder, then it is related to Being
and to first philosophy. Furthermore, it is in techne, the passage says, that
Being comes into its own, i.e., fulfills its self-disclosure. Techne is the
human looking back in response to a more primordial “look” or self-
disclosure. Thus techne does pertain to the gods; it is thea-horetical. What
Heidegger means by “technology” (die Technik), or by the “essence of
technology,” is techne in that sense.
Technology is then not the application of some more basic knowl-
edge but is itself the most basic knowledge, namely, the understanding of
Introduction 9](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2642013-250722014256-4e9515cc/85/The-Gods-And-Technology-A-Reading-Of-Heidegger-Annotated-Edition-Heidegger-22-320.jpg)
![what it means to be at all. On the other hand, technology itself can be
applied. For example, science is an application of modern technology.
Science is the research motivated by the self-disclosure of the essence of
beings as orderable through calculation. Science presupposes this under-
standing of the Being of beings, and so science presupposes modern tech-
nology, which is nothing other than the theory of beings as essentially
calculable. In turn, science itself can be applied, and that application is-
sues in a certain sophisticated manipulation of beings, which is “technol-
ogy” in the usual sense, namely, “the mechanical ordering of beings.”
Whence arises this theory of beings as orderable through calcula-
tion, a theory that leads to science and to modern, high-tech machina-
tions? According to Heidegger, “in the essence of techne . . . , as the
occurrence and establishment of the unconcealedness of beings, there
lies the possibility of imperiousness, of an unbridled imposition of ends,
which would accompany the absconding of the [original deferential
attitude]” (GP, 180/155).
Modern technology accompanies the absconding of the original at-
titude. Modern technology is not the cause of the absconding but is sim-
ply the most visible aftermath of that withdrawal. Modern technology is
the theory that is motivated when humans no longer experience them-
selves as the looked upon. In other words, when the gods abscond, when
they look upon humans not wholeheartedly but reticently, then human
disclosive looking presents itself as autonomous, as subject to nothing of
greater autonomy. An imperious theory thereby fills the void left by the
deferential one, hubris replaces piety, unbridled imposition supplants re-
spectful abetting, and the understanding of humans as possessors dis-
places the one of humans as Dasein. Humans thereby become subjects,
the sovereign, imperious subjects. The theory of beings as orderable
through calculation is a correlate of this imperiousness: to be imperious is
precisely to take beings as submissive to an ordering imposed by humans.
The imperiousness of modern technology is therefore evidence of the self-
withholding of the gods, and it is as such that Heidegger takes up modern
technology. He pursues the philosophy of technology out of his interest in
the relation between humans and the gods, i.e., out of his sole interest in
the disclosure of the meaning of Being. Consequently, Heidegger’s phi-
losophy of technology is an exercise in first philosophy.
According to Heidegger, history has seen two basic forms of tech-
nology, two theories of the essence of beings in general, namely, ancient
technology and modern technology. The history of these theories, the
gradual supplanting of the first by the second, is grounded not in au-
tonomous human choices but in what is for Heidegger a history of Being,
namely a relative absconding of the gods after their original, more whole-
hearted, self-disclosure. The history of technology is thus, fundamentally,
10 The Gods and Technology](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2642013-250722014256-4e9515cc/85/The-Gods-And-Technology-A-Reading-Of-Heidegger-Annotated-Edition-Heidegger-23-320.jpg)
![into care, to retain in care that which is cared for, and thus to found
an affiliation. Ordinarily, to give counsel means almost the opposite:
to impart a directive [or, today, to prescribe a psychoactive drug] and
then dismiss the one who has been counseled. (HI, 41/34)
If Heidegger is correct, then Aristotle’s example of the father as a
counselor is especially well chosen. The father is precisely the counselor
who takes the counseled one into his care, retains him in care, and never
dismisses him. The father is the prototype of the counselor, so much so
that to be a counselor is to be a father, and vice versa: to be a father is not
simply to beget an offspring but to care for him (or her), raise him, coun-
sel him, and so beget another man. Thus for Aristotle, a father, as a man
who begets a man, is a cause of the type under consideration. But that
does not make the father an efficient cause. On the contrary, “to beget a
man” must be taken in its full sense: to beget a real man, a fully devel-
oped man, and that requires care, affiliation, counsel, all of which are
matters not of force but of nurture. Thus a man is not the efficient cause
of another man but the nurturing cause.1
To consider for a moment Aristotle’s other examples, sowing seed
obviously does not make the corn grow in the sense of forcing the corn
up. Corn cannot be forced. To sow seed is merely to provide the right
conditions for the corn to arise. To sow is, in a sense, to encourage the
corn to grow, to call it forth into action, to release its potential for
growth, but it is not to bring about that action by one’s own agency. The
corn has to have it in itself to grow, or else sowing and nurturing will be
of no avail. Sowing is thus not an efficient cause; it does not impose
growth but only prepares or abets it.
Likewise, doctors (at least the doctors of Aristotle’s time) do not
cause health by their own agency. The doctor merely prescribes the right
conditions for the body’s natural health to reassert itself. Nature heals;
the doctor is only the midwife to health. Aristotle’s example of doctoring
is then not an example of efficient causality but of abetting causality.
In a perfectly analogous way, an abduction is not an efficient cause
of war; it does not by itself force the offended parties to declare war. All
it does is rouse them, stir them up, or perhaps merely release their latent
hostility, but they themselves freely respond to this perceived provocation
by going to war—or not.
It is then clear that Aristotle’s paradigm examples of this kind of
cause are by no means instances of imposing a form onto a submissive
matter. For Aristotle, this so-called efficient cause is in fact not the re-
sponsible agent, the one which, supposedly, by its own efficacy brings
about the effect. This cause is not an efficient cause but instead, as Aris-
totle’s examples make very plain, a cause that is efficacious only by act-
22 The Gods and Technology](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2642013-250722014256-4e9515cc/85/The-Gods-And-Technology-A-Reading-Of-Heidegger-Annotated-Edition-Heidegger-35-320.jpg)
![The four causes are not “responsible” for the change, in the sense of tak-
ing all the credit for it. Conversely, the change does not owe everything to
the causes. The obligation in question is the specific one of indebtedness
for assistance in coming to one’s own self-emergence or in achieving one’s
own accomplishment. This sort of obligation, I take it, is what is meant
in colloquial English by saying we are “much obliged” to someone.
This term, “obligation,” Heidegger’s Verschulden, is rendered in
the published translation variously as follows: “being indebted,” “being
responsible,” “being responsible and being indebted,” and “owing and
being responsible.” Part of the difficulty is indeed that the reader of these
terms will hardly realize that Heidegger has a single unified concept of
causality at all. More to the point, however, the term “being responsible”
is quite misleading, especially when applied to the four causes taken to-
gether. For instance, the translation says on page 9: “According to our
example, they [the four causes] are responsible for the silver chalice’s
lying ready before us as a sacrificial vessel.”
This surely gives the impression that the four causes, acting in
unison, have brought it about that the chalice is lying there ready
before us, i.e., already made and ready for use. It makes the chalice the
effect of the causes, ready-made by the four causes, delivered up and
ready for use. This impression is unfaithful to Heidegger’s intention
in two ways: in the first place, Heidegger does not maintain that the
effect of the four causes is to produce something ready-made; nor, sec-
ondly, is the activity of the four causes to be understood as an effectu-
ating at all.
The phrase “lying ready before us” and, in the next line, the phrase
“lying before and lying ready” translate Heidegger’s Vorliegen und Be-
reitliegen. These translations are defensible grammatically, but they are
not defensible philosophically, especially since Heidegger immediately
places in parentheses the Greek term he is attempting to render. That
term is uJpokei
sqai (hypokeisthai). The sense of this word for Heidegger
is “to lie underneath.” It means to be the prepared ground for the ap-
pearance of something. It does not refer to what is ready-made but to the
making ready of something; it does not refer to something appearing but
to the condition of an appearance of something. Specifically, the word
“ready” in “lying ready” does not mean ready for use; it means ready to
come to appearance, ready to come forth as a chalice, and only then be
ready to be used. In other words, the four causes have prepared the chal-
ice for its own coming-forth, they have prepared the ground for the chal-
ice; they are the chalice’s uJpokeivmenon (hypokeimenon, “substratum”).
What the four causes accomplish is what lies underneath the chalice, its
ground. But the causes do not effect the chalice, do not bring it about, do
not compel it to come forth on its ground. The causes cannot go so far.
30 The Gods and Technology](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2642013-250722014256-4e9515cc/85/The-Gods-And-Technology-A-Reading-Of-Heidegger-Annotated-Edition-Heidegger-43-320.jpg)
![nurture is to let with full diligence. And so we see that here again Hei-
degger is characterizing the causality of the four causes, the sense in
which they make ready the ground for the thing, and let it come forth, as
the active letting connoted by the terms “abetting” or “nurturing.”
Heidegger proceeds to summarize his view by stating very succinctly
that the An-lassen which makes something obliged (to the four causes) is
a Ver-an-lassen. It would perhaps be quite difficult to translate this state-
ment elegantly and briefly, but the meaning that would need to be
brought out is this: something is obliged to the four causes not merely for
letting it enter onto the path by which it will fully come forth but for car-
ing for it all the way to the end of its full coming forth. Thus the sentence
confirms our view that Heidegger’s interpretation of ancient causality is
abetting or nurture, i.e., letting in the active sense, letting all the way to
the end.
The published English translation, on page 9, renders the sentence
in question as follows: “It is in the sense of such a starting something on
its way into arrival that being responsible is an occasioning or an induc-
ing to go forward.” The crucial idea of “letting” has here been almost
entirely covered over. An-lassen has become “starting,” and Ver-an-
lassen “occasioning or inducing.” Thus, instead of “letting, active let-
ting, and letting all the way to the end,” the published translation of this
central series of terms is “letting, starting, and occasioning or inducing.”
Surely this translation does not remain faithful to the idea of letting but,
instead, proceeds in the direction of effecting, which is exactly what
must be avoided.
The proper translation of Ver-an-lassen becomes even more critical
in the next lines of Heidegger’s text, for there he explicitly proposes the
term as the name of the essence of causality in the Greek sense. It would
indeed be difficult to find a simple English word to use as a translation,
since our language does not seem to possess a compound of the verb
“let” that would add the nuance of activity, “letting with full diligence,”
“letting all the way to the end.” The word “nurturing” captures the
sense but is too free. I cannot do better than propose “active letting”
(perhaps “abetting”) as the least inadequate rendering in the present
context. Heidegger’s full statement then comes down (slightly para-
phrasing) to this: “Considering what the Greeks experienced when they
spoke of something as being caused, namely its being ‘much obliged,’ we
now give the term Ver-an-lassen [‘active letting’] a further sense, beyond
the usual meaning of the common term Veranlassen [‘occasioning’], and
it then names the very essence of causality as thought in the Greek man-
ner” (FT, 12/10).
Thus Heidegger explicitly distinguishes his term Ver-an-lassen from
an ordinary German word, Veranlassen (the same spelling, without the
Part I: Ancient Technology 33](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2642013-250722014256-4e9515cc/85/The-Gods-And-Technology-A-Reading-Of-Heidegger-Annotated-Edition-Heidegger-46-320.jpg)
![asserts this sense to be the predominant one: “Bringing-forth today means
the making and fabricating of an individual object” (GP, 85/76).
The two new terms that characterize the causality of the four
causes, “bringing” (or, more specifically, “bringing forth”) and poiesis,
thus seem to go back on what was said about the four causes as modes
of nurturing. Instead of assisting something to give birth or to develop, it
now seems that the four causes produce the existence of something out of
its previous nonexistence. The four causes bring it about that what they
cause exists in the first place, and they do not merely nurture something
along by gearing into it, by going with the thing’s own flow. The four
causes apparently cause the existence of the thing and first produce its
“flow.” Thus the causality of the four causes cannot be a matter of “gear-
ing into,” since there is nothing to gear into until the four causes have
brought it forth. It seems that the thing “owes everything” to the four
causes, is produced by them, and is not merely abetted or encouraged. In
other words, Heidegger’s current discussion implies an understanding of
causality as imposing, as bringing about or effecting the existence of the
caused thing.
On account of this impression, i.e., the implication that the causal-
ity of the four causes is a producing, a bringing about, an imposing, Hei-
degger immediately goes on to say that “everything depends” on our
thinking of poiesis in its full breadth and in the Greek sense. Everything
depends on this, for otherwise we would indeed be misled into thinking
of ancient causality as effecting and imposing. What then is the proper
sense of poiesis? According to Heidegger, it does not merely refer to
handcraft manufacture or to the artistic and poetic production of ap-
pearances and images. On the contrary, nature, too, is poiesis; in fact, na-
ture is even the paradigm case of poiesis: “Fuvsiõ [physis, ‘nature’], too,
self-emergence, is a bringing-forth, poiesis. Physis is even poiesis in the
highest sense” (FT, 12/10).
How can nature be poiesis in the highest sense, the paradigm of
bringing-forth or production? It can be the paradigm only if production
does in fact primarily mean nurture. Production is then not equivalent to
effecting, and so the terms “bringing-forth” and poiesis do not retract the
notion of causality as nurturing or rousing. Let us try to make that clear.
We begin with the way Heidegger distinguishes nature from manu-
facture: “For what comes to be fuvsei [physei, ‘naturally’] has the source
of the bringing-forth, e.g., the source of the blooming of the blossom, in
itself” (FT, 12/10). On the other hand, what is brought forth by craft has
the source of the bringing forth not in itself but in another, in the artisan.
Heidegger’s term I have rendered in a preliminary and neutral way
as “source” is der Aufbruch. This German term is an excellent candidate
to translate kinh
san, Aristotle’s word for the cause that is the source of
Part I: Ancient Technology 37](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2642013-250722014256-4e9515cc/85/The-Gods-And-Technology-A-Reading-Of-Heidegger-Annotated-Edition-Heidegger-50-320.jpg)
![connection between the products of Vautrollier’s press and the
writings of Shakspere, and we now plainly perceive what was
floating in the Poet’s brain when he placed the following speech in
Biondello’s mouth, who urges Lucentio to marry Bianca, while her
father and the pedant are discussing the marriage treaty:
Luc. And what of all this?
Bion. I cannot tell; expect they are busied about a counterfeit[3]
assurance: Take your assurance of her cum privilegio ad
imprimendum solum: to the church;—take the priest, clerk, and
some sufficient honest witnesses.
Taming of the Shrew, iv, 4.
These protective privileges, ‘ad imprimendum solum’, instead of a
benefit were a great hindrance to the growth of Printing. Many
master-printers even then felt them to be so, and by all legal and
sometimes illegal means, tried to procure the abolition of laws which
were oppressive and restrictive. They saw works of merit die out of
memory for want of enterprise in the patentee—they saw folly, in
the shape of a Star-chamber, controlling skill; or as Shakspere
himself expresses it,
Art made tongue-tied by authority,
And Folly (doctor-like),[4] controlling skill.
Sonnet lxvi.
Shakspere abounds in kisses of every hue, from shadowy, frozen,
and Judas kisses, to holy, true, gentle, tender, warm, sweet, loving,
dainty, kind, soft, long, hard, zealous, burning, and even the
unrequited kiss:
But my kisses bring again
Seals of love, but seal’d in vain.
Measure for Measure, iii,
1.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2642013-250722014256-4e9515cc/85/The-Gods-And-Technology-A-Reading-Of-Heidegger-Annotated-Edition-Heidegger-60-320.jpg)
![it is, numerous allusions, which, though plain to a printer, would
seem too forced to the general public, have been passed over.
Enough, however, has probably been brought forward to justify the
belief pourtrayed in the title-page, viz.: That Shakspere must have
passed some of his early years in a Printing-office.
Footnotes:
[1] The exact date was probably as difficult to arrive at then as now.
The arrival of William Caxton in England may, with a certainty of
being near the truth, be placed in 1475-6, the date 1474 given by
most writers being a misconception of the language used by Caxton
in the Preface to the Chess-book. The Art on its first introduction
was looked upon suspiciously by the people, few of whom could
read, its chief patrons being a few of the more educated among the
nobles and the rich burghers of London. Another mistake is to
suppose that Caxton printed in Westminster Abbey. His printing-
office was a tenement to the south-east of the Abbey Church; its
sign was the ‘Red-pale’, and Caxton rented it of the Abbot. There is
evidence to show that Caxton and the Abbot were on distant terms
of amity—none to show that the Ecclesiastic encouraged or](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2642013-250722014256-4e9515cc/85/The-Gods-And-Technology-A-Reading-Of-Heidegger-Annotated-Edition-Heidegger-62-320.jpg)
![patronised the Printer, notwithstanding Dean Stanley’s assertions in
a sermon lately preached by him in Westminster Abbey. The only
occasion upon which Caxton mentions the Abbot is to this effect—
that the Abbot, not being able himself to read a passage in old MS.,
sent it to Caxton, with a request that he would translate it. (See The
Life and Typography of William Caxton, by William Blades. 2 vols.,
4to. London, 1861-63.)
[2] Fat Pages. ‘Fat’ as a conventional word is not confined to
Printers. ‘A fat living’ is a phrase not unknown among churchmen,
and is used in the same sense by the compositor, who charges the
master-printer for the fat pages, in which no work appears, at the
same rate as if they were full.
[3] This word ‘counterfeit’ in the sense of ‘reprint’ or ‘duplicate’, is
certainly not used now-a-days by English printers; yet I find this in
Marahren’s Parallel List of technical Typographical terms:
—‘Counterfeit, to, or to Reprint, v., Nachdrucken.—Ré-imprimer.’ With
Bibliographers the word is still retained; e.g. ‘Lyons counterfeits of
the Aldine editions.’
[4] And Folly (doctor-like) controlling skill. It is worth noting, that in
none of the various volumes written to show Shakspere’s knowledge
of medicine and medical men, has the truth of this passage been
brought forward in evidence.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/2642013-250722014256-4e9515cc/85/The-Gods-And-Technology-A-Reading-Of-Heidegger-Annotated-Edition-Heidegger-63-320.jpg)
The Gods And Technology A Reading Of Heidegger Annotated Edition Heidegger
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- 5. Richard Rojcewicz The Gods and Technology A Reading of Heidegger Th G d d T h l
- 6. The Gods and Technology
- 7. SUNY series in Theology and Continental Thought Douglas L. Donkel, editor
- 8. The Gods and Technology A Reading of Heidegger Richard Rojcewicz State University of New York Press
- 9. Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2006 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, address State University of New York Press, 194 Washington Avenue, Suite 305, Albany, NY 12210-2384 Production by Diane Ganeles Marketing by Susan M. Petrie Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rojcewicz, Richard. The gods and technology : a reading of Heidegger / Richard Rojcewicz. p. cm. — (SUNY series in theology and continental thought) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-7914-6641-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-7914-6641-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Heidegger, Martin, 1889–1976. 2. Technology—Philosophy. I. Title. II. Series. B3279.H49R625 2005 193—dc22 2005003401 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
- 10. Contents Preface vii Introduction 1 Part I. Ancient Technology 15 The four causes as obligations, as making ready the ground 15 The so-called efficient cause in Aristotle 19 Abetting causality as a reading of Heidegger 29 Letting, active letting, letting all the way to the end 32 Producing, bringing-forth, nature 35 Manufacture and contemplation 40 Bringing-forth as disconcealment 47 Disclosive looking 54 Technology and truth 55 The Greek concept of techne 57 Ancient technological practice as poiesis 65 Part II. Modern Technology 67 Ancient versus modern technology 67 Modern technology as a challenging: the gear and the capacitor 71 Modern technology as an imposition 75 Modern technology as a ravishment 78 Modern technology as a disposing 80 “Disposables” 83 Ge-stell, the “all- encompassing imposition” 90 The essence of modern technology as nothing technological 107 Science as harbinger 111 Science as mediator 118 Causality; modern physics 119 The novelty of modern technology 124 v
- 11. Part III. The Danger in Modern Technology 127 Asking about and asking for 127 Sent destiny, history, chronology 129 Freedom 131 Hastening 139 Doom 140 The danger 141 The highest danger 142 The occultation of poiesis 152 That which might save 153 The sense of essence 156 Enduring 160 Bestowal 164 The essence as something bestowed 166 Bestowal as what might save 168 The mystery 174 The constellation 178 Transition to the question of art 182 Part IV. Art 185 (Metaphysical) aesthetics versus (ontological) philosophy of art 186 Art as most properly poetry 191 Art and the history of Being 201 Art and technology 202 Questioning 207 Part V. Detachment 213 Contemplation; Detachment (Gelassenheit) 214 Openness to the mystery, autochthony, lasting human works 218 Conclusion: phenomenology, improvisation on the piety in art 226 Notes 233 Cited Works of Heidegger 237 Bibliography of Major Secondary Studies 239 Index 241 vi Contents
- 12. Preface This is a lengthy study attempting to reopen and take a fresh look at a brief text in which Martin Heidegger projected a philosophy of tech- nology. What is offered here is a careful and sympathetic reading of that text in its own terms. I do situate Heidegger’s philosophy of technology within his overall philosophical enterprise, and I follow to their end cer- tain paths that lead not infrequently into ancient Greek philosophy and at times into modern physics. Moreover, never far from the surface is the theme of piety, a theme especially characteristic of Heidegger’s later pe- riod; in play throughout this study is what Heidegger sees as the proper human piety with respect to something ascendant over humans, with re- spect to the gods. Nevertheless, the focus remains intensely concentrated, and the goal is neither more nor less than a penetrating exposition of a classic text of twentieth century continental philosophy. That such a reading could be urgent, or even called for at all, might seem highly doubtful today, fifty years after the appearance of “Die Frage nach der Technik.” Has not Heidegger’s philosophy of technology al- ready been exhausted of its resources? Was it not time long ago to pass beyond exposition to judgment, perhaps even—in view of Heidegger’s unsavory political leanings—to dismissal? In any case, surely everyone is already familiar with this philosophy of technology in its own terms: the “Enframing,” the “saving power,” the “objectless standing-reserve,” the “constellation,” the redetermination of the sense of essence as “grant- ing,” and so on and on. Or are all these terms, if they do genuinely ex- press Heidegger’s ideas, still largely undetermined and deserving of closer examination? Have we mastered, not to say surpassed, Heidegger’s phi- losophy of technology, or are all readers of Heidegger, the present one in- cluded, still struggling to come to grips with what is thought there? The modest premise of this book is that the latter is the case. vii
- 13. Thus I do not pretend to speak the last word on Heidegger’s philos- ophy of technology, nor do I even purport to offer the first word—in the sense of a definitive exposition that would set every subsequent discus- sion on sure ground. On the contrary, I merely attempt to take a step closer to the matters genuinely at issue in Heidegger’s thought. In that way, the following pages, even while claiming a certain originality, merge into the general effort of all the secondary literature1 on Heidegger. viii Preface
- 14. Introduction The original turn in the history of philosophy, from pre-Socratic thought to the philosophy of Socrates and of all later Western thinkers, can be understood as a turn from piety to idolatry. In a certain sense, then, Cicero was correct to characterize this turn as one that “called philosophy down from the heavens and relegated it to the cities of men and women.”1 Cicero is usually taken to mean that Socrates inaugurated the tra- dition of humanism in philosophy, the focus on the human subject as what is most worthy of thinking. In contradistinction, the pre-Socratic philosophers were cosmologists; they concerned themselves with the uni- verse as a whole, with the gods, with the ultimate things, “the things in the air and the things below the earth.” Socrates supposedly held it was foolish to inquire into such arcane and superhuman matters and limited himself instead to the properly human things; his questions did not con- cern the gods and the cosmos but precisely men and women and cities. Thus his questions were ethical and political: what is virtue, what is friendship, what is the ideal polity? The Ciceronian characterization, understood along these lines, would have to be rejected as superficial, even altogether erroneous. As for Socrates, he by no means brought philosophy down to earth, if this means that the human world becomes the exclusive subject matter of philosophy. Socrates did not limit his attention to human, moral matters. On the con- trary, even when the ostensible topic of his conversation is some moral issue, Socrates’ aim is always to open up the divine realm, the realm of the Ideas. That is, he is concerned with bringing philosophy, or the human gaze, up to heaven; more specifically, he is occupied with the relation be- tween the things of the earth and the things of heaven. To put it in philo- sophical terms, his concern is to open up the distinction between Being and beings. That is his constant theme, and the ostensible moral topic of dis- cussion is, primarily, only the occasion for the more fundamental meta- physical inquiry. As for all later thinkers, Cicero’s characterization seems even less applicable. The entire tradition of metaphysics, from Aristotle 1
- 15. down to our own times, concerns itself precisely with the things of heaven, with Being itself, and even calls this concern “first philosophy” in contrast to the secondary philosophical interest in men and women and cities. Understood in another sense, however, Cicero’s characterization is perfectly correct. From Socrates on, philosophy is indeed withdrawn from the gods and relegated, completely and utterly, to men and women, with the result that the human being becomes the exclusive subject of phi- losophy. This statement holds, and it expresses the Socratic turn, but only if “subject” here means agent, doer, and not topic, not subject matter. Socrates makes philosophy a purely human accomplishment and Being a passive object. In other words, for the Socratic tradition philosophy is the philosophy “of” Being, or “of” the gods, only in the sense of the genitivus obiectivus; in philosophy Being merely lies there as an object, awaiting human inquiry. This is indeed a turn, since the pre-Socratic view is the pious one that humans, in carrying out philosophy, in disclosing what it means to be, play a deferential role. The proper human role in philosophy is then something like this: not to wrest a disclosure of the gods but to abet and appropriate the gods’ own self-disclosure. While we might be able to see the piety in this pre-Socratic attitude, it will strike us much more forcefully as enigmatic. The turn taken by the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates was the removing of the enigma. The turn taken by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, two and half millennia later, reverses the original one and restores the enigma—as well as the piety. Consider the Socratic versus the pre-Socratic notion of truth. For the Socratic tradition, truth is an unproblematic, though no doubt arduous, human affair. Truth is the product of the human research which wrests in- formation from the things. For the pre-Socratic philosopher, Parmenides, on the contrary, truth is a goddess, one that leads the thinker by the hand. As Heidegger emphasizes, Parmenides does not speak of a goddess of truth, a divine patron of truth, but of truth itself as a goddess: If, however, Parmenides calls the goddess “truth,” then here truth itself is being experienced as a goddess. This might seem strange to us. For in the first place we would consider it extremely odd for thinkers to re- late their thinking to the word of a divine being. It is distinctive of the thinkers who later, i.e., from the time of Plato on, are called “philoso- phers” that their own meditation is the source of their thoughts. Thinkers are indeed decidedly called “thinkers” because, as is said, they think “out of” themselves. . . . Thinkers answer questions they themselves have raised. Thinkers do not proclaim “revelations” from a god. They do not report the inspirations of a goddess. They state their own insights. What then are we to make of a goddess in the “didactic poem” of Parmenides, which brings to words the thoughts of a think- ing whose purity and rigor have never recurred since? (P, 7/5) 2 The Gods and Technology
- 16. That is the sense in which Socrates brought philosophy down to the men and women in the city: he made their own meditation the source of their thoughts. Philosophy becomes a human affair, not in that it becomes primarily ethics and politics, but in the sense that it arises exclusively out of the spontaneity of the human faculty of thinking. Humans are the protag- onists in the search for truth, they take the initiative, they exercise the spon- taneity, they think “out of” themselves, and Being is the passive object. For Parmenides, and the pre-Socratics generally, on the other hand, philosophy is a response to a claim made upon the thinker by something beyond, by a god or goddess, by Being. The pre-Socratic philosopher does not take up the topic of the gods; on the contrary, the gods take up the philosopher. This last statement indeed strikes us as extremely odd, not to say non- sensical, since we recognize no claim coming from beyond and nothing more autonomous than our own subjectivity. Therein lies the idolatry. The post-Socratic view is the narrow, parochial view that humans as such are above all else, are sovereign in their search for knowledge, subject to noth- ing more eminent. This is an idolizing of humanity, a kind of human chau- vinism, our epoch’s most basic and pervasive form of chauvinism. It is humanism properly so-called, and the unrelenting domination of modern technology, which is entirely motivated by it, attests to its pervasiveness. Now Heidegger’s philosophy is emphatically not a humanism, at least not the usual chauvinistic one. For Heidegger, there is something which holds sway over humans, is more eminent, more autonomous, and it would be utterly parochial to regard humans as the prime movers. This applies especially to that most decisive of all accomplishments, the dis- closure of truth. To consider humans the agents of truth, to consider truth a primarily human accomplishment, would amount to hubris, a challenging of the gods, and would draw down an inexorable nemesis. From Socrates on, in Heidegger’s eyes, there has been a “falling away” from the great original outlook,2 a forswearing of the attitude that led to the view of truth as a goddess, and so the entirety of the interven- ing history basically amounts to Ab-fall, apostasy (P, 79/54). For Hei- degger, this apostasy has culminated in metaphysics, humanism, and modern technology, and for him, as we will see, these are all in essence exactly the same. They are merely different expressions of the same human chauvinism. They all understand the human being in terms of sub- jectivity and in particular as the subject, the sovereign subject. For example, metaphysics defines the human being as zwæ on lovgon Ò econ (zoon logon echon), “the animal possessing language.” Heidegger’s quarrel here is not primarily over the words zwæ on and lovgoõ. Those terms do signify something essential, namely that humans are unique among liv- ing beings in enjoying an understanding of what it means to be in general. This understanding is especially manifest in the use of language, inasmuch Introduction 3
- 17. as words are general expressions; they express universals, concepts, essences, the Being of things. Thus to be able to speak is a sign that one is in touch with the realm of Being or, in other words, that one is “in the truth.” To that extent, the metaphysical definition points to something valid and is unobjectionable. The definition goes further, however, and in Heidegger’s eyes it does not simply make the observation that humans enjoy a relation to truth but also stipulates that relation as one of “pos- sessing.” Now that is objectionable to Heidegger, and so his criticism bears on what, to all appearances, is an utterly innocuous word in the definition, Ò ecw, “possess.” To possess is to be the subject, the owner, the master. Heidegger’s concern here is not that the metaphysical definition implies humans are in complete possession of the truth; it does not imply that at all. But the de- finition indeed intends to say that humans are the subjects of whatever truth they do possess. Humans are the possessors of language in the sense that the understanding of the essence of things, and the expression of essences in words, are human accomplishments. Humans have wrested this understanding; it is a result of their own research and insight. Hu- mans are then, as it were, in control as regards the disclosure of truth; hu- mans are the subjects, the agents, the main protagonists, of the disclosure. That is the characteristic stance of metaphysics; metaphysics makes the human being the subject. In other words, the human being is the subject of metaphysics: again, not in the sense of the subject matter, but in the sense of the agent of metaphysics, that which by its own powers accom- plishes metaphysics, wrests the disclosure of truth or Being. From a Heideggerian perspective, the “possessing” spoken of in the metaphysical definition ought to be turned around. Accordingly, Heideg- ger reverses the formula expressing the essence of a human being: from zwæ on lovgon Ò Ò econ to lovgoõ Ò anqrwpon Ò ecwn (EM, 184/137), from humans possessing language to language possessing humans. Humans are not the sovereign possessors, not the subjects of metaphysics, not the primary dis- closers of truth. Instead, humans are the ones to whom truth is disclosed. Referring to the metaphysical definition, Heidegger asks: “Is language something that comes at all under the discretionary power of man? Is language a sheer human accomplishment? Is man a being that possesses language as one of his belongings? Or is it language that ‘possesses’ man and man belongs to language, inasmuch as language first discloses the world to man and thereby [prepares] man’s dwelling in this world?” (PT, 74–5/59) The attitude motivating these questions is the pre-Socratic one whereby the gods (or, equivalently, truth, Being, language, the essence of things in general) hold sway over human subjectivity. The full sense of this holding sway is a nuanced one and will emerge in the course of our study 4 The Gods and Technology
- 18. of Heidegger’s philosophy of technology. It is certain at least that Heideg- ger does not merely reverse the direction of the “possessing” while leav- ing its sense of mastery or domination intact. Nevertheless, for Heidegger, the human powers of disclosure are indeed appropriated by something as- cendant over them, something which discloses itself to humans—or which hesitates to do so. Thus Heidegger makes it clear that the apostasy he finds in history is not human apostasy; it is not a matter of human failing. Humans are not the ultimate subjects of this apostasy; they are not the apostates, the gods are. That is to say, humans have not forsaken the be- ginning, so much as the beginning has forsaken humans. Humans have not foresworn the gods; on the contrary, the gods have on their own ab- sconded from us. Humans have not been unobservant or careless in their pursuit of the truth; instead, the truth has drawn over itself a more impen- etrable veil. Humans do now speak superficially, but not because they have been negligent, have neglected to preserve the strong sense of words; on the contrary, language itself has emasculated the terms in which it speaks to us. Most generally, humans have not overlooked Being, so much as Being has become increasingly reticent in showing itself. These inverted views are altogether characteristic of Heidegger’s philosophy, especially in its later period. His philosophy cannot then but seem countersensical or mystical to someone in the metaphysical tradi- tion. For Heidegger, the human being is not the subject of metaphysics. The prime movers of metaphysics, the main protagonists of the disclosure of what it means to be in general, are the gods or, to speak less metaphor- ically, Being itself. Since metaphysics and modern technology are essen- tially the same, we will see that for Heidegger humans are not the subjects of this technology either; the gods are the prime movers of modern tech- nology and indeed of all technology. Technology is not merely, and not even primarily, a human accomplishment. If humans are, in some way, possessed by language, led to the truth, if they are primarily the receivers rather than the agents of the disclosure of Being, that does nevertheless of course not mean for Heidegger that humans are sheer receivers, utterly passive recipients. Humans do not receive the self- offering of the gods the way softened wax receives the impress of a stamp. Humans make an active contribution to the disclosure of the meaning of Being. Humans co-constitute that disclosure and are co-responsible for it. Humans are therefore called upon to exercise all their disclosive powers; hu- mans must be sensitive, thoughtful, creative, resolute. There is no disclosure of truth without a human contribution, and the genuineness of the disclo- sure depends to some necessary extent upon that contribution. In other words, truth, the goddess, may take the thinker by the hand, but the thinker must actually be a thinker, must actively attempt to disclose the truth, must, as it were, reach out a hand toward the truth for the goddess to take up. Introduction 5
- 19. Heidegger never loses sight of the necessary and necessarily active role humans play in the disclosure of the meaning of Being. Nevertheless, for him the human role remains ancillary, and the primary actor, the pri- mary agent of the disclosure of truth, is Being itself. The proper human role is therefore not to wrest a disclosure of Being but to abet Being’s own self-disclosure. Humans are not the prime movers, and neither are they merely, passively, the moved. Humans are, rather, something like shep- herds or, perhaps better, midwives; they play a creative role within a more general context of receptivity. Heidegger attempts to express this role in the name he proposes as the proper one for humans, when viewed specifically with respect to the disclosure of Being. That name is not “pos- sessor,” but Dasein. This German term is to be understood, in accord with its etymol- ogy, as designating the place, the “there” (da), where a disclosure of Being (Sein) occurs. Taken in this sense, the term is applicable to humans alone, and so it indicates, first of all, the privileged position of humanity. Only humans are Dasein, the “there” of Being. Only to humans is it re- vealed what it means to be in general. Only humans speak. Only humans are in the truth. Furthermore, humans are privileged in the sense that Being, as inherently self-revelatory, needs a place to reveal itself; and so Being can even be said to require humans. Being needs its “there” as a ground just in order to come into its own as Being. These privileges ac- corded to humans, and expressed in the name Dasein, do then mark Hei- degger’s philosophy as a humanism, though not a parochial one. What is most decisive, however, in Heidegger’s understanding of humans as Dasein is the precise meaning of the “there,” the exact sense in which humans are called upon to be the place of a self-revelation of Being. This sense of “there” (as also of da in German) is expressed very nearly in a colloquial use of the word in a context admittedly quite foreign to the present one. In the interpersonal domain, a parent may promise a child, or a lover a beloved, to “be there” always for her or him. That is of course not a promise simply to remain at a certain place in space. Nor, at the other extreme, is it a claim of domination. Instead, it is a promise to be available in a supportive way; it is an offer of constant advocacy and nur- ture. To be “there” in this sense is not to dominate, but neither is it at all passive; it requires an active giving of oneself, a mature commitment of one’s personal powers, all while respecting the other person’s proper au- tonomy. For Heidegger, humans are called on to be Dasein, to be the “there” of Being, in an analogous sense. To be Dasein is to be a place of reception, but not of passive reception. To be Dasein is to be pious, but not obsequiously pious. Being cannot and does not impose itself on hu- mans. To be Dasein is not to take in passively but to abet the self-offering of Being by exercising one’s own disclosive powers. To be Dasein is thus 6 The Gods and Technology
- 20. to be a sort of midwife or ob-stetrician to the self-revelation of Being; it is to “stand there” (ob-stare) in an abetting way. It is thus impossible to be Dasein passively. No one is Dasein sim- ply by occupying a certain place. All receiving (not only of the self- offering of Being) requires some degree of giving, some amount of going out of oneself or active opening of oneself. As regards the human recep- tion of the meaning of Being, Heidegger is calling for the highest possi- ble giving on the part of the receiver, the most dedicated reception, the most active reaching out toward the giver. To be truly Dasein is to be “there” with all one’s might, with full diligence, with the exercise of all one’s disclosive powers. On the other hand, Dasein’s abetting must not be understood as a compelling or even an invoking, to which Being or the gods would re- spond with a self-disclosure. The abetting does not call forth the self- offering of the gods. The gods are always the motivating and never the motivated. They offer themselves, to the extent that they do offer them- selves, on their own initiative and not on account of our reaching out to them. To be Dasein is not to be a supplicant. Thus Heidegger is exhorting humans to be watchful and ready out of his mere hope that Being will return, that another beginning, one rivaling the first, more wholehearted, self-disclosure of the gods, might be at hand. A new beginning will not take place unless humans are ready for it; but human readiness will not cause it. In other terms, to be Dasein is to be theoretical, provided we take “theory” in the original sense, i.e., in the sense of the Greek qewriva (theoria). In Heidegger’s analysis, this word expresses a two-fold look- ing (PS, 63/44; P, 152–160/103–09). The one look, qeva- (théa), ex- presses the “looking” at us of the goddess, qeav (theá), or, in other words, the self-disclosure of the gods, qeoiv (theoi), to us.3 The other look, -ï oravw (horao), refers to our human disclosive looking back upon the gods. Thus to be theoretical, thea-horetical, means to have some insight into the gods, to be in the truth, to understand, more or less, the meaning of Being in general. And that understanding is precisely what is constitutive of Dasein. The decisive moment in theory, however, is not looking as op- posed to other modes of disclosing, e.g., feeling and handling. Theory is not empty speculation, mere gaping. Theory is intimate acquaintance, no matter how acquired; it is only later ages that take theory to be “mere” onlooking, in distinction to real knowledge acquired hands-on. What is decisive in the Greek concept of theory is, rather, the relation between our human disclosive looking and the self-disclosure of the gods, their “looking” at us. Originally, the gods were given the priority. Their self- disclosure was understood as the primary determinant of what we see and that we see: Introduction 7
- 21. The Greeks experience the human look as a “taking up perceptu- ally,” because this look is determined originally on the basis of a look that already takes up man and . . . has the priority. With respect to the [gods’] primordial look, man is “only” the looked upon. This “only,” however, is so essential that man, precisely as the looked upon, is first received and taken up into a relation to Being and is thus led to perceive. (P, 160/108) This passage says that the Greeks experienced themselves as the looked upon, the ones to whom a self-disclosure of Being is addressed, not ones who by their own efforts wrest a disclosure of the meaning of Being. Human looking is not original but is a response—to a more original being-looked-at. Thus the Greeks were not chauvinistic as regards theory. For them, the main protagonists with respect to theory, with respect to the disclosure of truth, or of the meaning of Being, are not humans but the gods. Therefore, according to Heidegger, the word “theory” ulti- mately breaks down into qeav- (“goddess”; specifically, the goddess truth) and -Ò wra (ora, “pious care”). Theory then names not merely a responsive looking back upon the gods but a specifically deferential, solicitous look- ing back. Theory is the “disclosive looking that abets truth” (das hütende Schauen der Wahrheit) (WB, 47/165). To be Dasein and to be theoretical are therefore equivalent—these terms both refer to humans as the “there” of Being, as active, abetting re- ceivers of the self-disclosure of truth. The theoretical is, of course, only one characteristic of humans, but Heidegger’s philosophical concern with humans does not extend beyond it. Heidegger’s is exclusively a first phi- losophy, an ontology, a study of the meaning of Being, and not second philosophy, not philosophical anthropology, not the study of humans as such. Heidegger’s single philosophical theme, which he pursues with un- precedented concentration, is Being (or its avatars, namely, the gods, truth, essence, language, etc.). Only secondarily does Heidegger’s philos- ophy attend to humans, and then only in a restricted way, i.e., merely as Dasein, merely as the “there” of Being, merely as thea-horetical. Heideg- ger thematizes humans only insofar as they relate to the gods, only as privileged places for the self-disclosure of Being. He thematizes the place of access only inasmuch as he is interested in the thing accessed, Being. Heidegger’s philosophy then disregards the full phenomenon of the human being. But that should occasion absolutely no reproach. Heideg- ger does not deny that second philosophy is worthwhile. He simply does not get beyond the more foundational questions, the ones of first philos- ophy; he does not get beyond theory, in the original sense. Then what are we to make of Heidegger’s writings on technology? Technology would seem to be a theme of second philosophy. Indeed, if ever there was a purely human affair, it is technology. Technology is a 8 The Gods and Technology
- 22. matter of human inventiveness, and it is a way humans accomplish prac- tical tasks. Technology seems to be absolutely human and instrumental, rather than god-like and theoretical. Technology has nothing to do with the gods and is not theory but, quite to the contrary, is the practical ap- plication of theory. Technology is concerned simply with ways and means, not with ultimate causes, and certainly not with Being itself. Tech- nology would then seem to have no place in Heidegger’s theoretical phi- losophy of Being. Yet all this merely seems to be so, and for Heidegger the philosophy of technology is actually equivalent to first philosophy, since, for him, technology is nothing other than the knowledge of what it means to be in general. Like all ontological knowledge, technology is ac- complished primarily by the gods, by the self-revelation of Being. Thus, to be Dasein, to be thea-horetical, to be technological, and to be ontolog- ical all mean exactly the same. They all mean to stand in a disclosive relation to Being itself. This concept of technology as theoretical knowledge is not simply a new, idiosyncratic use of the term on Heidegger’s part. Quite to the con- trary, it is a return to the old Greek understanding of techne: What is wonder? What is the basic attitude in which the preserva- tion of the wondrous, the Being of beings, unfolds and comes into its own? We have to seek it in what the Greeks call tevcnh [techne]. We must divorce this Greek word from our familiar term derived from it, “technology,” and from all nexuses of meaning that are thought in the name of technology. . . . Techne does not mean “tech- nology” in the sense of the mechanical ordering of beings, nor does it mean “art” in the sense of mere skill and proficiency in proce- dures and operations. Techne means knowledge. . . . For that is what techne means: to grasp beings as emerging out of themselves in the way they show themselves, in their essence, eidoõ [eidos], ijdeva [idea]. . . . (GP, 178–79/154–155) Heidegger is here identifying techne, in its original sense, with won- der, the basic disposition of philosophy. For Heidegger, individual beings may be astonishing, marvelous, remarkable, but only Being itself is wor- thy of wonder. If techne has to do with wonder, then it is related to Being and to first philosophy. Furthermore, it is in techne, the passage says, that Being comes into its own, i.e., fulfills its self-disclosure. Techne is the human looking back in response to a more primordial “look” or self- disclosure. Thus techne does pertain to the gods; it is thea-horetical. What Heidegger means by “technology” (die Technik), or by the “essence of technology,” is techne in that sense. Technology is then not the application of some more basic knowl- edge but is itself the most basic knowledge, namely, the understanding of Introduction 9
- 23. what it means to be at all. On the other hand, technology itself can be applied. For example, science is an application of modern technology. Science is the research motivated by the self-disclosure of the essence of beings as orderable through calculation. Science presupposes this under- standing of the Being of beings, and so science presupposes modern tech- nology, which is nothing other than the theory of beings as essentially calculable. In turn, science itself can be applied, and that application is- sues in a certain sophisticated manipulation of beings, which is “technol- ogy” in the usual sense, namely, “the mechanical ordering of beings.” Whence arises this theory of beings as orderable through calcula- tion, a theory that leads to science and to modern, high-tech machina- tions? According to Heidegger, “in the essence of techne . . . , as the occurrence and establishment of the unconcealedness of beings, there lies the possibility of imperiousness, of an unbridled imposition of ends, which would accompany the absconding of the [original deferential attitude]” (GP, 180/155). Modern technology accompanies the absconding of the original at- titude. Modern technology is not the cause of the absconding but is sim- ply the most visible aftermath of that withdrawal. Modern technology is the theory that is motivated when humans no longer experience them- selves as the looked upon. In other words, when the gods abscond, when they look upon humans not wholeheartedly but reticently, then human disclosive looking presents itself as autonomous, as subject to nothing of greater autonomy. An imperious theory thereby fills the void left by the deferential one, hubris replaces piety, unbridled imposition supplants re- spectful abetting, and the understanding of humans as possessors dis- places the one of humans as Dasein. Humans thereby become subjects, the sovereign, imperious subjects. The theory of beings as orderable through calculation is a correlate of this imperiousness: to be imperious is precisely to take beings as submissive to an ordering imposed by humans. The imperiousness of modern technology is therefore evidence of the self- withholding of the gods, and it is as such that Heidegger takes up modern technology. He pursues the philosophy of technology out of his interest in the relation between humans and the gods, i.e., out of his sole interest in the disclosure of the meaning of Being. Consequently, Heidegger’s phi- losophy of technology is an exercise in first philosophy. According to Heidegger, history has seen two basic forms of tech- nology, two theories of the essence of beings in general, namely, ancient technology and modern technology. The history of these theories, the gradual supplanting of the first by the second, is grounded not in au- tonomous human choices but in what is for Heidegger a history of Being, namely a relative absconding of the gods after their original, more whole- hearted, self-disclosure. The history of technology is thus, fundamentally, 10 The Gods and Technology
- 24. a history of Being. The latter history is the domain of the autonomous events, and these motivate a certain technology, a certain outlook on the essential possibilities of beings, which in turn issues in a certain practice with regard to those beings. The practice that arose from the earlier the- ory was ancient handcraft, whereas modern, high-tech machinations de- rive from the subsequent technology. The essential difference in the two practices, however, does not lie in the sophistication of the means em- ployed; that is, the difference is not that one practice uses simple hand tools, and the other one high-tech devices. The essential difference resides in the theory, in the attitude that underlies the use of the means: namely, a pious attitude toward the object of the practice, versus an imperious, hubristic, “unbridled imposition of ends.” By way of a preliminary illus- tration, let us consider counseling and farming, two practices offered by Aristotle as paradigms of the so-called efficient cause. The ancient farmer and the ancient counselor were midwives. They respected the object to which their practice was directed, and their cre- ative activity amounted merely to finding ingenious ways of letting this object come into its own. Thus the ancient farmer respected the seed and merely nursed it toward its own end. This “mere” nursing, of course, is not at all passive; farming requires intelligent, hard work. As to counsel- ing, the prime example is, significantly, a father counseling his child, ac- cording to Aristotle. Counseling used to respect the one to be counseled and so required intimate acquaintance, such as a father might have of his child. Counseling took direction from the one counseled, took its end from the counseled, and was thereby a matter of “mere” rousing or abet- ting, instead of imposing. In contrast, today’s farming and counseling are imperious; they are unbridled in imposing their own ends. Farming is becoming more and more not a respect for the seed but a genetic manipulation of it, a forcing of the seed into the farmer’s own predetermined ends. And counseling is being degraded into a casual dispensing of psychopharmaceuticals to al- most complete strangers. Instead of respecting the counseled, counseling now imposes the counselor’s own ends on the other. Farming and coun- seling have indeed today become “efficient causes,” impositional causes, but they were not so for Aristotle. In Heidegger’s view, it is not because high-tech drugs are available that modern counseling looks upon the counseled as an object to be im- posed on. On the contrary, it is because the object is already disclosed as a patient, as something meant to undergo (pati) the imposition of the agent, that we are motivated to synthesize those drugs in the first place. Modern counseling is not impositional because it uses high-tech drugs; in- stead, it summons up such drugs because it is already impositional in out- look. More generally, modern technology does not disrespect the things Introduction 11
- 25. of nature because it uses impositional devices. On the contrary, the dis- closure of nature as something to be disrespected and imposed on is what first calls up the production of those devices. Things do now look as if they were subject to our unbridled imposition of ends, but that is not be- cause we now possess the means to impose our will on them. On the con- trary, it was our view of ourselves as unbridled imposers that first motivated the fabrication of those means. It is the imperious theory that calls up the imperious means, and it is precisely this theory, and not the practice or the means, that embodies a challenging of the gods. It is as a theory that modern technology harbors the threat of nemesis. For Heidegger, the prime danger of our epoch does emphatically not lie in the effects of modern technology, in high-tech things. In other words, the prime danger is not that technological things might get out of hand, that genetically manipulated crops might cause cancer, that labo- ratory-created life-forms might wreak havoc on their creators, or that hu- mans might annihilate themselves in an accidental nuclear disaster. Something even more tragic is imminent; human beings are not so much in danger of losing their lives as they are in danger of losing their free- dom, wherein lies their human dignity. That is the disintegration which accompanies arrogance. It is a threat deriving from the essence of tech- nology, from the theory of ourselves as unbridled imposers and of nature as there to be imposed on. This theory, according to Heidegger, places humans on the brink of a precipice. It is bound to bring disillusionment, most basically since it will eventually become obvious that humans, too, are part of nature and so are themselves subject to the same impositional causality they claimed to be the agents of. Then humans will view themselves as outcomes of en- vironmental forces over which they have no control whatsoever. If impo- sition presents itself as the only possible mode of causality, then humans will either be the imposers or the imposed on, the controllers or the con- trolled. In either case, humans will be oblivious to genuine human free- dom, unaware of the threats to that freedom, and therefore unable to protect it. The nemesis would then be to become enslaved to the very technology that promised freedom. Heidegger’s first philosophy is indeed concerned with obviating this slavery, and so, again, it can be called a humanism, though not an idolizing one. The antidote to the danger of modern technology, according to Hei- degger, is a return to ancient technology or, more precisely, to the essence of ancient technology. That is to say, Heidegger is not at all urging a re- turn to the practice of ancient handcraft; he is not advocating an aban- donment of power tools or high-tech things; he is not a romantic Luddite. But he is advocating the pious, respectful outlook, the nonchauvinistic theory, which is precisely the essence of ancient technology. In that the- 12 The Gods and Technology
- 26. ory, human freedom does not amount to imposition but to abetting, nur- turing, actively playing the role of Da-sein. Ancient technology is the the- ory of abetting causality, and it is that theory, rather than the practice of handcraft, that Heidegger sees as possessing saving power. Theory is for Heidegger, to repeat, primarily a matter of the self- disclosure (or self-withholding) of truth or Being.4 Thus a particular the- ory is not to be achieved by sheer human will power, and Heidegger is not, strictly speaking, urging us to adopt the ancient outlook. He is not urging humans to seize this viewpoint as much as he is hoping that it might bestow itself once again. That will indeed not come to pass without our abetting, and we need to prepare ourselves for its possible bestowal. Indeed, the preparation, the waiting, advocated by Heidegger will de- mand what he calls the most “strenuous exertions.” The proper human waiting is not at all passive. Nevertheless, the other beginning, the return of the ancient attitude, is primarily in the hands of the gods. It will arrive, if it does arrive, primarily as a gift of the gods. That is the meaning of Heidegger’s famous claim that “Only a god can save us.” And it is also the theme of his philosophy of technology. All the above is, of course, only meant as a thread of Ariadne; it is obviously abstract and merely programmatic. My task is to bring it to life. That I propose to do through a close reading of the principal state- ment of Heidegger’s thinking on technology, his essay, “Die Frage nach der Technik,” first delivered as a lecture in 1953.5 Since Heidegger’s time, a great deal of ink has been spilled over the philosophy of technology, but his work remains unsurpassed—indeed unequalled—in its radicality, in its penetration down to the root, the essence, of technology. “Die Frage nach der Technik” is carefully crafted; it is highly pol- ished and follows a path that has been well staked out. At the very outset, Heidegger insists on the importance of this path. Heidegger likes to ap- peal to the image of meandering country lanes when describing the course of thinking, but here the path is practically a straight road. There are in- deed a few side paths that need to be pursued, but the main directional- ity is clear and intelligible. By following it, my commentary will receive its own intelligible organization and will begin accordingly with ancient technology, approached through the correspondent Greek understanding of causality. Part II will then be devoted to Heidegger’s characterization of the essence of modern technology and of the role played by science in manifesting that essence. For Heidegger, however, the task is not simply to characterize the essence of modern technology but to prepare for a proper relation to that essence. The preparation requires that we first see the danger in modern technology (Part III). Heidegger then proposes art Introduction 13
- 27. and, specifically, poetry as that which might save us from the danger, and the connection between art and the saving gods will have to be drawn out (Part IV). Finally, Part V will suggest a sympathetic response to Heideg- ger’s philosophy of technology. His essay is, so to speak, open-ended. It issues in an invitation and needs to be carried on; I will thus conclude by asking about the most proper response to that invitation. Here the guide will be Heidegger himself, who, in another of his writings, proposed con- templative thinking and a certain form of detachment (Gelassenheit) as the activities, the strenuous exertions, to be practiced in response to the danger of modern technology. In the end, I hope to show that this re- sponse, which would produce a genuinely “lasting human work,” namely, the safeguarding of human freedom, and would prepare for a re- turn of the gods, should they indeed be willing to offer us a clearer view of themselves once again, is, most concretely, an improvisation on the example of piety still manifest in art. 14 The Gods and Technology
- 28. 15 Part I Ancient Technology It is especially significant, in Heidegger’s eyes, that the epoch of an- cient technology coincides with the time of the theory of the four causes. Indeed, for Heidegger, the distinctive outlook of ancient technology found its most explicit expression in that theory. Where causality is un- derstood as it is in the theory of the four causes, there ancient technology reigns. Ancient technology, in essence, is the theory of the four causes; an- cient technology is the disclosure of things in general as subject to the four causes. Heidegger’s path to an understanding of ancient technology thus proceeds by way of the sense of the causality of the four causes. In particular, the delineation of ancient technology in “Die Frage nach der Technik” turns on the sense of the four causes in the locus classicus of that theory, Aristotle’s Physics. The four causes as obligations, as making ready the ground Heidegger begins by repeating the names and the common way of viewing the four causes of change or motion. It is well known that the four causes are the matter, the form, the agent (or efficient cause), and the end or purpose (the final cause). The prototypical example is a statue. What are the causes of the coming into existence of a statue? First, the matter, the marble, is a cause as that which is to receive the form of the statue. The shape or form (e.g., the shape of a horse and rider) is a cause as that which is to be imposed on the marble. The sculptor himself is the efficient cause, the agent who does the imposing of the form onto the matter. And the purpose, the honoring of a general, is a cause as the end toward which the entire process of making a statue is directed. All this is well known, indeed too well known. It has become a facile dogma and bars the way to the gen- uine sense of causality as understood by the ancients.
- 29. Heidegger maintains that the ancients did in fact not mean by “cause” what we today mean by the term. Thus Heidegger’s interpretation of the doctrine of the four causes is a radical one: it strikes down to the root, to the basic understanding of causality that underlies the promulga- tion of the four causes. Yet, Heidegger’s position is not at first sight so very profound, since three of the causes, the matter, the form, and the end or purpose, are most obviously not what we mean today by causes. We would today hardly call the marble the cause of the statue, so there must of course have been a different notion of causality operative in Aristotle, or, at least, Aristotle must have had a much broader notion than we do. Our contemporary understanding of causality basically amounts to this: a cause is what, by its own agency, produces an effect. Hence, for us, the cause of the chalice is not the silver but the artisan who imposes on the silver the form of the chalice. The silversmith herself is, for us, the one responsible for the chalice. She is the only proper cause of the chalice, since it is by her own agency, her own efficacy, that the thing is produced; the chalice is her product, and we even call it her “creation.” Accord- ingly, the silversmith herself takes credit for the chalice; that is what is meant by saying that she is the one “responsible” for the chalice. She an- swers for it; it is entirely her doing, and she deserves the credit. For us, the silver is merely the raw material upon which the agent works; the silver does nothing, effects nothing, does not at all turn itself into a chalice. Therefore we do not think of the matter as a cause. The matter merely undergoes the action of the other, the agent; it is the patient, that which suffers or undergoes the activity of the agent. The matter does not impose the form of a chalice onto itself. The matter imposes nothing; on the con- trary, it is precisely imposed upon. The matter is entirely passive; in the terms of the traditional understanding of the Aristotelian four causes, matter plays the role of sheer potentiality. It has no determinations of its own but is instead the mere passive recipient of the determinations im- posed upon it. As utterly passive, the matter would not today be consid- ered a cause. A thing is a cause by virtue of its actuality, and matter is precisely what lacks all actuality of its own. The matter is thus not re- sponsible for what is done to it and does not receive the credit or take the blame for the forms some external agent has imposed upon it. The mat- ter is therefore the complete antithesis of what we mean today by cause. In fact, only one of the four causes, the so-called efficient cause, would today be recognized as a cause. The common interpretation of Aristotle, then, is that he did include in his theory what we mean by cause, but that is to be found only in his concept of the efficient cause. Aristotle, however, also included other factors of change or motion (the matter, the form, and the end) under an expanded concept of cause. On this understanding, the concept of cause is therefore not a univocal one in 16 The Gods and Technology
- 30. Aristotle: the silversmith and the silver are not causes in the same sense. They do both contribute to the chalice, but the one acts and the other is acted upon; these may conceivably both be called causes, but only the ef- ficient cause is a cause in the proper sense. The silver is a cause in some other, improper sense, a sense we today feel no need to include under our concept of cause. Heidegger’s position is that for Aristotle the four causes are all causes in the same sense. And that sense does not correspond to anything we today call a cause. In particular, Aristotle’s so-called efficient cause is not in fact what we today mean by cause; that is, what Aristotle speaks of cannot rightfully be called an efficient cause: “The silversmith does not act . . . as a causa efficiens. Aristotle’s theory neither knows the cause that would bear this title nor does it use a correspondent Greek term for such a cause” (FT, 11/8). This says that even the so-called efficient cause is not understood by Aristotle and the Greeks as the responsible agent, as something that pro- duces an effect by its own agency. The Greeks do not know the concept of efficacy or agency as that which imposes a form onto a matter. Corre- spondingly, change or motion does not mean for the Greeks the imposi- tion of a form onto a matter by an external agent. Furthermore, since change is not the imposition of a form, ancient technology will not be an affair of imposition either. What then exactly does Aristotle understand by a cause, such that all four causes can be causes in the same sense? In particular, how can both the silver and the silversmith be included in the same sense of cause? According to Heidegger, in the first place, the Aristotelian distinction be- tween the matter and the agent is not the distinction between passivity and activity. Aristotle did not understand the matter as entirely passive nor the maker as entirely active. In other words, the matter is not that which is imposed upon, and the maker is not that which does the impos- ing. To put it in a preliminary way, we might say that the matter actively participates in the choice of the form; the matter suggests a form to the craftsman, and the craftsman takes direction from that proffered form. Accordingly, the matter is already pregnant with a form and the role of the craftsman is the role of the midwife assisting that form to come to birth. Instead of an imposed upon and an imposer, we have here some- thing like a mutual participation in a common venture, a partnership where the roles of activity and passivity are entirely intermingled. Heidegger expresses this interpretation of causality by saying that the causes are for Aristotle the conditions to which the produced thing is obliged. Obligation is the one common concept by which all four causes are causes in the same sense. The thing produced is indeed obliged to the various conditions for something different in each case, but the general Part I: Ancient Technology 17
- 31. relation of obligation is the same. What then does Heidegger mean by obligation in this context? Heidegger’s German term is Verschulden. This word has a wide range of meanings, but it is only one particular nuance that is invoked here. The term is derived from the ordinary German word for “guilt,” die Schuld. Therefore Heidegger has to say explicitly that he does not mean moral oblig- ation in the sense of being guilty for some lapse or failure. Furthermore, the term Verschulden also possesses the connotation of “responsibility.” Again Heidegger rejects this sense: he does not mean here responsible agent, that which brings about an effect by its own agency and so personally takes the credit for that effect. We might say, then, that what Heidegger rejects is both the passive (being guilty for some failure) and the active (responsibility as ef- fective agent) meanings. The sense he is invoking will in a certain manner lie between, or partake of both, activity and passivity. Perhaps the nuance Heidegger is seeking is expressed in our collo- quial expression of gratitude, “Much obliged.” What do we mean when we say to another person that we are much obliged to him or her? We mean that that other person has fostered us in some way or other. Specif- ically, we do not mean that we owe everything to that other person, that that other person created us, but only that he or she has “helped us along.” The other person has not been so active as to bear the entire re- sponsibility for what we have done or have become, nor has the other per- son been totally passive. The other, in a certain sense, has neither acted nor failed to act. Our being obliged to the other amounts, instead, to this: he or she has provided for us the conditions out of which we could accom- plish what we did accomplish, i.e., the conditions out of which our own accomplishment could come forth. We are much obliged to another not for creation, or for taking away our accomplishment by accomplishing it himself or herself, but for abetting us in our own accomplishment. That is the nuance Heidegger is trying to express: the four causes are ways of abetting. The thing produced is obliged to the four causes in the sense that the causes provide the conditions, the nurture, out of which the thing can come forth. The causes make it possible for the thing to emerge out in the open, the causes may even coax the thing out, but they do not force it out. The causes are not “personally” responsible for the thing: that means the causes do not effect the thing by their own agency, by external force. All the causes do is to provide the proper conditions, the nourishment, the abetting, required by the thing in order to fulfill its own potential. The causes do not impose that fulfillment, do not force the desired form onto the thing, they merely let that fulfillment come forth, in the active sense of letting, namely abetting. Thus the fundamental difference between Aristotle’s understanding of cause and our current understanding is that between nurture and force, let- ting and constraint, abetting and compulsion. That is why for Aristotle there 18 The Gods and Technology
- 32. can be four causes and for us there is only one. A chalice can be obliged to the matter, the silver, but cannot be forced into existence by it. If causality is force, then there is only one cause—since the force must be applied by an active agent. If, instead, causality means nurturing, then not only the crafts- man, but also the matter, the form, and the purpose may all be causes—by way of providing required conditions. These each provide a different condi- tion, but the sense of their causality is the same: i.e., precisely the sense of abetting or nurture, of providing a favorable condition. The four causes, therefore, are all causes by virtue of being obligations of the thing produced; it is “much obliged” to all four of them. But the thing has no efficient cause in the sense of an external agent to which it owes everything, by which it was compelled into existence. Nothing external forced it into existence, but it did receive assistance in coming to its own self-emergence. That is Heidegger’s radical understanding of the doctrine of the four causes: the causality of each of the causes, including the so-called efficient cause, is a matter of abetting only, not imposition. Two general questions immediately arise regarding this reading. In the first place, where in Aristotle does Heidegger find this understanding of causality; i.e., what is the textual basis in the Aristotelian corpus for Heidegger’s interpretation? Secondly, where in Heidegger do I find that this is in fact his understanding; i.e., what is the textual basis in Heideg- ger for this interpretation of Aristotle? These questions arise because the answers are by no means obvious, especially to anything less than the closest possible reading. The so-called efficient cause in Aristotle Let us begin with Aristotle. Heidegger simply does not say where in the Stagirite he finds this understanding of causality as abetting. We therefore need to look for ourselves and see if Heidegger’s interpreta- tion is borne out. Since the central issue is the way of understanding the so-called efficient cause, we will make that cause the focus of our inquiry. If the “efficient” cause amounts to abetting, then the others do a fortiori. As we read the passages in Aristotle’s Physics where this cause is in question, we immediately notice that Heidegger was right about one thing at least, namely that the Stagirite does not at all use the term “effi- cient cause.” In fact, Aristotle hardly gives this cause a name at all; any translation that settles on a definite name, such as “efficient cause,” is merely an interpretation, one which may or may not capture the proper sense. I shall myself propose a name for this cause, but the name must come only after the attempt to grasp the sense. At the start, a defining name would merely prejudice the inquiry. Part I: Ancient Technology 19
- 33. In Book II of the Physics, Chapters 3 and 7, Aristotle designates this so-called efficient cause seven times. The designation is somewhat differ- ent each time, but there is one key word that occurs in a majority of the formulations. This word is not really a name, or, if it is, it is the most in- determinate name possible. That is to say, the word leaves the determi- nation of the nature of this cause open; it only points out the direction in which to look for the proper determination. This word, which is Aris- totle’s most characteristic way of referring to the so-called efficient cause, is in fact not a name, a noun, but a relative adverb used substantively. The word is o Óqen (hothen), a simple term which means, as a substantive, “that from which” or “the whence.” Aristotle’s various designations then become variations on the no- tion of this cause as “the whence of the movement” (195a8). For exam- ple, it is called “the first whence of the movement” (198a27), “the whence from which arises the first beginning of the change” (194b30), and “that whence the beginning of the change emerges” (195a23). By calling this cause merely “the whence,” Aristotle indicates where we are to look for it, namely by following the motion to its source. But nothing is thereby determined as to how the source is to be understood. That is, it is not stipulated in advance how the motion proceeds from its source; in particular, it is not said that the source is the efficient cause of the change or motion. Our inquiry into the nature of causality in Aristotle therefore cannot stop at these designations; they are entirely open. Aristotle also provides three designations (198a19, a24, a33) which do not employ the word “whence.” We find there instead something closer to a proper name, namely the term kinh san (kinesan). Yet it is quite uncertain how this word is to be taken. It is the neuter aorist participle de- rived from the verb meaning “to move, set agoing, stir up, arouse, urge on, call forth.” The word kinh san thus actually expresses little more than “the whence”; it means in the most literal and neutral sense, “the first setting into motion” or “that from which the motion first derived.” The word then actually adds nothing to the initial designation as the whence, since it also leaves undetermined how the whence is related to the motion. It cer- tainly does not say that the whence is the efficient cause of the motion, that the whence is a force imposing the motion. As far as the name goes, this cause is simply, in some way or another, at the head of the motion, the source of the motion. But a thing may be a source of motion in many dif- ferent senses; for example, a thing may impose the motion or merely arouse it, urge it on. The efficient cause, properly so called, is a source in the former sense; it effects or imposes motion by its own agency. Accord- ing to Heidegger, however, the proper sense of causality in Aristotle is the latter one: not efficiency (imposition by one’s own agency), but abetting, fostering, encouraging, arousing. Since the name does not determine the 20 The Gods and Technology
- 34. issue one way or another, however, we shall have to have recourse to the actual examples Aristotle provides. It is precisely in his choice of examples that Aristotle expresses his sense of causality, his sense of the “whence.” Aristotle provides three main sets of examples of this cause. In the first introduction of it as the whence or the source of the motion, Aris- totle explains himself as follows: “For instance, counseling is this kind of cause, such as a father counsels his son, and, on the whole, the maker is this kind of cause of the thing made” (194b31). The second set of ex- amples occurs a few lines down: “The sower of seeds, the doctor, the counselor, and, on the whole, the maker, are all things whence the be- ginning of a change emerges” (195a22). The final example is introduced when this cause is called the first kinh san, “the first setting into mo- tion.” Aristotle illustrates: “For instance, why did they go to war? Because of the abduction” (198a19). These are the examples from which we have to gather the sense of the causality that has come to be called—but not by Aristotle himself— “efficient causality.” The paradigm case of such causality was taken—after Aristotle’s death—to be the maker, the craftsman, and, very often, in par- ticular the sculptor. The other instances of this type of cause, for example, counseling, were indeed always recognized as belonging within efficient causality but as derived forms, remote ones, ones to be understood by ref- erence to the paradigm case. The pure case is the sculptor, the one who, as it seems, by himself imposes a form onto a matter. We see from Aristotle’s examples, however, that such a maker is not at all the Stagirite’s own paradigm case. He does not place the maker first; and we may suppose that Aristotle does place first that which deserves the first place, that which is the prime instance. In fact, Aristotle suggests that the maker belongs to the list of examples only if we speak roughly, gener- ally, on the whole. The maker is the derived form, and the pure cases, the paradigms, are counseling, sowing, doctoring, and abducting. Now it is only in one particular sense that these can be called “the whence” of the motion: they are that which rouses up the motion, or re- leases the motion, but not that which produces motion by its own efficacy or agency. To counsel someone is not to force him or her into action; it is not to be the agent of the action, for that remains the other’s action. Nor, of course, is it to do nothing; it is to encourage the other, urge her on, rouse her up. To counsel is to appeal to the freedom of the other, not to usurp that freedom. For Heidegger, counseling, in its genuine sense, is equivalent to caring: In the word “counsel,” we now hear only the more superficial, utili- tarian meaning of counsel: giving advice, i.e., giving practical direc- tives. In the proper sense, however, to give counsel means to take Part I: Ancient Technology 21
- 35. into care, to retain in care that which is cared for, and thus to found an affiliation. Ordinarily, to give counsel means almost the opposite: to impart a directive [or, today, to prescribe a psychoactive drug] and then dismiss the one who has been counseled. (HI, 41/34) If Heidegger is correct, then Aristotle’s example of the father as a counselor is especially well chosen. The father is precisely the counselor who takes the counseled one into his care, retains him in care, and never dismisses him. The father is the prototype of the counselor, so much so that to be a counselor is to be a father, and vice versa: to be a father is not simply to beget an offspring but to care for him (or her), raise him, coun- sel him, and so beget another man. Thus for Aristotle, a father, as a man who begets a man, is a cause of the type under consideration. But that does not make the father an efficient cause. On the contrary, “to beget a man” must be taken in its full sense: to beget a real man, a fully devel- oped man, and that requires care, affiliation, counsel, all of which are matters not of force but of nurture. Thus a man is not the efficient cause of another man but the nurturing cause.1 To consider for a moment Aristotle’s other examples, sowing seed obviously does not make the corn grow in the sense of forcing the corn up. Corn cannot be forced. To sow seed is merely to provide the right conditions for the corn to arise. To sow is, in a sense, to encourage the corn to grow, to call it forth into action, to release its potential for growth, but it is not to bring about that action by one’s own agency. The corn has to have it in itself to grow, or else sowing and nurturing will be of no avail. Sowing is thus not an efficient cause; it does not impose growth but only prepares or abets it. Likewise, doctors (at least the doctors of Aristotle’s time) do not cause health by their own agency. The doctor merely prescribes the right conditions for the body’s natural health to reassert itself. Nature heals; the doctor is only the midwife to health. Aristotle’s example of doctoring is then not an example of efficient causality but of abetting causality. In a perfectly analogous way, an abduction is not an efficient cause of war; it does not by itself force the offended parties to declare war. All it does is rouse them, stir them up, or perhaps merely release their latent hostility, but they themselves freely respond to this perceived provocation by going to war—or not. It is then clear that Aristotle’s paradigm examples of this kind of cause are by no means instances of imposing a form onto a submissive matter. For Aristotle, this so-called efficient cause is in fact not the re- sponsible agent, the one which, supposedly, by its own efficacy brings about the effect. This cause is not an efficient cause but instead, as Aris- totle’s examples make very plain, a cause that is efficacious only by act- 22 The Gods and Technology
- 36. ing in partnership with that upon which it acts. There must be some change or product latent in the matter, and this cause amounts to assist- ing that change or product to come to fruition by releasing it or arousing it. Without the cooperation of the matter—i.e., without the potential for activity on the part of the matter—the efficacy of this cause would come to naught. Since this cause amounts to a releasing, there must be some la- tent activity to be released. Or, in terms of rousing, this cause requires some counterpart which can be roused. The point is that this cause does require a genuine counterpart, a genuine sharer in a common venture; both parties must be agents, both must play an active role. An efficient cause may perhaps impose a form onto a passive stone, but Aristotle’s ex- amples point in the direction of abetting, and that requires another agent rather than a patient. Abetting is directed at something that can actively take up the proffered aid, not at something that would passively undergo a compelling force. In Aristotle’s paradigm examples, the roles of activity and passivity are entirely intermingled. They are instances of genuine partnerships in which each party is both active and passive; each party gives direction to and takes direction from the other, and it is ordinarily extremely difficult to say on which side the absolutely first action lies. Consider the case of the abduction and the war. Is the abduction merely a pretext for going to war, or is it a genuine provocation, a genuine motive? That is, which side begins the war? It would be almost impossible to say, since there is no such thing as a provocation or a motive in itself. A motive obtains its mo- tivating force only by means of the decision made by the motivated per- son to recognize it as a motive. A motive is nothing if it is not accepted as a motive. Nor is any action in itself a provocation; even an abduction becomes an abduction, i.e., a provocation, only if it is taken as such by the provoked party. Thus it is the reaction to the abduction that first makes it be an abduction properly so called (and not a neutral picking up and transporting). A provocation becomes a provocation only when the provoked party confirms that it has been provoked. When will the provo- cation be sufficiently grievous to call for war? Precisely when, by declar- ing war, the offended party takes it as sufficiently grievous. In other words, it is the declaration of war that makes the provocation a provo- cation, and we could say that the war makes the provocation as much as the provocation makes the war. Thus it is impossible to provoke into war a nation that refuses to be so provoked, and provocation can therefore not be an efficient cause of a war. It can only be a rousing cause, one which merely, as Shakespeare says, “wakens the sleeping sword of war.” Only what is sleeping—i.e., potentially awake—can be wakened; waken- ing cannot be imposed on something that lacks the potential for it. The ones provoked into war, then, must be both passive and active; they must Part I: Ancient Technology 23
- 37. be presented with an occasion to make war, and they must actively take up that occasion and make it effective as a motive for war. The same activity and passivity are to be found on the side of the provokers. What shall they do to provoke their enemies into war? Indeed they will have to act in some way or other. In one sense, then, they begin the war; they take the first step, and they are the source of all the motion which is the war. But in another sense, they take direction from their en- emies, and their action is in reality a response to their enemies. Thus they are not the absolutely first beginners of the war. They take direction from their enemies in the sense that their provocative act must spring from a knowledge of their enemies. Their provocative act must be appropriate to their enemies. For example, whom shall they choose to abduct, or how many do they need to abduct? If they wish to start a war, they must know exactly how far their enemies can be pushed before those enemies will consider themselves sufficiently provoked to engage in hostilities. Thus the provokers are responding to their enemies as well as acting on them. Abetting, too, presupposes such a genuine partnership, where activ- ity and passivity occur on both sides. Abetting is not an efficient cause, where all the agency lies on the one side and all the passivity on the other. In the first place, it is obvious that, by itself, abetting or nurturing is noth- ing. That is, it is nothing to one who cannot respond to the abetting; it is not possible to counsel a stone. For there to be abetting, there must be ac- tivity on the part of both the abetter and the abetted. Likewise, there must be passivity on both parts; the abetted has to receive the abetting, but the abetting has to be appropriate. That is, the abetters have to receive direc- tion from the possibilities of development on the part of the abetted. Counseling is a prime example of this intermingling of activity and passivity. The counselor has to take direction from the one she is coun- seling, as much as she has to give direction to him. That is why Aristotle’s example of the father counseling his own child is, again, very happily chosen. The counselor must know intimately the one she is to counsel. The counseling must be appropriate to the one counseled, which is to say that it must not only be directed to the counseled but must take direction from the counseled. Thus the counseled rouses up the counseling nearly as much as the counseling rouses up the counseled, and it is extremely difficult to say on which side lies the absolutely first beginning, the abso- lutely first whence. Perhaps this peculiar intermingling of activity and passivity, agent and patient, directing and directed, is the reason Aristotle’s formulations of this cause become so convoluted. For instance, while he begins by ask- ing simply about the whence or the source of the motion, he comes to for- mulate this cause as “the whence from which arises the first beginning of the change” or “that whence the first beginning emerges.” In other words, 24 The Gods and Technology
- 38. Aristotle comes to ask not merely about the first source but about the source of that source. In seeking the whence of the first beginning, Aris- totle is thus seeking the beginning of the beginning or the whence of the whence, an inquiry that obviously would keep getting deferred to an ear- lier whence. There is no absolute, definitive first whence—that is what is expressed in Aristotle’s reflexive formulations of this cause. Now I main- tain that there is reflexivity in these formulations precisely because there is reciprocity in the cause that abets. That cause does indeed have a whence of its own, since it must be appropriate to that which it abets, i.e., must re- ceive its direction from the object’s possibilities of being abetted. If the whence amounts to rousing or releasing rather than imposing, then to speak of the whence does inexorably lead to speaking of the whence of the whence. That is, it leads to the necessary partnership between the rousing and the aroused, in which the cause relates not to a passive matter but to an active one, whose possibilities of action must be taken into account by the rousing agent. With a rousing cause, it is well-nigh impossible to de- termine the absolutely first source of the action, since the actor and the acted upon are mutually implicatory and take direction from one another. The counselor has to take counsel from the counseled, and the motive has to take its motivating power from the motivated. Is it the nurturing that calls forth the nurtured, or the nurtured that directs the nurturing? The an- swer is both, and thus neither one is absolutely first, which therefore ac- counts for the reflexivity in Aristotle’s formulations of the whence, where the whence gets deferred into a prior whence. By posing the question of the cause the way he does, Aristotle is suggesting that there is reflexivity or partnership in this cause. Thus both Aristotle’s examples and his very for- mulation of this cause indicate that he does not mean an efficient cause but a rousing or nurturing cause. Yet even if Aristotle’s paradigm examples do involve a partnership, an abetting, which prevents us from taking the sense of causality in play there as efficient causality, nevertheless Aristotle also includes the maker in his examples. Then what about the maker, the artisan, the sculptor? Is such a one an efficient cause, or is she to be understood in the sense of a nurturing cause, as in the paradigm cases? Is there the same partnership between the artisan and her material? Does the maker impose a form onto the matter, or does the matter impose a form onto her? Who or what determines the form of the sculpture: the marble or the sculptor? Today, by means of lasers, practically any form may be imposed onto any matter. A laser beam is indifferent to the matter; nothing can stop a laser from its predetermined, preprogrammed efficacy. The matter makes no difference to a laser, and it, or its program, is the absolute first whence, the absolute beginning of the motion or change. Here we encounter an efficient cause in its pure state. Part I: Ancient Technology 25
- 39. But let us take a traditional sculptor, such as Michelangelo. Is he to be understood as an efficient cause or, rather, as a midwife? That is to say, does he impose a form onto a submissive matter, or does he take di- rection from the matter and merely assist at the birth of the statue with which the particular block of marble is already pregnant? We have Michelangelo’s own testimony that the latter is the case. He claimed that the task of a sculptor is merely to chisel away the extraneous bits of mar- ble so as to expose the statue already present within. The sculptor, in other words, does not impose form, he merely allows the form to emerge by releasing it. He takes direction from the marble, determining what the marble itself wants, as it were, to bring forth. His activity is then to nur- ture that form into existence. He is so little an efficient cause that it is im- possible to say whether his action calls forth the statue or the latent statue calls forth his activity. In this way, the maker, the artisan, the supposed paradigm of an ef- ficient cause, can be understood as a derived form of the paradigm case of the abetting cause. An artisan can be understood as a midwife rather than an imposer. If we think of any maker or craftsman not as a laser beam but as a Michelangelo, as a respecter of the material on which she works, then the maker is not an efficient cause but is instead, like the counselor, a nurturer, an abetter. That is precisely Heidegger’s interpretation of an- cient causality; for the ancients, to be a cause meant to respect and abet. Furthermore, that respectful outlook constitutes the essence of ancient technology; ancient technology is the disclosure of things in general as there to be respected. The practice that issues from this theory then amounts to abetting or nurturing, as we will see when we examine Hei- degger’s account of handcraft. For now, we merely need to ask whether his interpretation is true to Aristotle. Heidegger has been accused of violence in his interpretations of the ancients, but here the evidence points to his view as the faithful one. In contrast, the traditional imputation of the notion of efficient causality to Aristotle surely appears to be violent. After all, Aristotle himself twice places the maker last in his list of examples, and on the third occasion (the example of the abduction) he does not include the maker at all. Moreover, Aristotle also distances himself from the maker by stating ex- plicitly that the maker fits within the list of examples only roughly, only if we speak in a general way or on the whole. In other words, Aristotle is expressing quite unmistakably his view that the maker is not the best ex- ample. The craftsman does not best illustrate the whence of motion, as that whence is understood by Aristotle. The better example is the coun- selor or the sower of seeds. That is Aristotle’s order, and Heidegger’s in- terpretation is the one that is respectful of that order. To take the maker as the paradigm is to be unfaithful to Aristotle, and to proceed to inter- 26 The Gods and Technology
- 40. pret the maker as an efficient cause is to be doubly violent to Aristotle. Thus we find that the evidence points in the direction of Heidegger’s po- sition that both the name and the concept of efficient cause are foreign to Aristotle. It perhaps remains to be seen whether Heidegger can fully work out the alternative notion of causality, but at least we can appreci- ate the justice of his attempting to do so. Before returning to Heidegger, let us now summarize the ancient view of causality as expressed in the doctrine of the four causes. First of all, we reject the efficient cause as one of the four. That name is not ap- propriate to what Aristotle himself understands as the source of motion, namely an arousing or a releasing. Then if I were to propose a new name, guided by what is hopefully a more adequate grasp of Aristotle’s sense of this cause, I would call it the “rousing cause,” the “nurturing cause,” or, at the limit, the “nudging cause.”2 And with regard to causality in gen- eral, the one single concept by which all four causes are causes in the same sense, it could be called abetting or (active) releasing. Heidegger’s term “obligation” is meant to express the same sense of providing favor- able conditions, assisting at birth, midwifery, ob-stetrics. The antithesis is imposition. Let us raise one final question within the framework of the ancient doctrine of the four causes: when and why did it happen that the para- digm instance of causality became efficient causality and causality in gen- eral came to be understood as imposition? It occurred not long after Aristotle’s death. Surely, by the medieval era the notion of rousing causal- ity is completely overshadowed by efficient causality. (And the latter is then reinterpreted back into Aristotle. The “whence” of Aristotle is, from medieval times down to our own, translated as “efficient cause,” a perfect example of digging up merely what one has already buried. In fact, until Heidegger, the notion of efficient causality as an authentically Aris- totelian notion is never even questioned.) In the medieval age, efficient causality indeed plays a central role in philosophy. For example, the no- tion of efficient causality, rather than releasing causality, is the basis of one of Thomas Aquinas’ famous five ways of proof for the existence of God. In fact, this way of proof amounts to an extension of the notion of efficient causality to God, who becomes the ultimate efficient cause; and Being, to be in general, is understood as meaning to participate in some way in efficient causality. Nevertheless, medieval philosophy is not totally divorced from Aristotle’s conception of causality, and the doctrine of the four causes remains intact there (although causality is not under- stood in the original Aristotelian sense). Indeed, the final cause is the basis of another of Thomas’ five ways of proof. In the modern age, however, the final cause, the material cause, and the formal cause are laughed out of court, and so is the notion that matter may be pregnant with a form Part I: Ancient Technology 27
- 41. and thereby deserving of respect. Only the efficient cause is allowed, and the notion of causality in general as imposition is solidly entrenched. It is true that some modern philosophers were skeptical about our knowledge of any causal connections among things. What these thinkers rejected, however, was not the sense of causality as imposition, as efficient causal- ity, but the possibility of our human intellect ever knowing the causal connections among things. These philosophers were precisely skeptics, not reinterpreters of causality. Thus in the modern age, the sense of causality as imposition, a sense slowly brewing since the death of Aris- totle, holds complete sway. What does this change in the understanding of causality amount to in terms of Heidegger’s history of Being, the domain of the original, motivat- ing events? It is a reflection of the withdrawal of Being; or, more precisely, it is a response to that withdrawal. It is what the gods leave behind in their flight. When Being veils itself, when the gods abscond, then humans are left with a distorted sense of what it means to be in general, and in particular a distorted sense of nature. They might then see nature as what is there to be imposed upon and might view causality as imposition. Impositional tech- nology is thus motivated by the flight of the gods and is accordingly, for Heidegger, not a matter of human failure but, instead, a fate. Having exposed the sense of causality in Aristotle, we can now un- derstand better the sense of this fate. That is, the causality in play here, by which the withdrawal of Being “causes” modern technology, must be the Aristotelian sense of causality, namely abetting or releasement. Therefore, the fate is not one imposed on human beings, as if they were passive and bore no responsibility for their fate. Heidegger is not exempting humans from responsibility for their fate. He is in no way a “fatalist”; he is not suggesting that humans simply wait and hope for the best. Human beings are not passive matter to be imposed upon by Being. The history of Being, the approach or retreat of the gods, does not impose anything on hu- mans. The gods are indeed the prime movers, but all movers must take direction from the possibilities latent in the ones to be moved. That is why Heidegger is entirely consistent to call the modern age a fate and to claim that only a fate will overcome it, while, at the same time, urging greater human resoluteness and watchfulness. Heidegger does not absolve humans from responsibility; he heightens human responsibility in the sense of moral responsibility. What he deflates are the pretensions of humans in the power of their own efficacy. If humans think they are the only ones responsible for their accomplishments, if humans think they are efficient causes, if humans think their productions are their creations, then Heidegger’s philosophy is ready to expose those claims as preten- sions. The concept of responsibility may involve either blame or credit; Heidegger heightens human responsibility insofar as humans can be 28 The Gods and Technology
- 42. blamed, and he diminishes responsibility insofar as humans deserve credit. The blame (the moral responsibility) is humanity’s own, the credit (the claim to be personally responsible for some accomplishment, to have accomplished something by one’s own efficacy) must be shared (with Being or nature). Heidegger’s philosophy is, therefore, just as Sartre char- acterizes existentialism in general, a most austere philosophy and has nothing in common with inaction or moral laxity.3 Abetting causality as a reading of Heidegger We arrive now at the second of the two general questions we raised concerning Heidegger’s view of causality as understood by the ancients. We have shown a textual basis in Aristotle for Heidegger’s interpretation; i.e., what we asserted as Heidegger’s view is borne out through a close reading of Aristotle. The task is now to return to Heidegger’s essay on technology in order to see how Heidegger himself presents and develops his interpretation. Causality, as understood in the doctrine of the four causes, means, most fundamentally, for Heidegger, abetting or nurturing. Its antithesis is imposition—i.e., force, compulsion. Yet it is by no means apparent on the surface of Heidegger’s text that this is indeed his under- standing. Rather than express himself with an immediate, facile intelligi- bility, his strategy is to introduce a whole series of terms, each of them highly nuanced, in order to clarify his position by their cumulative effect. Yet the nuances are easily overlooked or mistaken, even by a reader of the original German, and they are very difficult to bring out in a translation. Nevertheless, if we approach Heidegger’s text as deserving of the same care required to read Aristotle, these nuances will yield themselves up. In the published English translation of “Die Frage nach der Tech- nik,” the series of terms in question is the following: “being indebted,” “being responsible,” hypokeisthai, “starting something on its way,” “oc- casioning,” “inducing,” poiesis, “bringing-forth,” physis, “revealing,” and aletheuein. These are the terms in which Heidegger couches his un- derstanding of ancient causality and ancient technology. At first sight, a very mixed bag. Let us begin with Heidegger’s most general sense of causality, as un- derstood within the context of the four causes. We said that Heidegger takes causality there as obligation, in the specific sense that the causality amounts to something in between the extremes of compelling and doing nothing. The four causes are not ways of imposing or forcing change, and neither do they play a merely passive role. The four causes let the change come about—in the active sense of letting, namely: nurturing, releasing, abetting, providing the proper conditions, encouraging, nudging, rousing. Part I: Ancient Technology 29
- 43. The four causes are not “responsible” for the change, in the sense of tak- ing all the credit for it. Conversely, the change does not owe everything to the causes. The obligation in question is the specific one of indebtedness for assistance in coming to one’s own self-emergence or in achieving one’s own accomplishment. This sort of obligation, I take it, is what is meant in colloquial English by saying we are “much obliged” to someone. This term, “obligation,” Heidegger’s Verschulden, is rendered in the published translation variously as follows: “being indebted,” “being responsible,” “being responsible and being indebted,” and “owing and being responsible.” Part of the difficulty is indeed that the reader of these terms will hardly realize that Heidegger has a single unified concept of causality at all. More to the point, however, the term “being responsible” is quite misleading, especially when applied to the four causes taken to- gether. For instance, the translation says on page 9: “According to our example, they [the four causes] are responsible for the silver chalice’s lying ready before us as a sacrificial vessel.” This surely gives the impression that the four causes, acting in unison, have brought it about that the chalice is lying there ready before us, i.e., already made and ready for use. It makes the chalice the effect of the causes, ready-made by the four causes, delivered up and ready for use. This impression is unfaithful to Heidegger’s intention in two ways: in the first place, Heidegger does not maintain that the effect of the four causes is to produce something ready-made; nor, sec- ondly, is the activity of the four causes to be understood as an effectu- ating at all. The phrase “lying ready before us” and, in the next line, the phrase “lying before and lying ready” translate Heidegger’s Vorliegen und Be- reitliegen. These translations are defensible grammatically, but they are not defensible philosophically, especially since Heidegger immediately places in parentheses the Greek term he is attempting to render. That term is uJpokei sqai (hypokeisthai). The sense of this word for Heidegger is “to lie underneath.” It means to be the prepared ground for the ap- pearance of something. It does not refer to what is ready-made but to the making ready of something; it does not refer to something appearing but to the condition of an appearance of something. Specifically, the word “ready” in “lying ready” does not mean ready for use; it means ready to come to appearance, ready to come forth as a chalice, and only then be ready to be used. In other words, the four causes have prepared the chal- ice for its own coming-forth, they have prepared the ground for the chal- ice; they are the chalice’s uJpokeivmenon (hypokeimenon, “substratum”). What the four causes accomplish is what lies underneath the chalice, its ground. But the causes do not effect the chalice, do not bring it about, do not compel it to come forth on its ground. The causes cannot go so far. 30 The Gods and Technology
- 44. That is why Heidegger, in the previous paragraph, explicitly rejects the notion of the causes as effecting. His term Verschulden, he says, is not to be construed in terms of effecting, as the published translation rightly puts it. The question remains, however, as to whether, by translating Ver- schulden as “being responsible,” the translator did construe it in the wrong way. To return now to the passage under consideration, its meaning is as follows: “According to our example, the silver chalice is obliged to the four causes for making ready the ground upon which it might come forth as a sacrificial vessel” (FT, 12). Compare that to the published transla- tion, already cited, which speaks of the four causes as “responsible for the silver chalice’s lying ready before us as a sacrificial vessel.” This latter is a possibly correct translation, as far as grammar is concerned, and a ca- sual reader of the original German might well take the passage in that sense. But a Heideggerian text, just like an Aristotelian one, does not yield up its treasures to a casual reading. Indeed, in terms of philosophi- cal sense, the published version entirely misses the point. It fails to cap- ture the essential nuance, for, as the contrast with our own version makes clear, it expresses a notion of causality as effecting, precisely that which Heidegger warned against. The essential nuance, to put it as simply as possible, is that causal- ity is nurturing, not effecting. That is what Heidegger expresses by saying the chalice is obliged to the four causes for its hypokeisthai, for that which “lies underneath,” for that upon which it might come forth. The four causes are not responsible for the thing made in the sense of bringing about the existence of the thing, compelling it into existence, delivering it up ready-made. The four causes offer nurture; they lie underneath the thing in the sense of making ready the ground, preparing the conditions, for the potentiality in the matter to actualize itself. That is how, accord- ing to Heidegger, the ancients conceived of causality: not as imposition, but as nurture. Thus the term hypokeisthai, “to lie beneath,” confirms the choice of the word “obligation” (instead of “being responsible”) to render Verschulden. The four causes place the proper ground underneath the thing, they provide the support or nourishment the thing needs to come forth. The thing is, then, in the precise sense, much obliged to the four causes; but it does not owe everything to them, they are not by them- selves responsible for the thing. Consequently, “to oblige” and “to lie beneath,” the first two terms Heidegger employs to characterize ancient causality, bear out the view that he interprets it in the sense of abetting or nurture. As we proceed through the list, we will find the same inter- pretation expressed again and again, and the cumulative effect ought to be convincing. Part I: Ancient Technology 31
- 45. Letting, active letting, letting all the way to the end The next step Heidegger takes in characterizing the causality of the four causes occurs immediately following the proposal of the notion of hypokeisthai. In fact, it is to clarify this notion that Heidegger launches a new discussion, introducing a new central term. As hypokeisthai, as “lying under,” the four causes prepare the ground upon which the thing might come forth. This accomplishment of the four causes is now de- scribed in a disarmingly simple way: the four causes “let the thing come forth” (FT, 12/9). That is the published translation, and it is unexcep- tionable. It remains to be seen, however, whether the translation will remain faithful to the spirit of this simple assertion. The most important word in the statement, the new central term on which the discussion will turn, is the word “let.” That most precisely de- scribes the accomplishment of the four causes: not to effect or compel but to let. Of course, this “letting” must be understood in the proper sense, i.e., in the active sense, which we have called rousing, nurturing, abetting. It must still be understood as a type of letting or allowing, though not as a passive laissez-faire. To ensure that the letting be understood in the proper way, Heidegger introduces three derivative terms intended to specify the sense of letting. The word for “let” in German is lassen, and the new terms are compounds formed by adding prefixes to it: los-lassen, an-lassen, and ver-an-lassen. Heidegger writes them just that way, with hyphens to call attention to the root word, lassen, i.e., to show that they are derived from lassen, that they are forms of letting. What do the terms mean? That can be determined by examining the respective prefixes; los means “loose,” an means “on” or “to,” and ver-an means “all the way to” or “all the way to the end.” Thus the pre- fixes set the words in order from a more passive to an emphatically active sense of letting. The order is this: from letting loose, to guiding onto the proper path to some end, to being in attendance all the way to that end. As applied to the four causes, the sense of the terms is as follows. Los- lassen: the four causes let something loose or release it. An-lassen: they then let it go on to its path of development. Ver-an-lassen: their letting es- corts the thing all the way to the end of its development. It could not be clearer that these terms describe very precisely the process of nurturing. First the daughter (or son) must be given her free- dom, then she must be urged onto the right path, and then she must have a shoulder to lean on throughout her journey to adulthood. Or, first the seed must be released, then it must be nourished, and then it must be tended all the way to its end. As Heidegger’s terms suggest (in view of the common root, lassen), each step is indeed a matter of letting; to nurture is not to compel. But as the prefixes also indicate, this is an active letting; to 32 The Gods and Technology
- 46. nurture is to let with full diligence. And so we see that here again Hei- degger is characterizing the causality of the four causes, the sense in which they make ready the ground for the thing, and let it come forth, as the active letting connoted by the terms “abetting” or “nurturing.” Heidegger proceeds to summarize his view by stating very succinctly that the An-lassen which makes something obliged (to the four causes) is a Ver-an-lassen. It would perhaps be quite difficult to translate this state- ment elegantly and briefly, but the meaning that would need to be brought out is this: something is obliged to the four causes not merely for letting it enter onto the path by which it will fully come forth but for car- ing for it all the way to the end of its full coming forth. Thus the sentence confirms our view that Heidegger’s interpretation of ancient causality is abetting or nurture, i.e., letting in the active sense, letting all the way to the end. The published English translation, on page 9, renders the sentence in question as follows: “It is in the sense of such a starting something on its way into arrival that being responsible is an occasioning or an induc- ing to go forward.” The crucial idea of “letting” has here been almost entirely covered over. An-lassen has become “starting,” and Ver-an- lassen “occasioning or inducing.” Thus, instead of “letting, active let- ting, and letting all the way to the end,” the published translation of this central series of terms is “letting, starting, and occasioning or inducing.” Surely this translation does not remain faithful to the idea of letting but, instead, proceeds in the direction of effecting, which is exactly what must be avoided. The proper translation of Ver-an-lassen becomes even more critical in the next lines of Heidegger’s text, for there he explicitly proposes the term as the name of the essence of causality in the Greek sense. It would indeed be difficult to find a simple English word to use as a translation, since our language does not seem to possess a compound of the verb “let” that would add the nuance of activity, “letting with full diligence,” “letting all the way to the end.” The word “nurturing” captures the sense but is too free. I cannot do better than propose “active letting” (perhaps “abetting”) as the least inadequate rendering in the present context. Heidegger’s full statement then comes down (slightly para- phrasing) to this: “Considering what the Greeks experienced when they spoke of something as being caused, namely its being ‘much obliged,’ we now give the term Ver-an-lassen [‘active letting’] a further sense, beyond the usual meaning of the common term Veranlassen [‘occasioning’], and it then names the very essence of causality as thought in the Greek man- ner” (FT, 12/10). Thus Heidegger explicitly distinguishes his term Ver-an-lassen from an ordinary German word, Veranlassen (the same spelling, without the Part I: Ancient Technology 33
- 47. hyphens). The latter is indeed well translated by “occasioning,” and it names the typical modern notion of causality. Consequently, the pub- lished translation, which renders both terms, Heidegger’s highly nuanced one and the ordinary one, by the same word, “occasioning,” must be mis- leading, since it makes no distinction here where a distinction is explicit and crucial. The published translation merely says that the one occasion- ing is more inclusive in meaning than the other. Let us examine the dis- tinction as Heidegger expressly draws it, in order to see why the distinction is not one of mere greater inclusiveness; on the contrary, the term “occasioning” is appropriate only in the one case and not at all in the other. Heidegger characterizes the ordinary word, without the hyphens, as follows: “In its ordinary sense, the term Veranlassen means nothing more than collision and setting off” (FT, 12/10). Therefore his special word is not to be understood in terms of collision and setting off. Heidegger is surely alluding here to the favorite example of causality in modern thought, namely the colliding of one billiard ball into another and the subsequent “setting off” of the motion of the second one. This was the example invoked by those skeptical modern philosophers who main- tained that there is not any humanly knowable causal connection be- tween the two events, the collision and the starting of the movement of the second ball. All we know is that on the occasion of event A (the colli- sion of one ball into another), event B (the motion of the second ball) reg- ularly follows. There is no communication of the motion of the one ball to the other, the one ball does not give motion to the other, and so the second ball’s motion is simply, and inexplicably, set off. We cannot have insight into the intrinsic connection, if any, between the two events. All we have is the extrinsic connection of temporal succession: on the occa- sion of the one event, the other is started or set off. “Occasioning” is thus the appropriate word for this understanding of causality, but it is as for- eign to the ancients as can possibly be imagined. Thus it is misleading to translate Ver-an-lassen, Heidegger’s proper name for causality in Greek thought, as “occasioning,” and the same applies to the translation of An- lassen as “starting.” Both these English words are appropriate only to our own ordinary, modern, understanding of causality. Nor does it matter whether occasioning is taken in the skeptical sense or not. Heidegger does seem to be invoking the skeptical theory of occasionalism. Yet he realizes that the common (nonphilosophical) un- derstanding of causality today is not skeptical. For the everyday under- standing, causality means efficient causality, and examples of efficient causality are obvious. From the everyday standpoint, it is self-evident that collisions cause motion, so much so that the skeptical view would be taken as the typical reversal of the clear and the obscure which philoso- 34 The Gods and Technology
- 48. phy is notorious for. (Anyone still innocent of modern philosophy will surely find it difficult even to imagine what the skeptical arguments could be.) Except to some philosophers and theoretical scientists, the collision is seen today not merely as a temporal predecessor but as responsible for the motion of the second ball, as imposing that motion. While the commonsense view might be slightly closer to the ancient understanding, Heidegger’s point is that it actually has much more in common with the skeptical outlook than with Greek thinking. In fact, the skeptical view and today’s commonsense understanding are identical in essentials. For both, the paradigm case of causality is still, as Heideg- ger says, collision. For both, what counts as causality is efficient causal- ity. The only difference is that the skeptical view denies to human beings the possibility of ever coming to know the causal connections among things, while for common sense the causal connection is, at least some- times, obvious to us. Yet what is meant by “causal connection” is the same for both; it means collision: that is, violence, force, overpowering, the imposing of motion from one thing to another, or, in short, efficient causality. For skepticism, only God could have insight into the working of this causality, only God could see the motion being imposed by one billiard ball onto the other, but for both views the meaning of causality is the same: imposition. It is that sense of imposition that rules out the term occasioning as a translation of Ver-an-lassen, the term Heidegger proposes as the proper name for the essence of causality as thought in the Greek manner. What is distinctive about the Greek understanding is that there causality does not mean violence, forcing, effecting. It means, basically, Lassen, letting. This letting is to be understood in as active a sense as possible; yet it does not ever mean to impose instead of abet. Thus Heidegger’s term Ver-an- lassen is not “more inclusive” than the ordinary word Veranlassen; on the contrary, these terms are incompatible, and only the former could apply to the ancient sense of causality. Producing, bringing-forth, nature We have now worked through the first half of the long series of terms by which Heidegger characterizes the causality of the four causes. Causing is “obliging,” “making ready the ground,” “letting,” “active let- ting,” and “letting all the way to the end.” All these terms point in the same direction, toward an interpretation of the causality of the four causes as nurturing rather than imposing. The next two terms in the se- ries, however, at first appear to revoke that interpretation, for they assert that the causality of the four causes is a matter of “producing.” Part I: Ancient Technology 35
- 49. Heidegger introduces the new terms by asking about the unity of the four causes, the unity of the four modes of active letting. He begins his account of the unity by placing the letting in a new light: the four causes let what is not yet present come into presence. The idea, in more tradi- tional terms, is that the four causes let what does not yet exist come into existence. Here we encounter a kind of contradiction, for is it possible to let something that does not exist come into existence? Is it possible to nurture something so that it comes to be? At first view, that is not possi- ble: only what already exists can be nurtured, and so nothing can be nur- tured from nonbeing to being. One thing can be nurtured to give birth to another, such as seeds can be nurtured to bear crops, but nothing can be nurtured to give birth to itself. A thing can be nurtured so as to develop to a more perfect stage, but then it must already exist in some less perfect way. In other words, letting presupposes something already there to be let; and so existence is presupposed by letting and cannot follow from it. Thus if “letting” means to let into being, then the letting must be reinter- preted away from nurturing and toward producing. That is precisely the course Heidegger seems to pursue when he says, “Accordingly, the four causes are ruled over, through and through, and in an integral way, by a bringing, one which brings about the presence of something” (FT, 12/10). The last phrase, if taken in its more colloquial sense, could also be trans- lated as follows: “one which produces the existence of something.” Thus Heidegger is here interpreting the “letting” of the four causes as a bring- ing, a bringing about, a producing. Indeed, Heidegger says explicitly that this bringing is the dominant character; it holds sway over the four causes and integrates them into a single causal nexus. The character of “bring- ing something about” thus has an ascendancy over the “letting” and de- termines it. The letting is to be understood as a bringing about or a producing, rather than vice versa. The sense of the bringing as a producing is reinforced by Heideg- ger’s appeal to Plato in this context. Heidegger cites a passage from the Symposium in which Plato gives the name poivhsiõ (poiesis) to any causal action by which something comes into being from nonbeing. That is to say, the bringing now at issue, the dominant character of the causality of the four causes, is poiesis. And poiesis precisely means making or pro- ducing; poiesis is the bringing into being of what was previously not in being. Heidegger’s own rendering of the word poiesis here is Her-vor- bringen. Translated quite literally, Heidegger’s term simply means “bringing-forth.” Yet, in the context, it is clear that what is meant here is “bringing forth into being,” causing to pass from nonbeing to being, or, in other words, “making,” “producing.” In fact, Heidegger’s term Her-vor-bringen, “bringing-forth,” in its more colloquial sense, does mean simply “producing.” And, in another place, Heidegger himself 36 The Gods and Technology
- 50. asserts this sense to be the predominant one: “Bringing-forth today means the making and fabricating of an individual object” (GP, 85/76). The two new terms that characterize the causality of the four causes, “bringing” (or, more specifically, “bringing forth”) and poiesis, thus seem to go back on what was said about the four causes as modes of nurturing. Instead of assisting something to give birth or to develop, it now seems that the four causes produce the existence of something out of its previous nonexistence. The four causes bring it about that what they cause exists in the first place, and they do not merely nurture something along by gearing into it, by going with the thing’s own flow. The four causes apparently cause the existence of the thing and first produce its “flow.” Thus the causality of the four causes cannot be a matter of “gear- ing into,” since there is nothing to gear into until the four causes have brought it forth. It seems that the thing “owes everything” to the four causes, is produced by them, and is not merely abetted or encouraged. In other words, Heidegger’s current discussion implies an understanding of causality as imposing, as bringing about or effecting the existence of the caused thing. On account of this impression, i.e., the implication that the causal- ity of the four causes is a producing, a bringing about, an imposing, Hei- degger immediately goes on to say that “everything depends” on our thinking of poiesis in its full breadth and in the Greek sense. Everything depends on this, for otherwise we would indeed be misled into thinking of ancient causality as effecting and imposing. What then is the proper sense of poiesis? According to Heidegger, it does not merely refer to handcraft manufacture or to the artistic and poetic production of ap- pearances and images. On the contrary, nature, too, is poiesis; in fact, na- ture is even the paradigm case of poiesis: “Fuvsiõ [physis, ‘nature’], too, self-emergence, is a bringing-forth, poiesis. Physis is even poiesis in the highest sense” (FT, 12/10). How can nature be poiesis in the highest sense, the paradigm of bringing-forth or production? It can be the paradigm only if production does in fact primarily mean nurture. Production is then not equivalent to effecting, and so the terms “bringing-forth” and poiesis do not retract the notion of causality as nurturing or rousing. Let us try to make that clear. We begin with the way Heidegger distinguishes nature from manu- facture: “For what comes to be fuvsei [physei, ‘naturally’] has the source of the bringing-forth, e.g., the source of the blooming of the blossom, in itself” (FT, 12/10). On the other hand, what is brought forth by craft has the source of the bringing forth not in itself but in another, in the artisan. Heidegger’s term I have rendered in a preliminary and neutral way as “source” is der Aufbruch. This German term is an excellent candidate to translate kinh san, Aristotle’s word for the cause that is the source of Part I: Ancient Technology 37
- 51. the motion, the cause that sets the motion going, the cause that was later named—and understood as—the efficient cause. Heidegger’s term has a wide range of meanings, but two basic senses are relevant here: “setting out on one’s way” and “blossoming out.” It refers then to a kind of set- ting out that is precisely a blossoming out. The term thus names not only the source—the setting out—but also the way that is set out upon, namely the process of blossoming or, more generally, growth. Thus the term specifies what sort of cause this source is and how it stands at the head of the motion. In the first place, if the motion is a blossoming, then the source is certainly not an efficient cause, since blossoming cannot be imposed upon anything by an outside agent, cannot be forced upon a passive matter by an efficient cause. Nothing can make a bud blossom if it does not have it in itself to blossom. A bud can only blossom out naturally, which is to say that the source of the blossoming must lie within the bud; the blossoming has to be a self-emergence. The cause that is the source of a natural mo- tion is then nature itself, the natural tendency of the bud to blossom out, its own directedness to a certain end, its own pregnancy, its own “flow” in a certain direction. What sort of cause is this? A directedness or a ten- dency is not an imposition; this cause has rather to be understood in the context of nurture. That is to say, this source is a participant in a process of nurture. To make that explicit, let us look more closely at what does the nur- turing in a natural process and what gets nurtured. Let us think of a bud as pregnant with a blossom, as naturally directed to that end. The poten- tial of the bud is not an efficient cause; on the contrary, the potential is a deficient cause. That is, it requires certain conditions in order to come to fruition. The bud will not blossom by itself. Nor can it be forced; it must be allowed to grow, it must be “actively let.” To let a bud grow is to pro- vide it with the required nourishment, the favorable conditions; it is then up to the bud to take advantage of these conditions. Now, these condi- tions and nutrients are also nature; they are, let us say, material nature, such as earth, light, water, and warmth. These conditions are precisely nutrients, i.e., nurturers, and not imposers; they cannot force growth. Natural conditions cannot make an artificial bud grow. The conditions merely gear into the thing’s own flow, into its own nature, its inborn propensity toward motion in a certain direction. Conversely, to grow, to be nurtured, is to take up these conditions in an active way; to grow is to allow the conditions of growth to be effective as nutrients. Accordingly, the process of growth and the process of nurturing are mutually founding and are intertwined: they each let the other be. Thus the source of a blossoming movement is nature, and the con- ditions that let the movement occur are also nature. In the process of 38 The Gods and Technology
- 52. growing or blossoming there is an interplay between the source and the conditions, a cooperation or joining together of the forces of nature. If we call the source the cause that was later understood as the efficient cause, then the conditions, taken in a broad sense to include not only material nature but the natural end as well, coincide with the other three causes. Thus all four causes are nature, and all four causes cooperate in produc- ing the blossom. In other words, in bringing forth the blossom, in letting it come forth, the four causes are unified. They are unified as nature, as aspects of the one nature, and unified as cooperating forces, as joining to- gether in a common project. In bringing forth a blossom, the four causes form a single causal nexus, and the forces of nature are unified. That is to say, as poiesis, as bringing something forth, physis manifests the unity of the four causes. The four causes play together, i.e., get unified, in a spe- cial way when it is a case of something coming forth naturally. Thus the question of the unity of the four causes, the question with which Heidegger had initiated the present discussion, leads to physis as poiesis. The four causes are most one, their forces are most joined to- gether into a single combined force, their forces are most concentrated, in the case of something produced naturally in the manner indicated: i.e., when the production is growth, when the source of the movement is nat- ural (internal to the thing moved) and the external conditions that nur- ture it are also natural. Presumably, it is this concentration of forces that makes natural poiesis “poiesis in the highest sense,” as Heidegger claims. Indeed Heidegger does say that physis is the highest form of poiesis “since” what comes forth by nature has the source of the coming-forth in itself. But Heidegger leaves us on our own to draw out this “since.” How does that make physis poiesis in the highest sense? In other words, what sort of productive forces are being marshalled together here? In what sense is nature the most forceful form of production? Nature is certainly not the most forceful, if force is taken in the usual sense, i.e., as imposition. A laser beam can impose the form of a flower, by, let us say, etching it into a piece of glass, more forcefully than nature can bring forth a blossom from a bud. The darling buds of May are liable to be shaken, which is to say that they are tender and, in Shake- speare’s sonnet, easily “untrimmed,” denuded. Nature is not a concen- tration of the forces of imposition; what is brought forth by nature is not imposed at all. On the contrary, nature’s way of bringing forth is to nur- ture. The causal nexus in the case of nature is a nurturing nexus. Nature is a concentration of nurturing forces. So then we see how physis can be poiesis in the highest sense, how nature can be the highest form of pro- duction: only if production means nurture. That is of course precisely what we have been trying to show: for Heidegger ancient causality is nurture, and the paradigm of production Part I: Ancient Technology 39
- 53. is growth, not imposition. Heidegger employed two further terms to characterize the causality of the four causes, the terms “bringing- forth” (or “production”) and poiesis (“making” or “production”), and these seemed to imply a notion of imposition. But, according to Hei- degger, “everything depends” on thinking of poiesis in its full breadth and in the Greek sense. We see now that that sense is physis, and this term in the list of characterizations restores the notion of nurture. If bringing-forth and poiesis are thought as physis, as nature, then pro- duction does indeed mean nurture. To bring forth does therefore not mean to bring into being, to impose existence; it means to produce the way nature produces, namely by helping along, by gearing into an al- ready existing tendency in a certain direction. To bring forth thus means to abet, not to create ex nihilo. That is the conclusion we reach if we think of poiesis in its full breadth and in the Greek sense. That is to say, all of the terms—without exception—in Heidegger’s list of characterizations of ancient causality do point in the same direction, the direction of nurture rather than imposition. Manufacture and contemplation We now need to see how this paradigm of nurture applies to pro- duction in the usual sense, i.e., to manufacture, to artificial as well as to natural production. Thereby we will begin to join the ancient theory of causality (= the essence of ancient technology) to the practice of ancient technology. The essential difference between natural production and manufac- ture by craft amounts to the fact that, in the former, the source (the set- ting in motion) resides within what is to be produced, and in the latter case the source resides in another, in the artisan. What this signifies is that handcraft does not display the unity of the four causes as plainly as na- ture does. The causal nexus, in handcraft, does not entirely exemplify a marshaling of causal forces. In handcraft, therefore, the essential charac- ter of causality as nurture is less easily visible. Yet, for Heidegger, the same paradigm applies, and handcraft is not to be understood in terms of a new type of causality. The same type of causality holds sway in hand- craft, but in a more hidden way. Heidegger proceeds by offering three instances of handcraft pro- duction—i.e., three instances of ancient technology in practice—and shows how the paradigm of nurture applies. The three examples are the farmer, the waterwheel, and the artisan, such as the house builder or the silversmith. The first two can be disposed of rather easily, and we will concentrate on the third. 40 The Gods and Technology
- 54. It is clear that the farmer is a nurturer. Heidegger’s account of the traditional farmer implies nurture at every turn: “The field the farmer of old used to cultivate appeared differently, i.e., when to cultivate still meant to tend and to nurture. . . . In sowing the grain, the farmer con- signs the seed to the forces of growth, and then he tends to its increase” (FT, 15–16/14–15). The notion of consigning to a higher force is at the heart of the attitude of the traditional farmer. It marks this farmer as a midwife, one who respects an already given pregnancy and who under- stands himself as being in service to it, submitting to it, gearing into it, rather than imposing on it. The same attitude of respect is evident in the making of a waterwheel as compared to a hydroelectric dam. The waterwheel in an obvious sense gears into the natural forces of the river rather than imposing on them by direct opposition. Heidegger expresses it this way: the waterwheel is built (baut) into the river, but the river itself is mis-built (verbaut) into the hy- droelectric plant. The word verbaut commonly means “blocked” or “ob- structed,” but it also connotes a wrongful building or a building that misuses or exhausts the building materials. The word is rendered in the published translation as “dammed up.” That translation indeed captures part of Heidegger’s sense, but it misses the central point, namely that the river is used up to make the power plant. The river is itself built into—i.e., made into—a power plant: the river is transformed into something else, into the power plant, and the river now takes its essence from the power plant. Thus the difference is clear: the waterwheel is built into the river, it gears into the flow, and the river remains what it was. But the power plant imposes on the river to such an extent that now the river itself is made into something else; it has been exhausted in favor of the hydroelectric plant. The river has been commandeered by the power plant and is now in essence nothing but a supplier of hydraulic pressure to the plant. The dis- tinction between the respectful attitude of nurture and the hubristic atti- tude of imposition could not be more striking. For Heidegger, the hydroelectric plant exhausts the river; i.e., a new essence is forced on the river, and the river is no longer a natural thing. Yet, as Heidegger himself admits, the river can surely still be enjoyed as a part of nature. Even if the Rhine is dammed up, it remains a beautiful river. Nevertheless, for Heidegger, the modern attitude of imposition ex- tends all the way to the natural beauty of the river. For, now, as Heideg- ger notes in a rare expression of mockery, the natural beauty of the Rhine has been commandeered by tourism, and the beautiful Rhine actually ex- ists “in no other way than as an object on call for inspection by a tour group ordered there by the vacation industry” (FT, 17/16). Let us now turn to the third example of ancient technological prac- tice, the activity of the maker in the usual sense, the artisan, such as the Part I: Ancient Technology 41
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- 56. This is just the description of a forme in folio where two quoins on one side are always opposite to two quoins on the other, thus together joining and tightening all the separate stamps. In a quaint allegorical poem, published anonymously about the year 1700, in which the mystery of man’s redemption is symbolised by the mystery of Printing, the author commences thus: Great blest Master Printer, come Into thy Composing-room; and after ‘spiritualising’ the successive operations of the workman thus touches upon the quoins: Let the Quoins be thy sure Election, Which admits of no Rejection; With which our Souls being joined about, Not the least Grace can then fall out. Here, the idea of joining together by quoins so that nothing shall fall out, is just the same as in the couplet quoted from Shakspere. The tightening of these quoins by means of a wooden-headed mallet, (There is no more conceit in him than is in a mallet, 2 Henry IV, ii, 4), is called ‘locking up’, an exclusively technical term. The expression, however, occurs in ‘Measure for Measure’, IV, 2, Fast locked up in sleep, where the idea conveyed is the same. The ‘Forme’ worked off and the metal chase removed, leaving the pages ‘naked’, affords the Poet the following simile, which although not carrying to the popular ear any typographical meaning, was doubtless suggested by Shakspere’s former experience of the workshop:
- 57. And he but naked though locked up in steel. 2 Henry VI, iii, 2. The primary idea of ‘locking up’ had, doubtless, reference to ‘armour’; the secondary to printing, as shown by the use of the word ‘naked’. The forme then went to the Press-room, where considerable ingenuity was required to make ‘register’; that is, to print one side so exactly upon the other, that when the sheet was held up to the light the lines on each side would exactly back one another. The accuracy of judgment required for this is thus glanced at: Eno. But let the world rank me in register A master-leaver and a fugitive. Antony and Cleopatra, iv, 9. When the green-eyed Othello takes his wife’s hand and exclaims: Here’s a young and sweating devil, Othello, iii, 4, we fail at first to catch the idea of the Poet in calling a hand a ‘devil’; but take the word as synonymous with ‘messenger’, and we see at once how the moist plump palm of Desdemona suggested to the intensely jealous husband the idea of its having been the lascivious messenger of her impure desires. In this sense of ‘messenger’, the word ‘devil’ has a special fitness; for it is, and always has been among Printers, and Printers only, another word for ‘errand-boy’. In olden times, when speed was required, a boy stood at the off-side of the press, and as soon as the frisket was raised, whipped the printed sheet off the tympan. When not at work, he ran on messages between printer and author, who, on account of his inky defilement, dubbed him ‘devil’. All Printers’ boys go now by the same name: Old Lucifer, both kind and civil, To ev’ry Printer lends a Devil;
- 58. But balancing accounts each winter, For ev’ry Devil takes a Printer. Moxon, in 1683, quotes it as an old trade word, and it was doubtless the same in Shakspere’s time, a century earlier, as it is now two centuries later. But where could Shakspere have picked up the word if not in the Printing-office? Any one accustomed to collate old MSS. must have noticed how very seldom the copyist would, in transcribing, add nothing and omit nothing. If what the scribe considered a good idea entered his mind while his pen was travelling over the page, he was a very modest penman indeed, if he did not incorporate it in the text. From this cause, and from genuine unintentional blunders, the texts of all the old authors had become gradually very corrupt—a source of great trouble to the early Printers. With this in his mind Shakspere defines it as one of the qualities of Time To blot old books and alter their contents. Lucrece, l. 948. Many of Vautrollier’s publications must have been printed from discolored old manuscripts; and these papers Shakspere, if he read ‘proof’ for his employer, would have to study carefully. Does he call this to mind in Sonnet XVII? My papers yellowed with their age. Was it, after admiring some beautifully illuminated Horæ, that he wrote: O that record could with a backward look, E’en of five hundred courses of the sun; Show me your image in some antique book, Since mind at first in character was done. Sonnet lix. Does the Poet refer to its wonderfully burnished gold initials, and the red dominical letters which he must often have seen in the printed
- 59. calendars, when he exclaims in tones of admiration: My red dominical—my golden letter! Love’s Labour Lost, v, 2. The old calendar had a golden number and a dominical letter, but not a golden letter, which last must refer specifically to the practice of gilding important initials. ‘Golden Letters’ are mentioned in ‘King John’, III, 1, and in ‘Pericles’, IV, 4, while the red initials, which were common to both manuscripts and printed books of the fifteenth century, are made by Shakspere the death warrant of the unfortunate Clerk of Chatham, against whom is brought the fatal accusation that he Has a book in his pocket with red letters in ’t. 2 Henry VI, iv, 2. In Shakspere’s time, as we have already noticed (p. 41, ante), the press laboured under great restrictions. All books with a profitable circulation were monopolised by favored stationers or printers who held special patents or licenses from the Crown. Thus Reynold Wolfe, in 1543, held a monopoly of all books printed in Hebrew, Greek, or Latin. Seres was privileged to print all psalters, primers, and prayer books; Denham might print the New Testament in Welch; others held grants for scholastic or legal books, for almanacs, and even for broadsides, or as the grant says ‘for any piece of paper printed on one side of the sheet only’. In these favored books it was customary to place the patent granting the monopoly at the end, as a ‘caveat’ for other printers, and occasionally the phrase ‘Cum privilegio ad imprimendum solum’ would appear in a conspicuous part of the title. Among the printers in London, who secured such special privileges, was Vautrollier, Shakspere’s presumed employer. ‘In the sixteenth year of Elizabeth, 19th June, 1574’, says Ames, ‘a patent or license was granted him which he often printed at the end of the New Testament’; this was a monopoly of Beza’s New Testament which Vautrollier had the privilege ‘ad imprimendum solum’, for the term of ten years. We have already seen the curious
- 60. connection between the products of Vautrollier’s press and the writings of Shakspere, and we now plainly perceive what was floating in the Poet’s brain when he placed the following speech in Biondello’s mouth, who urges Lucentio to marry Bianca, while her father and the pedant are discussing the marriage treaty: Luc. And what of all this? Bion. I cannot tell; expect they are busied about a counterfeit[3] assurance: Take your assurance of her cum privilegio ad imprimendum solum: to the church;—take the priest, clerk, and some sufficient honest witnesses. Taming of the Shrew, iv, 4. These protective privileges, ‘ad imprimendum solum’, instead of a benefit were a great hindrance to the growth of Printing. Many master-printers even then felt them to be so, and by all legal and sometimes illegal means, tried to procure the abolition of laws which were oppressive and restrictive. They saw works of merit die out of memory for want of enterprise in the patentee—they saw folly, in the shape of a Star-chamber, controlling skill; or as Shakspere himself expresses it, Art made tongue-tied by authority, And Folly (doctor-like),[4] controlling skill. Sonnet lxvi. Shakspere abounds in kisses of every hue, from shadowy, frozen, and Judas kisses, to holy, true, gentle, tender, warm, sweet, loving, dainty, kind, soft, long, hard, zealous, burning, and even the unrequited kiss: But my kisses bring again Seals of love, but seal’d in vain. Measure for Measure, iii, 1.
- 61. The ‘burning’ kiss might be thought passionate and even durable enough for any extremity—yet Shakspere prefers, perhaps from an unconscious association of ideas, the durability of which Printing is the emblem when he makes the Goddess of Love exclaim: Pure lips, sweet seals on my soft lips imprinted. Venus and Adonis, l. 511. The same idea of durability is expressed in the cry of Henry’s guilty Queen, when parting with Suffolk: Oh, could this kiss be printed on thy hand! 2 Henry VI, iii, 2. The idea has been still further developed in the following anonymous quatrain: a printer’s kisses. Print on my lips another kiss, The picture of my glowing passion. Nay, this wont do—nor this, nor this; But now—Ay, that’s a proof impression. Many of Vautrollier’s publications went through several editions. In the ‘Merry Wives’, II, 1, Mistress Page says: These are of the second edition, and well can we imagine Shakspere handing volumes to a buyer with the same remark, or asking some patron with whom he was a favourite: Com’st thou with deep premeditated lines, With written pamphlet studiously devised? 1 Henry VI, iii, 1. as the author entered with a roll of ‘copy’ in his hand. In the deep mine from which the foregoing quotations have been dug, many others would doubtless reward a more careful search. As
- 62. it is, numerous allusions, which, though plain to a printer, would seem too forced to the general public, have been passed over. Enough, however, has probably been brought forward to justify the belief pourtrayed in the title-page, viz.: That Shakspere must have passed some of his early years in a Printing-office. Footnotes: [1] The exact date was probably as difficult to arrive at then as now. The arrival of William Caxton in England may, with a certainty of being near the truth, be placed in 1475-6, the date 1474 given by most writers being a misconception of the language used by Caxton in the Preface to the Chess-book. The Art on its first introduction was looked upon suspiciously by the people, few of whom could read, its chief patrons being a few of the more educated among the nobles and the rich burghers of London. Another mistake is to suppose that Caxton printed in Westminster Abbey. His printing- office was a tenement to the south-east of the Abbey Church; its sign was the ‘Red-pale’, and Caxton rented it of the Abbot. There is evidence to show that Caxton and the Abbot were on distant terms of amity—none to show that the Ecclesiastic encouraged or
- 63. patronised the Printer, notwithstanding Dean Stanley’s assertions in a sermon lately preached by him in Westminster Abbey. The only occasion upon which Caxton mentions the Abbot is to this effect— that the Abbot, not being able himself to read a passage in old MS., sent it to Caxton, with a request that he would translate it. (See The Life and Typography of William Caxton, by William Blades. 2 vols., 4to. London, 1861-63.) [2] Fat Pages. ‘Fat’ as a conventional word is not confined to Printers. ‘A fat living’ is a phrase not unknown among churchmen, and is used in the same sense by the compositor, who charges the master-printer for the fat pages, in which no work appears, at the same rate as if they were full. [3] This word ‘counterfeit’ in the sense of ‘reprint’ or ‘duplicate’, is certainly not used now-a-days by English printers; yet I find this in Marahren’s Parallel List of technical Typographical terms: —‘Counterfeit, to, or to Reprint, v., Nachdrucken.—Ré-imprimer.’ With Bibliographers the word is still retained; e.g. ‘Lyons counterfeits of the Aldine editions.’ [4] And Folly (doctor-like) controlling skill. It is worth noting, that in none of the various volumes written to show Shakspere’s knowledge of medicine and medical men, has the truth of this passage been brought forward in evidence.
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