Johannes Achill Niederhauser

Heidegger on Technology
Online Lecture Course

Johannes Achill Niederhauser

First Lecture:

“The Question After Technics”

Introduction

When we read Heidegger, when we try to make a sincere and honest encounter with his thinking,
with the task that he received from thinking, then we are faced with the question of language. Not
only because we present Heidegger here in English, i.e., in translation. Even if we read Heidegger
in the original German we are faced with that question. This is because we can never simply assume
that we already know what it is certain words mean. In fact, what Heidegger does is not etymology,
but rather a poetic act of disclosing hidden treasures in words. Thereby he opens up spaces of
thinking that invite to see what is. This seeing and coming to awareness is itself a first step towards
the possibility of another world. Hence, we should refrain from attacking the texts we are
concerned with here with our ordinary representations and ideas that we may have about
technology.
Yet, before we can turn to what it is that Heidegger is after with his thought of technology, it is
perhaps in order to set something straight. Heidegger is at times still considered to have been a
luddite, opposed to or anti-technology. It is crucial to appreciate that Heidegger’s thinking does
not take antithetical stances. To be against something means to be focussed on it and draw one’s
identity from what one is against. Yet, Heidegger wishes to do something else. He wishes to show
us that there is a world biding in the shadows, lingering, and waiting to be disclosed. Let me quote
Heidegger himself on what his stance on technology is. In a documentary film from 1970 the
documentary filmmaker Richard Wisser asks Heidegger how he would respond to those who find
his criticism of technology to cause severe headaches, Kopfzerbrechen. The German idiom
“jemandem Kopfzerbrechen bereiten (to give someone a headache)” can mean to cause someone
think profoundly after some issue. This can cause a healthy worry with the inquirer. Heidegger
responds: “I find Kopfzerbrechen very healthy! People do not at all worry enough. There is today
even a great thoughtlessness that goes together with the forgetfulness of being.” (Wisser 1970: 71)
For Heidegger today’s thoughtlessness is tantamount to an ingratitude for the gift of thinking. This
ingratitude is a most pressing danger, which is to say that we interact with technology without

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asking properly where it comes from. Heidegger then says something crucial, something that speaks
from out of the realm from which Heidegger’s thinking speaks:

I am not against technology. I have never spoken against technology nor against the so-called
demonic nature of technology. I rather try to understand the essence of technology … I see in
technology, in its essence, that human beings stand under a power that challenges them and in
which human beings are no longer free – that something announces itself here, namely a relation
[Bezug] between being and human being – and that this relation, which hides itself in technology,
one day comes to light … Thus, I see in the essence of technology the first appearance of a much
deeper occurrence (Geschehen) that I call Ereignis. (Wisser 1970: 73)

For now what we take from this is that Heidegger does not oppose technology. Heidegger says
something strange here, something that, I would argue, has not yet been picked up on by most
Heidegger scholarship. Heidegger says that in the epoch of technology, which is our epoch, we can
come closest to being. Remember that Heidegger is the thinker who begins his thinking path by
asking the question of being, Seinsfrage, by asking for the meaning of being. Note also that the
German word Seinsfrage can indicate that being itself poses a question for us. This is perhaps a claim
most have never heard about Heidegger. The supposed luddite here very clearly says that the
relationship between being and human being, which has been forgotten, can come to the fore in
technology. Beware that by “technology” Heidegger does not at all mean technological tools. Note,
however, also that Heidegger here does say that the human being is no longer free thanks to the
force or power of what unfolds in technology. That the human being is no longer free, in turn,
indicates the very possibility of freedom. On some level the human being as the tragic being must
always already gain his freedom, is never simply given freedom. Yet, in the epoch of technology,
there is something else that happens as well. Tragedy disappears. Total control and a will to make
and produce all beings according to preconceived demands takes over and deludes humans to
assume that by the means of technology we now are fully in charge of the course of history and
even the fate of the entire planet. Hence the hubristic notion of the “Anthropocene” according to
which the human subject qua foundation of all beings (and here it is important to point out that all
objectivity is always already subjective insofar as the categories of subjectivity form objectivity, i.e.,
the human being always already only finds himself in nature). Yet, Heidegger tells us that we are
not in charge. Rather, as he writes in What are Poets for?, man is the “functionary” of technology.
We execute its demands. Thus, we understand why it is that we speak of mastering the challenges
of technology, of digitisation etc. There is “something” that challenges us and forces us to execute
certain demands of the circular will to will in this epoch. In order to break free from technology,
we hence are not to will its end, or to will us to overcome it. In the German Heidegger often speaks
of verwinden, which can be understood as turning something around in such a way that another
possibility begins to show itself from within. There is another world possible right at this very

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moment of seeming total technological exclusivity on the earth. Yet, in order to find an exit, i.e.,
this other world that is already there but covered over, we need to understand whence technology
comes and how it unfolds. We also need to ask the question of being for this question is always at
the onset of thinking. Heidegger writes: “Human beings do not control technology. They are at its
mercy [ist ihr Spielwerk] … In that respect modern human beings are a slave to their forgetting of
being.” (GA 15: 370) Hence in What are Poets for Heidegger also says that “[t]his epoch is neither
decay nor decline.” (GA 5: 320/ 240 ta)

In a public, which Heidegger held in the early 1950s at the Technical University of Munich, we find one
of the clearest explications of Heidegger’s understanding of technology. The talk is entitled Die
Frage nach der Technik and is usually translated as The Question Concerning Technology. On the level of
correspondence truth this translation is, of course, correct. Yet, Heidegger says something else in
the German. Heidegger asks nach der Technik. That is to say, Heidegger asks after Technik for he
does not yet know what it is exactly that Techik is concerning. When we say the word concerning,
then we say, without thinking, that we already perfectly know what it is that we are questioning.
We are then after something in a different, namely in the way that we are after some desired result.
But Heidegger is after technology in such a way that he does not know what it is that technology
means or what it is that it brings to bear. Hence he is after a phenomenon of which he does not yet
fully know what it entails, he is after technology in such a way that technology is allowed to open
itself up to Heidegger on its own accord. Now the title of the text is The Questioning After
Technology.
Yet, what does technology mean in English vernacular? Note that all of this already indicates the
danger, the danger that is language itself, if we do not heed our mother tongues but simply operate
with words deaf and numb to their origins. Now, on the one hand, technology can mean a
technology of doing something. Writing, for example, is a technology. On the other hand,
technology in contemporary English vernacular can also be the general term of various
technological tools like smartphones, computers, cameras, nuclear bombs, airplanes. Yet,
Heidegger is not after those tools in that way, but rather he is after what makes those tools and
machines and ways of extracting and operating with energy possible. We shall say in English that
Heidegger is after technics, for technics seems to be a word that tickles the imagination less than
technology. Technics does not give us as much as to represent as the word or concept
“technology.” Thus, the question now is the questioning after technics. Note that the first

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paragraph of Heidegger’s essay explicitly mentions language. The first sentence speaks of
questioning, of asking, and Heidegger stresses that asking is a building of a path. There is no direct
way, immediate access to the phenomenon at hand, but the phenomenon, technics, and the epoch
it spans open, may show itself by itself. Most importantly, Heidegger here also says that this is
necessary, this free opening up of the phenomenon, if we mortals are to enter into a free
relationship with technology. Our being is opened up to technics if we tentatively ask after it rather
than attacking the phenomenon by saying “concerning X” which implies that we already know and
have full and transparent understanding of what is going on.
Heidegger then continues his investigation by explicating the two ordinary ways of understanding
technology. One theory says that technology is a means to an end. The other theory says technology
is technology is anthropological, it is something human beings do. Here technology is really about
tools and machines, about handling these instruments. Hence here the common representation of
technology is that technology is an instrument that humans use at will in order to achieve certain
ends. Heidegger does not deny that this is a valid claim. In fact, this is such a valid observation, so
obvious that the investigation could end here and we could now, as is done and has been at nausea
for decades, debate about the “ethical” or “peaceful” or “sustainable” etc. use of various
technologies like nuclear energy or airplanes. All of this, however, always assumes that we are in
charge, that modern technology is simply a tool like a hammer or a sword and humans make use
of tools at will. Nevertheless, at the time of Heidegger writing this, up until today, there is talk, in
variations, of course, about mastering technology. Today, perhaps, we mostly talk about mastering
the digital age, or the challenges ahead etc. Why would we need to master technology if it is simply
an instrument? A tool like a hammer does not require mastery on the level that the extraction of
nuclear energy does. One could argue that this is simply the logical result of continued progress
and self-evident complexity that comes with the furthering of the sciences. Yet, why is it that we
have entered an age of such seeming tremendous complexity? For Heidegger there is a clear schism
between a hammer and the nuclear bomb. They are of different epochs. And Heidegger’s question
is after the origin and meaning of our epoch, of the deep history we live through, rather than
whether to describe contemporary technological tools as instrumental is correct.
When Heidegger asks for the origin of technics, one could assume that he makes the assertion that
contemporary technological tools are the result, the effect of the revolution in the natural sciences.
The move from the vita contemplative to vita active, the active interference of the human being in
creation, which brings about the Copernican and other revolutions, and also effectuates the
construction of ever more complex tools which are used in the lab and for experimentation. That
is to say, the airplane is the result of the sciences bringing about a revolutionary way for the means
of transportation. As Heidegger, however, is not after technological tools per se, his thinking sets

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in somewhere else. For Heidegger the modern sciences themselves become possible thanks to the
dimension which he calls technics, which is now the preeminent, exclusive dimension of being.
Heidegger notes that when we consider technology in ordinary terms we tend to think of it in terms
of cause and effect. Again, we fail to ask after the origin of cause and effect, of causality. We simply
take causality for granted, a causality that is itself already reduced to effective causality. Aristotle
and his scholastic translators knew of four causes, not just one. The material cause, the formal
cause, the efficient cause, and the final cause. Think of a table. In order to build a table you need
timber, which is the material. You also need the form, the shape of the table that you want to bring
forth from the timber used. Then the efficient cause is the carpenter, the one who brings about the
table. The final cause is the purpose of the table which is to have a family or group of peers and
friends around it, to gather them when the evening begins to break into the day and announces the
night, when we gather after a day of battling with existence and find peace in our home around the
table. To speak of a cause here, in the now ordinary sense of the word, makes little to no sense.
Hence the way we understand cause today is already reduced. The word which Aristotle speaks of
in his writings is the Greek aitia which we can understand as owing something to something else.
The table owes its appearance, its form and shape, to its purpose. The carpenter brings to the fore
the form and appearance of the table in harmony with the material used and the purpose it serves.
Again Heidegger points to the danger in language. The Latin translation of the Greek, where aitia
is turned into cause, reduces the wealth of Aristotle’s insight into the art of bringing forth,
hervorbringen. Brining rather than positioning or producing means to deliver something, to bring
something that is there, but covered over, to the fore, to bring forth what is waiting to be brought
forth.
As we can see, Heidegger has moved from immediate phenomena and our immediate and implicit
unquestioned understanding of technology to questioning how at all any such immediate and
apparently obvious understanding and its operations have become possible. For the cybernetic
system, the cybernetic positive feedback loop whose operations are prevalent in our epoch operates
on the reduced model of efficient causality, of cause and effect, of forcefully producing desired
effects from wilfully posited causes. Here nothing is brought forth, nothing is brought to shine.
The cybernetic feedback loop simply reports on the various effects it produces for the sake of
producing those effects and signals. The cybernetic feedback loop is a system of reporting signals,
and in fact asking a simple question after something as yet unseen distorts and interrupts its
operations and is therefore immediately deemed, and rightfully so, a threat to its operations. This
system operates by abusing time and space as the parameters of its operations so that time and
space are no longer allowed to shine forth in their own right. Time is clock time. Space is a
receptacle. Both can be measured and both are required for the cybernetic circuit to function. That

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time is something that arises and gives, that withdraws and pushes, that ecstatically throws open
dimensions of existence is not a thought even remotely entertained here. A certain one-
dimensionality sets in.
What Heidegger then wishes to point us to is that in a simple endeavour of building a table the
mode of bringing forth something that is, that properly is a table, is always at stake. Something
concealed is brought forth into unconcealment. The table is harboured from the timber. While this
does change the form of the material used, this alteration is at once also a safeguarding, a protecting.
Perhaps a quote from an artist helps us grasp this better. It was Michelangelo who said the
following: “I saw the Angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” This is the movement
of the most fundamental thought of Heidegger’s thinking. This thought is called aletheia, un-
concealing, dis-absconding perhaps too.
Heidegger turns to the original Greek word for cause to bring forth, to let shine what experience
it might have been the Greeks made when the word aitia, owing something to something, became
the word that described this relationality. The reduction that takes place in the Latinised version of
the word translates into the further reduction of this profound relationality. Hence now Heidegger
asks, how is it that the Greeks understood technics? It is, to wit, no coincidence that our occidental
languages up until today often speak Latin and Greek when they address fundamental phenomena
and relations of human being.
Technology and Technik both come from the Greek techne. Techne is a way of unconcealing or disclosing
in relationship with episteme, knowing. Techne is first and foremost a mode of bringing forth in
harmony with and possible thanks to unconcealing. Techne rather than physis is a mode of bringing
forth of something, for example, a table, which cannot bring itself forth. Physis is the way in which,
for example, a flower grows and blossoms. While physis could be translated and represented as
“nature” we shall refrain from this translation. For nature is the representation of all things and
beings and animals organic and/or inorganic, something visible and today ultimately something to
operate with, something to manipulate. Physis, however, as Heraclitus tells us, physis kryptestai philei.
This means physis likes to hide herself, where the kryptestai is a medial form, i.e., not a pure self-
reflective verb, but the “itself” here means that physis conceals herself in something. Physis itself is
never present-at-hand as some object, physis cannot be represented or enframed. It eludes such
attempts entirely and necessarily. And yet, physis is the way in which something like a flower is
brought forth. Techne on the other hand is modifying bringing forth as the construction of a house
that brings forth a dwelling place of a family. Techne is then not the instruments or tools used, but
the knowing way of setting into presence.
Hence for Heidegger even modern technics is not instrumental, but first and foremost a bringing
forth, a way of disclosing and unconcealing, a rather specific way, shall we say. Modern

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technological complex tools are manifestations of this horizon of disclosing that Heidegger refers
to as technics, which is itself a way of disclosing and unconcealing. That is to say before the airplane
is possible a shift in being itself takes place, a shift to which humans respond to and which by their
response opens up this now prevalent and exclusive realm thanks to which time and space become
parameters and over-arching manipulation and modification of beings begins are possible and
necessary. Technics then and what it is that it can do, i.e., manipulate and modify beings, exert
seemingly total control, is only possible thanks to the peculiar way of disclosing and unconcealing
that Heidegger calls technics.
The shift that occurs from original techne to technics is crucial to appreciate. While techne does
constitute a manipulation to a certain degree, the table is not there without this specific bringing
forth, there is something else that happens in modern technics. Heidegger’s example here is the
production or extraction of energy. More to the point the phenomenon of electricity and the vast
amounts of energy that have to be extracted in order to produce electricity indicate a certain
forcefulness, a certain challenging and demanding precisely in the extraction of energy. Put
differently, what was once a river in its own right, is now a source from which energy can be
extracted. Take Heidegger’s example of the windmill. The windmill, which we know also from
Leibniz’s mill example, moves and is operational only when wind is blowing. Hence one has to go
with the seasons, with the wind. One cannot at will extract energy from the wind and then store
that energy for later use. It is worthy quoting Heidegger here at length in order to see the contrast
between tools of old and modern technics which is a challenging, herausfordern, rather than a working
with:
“Its sails do indeed turn in the wind; they are left entirely to the wind's blowing. But the windmill
does not unlock energy from the air currents in order to store it. In contrast, a tract of land is
challenged into the putting out of coal and ore. The earth now reveals itself as a coal mining district,
the soil as a mineral deposit. The field that the peasant formerly cultivated and set in order
[bestellte] appears differently than it did when to set in order still meant to take care of and t o
maintain. The work of the peasant does not challenge the soil of the field. In the sowing of the
grain it places the seed in the keeping of the forces of growth and watches over its increase.
But meanwhile even the cultivation of the field has come under the grip of another kind of setting-
in-order, which positions [stellt] nature. It positions it in the sense of challenging it. Agriculture is
now the mechanized food industry. Air is now set upon to yield nitrogen, the earth to yield ore,
ore to yield uranium, for example; uranium is set upon to yield atomic
energy, which can be released either for destruction or for peaceful use.”

This is the shift that occurs and this is the realm that modern technics opens up such that all beings,
including the human being, are positioned in a challenging and forceful way to stand ready as
exploitable resource for the positive cybernetic feedback loop. There is still unconcealing and
disclosing but this unconcealing is now forgetful of concealing, this mode is now a process of
“unlocking and exposing” “erschließen und herausstellen”. The prevalent mode is now stellen, to

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position, to posit, to demand, to challenge, rather than bergen which would mean something like
harbouring, sheltering, salvaging. Hence we no longer need to respect the seasons to grow crops.
There is no sheltering, but a permanent extracting, transforming, storing, redistributing etc.
Heidegger writes:
“That challenging happens in that the energy concealed in
nature is unlocked, what is unlocked is transformed, what is
transformed is stored up, what is stored up is, in turn, distributed,
and what is distributed is switched about ever anew. Unlocking,
transforming, storing, distributing, and switching about are ways
of revealing.”
There is also a continuous and permanent securing of the outcomes. This is why we today exist
under the permanent requirement to evaluate everything and everyone at all times and in any
encounter. This positive feedback system uses evaluations as its fuel to secure itself for the sake of
securing itself. Beings are ordered and secured, managed and evaluated as Bestand, standing
resource, i.e., as that which stands ready for unlocking, transforming, securing, distributing, at any
time and anywhere seemingly without resistance. The airplane always stands ready for the
possibility of transport, as the industrially produced chicken stock stands ready as the ever-same
source of identical amounts of protein, which is required for a healthy well balanced diet. And of
course today we can eat “fake” chicken, which is not a chicken at all, but a copy, a simulacra,
something artificial, but as such accepted as chicken. The breakdown of sense as an immanent
threat of technics is rather visible here.
The realm then which technics spans open is such that beings become modifiable standing reserve
ordered and positioned to stand ready at any time and anywhere and in a computational manner.
Nature is now ordered and computed as resource.
The human being is the functionary of this challenging unlocking positioning. As Heidegger puts
it, the human being is gathered or summoned to do so, summoned to do so more precisely by the
event of this original disclosing that lets beings appear as modifiable standing reserve. Humans
today are in and of this exclusive framework, gathered and positioned to execute the positioning.
Heidegger calls this realm Ge-stell, the concentration of all positioning. It used to be translated as
enframing, but is better understood as positionality. The German prefix “Ge” always indicates a
gathering or concentration of something. The verb stellen means to position, to place, to put, to set.
Stellen is also the root for her-stellen, to produce, vor-stellen, to represent, to imagine, to picture, and
nach-stellen, to imitate. What Heidegger does here is to bring forth, in a poietic manner, something
that the word Gestell officially does not mean. Yet, Heidegger shows that Ge-stell can mean exactly

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this and in doing so, all of a sudden, another path for thinking and hence seeing and being is thrown
open.
The German word Gestell is a common word. A Gestell is a stand or supporting framework used,
for example, in workshops or on farms. Until the second half of the 20th century “Gstell” in
Southern German vernacular was also used to refer to machines like a circular saw. Yet, this is not
what Heidegger means by Ge-Stell. By hyphenating the word Heidegger in a sense frees the word
from its immediate everyday meanings. The interruption of the hyphen lets us rest on the prefix
and simultaneously brings to the fore the weight and meaning of the root verb stellen: Ge-Stell is
then the gathering of all modes of stellen, of placing, putting, positioning, setting (up), producing,
chasing, imitating. Note also that the perfect tense of stellen is gestellt. As an adjective gestellt can
mean affected and artificial. Human beings have always produced and created things according to
preconceived forms, as Sheehan notes (cf. Sheehan 2010: 95). But Ge-Stell operates by
homogenising and making uniform and so Ge-Stell eradicates ownness and uniqueness.
Ge-Stell is not to be understood as a general concept, genus or class under which all
technological beings are subsumed. A radio or a smartphone, a plane or a computer are not gestells
like cows and birds are animals or like telephones and letters are means of communication. In that
sense the common English translation of Ge-Stell as enframing could be misleading since it implies
that what technology essentially does is to enframe all beings, as though technology surrounded
beings in such a way that all beings are in general enframed, as if it came to beings from outside.
Andrew Mitchell, therefore, proposes to translate Ge-Stell as positionality precisely because Ge-
Stell is not external to beings but rather an essential and currently prevalent ocurring of being, i.e.,
the way in which beings appear: “Positionality is not something distinct from the presencing of
beings, but rather is their way of presencing in a post-modern era of circulative replacement.”
(Mitchell 2015: 51) Beings are analogous to being as positionality. In this sense positionality is the
dimension, the realm that technics opens up. This realm is not eternal, but finite. The fact that
Heidegger can see positionality is a sign that there is already a shift occurring in history.
Positionality opens up a realm in which things become circularly replaceable. The way beings are
present is such that beings increasingly occur positioned — as immediately ready for use and
instantly replaceable. Heidegger uses a striking example with the German word “Pflanze”, which
means plant, an example that exceptionally also works in English vernacular. Both words “Pflanze”
and “plant” say the same thing. Is it not strange that we refer to a tree or a flower, both of which
grow, blossom, decay on their own accord, are considered “plants”, i.e., literally something placed
and positioned for a certain yield. The English “plant” can also mean “factory”, i.e, a building that
purely serves the purpose of production for the sake of production. Both the German and the
English words are of modern origin. The word “plant” already represents something that stands

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ready for exploitation. Beings, all that is, becomes Bestand, standing reserve, challenged and
demanded to be readily exploitable at any time anywhere. Beings are ordered and computed. They
are not allowed to be of their own accord in their unique uniqueness.
Gestell is the gathering of all positioning and placing. Gestell is as such das Wesen der Technik. This
word, Wesen, is usually translated as essence.
But Heidegger is not after what technology is, after some metaphysical definition of technology,
he is not after the quiddity all technological tools. Instead, Heidegger is after the realm that technics
opens up and which we, mortals, inhabit. Hence Heidegger gives the example of Hauswesen, i.e.,
the realm of a household to make clearer what he means by the word Wesen. The realm of technics,
where realm also means kingdom, then is what Heidegger is after to diagnose and is where we
today exist and die. Remember, what Heidegger is after is a free relationship with technics. The
question Heidegger asks could be formulated as follows: “What is the provenance of technics and
how does it constitute our epoch?”
That which constitutes our epoch, that which determines how beings are and appear lies in the
name Gestell. Heidegger sometimes also speaks of the will to will in this regard. The will to will, this
purely self-referential historical motion, that operates in order to enhance, increase, optimise,
evaluate only for the sake of so doing, is for Heidegger operative in technics and is nihilism.
Heidegger writes in his letter to Ernst Jünger and with reference to Nietzsche, that the will to will
is the ““most uncanny” [guest] … because, as the unconditional will to will, it wills homelessness
[Heimatlosigkeit] as such.” (GA 9: 387/ 292)
Homelessness, uprooting, and circularity are what the will to will wills. This entire uncanny process
is the constant denial of time and death. Hence in the lecture course What is Called Thinking?
Heidegger turns to Nietzsche’s Zarathustra to carve out how the will, representation, technics and
the ordinary understanding of time as linear work together.
Heidegger quotes from Zarathustra: “This, yes, this alone is revenge itself: the will’s revulsion against
time and its “It was”.” (GA 8: 97/ 93) As beings cease to be, the will seeks revenge and its revenge
drives the will to want the ever-same and controllable outcome at all times, which the will needs
for total control over beings. This is what Bestand, standing reserve, delivers. The German word
Heidegger uses for “seeking revenge” is nach-stellen. Nachstellen can mean to position oneself behind
someone else with the intent to chase after or even harm them. In Ge-Stell beings are without guard
precisely since they are not allowed their own time and place but must stand ready at any time and
anywhere. But nach-stellen also means to imitate. That is to say, the will to will operates by chasing
after and imitating beings. Thus, the will produces the ever-same outcome it desires by producing
imitations.

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In What is Called Thinking? there is another crucial passage where Heidegger lays out his
critique of representationalism and its connection to vulgar time. I quote Heidegger here at length
because it shows how Heidegger’s critique of representationalism leads him to determine the
essence of technology as Ge-Stell:

Since long ago, that which is present has been regarded as what is. But what representational ideas
can we form of what in a way is no longer, and yet still is? What ideas can we form of that which
was? At this “it was,” idea and its willing take offense. Faced with what “was,” willing no longer
has anything to say. Faced with every “it was,” willing no longer has anything to propose. This “it
was” resists the willing of that will. The “it was” becomes a stumbling block for all willing. It is the
block which the will can no longer budge. Then the “it was” becomes the sorrow and despair of
all willing which, being what it is, always wills forward, and is always foiled by the bygones that lie
fixed firmly in the past. (GA 8: 96/ 92)1

2. LEcture: THE DANGER and THE THING

3. LECTURE: ONly a God can save us now. Poetic existence

1
Note in this regard also that Heidegger likens the developments of modern technology and
society to Plato’s cave (cf. GA 71: 107/ 90). In the cave all beings qua shadows are secured in
their presence and they recur eternally in the same order.
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