The Technology Questioning the Concern
A useful seminar. Peering into:
Heidegger's The Question Concerning Technology via
Hölderlin's The Rhine, and
Harold's recording of the Niagara River for Dr. David
Harris Smith in CSMM712 (New Media Methods), October 2015.
See also: Presentation Notes.

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“from there I learned without expecting it
of a destiny”—F. Hölderlin
“We shall call that ... which first starts (wo)man upon a way of revealing, destining [Geschick]” —M. Heidegger
“But it makes no sense to wish
one's own wishes in the face of fate”—F. Hölderlin
“we hear ... that technology is the fate of our age ... But we are within the open space ... that in no way confines us to stultified compulsion” —M. Heidegger
“Even the poem may hardly disclose them”
—F. Hölderlin
“What technology is ... discloses itself when we trace instrumentality back to fourfold causality” —M. Heidegger
“and the ray of light that greets (grants) us newborn”
—F. Hölderlin
“Only what is granted endures. That which endures primally out of the earliest beginning is what grants (greets).” —M. Heidegger
“and if swiftly he were not mastered and made to grow”
—F. Hölderlin
“But suppose now that technology were no mere means, how would it stand with the will to master it?” —M. Heidegger
“But a god likes to save his sons”—F. Hölderlin
“But where the danger is, grows the saving power also”—F. Hölderlin
“To save” is to fetch something home into its essence.—M. Heidegger
“For purity comes out of such a smithy”—F. Hölderlin
“The three ways of being responsible owe thanks to the pondering of the silversmith”—M. Heidegger
“For house and home and law will perish and the days of (wo)man become monstrous before one like the Rhine forgets his beginnings”—F. Hölderlin
“consider the monstrousness that reigns here ... "The Rhine" (as) dammed up into the power works.”—M. Heidegger
“Rivers ... are to be a language ... Yet what the river does, No one knows.” —F. Hölderlin (Der Ister)
For me, the river holds in tension what is granted [gewahren] and what is inevitable [destined]. The river reveals freely, but is no tame beast. It challenges me forth. If flows with the rain.
Two modes of revealing
Poesis (bringing forth)
Herausfordern (challenging forth)
Standing Reserve
[Bestand] "Whatever is ordered about"
Human resources?
Natural resources?
“The essence of technology is by no means anything technological.”
[Wesen] (noun) essence.
[das Wahren als Gegenwart] enduring as presence
[anwesend] present
[wesen] (verb) to tarry or dwell / to come to presence
[wahren] to endure / (persist?) ence of memory.
[sein] to be
Questioning causality itself

silverstackers.com, christianpost.com, kateearlam.com
"But in what, then, does the playing in unison of the four ways of occasioning play?"
[Ge-stell] En-framing
[Stellen] to place / set (up) / arrange / supply
[stellt] set upon
[vorstellung] conception
[vorstellen] to represent
[bestellen] to order
[sicherstellen] to secure
[nachstellen] to entrap
[bestellte] set in order
[verstellen] block / disguise
[herstellen] to produce / to set here
[darstellen] to present / exhibit
En-framing
What people (are driven to) do when they set-in-order the world.
This attitude precedes modern physics and its new causality.
Our own orientation to the world is the essence of technology.
“Once there was a time when the bringing-forth of the true into the beautiful was called techne.”
Why this nostalgia for the Greeks? They are a long way upstream.
“The merely instrumental, definition of technology is in principle untenable ... it cannot be rounded out by some metaphysical or religious explanation.”
Interestingly, Holderlin's poems have substantial metaphysical/religious undertones.
Heidegger identifies wesen [essence] with wahren "to last or endure".
Heidegger is dead. But what is the essence of Heidegger?
What might Heidegger say about the (decadent) contemporary art market?

For The Love of God — Damien Hirst
abc.net.au, dailymail.co.uk
"We are summoned to hope in the growing light of the saving power. How can this happen?"
"Here and now and in little things, that we may foster the saving power in its increase. This includes holding always before our eyes the extreme danger."