中国现象学网

Dr. Beniamino Soressi

Via Gragnana 6, 29100 Piacenza,Italy

Email: bensore@yahoo.it


Abstract

In the first part of this article, I introduce to Heidegger's intuition that the poet accomplishes in producing by metaphor an "ek-stasis" of things that is the "analogon" of technological production. The poet transforms man's passive reception of things by a distinctive non-logical[1] "thinking." Technology appears as a "a mode of revealing" like poetry, but its "revelation" is a transfiguration of things as they are by a self-assertive and calculating stance toward nature; and it is a sort of "over-revelation" overwhelming every other possible revelation. In the second part, I take seriously what at first is only the personal mental experiment of considering technology, with its "sacerdotal" organization and apparatus of sacred tools, as the contemporary exact equivalent to ancient gods themselves, that is to what Heidegger diametrically opposed to it. This leads us into some of the outcomes of Heidegger's and of following thinkers such as Severino's reflections. Technology seems to be the only "not-yet-revealed" God because "over-revealed as something else". In fact, contemporary man[2] is not deeply conscious that "his" life is becoming an increasingly concrete, living prayer to the technological apparatus, which parallels and substitutes ancient men's singing their prayers and dedicating their everyday actions to their Gods.

Keywords: Technology, poetry, religion, sacred, contemporary man



§ Section one: Heidegger on poetry and technology


Heidegger thought he was, and today he would think we are, living in a destitute time, a dark time where the gods[3] "have left the world." It is a time of "mourning and melancholia" due to the "death of God" and a time empty of meaning, because Being[4] itself has "chosen to be absent" from man. Absence is the space made vacant by the loss of religious belief. In the middle of a destitute time, man cannot experience his destitution because of his "destitute character." Man is so "empty of meaning" and of capacity of real thought, that he cannot even see this emptiness. Moreover, he is experiencing a groundlessness that detains him from any turning. Men are unaware not only that gods have left, but also that men are mortals. Unaware of their own mortality, they do not feel the need of a God to save them.

1. The origin and destiny of technology

The root of the destituteness of our time lies in modern thought. According to Heidegger's interpretation, modern thought has its basis in Parmenides and Plato.

The most radical development of this great trend emerges in Descartes, who represents the fundamental thinker of modernity. With him and with subsequent modern thought, man, in the most radical way, "poses" the external reality before himself. Reality becomes an object of his consciousness and his consciousness becomes the only guarantor of the truth of what comes "inside" man. The guarantor can be identified with man's subjective, self-affirming will. There is no external guarantor.[5] On the contrary, Heidegger thinks that Being[6] itself guarantees man and his thinking. By doing this, it makes man secure.

Heidegger applies phenomenology to the history of thought with the intent of undoing philosophy[7] because philosophy, with its metaphysics, is pervasive in our society. Heidegger aims at liberating human being from the "contamination" of post-Platonic subjectivism and metaphysics.

Before Heidegger, Emerson in Nature has posed the problem of the disappearing of man's "original relation" to nature; he thought this was due to what he calls a "retrospective" culture.[8] Heidegger's inquiry is similar, but in his opinion, the cause of modern man's "alienation" from things is different: it is man's self-affirming will that does not admit man into the "Open," the "nonobjective character of full Nature."[9]

Along with a different conception of the subject, modernity is characterized by a new conception of "truth." As Leopardi says, science urges man to its "cold truth," which eradicates the hopeful and warm truth of poetry, and, with that, the youth and the innocence of mankind. The "cold" and objectifying "truth" is not only scientific "truth," but every metaphysical conception of truth as "adaequatio rei et intellectus," equation of Being and intellect. The truth of the "res cogitans" overlooks the chiaroscuro-like character of truth. Moreover, it dissolves the illusion.[10] As Rilke says, things have become "empty and indifferent." Even nowadays, it seems that only for some small children everything can be fully significant and really "present." According to Heidegger, truth must be conceived as Greeks did: as "aletheia," unveiling, unconcealedness and openness. "Openness," "beginning," "founding," and "youth" are all related terms and constitute the grounding, of language, thought and man, all at once. Heidegger as well as Leopardi, Emerson and Nietzsche[11] are concerned with the originating, the beginning, the rooting of thought, and of language itself, in poetry and in the wonder in which philosophy began.


2. The essence of technology

As I have said, man's self-affirming will is on the basis of the new conceptions of human subject and of truth that allow the appearing of technology, whose "essence" is the dominion of enframing. Technology has the character of a revelation that does not allow anything to appear as it is. Technology reveals what the thing is only after being "ordered," "produced," or simply enclosed in a concept by man: it reveals what the thing is not when it is presented to us. Heidegger says, "Enfraiming is an ordain of [a non compelling] destining, as is every way of revealing,"[12] and "it banishes man into that kind of revealing which is an ordering," it "conceals that revealing which, in the sense of 'poiesis,' lets what presences come forth into appearance."[13] As Heidegger says, "The objectness, the standing-over against, of production stands in the assertion of calculating propositions and of the theorems of reason" which constitute "the realm of self-assertive unshieldedness."[14] On the one hand, technology covers and "closes" man into her shield, and man loses his unshieldedness. Man of the age of technology is a "homo clausus" because he incarnates both individualistic atomism and the "closedness" of an exclusive technical-technological rationality.[15] On the other hand, "technological" man is unshielded and does not belong anymore to the Open because "he himself and his things are thereby exposed to the growing danger of turning into mere material and into a function of objectification." Self-assertive man, the "functionary of technology," is more in danger than animals and plants because he risks to "loose his selfhood to unconditional production."[16] In this sense, the essence of technology is both man's self-assertive nature and man's unshieldedness. "Technological" man is living not in the "realm" of goals, but in that of means. He is living in a realm that has value only because it can become in the future. This is another subtle form of what Nietzsche called "nihilism": the world and the things, as they are here and now, have no value.[17] According to Heidegger, what keeps man safe is "unshieldedness in reverse," a kind of vulnerability resolved in a "receptive" Openness to the Open. It is the reverse of man's self-affirming and searching for a technological safety. The most daring men accomplish in receiving, not in producing, and this "more venturesome" daring "creates a safety." The paradox Heidegger proposes is that the "daring which is more venturesome creates a safety for us" and does not raise defenses around man, but creates a form of secureness, that is a being "sine cura," "without care," without the "obsession" with "purposeful self-assertion," utilization and production of beings.

However, being "outside all care" does not seem to imply, as Heidegger says[18], a being freed from the need of protection. The need for protection seems to be a universal need of man, which we can find even in "poets in a destitute time." Maybe Heidegger means that being "outside of all care" frees man of the need of an exclusive technological protection. Technological protection is "the constant negation of death," which is "what is more certain." Thus, man needs another form of protection. We think that "the most daring" are such only because they have already found a "security," a form of safety. Otherwise, an "absolute daring" appears as an absolute madness. Certainly this protection needs to be other than a technological protection.[19]

However, according to Heidegger, the most safe will paradoxically be the "most mortals among mortals" the more self-conscious of the mortality of man would be the most daring, the most ventured. They would be even more daring than the "self-assertive human nature which is already more daring than plant and beast."[20] Here emerges the role of "poets in a destitute time": Poets "gather in poetry the nature of poetry" and in technology, its nature. Poets "sense the trace of the fugitive gods"[21] and so trace the way toward the turning for mortals.


3. Technology as a form of poetry

Man is no longer able to see natural beings as his home. Natural beings, to "gain" value, need to become other than what they are. This "becoming other" is something that happens also in poetry. The poet, by metaphor, makes things stand out of themselves, produces an ek-stasis of things that is the "analogon" of what man does through technology. The difference is that, while poetry by metaphor transfigures man's perception and reception of things, technology is not intended to transfigure man's reception of things, but to transfigure first of all things as they are.

While authentic poets, "the more daring men," accomplish in receiving, the less daring, the self-affirming men of the age of technology accomplish in producing.

While poetry appears as acceptance of destiny, technology seems to be the greatest form of refusal of the destiny of things and of the Open, the greatest form of refusal of man's relation to things as they are. Heidegger says, "What stands as object in the world becomes standing in representational production. Such representation presents. But what is present is present in a representation that has the character of calculation."[22] It is true that technology is a form of "poiesis" based mainly on the logical-mathematical processes of the human mind. The poetry toward which Heidegger wants to bring us is, on the contrary, a "poiesis" of feeling, a "poiesis" of the heart and of revelation.

It does not seem at all true that "the calculating production of technology" is an "act without an image."[23] The age of technology has produced and diffused as many images as never before in human history. Not only do we live in "the age of technological reproducibility of the work of art," but also in the age of technological producibleness and replaceableness of figurative works.[24] These technological images are subordinated to the processes of production that are the outcome of technology. For example, in most of the photos and of the movies, the "personal factors," the personal feeling of the photographer or of the film director, if any, are subordinated to the cold and anonymous calculations of marketing researches.

However, when Heidegger says that the calculating production of technology is an "act without an image," he means that the act that stands at the basis of human production in the age of technology is calculation. Heidegger is searching for the difference between calculating and thinking, calculating and feeling. In Heidegger's opinion, to understand this difference means to understand the essence of technology and of poetry. These questions involve some of the hardest problems of philosophy and mathematics: those concerning their beginning. Is not calculation based on images? Is not mathematics, as natural languages, based on symbolic images and metaphors or metonymies of natural facts, that is, based on poetry? Or the difference is irreducible? Heidegger thinks that the irreducible difference between poetry and technology resides in the fact that the former is a sort of "over-revelation" that overwhelms every other kind of revelation.

Plato's rejection of poetry constitutes the primal "sin" that anticipated and generated not only the death of "esprit de finesse" by hand of the "esprit de geometrie," but also the metaphysical oblivion of Being itself. Heidegger's attitude toward technology, however, is not one of complete rejection. On the one hand, technology is a form of "techne" that is far from founding, beginning, and being a "head start" in a way which is analogous to that of genuine art and poetry. Technology is the mere result of conformity to calculating "res cogitans." However, on the other hand, technology, as other forms of "techne," brings truth into being, into history. This explains Heidegger's ambiguous attitude toward it.

Another difference between poetry and technology lies in the fact that the poetic is the pure. That is, something free from the character of usefulness. The poetic purifies things from calculus and usefulness, and "un-covers" their essence, their truth.[25]

Moreover, the poetic is the essence of all genuine art, and the essence of what for ancient Greeks was called "techne."[26] However, poetry as "linguistic work" has "a privileged position in the domain of the arts."[27]In fact, according to Heidegger, verbal language is essential for man and his thinking.

The "nature," the essence, of poetry, in turn, "is the founding of truth." Founding can be considered "in a triple sense: founding as bestowing, founding as grounding, and founding as beginning. Founding, however, is actual only in preserving. Thus to each mode of founding there corresponds [to] a mode of preserving."[28] The poetical "thoroughly pervades every art, every revealing of coming to presence into the beautiful," says Heidegger.[29] Like poetry, art is – as Hegel puts it – "the highest manner in which truth obtains existence for itself."[30] The fundamental question Heidegger poses is, "Is art still an essential and necessary way in which that truth happens which is decisive for our historical existence, or is art no longer of this character?"[31] There was a time in which "the arts were not derived from the artistic. Art works were not enjoyed aesthetically. Art was not a sector of cultural activity."[32] In Heidegger's opinion, contemporary art is still the highest way of uncovering truth. "The history of the nature of Western art corresponds to the change of the nature of truth."[33]

Now we need to ask if technology, as art, is showing to us this changing of the nature of truth.

Technology, as "physis"[34] itself and as art, is "a bringing-forth, poiesis"; it's a bringing into appearance and "a mode of revealing."[35] Technology, as other forms of "poiesis," lets truth happen, makes Being always partially unconcealed. Technology, for example, reveals a river, the Rhine, as "a water power supplier." A poem on the Rhine, however, reveals the Rhine as something radically different.


4. Language

Heidegger, with "language," refers specifically to verbal language and natural languages.

Heidegger, "poetizing" both philosophy and poetry itself, says that language is the "precinct" and the "house of Being."[36] Words do infinitely more than simply signifying. And language is not simply an instrument in the "hands" of man. Heidegger says that "man has language and he is who says,"[37] but language is "neither expression nor an activity of man. Language speaks."[38]

Poetry is the activity that, more than anything else, makes us closer to language. To be closer to language means to be closer to one of the activities of language, that is, naming. Naming, Heidegger says, is calling, and "calling brings closer what it calls."[39] This is why authentic poetry, that is authentic calling, "brings beings to word and to appearance,"[40] "brings man onto the earth, making him belong to it, and thus brings him to dwelling."[41] Calling, man prepares "an abode for god, so that he can return." This abode is an abode of language and of "divine radiance" shining in "everything that is."[42] The language we believe we can use comes before us: without it, we could not even think and even be men. In the same way, we have always lived breathing air, we have always lived in language, which we have always been listening to and speaking as long as we have been thinking beings. We become conscious of air only concentrating on our breathing. In the same way, we become conscious of language only listening to it and being the voices of language. Another metaphor, that of the Holy Spirit of Christian tradition, applies to language as well, and explains the non-possessive nature of the relation of man to language. When a man is inspired, in the Christian tradition, it is not that he creates a good speech; it is the Spirit that is talking through him. By analogy, in the genuine poet, language is speaking through him rather than he is speaking language. The thoughts man thinks are the thoughts Being thinks through man. This does not exclude man's freedom, because man is destined to freedom.



§ Section 2: Another way of thinking of the gods


Hereinafter, when we speak of "men," we mean the majority of people living in the technology-based societies.

1. The new Homers and Hesiods

Are we really in a godless time? Have not ancient gods been substituted by other "divinities" in our time? Does not man have always substitute-gods for the gods that have gone?

We can think of a god as one to reach whom man would even be willing to sell his most valuable belongings. It is true what Heidegger says, "The default of God means that no god any longer gathers men and things unto himself, visibly and unequivocally, and by such gathering disposes the world's history and man's sojourn to it." However, we need to ask if there can be a time for man without gods. In many cases, a god dies because it seems there have come a "stronger" and more "trustable" god to replace him. We can think of Enlightenment, which substituted religious truth for scientific truth and substituted a personal God for an impersonal "natural" one.

We now ask if technology itself, with its outcomes, can be seen as the "god" of our "destitute time."[43] Technology, in its more powerful forms, is capable of "producing" technological beings and even functionaries of technology who can contribute to changing the way men receive from Being. The technological apparatus, for example, transfigures man's perception of things through advertising and propaganda. In this sense, technology appears as the most influential kind of "poetry." Are not people who work in the field of advertising and propaganda, our Homers and Hesiods, or let us say, our "theologians"? Have not advertising and propaganda, as ancient poetry, already created our pantheon? Certainly our gods seem much less fine and beautiful than those of the past, and seem to excite much rougher feelings in men, but are we really godless? No, man can still feel enthusiasm, hate and love for his gods and their symbols: for money, for his favorite team, for his nation, for his party, for his firm, for his car, for the advances of technology. Moreover, technology possesses another distinctive character that is typical of a god: it seems invincible; its revelations are always new, and even if they are never explicit revelations, every technological product is an implicit revelation of the invincibleness of technology.

2. Differences between ancient and "technological" gods

There is one difference between our gods and the ancient gods. Homer and Hesiod were not functionaries of technology. Their poetizing was not a part of an organized process of planned and impersonal production. Also their gods were free from an exclusive[44] concern for care. Only gods like these may "save us," in the Heideggerian sense of bringing man "outside all care." On the contrary, most of our gods come from production and man's care. The "production mind," which seems hardly to be, as Heidegger puts it, a merely cultural trait[45], can even expand its field over the generation of new human beings, which come to be seen as something analogous to any other kind of production. Even the possibility of having a child, in an age of technology, not only can be an object of a market and be desired as a status symbol[46], but it can become part of a process of production that is wholly controlled by men in its phases.

Every god induces men to sell what they have. Every god needs time to be reached. Both old and new gods want man to sell his time. To reach the old gods, men sold their impersonal, material, substitutable belongings and their calculating. On the contrary, for the new gods, men sell their talents and their most personal belongings, their heart. Also, in order to become, for a little time, similar to his "gods" of television, that is appearing in television, man is disposed to sell his privacy, his secrets, his feelings, his love of truth. In other terms, he sells his personality. Moreover, our not yet consciously and explicitly recognized but almost universally trusted gods keep man prisoner of the world of care.

3. Dwelling and the factual not disappearing of gods and the sacred

Man dwells in what he has created, dwells in technological products. Technological products can be considered by men as beings that do not need to be transformed; they can be seen as ends, so man can dwell in a technological world.

Technology is intended to "open" things to a new being. Beings, in the age of technology, are seen as pure means and "materials of self-assertive production,"[47] but we need to distinguish between technological beings and natural beings such as useful plants, animals, and minerals. Man attributes to natural beings value not for what they are, but for what they can become passing through a process of production. Meanwhile, technological beings, such as a computer or a car, once "posed into existence," as long as they are useful to man, need no more further production: they are provisional sacred beings. These kinds of technological beings are perceived as the real and "perfect" beings which, in a sense, are valuable in themselves. While once the sacred resided in natural beings, now it seems to reside only in some technological beings. Even if the word "sacred" is no longer used in the age of technology, man behaves toward -- and perhaps thinks of and feels -- his money, credit card, his computer, his car, almost as ancient man behaved toward his sacred tools, his totems and talismans. There is a feeling not too different from that of "constraint and externality" Durkheim related to sacred objects. All these technological beings are symbols of an "interior" and/or "external" richness and their almost sacred "religious ministers" are insurance officers, lawyers, bankers and managers.

Now men, while watching a movie in a cinema, are fascinated in a way that is similar to that of medieval men contemplating sacred images in a church; nowadays a lonely man visits a website like a solitary monk looked at a manuscript and its miniatures. Maybe for contemporary man too, even if in a different way, there can be a sacredness and holiness in movies and on the Internet, as well as in the cinema itself and in the still mysterious pixels of his computer.

However, we have to take into consideration other factors which Heidegger outlines. He says, "In self-assertive production, the humanness of man and the thingness of things dissolve into the calculated market value…"[48] The value of things in the age of technology tends to reside in the market value. Man is the "merchant" and remains so also in positing his values. On the contrary, in the time of the gods, beings were free from any imposition of value from market calculations. The value of things was not rising from calculations, but from the feeling and personal needs of men. Technological production constitutes a form of alienation and homelessness of man from natural beings. However, man can dwell in technological beings in the same way he once dwelt[49] in natural beings. Therefore, if technological beings are beings in their own right, does not technological man also dwell in Being itself?

4. Technology as the new god, not yet revealed because "over-revealed"

Technology is the "factual" god of this time. As well as Heidegger's gods, technology seems to gather "men and things unto himself, visibly and unequivocally, and by such gathering disposes the world's history and man's sojourn to it."[50] This god gives meaning to the existence of most men. It gives to men prophets to follow, temples where to find meanings, sacred texts to study, a common way of life and a promise of a future of immortality and prosperity. Technology has its saints: millionaires, music and Hollywood stars, and astronauts. Technology has its apostles and "fathers": Archimedes, Roger, Francis Bacon, and others. The god of our time is constituted by a creative source, the universe, and nature; then by it's "spirit" -- calculus and intuition, which inspire the functionaries of technology--; and finally by its "incarnations" in technological beings like the computer that I used for typing this paper.

Men today still can live for other gods, but, except some cases, they give the most of their time and talents to Technology, and their lives constitute the increase of Technology.

Rereading the sentence[51] cited above, we can raise some doubts about the word "unequivocally." Yes, man equivocates Technology. Man is still used to thinking of technology as a tool in his hands. Man is not yet conscious that this is the main god he trusts and obeys because the majority of his actions are done and his words are spoken for that god. Man equivocates technology because its revelations are subtle: it makes his name explicit only sometimes. Technology never reveals itself as man's god. Technology and its prophets generally speak their own language; they are not worried about "speaking" frankly and clearly to man in the language of man. As Heidegger says, "Technology itself prevents any experience of its nature. For while it is developing its own self to the full, it develops in the sciences a kind of knowing that is debarred from ever entering into the realm of the essential nature of technology."[52] As well as Heraclitus' Nature and the ancient gods, Technology "loves to hide itself," or at least its essence. However, it hides itself not by its absence, but by its omnipresence. It is in this lack of a sort of "frank visibility" and in this equivocation that lies the real difference between modern and ancient gods.

Technology and its prophets seem not to want man to know it as his god. Is Technology enslaving its believers by perpetual mimesis, by never revealing itself?

The times of the gods were the times of their revelation; the time when Apollo spoke through the oracle was the time YHWH spoke to Moses. Can it be that man lies in a "destitute time" because he lacks the consciousness of the god he is trusting, and lacks a revelation, lacks a god to speak to him? With the Christian God, man was used to believing he was believing. This happened in both the cases in which he was and he was not really believing. With Technology it is the opposite: man believes he is not believing in any god, or in some other god, while he, in fact, believes in and obeys Technology.

Technology has no explicit revelation for man, never says to him, "I'm your God." In fact, if man knows the god he trusts is technology, man may become conscious of Technology being an enslaving god, and -- speaking now in Heideggerian terms -- Being may destine man to his turning. However, in Heidegger's opinion, Being is revealing itself through technology and will destine man to turning. In conclusion, Heidegger says that man needs to prepare "an abode for god, so that he can return." I believe that the problem we must face is not so much the returning of a god as god, as that of knowing, of becoming conscious of, who is the God we already host into our home.





[1] Or not-only logical

[2] Most of all "industrialized" man

[3] Like Herakles, Dyonisos and Christ

[4] Being is also Meaning and Presence.

[5] Such as "physis" in most of Greek philosophy

[6] That corresponds to ancient "physis," nature.

[7] In particular Plato's and Descartes's metaphysics

[8] An experience of nature which is "over-filtered" by history and by our "looking backwards" at tradition in the merely "scholasticizing" fashion of textual worship. See Nature, (1836), Sealts, M.M., and Ferguson, A.R. (eds), Emerson's Nature. Origin, Growth, Meaning, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville 1969.

[9] Heidegger, M., What Are Poets for, in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975, p. 112.

[10] The Greek term "de-ludes" means putting us out of "ludus."

[11] We cite Leopardi and Emerson because they constitute some of the most important contemporary sources for Nietzsche, and indirectly for Heidegger.

[12] Heidegger, M., The Question Concerning Technology, in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (translated by W. Lovitt), Harper and Row: New York 1977, pp. 24-25.

[13] Heidegger, M., The Question Concerning Technology, in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (translated by W. Lovitt), Harper and Row: New York 1977, p. 27.

[14] Heidegger, M., What Are Poets for, in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975, pp. 132-133.

[15] Heidegger seems to me as not being against technical-scientific rationality in its entirety, but against its exclusive or "totalitarian" assumption.

[16] Heidegger, M., What Are Poets for, in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975, p. 115.

[17] Heidegger seems to want to extend the Kantian maxim "treat man as a goal in himself and never as a mean" to the whole world of beings. In this sense, Heidegger's antihumanism appears as a radical development of the humanistic tradition.

[18] Heidegger, M., What Are Poets for, in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975, p. 121.

[19] The more radical form of non-technological safety appears in the first part of the poem by Parmenides, concerning the "Way of the Day." According to the traditional interpretation and Heidegger's, this has been seen as the foundation of every subsequent western forms of safety through metaphysical "alienation." Emanuele Severino, reinterpreting the thinker of Elea in a post-Nietzschean and post-Heideggerian perspective, says that it is possible to reread Parmenides as the most radical immanentist thinker. In coherence also with the implications of the theory of relativity, Severino shows that man, as every other being, is -- and has always been -- safe, because both Being and beings, in each one of their states, are immutable, inviolable, and eternal. Severino's philosophy, not identifiable with modernity nor post-modernity, and not with "continental" or "analytic" thought, has, according to many Italian scholars, a decisive meaning in relation to the questions posed by Heidegger. Massimo Cacciari, who in the past years was known as not being a pupil nor an enthusiast of Severino, said this year that one of the main problems of nineteenth century philosophy is evident "only on the basis of a radical contradiction, of an authentic drama with two protagonists: Heidegger and Severino […]. Heidegger – without any distinction between the various phases of his thought – catches all the intrinsic weakness of the idealistic and Nietzschean anti-Platonism – and he develops it (far from denying it) with coherence and radicalism in a great anti-Parmenides. The work of Severino […] represents the other pole." Please see http://www.swif.uniba.it/lei/rassegna/010222.htm.

[20] Heidegger, M., What Are Poets for, in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975, p. 118.

[21] Heidegger, M., What Are Poets for, in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975, p. 94.

[22] Heidegger, M., What Are Poets for, in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975, p. 126.

[23] Heidegger, M., What Are Poets for, in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975, p. 127.

[24] The question arises: how do we have to label them? In fact, "art" and even "craftsmanship" may sound too complimentary.

[25] Heidegger exemplifies this with the paintings by Van Gogh, which show a pair of unused shoes. See Heidegger, M., The Origin of the Work of Art, in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975, pp. 32-37.

[26] "Techne, as knowledge experienced in the Greek manner, is a bringing forth of beings in that it brings forth present beings as such beings out of concealedness and specifically into the unconcealedness of their appearance; techne never signifies the action of making." See Heidegger, M., The Origin of the Work of Art, in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975, p. 59.

[27] Heidegger, M., The Origin of the Work of Art, in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975, p. 73.

[28] Heidegger, M., The Origin of the Work of Art, in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975, p. 75.

[29] Heidegger, M., The Question Concerning Technology, in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (translated by W. Lovitt), Harper and Row: New York 1977, p. 34.

[30] Heidegger, M., The Origin of the Work of Art, in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975, p. 80.

[31] Heidegger, M., The Origin of the Work of Art, in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975, p. 80.

[32] Heidegger, M., The Question Concerning Technology, in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (translated by W. Lovitt), Harper and Row: New York 1977, p. 34.

[33] Heidegger, M., The Origin of the Work of Art, in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975, p. 81.

[34] The Greek term "physis" means nature for ancient Greeks.

[35] Heidegger, M., The Question Concerning Technology, in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (translated by W. Lovitt), Harper and Row: New York 1977, pp. 10-11.

[36] Heidegger, M., What Are Poets for, in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975, p. 132.

[37] Heidegger, M., What Are Poets for, in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975, p. 140.

[38] Heidegger, M., Language, in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975, p. 197.

[39] Heidegger, M., Language, in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975, p. 198.

[40] Heidegger, M., The Origin of the Work of Art, in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975, p. 73.

[41] Heidegger, M., "…Poetically Man Dwells…," in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975, p. 218.

[42] Heidegger, M., What Are Poets for, in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975, p. 92.

[43] Severino's studies, comprehending the question concerning Technology, are very important with regard to this topic. See, for example, La filosofia futura, Rizzoli: Milano 1989.

[44] From the Latin "ex claudo," the word "exclusive" means locking out and leaving no room for anything else.

[45] It seems to be a deeper anthropological trait. In fact, the "production mind" and a reifying attitude are not effective only in the last centuries, as Heidegger seems to think. Man's becoming "human material" is certainly not a specificity of our age of technology. Slavery was accepted in many of the "times of the gods." Moreover, we know that among the Romans the slave was literally considered a "res," a brute thing, raw material, and the owner disposed of his life and death. Compare Heidegger, M., What Are Poets for, in Poetry, Language and Thought, translated by A. Hofstadter, Harper and Row: New York 1975, p. 111.

[46] It has often been in human history.

[47] Heidegger, M., What Are Poets for, in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975, p. 111.

[48] Heidegger, M., What Are Poets for, in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975, p. 115.

[49] In "the time of the gods"

[50] Heidegger, M., What Are Poets for, in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975, p. 91.

[51] "Technology seems to gather men and things unto himself, visibly and unequivocally."

[52] Heidegger, M., What Are Poets for, in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975, p. 117.



References

1. Language, in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975.
2. The Origin of the Work of Art, in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975.
3. "…Poetically Man Dwells…," in Poetry, Language and Thought (translated by A. Hofstadter), Harper and Row: New York 1975.
4. The Question Concerning Technology, in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (translated by W. Lovitt), Harper and Row: New York 1977.
5. What Are Poets for, in Poetry, Language and Thought, (translated by A. Hofstadter) Harper and Row: New York 1975.