Jackie Trono - Heidegger On Technology's Relation to Ecology

In PHIL382: Philosophy of Technology, we examined Heidegger’s thoughts on technology, which are directly relevant to ecology. In “The Question Concerning Technology,” Heidegger suggests that the only way to limit technology is by establishing a free relation to it, and in order to that, we must understand its essence. Accordingly, Heidegger sets about characterizing the essence of technology. The essence of technology, he argues, is Being itself, operating through Enframing. Enframing can basically be explained as that which establishes the world as it is ontologically and therefore ideologically for humans. The danger of technology is that its Enframing reveals the world to men as mere supply and resource, in Heidegger’s terms, as standing reserve.
Consequently, Heidegger sees this essence of technology, Enframing, the danger within Being, as the source of our misconception of our relationship to our surrounding and life-giving environment. Rather than recognize the symbiosis of our relation with Being through being-in-the-world, we are forced into the Enframing of the world as standing reserve by technology. But, Heidegger insists, there is a saving power. That saving power is to be found in safekeeping, the means by which we combat the nearly elusive principal stages of Enframing, the incipient stage of ontology where ideology is formed. Safekeeping is brought about by recognizing the nature of the beast, as one might put it roughly. The nature of the best, or the essence of technology, is Being itself, that which reveals the world as it is for man. Thus, it is by questioning alone, not thinking or calculation that we can reach that safekeeping aesthetic or mood by which Heidegger suggests we can finally limit the destructive scope of the technological. Of course, as the essence of technology is Being itself, it is ultimately unconquerable by man, and so we must learn also to live in a symbiosis with technology, not in the master-servant relation by which we currently abide.