The Question Concerning Technology

Introduction

Heidegger gave the lecture on 18 November 1953 in Munich in a series of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts on the arts in the technological age, and published it in 1954; it developed ideas from lectures he had given in Bremen in 1949. Technology, he argues, is not just a means but a way in which things are revealed: modern technology challenges nature to deliver energy that can be stored and ordered, so that everything becomes “standing reserve”. His example contrasts a hydroelectric plant on the Rhine with the river in Hölderlin’s hymn. The danger lies in this way of revealing itself, and Heidegger quotes Hölderlin: where danger is, the saving power also grows.

More works by Martin Heidegger

• 1927Being and Time
• 1929What Is Metaphysics?
• 1935The Origin of the Work of Art
• 1946Letter on Humanism