The Essence of Technology and Art

In the realm where technology and art intersect, the philosophical insights of Martin Heidegger offer a profound lens through which we can explore this complex relationship. Heidegger, a philosopher who delved deeply into the essence of Being and the existential truths of human existence, viewed technology not merely as a collection of tools and techniques, but as a way of understanding and relating to the world.

This text seeks to unravel Heidegger’s thoughts on technology and art, exploring how these two seemingly disparate domains are intertwined within the fabric of existence. Heidegger believed that the essence of technology is far from being something purely technical; instead, it reveals a fundamental mode of human existence. Similarly, his views (also shared by Luhmann) on art transcended the conventional perception of it as mere aesthetic creation. For Heidegger, art was a profound expression of truth, offering a glimpse into the essence of things. In Heidegger, truth changes from an absolute metaphysical presence to a collateral (d)effect which sparks the uncanny feeling that reality is a floating and relative network of differences; never truly and definitively definable.

As we delve into Heidegger’s philosophy, we find that technology and art are not antagonistic, but rather complementary aspects of human existence. Technology, in its essence, has the potential to unveil truths, much like art does, but it also runs the risk of enframing our understanding in a purely functional and utilitarian perspective. Art, on the other hand, possesses the unique ability to break through this enframing, revealing the world in a new light and allowing us to encounter the truth in its most unadulterated form.

While I think there are strong connections between Heidegger’s and Luhmann’s viewpoint on art, Heidegger’s sometimes quite romantic understanding of it and the special position Dasein has over, for example other forms of Being, seems incompatible with Luhmann’s cold post-metaphyiscal, posthuman theory. As Derrida noted: Heidegger’s attempt to deconstruct metaphysics led him to a new kind of metaphysics. Derrida wanted to show that in thinking, there is always already a contradiction that opposes thought. This seems to me close to Luhmann’s understanding of the psychic system as a sense producing system. Compared to Luhmann’s postmodern perspective (note that Luhmann wouldn’t call himself a postmodern thinker), Heidegger’s outlook seems ancient but nevertheless one can say he initiated the postmodern project.

I am aware of the dangerous territories romanticism can lead us to, but Heidegger hits a spot within me that I can not ignore. As we embark on this philosophical journey, I invite readers to ponder on the profound implications of Heidegger’s thoughts, challenging them to look beyond the surface and engage with the deeper questions about the essence of technology, the nature of art, and the very meaning of our existence within this technologically saturated world.

Heidegger and the Nazis

Heidegger was deeply influenced by his teacher Edmund Husserl who established the school of phenomenology. He was convinced that the best way to understand an entity is to understand it in its Being, which can only be discovered by looking at it, not through theorization or analysis of concepts:

Before words, before expressions, always the phenomena first, and then the concepts! – Martin Heidegger

His view is very practical but also a difficult way of seeing and understanding ontology. It is difficult because we are not used to it. Heidegger’s analysis amounts to an investigation of prereflective action, of the activities we engage in without first conceptualizing them. The truth is that we do not have to conceptualize the world around us—its rules and boundaries, conventions and assumptions—unless, of course, this world breaks down. Philosophy, for far too long, had tried to fit all beings into one category scheme, making metaphysics more primary than phenomena themselves. Heidegger insisted that we must

let what shows itself be seen from itself, just as it shows itself from itself. – Martin Heidegger

But before we can talk about that I have to include an important disclaimer!

While discussing the philosophical contributions of Heidegger, it is essential to acknowledge his association with National Socialism. He actively endorsed this ideology and exploited it as a mechanism for acquiring control, influence, and power. For instance, he employed the services of the Gestapo (the Geheime Staatspolizei) to sideline his colleagues. In other instances, he helped students to move away from the danger. He saw “great potential” in the Führer and, at least at some point in time, believed that Nazism enables the dwelling he desires. Regrettably, Heidegger neither apologized nor distanced himself from his actions, nor did he acknowledge any wrongdoing. Instead, he attempted to obfuscate and justify his actions, which is particularly disconcerting given the fact that both his mentor, Edmund Husserl, and his student (and romantic partner), Hannah Arendt, were of Jewish descent.

Moreover, many argue that it is impossible to separate Heidegger’s politics from his philosophy—they are intertwined, and I tend to agree, at least to some extent. Thus, engaging with Heidegger’s work can be a perilous undertaking, even if many of his ideas are incompatible with Nazism. Maybe it was his concern with technology that spiraled into fear and desperation, leading him to view Nazism as a means to escape the prevailing technological mode of being in his time.

Heidegger is, so to speak, the Hegelian of our time, who was also a Nazi, among other things. The worst part is that in Germany and all over the world, for example in South America, France, and Spain, Heidegger is admired and imitated. […] He usually writes things that one cannot understand at all, and that too, for pages on end! – Karl Popper

Notable critics include Karl Jaspers, Theodor W. Adorno (Frankfurt School), Jürgen Habermas (Frankfurt School), Kurt Tucholsky, and numerous others. Heidegger’s thinking and writing have been criticized for dressing up banalities as profound insights, projecting his personal moods onto others, hiding behind an overly complex language, overemphasizing the role of human beings in determining the nature of being, lacking any ethical content, circular reasoning and tautologies, being the root for the rise of relativism and the rejection of objective turths.

Despite these criticisms, Heidegger remains an influential figure in the history of philosophy especially in France. His ideas continue to be debated and studied in academic circles. He influenced the works of Herbert Marcuse, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, Paul Tillich, Michel Foucault and many more. It would be a mistake to completely dismiss his works because of his character. But it would also be a mistake to dive into his work without knowing about his actions and connections to the Nazi party.

How is it that such a brilliant mind was taken in by the Nazis? How could Heidegger be so socially irresponsible? It is the same problem as with Celan: here is a wonderful writer who was a rotten anti-Semite […] I have shown Heidegger’s brain with a mushroom-like tumor growing out of it to make the point. – Anselm Kiefer

The Essence of Technology

In Being and Time (1927) [Hei08] Heidegger argues phenomenologically that theoretical activities such as the natural sciences depend on views of time and space that narrow the understanding implicit in how we deal with the ordinary world of action and concern. We cannot construct meaningful distance and direction, or understand the opportunities for action, from science’s neutral and mathematical understanding of space and time. Indeed, this detached and supposedly objective scientific view of the world restricts our everyday understanding. Our ordinary use of things and our concernful dealings within the world are pathways to a more fundamental and more truthful understanding of world and being than the sciences provide; science flattens the richness of ordinary concern.

In his essay The Question Concerning Technology [Hei54], Heidegger challenges the prevailing views of technology as merely an instrument (a means to an end) and as a product of human activity. He posits that while we perceive ourselves as creators of technology, in reality, technology originates from elsewhere. Perceiving certain types of technology as instruments or tools is itself a technological mode of understanding. Heidegger argues that there is no such thing as a purely instrumental object. Instruments only manifest to those who interpret the world instrumentally. In this view, technology is a way of comprehending the world that reduces it to raw material, encouraging us to see the world solely as a realm for our intervention.

To find a pre-scientific view on the matter, he goes back to ancient times. In his view, the Greeks used the term techne to denote what we now call technology. However, their concept of techne embraced both art and technique, something akin to our modern notion of craft. For the Greeks, techne implied the act of bringing something into existence. It was not about an engineer constructing an object; rather, the craftsman’s role was to assist in the emergence of something, or, so to speak, helping the material to take on a form. A craftsman would never consider themselves as the absolute origin of the reality of what they were creating. In Heidegger’s view, they would perceive themselves as facilitating the process of something coming into existence.

The causes bring something into appearance. They let it come forth into presence. – Martin Heidegger

In stark contrast, modern technology is not seen as aiding something to emerge. Instead, as Heidegger posits, it forces things into existence. We have come to perceive ourselves as the source of what we create, believing that we are the origin of everything. This is a highly specific way of interpreting the world, one that seemingly grants us the power to control everything around us. Therefore, technology unveils the world in a particular way—it reveals the world as raw material and conceals Being.

The essence of technology as enframing (Gestell) is in its manner of revealing and concealing. It is a way in which we encounter entities generally, including nature, ourselves, and, indeed, everything. Heidegger claims that the Gestell, which becomes pervasively evident in our times with the advent of such technologies as the nuclear bomb, has been operating and developing itself from long ago, being itself the root of modern science’s instrumental character and its understanding of nature in terms of measurable extension. This implies that technological entities have their distinct form of presence, persistence, and relationships between parts and wholes. They have their unique ways of presenting themselves and the world in which they exist—technology is about dominance and control. However, the heart of the issue lies not in any specific machine, process, or resource. Instead, technology is challenging (herausfordernd): it is the way the essence of technology shapes our understanding of all things, and the existence of those things themselves—the all-encompassing manner in which we encounter and are encountered by the technological world.

[Because of technology] all distances in time and space are shrinking [and] yet the hasty setting aside of all distances brings no nearness; for nearness does not consist in a small amount of distance. – Martin Heidegger

We seem to have become nearly incapable of experiencing this nearness, let alone comprehending it, as all things increasingly manifest to us in a technological fashion: We perceive and interact with them as what Heidegger describes as a standing reserve, akin to supplies in a storeroom, items of inventory awaiting direction and mobilization, assembly and disassembly, positioning and dismissal. Everything presents itself merely as an energy source or as a subject for our orchestration. We even perceive human abilities as if they were merely instruments for technological procedures, as when a labourer becomes nothing more than a tool for production. Leaders, planners, along with the rest of us, are mere human assets to be managed, reorganized, and discarded. Every single entity that manifests itself technologically thereby forfeits its unique autonomy and form. We dismiss, conceal, or simply fail to perceive, other potentialities.

The mode of revealing that prevails in modern technology does not manifest as a bringing forth in the sense of poiesis (Gestalt). Instead, the revealing that governs modern technology is a challenging (Herausfordern) one, which places an unreasonable demand on nature to provide energy that can be extracted and stored. It’s important to note that, for Heidegger, the challenge precedes the unlocking, thus the essence of technology predates natural science. It was technological thinking that first understood nature in such a way that nature could be challenged to unlock its forces and energy.

Modern technology is not applied natural science, far more is modern natural science the application of the essence of technology. [Nature is therefore] the fundamental piece of inventory of the technological standing reserve—and nothing else. – Martin Heidegger

The nature of being-in-the-world (Dasein)—basically Heidegger’s concept of a human being—is such that we can never escape concerns about our dealings (Sorge), which originates from our finitude, but we frequently attempt to deny them. We distract ourselves from our worries, the primary of which is death, and consequently live in-authentically. To live authentically means not to “live as you truly are” but to live with the certainty of the end of all possiblities on your side.
Death is not just an endpoint but a companion—a reminder that gives our life meaning and let’s us care. Our relationship with technological tools, techniques, and devices can aid a distraction, diverting us from our fundamental experience and enticing us into a false sense of security. This can be dangerous if it impedes the lived awareness of our ultimate existence

as beings in trouble in a world of uncertainty.

We become accustomed to the internet, smartphones, social media, platform economies, and the endless repetition of trivialities. As individuals, we can often feel powerless in the face of new technologies, and occasionally experience a lack of depth provided by the scattered and dissected elements of our existence. The essence of technology deprives us of experiencing nearness because to truly experience it, we must encounter things in their truth. And no matter how deeply we believe that science will allow us to engage with reality in its actuality, science only provides us with representations of things. It only ever encounters that which its manner of representation has previously admitted as a possible object for itself.

Today the representational character of the digital shapes the physical. Speaking in Baudrillardian terms: through the colonization of the last frontier—our immediate consciousness—companies are constructing a virtual yet hyper-realistic world that suggests that there is no truth behind it. This process is evolving so rapidly that meaningful analysis becomes impossible. Our children will navigate a “meta”-reality. They won’t believe that the world depicted on their screens and other devices is real—that is not the danger! I also doubt that they will consciously believe the fake stories of this realm saturated by advertisement. Instead, they run the risk of becoming cynical; of perceiving the real world as if it is virtual. Therefore, they may consider everything as a scene to be observed, and all their actions as performances that can be captured and reviewed at any given moment. This would deny them a life of moments and turn it into a plan for later presentation and peer evaluation.

Kids already sense the digital world in a peculiar, allusive, and meta-like state. This is why their memes are perpetually ironic, detached, self-referential, and buried beneath twenty layers of irony; the truth is completely dead to them. They look at a postmodern president and culture and ask: what on earth is this? They see Coca Cola advertisements that are knowingly winking and smiling at them, and they see through this nonsense. Advertisers realize this and put yet another layer on top.

But I digress. Let me go back to the challenging aspect of technology. It implies that functioning things lead to more functioning things. Everything is challenged to serve as a systematic resource for technological application, which we subsequently utilize as a resource for further applications, perpetuating a cycle. For instance, we challenge land to produce coal, considering the land as nothing more than a coal deposit. The coal is then stockpiled, always ready to unleash the stored solar heat it contains, which is then called upon for warmth, which subsequently is commanded to yield steam whose pressure drives the wheels that sustain a factory’s operations. The factories themselves are challenged to create tools through which machines are once again put into service and preserved.

Heidegger argues that this chain does not move toward anything that has its own presence, but, instead, “only enters into its circuit”, and is “regulating and securing” natural resources and energies in a never-ending fashion. Heidegger’s argument is at least interesting. Given the complexity of modern life, we often lack a clear understanding of how our contributions to the advancement and “improvement” of technology lead to a “better” society. Beyond meeting basic needs such as housing, food, education, healthcare, social life, and intimacy, it is often difficult to discern how the introduction of new technological gadgets aids this objective.

For example, how does the newest iPhone, with its ability to take more refined pictures, contribute to a “better” society? The existence of the iPhone and the pressure to create appealing pictures for our profiles prompts many to purchase and use it. This, in turn, increases the demand for memory and computation, subsequently escalating the need for earthly materials. Many would probably be content if that new phone didn’t exist, primarily because they need it only because it exists, not because they truly desire it.

I argue that our understanding of progress being equivalent to technological progress in the form of more and “better” technology is more a question of faith than an envisioned future based on some justification. Luhmann might point out that technological progress is a value stabilized via communication. We communicate about the installation of nuclear power plants and buy new gadgets which is a kind of communication. However, this does not explain why we believe in this value. I would argue that many people would willingly hit the pause button on all technological progress, at least temporarily. No one asked for the Metaverse, but we will build it anyways because we are challenged to do so. Luhmann probabobly would offer a more nuanced explanation: interdependent self-generating social systems which “feed” us into them. Heidegger’s argument seems quite reductive but it captures my personal feeling of a reality that feels thinner and thinner.

Marxists might argue that my feeling is more related to our socio-economic system. However, I find it hard to attribute the cause solely to capitalism. The origin of Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism is not so much capitalism but a functional differentiated society. Of course, capitalism plays a huge role in shaping our social systems. Heidegger, on the other hand, might attribute capitalism and Luhmann’s functional differentiation to the essence of technology.

A success is that type of consequence that itself remains assigned to the yielding of further consequences. – Martin Heidegger

As already mentioned, Heidegger thinks of technology as a mode of seeing where every “seeing” has its necessary blind spots. He expands on the example of the hammer to illustrate his thoughts about technology: when using a hammer (a form of technology), you don’t even think about the tool itself; instead, you focus on the nail. The hammer recedes from your awareness, and you concentrate on the task at hand. The hammer is ready-to-hand (zuhanden).

Or imagine a more modern example, for instance, the keyboard. As you become proficient at typing, your primary experience involves the words appearing on the screen rather than the act of pressing the keys. Furthermore, if you recognize a keyboard you not only see the thing as it appears to you but you also “see” all the possibilities that the thing opens up for you. The keyboard is, so to say, not only an object but an offer to explore and interact with the world in a certain way. This phenomenological way of thinking about objects as they appear to us was already formulated by Edmund Husserl, who was Heidegger’s teacher.

This world is not there for me as mere world of facts and affairs, but, with the same immediacy as a world of values, a world of goods, a practical world. Without further effort on my part I find the things before me furnished not only with the qualities that benefit their positive nature, but with value-characters such as beautiful or ugly, agreeable or disagreeable, pleasant or unpleasant, and so forth. Things in their immediacy stand there as objects to be used, the “table” with its “books”, the “glass to drink from”, the “vase”, the “piano” and so forth […] The same considerations apply of course just as well to the men and beasts in my surroundings as to “mere things”. They are my “friends” or my “foes”, my “servants” or “superiors”, “strangers” or “relatives” and so forth. – Edmund Husserl

Equipment vanishes from our world. Only if it breaks or fails to perform as expected it introduces itself again as present-at-hand (vorhanden). Otherwise, it simply serves as a medium through which we experience our world. For Heidegger, technology withdraws from our attention and becomes transparent. And if it does, it is all the more genuinely what it is. In that sense, it needs us to be. Furthermore, we don’t experience the technology itself, but rather the world through it. Consequently, technology introduces its own mode of seeing.

When you drive a car proficiently, you develop a sense of the vehicle’s size and whether it can fit through a gap. Similarly, wearing nail extensions frequently can cause you to forget about them, even though they change how you interact with objects. Part of the allure of technology is found in the diverse opportunities it provides for unique forms of embodiment. Philosopher Bruno Latour posits that when technology becomes sufficiently transparent, it becomes an intrinsic part of our self-perception and our experience of the world, thereby giving rise to a new, compound entity. Evidence from cognitive science supporting this viewpoint is substantial. Our enjoyment of driving stems from the fact that we transform into “the driver”, a being with speed and power surpassing any land creature. Likewise, our delight in operating digital devices arises from the sensation of becoming a being that can converse with someone on the opposite side of the globe at a speed comparable to a lightning strike. Similarly, a person wielding a hammer essentially evolves into a new being, equipped with its own unique way of perceiving the world. This newly formed being, as a result of the technology’s influence, experiences the world from a distinct perspective and possesses an individualized subjectivity.

Given that technology represents a mode of understanding the world, and acknowledging that our understanding of the world is not entirely self-determined, this perspective seems to envelop us; it is greater than us as individuals. Heidegger sees the highest danger of technology as its potential to erode our ability to interpret reality profoundly. The moment we start viewing ourselves as manipulable raw materials, we cease to see ourselves as the ultimate source from which fresh interpretations of the world can spring. Furthermore, technology can trap us in a specific worldview because as soon as we attempt to devise a new way of interpreting the world, we find ourselves trying to exert power over our inherent will to power. In essence, we attempt to control our very propensity for control. Every effort to overcome this will to power only serves to reinforce it. Consequently, every attempt to break free from this technological mindset only propels us back into it.

The essence of technology is by no means anything technological. – Martin Heidegger

Being in the World

The self is a relation that relates itself to itself. – Soren Kierkegaard

Heidegger’s emphasis on ordinary life may seem trivial, yet, how frequently do we feel lost, overwhelmed, and alienated in the world, even though we are experts in navigating this chaos? Often, we forget that we are temporal beings in a world where we are deeply rooted. This fact becomes crystal clear when considering all the small habits our bodies carry out so effortlessly that we hardly give them a thought. All the smells we can perceive, all the various tactile experiences we can receive and give, all the sounds we can differentiate, and the ways in which we can walk, sit, run, and dance. Sometimes, when one feels lost in the digital spectacle, returning to the simplicity of the ordinary can offer a reassuring sense of home—and we are deeply home here and now.

Few would dispute that technology has transformed our self-perception. From a scientific perspective, we are more and more humiliated by what we see through science:

• Copernicus: Earth is not the center of the universe.

• Nietzsche: God is dead, implying that normative values are constructed and lack any metaphysical essence.

• Darwin: Humans are not the apex of creation but part of an evolutionary biological process.

• Freud: The human “ego” is not fully in control but is governed by unconscious processes.

• AI: Machines can execute task that we thought require human thinking.

A scientific definition of beings will make us blind for their mysterious and unexplainable presence in the world. In Heidegger’s term: it will make us blind for Being. The danger is to lose the ability of seeing the world and its beings as they appears to us and to understand ourselves not as mere thinking subjects but as Dasein that is in the world in a mode of uncovering, i.e. disclosing other entities as well as ourselves. For Heidegger, Dasein is the “there”—or the locus—of Being and thus the metaphorical place where entities “show themselves” as what they are. It is the being that has an understanding of Being. In other words, Dasein is simply Heidegger’s term for human beings.

He intentionally used the term because he felt as though the words most often used by philosophers to designate human beings, words like “consciousness”, “self-consciousness”, “subject”, “soul”, etc., carried far too much metaphysical baggage, and, thus, found it necessary to come up with a new term for human beings. Decartes view of the self as self-subsistent and worldless subject changes in Heidegger’s phenomenologically perspective because Dasein is always Being-(involved)-in-the-world. To be a self is to have a world. Like Husserl’s world, Heidegger’s world is a practical world of interconnected beings where equipment presupposes other equipment and is truly what it is only when it is being used transparently. We can reformulate Descartes’ “Cogito ergo sum” from a Heideggerian perspective: I am, therefore the world is.

We shall call those entities which we encounter in concern “equipment”. In our dealings we come across equipment for writing, sewing, working, transportation, measurement. […] Taken strictly, there ‘is’ no such thing as an equipment. To the Being of any equipment there always belongs a totality of equipment, in which it can be this equipment that it is. Equipment is essentially ‘something in-order-to […]’. A totality of equipment is constituted by various ways of the ‘in-order-to’. […] In the ‘in-order-to’ as a structure there lies an assignment or reference of something to something. […] Equipment—in accordance with its equipmentality—always is in terms of its belonging to other equipment: ink-stand, pen, paper, blotting pad, table, lamp, furniture, windows, doors, room. […] What we encounter as closest to us (though not as something taken as a theme) is the room; and we encounter it not as something ‘between four walls’ in a geometrical spatial sense, but as equipment for residing. Out of this the ‘arrangement’ emerges, and it is in this that any ‘individual’ item of equipment shows itself. Before it does so, a totality of equipment has already been discovered. Equipment can genuinely show itself only in dealings cut to its own measure (hammering with a hammer, for example); but in such dealings an entity of this kind is not grasped thematically as an occurring Thing, nor is the equipment-structure known as such in the using. The hammering does not simply have knowledge about the hammer’s character as equipment, but it has appropriated this equipment in a way which could not possibly be more suitable. In dealings such as this, where something is put to use, our concern subordinates itself to the “in-order-to” which is constitutive for the equipment we are employing at the time; the less we just stare at the hammer-Thing, and the more we seize hold of it and use it, the more primordial does our relationship to it become, and the more unveiledly is it encountered as that which it is—as equipment. […] The peculiarity of what is proximally ready-to-hand is that, in its readiness-to-hand, it must, as it were, withdraw in order to be ready-to-hand quite authentically. – Martin Heidegger

Heidegger’s concerns of technology also raise several difficulties. It tends to romanticize certain types of tools. His texts are filled with what we may call a romanticization of German country life that is hard not to relate to Heidegger’s involvement with Nazism. And isn’t the distinction between affirming (ancient Greeks) and dominating technologies (modern times) just a subjective preference. Why exactly does the hydroelectrical dam on the Rhine provoke nature whereas the temple doesn’t? Is the manner in which beings reveal themselves to us meaningful only in Heidegger’s terms, or can a rationale be provided for this meaning that simultaneously permits and even requires openness to Being beyond Heidegger’s limits? In other words, can a scientific view enrich the mystery of the world? Richard Feynman, at least, seems to think so.

I have a friend, who is an artist. And he is sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He hold up a flower and says: “Look how beautiful it is.” And I agree. And he says: “I as an artist can see how beautiful that is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a doll thing.” And I think he is kind of nutty. First of all the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too. I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is but I can appreciate the beauty of the flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I can image cells in it; the complicated actions inside which also have a beauty. I mean it is not just beauty at this dimension of one centimeter, there is also beauty at a smaller dimensions; the inner structure also the processes; the fact that the colors and the flowers evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting. It means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement and mystery in the aura of a flower; it only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts. – Richard Feynman

It would be foolish to advocate for a return to some mythical naturalistic past or some elusive authenticity. This would only lead to disillusionment because such authenticity was never present to begin with. Nature is a splendid beast; it is the real that pursues us. It is not our tools, methods and techniques that are at the center of Heidegger’s concerns but our way of seeing the world. He sees danger in the domination of nature which, for him, ultimately leads to the domination of humanity. But is it a question of black and white? Is there room for both instrumental and non-instrumental thinking and seeing? Can we see the mystical whole—the world as it appears to us—and its no less magical parts, structure, and abstraction? I believe there is.

For all of us, the arrangements, devices, and machinery of technology are to a greater or lesser extent indispensable. It would be foolish to attack technology blindly. It would be shortsighted to condemn it as the work of the devil. We depend on technical devices. – Martin Heidegger

Let’s consider an analogy: the concept of free and instrumental play, as introduced by Wolfgang Iser in [Ise93]. Iser labels play in games with specific goals as instrumental play. At the other end of the spectrum is free play, a form of play devoid of definite endpoints, perpetuating the continuity of play. Instrumental play is a goal-oriented approach that values efficiency, expertise, and optimized strategies as components of play. For instance, if children engage with their surroundings, such as running around, this can be considered free play. However, when they introduce goals like catching one another, the play tends more towards instrumental play. The aim of playing isn’t solely to reach the end but to discover the most effective way of getting there. However, there’s no such thing as pure free or pure instrumental play. Playing chess to win money leans heavily towards instrumental play, while playing with a ball purely to enjoy the physical experience is predominantly free play. Furthermore, there’s no inherently “good” or “bad” style of play. In fact, the issue sometimes arises when we deem instrumental play to be the correct, or “good,” way to play. But here’s the crucial point: instrumental play isn’t the opposite of free play; instead, there exists a tension between the two. One can derive deep enjoyment from improving a skill, achieving goals, or uncovering solutions to complex problems. Similarly, we can perceive the earth and its inhabitants instrumentally (as a means to an end) or appreciate them for what they are (as ends in themselves).

Therefore, I favor the Kantian notion extended to all beings as well as things—never viewing anything merely as a means to an end, but always as an end in itself. But I also acknowledge Richard Rorty for pointing out that such an ethical principle can not be seen as an absolute rule but something we can consider when we try to make the right decision. There is no authority, no rule, no algorithm that will forever and in any situation provide us with the right answer. What we think is right or wrong is contingent on how we grow up—in our culture, history, and environment. The answer is neither absolutism nor absolute relativism but the willingness to acknowledge to myself, that my conscience is the internalized consciousness of a specific historical-contingent culture. Furthermore, just as instrumental play can enrich free play, such as by enabling other forms of free play via the acquisition of new skills and habits, I also believe that the scientific perspective, which necessitates objectifying entities and often neglects the broader context, can still enhance our appreciation of the whole.

Nonetheless, it remains challenging to dismiss Heidegger’s concerns especially if we keep in mind that, because of seeing earth as standing reserve, we are currently destroying the ground that feeds us. Can we become aware of our instrumental thinking, of our own will to power? We are at a point in time where the standing reserve seems to break under the pressure of dominance. We are likely to encounter significant issues if we believe that technology alone, i.e., further instrumental thinking will resolve all of today’s major challenges, while it undeniably contributes to many of them. Thinking in cause and effect to the end of day will not provide us with the wisdom to overcome the breaking down of earth. At the same time, throwing our tools away will not change the way we think and see the world.

It certainly is not a matter of condemning the industrial and technological fate of humanity. Rather, it is a case of reinventing this fate. – Bernard Stiegler

The Essence of Art

If, at this point, you get an idea of Heidegger’s phenomenologically thinking, it should be no surprise that for him, not only is the artist the cause of the work, but the work, in turn, is the cause of the artist.

The artist is the origin of the work. The work is the origin of the artist. Neither is without the other. Nevertheless, neither is the sole support of the other. In themselves and in their interrelations artist and work are each of them by virtue of a third thing which is prior to both, namely, that which also gives artist and work of art their names—art. – Martin Heidegger

Art, as a mode of Being, makes both artist and artwork ontologically possible. And if we are to discover the essence of art we must discover it by phenomenologically investigating artworks, but here we arrive at a strange loop, i.e., a paradox since what art is should be inferable from the work but what the work is, we can come to know only from the essence of art. These loops remind me of Hofstadter’s self-referential and paradoxical strange loops from his book Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid [Hof79]. And it was Husserl (and to an extend Kierkegaard) who already thought of consciousness (or the self) as a strange loop relating itself to itself and constantly going back and forth between seeing phenomena and self-relating—a never ending circle which constitutes consciousness seemingly out of nothing. In the field of systems theory, cypbernetics, and especially in Luhmann’s social system theory, we probably find one of the most sophisticated self-referential concepts.

Heidegger was onto something but while reading his text about art, it felt incomplete and rather vague. There is no complete and consistent theory to find. However, this was probably not his goal. I think what he means by the introduced paradox is that we are thrown into a process that already started. We enter the circle at some point and move on it which will reveal both the artist and the artwork more and more but this process never ends. What an artist and the artwork is, is never fully defined.

To talk about art in an Heidegerian sense, I have to clarify what he understands by tools or equipment and objects. Heidegger differentiates between what others may call “substances”—that are more thing-like and present-at-hand (vorhanden) entities (raw material, stones, water in a river, etc.)—and tools or equipment (useful things) that are generally ready-to-hand (zuhanden) and connected within a network of other tools and purposes. Interestingly, in his view, artworks are present-at-hand, i.e., have a very thingly character. This seems to be a gross reduction of artworks. How can it be that the great works of art are like a purposeless stone in a see of stones? Isn’t a thing anything? Surely tools are things and stones are things and dirt is a thing but a tool is more than a thing. I will come back to this “issue”.

There is something stony in a work of architecture, wooden in a carving, colored in a painting, spoken in a linguistic work, sonorous in a musical composition. – Martin Heidegger

This quote perfectly mimics Luhmann’s view that artworks reveal the difference between form (building) and medium (stone). In my view, great artworks reveal a (mystical) truth that is unexplainable; these works let us question without ever coming to a final conclusion. They present an internal logic that is alien to our world. They escape language or any other abstraction or symbolic representation but give the observer the possbility to make sense of their internal structure. Any analysis or critique has to be incomplete and shallow of what the artwork is. Therefore, if the essence of technology is enframing (Gestell) then the essence of art might be the opposite. It might be that which can not be enframed and which is able to unconceal a new horizon of possibilities. In fact, Heidegger argues in his essay The Origin of the Work of Art [Hei50] that

to be a work [of art] means to set up a world. – Martin Heidegger

In other words, setting up a world is one of the essential feature of the Being of the work of art. This is close to Luhmann’s view when he says that art forms its medium to create a contingent alternative version of reality.

But what does Heidegger mean by that? Let us look at Heidegger’s example of a Greek temple. The Greek temple brought about a world—it is an event of truth. The temple, in its standing there, first gives to things their look and to men their outlook on themselves. The Greek temple set up a world that organized and stabilized the lives of the Greeks; it was that by which they made sense out of their existence. Medieval cathedrals did the exact same thing for Christians and the great mosque did the same for Muslims.

Heidegger chooses the ancient temple because it is non-representational, therefore, preventing the erecting of a world being understood solely as representation. A statue within the temple might represent the gods but the wall, and the stones that make up the wall do not represent anything. Another example he brought up is Van Gogh’s painting of a farmer’s shoes. One might say that the painting represent the shoes but this is not the main point of the artwork.

Notice that world is not the objective reality of the universe but the significant, contextual network of references through which Dasein can take the stand on its Being that it does (be the specific person that it is), as well as have the style of Being that it has. The temple gathers the possibilities of the Greek people who live around it, governing over the ideas of birth and death, managing victory and causing decline—that is the world the temple opens. The world is the self-opening openness of the broad paths of the simple and essential decisions in the destiny of a historical people. Sandra Lee Bartky has summed it up well in the following way:

Heidegger’s use of the term “world” carries with it the sense not only of life-world (Lebenswelt) but of historical epoch as well, with the suggestion that the life-world is an historical structure. – Sandra Lee Bartky

Husserl came to believe that the world was what we have in common—a universal horizon but one rooted in a shared existential space, what he called Lebenswelt (life-world). But who creates or sustains this horizon? This, in short, was Heidegger’s question to his former mentor. For Heidegger, the nature or the limits of the world were less important than the practical experience of the world itself, an experience peculiar to Dasein. Heidegger resisted Husserl’s latent tendency toward abstraction and sought to ground his reflections in an analysis of everyday behavior. Luhmann went the opposite way, i.e., towards an abstract theory but one that is able to speak about everyday interactions. However, both philosophers (Husserl and Heidegger) viewed the limits of knowledge and meaning through the lens of practical experience, that is, through living and being in the world.

Heidegger interprets in Being and Time [Hei08] the world not as a collection of things or entities, as Cartesian metaphysicians would have it, but as a phenomenon imbued with pre-reflective meaning and understanding. The objective world—the world of objects—is in fact derivative: it abstracts from a world of practical, absorbed engagement. World is never an object that stands before us and can be seen. The world as a world is always essentially doing something—it is in progress. It orients, situates , guides and directs our lives in particular ways. The temple established an epochal understanding of Being on the basis of which the Greeks meaningfully understood the beings they encountered and the event in their lives, thereby, giving them as a people a history or a destiny. World is best associated with unconcealment, the clearing and intelligibility. But bringing a new world into being will conceal another one.

In contrast, earth (Heimat) is the homeland, in which the temple stands, but also the rock upon which the temple stands, and the temple stones themselves. It is best described in terms of concealment, hiddenness and unintelligibility—I think it shares similarities with Lacan’s concept of the real which evades all symbolic representation while pushing back against it. The real is located beyond language and conceptual understanding, yet, always present in some sense. The real is something you find always at the same place. However you mess about, it is always in the same place, you bring it with you, stuck to the sole of your shoe without any means of exiling it. Earth, like the real resists our attempts to assimilate it into our world. The relation of world and earth is like a contestation between light and darkness but they are essential to each other. And it is in strife that world and earth raise each other into the self-assertion of their essential natures.

Heidegger draws an important distinction between equipment (hammer, phones, keyboards, nails, etc.) and the work of art. While the material of equipment withdraws out of notice, the opposite is the case for the work of art.

In fabricating equipment—e.g., an ax—stone is used, and used up. It disappears into usefulness. The material is all the better and more suitable the less it resists vanishing in the equipmental being of the equipment. By contrast the temple-work, in setting up a world, does not cause the material to disappear, but rather causes it to come forth for the very first time and to come into the open region of the work’s world. The rock comes to bear and rest and so first becomes rock; metals come to glitter and shimmer, colors to glow, tones to sing, the word to say. All this comes forth as the work sets itself back into the massiveness and heaviness of stone, into the firmness and pliancy of wood, into the hardness and luster of metal, into the brightening and darkening of color, into the clang of tone, and into the naming power of word. – Martin Heidegger

In the work of art, earthly elements (stones, woods, oil, etc.) are consecrated and transfigured into something radiant and mysterious which the human intellect cannot make completely comprehensible and assimilable. If we think of a work of art phenomenologically, this seems to be true. When looking at a great work of art the meaning of it oftentimes alludes us; we find ourselves wrestling with the work in order to make it fully intelligible, which never actually happens. Earth as something, which makes up everything around us and gives our reality a context for us to sort our place in the world, by gaining reference from its physicality. However, we can never see this earth for what it is, except in the special instance of when it is presented in an artwork.

Standing there, the building rests on the rocky ground. This resting of the work draws up out of the rock the mystery of that rock’s clumsy yet spontaneous support. Standing there, the building holds its ground against the storm raging above it and so first makes the storm itself manifest in its violence. The luster and gleam of the stone, though itself apparently glowing only by the grace of the sun, yet first brings to light the light of the day, the breath of the sky, the darkness of the night. The temple’s firm towering makes visible the invisible space of air […] The Greeks early called this emerging and rising in itself and in all things phusis. It clears and illuminates, also, that on which and in which man bases his dwelling. We call this ground the earth. – Martin Heidegger

So, because we see the temple as an art-thing, and also experience the world it creates, this highlights to us that it is made from something. The rocks that may have been concealed from our attention before, because they used to be mixed in with nature, are now something else all together. They are at one with the temple, but still we know they are rocks. They shine out at us. Their true nature is revealed in the tension between the rocks trying to be a temple but remaining rooted as earth. Again, this is similar to Luhmann’s claim that the form (the temple) reveals the medium (earth).

The world is usually invisible or transparent to us in our everyday activities. It becomes visible through the opacity of earth in an artwork. In a great work of art there’s always a strife between transparent intelligibility (world) and opaque unintelligibility (earth). In that sense, earth is like the breakdown of equipment: The equipment withdraws from us (ready-to-hand) but it introduces itself as present-at-hand if it breaks or is missing. But, unlike a breakdown of a tool, earth is unfixable. Furthermore, it is only through the transparency of the world that earth can strike us as unintelligible, perplexing and mysterious. The happening of truth in the work of art and the Being of the work of art is essentially the instigation of the strife between world and earth. A great work of art intensifies this strife while establishing it.

That is why Heidegger claims that artworks are more “thingly” than tools. They do not withdraw but stay present-at-hand for Dasein because they are unfixable. Art can be thought of in terms of Being, truth, world, earth and strife, and according to Heidegger, the two essential features of great artwork are setting up of a world and setting forth of earth. Furthermore, an epochal understanding of Being and a particular world are opened and held opened in Dasein’s clearing by a specific being, i.e., a work of art.

We haven’t really touched on the aesthetics of art; its beauty and ugliness or subjective quality. I think, for Heidegger, it is more about truth than beauty. Truth and art are deeply interconnected—not mutually exclusive. But, of course, I am not talking about the truth as correspondence or agreement (adaequatio) but truth as unconcealment or uncovering. Like the objective world is based on Lebenswelt, for Heidegger, the former is based on the latter.

With respect to music, Heidegger is rather silent. He was convinced that music is essentially the art of feeling and not the art of tonally moving forms. We do not find a philosophy of music in Heidegger’s work. In fact, it could be argued that Heidegger’s attitude towards music is antagonistic. He attacks the emotionality of music. For example, about Wagner he says that his project was not just the predominance of music with respect to the other arts in his work that made him fail, but the problem inherent in aesthetics itself; namely, the reason why music was allowed to aspire to such a position. Aesthetics is only a part of a greater movement in history—that of nihilism. This is revealing since right-wingers often praise ‘great’ artwoks which are great in an aesthetic sense and complain about more abstract and conceptual artworks which they see as a degeneration of art. One can argue that Heidegger too is drawn to the aesthetic of a certain kind of lifestyle.

However, I believe there is more to music than Heidegger recognized. His perspective might have been too focused on the particular music of his era. When the listener is absorbed by music, clock time is put out of play by the musical temporality: the musical time is the listener’s time. In a performance the passing of time is not experienced individually. The entire audience shares the temporality of the work, just as the musicians do (inter-subjective temporality). We say that music moves us, i.e. the movement of the mind have been those of the musical movements which require space. The temporality, mobility, and spatiality of music depend upon the tone. The tone is the earth of music. In the musical work, the materiality is brought forth in the world with its temporality, mobility, and spatiality.

Composers can change the conception of what was possible in music. In a certain sense, their worlds changed the world that has become our world. In the absence of the exact words to describe the new world, it is perceived in its strangeness. This is how truth is established in the workings of the artwork.

Heideggerian Cinema

Let me look into the works of Andrei Tarkovsky, Terrence Malick and Michael Haneke with an Heideggerian perspective. While Tarkovsky and Malick are existential filmmakers, Haneke is more of a critique of his own profession thus more postmodern. However, all three try to ask questions rather than providing answers.

Tarkovsky thought of art as revealing the transcedental. He thought art is the only way to it.

It appears as a revelation, as a momentary, passionate wish to grasp intuitively and at a stroke all the laws of this world—its beauty and ugliness, its compassion and cruelty, its infinity and its limitations. – Andrei Tarkovsky

For Tarkovsky, embracing art comes close to a spiritual experience and its creation to an act of faith. By his films he was exploring our world in search for understanding—he was observing Dasein’s questioning of its own Being by praying through cinema. As his characters say:

We need a mirror.

For Tarkovsky this mirror would not depict our experiences as a linear sequence of events, captured objectively and logically into what could be called a plot. Instead, we would see a complex web of thoughts, memories and emotions and all these would be deeply interconnected to other beings, be it other Daseins, tools, or things present-at-hand. We would see a being that experiences a practical world subjectively, gives shape to it and is shaped by it subjectively. A being that is shaped by its past, moves through the present by projecting itself into its own future and observing each new moment with a consciousness made up of impressions, distortions, and associations. Tarkovsky, like Heidegger, was wrestling with time as an essential feature of the human condition. Dasein projects itself into the future. It imagines to be a certain way.

Time is said to be irreversible. And this is true enough in the sense that ‘you can’t bring back the past’, as they say. But what exactly is this ‘past’? Is it what has passed? And what does ‘passed’ mean for a person when for each of us the past is the bearer of all that is constant in the reality of the present, of each current moment? In a certain sense the past is far more real, or at any rate more stable, more resilient than the present. The present slips and vanishes like sand between the fingers, acquiring material weight only in its recollection. – Andrei Tarkovsky

To capture truth as unconcealment artists best trust their own heart, follow their own instinct; and hope that if something resonated with them on a personal level, if something left an impression, however intangible, unexplainable, it will do the same for others. For Tarkovsky as well as Heidegger art is neither there to be analysed or ripped apart, nor is it there for pure aesthetically reasons. For both it is about a certain kind of truth. While Heidegger thinks of the unconcealment and opening of a world, Tarkovsky thinks of the opening of a spiritual world. Both, I think, see in great art a guiding aspect to find oneself, or in Heidegger’s terms, to be authentic towards death by which he does not refer to today’s meaning of “being authentic”. Instead, he uses the Greek meaning of the word: to take a stand and make a final, irreversible choice by choosing one thing while killing all the other possibilities—a view also shared by Kierkegaard. It is existential time and our finitude that gifts us authenticity.

And here we are back at the essence of technology which makes everything measurable and exchangable by putting an exchange value on all things. In the consumer and technological age of the twenty-first century we are surrounded by exchange values everywhere. Ever more areas of our lives are being technologized and marketed, thereby adding infinite anonymity at the expense of authenticity. Making a definite, irreversible choice becomes a challenge when the possibilities expand without limit. Therefore, one eventually tends to wait anxiously before making any definite choices as if life itself were unlimited. But the price to pay is a meaning and identity crisis. And if someone struggles to find their identity within themselves then there are all sorts of groups and movements to provide it for them. Eventually even the devil becomes more appealing as a leader, simply because it has a strong personality.

I think, seeing the world opened by the works of art, is conditions on our belief that such a thing exists in the first place which can be difficult in a world that seems to actively discourage us from looking past the immediate material reality. Tarkovsky (e.g. in Stalker) as well as Kierkegaard, warns us of a society that seeks to conquer the infinite with the finite. If we lose our ability to hope and believe in something greater than ourselves and disregard all that which is experienced irrationally and poetically, we may forever fall into the inauthentic mass (Heidegger) or, in Kierkegaard’s terms, lose ourselves. A world stripped of its spirituality will be a cruel one, in the sense that it will no longer prepare us for death.

Another film director which is even more relatable to Heidegger’s philosophy is Terrence Malick. Malick once attempted a doctorate on Heidegger, Kierkegaard, and Wittgenstein at Harvard. His films often hew closely to and examine—in both narrative and form—ideas about the essence of humanity and phenomenology advanced by Heidegger. This can be seen in his existential style but also his use of ever questioning voice-overs which I see as Dasein’s questioning of Being. The whispering turns the film into poetry in motion.

Malick, like no other, depicts a practical world of phenomena instead of a world of facts and a linearly progressing story. He let’s us experience the mystical of the ordinary which is, in fact, extraordinary. The camera is constantly moving. It follows the characters at different angles but also lingers and wanders away. Thereby, the camera focuses on the world that surrounds our characters. The camera seems to be more interested in exploring the beauty and mystery of the world of the characters than the characters themselves—much like Malick is not really interested in his own story. The camera looks at beings as they are thus revealing the multiplicity of Being.

All of [Malick’s] movies are about worlds. […] Each film is about some aspect of the world. – Hubert Dreyfus

And according to Martin Woessner in What Is Heideggerian Cinema? Film, Philosophy, and Cultural Mobility [Woe11], film gives us a meaningful world at the same time that it mirrors our own growing alienation from the world. Moviegoers are simultaneously engaged and disengaged. With regard to the former, we can say that cinema gives us what, in our everyday lives, we take for granted or do not acknowledge, mainly because it is too difficult to do so. It gives us precisely what Malick was looking for as a student in his philosophy classes, namely, a sense of the world, if not exactly a complete knowledge of one’s place in it.

Instead of insisting, Malick is insightful. Instead of filling spaces, he opens them up. By being playful, wasteful as well as ambiguous his craft goes against the utilitarian method. Especially in his later works, there is barely any structure or dialog. He hasn’t bounded his work within the ‘technical’ language of film like a poet who does not bound his work to the normal use of language.

If one wants to get a better understanding of Heidegger’s kind of thinking, experiencing the childhood portrayed in The Tree of Life is a good place to start. It is a meditation on Being. It ask the question with which Heidegger started:

Why is there something rather than nothing?

While being a very personal movie, Malick wishes that

the ‘I’ who speaks in this story is not the author. Rather, he hopes that you see yourself in this ‘I’ and understand this story as your own. – Terrence Malick

In his filmography Malick develops the concept of grace and nature which is most prominent in The Tree of Life. I would argue that nature is closely related to the essence of technology being the instrumental and rational aspect of seeing and thinking. Malick’s nature is calculating, selfish, and alien—it fights and dominates to survive; the wolf hunting the lamb, land fighting the ocean, plants fighting plants, humans dominating humans in

physical life in a world abandoned by the spirit. Organized unreality. The soul a hindrance in one’s dealings here. A burden. A mere quantity of thoughts and desires. – Terrence Malick

Grace, on the other hand, is forgiving, vulnerable, selfless, playful, and intimate. It is the spiritual which, for Malick, seem to erode out of the limits of understanding. Some call its source God, but Malick notes:

Let us sing a new song, tell a new story; one which, mindful of the ancient tales, takes its inspiration from science. Let us search for the permanent amid the fleeting and mutable, for that which endures through the spectacle of ceaseless change. Let us discover the eternal, the good. – Terrence Malick

For Malick, creation is eternal birth. A beginning without end. It happens in every instant of time. The same power which burns the stars burns equally in us. Our being is a miracle, equal with the creation of the universe, and like the universe, each day is created anew.

In The Thin Red Line we can observe the soldiers which are thrown onto a Pacific island in World War II and are aware of the thin line between Being and Nothing. Nowhere in Malick’s works is the transitory nature of the world more thoroughly explored than in this movie. These soldiers struggle with existential questions and anxiety because they are forcefully confronted with death; they imagine their life from the end—what Heidegger called Vorlaufen zum eigenen Tode. The American and Japanese soldiers as well as the Melanesian people caught in the middle of a conflict represent a reminder of our constant vulnerability to the collapse of our way of life, i.e., our existential fragility of human worlds. For the philosopher Dreyfus the film is a concrete and historical example of the freedom of Dasein at work, a clear example of the groundless ground of human action. According to [Woe11], The Thin Red Line shows us not just the world of the battle but at least three other worlds. Its central aim to investigate the meaning of the world itself, something connected to mortality, but not defined entirely and solely by it. In that sense, it is not only a film of a battle between nations but a clash of different worlds. It is also a film about our increasing inability to recognize that the world itself is a delicate and fragile balance predicated on, but ultimately pointing beyond, human agency.

According to the topic of the essence of technology, Malick’s The New World might be closest to the question at hand. What The New World recounts is the transformation of the natural world into an artificial world. Scenes of indigenous dwelling are juxtaposed with scenes of colonial misery, the former depicting balance and harmony with the environment, the latter only struggle and strife—existence against, not with, nature. Malick uses the Pocahontas myth to explore the origins of modern world, in which mortals begin to exaggerate their role in the delicate and fragile interaction of the interaction between the earth, the sky, divinities, and mortals—throwing it off balance. An uprooted Pocahontas wanders through the rationalized English garden, perplexed by how the Europeans have tamed and reshaped the trees of nature. We can suggest that the colonists brought not only industry and civilization but also the metaphysics that created the objective and rational world, i.e. Decartes’s philosophy, and with the essence of technology—seeing the world as standing reserve. In this way, America comes into being.

And in his latest work A Hidden Life, Malick seems to try to find a moral compass within Heidegger’s work by deconstructing religion and nationalism by looking at someone who refuses to fight. It is a film about goodness and courage, without recognition. An attempt that is more close to Kierkegaard and goes probably against Heidegger’s intentions because he seems to provide no such compass or moral considerations. Here we find an ordinary farmer with a profoundly unspectacular life. He follows his convictions absolutely with little impact apart from his and his family’s destiny. Malick transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary by letting Being show up. The farm life has importance, as part of the larger creation. We experience the farmer in his web of practical tools, labour and earth. The film also provides us with scenes where we can feel the filmmaker’s own wrestling with Heidegger’s legacy as a Nazi. And, of course, a world breaks down forever.

It is in our human nature to love the story of a person who did great things: saved lives, wrote books, stood against the dictator who wiped out millions of lives. It is less common for us to celebrate a man or woman who threw away a good life and simply refused to do what he knew he could not, and paid with his life. A Hidden Life dares us to imagine that the latter is at least as important as the former—and maybe more so.

Most certainly, Malick’s works question that we ought to have made ourselves answer. Undoubtedly, they are important questions since they get to the heart of disengagement and alienation. These are inherently modern questions, unfamiliar to traditional societies and cultures. They are also questions one asks only in a state of anxiety. And knowing the world and being open to the terror of anxiety were two sides of the same coin.

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. – Mary Anne Evans (George Eliot)

Next I want to include Michael Haneke because he, like no one else, uses film to unconceal the blurriness of reality and contemporary cinema. It’s probably more Luhmannian cinema than Heidegerrian. Most of his works are an attempt to make the medium via its forms visible.

It’s the duty of art to ask questions, not to provide answers. And if you want a clearer answer, I’ll have to pass. – Michael Haneke

For Haneke there is not one truth but there are a thousand. It’s a question of viewpoint which truth you accept; whether you want it or whether you refuse it. This is fundamentally what he is trying to show: to grasp, to some extent, the contradictory nature of reality because reality is always contradictory and never clear. The work of Haneke challenges the notion that film and reality are mirror images of one another.

He suggests that the creation of film has in fact reworked what we consider reality. He creates very real worlds but making us aware that they aren’t real at all. By doing so Haneke exposes the dangerous effect of an existence informed by media worship implying that a worldwide trivialization of emotion has been instigated through the disassociation with reality. He shows deep seeded interest in the world beyond what we see at the screen. By framing subjects out of the line of sight or using off-screen sounds, he draws attention to the materiality outside of the frame. This is the place where the most traumatic events occur. Thereby, Haneke is bringing into question the context of an image. If we are aware of violence but are incapable of seeing it, is that image still violent? If we spent our time surrounded by real acts of terror in our media, does this makes our life terrifying? Personal stories bleed into social decay and vice versa. One can not exist without the other. And to lack an understanding of the coherence of both is Haneke’s way of communicating the failure of communication in societies. The necessity of creating secrets in his work is to establish an interior not known by those outside of the circle.

In his work he establishes that copies of reality erode the walls between the real and the imaginary leading to Baudrillard’s hyper-real. A prime example is the effect of the new Barbie movie. It is no longer the case that Barbie is a mirror of humanity, i.e., constructed in our image, but instead humans constructing themselves as Barbie—life imitates advertisement. In itself this is neither good nor bad but it should give us thought for pause. If reality imitates media, we should be aware of what we consume!

In Funny Games, Haneke shows us senseless violence like we see in so many movies and news shows today. But his violence is violent. It hurts, it is unpleasant, disturbing, and soul crushing. It goes against the Nietzschian perspective that greatness requires suffering. No! Haneka shows us, suffering is just suffering. There is nothing great to find there; it is a horrific banality. While watching the movie one wants to scream towards the protagonists but one has to keep watching helplessness. Leonard Maltin called the movie “nonsensical and highly unpleasant’’ but that is exactly the point. Haneke wants to provoke and he wants to deconstruct the violent cinema. And he won’t give as relief, causal rationalization, or the morally guilty. Violence stays brutally nonsensical. Only we as audience seem to be guilty of consuming it.

Haneka’s films explore the notion of not addressing truth and rather looking outward. As viewers, we ‘enjoy’ the pain of not knowing. Perhaps we are unable to dissect the connotations of his images because we are unable to understand the reality of that world. Just as the images of our reality are incapable of being communicated with our subject. In a sense, Haneka teaches us more complex ways of reading images by displaying a world as close to reality as possible—something almost anti-cinema. The emergence of reality becomes the destruction of the fantasy. He disrupts the traditional filming methods to raise the awareness that the film spectator is the consumer that all images are addressed to. He leads us as an audience from the notion of the true image into perspectives of plural truth. He presents us the reality of people’s life, yet puts us at a physical distance so that we may remain ‘objective’ towards it. His work is unfulfilling and shows how cinema primes us to an Utopian vision of reality where all problems are resolved and a chain of causality is present. Haneka highlights this cloud of untruth. There is no single explanation of human suffering, it just is—all that remain is what we do with it.

I find Haneke’s project important. However, it is questionable whether such an unconcealment of the hyper-real is possible, or if even the most unpleasant depiction of violence, in reference to the medium itself—for example, by breaking the fourth wall—will merely lead to the same old effect: more violence.

I think, similar to the Greek temple, films from these directors can open worlds by bringing us back into existential time, i.e., bringing us to reflecting on (our) Being or what it means to be. And when this question shines through, it can upset our entire world. It can make us question every aspect of our being. This “feeling” is defined by a particular type of anxiety (Angst) or dread, which according to Heidegger, is the only human emotion that is unbound from our world. It calls into question all of our everyday assumptions about the world around us and, perhaps more importantly, about our place in the world. This experience of world collapse is equivalent to the realization that the center no longer holds, that the shared understanding that defines our space of meaning and understanding no longer exists. It can be triggered by external events that awaken us from practicality into awareness and contemplation—by the failing or surprising equipment—so to speak. The feeling itself is not related to anything concrete. Instead, it is defined by an absence. It relates to the nothing; to the void. When the noise no longer drowns out the inner voice, a dialogue with our own mortality begins. This is what these works depict but can also cause to the observing audience. They are good examples of the struggle between world and earth. They are never semiotically exhausted or depleted, i.e., finally made totally intelligible.

Overall Heidegger’s view on art is interesting but seems also quite narrow. There is much to be gleaned from Kant’s idea of aesthetics being a subjective judgment of taste. We cannot ignore that a beautiful form can also be shown to be an attribute of art. That isn’t to say that aesthetics has it right either, however, to completely ignore it cuts short all that art can be. I would also say the portrayal of a world isn’t always clearly evident in every work of art either. If you listen to a piece of music—uniquely both: completely abstract and profoundly emotional—particularly one without lyrics, is a whole world evident in its make-up? If not, does this mean it is not a work of art?

God has given us music so that above all it can lead us upwards. Music unites all qualities: it can exalt us, divert us, cheer us up, or break the hardest of hearts with the softest of its melancholy tones. But its principal task is to lead our thoughts to higher things, to elevate, even to make us tremble […] The musical art often speaks in sounds more penetrating than the words of poetry, and takes hold of the most hidden crevices of the hear […] Song elevates our being and leads us to the good and the true. If, however, music serves only as a diversion or as a kind of vain ostentation it is sinful and harmful. – (a very young) Friedrich Nietzsche

Heidegger’s description of art lacks clarity which might be deliberate or might be my own lack of understanding. As already discussed, a more explainable but also abstract framework was presented by Niklas Luhman, for example in his text Medium and Form [Luh86]. What I take from Heidegger is that art can unconceal world and earth. Furthermore, I think that art can elucidate the essence of technology, enabling us to develop an open relationship with it. A piece of art can expose our uncertainty about whether technology can be disregarded, or whether it embodies a seductive cosmic force that we’re incapable of resisting. It can set up a new meaning-giving world and, according Tarkovsky, can ultimately prepares us for death.

The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good. – Andrei Tarkovsky

Turning Away from Danger

I feel a great tension between Heidegger’s description of technology and my own understanding of it. Technological tools saved my life. Equipment gives me the ability to explore the world on my own terms. So many technological tools are serve an emancipatory purpose and make the live of many people less miserable—a development politicians on the far right want to reverse. They try to inject fear from transhumanism into the public discourse with arguments that remind me of Heidegger’s texts.

I cannot see a clear line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ types of technolgical tools. When the alphabet was introduced, Plato harbored concerns that it would lead to the erosion of memory. To some extent, his fears were justified; people began to lose their capacity to memorize and orally transmit great stories. However, his apprehension was not entirely accurate, as the advent of writing allowed these narratives to be documented, effectively externalizing memory. So is the alphabet a bad type of technology? I suppose most of us will disagree. In my view, it is crucial to continuously seek out new weapons of emancipation while recognizing that these tools invariably wield an influence over us that is beyond our control.

Were I agree is Heidegger’s description of a network of equipment and our place in it. The crushing reality that we are less in control than we often assume. We have to recognize and deal with the fact that we are situated in a culture and environment that is shaped by technology. We are obliged to perpetually reflect on the essence of technology and its danger. But we should also reflect on the great danger of labelling something unnatural or natural. Over the history we have learned to accept more and more people to our ingroup, not because of some absolute principle but because of better and vivid imagination, and we should be proud of that.

It’s not a matter of outright resistance or unconditional acceptance, but rather of informed ambivalence, deliberate retreat, and vigilant anticipation. As Luhmann rightfully emphasised: Our society is contingent, that is, everything that is could be different. Modern society is more and more unpredictable on a global scale, but also on a personal level. We can not predict our state over ten years. Our perspective into the future is very different from ancient times.

I must believe that there is the possibility that our mode of seeing the world can change into something radical different. It is attention to technology as a mode of seeing that might help us. Other kinds of revealing, and attention to the realm of truth and being as such, will allow us to experience the technological within its own bounds. Consequently, the artist’s duty is to disclose and explore this process phenomenologically. She is the one who crafts aesthetic symbols, setting the stage for a possible future. The approach should involve neither prejudice nor antagonism, but rather sincere engagement with technology and its creators. After all, the artifacts of our past aren’t natural occurrences but are crafted by people. Yet, what has transpired and what will occur are guided by the horizon of possibilities, which is enframed (gestellt) by technology and unveiled by artistic works.

Our thought process should acknowledge the challenge posed by technology. We must enter the realm where things can show themselves to us truthfully in a manner not limited to the technological. We must resist our automatic acceptance of the challenge and the status quo as it tends to instill a sense of powerlessness towards instigating change. There is neither room for bittersweet melancholy nor illusions that minor local changes will be adequate.

Echoing the words of Mark Fisher: I’m not apprehensive about a zombie apocalypse; rather, my concern lies in the ease with which people can envisage such an apocalypse, in contrast to visualizing life a decade or two hence. My worry is that we may have already conceded defeat, that we lack the imagination and bravery to adopt different strategies, and that we might succumb to reflexive responses and seemingly easy but unrealistic solutions.

Philosophy will not be able to bring about a direct change of the present state of the world. This is true not only of philosophy but of all merely human meditations and endeavors. Only a god can still save us. I think the only possibility of salvation left to us is to prepare readiness, through thinking and poetry, for the appearance of the god or for the absence of the god during the decline; so that we do not, simply put, die meaningless deaths, but that when we decline, we decline in the face of the absent god. [… The place once occupied by philosophy is now] cybernetics. – Heidegger, Spiegel inverview in 1966

While many critics of technology highlight its apparent dangers, Heidegger underscores a different type of peril: the potential of technology to obstruct us from hearing “the call of a more primal truth”. The issue is not solely that technology impedes our access to this sphere, but that it causes us to entirely forget the existence of this realm. Nevertheless, Heidegger posits that by acknowledging this danger, we might be able to discern and then address what has been neglected. The realization of our essence as receptive to this sphere, and of technology as merely one avenue through which things can manifest, is the roadmap for keeping technology within its appropriate confines. The thought that unfolds the potential for a turn away from technology and towards its fundamental domain is the recognition of its hazard.

Ultimately, it may be the energy of earth that unveils a potential earth-world relationship. This could be Heidegger’s god, for whom we are waiting and preparing for.

[…] where the danger is, there grows also what saves. – Friedrich Hölderlin

But will it be too late? Will earth totally conceal the world? The future is looking grim but imagining the catastrophe is out of my horizon but thinking about it makes me horrified.