The End of Technic as Proxy in the Praxis for Presencing Architecture
5. Technic is ramification of thought.
| Heidegger
questions technology to find its essence. He begins with discussing the
relationship between herausfordernde Technik [challenging forth
technology] and the Her-vor-bringen [bringing forth presencings]3
of Aristotle’s writings, he then shifts to focussing on what that contemporary herausfordernde Technik [challenging forth technology] means in essence. Mankind, as part of the unconcealed, is versamelt [‘gathered’] into bestellen [ordering], into that way of revealing that is a Herausfordern [challenging forth] and |
| ensnares nature as an object of his own conceiving. … [apprehending] nature as an object of research,4 |
| Heidegger rather grandly announces the Ge-stell, the primordial factor of that of which humankind is more originally a part: |
| We now name that challenging claim which gathers man thither to order the self-revealing as standing-reserve: “Ge-stell” [Enframing].5 |
| Humanity
is gathered into conceiving the world according to its vision as part
of the original primal destining of humanity. This is expressed as
truth and revealing. Heidegger is calling that Ge-stell [Enframing
]. It stands for the essence which he calls Modern, whereby the Modern
is not only of the recent developments as Heidegger generally seems to
assert, but really a form of what began with ‘thought as modification
of Mind’. This is a value. It is a valuing that makes the human
ordering as well as that standing-reserve [Bestand]
a part of Nature. Heidegger writes, it is a claim that already claimed
humanity, “more originally”. We and our standing-reserve [Bestand]
are nonetheless utterly within Nature and our concepts of externality
to Nature is a part of the challenging forth technology [herausfordernde Technik].
This has set up the tug-of-war. I must say here that I am knowingly
adding elements to Heidegger’s work, or perhaps only presenting that
which is now obvious and was as yet unsayable by choice or as yet
unsayable at that time. |
| Enframing [Ge-stell] means the gathering together of that setting-upon [stellen] which sets upon man, ie. challenges him forth [Herausfordert], to reveal the real in the mode of ordering [bestellen], as standing-reserve [Bestand]. Enframing means that way of revealing which holds sway in the essence of modern technology, and which itself is nothing technological.6 |
| It
is not humanity which is doing but that essence, whereby humanity is
not the only part of it, is not the creator of it, and it is part of
humanity. It is humanity’s destining to partake in revealing, and in
this specific way. It holds sway as modern technology now, as Ruskin
was concerned it would before the challenging forth [Herausfordern] as a ‘to-set-upon’ [stellen] that creates a standing-reserve [Bestand] of the world as the image of Nature became superior in its holding sway — not only in architectural practice. In everything. Is not Ge-stell [Enframing ] a kind of thought? - With that relationship to thought — as we have outlined in terms of its relationship to Mind — we thus realize an ‘other’ vector related to technology which is similar and simultaneous. Technology and architecture are related as if in another stage of one thing. Is not technology the presencing of thought’s ramification, and Ge-stell [Enframing ], that ramification and the name for that essence that allows it? - If so, then architecture is reflected symetrical manifestation of the unmodified Mind. Heidegger describes that technic has a “claimedness” to revealing, which has to do with an original granting and destining. In conjunction with the origin of its present presence, it is that which brings humanity down from the more subtle realms of being, ramifying into heavier or grosser conditions that are more solid and of narrowness. Building is a form of this as ramified thought. It is in a multiple interaction with architecture, and is indebted to it both as a means to presencing in the world and as a protective proxy. Technology is indebted to architecture in a similar way that thought is indebted to mind. Thought itself must bring about transcendence, freeing the mind of modifications.Thus Ge-stell [Enframing ] as essence of technicism must be the same for architecture, where Idea architecture is, for now, the name of a kin to the unmodified Mind.
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