18 The Question Concerning Technology

Who accomplishes the challenging setting-upon through which what we call the real is revealed as standing-reserve? Obviously, man. To what extent is man capable of such a revealing? Man can indeed conceive, fashion, and carry through this or that in one way or another. But man does not have control over unconcealment itself, in which at any given time the real shows itself or withdraws. The fact that the real has been showing itself in the light of Ideas ever since the time of Plato, Plato did not bring about. The thinker only responded to what addressed itself to him.


Only to the extent that man for his part is already challenged to exploit the energies of nature can this ordering revealing happen. If man is challenged, ordered, to do this, then does not man himself belong even more originally than nature within the standing-reserve? The current talk about human resources, about the supply of patients for a clinic, gives evidence of this. The forester who, in the wood, measures the felled timber and to all appearances walks the same forest path in the same way as did his grandfather is today commanded by profit-making in the lumber industry, whether he knows it or not. He is made subordinate to the orderability of cellulose, which for its part is challenged forth by the need for paper, which is then delivered to newspapers and illustrated magazines. The latter, in their turn, set public opinion to swallowing what is printed, so that a set configuration of opinion becomes available on demand. Yet precisely because man is challenged more originally than are the energies of nature, i.e., into the process of ordering, he never i's transformed into mere standing-reserve. Since man drives technology forward, he takes part in ordering as a way of revealing. But the unconcealment itself, within which ordering unfolds, is never a human handiwork, any more than is the realm through which man is already passing every time he as a subject relates to an object.


Where and how does this revealing happen if it is no mere handiwork of man? We need not look far. We need only apprehend in an unbiased way That which has already claimed man and has done so, so decisively that he can only be man at any given time as the one so claimed. Wherever man opens his eyes and ears, unlocks his heart, and gives himself over to meditating




and striving, shaping and working, entreating and thanking, he finds himself everywhere already brought into the unconcealed. The unconcealment of the unconcealed has already come to pass whenever it calls man forth into the modes of revealing allotted to him. When man, in his way, from within unconcealment reveals that which presences, he merely responds to the call of unconcealment even when he contradicts it. Thus when man, investigating, observing, ensnares nature as an area of his own


40 conceiving, he has already been claimed by a way of revealing that challenges him to approach nature as an object of research, until even the object disappears into the objectlessness of standing-reserve.




6 human doing. Therefore we must take that challenging that sets upon man to order the real as standing-reserve in accordance with the way in which it shows itself. That challenging gathers man into ordering. This gathering concentrates man upon ordering the real as standing-reserve.


That which primordially unfolds the mountains into mountain ranges and courses through them in their folded togetherness is the gathering that we call "Gebirg" [mountain chain].


That original gathering from which unfold the ways in which we have feelings of one kind or another we name "Gemilt" [disposition].


We now name that challenging claim which gathers man thither to order the self-revealing as standing-reserve: "Ge-stell" [Enframing] .17


We dare to use this word in a sense that has been thoroughly unfamiliar up to now.


17. The translation "Enframing" for Ge-stell is intended to suggest, through the use of the prefix "en-," something of the active meaning that Heidegger here gives to the German word. While following the discussion that now ensues, in which Enframing assumes a central role, the reader should be careful not to interpret the word as though it simply meant a framework of some sort. Instead he should constantly remember that Enframing is fundamentally a calling-forth. It is a "challenging claim," a demanding summons, that "gathers" so as to reveal. This claim enframes in that it assembles and orders. It puts into a framework or configuration everything that it summons forth, through an ordering for use that it is forever restructuring anew. Cf. Introduction, pp. xxix ff.

20 The Question Concerning Technology

According to ordinary usage, the word Gestell [frame] means
some kind of apparatus, e.g., a bookrack. Gestell is also the name
for a skeleton. And the employment of the word ~ ~e-stell~[En
framipgj that is now required of us seems equally eerie, not to
speak of the arbitrariness with which words of a mature language
are thus misused. Can anything be more strange? Surely not.
Yet this strangeness is an old usage of thinking. And indeed
thinkers accord with this usage precisely at the point where it is a
matter of thinking that which is highest. We, late born, are no
longer in a position to appreciate the significance of Plato's dar
ing to use the word eidos for that which in everything and in
each particular thing endures as present. For eidos, in the com
mon speech, meant the outward aspect [Ansicht] that a visible
thing offers to the physical eye. Plato exacts of this word, how
ever, something utterly extraordinary: that it name what precisely
is not and never will be perceivable with physical eyes. But even
this is by no means the full extent of what is extraordinary here.
For idea names not only the nonsensuous aspect of what is
physically visible." Aspect (idea) names and is, also, that which
constitutes the essence in the audible, the tasteable, the tactile,
in everything that is in any way accessible. Compared with the
demands that Plato makes on language and thought in this and
other instances, the use of the word Gestell as the name for the
essence of modern technology, which we now venture here, is
almost harmless. Even so, the usage now required remains some
thing exacting and is open to misinterpretation.

Enframing means the gathering together of that setting-upon which sets upon man, i.e., challenges him forth, to reveal the real, in the mode of ordering, as standing-reserve. Enframing means that way of revealing which holds sway in the essence of modern technology and which is itself nothing technological. On the other hand, all those things that are so familiar to us and are standard parts of an assembly, such as rods, pistons, and chassis, belong to the technological. The assembly itself, however, together with the aforementioned stockparts, falls within


18. Where idea is italicized it is not the English word but a transliteration of the Greek.




the sphere of technological activity; and this activity always merely responds to the challenge of Enframing, but it never comprises Enframing itself or brings it about.

The word stellen [to set upon] in the name Ge-stell [Enfram- V ing] not only means challenging. At the same time it should preserve the suggestion of another Stellen from which it stems, namely, that producing and presenting [Her- und Dar-stellenj which, in the sense of poiesis, lets what presences come forth into unconcealment. This producing that brings forth-e.g., the erecting of a statue in the temple precinct-and the challenging ordering now under consideration are indeed fundamentally different, and yet they remain related in their essence. Both are ways of revealing, of alotheia. In Enframing, that unconcealment comes to pass in conformity with which the work of modern technology reveals the real as standing-reserve. This work is therefore neither only a human activity nor a mere means within such activity. The merely instrumental, merely anthropological definition of technology is therefore in principle untenable. And it cannot be rounded out by being referred back to some metaphysical or religious explanation that undergirds it.

It remains true, nonetheless, that man in the technological age is, in a particularly striking way, challenged forth into revealing. That revealing concerns nature, above all, as the chief storehouse of the standing energy reserve. Accordingly, man's ordering attitude and behavior display themselves first in the rise of modern physics as an exact science. Modern science's way of representing pursues and entraps nature as a calculable coherence of forces. Modern physics is not experimental physics because it applies apparatus to the questioning of nature. Rather the reverse is true. Because physics, indeed already as pure theory, sets nature up to exhibit itself as a coherence of forces calculable in advance, it therefore orders its experiments precisely for the purpose of asking whether and how nature reports itself when set up in this way.

But after all, mathematical physics arose almost two centuries before technology. How, then, could it have already been set upon by modern technology and placed in its service? The facts testify to the contrary. Surely technology got under way only

22 The Question Concerning Technology

when it could be supported by exact physical science. Reckoned chronologically, this is -cgrrect. Thought historically, it does not hit upon the truth.

The modern physical theory of nature prepares the way first not simply for technology but for the essence of modern technology. For already in physics the challenging gathering-together into ordering revealing holds sway. But in it that gathering does not yet come expressly to appearance. Modern physics is the herald of Enframing, a herald whose origin is still unknown. The essence of modern technology has for a long time been concealing itself, even where power machinery has been invented, where electrical technology is in full swing, and where atomic technology is well under way.

All coming to presence, not only modern technology, keeps itself everywhere concealed to the last." Nevertheless, it re_ mains, with respect to its holding sway, that which precedes all: the earliest. The Greek thinkers already knew of this when they said: That which is earlier with regard to the arising that holds sway becomes manifest to us men only later. That which is primally early shows itself only ultimately to men." Therefore, in the realm of thinking, a painstaking effort to think through still more primally what was primally thought is not the absurd wish to revive what is past, but rather the sober readiness to be astounded before the coming of what is early.

Chronologically speaking, modern physical science begins in the seventeenth century. In contrast, machine-power -technology develops only in the second half of the eighteenth century. But modern technology, which for chronological reckoning is the later, is, from the point of view of the essence holding sway within it, the historically earlier.


19. "Coming to presence" here translates the gerund Wesende, a verbal orm that appears, in this volume, only in this essay. With the introduction nto the discussion of "coming to presence" as an alternate translation of the noun Wesen (essence), subsequent to Heidegger's consideration of the meaning of essence below (pp. 30 ff.), occasionally the presence of das Wesende is regrettably but unavoidably obscured.

20. "That which is primally early" translates die anffingliche Friihe. For a discussion of that which "is to all present and absent beings ... the earliest and most ancient at once'~-Le., Ereignen, das Ereignis-see "The Way to Language" in On the Way to Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), p. 127.




If modern physics must resign itself ever increasingly to the
fact that its realm of representation remains inscrutable and
incapable of being visualized, this resignation is not dictated by
any committee of researchers. It is challenged forth by the rule
of Enframing, which demands that nature be orderable as
standing-reserve. Hence physics, in all its retreating from the
representation turned only toward objects that has alone been
standard till recently, will never be able to renounce this one
thing: that nature reports itself in some way or other that is
identifial5le t ugh calculation and triat-IT-re~mains orderable
a on. This system is determ en, out
of a causality that has changed once again. Causality now dis
plays neither the character of the occasioning that brings forth
nor the nature of the causa efficiens, let alone that of the causa
formalis. It seems as though causality is shrinking into a re
porting-a reporting challenged forth-of standing-reserves that
must be guaranteed either simultaneously or in sequence. To this
shrinking would correspond the process of growing resignation
that Heisenberg's lecture depicts in so impressive a manner.*

Because the essence of modern technology lies in Enframing, modern technology must employ exact physical science. Through its so doing, the deceptive illusion arises that modern technology is applied physical science. This illusion can maintain itself only so long as neither the essential origin of modern science nor indeed the essence of modern technology is adequately found out through questioning.


We are questioning concerning technology in order to bring to light our relationship to its essence. The essence Qf modern techn . But si y to point to this is still in no way to answer the question concerning technology, if to answer means to respond, in the sense of correspond, to the essence of what is being asked about.

Where do we find ourselves brought to, if now we think one step further regarding what Enframing itself actually is? I.t is nothing tec no ical, nothing on the order of a machine. It is t~e way in which the real reveals itself as standing-reseive.


W. Heisenberg, "Das NaturbiId in der heutigen Physik," in Die Kiinste im technischen Zeitalter (Munich, 1954), pp. 43 ff.

24 The Question Concerning Technology

Again we ask: Does this revealing happen somewhere beyond all human doing? No. But neither does it happen exclusively in Man, or decisively through man.

L Enframing is the gathering together that belongs to that setting-upon which sets upon man and puts him in position to reveal the real, in the mode of ordering, as standing-reserve. As the one who is challenged forth in this way, man stands within the essential realm of Enframing. lie can never take up a relationship to it only subsequently. TEus the' _quesf1-5n-__a__s-to how


we are to arrive a F6 asked in this way, always comes too late. But never too late comes the question as to whether we actually experience ourselves as the ones whose activities everywhere, public and private, are challenged forth by Enframing. Above all, never too late comes the question as to whether and how we actually admit ourselves into that wherein Enframing itself comes to presence.

The essence of modern technology starts man upon the way
of that revealing through which the real everywhere, more or
less distinctly, becomes standing-reserve. "To start upon a way"
means "to send" in our ordinary language. We shall call that
sending-that-gathers [versammelde Schicken] which first starts
man upon a way of revealing, destining [Geschick]." It is from
out of this destining that the essence of all history [desch'lchte]
is-determined. Iii-stor~-ii-s--neit er Fsimp ~ytEe_oSjectcaf-written
chronicl&--nor simply the fulfillment of human activity. That
activity first becomes history as something destined.* And it is
only the destining into objectifying representation that makes the
historical accessible as an object for historiography, i.e., for a
science, and on this basis makes possible the current equating
of the historical with that which is chronicled.
,EZframing, as a challenging-forth into ordering, sends into a

way of rextaling~

21. For a further presentation of the meaning resident in Geschick and the related verb schicken, cf. T 38 ff., and Introduction, pp. xxviii ff.


* See Vorn Wesen der Wahrheit, 1930; 1st ed., 1943, pp. 16 ff. [English translation, "On the Essence of Truth," in Existence and Being, ed. Werner Brock (Chicago: Regnery, 1949), pp. 308 ff.]




every way of revealing. Bringing-forth, poigsis, is also a destining ,
in this sense. I
Always the unconcealment of that which is" goes upon a way
of revealing. Always the destining of revealing holds complete L4,
sway over man. But that destining is never a fate that compels. L
~ -Y
For man becomes truly fxee only insofar as he belongs to the ~e_ ck4.
realm of destining and so becomes one who listens and hears
[Hbrender], and not one who is simply constrained to obey
[Hijriger].
The essence of freedom is originally not connected with th_J will or even with the causality of human willing.
Freedom governs the open in the sense of the cleared and
lighted up, i.e., of the revealed. 13 It is to the happening of reveal
ing, i.e., of truth, that freedom stands in the closest and most
intimate kinship. All revealing belongs within a harboring and a
concealing. But that which frees-the mystery-is concealed and
always concealing itself. All revealing comes out of the open,
goes into the open, and brings into the open. The freedom of
the open consists neither in unfettered arbitrariness nor in the
constraint of mere laws. Freedom is that which conceals in a w ay
that opens to light, in whose Jear-ing -there shimmers that veil
tffa`tc6-v`er_s_w_N_atcomes to presence of all truth and lets the veil
appear as what veils. Freedom is the realm of the destining that
at any given time starts a revealing upon its way.

The essence of modern technology lies in Enframing. Enframing belongs within the destining of revealing., These sentences express something different from the talk that we hear more frequently, to the effect that technology is the fate of our age, where "fate" means the inevitableness of an unalterable course.

But when we consider the essence of technology, then we experience Enframing as a destining of revealing. In this way we are already sojourning within the open space of destining, a destining that in no way confines us to a stultified compulsion to push on blindly with technology or, what comes to the same


22. dessen was ist. On the peculiar significance of das was ist (that which is), see T 44 n. 12.

23. "The open" here translates das Preie, cognate with Freiheit, freedom. Unfortunately the repetitive stress of the German phrasing cannot be reproduced in English, since the basic meaning of Freie-open air, open space -is scarcely heard in the English "free."



In whatever way the destining of revealing may hold sway,
the unconcealment in which everything that is shows itself at
any given time harbors the danger that man may quail at the un
concealed and may misinterpret it. Thus where everything that
presences exhibits itself in the light of a cause-effect coherence, even God can, for representational thinking, lose all that is exalted and holy, the mysteriousness of his distance. In the
light of causality, God can sink to the level of a cause, of causa
efficiens. He then becomes, even in theology, the god of the
philosophers, namely, of those who define the unconcealed and
the concealed in terms of the causality of making, without ever
considering the essential origin of this causality.
In a similar way the unconcealment in accordance with which
nature presents itself as a calculable complex of the effects of
forces can indeed permit correct determinations; but precisely
through these successes the danger can remain that in the midst
of all that is correct the true will withdraw.
The destining of revealing is in itself not just any danger, but
danger as such.
Yet when destining reigns in the mode of Enframing, it is the
Oe' supreme danger. This danger attests itself to us in two ways. As
g-o-o-n-ag-what is unconcealed no longer concerns man even as



object, but does so, rather, exclusively as standing-reserve, and man in the midst of objectlessness is nothing but the orderer of the standing-reserve, then he comes to the very brink of a precipitous fall; that is, he comes to the point where he.himself will have to be taken as standing-reserve. Meanwhile man, precisely as the one so threatened, exalts himself to the posture of lord of the earth. In this way the impression comes to prevail that everything man encounters exists only insofar as it is his construct. This illusion gives rise in turn to one final delusion: It seems as though man everywhere and always encounters only himself. Heisenberg has with complete correctness pointed out

that the real must present itself to contemporary man in this way.* In truth, however, precisely nowhere does man today any longer encounter himself, i.e., his essence. Man stands so decisively in attendance on the challenging-forth of Enframing that he does not apprehend Enframing as a claim, that he fails to see

himself as the one spoken to, and hence also fails in every way to hear in what respect he ek-sists, from out of his essence, in the

realm of an exhortation or address, and thus can never encounter
only himself. i
But Enframing does not simply endanger man in his relation- AA
ship to himself and to everything that is. As a destining, it CIA
banishes man into that kind of revealing which is an ordering.
Where this ordering holds sway, it drives out every other possi
bility of revealing. Above all, Enframing conceals that revealing
which, in the sense of poiesis, lets what presences come forth
into appearance. As compared with that other revealing, the

setting-upon that challenges forth thrusts man into a relation to that which is, that is at once antithetical and rigorously ordered. Where Enframing holds sway, regulating and securing of the standing-reserve mark all revealing. They no longer even let their own fundamental characteristic appear, namely, this revealing as such.

Thus the challenging Enframing not only conceals a former way of revealing, bringing-forth, but it conceals revealing itself and with it That wherein unconcealment, i.e., truth, comes to pass.


* "Das Naturbild," pp. 60 ff.


28 The Question Concerning Technology

Enframing blocks the shining-forth and holding-sway of truth. The destining that sends into ordering is consequently the extreme danger. What is dangerous is not technology. There is no demonry of technology, but rather there is the mystery of its essence. The essence of technology, as a destining of revealing, is the danger. The transformed meaning of the word "Enframing" will perhaps become somewhat more familiar to us now if we think Enframing in the sense of destining and danger.

The threat to man does not come in the first instance from the potentially lethal machines and apparatus of technology. The actual threat has already affected man in his essence. The rule of Enframing threatens* man with the possibility that it r-ould be denied to him to enter into a more original revealing and hence to experience the call of a more primal truth.

Thus, where Enframing reigns, there is danger in the highest sense.




Let us think carefully about these words of H61derlin. W& does it mean "to save"? Usually we think that it means only to seize hold of a thing threatened by ruin, in order to secure it in its former continuance. But the verb "to save" says more. "To save" is to fetch something home into its essence, in order to bring the essence for the first time into its genuine appearing. If the essence of technology, Enframing, is the extreme danger, and if there is truth in Hblderlin's words, then the rule of Enframing cannot exhaust itself solely in blocking all lighting-up of every revealing, all appearing of truth. Rather, precisely the essence of technology must harbor in itself the growth of the saving power. But in that case, might not an adequate look into what Enframing is as a destining of revealing bring into appearance the saving power in its arising?

In what respect does the saving power grow there also where the danger is? Where something grows, there it takes root, from thence it thrives. Both happen concealedly and quietly and in their own time. But According to the words of the poet we have no right whatsoever to expect that there where the danger is we




should be able to lay hold of the saving power immediately and without preparation. Therefore we must consider now, in advance, in what respect the saving power does most profoundly take root and thence thrive even in that wherein the extreme danger lies, in the holding sway of Enframing. In order to consider this, it is necessary, as a last step upon our way, to look with yet clearer eyes into the danger. Accordingly, we must once more question concerning technology. For we have said that in technology's essence roots and thrives the saving power.

But how shall we behold the saving power in the essence of technology so long as we do not consider in what sense of liessence" it is that Enframing is actually the essence of technology?

Thus far we have understood "essence" in its current meaning. In the academic language of philosophy, "essence" means what something is; in Latin, quid. Quidditas, whatness, provides the answer to the question concerning essence. For example, what pertains to all kinds of trees-oaks, beeches, birches, firs-is the same "treeness." Under this inclusive genus-the "universal"fall all real and possible trees. Is then the essence of technology, Enframing, the common genus for everything technological? If that were the case then the steam turbine, the radio transmitter, and the cyclotron would each be an Enframing. But the word "Enframing" does not mean here a tool or any kind of apparatus. Still less does it mean the general concept of such resources. The machines and apparatus are no more cases and kinds of Enframing than are the man at the switchboard and the engineer in the drafting room. Each of these in its own way indeed belongs as stockpart, available resource, or executer, within Enframing; but Enframing is never the essence of technology in the sense of a genus. Enframing is a way of revealing having the character of destining, namely, the way that challenges forth. The revealing that brings forth (poiesis) is also a way that has the character of destining. But these ways are not kinds that, arrayed beside one another, fall under the concept of revealing. Revealing is that destining which, ever suddenly and inexplicably to all thinking, apportions itself into the revealing that brings forth and that also challenges, and which allots itself to man. The challenging reveal

30 The Question Concerning Technology

ing has its origin as a destining in bringing-forth. But at the same time Enframing, in a way characteristic of a destining, blocks poiesis.

Thus Enframing, as a destining of revealing, is indeed the essence of technology, but never in the sense of genus and essentia. If we pay heed to this, something astounding strikes us: It is technology itself that makes the demand on us to think in another way what is usually understood by "essence." But in what way?

if we speak of the "essence of a house" and the "essence of a state," we do not mean a generic type; rather we mean the ways in which house and state hold sway, administer themselves, develop and decay-the way in which they "essence" [Wesen]. Johann Peter Hebel in a poem, "Ghost on Kanderer Street," for which Goethe had a special fondness, uses the old word die Weserei. It means the city hall inasmuch as there the life of the community gathers and village existence is constantly in play, i.e., comes to presence. It is from the verb wesen that the noun is derived. Wesen understood as a verb is the same as wahren [to last or endure], not only in terms of meaning, but also in terms of the phonetic formation of the word. Socrates and Plato already think the essence of something as what essences, what comes to presence, in the sense of what endures. But they think what endures as what remains permanently [das Fortwiihrende] (aei on). And they find what endures permanently in what, as that which remains, tenaciously persists throughout all that happens. That which remains they discover, in turn, in the aspect [Aussehen] (eidos, idea), for example, the Idea "house."

The Idea "house" displays what anything is that is fashioned as a house. Particular, real, and possible houses, in contrast, are changing and transitory derivatives of the Idea and thus belong to what does not endure.

But it can never in any way be established that enduring is based solely on what Plato thinks as idea and Aristotle thinks as to ti on einai (that which any particular thing has always been), or what metaphysics in its most varied interpretations thinks as essentia.

All essencing endures. But is enduring only permanent enduring? Does the essence of technology endure in the sense of




the permanent enduring of an Idea that hovers over everything technological, thus making it seem that by technology we mean some mythological abstraction? The way in which technology essences lets itself be seen only from out of that permanent enduring in which Enframing comes to pass as a destining of revealing. Goethe once uses the mysterious word fortgewfihren [to grant permanently] in place of fortwiihren [to endure permanently].* He hears wfihren [to endure] and gewdhren [to grant]


here in one unarticulated accord. And if we now ponder more carefully than we did before what it is that actually endures and perhaps alone endures, we may venture to say: Only what is granted endures. That which endures primally out of the earliest beginning is what gran tS.25

As the essencing of technology, Enframing is that which endures. Does Enframing hold sway at all in the sense of granting? No doubt the question seems a horrendous blunder. For according to everything that has been said, Enframing is, rather, a destining that gathers together into the revealing that challenges forth. Challenging is anything but a granting. So it seems, so long as we do not notice that the challenging-forth into the ordering of the real as standing-reserve still remains a destining that starts man upon a way of revealing. As this destining, the coming to presence of technology gives man entry into That which, of himself, he can neither invent nor in any way make. For there is no such thing as a man who, solely of himself, is only man.

But if this destining, Enframing, is the extreme danger, not only for man's coming to presence, but for all revealing as such, should this destining still be called a granting? Yes, most emphat-


* "Die Wahlverwandtschaf ten" [Congeniality], pt. II, chap. 10, in the novelette Die wunderlichen Nachbarskinder [The strange neighbor's children].

24. The verb gewfiliren is closely allied to the verbs wfihren (to endure) and wahren (to watch over, to keep safe, to preserve). Gewdhren ordinarily means to be surety for, to warrant, to vouchsafe, to grant. In the discussion that follows, the verb will be translated simply with "to grant." But the reader should keep in mind also the connotations of safeguarding and guaranteeing that are present in it as well.

25. Nur das Gewfihrte wiffirt. Das anffinglich aus der Friihe Willirende ist das Gewfilirende. A literal translation of the second sentence would be,

"That which endures primally from out of the early On the meaning
of "the early," see n. 20 above.
32 The Question Concerning Technology

ically, if in this destining the saving power is said to grow. Every destining of revealing comes to pass from out of a granting and as such a granting. For it is granting that first conveys to man that share in revealing which the coming-to-pass of revealing needs." As the one so needed and used, man is given to belong to the coming-to-pass of truth. The granting that sends in one way or another into revealing is as such the saving power. For the saving power lets man see and enter into the highest dignity of his essence. This dignity lies in keeping watch over the unconcealment-and with it, from the first, the concealment-of all coming to presence on this earth. It is precisely in Enframing, which threatens to sweep man away into ordering as the supposed single way of revealing, and so thrusts man into the danger of the surrender of his free essence-it is precisely in this extreme danger that the innermost indestructible belongIngness of man within granting may come to light, provided that we, for our part, begin to pay heed to the coming to presence of technology.

Thus the coming to presence of technology harbors in itself what we least suspect, the possible arising of the saving power.

Everything, then, depends upon this: that we ponde. arising and that, recollecting, we watch over it. How can this happen? Above all through our catching sight of what comes to presence in technology, instead of merely staring at the technological. So long as we represent technology as an instrument, we remain held fast in the will to master it. We press on past the essence of technology.

When, however, we ask how the instrumental comes to presence as a kind of causality, then we experience this coming to presence as the destining of a revealing.

When we consider, finally, that the coming to presence of the essence of technology comes to pass in the granting that needs and uses man so that he may share in revealing, then the following becomes clear:


26. Here and subsequently in this essay, "coming-to-pass" translates the noun Ereignis. Elsewhere, in "The Turning," this word, in accordance with the deeper meaning that Heidegger there finds for it, will be translated with "disclosing that brings into its own." See T 45; see also Introduction, pp. xxxvi-xxxvii.




The essence of technology is in a lofty sense ambiguous. Such ambiguity points to the mystery of all revealing, i.e., of truth.

On the one hand, Enframing challenges forth into the frenziedness of ordering that blocks every view into the coming-to-pass of revealing and so radically endangers the relation to the essence of truth.

On the other hand, Enframing comes to pass for its part in the granting that lets man endure-as yet unexperienced, but perhaps more experienced in the future-that he may be the one who is needed and used for the safekeeping of the coming to presence of truth .17 Thus does the arising of the saving power appear.

The irresistibility of ordering and the restraint of the saving power draw past each other like the paths of two stars in the course of the heavens. But precisely this, their passing by, is the hidden side of their nearness.

When we look into the ambiguous essence of technology, we behold the constellation, the stellar course of the mystery.

The question concerning technology is the question concerning the constellation in which revealing and concealing, in which the coming to presence of truth, comes to pass.

But what help is it to us to look into the constellation of truth? We look into the danger and see the growth of the saving power.

Through this we are not yet saved. But we are thereupon summoned to hope in the growing light of the saving power. How can this happen? Here and now and in little things, that we may foster the saving power in its increase. This includes holding always before our eyes the extreme danger.

The coming to presence of technology threatens revealing, threatens it with the possibility that all revealing will be consumed in ordering and that everything will present itself only in the unconcealedness of standing-reserve. Human activity can never directly counter this danger. Human achievement alone can never banish it. But human reflection can ponder the fact that


27. "Safekeeping" translates the noun Wahrnis, which is unique to Heidegger. Wahmis is closely related to the verb wahren (to watch over, to keep safe, to preserve), integrally related to Wahrheit (truth), and closely akin to wdhren (to endure) and gewdhren (to be surety for, to grant). On the meaning of Wahmis, see T 42, n. 9 and n. 12 above.

34 The Question Concerning Technology

all saving power must be of a higher essence than what is endangered, though at the same time kindred to it.

But might there not perhaps be a more primally granted revealing that could bring the saving power into its first shining forth in the midst of the danger, a revealing that in the technological age rather conceals than shows itself?

There was a time when it was not technology alone that bore the name techne. Once that revealing that brings forth truth into the splendor of radiant appearing also was called techne.

Once there was a time when the bringing-forth of the true into the beautiful was called techne. And the poijsis of the fine arts also was called techni.

In Greece, at the outset of the destining of the West, the arts soared to the supreme height of the revealing granted them. They brought the presence [Gegenwart] of the gods, brought the dialogue of divine and human destinings, to radiance. And art was simply called techne. It was a single, manifold revealing. It was pious, promos, i.e., yielding to the holding-sway and the safekeeping of truth.

The arts were not derived from the artistic. Art works were not enjoyed aesthetically. Art was not a sector of cultural activity.

What, then, was art-perhaps only for that brief but magnificent time? Why did art bear the modest name techne? Because it was a revealing that brought forth and hither, and therefore belonged within poi0sis. It was finally that revealing which holds complete sway in all the fine arts, in poetry, and in everything poetical that obtained poi~sis as its proper name.

The same poet from whom we heard the words



says to us:



The poetical brings the true into the splendor of what Plato in the Phaedrus calls to ekphanestaton, that which shines forth most purely. The poetical thoroughly pervades every art, every revealing of coming to presence into the beautiful.




Could it be that the fine arts are called to poetic revealing? Could it be that revealing lays claim to the arts most primally, so that they for their part may expressly foster the growth of the saving power, may awaken and found anew our look into that which grants and our trust in it?

Whether art may be granted this highest possibility of its essence in the midst of the extreme danger, no one can tell. Yet we can be astounded. Before what? Before this other possibility: that the frenziedness of technology may entrench itself everywhere to such an extent that someday, throughout everything technological, the essence of technology may come to presence in the coming-to-pass of truth.

Because the essence of technology is nothing technological, essential reflection upon technology and decisive confrontation with it must happen in a realm that is, on the one hand, akin to the essence of technology and, on the other, fundamentally different from it.

Such a realm is art. But certainly only if reflection on art, for its part, does not shut its eyes to the constellation of truth after which we are questioning.


Thus questioning, we bear witness to the crisis that in our sheer preoccupation with technology we do not yet experience the coming to presence of technology, that in our sheer aestheticmindedness we no longer guard and preserve the coming to presence of art. Yet the more questioningly we ponder the essence of technology, the more mysterious the essence of art becomes.

The closer we come to the danger, the more brightly do the ways into the saving power begin to shine and the more questioning we become. For questioning is the piety of thought.