The Question Concerning Technology（关于技术的问题）.pdf

Fouch_V1_CH01.qxd 9/10/2007 10:45 AM Page 1 1 The Question Concerning Technology MARTIN HEIDEGGER Source: The Question Concerning Technology (1977), pp 3–35 n what follows we shall be questioning concerning technology. Questioning builds a way. We would be advised, therefore, above all to pay heed to the Iway, and not to fix our attention on isolated sentences and topics. The way is a way of thinking. All ways of thinking, more or less perceptibly, lead through language in a manner that is extraordinary. We shall be questioning concerning technology, and in so doing we should like to prepare a free rela- tionship to it. The relationship will be free if it opens our human existence to the essence of technology.1 When we can respond to this essence, we shall be able to experience the technological within its own bounds. Technology is not equivalent to the essence of technology. When we are seeking the essence of “tree,” we have to become aware that That which per- vades every tree, as tree, is not itself a tree that can be encountered among all the other trees. Likewise, the essence of technology is by no means anything technological. Thus we shall never experience our relationship to the essence of technology so long as we merely conceive and push forward the technological, put up with it, or evade it. Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst pos