Being's self-sending, the danger, and the saving

pp. 239-248

in: John Loscerbo, Being and technology, Berlin, Springer, 1981

Abstract

The entire essay "Die Frage nach der Technik" is centered around the theme of Gestell as belonging inseparably to Being's ownmost manner of sending itself. From the outset of the essay this is suggested in the emphasis that man, prior to all his ordering of nature in general, is himselfalready put to the challenge. And it is for this reason that what is essential to modern technology may not be reduced to the purely anthropological, to the doings and machines of man. Man is already, in the very process of ordering, drawn into the "appealing claim" ("Anspruch") of Being, regardless of whether he is able to attend to this or not. On the one hand, man is related to something which is not of his own making,¹ but on the other he neglects, or is for sundry reasons, unable to take this into view.