Stambaugh (1969:13) – Man is technology

This brings Heidegger to the form of belonging together of man and Being in our present age of technology. A short comment might be inserted here about Heidegger’s emphasis on thinking as that which man is. One might ask: isn’t man more than thought, doesn’t he also have emotions, needs as to how he lives, practical problems, etc.? Isn’t Heidegger’s understanding of man too rationalistic, too idealistic in its emphasis on thought? To this question it must be answered: all of these aspects of man are included in what Heidegger calls thinking. Thinking is not   the “upper story” of the split-level being that is the rational animal. Thinking in the form of the Logos   has, for instance, brought about the whole world of technology and the atomic age which is concrete enough. Technology isn’t just something man has acquired as an accessory. Right now it is what he is.

“Technology” is nothing technical. It is not even a “product” of man. The manner in which man and Being concern each other [13] in the world of technology Heidegger calls the framework. The framework is far more real than all atomic energy and all machines. But it is nothing necessarily ultimate. It could be a prelude to what Heidegger calls the event of appropriation (Ereignis). The event of appropriation is the realm in which man and Being reach each other in their very core. They lose the determinations placed upon them by metaphysics.

Metaphysics thinks identity as a fundamental trait of Being. For Heidegger, Being and thought belong to an identity whose acting nature stems from the letting belong together which is called the event of appropriation. It took thinking two thousand years to arrive at an understanding of identity as transcendentally mediated identity. We cannot expect to grasp instantly the meaning of the non-metaphysical identity Heidegger shows us here. (1969, p. 13)