The Framing of Man - Heidegger

Man and Being are allocated to each other.  They belong to each other...

This predominant belonging-together of Man and Being we fail to acknowledge stubbornly so long as we are looking upon everything in orderly arrangement and mediation...

How such Einkehr [togetherness] may be accomplished.  The answer is by keeping aloof from the attitude of representational thinking.  This keeping aloof is a positing in the sense of a leap [Sprung].  It is a bounding away from and a leaving behind of the familiar concept of Man as the animale rationale, the rational animal, who nowadays has become the subject for his objects...

Today we no longer need the elaborate hints still required years ago to direct our gaze to a certain pattern in which Man and Being concern each other, -at least so it seems.  One might venture the opinion that it would suffice mentioning the word atomic age in order to convey how nowadays Being con-fronts us in the world of technology.  However, are we entitled, without further ado, to equate the world of technical science and Being?  Obviously not.  Even then we should not do so when we picture ourselves the world as a whole in which atomic energy, the planned calculations of human beings, and automization are combined.  Why is it that such a reference, however detailed, to the world of technology does not, nevertheless, by any means bring the patterns of Being and Man into focus?  Because every thinking analysis of the situation falls short in so far as the above-mentioned whole of the world of technology has already been prejudged in the human perspective as the product of man.  Technology, in the broadest sense and thought of in the manifoldness of its phenomena, is looked upon as a man-made plan which eventually forces the human being into a decision as to whether he wishes to become slave of his plan or retain mastership over it.

In this conception of the entire world of technology we trace everything back to man and finally demand an ethics suitable to the world of technology if, indeed, we wish to carry things that far.  Caught up in this conception we then personally firm ourselves in the opinion that technology is the concern of Man alone and fail to notice the claim which Being makes on us through the very nature of technology.

Let us at long last be done with thinking about technology only technologically, that is, in terms of man and machine.  Let us pay close attention to the claim under which, in our age, not only Man but all Existence, nature and history, operate with respect to their own Being.

What claims are we referring to?  Our whole existence is challenged everywhere-now as in play, now urgently; now as if set upon, now as if pushed-- to plan and calculate everything.  What does this challenge mean?  Is it merely the product of man's self-generated mood?  Or are we actually concerned with Existence itself in the sense that it makes a claim upon us with respect to its schematization and calculability?  If such were the case, would not Being itself be then subject to the challenge of having Existence appear within the purview of calculability?  Such is, indeed, the case.  More than that.  To the extent that Being is challenged, Man is likewise challenged, that is to say, Man is 'framed' so he will safeguard the Existence which concerns him as the very substance of his planning and calculating, and thus pursue this task into the immeasurable.





M. Heidegger.  Identitat und Differenz. 1957. trns. by Kurt Leidecker.  Philosophical Library.  New 
      York.  1960.



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