fooloso4
Questioning is a way of thinking, apparently, there are others.
But it is a way that opens rather than closes. Statements are closed, fixed. Questioning undoes this and expands truth so more is revealed or"unconcealed". This opening is an extraordinary event and I think it is why Heidegger uses quasi religious terminology in his exposition of the essence of technology: in the opening there is freedom and it is here that metaphysics is born. Kant warned of dialectical fallacies, but this misses the point, and the point is about the mystery of openess. He writes:
the more questioningly we ponder the essence of technology, the more mysterious the essence of art becomes
Art is what is missing from technology in the modern misapprehension of the word which is fixed on a simple means to end thinking. The mystery of questioning is in the openings, the "breaches" of fixed thought. And: to stand face to face with being in a state of inquiry is, one might say, the very essence of religious wonder. I think Heidegger has some respect for this, hence the choice of such terms.
Techne belongs to bringing-forth, to poiesis; it is something poietic … From earliest times until Plato the word techne is linked with the word episteme. Both words are names for knowing in the widest sense. They mean to be entirely at home in something, to understand and be expert in it. Such knowing provides an opening up. As an opening up it is a revealing … Techne is a mode of aletheuein. It reveals whatever does not bring itself forth and does not yet lie here before us, whatever can look and turn out now one way and now another.
Poiesis means to make. The poets are makers. Contrary to much of the history of philosophy Heidegger does not oppose philosophy to poetry. They are both ways to bring forth, to open, to reveal. They are both modes of alethea, truth.
For art is part of the essence of technology, it is a making, but is generally thought of in a "sheer aesthetic-mindedness" with a failure to acknowledge the technological aspect. I think Heidegger is saying that art IS technology, and tehcnology IS art, that is, both are such that they cannot be conceived in their essences without the other. Heidegger writes this extraordinary account:
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.
The Greeks did not, it seems, draw the distinction that abides today and it is a failing of modern culture not to see they are essentially bound to one another. He uses Aristotle's fourfold causality to show how purpose, material and form (note how form is by many standards today, by Kant's Schelling's--form-in-reason, the essence of art, not technology) must be considered along with causa efficiens.
Heidegger makes use of religious language - destining, fate, call, listen and hear. One must listen to hear the call. One is free to hearken to the call, and enter the realm of destining.
Such a surprise at first. But I suspect Heidegger, while not a disciple of popular religion by any means, is not insensitive to the "truth" of human religious terms. These are revelations of disclosure, too; or, these are "presence" in our history of disclosure and are not to be ignored. "Destining" is an intersting example. he writes that the "unconcealment of that which is goes upon a way of revealing. Always the destining of revealing holds complete sway over man." Truth presents a trajectory of possibilities. As you say, our job is to "listen". In this, there is a kind of fate to technology. One way to put what he is doing is to say that he enriches technology as a concept by humanizing it, or, to borrow a term from B & T, regionalizes it. Terms have their meanings in regions of contexts that are brought to proximity of conscious awareness when situations arise. Heidegger obviously wants to liberate the term 'technology' from modern limitations that divest it of its full regional possibilities; I mean, when we think iof technology, we think of much more than Kantian apodicticity of cause and effect. It is really a broader, fuller meaning, and qualifiedly religious, as least in the way religious meaning is embedded in certain language.
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.
The granting is what he calls ‘es gibt’, which means ‘there is’ but Heidegger points to the literal meaning - it gives. To grant is to give. But man plays an essential part in this. It is not simply what is given to man. It is what man brings to presence, into unconcealment, into truth.
But why does Heidegger choose this language, this giving/granting/saving power, and the rest? Clearly, he thinks that such terms belong to the truth of technology's essence, and this essence is not a simple matter. Meanings for Heidegger are equiprimordial; there is no singular essence for terms. This is Heidegger's tribute to religion, for though not a religious man in theory, he does see that our dasein is mysteriously "religious". This is intrinsic to Time and our becoming.