The Unfolding of Being
After failing to satisfactorily answer the central question on the meaning of Being in Being and Time, Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) abandoned philosophical language and adopted a writing style that encouraged poiesis, where something is brought into being that did not exist before. The original question, “What is the meaning of Being?” answered through Dasein, now became “How does Being unfold?” Unfolding implies looking at Being not as an entity, but as a series of events in time through which humanity’s sense-making (“dwelling”) of its world across several dimensions is transformed.
But where does humanity dwell? Here, Heidegger introduced the notion of the fourfold. Human beings are at home on earth, under the sky, among one another as mortals, and before the divinities or gods. The fourfold is the underlying unity of these four dimensions. The earth and sky comprise Nature, while mortals and gods refer to Culture. Humanity dwells in the fourfold in a poetic way, which allows for mystery, rather than the ways of philosophy or science. Heidegger argued that safeguarding the fourfold is necessary for the essential unfolding of Being. He felt that contemporary humans had failed to protect this fourfold, and the primary culprit was technology.
According to Heidegger, the essence of technology is that it views all entities as resources or means to be used for some ends. Nature is no more than a reserve of exploitable resources, while other humans are merely resources for our ends. Today, the technological mode of Being is dominant and defines our way of life, driving out the sense of awe of the fourfold and its beings, and of the mystery of Being. This loss of wonder is worsened by our indifference or ignorance to its loss, and by its replacement through simulated experiences.
The problem is not technology per se, but the domination of its instrumental mode of being in our lives. In pre-modern societies, work emphasized the arts and artisanship, which brought out the essence of the natural materials and environments that were used. This process of revealing the underlying essence is called poiesis, which the technological mode of living does not do.
The solution is hardly to get rid of technology, but to lead our lives so that technology is not our primary channel of encountering the world. We can start to inhabit the world in a way that safeguards the essential unfolding of Being in our lives, Heidegger argued, by always being grateful for the gift of Being that gave us our and other beings’ lives. To appreciate this gift does not require a god; it is a secular appreciation for the sacredness of life.
Promoting and appreciating arts and artisanship is essential, because they reveal both the underlying beauty and preserve the mystery of Being. We should synchronize our lives and our use of technology with the temporal patterns of nature, such as day and night. We should encourage cultural practices that enable us to own our deaths and not evade them, thereby safeguarding one another as mortals. Finally, we should encourage and support the heroes among us who will reawaken us to our poetic inhabitation of the fourfold and to the mystery of Being in our lives.
Heidegger’s brilliance and insights into Being are stained forever due to his association with the Nazi party, which he joined in 1933. In his speeches as rector of Freiburg University, he supported Hitler and incorporated Nazi images into the language of Being and Time. Heidegger later came to believe that the Nazi leaders were false gods and promoted a technological way of being. But he never explicitly rejected Nazism, which is impossible to excuse.