Martin Heidegger :: essays papers

Martin HeideggerNote The main work from which text was drawn is The Question ConcerningTechnology. Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher, who developed existentialphenomenology and has been widely regarded as the approximately original20th-century philosopher. His works include complicated essays such as Anintroduction to Metaphysics and The Question Concerning Technology. Inhis essay The Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger attempts tocreate several intricate arguments regarding applied science and thesignifi potbellyce of information. One prominent theme in this essay is the ideaand meaning of info rmation. Heidegger presents his thoughts by searching for the roots of the ideasbehind information. He includes umteen references to German, Greek and Latinvocabulary to better explain his ideas. In order to fully understand themeaning and significance of informa tion, one must be enlightened as to theaccurate definitions of some basic vocabulary regarding information. Thefir st word that is significant to the idea of information that Heideggerexplains to the reader is episteme. Episteme in basic deracination can bedefined as knowledge. (Episteme is a term). for knowing in the widestsense. (it) means to be entirely at home with something, to understand andbe expert in it. Such knowing provides an opening up. As an opening it upit is a revealing. This leads to the next expression, alethia. Alethia is used by Heidegger the same way it was defined by the past Greeks revealing. This same word is translated by the Romans to veritas. Again, veritas in English is usedto mean truth which can be unde rstood as correctness and representation. It is in this change, due to translation of ideas, that Heidegger notices some inconsistencies. Information is an often misused term in Heideggers opinion. As previouslynoted, the translation from one language to another can often reverse truedefinitions of words askew, and this can cause serious problems withlarger concep ts of technology and an id ea of enframing (gestell).Gestell is a German word whose direct translation means enframing. Theidea of enframing is also quite prevalent in this essay. We now name that challenging claim which gathers man thither to order theself-revealing as standing-reserve ge-stell (enframing). We dare to usethis word in a sense that has been thoroughly unfamiliar up to now.According to ordinary usage, the word Gestell (frame) means some kind of apparatus, e.g., a bookrack. Gestell is also the name for a skeleton. And the employment of the wordGestell(enframing) that is now required of us seems equally eerie, not tospeak of the arbitrariness with which words of a mature language are so