Revealing by means of challenging and revealing by means of poiēsis may seem to bring about the same tangible end product, but what about the intangible? I’m going to use the example of woodworking and deforesting. The Heidegger AI and I came up with this example together while discussing the distinction between challenging and bringing-forth. When an artist goes into the woods and collects parts of a fallen tree to carve into a figure, the artist is helping to reveal that figure through poiēsis. When a corporation destroys half of a forest in order to secure resources to mass produce wooden figurines, that product is being challenged-forth. One may wonder why it matters where we get our wooden dolls from, but this goes beyond the scope of which dolls were ethically sourced (although that is very important). If we were to talk about the bringing-forth of the wooden figure as poiēsis, we would look to page 7 of Heidegger’s “The Question Concerning Technology”. From Heideggar’s perspective, the artist would stand by the forest and know that their figure is not only their carving, but also “indebted” to the wood from which it was made, the process of making it, and the very concept of a figure to be carved. The artist is able to see the forest not as something that they take from to create, but as something that allows them to help bring-forth that which was concealed (the figure). This bringing-forth as poiēsis holds that the forest is still a forest in its own right- a co-creator. Now we may turn our focus to the mass-produced wooden dolls. A corporation does not see the forest as a forest, but as a way to make wooden dolls. It has been reduced down to its ability to produce. And further, the consumer does not even know of the forest, or the tree from which it was carved from. All they know is the product in their hands. This is the cause of what Heidegger calls “enframing”, which is to reduce things down so far that all they become is a means to an end, or “standing reserve”. (Heidegger, 17) One may ask again, why does it matter? Well, beside the fact that we should care about the health of our planet, trees are not the only things subjected to enframing. We as humans have also fallen victim to our own enframing, weighting our value only by what we can produce. We have made ourselves into standing-reserve. So, what is the difference between revealing through challenging and revealing through poiēsis? The product may be exactly the same- a small wooden doll, but the social landscape that they create are divided. Challenging sets the stage for everything to be seen as standing-reserve, or a means to an end, while poiēsis recognizes that, that which has been revealed is indebted to those who helped in it’s bringing forth.
-Marvin Stearns
AI Heidegger and Technology Tutor, September, 2024
Heidegger, Martin. The Question Concerning Technology. Garland Publishing Inc, 1977. PDF.
