Could any one here enlighten me on the range of senses of the German word Technik?

Adam Klein‎ to Heidegger Research Group

Could any one here enlighten me on the range of senses of the German word Technik? I have been thinking that what seems to me to be Heidegger's thrust in his discussions about technology is more captured by the English "technique" (saying this from a conceptual point of view as I don't know German). "Technology" often gives the confusion that Heidegger is concerned with technological objects. In fact, though modern science is implicated with technological invention, it is really technique, exactitude, method, measure which describes its ontological stance.

Comments

Joaquin Trujillo Pre-Socratic Greek. Shares etymological significance with poeisis, history, and entelechy.

Remove

Adam Klein Right but this is the same for English....

Adam Klein I'm thinking "applying technique" or "applying a technique" where we take a technical stance, an isolating and exacting vision, surgical technique.

Remove

Joaquin Trujillo Here you. But it is a Greek word and not German inceptually. Publication I posted in Heidegger hermeneutic phenomenology group 3 days ago reviews etmology.

Remove

Adam Klein It will still function differently in different languages. As far as the dictionaries I'm looking at, in some contexts technik translates to technique

Remove

Joaquin Trujillo Brother, you can feel what you like but it is not the meaning.

Remove

Luo Ji I do think he is correct in suggesting that the German Technik is better translated into English as technique than technology.

Remove

Adam Klein I feel as though "technology" even has a kind of handy quality sometimes, which is also unhelpful

Remove

Joaquin Trujillo Poiesis subsumes technē. Lógos standard meaning. A good source for that is father Richardson phenomenology to thought as well as SZ first 60 or so pages.

Remove

Elizabeth Painting I was taught technik meant technical; involving a method, mathematics, measurements, tools, precision - in engineering that is.

Remove

Susanne Dawn Claxton "Technology is in its essence something that human beings cannot master of their own accord . . .But above all modern technology is not a “tool,” and it no longer has anything to do with tools . . . Everything functions. That is exactly what is uncanny. Everything functions and the functioning drives us further and further to more functioning, and technology tears people away and uproots them from the earth more and more. I don’t know if you are scared; I was certainly scared when I recently saw the photographs of the earth taken from the moon. We don’t need an atom bomb at all; the uprooting of human beings is already taking place. We only have purely technological conditions left. It is no longer an earth on which human beings live today." -M.H. in Der Spiegel interview

Remove

Susanne Dawn Claxton "In his essay, “The Question Concerning Technology,” he explains that in understanding the meaning of the Greek word poiesis as “bringing forth,” and Aristotle’s Four Causes are at play in this, we absolutely must distinguish poiesis from the kind of “making” that results from modern technology. Heidegger explains that while the bringing forth that is poiesis is a revealing that involves the moving from concealment into unconcealment (and for the Greeks technē belongs to bringing-forth and thus to poiesis ), modern technology as a revealing is not at all the poiesis of the Greeks. Heidegger says, “And yet the revealing that holds sway throughout modern technology does not unfold into a bringing-forth in the sense of poiesis. The revealing that rules in modern technology is a challenging [ Herausfordern ], which puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it supply energy that can be extracted and stored as such.” The unconcealing that belongs to this “challenging” results in the reduction of all beings and things to mere resources on standby to be optimized ( Bestand ). “The essence of technology lies in Enframing,” Heidegger writes. And ultimately, this Enframing “conceals that revealing which, in the sense of poiesis , lets what presences come forth into appearance.”"

With the above understanding in mind, the poiesis that belongs to the poet is indeed to be distinguished from any and all production that belongs to the 
technē of modern technology. Iain Thomson explains this distinction well in his book Heidegger, Art, and Postmodernity when he writes:
"Just think, on the one hand, of a poetic shepherding into being that respects the natural potentialities of the matters with which it works, just as Michelangelo (who, let us recall, worked in a marble quarry) legendarily claimed he simply set his “David” free from a particularly rich piece of marble (after studying it for a month); or, less hyperbolically, as a skillful woodworker notices the inherent qualities of particular pieces of wood— attending to subtleties of shape and grain, different shades of color, weight, and hardness— while deciding what might best be built from that wood (or whether to build from it at all). Then contrast, on the other hand, a technological making that imposes a predetermined form on matter without paying heed to any intrinsic potentialities, the way an industrial factory indiscriminately grinds wood into woodchips in order to paste them back together into straight particle board, which can then be used flexibly and efficiently to construct a maximal variety of useful objects."
The crucial differences between the two modes of poiesis and technē are clear. Moreover, it is clear also that in the poietic approach to the wood there is an element of theorein in that the woodworker contemplates, gazes upon, and considers what is apparent to him and allows the possibilities of the wood to presence . This is indeed in marked contrast to a technological approach to the wood that would simply impose upon it a predetermined form and meaning. The woodworker, like the poet, is possessed of those characteristics of knowledge ( Wissenschaft ) and tenderness ( Zӓrtlichkeit ) so important to Heidegger and his understanding of the poet."