The totemic operator’s appearance in relation to Heidegger’s philosophical standpoint functions as technology due to the intricate relationship existing between the operator and the technology. According to Heidegger, understanding technology is a matter of relating it to its entirety, which includes assessing its users. In this regard, the totemic operator’s appearance influences how technologies are made part of the daily lives of people. The operator in this case can be described as the “means” through which the technology comes to being. Heidegger uses means in this context to refer to the distance travelled and interventions made until the end is reached (296). The technologies serve purposes of creating the truth, so it is apparent that the operators facilitate the “bringing-forth” function.
The use of technologies today is in itself the means through which the people live. Therefore, the operator’s appearance could be viewed from the standpoint of how they intervene in bringing-forth the essence of technologies around them. Furthermore, technologies are designed in the manner which they will best serve the interests of their potential users. -However, Heidegger still challenges this proposition when he argues that the role of technologies is not entirely to bring forth. In his view, technologies also serve the purpose of challenging forth. When looked at from this perspective, it is apparent that Heidegger proposes that technologies be seen not only as devices or gadgets with capabilities but also as representations of their users.
Heidegger’s presupposition about the essence of technology pays great interest to the aspect of “cause”. In his definition of cause, Heidegger associates them by stating that “the end in keeping with which the kind of means to be used is also considered a cause” (289). He also reveals that philosophy of the centuries presupposes the existence of four causes: the causa materialis, the causa formalis, the causa finalis, and the causa efficiens (289). These four causes work together through intricate interrelationships that to create the essence of technology. Understanding truly how our technologies exist as a matter of their elements of material, form, end, and effect is the ultimate and dynamic description. In this context, it is accurate to say that technologies exist as representatives of the material they are made of and at the same time they gain new form after they are created. The end in technologies is a result of how they are created and have form in the first place (293). Finally, technologies also effect as subjects of how they have come to being, meaning that their material, form, and effect converges in this definition of their essence. Given these four dynamic causes it is apparent that technologies exist not merely as object but rather as social elements,, just like their users and operators.
Technologies are essential to the human existence and integral elements in the documentation of human existence. Still, it is dynamic to say that the essence of technologies is not entirely to serve as tools or gadgets. Rather, technologies are in their own the means through which they travel their preordained path from their inception to their effect. In the same context, the technology and the user are interrelated in ways that only a philosophical standpoint can illustrate. While one might say that they are just creations of the human ingenuity, in essence technologies require a dapper understanding than that. Heidegger offers this vivid illustration with the clear objective of demystifying this definition of technologies.
Works cited
Heidegger, Martin. “The question concerning technology.” Technology and values: Essential readings 99 (1954): 113.