Martin Heidegger: Saving Power

But where danger is, grows

The saving power also.

Though it troubled him, Heidegger did not despair at enframing. He felt there was “saving power” to deal with it. However, when confronted with the reality of how enframing has evolved and intensified since Heidegger gave these lectures and wrote these essays, his notion of a "saving power" growing alongside the danger seems tenuous.

Heidegger introduces the concept in “The Question Concerning Technology” by quoting a line from a poem by Frederich Hölderlin. For Heidegger, this means that within the very essence of technology—within enframing itself—lies the potential for salvation. He explains: "the coming to presence of technology harbors in itself what we least suspect, the possible arising of the saving power." (page 32) This saving power is connected to a shift in human awareness and relationship to technology rather than a technological fix or rejection of technology.

Key aspects of this saving power include a conscious recognition of enframing as a specific mode of revealing rather than the only way of relating to reality. Just as importantly is each person seeing beyond the merely technological to grasp technology's essence. This obviously requires a transformation in how we relate to Being itself, what Heidegger calls "the turning": "When insight comes disclosingly to pass, then men are the ones who are caught sight of... In thus corresponding man is gathered into his own." (page 47)

But, ultimately, for Heidegger it is a kind of faith, a faith that revealing will find a way to truly reveal to us or, perhaps, that we will find a way back toward revealing.  A faith in a reconnection with alternative modes of revealing, particularly those that let things appear as they are rather than challenging them forth as resources: "May world in its worlding be the nearest of all nearing that nears, as it brings the truth of Being near to man's essence" (page 49). This last sentence in “The Turning” could serve as a benediction.

Heidegger emphasizes that this saving power cannot come from human mastery over technology: "Technology, whose essence is Being itself, will never allow itself to be overcome by men. That would mean, after all, that man was the master of Being." (page 37) Instead, it requires a "surmounting" that transforms our relationship to technology while acknowledging our fundamental connection to it.

Enframing has demonstrated a remarkable capacity to absorb and neutralize resistance. Even critiques of technological society are readily transformed into content for technological platforms, becoming just another form of engagement to be quantified and monetized. Our attempts to disconnect or establish alternatives are quickly reincorporated into the very systems we seek to escape. Most people don't even recognize this (their) condition as problematic—the enframed transformation of humans into standing-reserve for consumption and entertainment has become so complete that it appears as natural, inevitable, and even desirable.

What Heidegger underestimated was technology's ability to reshape human desire itself. When he writes that "the turning of the danger comes to pass suddenly" (page 44), he seems to assume a potential moment of revelation—a "lightning-flash" in which the truth of our condition might become visible. But what if the very capacity for such revelation has been diminished through our technological immersion?

The algorithmic management of attention and desire represents a more holistic form of enframing than Heidegger anticipated—one that doesn't just transform humans and the world into standing-reserve but transforms human consciousness in ways that make alternative modes of revealing increasingly inaccessible. When he suggests that "modern man must first and above all find his way back into the full breadth of the space proper to his essence" (page 39), he presupposes an essence that remains somehow intact beneath technological conditioning.

There's a sobering possibility that the technological ordering of existence has advanced beyond the point where Heidegger's saving power could emerge as he envisioned it. Perhaps what we're witnessing is not the dialectical relationship between danger and saving that Heidegger borrowed from Hölderlin, but rather the progressive foreclosure of alternatives that Heidegger feared most—when "Enframing conceals that revealing which, in the sense of poiesis, lets what presences come forth into appearance." (page 27)

If there remains any hope for a saving power, it needs to be reconceived in terms appropriate to our current condition—not as a dramatic turning but perhaps as small, persistent efforts to create spaces where alternative modes of revealing remain possible, even within a world thoroughly shaped by technological enframing.

I doubt that Heidegger's saving power took the transformation of reality far enough. We are enframed by smartphones and algorithms, for example. There is no "saving power" from this powerful "presencing." The smartphone exemplifies enframing in its most complete and intimate form—a device that mediates our relationship to virtually everything while simultaneously transforming us into nodes of data production and consumption.

The smartphone represents what Heidegger might call a "total enframing"—it doesn't merely change what we do but fundamentally alters how we are in the world. It reshapes our perception of space (always connected regardless of location), time (constant availability, endless scrolling), social relations (mediated through platforms), and even selfhood (curated digital identities, validation through metrics).

When Heidegger wonderfully wrote that "Enframing challenges forth into the frenziedness of ordering that blocks every view into the coming-to-pass of revealing," (page 33) he could hardly have imagined a more perfect embodiment than the smartphone—a device that constantly orders our experience while concealing this very ordering beneath an interface of convenience and connection.

The absence of a clear "saving power" from this presencing is particularly troubling because smartphones have become infrastructure for modern existence rather than optional tools. They've been incorporated into essential systems of work, healthcare, education, family, friends and civic participation. Opting out increasingly means exclusion from fundamental aspects of social and economic life.

What makes smartphones and algorithms especially powerful as agents of enframing is their collective capacity to colonize moments that might otherwise allow for different modes of revealing—moments of solitude, boredom, or attentiveness that Heidegger might have seen as openings for alternative relationships to Being. The device fills these gaps, ensuring that the technological ordering of experience remains uninterrupted.

If Heidegger were confronting our smartphone reality, he might be forced to reconsider his hope that "where danger is, grows the saving power also." The persistence and penetration of this form of enframing suggests that technology's ordering of existence may not inevitably generate its own transcendence—at least not in ways we can readily recognize or access.

I think Heidegger might have it right in quoting Holderlin's poem. It's just not right in a way people are thinking. It is possible to accept the enframed reality and find a solution within enframing itself. Perhaps the saving power doesn't emerge as an escape from or opposition to Enframing, but rather arises within enframing itself—not as its negation but as its transformation from within.

This perspective aligns with Heidegger's suggestion that "the coming to presence of technology will be surmounted in a way that restores it into its yet concealed truth." (page 38) The key word here is "restores"—not eliminates or overcomes. As quoted above, Heidegger specifically notes "technology will never allow itself to be overcome." (page 37) [This happens to fit in with my previous posts about “Technology: How We Lost Control.”]

What if the saving power manifests not as freedom from smartphones and algorithms, but as a transformed relationship to them? Not rejection, but a different mode of engagement that allows their presence while changing how we encounter them. This would be consistent with Heidegger's assertion that "the essence of technology is in a lofty sense ambiguous." (page 33)

In "The Turning," Heidegger suggests something along these lines when he writes: "When, in the turning of the danger, the truth of Being flashes, the essence of Being clears and lights itself up." (page 44) This doesn't describe an escape from technology but a shift in perspective that reveals what technology itself conceals—a recognition of enframing as Enframing.

Perhaps we can develop an awareness of our enframed condition while remaining within it. This mindful inhabitation might constitute the "saving power"—not freedom from technological mediation, but freedom within it through a consciousness that isn't completely determined by it.

Such a view would accept the smartphone not just as a device that reduces us to standing-reserve, but also potentially as a site where different modes of revealing might still emerge—if we can develop the capacity to encounter it differently, to use it without being completely used by it.

This is a more subtle and perhaps more realistic understanding of Heidegger's saving power—not as technological regression or revolutionary transcendence, but as a shift in awareness that opens new possibilities within our technological condition itself.

In "The Question Concerning Technology," Heidegger invokes the Greek term aletheia as central to understanding the essence of technology. He introduces this concept early in the essay when he writes: "We are questioning concerning technology, and we have arrived now at aletheia, at revealing. What has the essence of technology to do with revealing? The answer: everything." (page 12)

Aletheia is typically translated as "truth" in English, but Heidegger's usage deliberately reaches back to the word's Greek origins to recover a meaning he believed had been obscured in Western philosophical tradition. For Heidegger, aletheia doesn't primarily mean correctness of statements or correspondence between mind and reality (the conventional understanding of truth). Instead, he emphasizes its original sense as "unconcealment" or "revealing."

The etymology of aletheia is significant here—it contains the prefix "a-" (meaning "not") and "lethe" (meaning "forgetting" or "concealment"). Thus, aletheia literally means "un-forgetting" or "un-concealment." Heidegger seizes on this etymology to develop his understanding of truth as an event of revealing or bringing-forth into presence what was previously concealed.

By connecting technology to aletheia, Heidegger establishes that technology is fundamentally a mode of revealing reality—not just a collection of tools or means to human (or algorithmic) ends. Technology reveals beings in a particular way, bringing them forth from concealment into presence. As he states: "Technology is a way of revealing." (page 12)

When Heidegger later speaks of the "danger" of modern technology, he's referring to how enframing threatens to become the exclusive mode of revealing—potentially concealing other ways in which truth might happen. As he writes: "Enframing conceals that revealing which, in the sense of poiesis, lets what presences come forth into appearance." (page 27)

Through his use of aletheia, Heidegger connects his critique of technology to his larger philosophical project of recovering what he saw as forgotten dimensions of Being. The problem of technology becomes inseparable from the problem of truth itself—how we understand, encounter, and relate to what is. This is why, for Heidegger, the question concerning technology is ultimately not about technology at all, but about our relationship to Being and truth.

Aletheia as revealing or unconcealment within a technological context—rather than against or beyond it—may indeed be the key to understanding Heidegger's analysis in a way that speaks to our present condition.

If we accept that enframing has become our primary mode of revealing reality, then perhaps the "saving power" emerges not through escaping technology but through a more conscious relationship with technological revealing itself. This would mean developing an awareness of how technology simultaneously reveals and conceals—making certain aspects of reality accessible while hiding others.

What this suggests is a kind of double vision: participating in technological systems while maintaining an awareness of their partial and particular mode of revealing. The smartphone user who recognizes how the device frames experience even while using it; the social media participant who sees the algorithmic shaping of content even while engaging with it; the consumer who understands their reduction to data points even while navigating digital marketplaces.

Heidegger suggests that "we ponder this arising and that, recollecting, we watch over it" (page 32). The watching-over might happen not outside technology but within it—a mindful habitation of technological spaces that maintains an openness to what technology both reveals and conceals.

Perhaps aletheia in a technological sense means accepting our technological condition while developing the capacity to see it as one mode of revealing among others—not the whole of truth but a particular unconcealment that both gives access to and conceals aspects of Being. More on that in the near future.

Heidegger's thinking remains vital not because it offers an escape from our technological reality, but because it provides conceptual resources for inhabiting that reality. In doing so he gives a devastating account for the enframed nature of human experience today. It describes the manifestation of what we see all around us with uncanny accuracy even though we are no longer merely an industrial world.

The Internet and Cloud computing would probably have given Heidegger an ulcer.  AI would have caused him a heart attack.  He would be forced to rethink what enframing and standing-reserve mean in a digital environment which totally immerses us with the consumer/convenience/entertainment complex. It seems to me that Heidegger's thoughts on saving power were obviously geared toward manufacturing systems and that what works for saving us from building things is not necessarily what works for saving us from buying stuff online, streaming content, or being part of a virtual community where fake-aletheia is just conjured out of thin air by people who have no idea what they are talking about but are consumed as valid by millions of followers.

(Written with assistance from Claude. Illustration by ChatGPT.)