Today’s Plan:
- Creativity Discussion [20 minutes]
- Preparing for Heidegger [10 minutes / 15 minutes]
- For Next Session
Creativity Discussion
I want to spend some time thinking about creativity. I wrote a rant about it, but I might save that. I want to give you time to think and discuss.
I find the Mollick chapter on creativity a highlight of the book. Some of it is intriguing, some infuriating. What parts caught your attention and engaged you (for good or ill)?
Heidegger Preparation
Sam: we are reading the William Lovitt translation of this essay. It appears in Basic Writings, 1993, ed David Farrell Krell. Krell has a footnote that he altered the Lovitt translation, but doesn’t supply details.
Stock comment: Heidegger was a Nazi. Not just a member of the Nazi party, but an antisemitic asshat. Unfortunately, you cannot think through 20th century philosophy without him. And while he was never repentant about his time as a Nazi, most scholars do not believe his philosophy is reflective of Nazi politics. In fact, I would argue (I am not a Heidegger scholar) that the essay we are about to read is about as close a condemnation of fascism as Heidegger ever wrote (though I think you have to dig a bit deep to find it).
This is an incredibly difficult essay to read. I dedicate a week to it when I teach it at the graduate level (along with an article by Lynn Worsham called “The Question Concerning Invention” about why many writing teachers are desperate to reduce writing to a set of efficient rules; it contains a pretty accessible summary of this essay). Here is the pre-questions I provide graduate students when I teach the essay:
- What is the essence of technology?
- Why is the destining of revealing (of the essence of technology) the greatest danger humanity faces?
- Is there an optimism to Heidegger?
- In simple language, what is Heidegger’s solution to the question concerning technology (poesis)?
- What is the irony of giving a reading quiz like set of questions concerning Heidegger’s essay?
- What is the role of “enframing” in Heidegger’s critique of technology? How does it affect human understanding of the world?
- How does Heidegger’s concept of “revealing” relate to his critique of technological thinking?
Here’s a potential write-up prompt:
In “The Question Concerning Technology” Martin Heidegger contrasts two different ways of making. He discusses how each way of making changes the way in which we relate to the world. In doing so, he complicates the meaning of the word “being.” Please explicate these two ways of making, how they shape how we experience the world, why he finds one concerning, and how the other plays with the term “being.”
Then explain how Heidegger might respond to the emergence of AI systems such as ChatGPT.
Collaborating with ChatGPT to Read Heidegger
Help!
A vocabulary list:
- Being
- Enframing
- Standing Reserve
- Revealing
- Technology
- Poiesis
For Next Class
Read Heidegger. Do a Write-Up on “QCT.”
