Technē (p. 34)

In this page, Heidegger elaborates on technē. Technē includes the work of artisans and technology. The revealing holding sway in technē is poetical, bringing to presence into the beautiful.

all saving power must be of a higher essence than what is endangered, though at the same time kindred to it.

But might there not perhaps be a more primally granted revealing that could bring the saving power into its first shining forth in the midst of the danger, a revealing that in the technological age rather conceals than shows itself?

There was a time when it was not technology alone that bore the name technē. Once that revealing that brings forth truth into the splendor of radiant appearing also was called technē.

Once there was a time when the bringing-forth of the true into the beautiful was called technē. And the poiēsis of the fine arts also was called technē.

In Greece, at the outset of the destining of the West, the arts soared to the supreme height of the revealing granted them. They brought the presence, [Gegenwart] of the gods, brought the dialogue of divine and human destinings, to radiance. And art was simply called technē. It was a single, manifold revealing. It was pious, promos, i.e., yielding to the holding-sway and the safekeeping of truth.

The arts were not derived from the artistic. Art works were not enjoyed aesthetically. Art was not a sector of cultural activity.

What, then, was art – perhaps only for that brief but magnificent time? Why did art bear the modest name technē? Because it was a revealing that brought forth and hither, and therefore belonged within poiēsis. It was finally that revealing which holds complete sway in all the fine arts, in poetry, and in everything poetical that obtained poiēsis as its proper name.

The same poet from whom we heard the words

But where danger is, grows The saving power also.

says to us:

. . . poetically dwells man upon this earth.

The poetical brings the true into the splendor of what Plato in the Phaedrus calls to ekphanestaton, that which shines forth most purely. The poetical thoroughly pervades every art, every revealing of coming to presence into the beautiful.