In enframing, the human is challenged forth to comport himself in correspondence with exploitation and consumption; the relation to exploitation and consumption requires the human to be in this relationship. Man does not hold technology in his hand. He is its plaything. In this situation, there reigns a complete forgetfulness of being, a complete concealment of being. Cybernetics becomes a replacement for philosophy and poetry. Political science, sociology, and psychology become prioritized, disciplines which no longer bear the slightest relation to their own foundation. In this regard, modern man is a slave to the forgetfulness of being.

Through this, the state of affairs becomes visible (as far as it will let itself be seen) that the human is "used by being" [utilisé]. In the word "to use" [Brauchen] we hear an echo of the Χρή of Parmenides and Anaximander. It thoroughly corresponds to "utilisé," but in the sense that one has need of that which one "uses."

Thus the human necessarily belongs to, and has his place in, the openness (and currently in the forgetfulness) of being. Being, however, for its opening, needs man as the there of its manifestation.

Pp. 62-3

¶ 7:38 PM