ABSTRACT
Technical mastery of the world is something specifically human, and technique is as enigmatic a phenomenon as the human being itself. Technique, writes Arnold Gehlen, “truly mirrors man – like man himself it is clever, it represents something intrinsically improbable, it bears a complex, twisted relationship to nature. . . . Technique constitutes, as does man himself, nature artificielle” (1980: 4-5). It belongs to the enigmatic nature of man to be a product of nature and at the same time to be able to negate nature, and technique takes part in this ambivalence. On the one hand technique is a continuation of nature with other (human) means (technique is merely a function of unchanging natural laws), on the other hand technique goes against nature (technique neutralizes certain natural laws by means of others in order to achieve a goal) (Hösle 1995: 94). For instance, the waterwheel is made to rotate by the force of the natural downward flow of the water, and by this action it forces the water to run upward against its “nature,” so it can irrigate the fields. It is in simple but ingenious contraptions like the waterwheel that the essence of human action becomes an object for philosophical reflection.
