Yet for this it is necessary that we grow toward this possibility and, from out of our own least measure, open paths, walk ways that lead into the open—even if only for a few steps; not forcing truth, not propagating the claim that now it has been found, now we possess the truth, but rather returning into this thinking by allowing what has been allotted to us to come toward us.
I believe this is also the fundamental disposition that must underlie a transformed essence of science and research, whereas contemporary science stands in the opposite disposition, namely in the sense of an assault upon Being itself. Here there prevails a process grounded in the essence of technology, namely that within it — (if one may say this in the sense of destiny) — the essential destruction occurs. The atomic bomb exploded long ago; namely, in the moment when the human being entered into rebellion against Being and posited Being from out of himself, making it into the object of representation. This has occurred since Descartes. The representing of beings as objects for a subject has, since Descartes, been knowingly carried out. This challenging-forth of nature as object characterizes the fundamental disposition of technology, and upon it rests all modern science. Modern natural science is only the elaboration of the essence of technology, concerning which we still know very little. We cannot morally overcome technology. Technology is neither merely nor even primarily something human. In its essence, technology is a very determinate mode of the disclosure of Beyng, through whose destiny the contemporary human being must pass.
I wished thereby to give you several perspectives for what I attempted to present yesterday — so that the impression might not arise that it is merely a beautiful thing to occupy oneself with Hölderlin. This reaches into something else entirely.