| During his 1955 lecture, "The Question Concerning Technology," Martin Heidegger invokes the third and fourth verses from the first strophe of Friedrich Hölderlin's hymn, "Patmos": "But where danger threatens/That which saves from it also grows." Why does Heidegger retrieve these words? What role do they perform in Heidegger's inquiry into technology? In this dissertation, it will be shown that Hölderlin's words illuminate the problem of language and being which lies at the center of Heidegger's questioning. In order to do so, this dissertation will perform close readings of both "Patmos" and "The Question Concerning Technology." Examining the hymn against the Greek and Christian background of Hölderlin's poetry, and in terms of his reflections on poetry in both "The Perspective from which We Have to Look at Antiquity" and the 4 December 1801 letter to Casimir Ulrich Böhlendorff, it will be shown that "Patmos" enacts the unfolding of being as the self-translation of language. Analyzing Heidegger's fundamental distinction between the correct and the true, it will be argued that the question of technology questions language as the locus of being. Ultimately, it will be shown that "Patmos" informs "The Question Concerning Technology" as the question concerning language, and that language, precisely as the locus of being, is itself simultaneously "the danger" and "that which saves.". |
