Gestell (also written Ge-stell; usually “Enframing”) — Martin Heidegger’s term for the essence of modern technology: the mode of revealing that claims nature and human beings as a standing reserve of resources. In ordinary German, Gestell means “frame,” “rack,” or “stand”; Heidegger rebuilds it from stellen (“to set,” “to place”) with the collective prefix Ge- (as in Gebirge, “mountain range”), to name the gathering of the ways of “setting upon” characteristic of the technological age. The word appears in the 1949 Bremen lectures (“Das Ge-Stell,” in Einblick in das was ist, published 1994) and in “The Question Concerning Technology” (lecture of 1953, published in Vorträge und Aufsätze, 1954). For him the essence of technology is nothing technological: it is a destining of revealing in which everything shows up as Bestand, a “standing reserve” to be ordered and exploited, like the Rhine turned into an energy supplier by the hydroelectric plant, in contrast to the old wooden bridge. Human beings are claimed by it as well, and risk understanding themselves merely as resources. Heidegger sees here the supreme danger, which blocks other forms of truth, but cites Hölderlin (“where danger is, grows the saving power also”) to point toward a possible turn (Kehre), for which art would be one path. Translations differ: “Enframing” (William Lovitt, 1977) is the most common English rendering, but other versions exist. Critics such as Andrew Feenberg and Don Ihde contest the unitary and essentialist character he attributes to technology, while Jacques Ellul offers a parallel, independent analysis. See Dasein and the article Philosophy of technology: Heidegger, Ellul, and Mumford; see also Andrew Feenberg, Don Ihde, and Jacques Ellul.
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