into the setting in order o f everything that presences as standingreserve, establishes itself in the standing-reserve, and rules as the standing-reserve.
Enframing comes to presence as the danger. But does the danger therewith announce itself as the danger? No. To be sure, men are at all times and in all places exceedingly oppressed by dangers and exigencies. But the danger, namely, Being itself endangering itself in the truth of its coming to presence, remains veiled and disguised. This disguising is what is most dangerous in the danger. In keeping with this disguising of the danger through the ordering belonging to Enframing, it seems time and time again as though technology were a means in the hands of man. But, in truth, it is the coming to presence of man that is now being ordered forth to lend a hand to the coming to presence of technology.
Does this mean that man, for better or worse, is helplessly delivered over to technology? No, it means the direct opposite ; and not only that, but essentially it means something more than the opposite, because it means something different.
If Enframing is a destining of the coming to presence of Being itself, then we may venture to suppose that Enframing, as one among Being's modes of coming to presence, changes. for what gives destining its character as destining is that it takes place so as suitably to adapt itself to the ordaining that is ever one.3 To take place so as to adapt means to set out in order to adjust fittingly to the directing already made apparent-for which another destining, yet veiled, is waiting. That which has the character of destining moves, in itself, at any given time, toward a special moment that sends it into another destining, in which, however, it is not simply submerged and lost. We are still too
3. "Destining" translates Geschick, which ordinarily means skill, aptitude, fitness, as well as fate or destiny, and is here regularly rendered by "destining." The expressions "ordaining" and "takes place so as suitably to adapt itself" render words closely allied to Geschick. "Ordaining" translates Schickung, meaning providential decree, dispensation. "To take place so as suitably to adapt" translates the verb sich schicken, which means to corne to pass or happen, to suit or be fit, to accommodate oneself, to agree with, to match or blend. In this essay, where Heidegger's central concern is with turning about, a changing of direction, the connotations of aptness, fitness, and self-adapting brought forward for Geschick in this passage should always be kept in mind for the word "destining." Cf. QT 24.