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The Question Concerning Technology
"to work" understood in this way—namely, as to bring hither
and forth—names, then, one way in which that which presences,
presences.
To work is to bring hither and forth, whether something
brings itself forth hither into presencing of itself or whether
the bringing hither and forth of something is accomplished by
man. In the language of the Middle Ages our German word
wirken still means the producing [Hervorbringen] of houses,
tools, pictures ; later, the meaning of wirken is narrowed down
to producing in the sense of sewing, embroidering, weaving.
The real [
Wirkliche
] is the working, the worked [Wirkende, Gewirkte];
that which brings hither and brings forth into presencing,
and that which has been brought hither and brought
forth. Reality [Wirklichkeit] means, then, when thought sufficiently
broadly : that which, brought forth hither into presencing,
lies before ; it means the presencing, consummated in itself, of
self-bringing-forth. Wirken belongs to the Indo-Germanic stem
uerg, whence our word Werk [work] and the Greek ἔργον . But
never can it be sufficiently stressed : the fundamental characteristic
of working and work does not lie in efficere and effectus,
but lies rather in this : that something comes to stand and to lie
in unconcealment. Even when the Greeks—that is to say, Aristotle—speak
of that which the Romans call causa efficiens, they
never mean the bringing about of an effect. That which consummates
itself in ἔργον is a self-bringing-forth into full presencing ;
ἔργον is that which in the genuine and highest sense presences
[an-west] . For this reason and only for this reason does Aristotle
name the presence of that which actually presences7 ἐνέργεια
and also ἐντελέχεια : a self-holding in consummation (i.e., consummation
of presencing) . These names, coined by Aristotle for
the actual presencing of what presences, are, in respect to what
they express, separated by an abyss from the later modern
meanings of ἐνέργεια in the sense of "energy" and of ἐντελέχεια
in the sense of "entelechy"-talent and capacity for work.
Aristotle's fundamental word for presencing, ἐνέργεια, is
properly translated by our word Wirklichkeit [reality] only if we,
for our part, think the verb wirken [to work] as the Greeks
thought it, in the sense of bringing hither—into unconcealment,
forth—into presencing.8
7. des eigentlich Anwesenden.
8. her-ins Unverborgene, vor-ins Anwesen.