From time to time, readers may wonder about my use of Heideggerian concepts, especially given the long-standing concerns surrounding his life and legacy. I would like to briefly share how I position myself in relation to this.
Heidegger is a controversial philosopher, but ironically, his work on releasement gave us the very mode of thinking that allows us to dwell with his work without collapsing into ideas that might flag caution for some readers. Indeed, I work with Heidegger's thought carefully and selectively, fully aware of the controversies surrounding his life and legacy.
My interest lies not in defending the thinker, but in drawing on certain concepts, especially releasement, world-disclosure, and attunement, that remain philosophically significant for contemporary questions, particularly regarding AI and human-technology relations.
However, I am mindful of the debates around Heidegger's politics and the discomfort many feel about engaging with his work. At the same time, I find myself cautious about falling into what can become a kind of rote apology. By this, I mean a discursive habit that risks displacing serious reflection in favour of procedural reassurance. For me, the question is not whether to canonize or cancel but whether certain ideas can still serve thoughtful reflection on the problems of our time.
Scholars such as Iain D. Thomson (2025) have exemplified an approach that neither ignores Heidegger's political entanglements nor dismisses the philosophical value of his critique of technological enframing. Equally, for some years now, I have been moving with this spirit of mindful engagement with Heideggerian thinking in my research and writing on AI. Indeed, my PhD project explores the concept of 'algorithmic governance' in the everyday life domain on television.
My use of Heidegger, then, is neither uncritical nor performatively apologetic but part of an ongoing effort to hold complexity and to think, as best we can, without prematurely resolving what is difficult.
I may write more on this in future, but for now, I simply wish to offer this as context for how I approach my work and writing that moves through the evolving discourse on AI.
Heidegger Wasn't Anti-Tech: A Note on Misreading
It's often said that Heidegger was "anti-technology." This is a misreading and a tiresomely persistent one.
What Heidegger critiqued was not technology itself, but our mode of relating to it. He was concerned that modern humans approach everything, including nature, people, and even thinking, through a lens of instrumentality: what can it do, how can it serve, how can it be ordered or optimized? In his essay, The Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger discusses the essence of technology, especially through his concept of Gestell (enframing).
Heidegger states, "the essence of technology is not itself anything technological", and then identifies the essence of modern technology as Gestell (enframing). But, and this is a crucial distinction for understanding his work on technology, Gestell is not the essence of all technology across time; it's the mode of revealing unique to modern technological thinking.
This is where Heidegger's thinking is often misrepresented or misunderstood. He is not arguing that the danger lies in technological devices themselves but in the way enframing reduces the world and humans to mere resources (standing-reserve), potentially obscuring awareness, truth, and understanding.
A philosophical sigh of relief
But Heidegger goes further, and in doing so, makes the idea that he was simply anti-tech not only mistaken, but strangely beside the point. For within the very danger of enframing, the reduction of the world and ourselves to things to be ordered and used, he saw the quiet presence of a 'saving power': a possibility that calls us to pause, to think again, and to rediscover a freer, more attuned way of being in relation to technology.
In Discourse on Thinking, Heidegger offers an alternative: not rejection, but releasement (Gelassenheit). This means letting things be what they are, including technological things, without either idolising or fearing them. It is a form of attuned dwelling, a way to stand and endure in the world of technology without being imperilled by it.
We often talk about humans maintaining agency in the face of AI, a liberal humanist term not used by Heidegger himself. Instead, he is concerned with something more ontological: how we come into relation with being, and how that relation shapes (or distorts) our ways of revealing the world.
In contrast to the idea of agency over AI – which in Heideggerian terms would mean some form of control over AI, or mastering AI, or adapting to AI – Heidegger proposes something far more subtle. He calls this releasement toward things (Gelassenheit). But this is not passivity; it is a form of non-coercive attunement.
But will not saying both yes and no this way to technical devices make a relation to technology ambivalent and insecure?
On the contrary! Our relation to technology will become wonderfully simple and relaxed.
We let technical devices enter our daily life, and at the same time leave them outside, that is, let them alone, as things which are nothing absolute but remain dependent upon something higher.
I would call this comportment towards technology which expresses 'yes' and at the same time 'no', by an old word: releasement toward things.
Releasement toward things and openness to the mystery belong together.
They grant us the possibility of dwelling in the world in a totally different way.
They promise us a new ground and foundation upon which we can stand and endure in the world of technology without being imperiled by it.
— Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking (trans. Anderson & Freund, 1966), pp. 54–55Grace in the grappling
Heidegger's work invites us to step out of the compulsion to dominate or submit, and into a more open, contemplative relation, one that recognises that not all truth comes through control, and that even our misreadings and entanglements may carry within them the conditions for deeper disclosure.
This is not anti-technology. This is not a rejection of technology even as we experience entanglement, but an invitation to dwell alongside it differently, to remain open, attuned, and unabsorbed, even as we move through its complexities and entanglements.