File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0304, message 395


From: "Anthony Crifasi" <crifasi-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: RE: problem of technology
Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2003 14:58:15 +0000


Rene de Bakker wrote:

>Are you saying that for Heidegger, whatever "different attitude" towards
>technology may be in principle possible, still the bonding power of
>technology is so inescapable that technological Enframing must always be
>resisted?
>
>Anthony Crifasi
===================>
>          So inescapable that it must be ... accepted. Only then freedom
>          makes a chance. I know, sounds strange.

No I understand. But doesn't this freedom consist precisely in having the 
proper orientation towards technology as described in the last paragraph of 
the passage I quoted from the Discourse on Thinking? Hence Heidegger goes on 
in other passages about how technology enframing contains its own saving 
power, despite its tendency towards exclusivity.

>          I don't deny that technology has to do with revealing. It has,
>          because of its origin. (Of itself it's only after the hiding
>          of revealing.) But only if this origin is not something
>          historical, but something that still *is* now. (Gewesenheit)
>          Using 'revealing' as a general concept, to be able to compare
>          different ways of revealing, such as also Michael Eldred did
>          with his cows, stands in utmost opposition to what is required 
>here:
>          the thinking together of what belongs together. (identity & 
>difference)
>          To say the most innocent: comparing is metaphysical.

Comparing DIFFERENCES is metaphysical, since differences imply different 
things (something "had" by one thing but "lacked" by another thing). But 
Heidegger still says that we can have a DIFFERENT without a DIFFERENCE. So 
if you limit "comparing" to the traditional metaphysical sense, then yes, 
for Heidegger comparing is necessarily metaphysical. But just as we can have 
a different without a difference, we can also have a comparing without two 
comparable things.

Anthony Crifasi

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