File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0304, message 474


From: HealantHenry-AT-aol.com
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2003 09:59:49 EDT
Subject: Re: Gestell UND Gewinnst


Michael,

Having had a leisurely, woodpathy reading and thinking about parts of "Marx 
and Heidegger," the questions concerning Gestell and Gewinnst begin first 
with a clumsy attempt at uncovering Heidegger's critique of the will to will 
(his view of Nietz as the last metaphysician) with particular connection to 
the transvaluation of all values. For now it is just humming in the 
background as a not-ready preparation for discussing "Marx and Heidegger."

So my monkey mind played its little flute on the woodpath with "Marx and 
Heidegger," whispering tunes of value-thinking as nihilism, the essence of 
the market as psychology, the essence of money as metaphysics, and so on.  
Lame thoughts, perhaps, marginal scribblings.

Since you center Marx thought as a thinking on value, I speculate that 
value-thinking in Marx falls under the sway of nihilism as does such in 
Nietzsche.


It may be the case that a heideggerian thinking on the essence of modern 
capital --a distinction one makes about technology as gestell and "nothing 
technical"-- could interpret capital as the value system of Gestell:  the 
gestell as the reduction of the pure objectification of beings; the essence 
of modern capital the total subjectivity of all beings.

Also, it may be the case that the fourfold, the earth in particular, says 
something other than what is confronted at the end of "Marx and Heidegger," 
says something essential to Gelassenheit.  

(I learned in the forest that "Gelassenheit" is the German 12-step program 
term for "Serenity," as in the "serenity prayer" that grants courage to 
change what can be changed and serenity to accept what cannot... or something 
to that effect.)

It may be that Heidegger does call for an essence of humanity in the soil of 
the planet, truly turning Plato on his feet, but I don't think so, and so I 
don't think the challenging-forth of technology and capital have to do with 
the loss of bucolic life. What is happening to humanity by way of technology 
is a continuation of what has been happening throughout history, a kind of 
evolution, mutation. But the mutation brought forward by the essence of 
technology is a "fixing into place" of Dasein, which makes it an 
ersatz-Opening, a closing.  Capital may be the handmaiden of total 
subjectivity to this great objectifying fixedness.

kindest regards,
hen


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