File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0304, message 488


Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 12:29:39 +0200
From: artefact-AT-t-online.de (Michael Eldred)
Subject: Re: Gestell UND Gewinnst


Cologne 30-Apr-2003

HealantHenry-AT-aol.com schrieb Tue, 29 Apr 2003 09:59:49 EDT:

> 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.

Henry,
Not psychology in the modern sense, at any rate!

> 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.

That is the question, since the value concept fundamental to Marx's thinking has
a long pedigree which passes through David Ricardo and Adam Smith way back to
Aristotle, who first introduced the distinction between use-value and
exchange-value. As far as I know, neither Nietzsche nor Heidegger took any notice
whatsoever of this concept of value. The latter were both concerned with the
'higher' values of Platonic Christianity, i.e. an 'other' world, etc.

But, in the end, Heidegger's concept of the being of Zeug in SuZ as Um-zu, i.e.
being-good-for, is tantamount to a concept of use-value, presumably unbeknowns to
Heidegger himself. I can only emphasize once again that Heidegger had a total
mental block when it came to thinking through 'economic' phenomena. It was
'beneath' him, just as 'urban life' was beneath him. He reverted instead to
"rooted in the soil" (Bodenstaendigkeit). This one-eyed attitude tends also to
incite Monday to Friday 9 to 5 librarian philologian disciples who exclusively
quote exactly the same passages of exactly the same authors which the master
read, faithfully following in the regurgitated footsteps. They exercise nothing
other than the fervour of scriptural exegesis.

Nietzsche, it should be recalled, is not so much a thinker of the soil, but was
more inclined to the moving, open element of the sea. I don't recall that
Heidegger ever talks of the sea.

You are surrounded by 'values' in the valuable, useful things you employ every
day for living. That is the openness of quotidian being-in-the-world.

> 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.

No, I disagree entirely. Why? Because Gestell is precalculative thinking, whereas
Gewinnst is the gathering of all the risky opportunities for gain -- without
being able to calculate with certainty in advance. Their essences are different
from each other. Capitalism is a _risky_, non-precalcuable world-game, worlds
removed from Heidegger's nihilist fantasies of total cybernetic control under the
Gestell laid out in his late writing.

One must learn from both Heidegger and Marx, and not try to assimilate the one to
the other. One has to be aware of the respective blind spots of readers of
Heidegger and Marx. I write also on a Marxism list, where the participants
continually try to assimilate Heidegger to Marx. Here on the Heidegger list, the
opposite is attempted. One has to recognize the unproductive exclusivity of the
respective blind spots in the two thinkers and ESPECIALLY their disciples, who
will never have an original thought in their entire lives.

> 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.

Even the internet has to be accepted and affirmed -- as opening possibilities for
human living.

> (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.

I think that technological thinking also has to be conceived as a freeing-up, as
an opening-up of possibilities for Dasein, if humanity can step back and gain the
necessary Gelassenheit (letting-be). Distance is important, distance not in order
to overcome in some sort of eschatological scenario (e.g. Communism, the last
God), but in order to twist to get an other angle, an other perspective.

It should also be noted that Marx (albeit within the language of subjectivist
metaphysics) thinks capital as an eery (non-subjective) power which comes over
and overcomes humanity as subject. This is what he thinks under capital
fetishism.

Cheers,
Michael
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