File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0311, message 113


From: "Anthony Crifasi" <crifasi-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Liberal vs. social democracy - Gestell/Gewinnst
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 13:44:44 +0000


Michael Eldred wrote:

>This is why I object to the term "social Gestell", for it casts social 
>relations
>as
>being able to be set up in the same way as technological knowledge can set 
>up
>things.
>Money-mediated social relations, however, are groundless because they 
>depend on
>opposing forces striving for gain, and this is the source of _risk_ in
>capitalism.
> >From within the thinking of Gestell, the phenomenon of risk is not 
>visible. All
>the
>calculating in economic life is a calculating subject to change without 
>notice,
>because market social relations change ceaselessly. So economic 
>calculations
>turn
>into estimates and projections, and are always subject to revision. This is 
>NOT
>the
>case with Gestell-like knowledge -- e.g. an engineer who designs a bridge 
>on
>estimates subject to change without notice would not _be_ an engineer, i.e. 
>he
>or she would not master what engineering knowledge _is_.

First, you REALLY need to write a book about this. I'll even pre-calculate 
the sales for you. Secondly, a question: what would be required for 
money-mediated relations to be subsumed under Gestell? You have already said 
that modern statistics is not enough for this. Is that simply because there 
are too many variables for the kind of for-knowledge required by Gestell? 
And if so, then wouldn't you be reducing an ontological analysis to a mere 
difference of degree? After all, even in designing a bridge, an engineer has 
to assume at least SOME things as stable which could possibly change without 
notice - for example, if the landscape radically changes due to some natural 
phenomenon that the bridge could not withstand. So since even engineering 
cannot account for some variables, is it then just a matter of how MANY 
variables there are? And if so, then wouldn't this be a mere matter of 
degree, which obviously cannot be the basis for an ontological distinction?

Anthony Crifasi

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