File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0311, message 12


Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2003 12:28:10 +0100
From: artefact-AT-t-online.de (Michael Eldred)
Subject: Re: Liberal vs. social democracy


Cologne 03-Nov-2003

HealantHenry-AT-aol.com schrieb Sun, 2 Nov 2003 16:33:06 EST:

> In a message dated 10/29/03 4:53:37 PM, artefact-AT-t-online.de writes:
>
> ME:
> >Thanks for your thoughtful response. The questions that arise in this area
> >will certainly be
> >too much for us, but we can try to tease them out a bit.
> >
> >Yes, I do think that the distinction between the ontological and the ontic
> >is crucial here,
> >and also the distinction between the ontological (the being of beings)
> >and the open truth of
> >being.
> HH:
> I am interested in what you are implying here
> with the term "open truth of being."  Would
> that be another way of saying my "mode of Being"?

No, "open truth of being" is a translation of Wahrheit des Seins, i.e. the open
time-space clearing in which what is present can present itself and from which
what is absent can absent itself.

> >ME: With every phenomenon that is touched on we have to ask, What is
> >the mode of being
> >that lies hidden here? I have problems with the focus on cultural practices
> >precisely
> >because the mode of being, i.e. the ontological side, of these cultural
> >practices remains
> >hidden. I can only try to bring this out in the engagement with specific
> >phenomena.
>
> I am not sure that any approach to things
> ever overcomes issues of hiddenness completely,
> moreover, each approach covers over as it discloses.
> So, I am not sure what "engagement with specific
> phenomena" can mean outside of cultural practices.
> (And, by the way, how any of this, or anything else,
> falls outside of discursive practices: certainly, the state
> is a discursive entity, ie, it depends for its existence upon
> forms of representation.

I translate this as: in what it is, the state depends also on how it is
understood.

> >ME:
> >Legitimacy has to be distinguished here from legality. The latter is a
> >kind of facticity,
> >i.e whether social practices correspond to (comply with) rules posited
> >by the state (and
> >enforced by superior state power), whereas legitimacy concerns everyday
> >understanding
> >_consenting to_ specific relations of social power. To take a simple example:
> >physical
> >assault is an illegal practice that is factically punished by superior
> >state force (the
> >police and the judiciary) as not in compliance with the law. The act of
> >state punishment is
> >also legitimate insofar as everyday understanding regards the state's
> enforcement
> >of the law
> >to be just. (Examples have to be simple to get the ontological structure
> >into view.)
> >
> >So legitimacy comes back to the question of justice which is always also
> >a matter of how
> >everyday understanding views states of affairs, e.g. assault is unjust
> >for it is the
> >exercise of physical force to the detriment of someone else. Since the
> >Greeks, the
> >underlying notion of justice has been of the fair, equitable (_isos_)
> apportionment
> >of goods
> >and bads of living, of what is beneficial and deleterious to human living
> >in society. This
> >notion of fairness as equitable apportionment is at the very least a pretty
> >good first
> >approximation to what is understood by justice among human beings (getting
> >one's just
> >deserts).
> >
> >But then the question of good and bad, i.e. of _values_ is not far off,
> >which is a bit much
> >to chew off at the moment. Suffice it to say for the moment that a being
> >(which may also be
> >a practice or a state of affairs) is positively valued insofar as it is
> >good for, i.e.
> >beneficial for, human living.
> >
> >The question of legitimacy is a matter of consent to relations of social
> >power. The question
> >then inevitably becomes: What is social power? What is power at all? What
> >is a social
> >relation at all? The question of power leads straight to the heart of
> metaphysics:
> >_dynamis_, whose ontological structure Aristotle famously analyzed in his
> >Metaphysics. This
> >understanding of force and power and potential silently underlies over
> >two millennia of
> >Western history.
> >
> >Suffice it for the moment to say that social power as a mode of being (i.e.
> >ontologically)
> >is "being a starting point for governing a change in another human being,
> >including another
> >human being's circumstances". E.g. the state has social power insofar as
> >it is able to
> >(Seinkoennen) to arrest someone who assaults somebody. The power is in
> >the first place a
> >potential, and its exercise results in the factual arrest of the offender.
> >
> >The legitimacy of social power and its exercise resides in whether everyday
> >understanding
> >regards this social power as just. E.g. the arrest of someone commiting
> >assault will
> >generally be regarded as legitimate, for it is unfair to inflict physical
> >harm on somebody
> >else's body.
> HH:
> First, here in the states, the formula runs more like:
> "the arrest of someone alleged to have committed
> assault will generally be regarded as legitimate. The
> allegation leads to the arrest.  Thus the legitimation
> is always already based on how an allegation fits within
> the possible interpetations of legitimacy.
> These interpretations, too, are discursive practices
> (the arresting officers, the accusors, all the way thru
> defending and prosecuting attorneys and the judge/jury).

Sure. These legal practices take place in the medium of the _logos_ (in the sense
of speech, discourse), but not exclusively. Arrest, for instance, requires also
physical force exercised on a human body.

> >ME:
> >It is not in the first place any "practice of legitimacy" that changed,
> >but rather, the
> >understanding of legitimacy underlying practices changed. The power of
> >a monarch, for
> >instance, can no longer be legitimized, i.e. understood as just, in terms
> >of the monarch
> >being the representative of God, nor even in terms of the monarch being
> >a "good" monarch for
> >the people s/he rules (paternalism). Although the "networks of power"
> constantly
> >change in
> >an ontic sense, the underlying understanding of legitimacy and justice
> >remains relatively
> >simple and historically relatively constant (although it is not eternal!).
> HH:
> "the underlying understanding of legitimacy and justice" ---
> I disagree. First, I think there is no 'underlying understanding of
> legitimacy and justice'. Second, since there isn't anything underlying,
> it can not be constant.

One has to take a look at how legitimacy and justice have been understood through
Western history to decide. Already the employment of the same words, "legitimacy"
and "justice" and their translations in various European languages, indicates a
certain sameness. Without an encompassing sameness, no comparison could be made,
and no differences found. One has to look concretely at how the phenomena have
been understood and brought to language at various times. More below.

> >ME:
> >I presume you are referring here to the distinction between two different
> >media of
> >sociation, i.e. of association in social relations. The one medium is social
> >power of
> >government which mediates the exercise of legitimate force over others,
> >and the other medium
> >is money which mediates the exchange (incl. hire) of goods (in the broadest
> >sense) between
> >people. I agree that _ontically_ these two media are thoroughly mixed up
> >with one another.
> >E.g. the medium of money (a certain kind of power) can be employed to
> influence
> >(legitimately or illegitimately) social power and its exercise. When this
> >use of money is
> >illegitimate, we understand it as corruption.
> >
> >The legality and the legitimacy of social power of government, and the
> >possession and use of
> >money are difficult to disentangle ontically. All we can hope to do
> philosophically
> >is to
> >get the ontological structures of the two media out into the open. Above
> >I gave a crude
> >'definition' of social power. An equally crude determination of money as
> >a power can be
> >worked out by considering the kind of power that is exercised when goods
> >(including services
> >and labour-power) are exchanged (incl. hired) for money. Money has the
> >power to gain goods.
> >Exchange of goods is a social relation, and in this relation, money exercises
> >power to gain
> >the control and benefit of other goods. I cannot spell out the ontological
> >structure of
> >exchange here, but have attempted to do so elsewhere.
> >
> >At the moment, what is important to note is that the legitimate social
> >power of government
> >relies on the _logos_ (laws, regulations, the workings of the judiciary
> >and the bureaucracy,
> >election campaigns, elections, etc.), whereas the social power of money
> >in mediating
> >exchange has a _reified_ character. I.e. money is nothing other than a
> >reified social
> >relation (something which Marx has worked out in detail -- cf. e.g.
> alienation).
> >Exchange
> >itself is a kind of change (_metabolae_) mediated through (the power of)
> >things (money and
> >goods, incl. services). These things (and thus their possessors) have power
> >insofar as they
> >are (exchange-) values that are beneficial for living. The role of the
> >_logos_ in such
> >exchange is limited at the most to bargaining and haggling over price and
> >conditions. For
> >the most part, it is enough to agree on a price.
> >
> >A simple example: the reified medium of money allows me to buy a newspaper
> >from the
> >newspaper seller without further ado. I give the money (the price of the
> >newspaper) and get
> >the newspaper. I do not have to first debate with the newspaper seller
> >in the medium of the
> >_logos_ over the contents of the newspaper. The reification of the social
> >relation allows a
> >certain simplification. (By contrast, for instance, to get elected to
> government,
> >I have to
> >debate with the voters in the medium of the _logos_.)
> HH:
> This helps me in my haze, juxtaposing the logos
> of your legitimation theory and the social exchange
> by way of money (as reified agent).
>
> I do not see a stable order, procured from Greek thought, as the
> ontological design  and foundation for all ontic possibilites.

That can only be decided by looking at the tradition of thinking on the specific
phenomena. Aristotle comes to the fore here as a source because his Metaphysics is
the first ontological thinking that works out some of the simplest ontological
structures (e.g. of movement).

> >ME:
> >I think this has to be spelt out in order to see whether and in what sense
> >there is a
> >merging of efficiency. You use the word "enframing" which is one of the
> >usual translations
> >of the Gestell (which I prefer to translate as the set-up). The set-up
> >is said by Heidegger
> >to be the essence of technology. Technology is a way of knowing the world;
> >it is above all
> >Wissen, i.e. knowlege, as Heidegger tirelessly underscores. The power of
> >technology is the
> >knowledge of how to bring forth beings into presence (and thus set them
> >up) in a
> >precalculable way. Thus one of Heidegger's well-known examples in discussing
> >technology is
> >the knowledge of how to place a power station in the Rhine River to bring
> >forth electrical
> >current in a precalculable, controllable way. Or the knowledge of how to
> >build an expressway
> >network that is able to cope with the load and the amount of motorized
> >traffic. If one knows
> >how to precalculate a result, this result can be brought forth efficiently.
> >
> >But it has to be asked whether and in what sense this precalculating essence
> >of
> >technological knowledge, the set-up, applies to social relations among
> >human beings.
> HH:
> Indeed, one might be concerned
> to examine such a possibility.
> ME:
> >One can take a look at the capitalist economy (which you refer to as the
> >Market) and ask
> >whether it is possible for a capitalist enterprise to precalculate the
> >prices at which it
> >can sell goods, or even its overall profit. One can even ask more simply
> >whether prices are
> >precalculable in a knowing way. In the simple exchange relation between
> >buyers and sellers
> >on a single market at any one time, can the prices be precalculated on
> >the basis of
> >knowledge, even granted the use of statistics and techniques of market
> >research? (Aristotle
> >distinguishes between _epistaeme_, i.e. knowledge from first principles,
> >and _phronaesis_ as
> >knowledge "for the most part" in the realm of practical social life.)
> HH:
> One might take a look to see if it might be
> possible to predetermine a certain kind of
> efficiency in, say, labor costs elsewhere, or pre-design
> obsolescence, or proft reutrn expectations from
> behavior altering market & advertising promotions,
> and so forth. There may be a faint palimpsestic
> trace in these cultural (& discursive) practices
> back to concerns about the buyer and the seller,
> but this too doesn't show any constance or an underlying
> essence in social exchange.

Your description here suggests to my ear a kind of omnipotence on the part of
capitalist corporations and a corresponding impotence on the part of workers and
consumers, who are merely manipulated by the omnipotent corporations (mere
'objects', mere 'pawns'). As a consumer, do you consider yourself to be merely a
manipulated object of the capitalist corporations?

But this does not fit the phenomena. Even gigantic, powerful corporations can get
into 'life-threatening', serious trouble by getting it wrong with their consumers.
Very recent example: Sony (last week), which has been too slow in catering to
consumer demand shifting from cathode ray tube TVs. to LCD TV screen. Such
examples, large and small, are countless.

The question underlying corporate power is that of the ontological structure of
_dynamis_ in the case where the _dynamis_ is exerciseed over other human beings
_as_ such.

If the corporations and the state are omnipotent and the rest of us (the workers,
the citizens, the consumers) are impotent, then this fits the ontological
structure of _dynamis_ as thought for power over things, i.e. any active
power/force must be paired with a passive power/force. E.g. the wood as passive
material allows itself (has the _dynamis_) to be fashioned and shaped by the
active know-how of carpentry, which is the active _dynamis_ in this case.

Newton's Third Law of Motion concerning action and reaction is a more superficial
version of Aristotle's distinction between active and passive _dynamis_. NB:
Newton's Laws concern physical bodies, not social relations (despite later
attempts to emulate Newton's laws in transferring them to the social arena).

What I am pointing to and insisting on is that each individual human being is an
_archae_, a starting-point, and not merely passive material (despite, for
instance, all the attempts of a science of psychology to treat human being
otherwise).

What is an essence, and in what sense is it underlying? More below.


> >ME:The simple exchange relation involves a social relation between at least
> >two human beings, a
> >buyer and a seller (or a hirer and a lender, etc.). Here we do not have
> >the paradigmatic
> >situation of human control over things, but a relation _between_ human
> >beings which, as
> >Aristotle points out, involves "at least four terms", namely, the buyer,
> >the seller and the
> >goods and money exchanged. Who is in control here?
> >
> >If one looks at the other medium of social power, i.e. government, one
> >is perhaps inclined
> >to say that government power can be exercised in a precalculable, efficient
> >way. The
> >executive organs of the state just have to be organized in an efficient
> >manner allowing the
> >exercise of government power. This may or may not be the case, depending
> >on how wily the
> >state's subjects are in thwarting the exercise of state power. (A
> totalitarian
> >police state
> >is probably the closest thing to a social set-up or Gestell in the sense
> >of efficient,
> >precalculable control -- but it is hardly legitimate for everyday
> understanding.)
> >
> >If one shifts the focus slightly to the question of _legitimate_ state
> >power, the situation
> >becomes anything but efficient and precalculable, at least if we consider,
> >for the sake of
> >convenience, the paradigm of democratically elected governments. In
> democracy,
> >the gaining
> >of government power is anything but precalculable. It is contestable, a
> >struggle. A
> >democratic election cannot be (legitimately) set up like a power station
> >can be set up in
> >the Rhine. First of all there is a contest for power. Secondly, winning
> >elections depends on
> >public opinion and on swaying public opinion, i.e. the opinion of the
> electorate.
> >Here the
> >phenomenon of the mass media comes into view. Monopoly or near-monopoly
> >government control
> >of the mass media (e.g. today in Berlusconi's Italy) is a huge advantage
> >because the
> >electorate forms its opinions on government policy on the basis of what
> >the media present.
> >Capitalist concentration of the mass media in few corporate hands also
> >restricts the
> >formation of public opinion and thus influences that way the electorate
> >will vote.
> >
> >So the legitimacy of democracy depends crucially, among other things, on
> >the plurality and
> >freedom of expression of public opinion. There is a constant struggle for
> >upholding and
> >widening of the freedom of public opinion in democratic countries. Attempts
> >to curb the
> >formation of public opinion simultaneously delegitimize government power,
> >i.e. a government
> >that is elected on the basis of massive restriction of the formation of
> >public opinion,
> >whether it be through government monopoly control of the media or the
> concentration
> >of media
> >ownership, is not regarded in everyday understanding as being just,
> legitimate
> >government.
> HH:
> Ah, but it is regarded as such because it takes place.
> This happens.  Other forms of covering over the
> customary meaning of elections and democracy also
> become legitimate because they work and in the
> long run are accepted, adopted, or forgotten about
> and rarely if ever acknowledged.

You mean that all sort of protest disappears and becomes impossible? That there is
no longer any critical understanding of legitimacy that could criticize, say,
monopoly control of the media? If that were the case, there would also not be, for
instance, any laws regulating monopoly ownership of the media.

> HH: Again, I don't hold to the liklihood that deriving a
> notion of legitimacy from Aristotle is, by definition,
>  a constant, underlying essence of law and legality.

See below.

> ME:
> >No matter whether the struggle for the free expression and formation of
> >public opinion is
> >being lost or won, this struggle is fought out on the basis of an
> _understanding
> >of
> >legitimacy_. And this makes the sphere of government power incalculable.
> >
> >To get closer to the ontological structure of public opinion, one needs
> >to consider the
> >simple rhetorical situation in which a speaker attempts to influence an
> >audience through the
> >employment of rhetorical _technae_. Does the technique of rhetoric correspond
> >in its
> >ontological structure to the ontological structure that Heidegger has in
> >mind with the
> >set-up? Can an audience be swayed in the way it sees the world with
> precalculable
> >rhetorical
> >efficiency? Is rhetoric a knowledge in the sense of a know-how of how to
> >bring a pregiven
> >audience viewpoint to presence? Is it at all comparable to the _technae_
> >of shoemaking?
> >
> >I think such questions have to be asked employing simple examples before
> >one rushes to
> >totalize the set-up (i.e. enframement or the Gestell).
> HH:
> No. I do not think that rhetorical devices,
> or style, necessarily equates directly with
> generally understood notions of calculation
> and efficiency.  Rather, I think that the
> ontological character of our epoch is such
> that our discursive practices become
> saturated in a more and more necessarily
> interpreted by way of calculation and efficency:
> the flattening down of meaning of language to
> categories of efficiency and calculation.
> Not that the words and images and persuations
> that are being utilized are explicitly such by
> way of a 'consacious' forcefulness.  Rather,
> the speaker and the hearer recognize the
> encoded calculaiton and efficiency in the
> same language as has been used into the past.

Could you give a simple example to bring this out? It would seem to amount to a
totalizing of calculation and efficiency (which, in the social realm, to my mind
would mean totalitarianism, a  _specific_ kind of social set-up based on violent
suppression of all resistance).

> >ME:
> >Isn't it the case that there will only be a dole after a social struggle
> >for it? I.e.
> >government power is not absolute and above the fray of social struggle
> >over a standard of
> >living. And a dole is struggled for within a certain (social-democratic)
> >understanding of
> >legitimacy. So one needs to look at the understanding on which a social
> >struggle is based.
> HH:
> Isn't it the case that a certain level of unemployment
> has been determined necessary by collusion among
> states and Markets in order for the most efficient
> economic harmony to be estabilshed? And that, in
> some states, a dole part of the set-up again, as an
> efficient solution for economic harmony?

Again, this would make states omnipotent and always and essentially in control.
What does collusion among markets look like? Are you claiming that all markets
tend to cartels? Can markets be regarded as monolithic blocks or do they consist
of multitudes of individual strivings?

I agree that unemployment benefits are part of the solution for relative social
harmony in modern capitalist societies. But this harmony soon disappears if the
underlying balance of forces in the social struggle is disturbed. I.e. relative
social harmony is a state of equilibrium in a balancing of opposed social powers.
For every social power there is an opposing counter-power, so that social life is
always a struggle.

There is a deeper link here between social struggle (of opposed interests) and the
strife of truth itself between unconcealment and concealment which I only mention
for the time being.

> >ME:
> >For me, Marx has been valuable in helping to bring the ontological structure
> >of the social
> >relation of money-mediated exchange and the social relation of capital
> >to light. (Perhaps
> >Aristotle is even more valuable in this regard.) This allows a crucial
> >widening of the
> >Heideggerian focus from technological knowing to encompass also social
> >relations _as such_.
> >As I have said before, the gathering of the ways of setting-up in the Gestell
> >has to be
> >supplemented by the gathering of the ways of gaining in the Gewinnst. The
> >striving for gain
> >is an essential determination of human being that must be brought more
> >clearly to light.
> >
>
> >ME:
> >The other, and deeper-lying, conformity is the way one understands the
> >world (including
> >oneself in the world), and this leads inevitably and ultimately to the
> >question of truth
> >(unconcealment). All practices are practised only within and are possible
> >only from within a
> >given understanding.
> >
> >The given, complacent everyday understanding has to be prised loose from
> >its chains to
> >understand more deeply what truth is and who we are as human beings. Only
> >this, ultimately,
> >can be the basis for changed practices. As Heidegger points out, the practice
> >of thinking
> >lies and goes deeper than that of everyday practices. That is also how
> >he objects to Marx's
> >Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach, for instance.
> >HH:
> >> The questions concerning democracy are more complex in my view than choices
> >> of fitting the market, poverty or crime. And there is the fact that the
> >vast
> >> quantity of democratic lucre flows into corporate cash streams than into
> >> ordinary citizenry's. But this you have mentioned under "(whether fair
> >or unfair)"
> >ME:
> >All that I have written above is only a crude sketch lacking many important
> >details. All the
> >questions remain open.
> >
> >Thanks,
> >Michael
> HH:
> (Perhaps
> Aristotle
> is
> even
> more
> valuable
> in
> this
> regard.)
>
> Michael, thanks for "lecture two."
> (I am working through your phenom of
> manliness, but that's a whole other discussion. Soon perhaps.)
> I think that all of my interliner remarks
> lead back to the quote above and the
> question: why Aristotle?
>
> But perhaps more important:  how Aristotle, to be "essential" (yet not
> eternal...)  Thanks, Henry

Good question: why Aristotle?
The thesis is that the Greek beginning or _archae_ (which comes to a consummation
in Aristotle) still has its historical hold on us in the West. Aristotle as the
consummate Greek thinker draws the threads of many other thinkers together and
achieves a degree of clarity not attained by his predecessors. Even the Christian
appropriation of the Greek beginning is still also held under the sway of this
beginning, but that is another topic.

What is essence? Essence is quidditas, whatness. Essence is the answer to the
question, What is...? In the present case, the question of essence would be, What
is justice? Or the question, What is power?
When you object to essence, do you mean that it makes no sense to ask the
question, What is justice? (Socrates' question in Plato's _Politeia_.)
Or do you maintain that the question has completely different, divergent, mutually
incomprehensible and incommensurable answers at different historical times? In
which case it would be best to take a look concretely at the answers to the
question of justice at different historical times to decide on how understandings
of justice hang together.

Do you think it is senseless to ask the question, What is power? or What is social
power?
If the question is admissible, is it then possible to escape the question of
_dynamis_ as one of the principal concepts of Aristotelean metaphysics/ontology?
Would we then have to square the ontological structure of _dynamis_, power (as
worked out originally by Aristotle and retrieved phenomenologically by Heidegger),
with the phenomenon of power as we experience it today in everyday life? Or does
what we today understand by power have nothing at all to do (even subterraneanly,
behind our backs and outside our awareness) with the Greek experience and
thinking-through of power (_dynamis_)? In which case, returning to the Greeks
(esp. Aristotle) would be a useless exercise, or at most a pastime for scholars.

Are you saying that in each historical epoch or phase, we're in a completely new
ball game and have to pose the questions again from scratch, as if they were being
posed for the first time? Can we do that?

I have a hunch that you regard the world to be discursively defined by various
discourses that shape human social practices. The phenomena would then disappear
into the discourses and have no independent truth (unconcealment) against which
the discourses have to be assessed. For phenomenological thinking, by contrast, it
is possible to go back to simple phenomena as a touchstone.

Regards,
Michael
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