File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0311, message 121


Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 23:02:10 +0100
From: artefact-AT-t-online.de (Michael Eldred)
Subject: Re: Liberal vs. social democracy - Gestell/Gewinnst


Cologne 12-Nov-2003

Anthony Crifasi schrieb 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.

First of all, thank you for the encouragement. I am writing down some thoughts,
but any publication can wait.

> 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 fore-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
>

I agree that if it were merely a matter of degree (of complexity, etc.), there
would be no justification to claim an alternative ontology. If one could point
to just a greater number of causal variables/factors, then, in principle,
subsumption under a precalculative thinking (which characterizes the
world-opening of the Gestell) would be possible.

The wonderful thing about approaching the phenomena mathematically is that they
cannot withstand being grasped in thought quantitatively. But then subsumption
under the Gestell in its form as mathematically calculating knowledge is indeed
possible. It is therefore necessary to take a closer look at the phenomena
themselves.

In the case of the movement of natural bodies, Newton's laws of motion are
applicable. Any engineer designing a bridge applies these laws to calculate the
statics of a bridge, such as what strength of materials (steel, etc.) is
necessary to bear the foreseen load on the bridge or to withstand the torsion
moment of winds. This can be worked out with precision on the basis of Newton's
laws, assuming the expected loads and stresses to which the bridge can
reasonably be expected to be subjected. Engineering science then builds in a
safety factor of, say, 10 to the equations, so that the bridge will be able to
withstand up to 10 times the forces that can reasonably be expected and entered
into the fore-seeing equations.

But that is quite different from the applicability of statistical methods to all
kinds of phenomena, including market phenomena. Mathematical statistics is a way
of finding regularities in any sort of data. The data are given by experience,
e.g. the prices for a given commodity over a given period together with other
data that are assumed to be relevant. The statistical methods are able to sift
out regularities, e.g. significant correlations.

But such significant correlations are still removed from having insight into the
causal relationships. In the case of monetary phenomena, there are always
markets and market forces at play. Markets themselves are a social relation that
depend on social forces, i.e. on a multitude of acting, striving human beings.
Economics grasps this as the phenomenon of supply and demand, without being able
to ground this phenomenon any more deeply. Thus, for instance, the early
political economists and political philosophers say, "the value of a thing is
just as much as it will bring" (Samuel Butler Hudibras 2nd. Part, 1st. Song 51)
or "nothing can have an intrinsick value (N. Barbon).

This has been put into question by Marx with the famous labour theory of value
which does indeed assert an "intrinsick value" of commodities residing in the
amount of "socially necessary labour-time" required to produce them. This is a
debate that has to be fought out in its own right. My work and that of others
(the first being Boehm-Bawerk) aims at showing that this labour theory of value
is ungrounded.

One has to gain insight into the ontological structure of the simple exchange
relation of goods for goods or goods for money to see that the determination of
exchange proportions or price cannot be led back to (reduced to) an inner causal
factor. The reason for this ungroundedness is that a social relation breaks the
mould (breaks the casting!) of the technae-like understanding of force
(_dynamis_) as a "starting-point governing a change in a thing".

In the social relation of market exchange, a striving for gain comes up against
a striving for gain, desire comes up against desire, and a momentary equilibrium
is reached. This equilibrium dissolves and a new market equilibrium comes about
at another price. Such desiring and striving on the part of human beings engaged
in a social practice cannot be reduced to the workings of a manifold of
'objective' causal factors, no matter how complex. This, of course, does not
stop economic science from trying, and people get Nobel Prizes in economics for
working out theories of market behaviour.

Economics (political economy) arose as a social science with the explicit aim of
emulating Newton's laws of motion and their admirable success in getting a grasp
and a grip on natural phenomena. Adam Smith had this ambition, and Marx, for
instance, sets out to discover the "law of motion" of capitalist society. But
this was from the outset based on an ontological sleight of hand that did not
look carefully enough at the ontology of social relations.

The reason for this, in turn, lies in the nature of metaphysics itself, which
was developed from the simple everyday paradigm of _poiaesis_, and not, say, of
_allagae_ (exchange). Heidegger already points out the peculiar predominance of
the 'third person singular' in metaphysical concepts. This can only have to do
with the way the being of beings presents itself to human being in the Greek
beginning as _idea_, _eidos_, i.e. in the look of standing presence (das
Aussehen staendiger Anwesenheit). This opening of being as the being of beings
in their defined 'look' is itself groundless Ereignis, but it enables (empowers)
human understanding to gain a grasp of beings in the 'third person', i.e. as
things.

So, today, too, we still have social science (economics, psychology incl.
advertising and marketing 'technology') vying to grasp the other human being as
a thing. But this does violence to the phenomena of Mitsein.

Michael
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