File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0311, message 31


Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 13:35:50 +0100
From: artefact-AT-t-online.de (Michael Eldred)
Subject: Re: Liberal vs. social democracy


Cologne 05-Nov-2003

HealantHenry-AT-aol.com schrieb Tue, 4 Nov 2003 09:10:28 EST:

> In a message dated 11/3/03 6:30:46 AM, artefact-AT-t-online.de writes:
>
> >ME:
> >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.
>
> HH:
> The "open truth of being": ah, the fourfold,
> four dimensional time...
>
> Well to clarify the distinction that has been
> completely muddled by me:  the Gestell is
> not 'represented' by multi-national corporations.
> They are beings of the presence that is present,
> that appears in the time-space clearing of gestell,
> our historical transmutation of the Being of beings.
>
> My ontic-political descriptions I interpret as what
> the world is like thru the ersatz-opening that is Gestell.

So the question becomes whether the "constellation of being and human being"
(_Identitaet und Differenz_ S.28) that holds sway in our time can be adequately
called "Gestell". Let me say straight out that I am suspicious of
one-size-fits-all thinking, i.e. totalizing thinking. More below.

> >ME:
> >I translate this as: in what it is, the state depends also on how it is
> >understood.
> HH:
> If Heidegger is read to include social forces
> and not just machinery and toys as part of
> the Gestell, then the state, too, becomes
> an entity or group Dasein that organizes
> itself around the values of efficiency and
> calculation.

Yes, that is the question: whether the Gestell can be read to include social
forces, and whether in Heidegger's thinking an adequate thinking-through of
_social_ forces and _sociation_ (_koinonia_) is to be found that can be subsumed
beneath the sway of the Gestell.

Heidegger does not only have to be "read to include" -- his thinking has to be
questioned and taken further.

> I have often thought of the Gestell-like
> character of div one of SuZ.

The structure of the world in its worldliness is unfolded in Division I of SuZ
with the focus on taking care of things (Zeug, Besorgen). The question is whether
the ontological structure of Fuersorge (taking care of others) is adequately
unfolded in SuZ or anywhere else in Heidegger's thinking. Mitsein in Heidegger's
thinking remains sketchy, albeit a fundamentally important sketch.

> >ME:
> >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.
> HH:
> Of course, Foucault has written well and
> interestingly about the state and the body
> in Discipline and Punish. I think of his
> panopticon and other topics a telling
> description of the societal and human
> transformations that Gestell gives.

Foucault's treatment of the Greeks in his last famous work, _Histoire de la
sexualité. Vol. 2 L'usage des plaisirs_ is a big disappointment. He has no notion
of the Greeks. The same cannot be said for Heidegger, whose thinking, from start
to finish, is a translation from the Greek.

> HH:
> Here in the US the prisons are containing
> more and more of the citizenry.  Also,
> prisons are more often being opened by
> private investment, and run by private
> businesses in contract with various states.
> Prisons for profit are a hot investment.
> Building prisons in rural and other
> economically depressed areas is very
> tempting for communities that would
> have never imagined wanting a prison
> in their midst in the past.

Is "profit" a category that can be grasped as a "stellen" in the Gestell? Is the
striving for profit (Gewinn) of the same essence as the bringing forth
(her-stellen) under the guidance of a fore-seeing, pre-calculating knowledge, like
a bridge can be brought forth under the guidance of fore-seeing, pre-calulcating
engineering knowledge?

Another aspect in your example of privately run prisons is whether punishment
under the law can be compatible with the state hiring private companies to provide
imprisonment services.

Or are you wanting to suggest that all imprisonment is gestell-like? That's the
easiest solution, of course. The Marxist says that imprisonment is a function of
the capitalist class keeping the working class down. This 'explanation' also fits
all.

Is there a possibility of the critique of current US imprisonment practices,
including privately run prisons, based on an understanding of just imprisonment
that allows for differentiations and demands that differentiations be made? Or
are, say, lawyers who help prisoners to fight for their rights merely themselves
pawns in the Gestell playing an inauthentic game called the justice game?

> >ME:
> >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.
> HH:
> Now one has to wonder if, in order to fill those
> prisons, and maximize that profit, if the
> corporate community doesn't apply some
> force as to what exactly legitimacy and
> justice are and are to be.

Yes, there is always a tension and conflict between private interests, esp.
private interest in gain, and the universal interest in, say, the punishment of
crime.

> HH: And in an almost infinite number of other
> formulations in Gestell, what is justice?

The phenomena of particular interests and universal interests and their conflict
did not arise only yesterday. They are a constant theme in all political
philosophy throughout the modern age. I do not see how the striving for profit can
be subsumed under the Gestell as the essence of technology. In the example you
cite, one needs a distinction between particularity and universality. On the basis
of such a distinction one can see how the private interest in profit-making can
come into collision with the universal interest in punishment and thus _be_
unjust.

You seem to suggest that such conflict is something new, whereas the same conflict
only manifests itself in different phenomenal garb throughout history.

> HH: Calculating the poisoning of a certain
> census of humans as justifiable to market
> a new product. How far do cost-benefit
> analyses go now?  Cloning, and other
> biotechnology opportunities (genetically
> modified products) are already transforming
> understandings of legitimacy and justice.

Yes, indeed. Biotechnology itself is a kind of knowledge of how to bring forth
certain precalculable results. How this knowledge and its products are embedded in
a way of living opens up questions of justice (how is this knowledge to be
properly employed? etc.) and ethics (how to live? who are we as human beings?).
Can the question, How does this knowledge intermesh with the striving to make
profit? be dealt with within the framework of the Gestell (enframing)? I see here
rather an intermeshing of Gestell and Gewinnst.

> HH: Corporate cost-benefit analyses generally
> differ, say, for markets in the US and Europe
> from, say, Africa, east Asia. This may not
> be a new view of African and east Asian
> humans as 'cheaper' than European and
> American, but it is a more efficent and
> better calculated determination of how
> much cheaper they are as humans, and
> what the benefits their cheapness is
> for marketing, labor sources, etc.

To speak in any philosophically serious way of "cost" one has to pose the question
concerning the being of money. One seeks in vain in Heidegger's thinking for such
a question, let alone an analysis of the ontological structure of money. And yet,
money is not merely a thing, Zeug -- rather, it is a "verdinglichtes
Gesellschaftsverhaeltnis" (reified social relation). In my view it is a
philosophical scandal that one acts as if the question had been settled by
Heidegger's thinking on the Gestell.

Of course, there is no difficulty to talk ontically of "cost-benefit analyses",
"cheap labour", etc. etc. -- ad infinitum. But it ain't philosophy. That's the
scandal -- the sheer, stubborn, complacent thoughtlessness.

It is a sleight of hand to subsume the peculiar thing money under the Gestell.

> HH: How does the sameness of "justice" and
> "legitimacy" reach this level of calculation?
> It doesn't. In fact, at this level of calculation
> and global efficiency, state-determined
> values like 'justice' and 'legitimacy' work
> to lubricate the efficiency of cost-benefit
> analysis.

_Given_ certain prices on the market, such as cheaper prices for labour-power in
China, calculations for making profit can be made. But this givenness of prices is
subject to the constant possibility of retraction and cannot be fest-gestellt
(established) with a precalculating certainty. So all profit-making calculations
are subject to constant revision. To see this clearly, an ontological analysis of
market exchange is necessary.

At present, the Chinese have the greatest cost advantage in the worldwide market
for labour-power in the manufacturing sector. Chinese workers in that sector
currently are competing very effectively with US and European workers in that
particular market. That can change and will change relatively quickly, just as
Japanese workers were still at the bottom of the pile in the sixties. All this can
take place within the justice and legitimacy of market exchange, with US and
European workers trying as much as they can to prevent this working of the markets
through protectionist measures. E.g. US catfish farmers are currently protesting
loudly against Vietnamese catfish farmers because the latter beat them on price.
Under the pressure of protest by US catfish farmers, protectionist measures have
been introduced which are unfair, i.e. unjust, just as the General Agricultural
Policy in the EU is unfair vis-à-vis agricultural producers in Africa and
elsewhere. It is distortive to portray such competitive struggles as struggles
simply between capitalist corporations, as if 'we' were innocent and harmless and
'they' were greedy and ruthless.

So yes, there is currently a struggle between workers in Europe and the US against
workers in China and India and Africa based on understandings of justice in which
the European and US workers try to shield themselves from competition in alleging
"unfair" competition. On the other hand, workers in east Asian and Africa regard
themselves as being unfairly excluded from markets.

The competitive struggle on markets over price is regarded as fair and therefore
just as long as certain rules of fair play are adhered to. There is a constant
struggle over these rules of fair competitive play which takes place _within_ an
understanding of justice. The WTO represents an attempt to work out fair rules of
play for capitalist markets on a worldwide scale. That is something I support.
Labelling the WTO as part of the Gestell or as a part of 'capitalist world
domination' is a cheap cop-out, to my mind.

Is this competition on the markets gestell-like? Or does it rather belong to the
gathering of the striving for gain, i.e. the Gewinnst? The question has hardly
even been posed to date.

On this list we have RdB with an epigonal stance. In discussions on a Marxism list
recently I experienced rather total philosophical blindness. The thoughtlessness
goes on...

> >ME:
> >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).
> HH:
> The whole of the history of metaphysics,
> as I read Heidegger, has continued to unfold
> in general in a forgetfulness of Being.
> Aristotle fits within that history, a
> thinker of his time.

Heidegger says a whole lot more about the history of metaphysics than simply that
it is a history of the forgetting of or oblivion to being. His readings of Plato,
Aristotle and others are highly differentiated. The slogan of oblivion to being
(Seinsvergessenheit), to my mind, is a kind of vulgarization and popularization of
Heidegger's thinking.

Heidegger's deep insight into and phenomenological analyses of many phenomena
would be simply impossible without his teacher, Aristotle. Heidegger's reading of
Aristotle was selective, however. That is not so much a criticism of Heidegger and
his single-minded focus, but rather a call to us to widen our horizons in
thinking.

> >ME:
> >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.
>
> HH:
> I am awash in analogies from the above;
> really good analogies, but i can't work thru
> them all.  It is amusing, though, that your
> crises for the corps as contrasted with
> my crises for human bodies over and agst
> the corps, is that Sony isn't making enough
> flat TVs fast enough.

Examples tend to be banal. For the most part, the world is mundane.

> I don't know how much power individuals have
> in the giganticism of the Gestell.
> What is humanity becoming?
> There are powerlessnesses in the growing
> dependence on corporations for everything.
> One has little one can repair these days of
> the gear and equipment.  Seeds are specialized so
> that they are not to be saved over form harvest
> but bought anew from the corporation each year.

The struggle over genetically engineered seed goes on, i.e. the strife over its
truth. People are not powerless; it only seems so. Social struggles in the West
are not fought out between the powerful (state and capitalist corporations) and
the powerless.

> I imagine you could notice these kinds of power
> relations too if you were to "pay" attention.

Yes, I do notice such power relations, i.e such struggles. It's a question of
whether the glass is half empty or half full. I would probably have died at the
age of ten of a burst appendix if it had not been for modern surgery. Should I be
grateful?

> HH:
> But the Gestell gives
> efficiency and calculation to all of us as
> individuals as well as gigantic groups of mass-culture.
> What we think of ourselves grows more calculated.
> What our children think of themselves even more so.
> And our grandchildren? What kind of archimedean
> point is coming up for that generation?

This is where the possibility of a guiding role for philosophy comes in, not that
philosophizing can ever be a mass phenomenon. Philosophizing is the thinking
practice of a "turning round of human being" (_periagogae taes pychaes_) in which
distance is gained from mere absorption in everyday living and its delusory view
of the world. From a distance, the deceptive nature of everyday living can be seen
and the way it is cast by a certain casting of the being of beings to which
everyday thinking remains oblivious whilst being immersed in it. The task of
philosophical thinking is to open up the historical possibility of an alternative
casting of the truth of being and thus how the world shows up and opens up for
human being.

The question is, however, whether the present casting of the being of beings and
the way being and human being belong together can be reduced to the constellation
that Heidegger calls the Gestell (the set-up, enframement). Is the present
constellation of belonging-together of being and human being a gathering (Ge-) of
the various possibilities of 'stellen', i.e. of setting up, Ge-stell? One major
test case for this question, to my mind, is that of social relations, i.e. of the
relation of one human to another in any kind of exchange. In our relations with
each other, do we simply just set each other up? How would a reciprocal setting-up
be possible? Does each of us simply calculate how to use the other for one's own
ends? And if so, is such reciprocal calculating behaviour based on a fore-seeing
knowledge?

Even in the case of a purely economic social relation, it does not seem to me that
the reciprocal calculation of the two parties can be reduced to a setting-up of
each other. There is also no fore-seeing knowledge of exchange, even economic
exchange. And if one looks at the phenomenon of the exchange that takes place in
conversation and dialogue, there is hardly the possibility of any precalculating
foreknowledge. The example of 'manipulative' behaviour in which someone tries to
psychologically manipulate others in their social world shows up the limitations
of calculation. There are also (ontological) possibilities of genuine exchange in
dialogue, for instance.

> >ME:
> >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:
> Well, yeah, hell yeah.  The guy running the
> "laws regulating monopoly ownership of the media"
> here in the States is Colin Powell's son.
> he's giving away the whole thing.
>
> But the point is that whether he is stopped
> by protest and by more 'liberal' legislators
> and judges, the movement to the gigantic
> is ruled by efficiency and calculation, and
> this one Media conglomorate, one Store,
> one Bank... these continued mergers of
> products and information into a one giant
> corporation, seems most efficient.

Did you know that the overwhelming majority of the US economy (over two thirds, if
I recall rightly) is made up of small businesses? In other economies, the
percentage is even higher. So, there are gigantic corporations and also plenty of
room for individuals.

Do you know how many thousand banks there are in the US?
Is it really impossible to avoid going to Wal-Mart? Here in Cologne there's still
a good selection, although capitalist efficiency has its effects.

> >ME:
> >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).
> HH:
> No. It is as much self-suppression as anything.
> It is the determination that education needs
> to be verified by way of standardized tests.

"Self-suppression", i.e. the need to learn to think for oneself and become a self.

> HH: Students need to answer questions correctly to
> pass the standardized tests, since there are,
> of course, standard answers.
>
> Indeed, education as a whole presents many
> examples of the flattening out of language,
> and the growing intensity of the values of
> calculation and efficiency.

I see these tendencies in education in connection with the growing
thoughtlessness. I am personally very grateful to have received a good education
as an initiation into so-called 'abstract' thinking. This education has taught me
to be an autodidact. As Plato knew, learning is _analabon autos ex autou taen
epistaemaen_ (Plato Menon 85d) "Raising up/retrieving knowledge oneself out of
oneself."

> >ME:
> >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.
> HH:
> All markets cartels?  No. Of course in some economies
> and areas of economies it is most efficient. Again,
> you can notice the controlling powers if you want to.
>
> On the question of unemployment and struggle,
> God I hope you are right, but I doubt it. The US has
> lost more jobs in the last three years than in any
> other three-year period since the great depression.
> hundreds of thousands have lost their unemployment
> benefits (here in the US they dont run more than a
> year or a year and a half). Calculations have been
> released by the government that hunger has risen
> in this country for the third straight year.

To speak ontically again: this is glass-half-empty talk isn't it? Unemployment in
the US moved from 4.2 per cent in 2000 to 6.0 per cent today. In the next leg of
the economic cycle, the unemployment rates will start to improve again. Germany
today has had 10 to 11 per cent unemployment for more than a decade (the economy
and the society is sclerotic). The US had its longest economic boom in history in
the nineties, and average US incomes gained huge leads over average EU incomes
during the nineties, so that they are today fifty per cent ahead (USD36000 over
against USD24000 in Germany, for instance). So poverty and hunger is only part of
the picture, albeit it has to be taken seriously.

> HH: Where are the ramparts?
> Why are the people not restless?
> Where are the voices of opposition in
> the government defending labor?
> That's a joke.  In this country the legislators
> that are pro-labor are a small minority.
> The secretary of labor is anti-labor!
>
> But again, this isn't the doing of the
> Gestell, of course.  But of course it is.

You are relieving people of their freedom. Only free human beings have the
responsibility to care for themselves.

> HH: It is the contouring of human practicies
> by way of calculation and efficiency that
> would tend to make the gigantic
> management of production and human
> labor more powerful vis a vis the state
> so as to effect further efficiencies of
> production.  The Gestell doesn't give a
> fuck that the secretary of labor is anti-labor,
> but it works out that way, effectively.
>
> HH:
> It interests me how Christendom has
> evolved in the West.  Today, one could
> make the case that Christianity has
> almost completed a reversal of values
> from what one finds in the words of Jesus.
> the churches, most of them, have stood
> Jesus on his head like Marx Hegel or
> Nietzsche Plato.  If one is cynical enough,
> the best standup comedy in amerika is
> just about any church at 11 am on sunday.
>
> The question of 'gain' in western culture
> is a long and interesting story. I have my
> own interpretation of how 'gain' and Gestell connect.

Sooner or later you'll have to spell it out.

> >ME:
> >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.
> HH:
> Well, not completely incommensurable
> at all levels of discourse at all times.
> One can gain glimmers by way of the often-
> mentioned transformations of Being in Heidegger's
> texts, and by way of studying the epochs.
> ME:
> >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.
> HH:
> I am not sure how helpful returing to the
> Greeks is, particularly about power. But it
> may be helpful.

I was reading only today in Gesamtausgabe 36/37 (WS 1933/34) how Heidegger
interprets Plato's _idea tou agathou_, i.e. the idea of the good, as
"Ermaechtigung" (empowerment) and explicitly brings it into connection with the
Greek word for 'power' (_dynamis_, which has a wide semantic span). Here,
Heidegger is conceiving of power in a thoroughly positive sense, close to how he
conceives the Ereignis.

> HH: What interests me is that
> you aren't at all interested in Heidegger's
> view of the Gestell in all its raging glory,
> and his insistence that the completion of
> metaphysics in this era is nihilism.

Not interested? I have been engaging critically with Heidegger's thinking on the
Gestell for many years. I have big problems with its totalizing nature. But I do
go along with Heidegger's thinking on the consummation and exhaustion of Western
metaphysics. The thinking of the being of beings ends in nihilism, in nothing, but
this nothingness is only the "photographic negative" (Heidegger), i.e. the
flipside, of being and the belonging of human being to being. "We get a first,
pressing flash of Ereignis in the Ge-Stell. In the Ge-Stell get a view of a
_belonging_-together of human being and being..." (Identitaet und Differenz S.31)

I do not see just one constellation of being, or rather I see three constellations
which are all aspects of the same constellation of the truth of being and human
being holding sway today:

i) the Gestell -- the gathering of all the possibilities of setting up
beings/things on the basis of fore-seeing knowledge (historical consummation of
_technae_) -- '3rd. person' aspect or fold of the unfolding of being as world.

ii) the Gewinnst -- the gathering of all the possibilities of gain in social
relations (historical consummation of  _chraematistikae_ (money-making) as the
Janus face of  '_oikonomikae_ (earning a living)) -- 2nd. person' aspect or fold
of the unfolding of being as world.

iii) the Gewer -- the gathering of all the possibilities of bringing oneself to
stand and showing oneself off as some who (historical consummation of _timae_
(honour, esteem, public office) as the Janus face of selfhood)  -- '1st. person'
aspect or fold of the unfolding of being as world.

> Rather, there is a lack of concern, almost
> a revelry at the wonders and the glory of the age.
>
> Whereas, I wake up angry every morning at the growing
> nihilism.

Is anger the appropriate mood for a thinking of an other beginning? Sure, I get
angry, but probably on a much more petty level than you. Heidegger calls the basic
mood for the other beginning Verhaltenheit (composure), whereas the basic mood of
the first Greek beginning was _thaumazein_ (wonder, amazement). I sure do not
maintain the equanimity of composure in daily life.

> ME:
> >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?
> HH:
> No.
> ME:
> >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.
> HH:
> Well it is possible to go back to phenomena,
> but I dont know how simple that is.

It is very difficult to unearth the simplest phenomena. That is what makes
philosophizing so challenging and a long-term pursuit.

> HH:
> "Since Aristotle it became the task of philosophy
> as metaphysics to think beings as such ontotheologically."
> The onto-theo-logic power of the Gestell encompasses,
> somehow, the long and winding path to this nihilism (Gestell)
> from the Greeks.  I am very concerned.

Ontotheologic thinking reaches its crescendo in Hegel's system (cf. Heidegger's SS
1933 lectures in GA36/37). Sein (being) has been confused with Seiendes (beings)
throughout the history of metaphysics, starting with Plato. The open clearing of
_alaetheia_ has been overlooked and taken for granted. It is this granting to
which thinking must turn.

Humanity is not waiting for me to save it. Apart from getting along in the
struggle of daily life, my concern is with the growing thoughtlessness in the
world, and I struggle to do something against it, simply by practising thinking.

> HH:
> It doesn't take much ontic awareness to see how
> gigantically the world is fucked up.
> Nor how the incessant calculation and efficiency,
> bringing everything to standing reserve,
> lacks a most important essence. And that we
> hardly know today what that important essence is.

Interesting that you now return to essence in an affirmative sense.
Is the world more fucked up now than it ever was?
Maybe it was more interesting and promising to have lived in the seventeenth
century, at the dawning of the new age. But each age has its own suffering and
unbearableness.

Truth is and remains strifeful. The strife between concealment and unconcealment
is not, as Heidegger says, only strife between world and earth, but it is at the
same time continual strife among human beings. There is only individual truth,
especially when it is a matter of philosophical truth, that "turning of human
being". Such a turning can only take place individually.

> thanks,
> henry

Thanks,
Michael
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