From: HealantHenry-AT-aol.com
Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 11:59:59 EST
Subject: Re: Liberal vs. social democracy


I have tried to send the totality of the message twice.  
It aint showed up.  
Here are the newest interlocutions only.  
I assume the length has been the issue at my end…hen

ME:
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.


H:
I have concerns with it, too. Anyone wrestling with heidegger (& his one 
supreme question) had better have concerns about “totalizing thinking.”

In respect to Gestell: I don’t think there is any question that there is 
something like Gestell that is powerfully giving forth the background (or 
“set-up”) of social practices dominating the planet. Perhaps the verb “defining” is 
appropriate, and that as ontology.

However, “defining” doesn’t necessarily mean “totalizing thinking.” The 
ontological power of defining appears infinite and open-ended.  Totalizing seems 
to mean a closed circle. Heidegger writes of working thru the nihilism and out 
the other side of it, and if human existence is interpretation all the way 
down, it is interpretation all the way “up” too.


ME:
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.


H:
I appreciate your attempts to supplement (& critique) his thought, as I do 
others, like, eg, Foucault. Perhaps H assumes too easily that his acute 
awareness of the social forces makes up for lesser mention of sociation. 

One thing, also, from SuZ we learn that the nearest and most primordial of 
understandings emanates from sociation and only from this most practical of 
practical spheres of human concern does it ‘rise’ into the sciences and theory, 
and philosophy. (And after philosophy, formal theology.)


ME:
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.


H:
SuZ was a failure, self-confessed.  I think H’s ‘turn’ to thinking Being 
historically and poetically was a result of his dead end in SuZ. But it is 
probably the greatest book of the twentieth century. One can turn to the later works 
on language and poetry to see insights into a Mitsein unavailable to the 
ontological phenomenology approach.  



> >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.


ME:
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.


ME:
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?


H:
Well it is a science called economics. Granted this science has the same 
turbulence as meteorology. More below.


ME:
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?


H:
We were discussing “justice.” I was pointing out certain contaminations of 
that particular practice within our milieu, a few select power networks that 
tend to bring influence on how it unfolds in the culture.  I do think an 
interpretation of just imprisonment can be made, perhaps dozens of them, and their 
counterproposals from no just imprisonment views as well. At the same time, 
humanity has setup the Gestell of forces that predominate when it comes to what a 
prison is and what justice is.
But let us not totalize the nature of Gestell.  Let us suggest that criticism 
is to be allowed, and legal for the time being…perhaps the existence of this 
criticism alone contributes some form of ‘authenticity’ to “justice.”
justice are and are to be.


ME:
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.


H:
I was pointing out a circularity that has become a powerful social practice 
betw your Gewinnst and justice.


ME:
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.


H:
I am not trying to suggest that there is anything new about conflicts of 
interest in human motivations.  I do think that private interest in profit is 
manifesting itself in new and different phenomenal garb as the new garb is given 
by Gestell. Moreover, the striving for profit itself has a part to play in the 
coming forth of Gestell and its sway over all beings. 


ME:
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.


H:
I am more confused, admittedly, as to the kind of knowledge that is 
Biotechnology and its impact on sociation. But it does provide a view as to the force 
or sway with which striving to make profit impacts the merger of the essence of 
biology and the essence of technology.

Would Biotechnology appear differently if it weren’t predominantly brought 
into being by strivers for profit? I just don’t know.


ME:
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 analyse
s",
"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.


ME:
_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 Agr
icultural
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.


H:
These are stunning descriptions of what is going on in the global economy. 
This leads to an image of working people in the US and China at odds with each 
other rather than, a more accurate description of a different set of powers in 
play. 

The representation of “an attempt to work out fair rules of play for 
capitalist markets on a worldwide scale” …well, that description of WTO behavior must 
come from the WTO brochure.  Be that as it may, the question concerning rules 
of play for planetary capitalism is not essentially Gewinnst.  


ME:
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:
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.


H:
Perhaps all slogans are vulgar by definition, but H expended a great deal of 
thought on what has been ‘forgotten’.  It is probably lazy of me not to 
describe what I mean by this term I have learned from Heidegger.  But suffice that 
it is the “what’s left out part” in all of Heidegger’s analyses of 
philosophers.

It is most interesting that you have discovered Aristotle as the major impact 
on Heidegger’s thought, and have drawn rich further thinking.


ME:
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.


H:
I think there is a great deal of importance to what you say.  I am reminded 
of what Heidegger wrote in the Fesschrift to Hermann Niemeyer:  “…However, the 
clearer it became to me that the increasing familiarity with phenomenological 
seeing was fruitful for the interpretation of Aristotle’s writing, the less I 
could separate myself from Aristotle and the other Greek thinkers. Of course 
I could not immediately see what decisive consequences my renewed occupation 
with Aristotle was to have.”

And of course, the old saw about spending ten years on Aristotle in 
preparation for Nietzsche… I am sure H was deadly serious about that, and to a certain 
extent, autobiographical.

Unfortunately, I began reading Nietzsche in high school, already assuming 
that I understood him. Marx, too.  I had as much unlearning as learning to do .


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


ME:
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.


H:
It only seems so? I am not at all sure there are any real social struggles in 
the West. Most people seem to be powerless. It ‘seems’ to me that just as 
you have alluded to some struggle between Chinese and US workers, where, rather, 
there are exploiting commercial interests, calculating labor as they do any 
other resource, and making the strategic economic decisions… and the US and 
Chinese laborers flow through these decisions like the Rhine river through the 
hydroelectric plant.


ME:
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?


H:
I was twelve when I endured the same experience. 


ME:
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.


H:
I think the setup is getting things in order.  I do think there is a 
resistance to the Gestell.  I would call it a turbulence that is not easily brought 
under the sway of the Gestell. 

On social relationships, especially commerce,  the machinations of business 
(the new ‘sciences’ of advertising, marketing, human resources, etc.) are a 
growing threat to genuine interaction. This happens on the everyday level.

On the planetary level, there are 8 leaders of the world who meet regularly 
to determine gigantic policies and mutual accords.  Their moves are made from a 
background of information that flows through specialized channels of massive 
influence and power.

World Trade Org., World Bank, IMF, and so forth are the determining entities 
with regard to struggling workers as well as starving, dying refugees and 
others.


ME:
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.


H:
I am involved in a couple of these small businesses (as I expect you are). As 
regards Walmart, no, in many places in the US it becomes very difficult to go 
anywhere else.  Walmart has ended the existence of its competition in many 
places, in fact, they look for these cornerable markets.

WalMart is any interesting phenomenon for you to look at to see some of the 
implications of an intertwined Gestell and Gewinnst.  

The economic philosophy of this entity, alongside cornering markets, is to be 
gigantic in order to handle masses of shoppers, and to pay its workers as 
little as possible in order to provide the discount prices to appeal to the 
masses (and to shut down the competition). The smaller mass of people (employees; 
in many states in the US, WalMart is the largest employer) is sacrificed for 
the larger mass (the masses who shop almost exclusively at WalMart).  WalMart 
reminds me of the kind of entity that a successful USSR would have had to 
accomplish. 


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


H:
Some of that, yes.  But I was thinking more in terms of Foucault’s 
descriptions of how the Gestell-like power relations help to create the individual.


ME:
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."



H:
Agreed.  I wonder about the possibility that many can learn anything about 
thoughtfulness in the public schools of the US. In some instances it ‘seems’ to 
be illegal to teach thoughtfulness or to attempt to learn it. 


ME:
To speak ontically again: this is glass-half-empty talk isn't it? Unemp
loyment 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.


H:
Calculating the ebb and flow of unemployment is a form of speaking ontically, 
but these and other quantifications of humanity, and the growing importance 
of the quantifiable with regard to human existence, also reveal the setup.


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


H:
I find that to be a meager understanding of freedom. 


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


H:
Gain and Gestell has to do with the interdependence of all beings on the 
planet as essentially incalculable, and yet essentially involved in the 
possibility of any real gain.


ME:
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.


H:
That is helpful…it is ludicrous to think that ‘power’ is negative.  


ME:
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.


H:
That is impressive even as just sketched out.  I am humbled to just be able 
to come up with “turbulence.”


ME:
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.


H:
Turbulence and Empty Protest, I suppose, are what I current pose alongside 
your Gewinnst and Gewer.


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


H:
Indeed…


> 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.


ME:
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.


ME:
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.


H:
Well, you were pushing me into an untenable position.  


ME:
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.


H:
Yes truth is full of strife.  

I do not have as clear cut a distinction of the individual as you do.  

Thanks, hen


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