Date: Sun, 09 Nov 2003 14:07:54 +0100
From: artefact-AT-t-online.de (Michael Eldred)
Subject: Re: Liberal vs. social democracy


Cologne 09-Nov-2003

michaelP <michael-AT-sandwich-de-sign.co.uk> schrieb Sat, 08 Nov 2003 17:55:19 +0000:

> on 8/11/03 4:45 pm, Michael Eldred at artefact-AT-t-online.de wrote:
>
> > On a more philosophical plane: The gathering of the striving for gain as a way
> > in which our
> > world opens up encompasses not just the capitalists and the corporations over
> > there -- we all
> > have our stakes in this worldgame for gain. It need not be rejected in favour
> > of a kind of
> > asceticism, but it does need to be thought through in order to break its
> > unconditional hold on
> > human being.
>
> Michael, I'm not so sure of this totalisation you claim for gain. Certainly,
> capitalism has taken and ordered this striving as an end in itself with the
> added promise of goodies and more goodies, never-fucking-ending goodies: but
> is not this precisely the casting of ALL beings as ONLY commodities, as
> goodies-for-us? Is this not gestell? Capitalism seems to have channeled
> (grasped) this embrace of the gestell as if it were a pro-ject of humanity
> (for the good of humanity), rather than a being-in-the-grip of gestell.
> Every thing become goods without the slightest sense of the good. What a
> world, huh...
>
> regards
>
> michaelP
>

Michael,
Sounds like you would be happy to do without the thousands of commodity goods you
use in daily life. Good luck!

What does "commodity" (goods put on the market for sale) have to do with Gestell?
That's a question I have been pursuing for some time and have been discussing with
Henry.

Heidegger says that the essence of technology is the Gestell, i.e. the gathering of
all possibilities of foreknowingly setting-up beings. This constellation of being
and human being is the historical Zuspitzung (coming to a head) of what the Greeks
experienced and thought through as _technae_, i.e. a knowing of how to bring forth
beings. Such knowledge of how to bring forth and set up is directed at things and at
human beings insofar as they are seen _as_ things. I call this the 'third person'
orientation of all metaphysical thinking, which culminates in the Gestell.

NB Heidegger made the Vorherrschaft (predominance) of the grammatical category of
the third person into a question in 1935 (Introduction to Metaphysics). There is
thus a 'natural tendency' in Western languages (which is fundamentally experience of
the world) to subsume the first and second persons under the third person. Where
does this tendency come from, if not from the way in which being itself opens up to
human being?

I have been trying to get another aspect/face of the constellation of being and
human being into view that specifically throws light on _social_ relations, i.e. the
relations between human being and human being regarded _as_ human beings. The
essence of capitalism is nothing capitalistic but is the Gewinnst, i.e. the
gathering of the gainable in social relations with one another. This constellation
of being and human being is the historical Zuspitzung (coming to a head) of what the
Greeks experienced and thought through as _allagae_, i.e. exchange, a specific
'useful' social relation involving the goods of daily life.

The simple relation of commodity exchange is driven by the desire for gain, whether
it be the desire to make money or to enjoy the consumer good on offer or to employ
the good for some further end. The metaphysical childishness of Marxism consists in
bifurcating human being into the working class, on the one hand, which is desirous
only of 'modestly' fulfilling its finite needs, and the capitalist classes, on the
other, which are greedily desirous of infinite gain.

I don't see that the gathering of the gainable is subsumable under the gathering of
the possibilities of foreknowingly setting up beings, nor vice versa. This has to do
essentially with the folding of being into its folds, which can be provisionally
(and inadequately) called the 1st person, 2nd person and 3rd person aspects of
being. Each of these faces (along with the gathering of possibilities of showing one
self off as who -- the Gewer) has to be brought to definition in thinking. Then one
can begin to see better how they are also intertwined in the everyday phenomena we
encounter.

Cheers,
Michael
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