File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0312, message 127


Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 22:23:27 +0100
From: artefact-AT-t-online.de (Michael Eldred)
Subject: Re: Liberal vs. social democracy - Gestell/Gewinnst


Cologn 08-Dec-2003

Anthony Crifasi schrieb Mon, 08 Dec 2003 16:34:56 +0000:

> Michael Eldred wrote:
>
> >I suppose it's a question of _dynamis_/potential in its different senses.
> >Every
> >human being as claimed by being lives within an (ontological) understanding
> >of
> >being that is taken for granted in taking care (ontically) of what has to
> >be
> >taken care of in living (existing). As exposed to being, every human being
> >qua
> >human being can potentially become a questioner of being, i.e. a
> >philosopher.
> >
> >But at first and as a rule, people are perfectly happy with their ontic
> >understanding of the world and cannot see that this ontic understanding has
> >'always already' a given (historically cast) understanding of being.
> >
> >You may well try to 'criticize' people for remaining self-satisfiedly
> >ensconced
> >in their everyday understanding, but you won't make yourself popular by
> >doing
> >so.
> AC:
> What I had in mind wasn't that criticism, but rather all the recent
> criticism here in terms of gestell. Your take was to deny that capitalistic
> social relations fall neatly under gestell. But I wonder if there is another
> problem - a conflation of factical orderings (which can be chosen, and so
> for which we can be criticized) with how we already understand everything as
> ordered under the sway of gestell (which is never chosen). Doesn't
> criticizing factical entities like Wal-Mart on the basis of gestell imply
> this equivocation between factical chosen orderings with the unchosen
> pre-understood ontological ordering that is gestell?

One can look at the phenomenon Wal-Mart and see in it an example of Gestell
(e.g. its well set-up supply chain) and Gewinnst (its ways of generating profits
through pricing pressure on suppliers, etc.) by showing in each case concretely
in what way it is such an exemplification. That is 'criticism' in the sense of
_krinein_, i.e. differentiating. Such a criticism is revealing/unconcealing. It
throws light on what Wal-Mart is as an entity within a given historical
constellation of being.

Apart from that, one could criticize Wal-Mart as a corporation politically,
economically and socially. But that falls in the ontic realm of politics and
political/social/economic struggles.

> > > >ME:
> > > >First, an attunement to the world is always accompanied
> >"equiprimordially"
> > > >by an
> > > >understanding that is captive to a given historical casting of being.
> >This
> > > >_accompaniment_ means that there is also a resonance with being that
> > > >escapes a given understood world-casting.
> > > AC:
> > > But wouldn't that imply that Dasein does not necessarily project its
> >Being
> > > ONLY on the possibilities by which it understands itself
> >(ontologically)?
> > > Doesn't Heidegger say the opposite?
> >ME:
> >I don't think so, since in SuZ two "equiprimordial" modes are indicated  in
> >which world opens up for Dasein, namely, understanding and moodedness. All
> >understanding of being is always accompanied by moodedness. The moodedness
> >is
> >alongside understanding and 'colours' it. One could call
> >moodedness/attunedness
> >the Muse-like or 'musical' dimension of Dasein, its susceptibility to
> >quivering
> >in resonance with being.
> >
> >So "escapes a given understood world-casting" has several meanings:
> >
> >First, it means that there is a dimension of moodedness essential to human
> >being
> >that is irreducible to understanding.
> >
> >Second, there are those odd creative individuals who are guided in their
> >artistic work by an inkling that allows them to open up another, hitherto
> >unknown perspective on the world.
> AC:
> Does this occur in a way that is, strictly speaking, praiseworthy or
> blameworthy, since mood (as an existential) is also never chosen?

Whether the creative work of a great artist is greeted or not always remains
contentious. Take as a prime example of the twentieth century James Joyce's
Ulysses. Soon after publication in 1922 it was both hailed as a masterpiece of
world literature and condemned as smutty. Any creative work is and remains
contentious because the opening up of a world is always situated within the
strife of truth between unconcealment and concealment, or between world and
earth, as Heidegger puts it in his study on the Origin of the Work of Art.

> >Third, there are the odd philosophers who through questioning are able to
> >break
> >up an all-too-consolidated, taken-for-granted granting of an understanding
> >of
> >being. This putting-into-question, too, "escapes a given understood
> >world-casting", but now in the most radical, explicit way. A given
> >historical
> >ontological casting of world becomes molten in the element of philosophical
> >questioning, and this makes philosophers into historical co-casters of
> >world. In
> >being receptive to the possible grantings of being, philosophical
> >questioning
> >struggles with a malleable complex of questions constituting a philosophy.
> AC:
> I would have the same question about the philosopher as about the artist
> above. It's mainly the issue of criticism that I'm wondering about.

The same thing (see above) applies to a philosopher's creative work of thinking.
The work of criticism consists in the first place in trying to make sense of a
philosophy _at all_. The strife over a philosophy will have a spectrum of
positions ranging from adherents through critical appraisers and appropriators
through to outright adversaries. But in the forefront there must always be a
critical appraisal of a philosophy.

> >There are, of course, many different meanings of human "freedom". Human
> >being as
> >such is cast as free. Freedom is exposure to being that enables decision,
> >including the widecasting decision of how to lead one's life. This freedom
> >is
> >mostly lived as unfreedom in anxious conformity to how the others live.
> >Only
> >because it is essentially free can human being be unfree. Such essential
> >freedom is ontological.
> >
> >The ontological casting of being is still never _simply_ up to us. It
> >depends on
> >the granting of being in which world opens up. We can only be receptive, if
> >at
> >all. Questionless, we remain captive to a given casting of world. As human
> >beings we are able to question. Questioning is another word for freedom and
> >is
> >essential, ontological. Whether we make use of that freedom is another,
> >'ontic' matter.
> AC:
> Then wouldn't that preclude criticism on the basis of the way being is
> granted (gestell, for instance), since we never choose this? In other words,
> if the casting of being is not up to us, understanding is not up to us, and
> mood is not up to us, then how can anyone criticize entities like Wal-Mart
> or George Bush for "promoting" or "participating" in what they never chose
> and in principle could never have chosen in the first place? Wouldn't that
> constitute an equivocation between factical orderings (which can be chosen,
> and so for which we can be criticized) and ontological Ordering (gestell)?

Yes. A Wal-Mart or a George W. Bush can only be at most an example in any
philosophical question at issue. They are only ever factical entities. It is
only their ontological structure that can be made questionable and thus
investigated by philosophical questioning. But then they are merely 'specimens'.

Marx makes a similar point in Das Kapital. His intention, he says, is not to
criticize any specific capitalist personally or any specific capitalist
enterprise, but rather the capitalist social relations for which they are merely
"character masks". Pace Marx's famous Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach, the
criticism of capitalist social relations remains a philosophical, ontological
task. The step from ontological questioning and criticism to ontic rejection and
opposition is mostly a misunderstanding because philosophical questioning (and
artistic creation) prises open an historical space of _possibility_; it does not
point to "what has to be done" (Lenin) _necessarily_. The historical
transformation of how we think is a subtle, subterranean passage of transition.

What philosophical thinking can achieve in its move of abstraction is always a
clarifying distancing from being all-too-involved with the phenomena as they are
lived in our everyday struggles of whatever kind, whether momentous or trivial.

>
> Anthony Crifasi

Michael
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