File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0312, message 233


Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 10:51:04 -0500
Subject: Re: sclerosis, social inertia, money, etc
From: Henry Sholar <henry-AT-agenceglobal.com>


Michael & co., I've sent and re-sent this bloated beast. If it shows up four
times, eventually, my apologies...

Meanwhile, after waiting 24 hours, here is a trimmed version. --Hen



>> HS:
>> I think human intercourse works just as well as the other.
>> 
>> Under the sway of Gestell, there are pre-arrangements of exchange 'grounded'
>> on a representation of history that pre-determines social relations. This
>> from the "social relations" content that can be pulled out of Heidegger
>> texts, and this specifically from a reading of "...World Picture." For
>> example:
>> 
>> [Only because and insofar as man actually and essentially has become
>> subject is it necessary for him, as a consequence, to confront the explicit
>> question: Is it an "I" confined to its own preferences and freed into its
>> own arbitrary choosing or as the "we" of society; is it as an individual or
>> as a community; is it as a personality within the community or as a mere
>> group member in the corporate body; is it as a state and nation and as a
>> people or as the common humanity of modern man, that man will and ought to
>> be subject that in is modern essence he ALREADY IS? Only where man is
>> essentially already subject does there exist the possibility of his slipping
>> into the aberration of subjectivism in the sense of individualism. But also,
>> only where man REMAINS subject does the positive struggle against
>> individualism and for the community as the sphere of those goals that govern
>> all achievement and usefulness have any meaning. (TQCT, "Age..." pp132-133)]
> 
> ('Die Zeit des Weltbildes' (1938) _Holzwege_ 1st. ed. S.85 6th ed. S.90)
> 
> My question here and with the other passages you cite is whether "the 'social
> relations' content ... can be pulled out of Heidegger texts" or whether it has
> to be put in. See below.


Some things get put in and pulled out of texts in every read. Isn't it
required in the act of reading? thinking?



> 
>> The representation of history, short for the objectifying practices of the
>> social sciences, gives an account of the nature of human intercourse. The
>> work of representation is a key symptom of the setup. It is key both as to
>> things and human being. It is completely alien to the Greeks, the
>> medievalists, it is uniquely our own.
>> 
>> [The fundamental even of the modern age is the conquest of the world as
>> picture. The word "picture" -Bild- now means the structured image -Gebild-
>> that is the creature of man's producing which represents and sets before. In
>> such producing, man contends for the position in which he can be that
>> particular being who gives the measure and draws up the guidelines for
>> everything. (TQCT, "Age... " p134)]
> 
> (ibid. S.87/92)
> 
>> HS:
>> The paradigm of exchange as human intercourse, (and pointedly in your own
>> interpretation, viz. Auseinandersetzung) tends to be one of power relations,
>> i.e., a struggle of world views. And, I think, that is the point of
>> Weltbilder, lifestyles, Weltanschauungen, and the like: there is this
>> pseudo-flexibility accessible in the setup, itself the disciplinary leveling
>> down under the sway of representation, that sets the stage for the battle of
>> worldviews as the tendency to remain within that primary leveling down and
>> level down further.
> 
> Your interpretation here has more a Foucaultian flavour. How is the theme of
> (social) power relations present in the passages you cite and in the entire
> Weltbild-Aufsatz? To my ear, it is striking that Heidegger speaks uniformly of
> "der
> Mensch" in laying out the subjectivity in which humankind has been
> metaphyiscally
> positioned in the modern age. "Der Mensch", literally translated, is "the
> human",
> but that makes poor English. This usage of "der Mensch" in the singular in
> German
> means in English "the human in general", i.e. "humankind". Even where
> Heidegger
> explicitly refers to "der Mensch" as "I and you, as we and you" (S.102/108
> Addendum
> 9), it is done only to clarify that the subjectivity of humankind must not be
> confused with "subjektiver Egoismus" (S.102/109). And in the passage you cite
> above,
> Heidegger refers to the "we of society" and the "Unwesen des Subjektivismus im
> Sinne
> des Individualismus" ("the perverted essence of subjectivism in the sense of
> individualism"). In other words, Heidegger is making sure that the reader
> understands his meaning, viz., that subjectivism denotes a "basic position"
> (Grundstellung) of (Western-cum-planetary?) humankind as a whole in the
> metaphysical history of being.
> 
> Does he unfold what the phenomena of "we as society" or "I and you, we and
> you" look
> like in any more detail? No, he doesn't. For him, it's all "der Mensch",
> connoted to
> include whatever plurality he wants to. If one looks through Heidegger's texts
> on I,
> you and we from the twenties on, one finds the most extensive discussion in
> GA26,
> the Leibniz lectures SS 1928, a discussion stimulated by the
> Auseinandersetzung with
> Scheler. But even this most extensive elaboration does not go very far.
> Heidegger
> only repeats several times over the years that Dasein and the Self are the
> basis for
> I and you and we and also for the two genders. But that is only a negative
> determination that never becomes positively elaborated.

Michael, I appreciate the comprehensive review. And I agree that in
Heidegger's thinking not much is unfolded that specifically pertains to "we
as society" or "you and I," or much of anything on a social relationships
level of description. And I appreciate your thinking through the
possibilities of just such an unfolding.

I pull/put questions about "social relations" in Heidegger usually from the
greater context of the first division of B&T.  Important views worked out
there help the approach to "The Age of the World Picture," (and on down the
line with Gestell and so on) that is, form the background for my
understanding of the history of being.

"Dasein" can be interpreted as individual and as group without much
differentiation throughout the first division. Part of this is the structure
of falling-in-with, and part of it is the activity of Dasein is
interpretation all the way down.  All of it is Sorge. "Group Dasein" is an
interpreting entity just as is individual Dasein. Institutions, cultures,
various groups construct a meaningful world.  How this happens is important
and particularly with regard to "The Age of the World Picture."

As is described in the first division, primordial understanding (the
nearest, richest, and that which avails other subordinate understandings)
are the skills and practices that are always already ours as we are cast
into a world. I think the key here is the transparency of our existence in
"just knowing" on a practical how-to-do level the various appropriate
practices and skills to cope with and care for the world around us.

Though social relations are NOT described this way, is not in there, as we
both know, I hold that one can pull out of this description of Dasein's
cast, that cultural practices are indeed availed to us through social
relations, by social relations and to some extent for social relations. That
is, social relations are implied in the background of cultural practices we
all have in common Being-in-the-world. "World" is a totality of
involvements. The involvements with things are spelled out, the involvements
among Dasein not so.

One mimics as a child, one watches, listens...one practices the
practices...this is how we live together, and essentially, the social
practices between/among Dasein are as transparent as ready-to-hand
understanding of equipment, stuff and crap. One moves from the child's world
into a world of social involvements that are matured.



But there is also the important story in the first division that relates the
deficient level of understanding that is given in the change-over to the
present-at-hand. Here one steps back from the transparency of
being-in-the-world and adopts the theoretical mode of explanation, and
representation. 

The connection to the  history of metaphysics as the forgetfulness of being
is constructed from this story. And I read Heidegger's later thinking as
essentially critiquing Gestell as the continual regimentation of Dasein and
everything as present-to-hand.

Thus, the "only because..." entry from "Age..." (above) is descriptive of
this cultural practice: Dasein as subject grows in every aspect of its
world. The critique of what grows here is that the issues now facing us as
individuals and communities, under the sway of the essence of technology,
are converted into a present-at-hand representation of 'us', etc.

Foucault, as I read him, follows this same thinking, opens it by his
comprehensive introduction of "power-relations."


Your exposition below appears consistent with this put/pull read:

>ME: 
> The same thing holds true also for Heidegger's mention of other social
> relations
> such as economic social relations. In "Wozu Dichter?" he even cites Rilke's
> "vibration of money" (_Holzwege_ op. cit. S.269/287 u. S.289/310) and
> amplifies:
> 
> "In the place of what the once granted world-content of things gave out of
> itself
> pushes ever faster, more ruthlessly and more completely the objective
> character of
> the technical domination of the earth. It not only sets up (stellt auf) all
> beings a
> producible (Herstellbares) in the process of production, but it delivers
> (stellt zu)
> the products of production via the market. The human character of humans and
> the
> thingly character of things dissolves within the self-asserting producing
> (Herstellen) into the calculated market value of a market that not only
> encompasses
> the earth as world market, but also as the will to will markets (marktet ! )
> in the
> essence of being and thus brings all beings into the practical action
> (Handeln) of a
> calculating (Rechnen) that rules most tenaciously where it does not require
> numbers." (S.270/288)
> 
> Notice the words based on 'stellen' and the explicit incorporation of the will
> to
> will which is der Wille zum Herstellen. The Herstellen that asserts itself
> ever more
> has to do so through the dimension of "the calculated market value of a
> market",
> i.e. through things emanating "the vibration of money" and thus "developing a
> kind
> of spirituality which now already exceeds their tangible reality". Here at the
> latest one is reminded of the famous Section 4 of the first chapter of _Das
> Kapital_
> on commodity fetishism, where things develop "theological crotchets".

I think Heidegger is using the Merchantization of Dasein in "What are Poets
for?" as a demonstration similar to the story of the Researcher in "The
Age...". 

> ME:
> What is this "vibration of money", this peculiar "spiritual" emanation of
> things as
> commodities? Heidegger employs Rilke's turn of poetic phrase and proceeds to
> subsume
> money and the markets it enables under the all-encompassing scope of the
> Her-stellen
> of the Gestell EVEN THOUGH the self-assertion of Herstellen has to rely on the
> medium of money and markets in order to "deliver" (zustellen). With this, the
> question of money and markets is already taken care of for Heidegger's
> thinking. As
> far as I know and have read, there is nothing further to be found in his one
> hundred
> volumes of Gesamtausgabe. Compare this with the thorough-going analyses of the
> being
> of commodites and money and markets to be found in Marx's _Kapital_,
> _Grundrisse_,
> _Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie_, _Theorien des Mehrwerts_, etc. Even a
> superficial acquaintance with Marx's thinking on money will persuade the
> reader that
> Heidegger's treatment of money is rather glib and rather lacking in
> unconcealing-power as a philosophical questioning of the phenomenon of money.
> The
> word of the poet, Rilke; is no match for a philosopher's thinking-through of
> the
> phenomenon of money, but Heidegger is content to make do with it. (From the
> other
> side, Marxists get impatient with Marx's subtle depths and accuse those who
> take on
> the philosophical Auseinandersetzung with Marx's thinking on money of being
> mere
> "Marxologists", i.e. Marxists are even more narrow-minded and incapable in
> their
> thinking than loyal adherents to Heidegger.)

I am most puzzled at the dependence on money as the transparent key to
social exchange, and the foundation for Gewer. No less so at the translation
of Eros to money in something more than an obvious regimentation in Gestell.
If I have already forgotten (perhaps again) your disputation of this,
pre-apologies.

 Marx is a scientist of money and rounds up things and labor under the
rubric of monetary calculation. This to me is a sordid reductionism along
the lines of the general flattening out of meaning. The end of "What are
Poets for?" prospects something beyond the will to will, yet out of the will
to will, "the willing of the more venturesome..." (whatever that means).


> ME:
> What I therefore propose is that the dimension of social market relations has
> to be
> INTERPOSED TRANSVERSELY between Mensch and beings in the relation of
> Herstellen
> (producing, bringing forth into presence). Considering the following diagram:
> 
> 
>                          Beings as such
                                   l
                          Vor-     l Her-
                       stellen     l stellen
                                   l
                                   l
>            Mensch ------------ Money ------------- Mensch
                                   l
                                   l
                                   l
                                   l
                                   l
>                               Mensch
> 
> There is an interlocking of Gestell and Gewinnst, with the latter signifying
> here
> the manifold of social relations enabling gain, and the former signifying the
> manifold of possibilities of Her-stellen enabled by technological know-how
> (Vor-stellen). Only by interposing a cross-bar in the vertical dimension of
> Herstellen is it possible to genuinely consider the social relations of the
> market
> and allow them to come to light as phenomena in their own right. Only through
> the
> mediation of the medium of money, a reified social relation, is capitalist
> Herstellen at all possible, both ontically and ontologically. "Money" is not
> simply
> "Herstellen", nor is it simply "Vorstellen"; it is a phenomenon sui generis.
> 
> The horizontal social relations among human beings unfold in a multiplicity
> for
> which the use of the singular term, "der Mensch", no longer suffices.
> "Menschen" now
> have to be considered and their social relations. It will not do simply to
> mention
> "I and you, we and you" and subsume these phenomena under the one dimension of
> Herstellen.
> 
> Heidegger says that the Mensch of subjectivism, of the will to will, is
> without
> protection ("schutzlos" Rilke _Pilgerfahrt_ V.13). "Als der Vor- und
> Herstellende
> steht er [der Mensch] vor dem verstellten Offenen." (S.270/289). Notice that
> here
> there are no less than three 'stellen'-words in a single short sentence. It
> translates poorly as "As the being who imagines and produces, the human stands
> before the obstucted open."
> Vorstellen is how human beings bring beings before themselves in consciousness
> in a
> representing image through "cogitation".
> Herstellen is how human beings bring beings forth into presence through making
> them
> (Gk. _poiaesis_).
> This Vorstellen and Herstellen as a metaphysical "basic position" of modern
> humankind in subjectivism "verstellt" (obstructs) the view of the open, i.e.
> the
> view of the open truth of being as granted by propriation.
> 
> But then what about the horizontal relations between and among Mensch und
> Mensch?
> Don't these relations, too, obstruct the view of the open? To get these social
> relations explicitly into view, one has to be prepared to twist Heidegger's
> thinking
> away from its exclusive focus on the vertical relation of Mensch und Sein.

I don't think of 'Mensch' as vertically related to Sein. Rather, the
relationship to Sein is within everydayness, within the transparent ways in
which Dasein cares for and copes with its world.  That includes social
relations, various attunements to others in shared values, practices,
interpretations, understandings.

>> HS:
>> The history of social capital and technology are so involved with one
>> another and so informing of each other's essence that I have to see social
>> relations weaving in and out of Gestell.
> ME:
> And this seeing has to be explicit, unfolded.
> 
>> The in-piece is our unthought, das Man, going thru the motions,
>> free-floating, modern lifestyles. Falling-in-with an Auseinandersetzung as
>> competition, that is enframed outside of further considerations than
>> "winning."
>> 
>> The out-piece is mostly the "shadow" that Heidegger speaks of in "The Age of
>> the World Picture," which is also a sense of denial, and Nothing... and what
>> I call "Empty Protest."
> ME:
> With "shadow" you are presumably referring to:
> "Ein fluechtiger Wolkenschatten ueber einem verborgenen Land, das ist die
> Verduesterung, die jene von der Heilsgewissheit des Christentums vorbereitete
> Wahrheit als die Gewissheit der Subjektivitaet ueber ein Ereignis legt, das zu
> erfahren ihr verweigert bleibt." (Addendum 9 S.103/109)
> "The fleeting shadow of a cloud over a hidden land, that is the darkening
> which that
> truth prepared by the Christian certainty of salvation, as the certainty of
> subjectivity, lays over an event (Ereignis) of which it is denied [any]
> experience."
> 
> That's okay for the vertical dimension.

No, I am referring to the 'gift' of the gigantic, the last three paras of
"The Age...":

"...This becoming incalculable remains the invisible shadow that is cast
around all things everywhere when man has been transformed into SUBJECTUM
and the world into picture.

...But man will never be able to experience and ponder this that is denied
so long as he dawdles about in mere negating of the age. The flight into
tradition, out of a combination of humility and prsumption, can bring about
nothing in itselfother than self-deception and blindness in relation to the
historical moment. ..."

(if I were a drinking man...)

>> HS:
>> I am more than ambivalent with regard to the Enlightenment: the king aint
>> dead, just translated implicitly into the disciplinary society.
> ME:
> We still have social power relations. We still have government. And we also
> have a
> thinking that thinks through and legitimizes certain kinds of social power
> relations
> which are then justified within the thinking of subjectivism.
> 
> Heidegger certainly does not want to abolish vertical relations of social
> power. He
> speaks, with echoes of Herakleitean _polemos_ of that Kampf (struggle) in
> which the
> issue of social ranking and rule is decided.

This is what is taken to task by Foucault. His examinations carry us forward
in thinking in ways that Heidegger was more than a little constipated.

>> HS:
>> Lately I have been wondering about the 'unity' of Dasein. I take away form
>> SuZ a concept of Dasein as nothing but cultural roles played out through the
>> skills and practices.
>> 
>> And that's just assuming that their is only one individual "living" within
>> the "Self."  What if their are a dozen parts to a Self? or a dozen Selves? I
>> expect something like this could prove helpful (the parts of the Self, not
>> the 12 selves).
> ME:
> Each existence is its very own, jemeinig, and holds together throughout its
> own
> timespace its own experiences which belong to it as its identity. Identity is
> to be
> understood as Zusammengehoerigkeit, as belonging-together.


As I grow older (sigh) this Zusammengehoerigkeit becomes more and more an
inkling...

other.
>> HS:
>> Can you say what you are meaning by this multiplicity of ontological
>> structures? I know you have three, I know they relate  by way of "person."
>> but what is the meta-ontological nature of multiple ontological structures?
>> 
>> I suspect it is given by the Greeks, particularly Aristotle's highly
>> sophisticated experiential thinking.
> ME:
> Aristotle's _pollachos legetai to on_ "being is said in many ways" is a hint
> at the
> multiplicity, literally, the many-foldedness of being. Aristotle himself has a
> fourfold that is further folded into sub-folds. The four folds are:
> i) the categories as ways of addressing beings qua beings (ten or more)
> ii) according to _dynamis_/_energeia_/_entelecheia_
> (power/power-at-work/having an
> end in consummate presence)
> iii) according the _alaethes_/_pseudos_, i.e. truth and falsity
> iv) according to _kath' auto_/_kata symbebaekos_, i.e. that which presences of
> itself and that which 'go along with' (_symbainein_) in presencing with
> something
> else (what is contingent, incidental, coincidental)
> 
> Both Plato and Aristotle also explore social relations, i.e. relations of the
> first
> and second person, but neither work out an explicit metaphysics for these
> social
> relations. The question of who-being or whoness (as opposed to whatness,
> essentia)
> arises is asking how I am present and how I bring myself into presence for
> myself,
> and how I present myself to others in a self-showing-off of myself.


doesn't Heidegger convert all of this in SuZ?

> ME:
> Thus, in a certain way, the question of whoness is the 'same' as the question
> of how
> beings come into presence in the third person, but now reflected back and tied
> back
> to the human being as self, which opens up the further question of how we
> present
> our selves to each other (you-and-I, freindship, constitution of a unity as
> we,
> etc.).
> 
> What unifies this multiplicity of folds is presence itself --
> Anwesen:Anwesendes --
> presence:what/who-presence. Presence encompasses all kinds of absence, the
> withdrawal of what and who has been, the refusal of what and who is to come,
> the
> presence of what is missing in its absence, etc. etc.
> 
>> HS:
>> This who-status of striving in relation to the who-status of the other is
>> called in the US:  "Keeping up with the Joneses." It is a cultural myth dear
>> to the hearts of capitalists as the driving force for gain by way of
>> inducing envy and covetousness as market value.
>> 
>> The question of who-ness, who-status, and in particular your lessons from
>> Aristotle slam into the formidable obstacles of the setup and the opening of
>> Weltbild. How do we gain a surety that one's worldsharing of excellences is
>> not simply a mutuality in representation, in powered perspective over and
>> against other conflicting lifestyles, in the ordered setup?
> ME:
> Probably we cannot gain any surety. All phenomena are ambivalent (cf. the
> section on
> Zweideutigkeit in SuZ), they all have at least two faces.
> 
> I call this "Keeping up with the Joneses" in my book "vermessenes Messen der
> Werstandskraefte" ("presumptuous measuring of the powers to stand as who"),
> and
> "mutuality in representation" "bestaetigende Bespiegelung"
> ("confirming/reassuring
> mirroring") At first and for the most part, we mirror each other's who-stands
> reassuringly whilst at the same time and hiddenly being in competition with
> the
> other's stand as who. To be caught in such a competition of who-stands is to
> be set
> up.
> 
> Nevertheless, there is the existential-ontological possibility of
> Selbst-Staendigkeit, a standing of one's self that stands in and by itself and
> is
> not lured by the flattery of the others, and maintains an ironic distance from
> the
> games of mutual measuring of who-stands. This is self-irony thought
> ontologically.
> 
> But we can never be sure. What appears to be matter-of-factness may turn out
> to be
> flattery, and what seems to be a genuine appreciation of the other's
> excellence may
> secretly be the most subtle form of flattery. Thus do we live in ambivalence
> with
> each other.

I am assuming your book is in German?  Do you know any good translators who
could bring it my way Englishly? heh, heh, heh.


>ME: ...
> 
> Is "dag" a word in colloquial American English? I didn't mean "dog".
> OED "dag":
> 4. A ‘character’, an extraordinary person, a ‘tough’ but amusing person (see
> also
> quot. 1941). Austral. and N.Z. slang.
> 1916 Anzac Book 47 Yes; ’Enessy was a dag if ever there was one!
> 1931 V. Palmer Separate Lives 222 Chook chuckled suddenly... ‘Ain’t he a dag?’
> 1940 F. Sargeson Man & Wife (1944) 64 Struth he was a dag, Bill was.
> 1941 Baker Dict. Austral. Slang 22 Dag, an amusing or eccentric person.
> Whence, dag
> adj., good, excellent: a dag at, expert at.
> 1945 N.Z. Geographer I. 35 He was a tough old dag, and no mistake.

No "dag" here to my knowledge; ah, the fateful lack of a common horizon.

> ME: There is such an incredible lot of New Agey nonsense about. What I do
approve 
> of is
> some of the very simple insights of Buddhism that stay on an everyday level
> (without
> the esoteric explanations of cosmic energies, powers, and all that other
> bullshit).

'Explanations' of cosmic energies and powers and other bullshit I see as in
the Nothing that awaits deeper thinking, and not the inexhaustible Gerade
and assertion... caught in the shadow and denial (above).

> ME: For me, that "everything is alive" is a Buddhist precept. It is quite
uncanny 
> that the oldest of all the so-called world religions is the Buddhist insight
>into nothing. This nihilist insight soon became religious and deistic, as if
>people needed more to hold on to.


Recently discovered a simple, almost silly, but also startling, thought
encompassing my holdings:

³The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for.
And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a
distance but live right in it, under its roof. What I want is so simple I
almost can¹t say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go
around. The possibility that kids might one day grow up to be neither the
destroyers nor the destroyed. That¹s about itŠ² Kingsolver

Michael, this is becoming an awakening for me,
thanks,
Henry



     --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005