Subject: RE: Liberal vs. social democracy - Gestell/Gewinnst
Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2003 17:54:56 +0100
From: "Bakker, R.B.M. de" <R.B.M.deBakker-AT-uva.nl>


Malcolm wrote:

What is ontical is what is known, and what is known are factical 
entities, or beings as a whole,


   Things yes, but not das Seiende im Ganzen (world), which is only
   disclosed in fundamental mood. We can never bring the whole of
   things in front of us, just as we cannot bring the whole of our
   Dasein in front of us, because to Dasein belongs as extremest
   possibility: being-no-more.
   (cf. also Husserl's Abschattung)   

   Metaphysically, from Plato to Nietzsche (more or less), this is
   answered to by an infinite knowing. Now could be seen that onto-
   (all that is, insofar it is) and theo- (the highest being) form
   ONE procedure: onto-theo-logy. 
   All metaphysical thinking is aware, that human knowing is finite,
   and as such it is measured against infinite knowing. 
   
   We have, first, to re-think (because it is already-thought) this
   metaphysical structure, in order to be able to estimate - by way
   of destruction - Heidegger's no longer metaphysical concepts of
   finiteness, possibility (etc.) in BT. 

I actually think Jud is closer to 
correct usage than you Anthony, but maybe I'm just being pedantic.
As far as I know Heidegger's fundamental ontology describes the meaningful 
structure of our ontical understanding of factical existence, it's an 
ontology of human understanding as the understanding of being. All 
factical things like corporations are understood ontically in one way 
or another, and I don't see the problem with understanding the 
regimentation of corporatism in terms of the ontological structures of 
Gestell and das Man. I'd tend to agree that if corporations are part of 
a historical globalising network of order that constantly challenges us 
all forth into the uniformity of the one form of subjectivity, the 
they-self, then you might say 'that they regiment us according to Das 
Mann'.

To frame your rebuttal in terms of 'the ontological is not "effected" 
or "brought about" by ontic [factical] entities' would seem to me to 
completely miss the point that ontical knowledge of factical beings is 
already ontologically structured. There is no dualism here between the 
'ontological' on one side and the 'ontical' on the other, they are ways 
of knowing about the same thing, or things in general. Any ontical 
understanding of a factical corporation can be understood 
ontologically, in this case in terms of Gestell and das Man. You are 
still thinking in logical categories Anthony, try thinking 'vertically' 
instead but in a holistic sense.

> to which Henry responded that existentials are not empty universals 
> but rather are historically and concretely manifested. But aren't you 
> giving essentially the same response now that I gave then - that 
> gestell is how the world (and everything in it) has already been 
> casted, and therefore cannot be identified with any entity or entities 
> in the world, or opposed to others? What then would be the point of 
> the anti-corporatism espoused by those like Henry Scholar and 
> healantHenry, if the world is already casted prior to any ontic entity 
> like a corporation?

So I have no idea whatsoever by what you mean when you frame your 
question with: 'if the world is already casted prior to any ontic 
[factical] entity like a corporation?' What is this a priority and is 
it exclusive? Existentials are the meaningful and temporally 
articulated structures of Dasein's ontical understanding of its own 
historically and concretely manifested factical existence. That's the 
basic meaning of phenomenology as a descriptive analysis of one's own 
phenomenal world. We can't help but identify the ontological structures 
of this ontology in those entities that as a whole form the totality of 
what we ontically know as world and self. The 'ontological' is nothing 
other than this world we live in, and what else is there?




   SuZ par 5, p. 15:  
   "Das Dasein ist zwar ontisch nicht nur nahe oder gar das nächste - wir sind
   es sogar je selbst. Trotzdem oder gerade deshalb ist es ontologisch das Fernste."

   When it is so, that the ontical (near) IS the ontological (remote), and Dasein
   even is this connection of ontics and ontology, then ontological distinction a la
   rigueur would mean: schizophreny. And so it is. Oblivion of being means: the
   relation of ontics and ontology is problematic, and that means: man is problematic.
   If that would not be so, why and how could ever be asked in terms of Dasein, with
   help of a radically new conceptuality: existentials instead of categories?
   That's also why no Greek inspiration as such can help understanding BT. Compare
   though BT's motto. (Wieder-holung)

   (The modern primacy of Seiendes (the extant) above Sein, is itself ontologically 
   founded: in the sense of being as being extant. It works so that we think that
   there are only things and nothing else, and that also we are just a thing)

> But if such possible corportments under gestell can be concretely 
> analyzed all the way down to the power of corporations or of US 
> foreign policy, then what's wrong with what I tried to show - namely, 
> that some ontic entities manifest gestell more than others? Isn't that 
> essentially the same thing? The only difference is that for me, 
> governments are the ontic entities which manifest gestell more than 
> corporations.

You are free to interpret as you will. My emphasis would be more on the 
corporation and government as manifestations of the same globalising 
form of modern subjectivity rather than trying to say that corporations 
don't have anything to do with the metaphysical ordering of beings that 
has apparently been under way since the ancient Greek inception and 
that culminated in the global technological ordering of beings evident 
since Nazism collapsed into the modern nihilism of the will to will.

> Michael (if I understand him correctly) has argued that capitalistic 
> social relations do not fall under gestell, because they are not 
> subject to lawlike calculable predictability, even by the 
> sophisticated standards of advertising and marketing. I still have 
> lingering doubts about that (as I told him earlier), since even modern 
> physics - a paradigmatic manifestation of gestell - has long since 
> given up Newtonian determinism in favor of statistical probability, 
> even for the most basic subatomic phenomena.

Yes, well I come to Gestell with a similar Heideggerean focus on the 
modern scientific project with its origins in Aristotle through 
Descartes, Newton and Kant and on to the interesting problems of 
quantum physics. But there's another side to the thinking of Gestell, 
and that's Heidegger's Nietzsche and the will to will as exemplified by 
the Nazi disaster. This problem of Gestell is much wider than simply 
the 'lawlike calculable predictability' of pure physics. The Nazi's 
wrested order from chaos by willing yet more chaos, and although this 
was a form of political bootstrapping it wasn't rocket science, yet it 
certainly produced a lot of rocket scientists and some of the finest 
minds in quantum physics were in the service of its will to order 
chaos. And in many ways the Nazis set the sophisticated standards for 
modern advertising and marketing, although they learnt a lot from the 
US and British propagandists.

You've opened up an interesting problem here Anthony, how do we think 
both the 'mathematical' problem and the will to will together in the 
enframing of our modern technological world view? How do we think 
science and politics as the same? Or Kant and Nietzsche?

    As i said, Nietzsche sees the democratic instinct also in physics:
    universal atomism, and also in the crisis of traditional harmony:
    the primacy of certain intervals is charged just like any other primacy.
    The devaluation of all values cannot be but gleichschaltend, democratic:
    no differences, the majority is afraid of differences. 
    What science could have been without this, i really would not know, but
    a restart with Leibniz and Goethe (anti-Newton) will probably be worthwhile
    some day. 

    Why do you think will-to-will and nazism have a special relationship?
    When Heidegger saw that the nazi's were not interested in the direction
    his thinking took  - they appreciated rather Staudinger's direction  - 
    he knew all hope for a change had become idle. And that means: will to
    will was now inevitably everywhere, doesn't it?
   


 For Heidegger 
it all came down to the metaphysics of subjectness. However, I'm going 
to keep plowing the will to will to see where it goes so I'll leave the 
science to you for the moment, but I don't think these are two 
exclusive problems, they are equiprimordial and complementary if 
anything and I think we need to open the debate up to more questions 
rather than making ad hoc exclusive distinctions.

> So I'm willing to accept that something less than absolute 
> predictability can be a (dimmer) manifestation of gestell, and 
> therefore that capitalistic social relations can be a manifestation of 
> gestell to whatever extent that those social relations are orderable, 
> predictable, and controllable. I would just argue that political 
> social relations exhibit those characteristics of orderability and 
> controllability even more. Is that just my ideology creeping in too? 
> Well I'm willing to discuss that, but it does seem to me that the 
> power of the government to exclude alternatives by physical force is 
> ontically closer to the power of the dam to physically exclude the 
> Rhine from alternate routes. The power of corporations, it seems to 
> me, consists in ways of swaying and influence which fall short of the 
> kind of outright exclusive force present in the dam and government 
> power.

Cool, I'll buy that, as a tentative inclusive possibility, and what 
else do we have here? Like I said I'm not averse to opening up 
Heidegger's critique of modernity to include the problems of 
Gewinnst/Gewer, I just don't think these are exclusive of Gestell but 
more complementary if seemingly antagonistic ways of conceptualising 
the same ontological structure of our modern human understanding. But 
in order to do so we need to see at least the broad outlines of 
Heidegger's whole complicated 'world view'. I think perhaps we're just 
vaguely starting to do just that, but one should never underestimate 
that old Nazi's ability to think.

   that's the skandalon: that nobody can keep up, that he is miles ahead,
   and that he participated in that movement. Too much for modern intelligence!  

   cheers
   rene


Cheers,

Malcolm



 


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