Heidegger

Cologne 13-Aug-2008

Heidegger’s diagnosis of the times:
The planetary destiny of technology racing out of control: das Gestell
und die “rasende Technik”.
Das herstellende, vorausberechnende Denken gewinnt die Oberhand –
pro-ductive, pre-calculative thinking gains the upper hand, so Heidegger
says.
We are, he claims, exposed to the outgrowths of an ontological seed
planted by the Greeks: _poiaesis_, Her-stellen, pro-duction, and that on
a planetary scale. Heidegger’s basic thesis: the Greeks understood being
as Hergestelltheit, producedness or having-been-produced, and this
legacy (with its will to productivist power) remains with the West over
two and a half millennia.

And yet, ironically, Heidegger is unwittingly speaking primarily of
German historical destiny, nowadays exported as the dole of the world.
Germany — that land enamoured with productionist ways of thinking, the
land of totally calculative thinking, of bureaucratized State control,
of an infinite tangle of regulations, i.e. the land of social justice.
Social well-being is to be her-gestellt, pro-duced — through the
State’s ‘measures’, its gründliche (thorough) regulations in every
sphere, its total caring, and its citizens’ more-than-willing submission
to this care.

Lacking an historical instinct for freedom, the implantation of a
democratic order by the Americans, against historical immune-reactions,
made post-war Germany only superficially a free society. Historical
genes for freedom cannot be implanted in a people. The ‘deep’ Germans
still like to complain about American ’superficiality’. So-called
American ‘individualism’ and its attendant ‘chaos’ of market interplay,
make Germans nervous. German Angst is assuaged through risk-aversive
behaviour and State legislative control.

A German politician is far more likely to have studied theology than
economics.

Rule of law (Rechtsstaatlichkeit) in Germany is not understood as law in
conformity with the inviolable freedom of groundless interplay among
free citizens, but as submission of the abstract person to universal
laws promulgated by formal democratic procedure. Formalism trumps any
substantial content of freedom, guaranteeing the positing of the State’s
will through formal, democratic procedure, which, by a sleight of hand,
is sold as ‘freedom’.

‘Critical’ German ‘intellectuals’ have still to meet the challenge posed
by the critique of the positivism of the Weimar constitution presented
by the committed Nazi, Carl Schmitt.

Social justice = total social welfare = total State control
Freedom traded in for secure, ‘happy’ living.
Kafka tells us this, not Heidegger’s Hoelderlin.

_-_-_-_-_-_-_- artefact text and translation _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- made by art _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ http://www.arte-fact.org _-_-_-_-_-_-_ artefact at t-online.de _-_-_-
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ Dr Michael Eldred (c)_-_-
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Posted on Sunday, August 17th, 2008 at 6:00 am
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