VLVL2 (15): A Frame around 'Em ...

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

>
> In his early philosophy ("Sein and Zeit") Heidegger uses the word "Zeug" 
> (stuff, things), but "Zeug" has also a pejorative meaning in German, like in 
> "dummes Zeug" (rubbish); it can also mean waste, trash, useless things. Later 
> Heidegger used "Gestell" instead of "Zeug". For me "Gestell" sounds more neutral, 
> it means the world of the artificial things, but in the context of Heidegger's 
> philosophy it sounds as pejorative as "Zeug".
> 
> Kurt-Werner Poertner.
> 



* Neither "Zeug" nor "Gestell" do refer to the material objects as such.
In both cases we have kinda early form of the actor/network-theory à la
Bruno Latour. So it's about socio-technical networks. In "Sein und Zeit"
[1927: cf. § 15], where the carpenter's hammer gives the paradigmatic example,
the Zen master from the Black Forest writes: "ONE stuff [ready at hand = 
"zuhandenes Zeug"] actually never simply 'is'. To the being of stuff ready 
at hand essentially belongs a totality of stuff where inside it can become the 
stuff at hand it actually is." In the later writings - this has to do with
Heidegger's "Kehre" as much as it has to do with Hiroshima - the same thought
is expressed on the macro-level of globalized technology: "Ge-stell means the
way of 'revelation-processing' [= Entbergen] that's dwelling in modern
technology, YET IT IS NOT SOMETHING TECHNICAL ITSELF" (Die Technik und die 
Kehre, 20). The ruling of the Ge-stell (Right, Umberto, the German word has no 
immediate connotation of screen-frame) becomes obvious with the rise of speed, 
the digital instrumentalization of language, or the danger of nuclear 
extinction (cf. Unterwegs zur Sprache: 165, 190, 263). For Heidegger nowadays 
deadly cybernetics do inherit the ambivalence of the decaying metaphysical
tradition. In this context, it's important to note that Heidegger is no naive 
luddite but shaking us to wake up and see what's at the stake. Or, with
Hölderlin whom Heidegger is quoting here:  "Wo aber Gefahr ist, wächst/
Das Rettende auch." Where danger becomes actual,
the rescueing also grows -- 

KFL +