Extending Humanism & Heidegger's Hammer

[alice wellintown]

Comprehending that the proliferation of means brings about the
disappearance of the ends, we have become preoccupied with rediscovering a
purpose or a goal. Some optimists of good will assert that they have
rediscovered a Humanism to which the technical movement is subordinated.
The orientation of this Humanism may be Communist or non-Communist, but it
hardly makes any difference. In both cases it is merely a pious hope with
no chance whatsoever of influencing technical evolution. The further we
advance, the more the purpose of our techniques fades out of sight. Even
things which not long ago seemed to be immediate objectives - rising living
standards, hygiene, comfort - no longer seem to have that character,
possibly because man finds the endless adaptation to new circumstances
disagreeable. In many cases, indeed, a higher technique obliges him to
sacrifice comfort and hygienic amenities to the evolving technology with
possesses a monopoly of the instruments necessary to satisfy them. Extreme
examples are furnished by the scientists isolated at Los Alamos in the
middle of the desert because of the danger of their experiments; or by the
would-be astronauts who are forced to live in the discomfort of
experimental camps n the manner so graphically described by Jungk.

But the optimistic technician is not a man to lose heart. If ends and goals
are required, he will find them in a finality which can be imposed on
technical evolution precisely because this finality can be technically
established and calculated. It seems clear that there must be some common
measure between the means and the ends subordinated to it. The required
solution, then, must be a technical inquiry into ends, and this alone can
bring about a systematization of ends and means. The problem becomes that
of analyzing individual and social requirements technically, of
establishing, numerically and mechanistically, the constancy of human
needs. It follows that a complete knowledge of ends is requisite for
mastery of means. But, as Jacques Aventur has demonstrated, such knowledge
can only be technical knowledge. Alas, the panacea of merely theoretical
humanism is as vain as any other.

"Man, in his biological reality, must remain the sole possible reference
point for classifying needs," write Aventur. Aventur's dictum must be
extended to include man's psychology and sociology, since these have also
been reduced to mathematical calculation. Technology cannot put up with
intuitions and "literature." It must necessarily don mathematical
vestments. Everything in human life that does not lend itself to
mathematical treatment must be excluded - because it is not a possible end
for technique - and left to the sphere of dreams.
Who is too blind to see that a profound mutation is being advocated here? A
new dismembering and a complete reconstitution of the human being so that
he can at last become the objective (and also the total object) of
techniques. Excluding all but the mathematical element, he is indeed a fit
end for the means he has constructed. He is his essence. Man becomes a pure
appearance, a kaleidoscope of external shapes, an abstraction in a milieu
that is frighteningly concrete - an abstraction armed with all the
sovereign sings of Jupiter the Thunderer.
from Ellul's TS

The Hammer
http://hammer.ucla.edu/
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