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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'

Heidegger:dominion over the earth « Previous | |Next »
April 8, 2005

Chapter 14 of Heidegger's Nihilism book (vol.4 of Nietzsche) is entitled 'The Statement of Protagoras'. The statement is that:

"Man is the measure of all things, of things that are, that they are, of things that are not, that they are not."

Suprisingly, Heidegger argues that there is little trace here of a subjectivist metaphysics in which being as such has to be orientated by the self-posited ego as subject. This is what we find in Descartes. Heidegger says though Descartes' metaphysics is not independent of Greek metaphysics, his metaphysics is essentially removed from it. That makes the pre-Socratic metaphysics of Protagoras something other to the metaphysics of modernity.

I'm in no position to judge Heidegger's interpretation of Protagoras. I do remember that Protagoras was commonly interpreted along subjectivist lines by those analytic materialist philosopher enamoured of a modernist physicalist metaphysics. We will put Protgaoras to one side.

That then leaves us with the question: where does the subjectivist metaphysics come from in modernity? Descartes surely, is my quick response. In his Discours of Method(1636), Descartes spoke without equivocation of men as "the masters and possessors of nature." Not only is nature a mindless or soulless pile of inert things which, through the cultivation of knowledge, human beings are entitled to master and possess, but the bodies of human beings are visualized and represented as a machine.

Heidegger thinks of Descartes' metaphysics in terms of will to power and dominion over the earth.

Suprisingly, Heidegger mentions Machiavelli but not Francis Bacon, even though Bacon was, along with Descartes, the other master shaper of modernity as the age of technology. Bacon, like Descartes, sought a new and apodictic foundation of human knowledge based on the liberation of man from the ancient and medieval tradition of the West.

Bacon was the intellectual harbinger and architect of the modern age of science, technology, and the utilitarian economy: he is "the first philosopher of the modern age" to generate the technological and industrial ethos of modernity. Bacon upheld the convergence of theory and practical operations, of knowledge and utility, and of knowing and making. "Domination" and "utility" are the guiding ethos.

Now the Baconian conception of technology as instrumentum has been overtaken by "autonomous technology" since technology has now become end itself rather than means as ends are subverted by means. As the latter Heidegger pointed out the essence (Wesen) of technology (Technik) is not technological. Technology is no longer the application of the mathematical and physical sciences to praxis but is rather a form of praxis in and of itself The idea that technology is applied knowledge and instrumentum is now obsolescent. Technology indeed "discloses" and "enframes" the being of man and the world. In the age of technology as "enframing" (Gestell), there is a "reverse adaptation" between man "the master" and the machine "the servant."

Still it is suprising that Heidegger does not mention Francis Bacon in his tracking of a technological metapahysics in early modernity.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:25 AM | | Comments (0)
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