Aspects of technicity in Heidegger's early philosophy: Rereading Aristotle's techné and hexis

Research in Phenomenology

Volumn 38, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 317-357

  Wolff, Ernst ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PRETORIA   (South Africa)

Author keywords

Aristotle; Habitus; Heidegger; Technics; Virtue

Indexed keywords

EID: 61149705284     PISSN: 00855553     EISSN: 15691640     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/156916408X336738     Document Type: Article

References (82)

1. "Vielleicht ist es für den, der gelernt hat, einen Autor zu verstehen, nicht mÖglich, das, was dieser selbst als das Wichtigste bezeignet, zur Grundlage der Interpretation zu nehmen." (Unless otherwise stared, all translations from German and Greek are my own; text abbreviations are appended.)
2. Cf. for example John Loscerbo, Being and Technology. A Study in the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Phaenomenologica 82 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981)
3. and Günther Seubold, Heideggers Analyse der neuzeitlichen Technik (Freiburg: Verlag Karl Alber, 1986).
4. Cf., for example, Hubert Dreyfus, "De la techné à la technique: le statut ambigue de l'ustensilité dans L'être et le temps," in Martin Heidegger, ed. Michel Haar (Paris: I'Herne, 1983), 283-303.
5. Franco Volpi has done a lot to make the findings of his Heidegger e Aristotele (Padua: Daphne, 1984) available for non-Italian readers in further studies, see "Dasein comme praxis: L'assimilation et la radicalisation heideggeriene de la philosophie pratique d'Aristote," in F. Volpi et al., Heidegger et l'idée de la phenomenology. Phaenomenologica 108 (Dortrecht: 1988), 1-42
6. and "Der Bezug zu Platon und Aristoteles in Heideggers Fundamentalversrändnis der Technik," in Kunst und Technik. Gedächtnisschrift zum 100. Geburtstag von Martin Heidegger, ed. W. Biemel and F. W. von Hermann (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1989), 67-91.
7. For Jacques Taminiaux, see "Poiesis et Praxis dans l'articulation de l'ontologie fondamentale," in F. Volpi et al., Heidegger et l'idée de la phenomenology, 107-26;
8. "Heidegger et les Grecs à l'époque de l'ontologie fondamentale," Etudes phénoménologiques 1 (1985): 95-112.
9. For Robert Bernasconi, see "The Fate of the Distinction between Praxis and Poesis" Heidegger Studies 2 (1986): 111-39
10. and "Heidegger's Destruction of Phronesis" Southern Journal of Philosophy 28, Supplement (1989): 127-48. In all three of these cases 1 have selected only what seems to me most useful for the current purposes from a much more abundant literature.
11. Cf. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philosophische Lehrjahre (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1977), 216.
12. Namely, "Die Auslegung des Daseins des Menschen hinsichtlich der Grundmöglichkeit des Miteinandersprechens am Leitfaden der Rhetorik," which is chapter three of part one: "Vorverständigung über die Bodenständigkeit der Begrifflichkeit auf dem Wege einer Explikation des Daseins als ln-der-Welt-sein in der Orientierung an aristotelischen Grundbegriffen."
13. According to "Ontologie des Lebens und des Daseins" in GA 22, §§65-66, Aristotle aimed at developing an ontology of life with his doctrine of the soul. The latter is defined, following De anima 402a6f: "sie ist so etwas wie der Seinsgrund des Seienden, das lebt" (GA 22: 184).
14. Cf. GA 18: 50: "Sprechen ist nicht primär und zunächst ein Vorgang, zu dem nachher andere Menschen dazukommen, so daß es dann erst ein Sprechen mit anderen würde, sondern das Sprechen ist in ihm selbst als solches Sichaussprechen, Miteinandersprechen mit anderen Sprechenden und deshalb das seinsmäßige Fundament der
15. For a usefull overview of Heidegger's ontologizing reappropriation of Aristotle's see Roberto Rubio "La relevance de la praxis en la ontologia del Dasein," Areté 15, no. 2 (2003): 303-23 (especially the summary p. 312)
16. and Volpi, "Dasein comme praxis: L'assimilation et la radicalization heideggeriene de la philosophie pratique d'Aristote."
17. "Dieses Man ist das eigentliche Wie der Alltäglichkeit, des durchschnittlichen konkreten Miteinanderseins. Aus diesem Man heraus erwächst die Art und Weise, wie der Mensch die Welt zunächst und zumeist sieht, wie die Welt den Menschen angeht, wie er die Welt ansprecht. Das Man ist das eigentliche Wie des Seins des Menschen in der Alltäglichkeit und der eigentlicher Träger dieses Man ist die Sprache."
18. Cf. The studies of Jean Greisch, Ontologie et temporalité. Esquisse d'une interprétation intégrale de Sein und Zeit. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994): especially 23-30
19. and Theodore Kisiel, "From intuition to Understanding: On Heidegger's Transpositions of Husserl's Phenomenology," in Heidegger's Way of Thought: Critical and Interpretative Signposts (London: Continuum, 2002), 174-86.
20. Cf. GA 20: 412: "Verstehen besagt hier soviel wie 'können' und 'können' bedeutet: bei sich selbst die Möglichkeit haben zu etwas. "
21. "in jedem Besorgen und in jedem Seienden, das durch die Sorge bestimmt ist, liegt a priori mit die Seinsart des 'Ich kann', und zwar ist es diese 'Ich kann' als Seinsverfassung des Daseins immer als verstehendes 'Ich kann'.
22. And hence the possibility for reading Heidegger's early philosophy as a "pragmatism," as was done for instance by Carl Friedrich Gethmann; see, for example, his "Heideggers Konzeption des Handelns in Sein und Zeit," in Heidegger und die praktische Philosophie, ed. Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert and Otto Pöggeler (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1988), 140-76.
23. It is true, as Theodore Kisiel indicates in "From Intuition to Understanding," that for Heidegger "[t]he primary given is the world and not things, the primary presence is meaning and not objects" (181) and that being or dwelling in this world of meaning is continuously energized by the "habit of our habitat" (182), so that "simply by living, or living thus simply, I acquire diese peculiar possessions, the habits of my habitat that constitute my most immediate having, the having of having-been whose effects persist, the present perfect a priori [reference to SZ 85.-EW] as my prepossession" (182). But of the process of the "acquisition" of "habit," which stands at the center of my concern, Heidegger speaks only obliquely, and it is only as such examined by Kisiel.
24. Cf. NB 15 : "Hantieren an, Bereitstellen von, Herstellen von, Sicherstellen durch, in Gebrauchnehmen von, Verwenden für, in Besitznehmen von, in Verwahrung halten und in Verlust geraten lassen. Das je diesen Weisen entsprechende Womit des verrichtenden Umgangs steht dabei jeweils in einer bestimmten Bekanntheit und Vertrautheit."
25. Michael Pakaluk concludes his discussion of in Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics. An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2005), 129-36, by proposing the following definition: "prohairesis is a rational ability; it operates from an all tilings considered perspective; it varies in effectiveness (resolve, strength); and it is essentially practical, in that it is directed at actions immediately within my power. It expresses a kind of practical judgment as regards the goodness or badness of things, in the very seeking of them" (135). This definition guides my remarks above.
26. For the double use of the word cf. Richard Kraut, Aristotle: Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 286.
27. We shall see later on that Heidegger used the word for in GA 19: 42. 22) Cf. EN 1139a35-b4.
28. I cannot go into the exegetical difficulties associated with Aristotle's distinction between and It will however be clear that my perspective on technicity tends to go in the direction of this passage of Aristode's on as governing I share Bernasconi's reading according to which "the for-the-sake-of, which governs praxis and belongs to it, is also the principle of poiesis" and this amounts to "understanding techne as piloted byphronesis through the proairesis. Thus phronesis also becomes concerned with technical issues and with intermediary steps" ("The Fate of the Distinction between Praxis and Poesis," 137-38).
29. I am thinking here of a single craftsman. Ir is unfortunately not difficult to imagine a skillfully produced artifact in which demands on the skill of a number of individuals might be very limited. One could think, for instance, of the work of laborers in car manufacturing plants who have been submitted to Fordist or Taylorist labor strategies. But I think that such a situation could be considered as one in which the skill of the workers has been suspended-or reduced in the phenomenological sense: put in brackets, incapacitated, without perhaps eliminating it as a potential. In any case, in such a motorcar construction plant, the real "technicians" would be the managers and engineers.
30. On deliberation in the see for instance EN 1112b29-32-what Aristotle writes here about I have drawn into justifying myself with the definition of
31. Cf R. Kraut, Aristotle: Political Philosophy, 287-88.
32. CE EN 1112b8-13: "Deliberation then is employed in matters which, though subject to rules that generally hold good, are uncertain in their issue; or where the issue is indeterminate, and where, when the matter is important, we take others into our deliberations, distrusting our own capacity to decide. And we deliberate not about ends, but about means." The absence of deliberation about ends will be problematized later in this essay.
33. The question of will be pursued further in §3 of this article.
34. See the subtitle of GA 19, §7c: und Die als Boden der Auslegung des Seins durch das On this text, see Volpi, "Der Bezug zu Platon und Aristoteles in Heideggers Fundamental Verständnis der Technik" (which also situates this theme within Heidegger's whole philosophy of technics) and Taminiaux, "Poiesis et Praxis dans l'articulation de l'ontologie fondamentale" 112-17.
35. A more recent treatment of the subject has been given by Bogdan Mincǎse: "Das Modell der Herstellung. Über den Bezug techné-eidos-logos in M. Heideggers Interpretationen zu Aristoteles," Studia phaenornenologica 4, no. 1-2 (2004): 127-50, see in particular his overview of the theme (based primarily on GA 24) in pp. 127-37.
36. "Und was hier in der Seele aufgedeckt wird und in ihr präsent ist, das is das des Hauses, das Aussehen, das "Gesicht" des Hauses, wie es einmal dastehen soll und welches seine eigentliche Anwesenheit ausmacht."
37. This formula comes from the title of §7c. See also the same page: "In der ist das der welche zunächst die der und sodann die der ist."
38. This idea of (design) that Heidegger derives from Aristotle is very close to that of Marx, when in Das Kapital (book 1, chapter V) he explains what human labor is in contradistinction to the activity of animals: "Wir unterstellen die Arbeit in einer Form, worin sie dem Menschen ausschließlich angehört. Eine Spinne verrichtet Tätigkeiten, die denen des Webers ähneln, und eine Biene beschämt durch den Bau ihrer Wachszellen manchen menschlichen Baumeister. Was aber von vornherein den schlechtesten Baumeister vor der besten Biene auszeichnet, ist, daß er die Zelle in seinem. Kopf gebaut hat, bevor er sie in Wachs baut" (my italics) (Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie. K. Marx, F. Engels, Werke, Band 23 [Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1974], 193). 35 GA 18: 221: "Aus dem Wie des Aussehens des fertigen Seienden in seinem Vorweggenommensein ist vorgezeichnet Gangart, Gangfolge und Gangrichtung der Herstellung."
39. In the passage of our discussion the question of deliberation is not touched on. In it, Heidegger translates with deliberation (Überlegung).
40. See my remarks above on Kisiel "From Intuition to Understanding," 181-82.
41. What is said here with the example of the carpenter should be complemented by EN 1104a7-10 (which will be discussed below), where Aristotle indicates that there is no that could determine what the should do in every particular circumstance. Having a general knowledge of the field of work informs the craftsman in a particular situation but it is not a question of simply applying the rules-it is a question of hermeneutically engaging with the situation in order to find the appropriate technical
42. Cf. Heidegger's use of the word Vorschrift (instruction) that could be read etimologically as I indicate.
43. I herein agree with Taminiaux; see his "Poiesis et Praxis dans l'articulation de l'ontologie fondamentale."
44. See my appropriation of the and in EN 1 140a3-5 above.
45. Cf. M. Pakaluk, Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, 104.
46. Translation of Roger Crisp, in the Cambridge texts in the history of philosophy series (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
47. A more literal translation is given by Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company 1985): "Virtue, then, is a state that decides, consisting in a mean, the mean relative to us, which is defined by reference to reason, i.e. to the reason by reference to which the intelligent person would define it. It is a mean between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency."
48. Cf. Pakaluk, Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, 107.
49. Cf. Pakaluk, Aristotles Nichomachean Ethics, 113.
50. Though one would have to qualify the last element, the purpose, since the is inscribed in the essence of practice as it could not be inscribed in production.
51. This conclusion has been anticipated by my interpretation above of the precision of technical work as being determined (see my discussion in sec. 2.2 above of Aristotle's comparison of precision for the geometer and for the carpenter).
52. For the purposes of the present essay I shall leave out the
53. Heidegger's reading of Aristotle's in the Physics, that covers the whole of the second part of GA 18, balances the first part in which Dasein as is analyzed, in order to form a unified ontological argument of this series of lectures.
54. Whereas I concentrate on the first part of GA 18, a commentary on the second part has been worked out by Charlorta Weigelt in "Logos as Kinesis: Heidegger's interpretation of the Physics in Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie" Epoché 9, no.1, (Fall 2004): 101-16.
55. For a global reading of the early Heideggers reappropriation of Aristotle's see Jussi Backmann, "Divine and Mortal Motivation: On the Movement of Life in Aristotle and Heidegger," Continental Philosophy Review 38 (2006): 241-61.
56. "Aussein auf eine bestimmte Seinsmöglichkeit oder seiner Negation, was aber im Sinne der Negation dasselbe ist: des Abhaltens davon, eigentlich zu sein, wie etwas sein möchte." This "being out after" (aussein auf) is the exact expression by which Heidegger characterized the facticial movement of life since the Natorp Bericht: "Der Grundsinn der faktischen Lebensbewegtheit ist das Sorgen (curare). In dem gerichteten, sorgenden 'Aussein auf etwas' ist das Worauf der Sorge des lebens da, die jeweilige Welt" (NB 14).
57. Metaphysial 4.1022bff : ("when the one makes and the other is made, in between them is the fact of making").
58. cf. also 179, where is called a "Grundbestimmung des Daseins des Menschen."
59. EN 1105b 19-21:
60. Heidegger will exploit a number of elements from the semantic field of the root "fass-": Fassung (composure); fassen (grasp, hold or grasp [figuratively], i.e., understand); gefaßt (calm, composed); gefaßt auf etwas (prepared for). The word Gefaßtsein should resound with these possibilities.
61. Jacques Taminaux, using especially GA 19, has worked out an interpretation of "The Interpretation of Aristotle's Notion of Areté in Heidegger's First Courses," in Heidegger and Practical Philosophy, ed. F. Raffoul and D. Pettigrew (Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 2002), 13-27.
62. CE GA 18: 180.
63. I use the notion of "reduction" here in the Heidegerrian sense as analyzed most clearly by Rudolf Bernet in "La réduction phénoménologique et la double vie du sujet," in La vie du sujet. Recherches sur l'interprétation de Husserl dans la phénoménologie (Paris: PUF (Epiméthée), 1994), 5-36.
64. However, it becomes apparent that the exact nature of the reduction by danger has not been clarified: does it come over me or do I bring it about? One finds a well-known example of the latter in §283 of Nietzsche's Fröhliche Wissenschaft.
65. See introduction to previous subsection.
66. Aristotle incidentally states explicitly in the same passage (EN 1103a 32) that one is to understand this acquisition of virtue by analogy to that of technical skill: one acquires virtues by doing virtuous things in order to acquire the of practicing virtues, just as one acquires a skill by practicing the skill in order to acquire the stable practical know-how.
67. The text from which Heidegger cites here (EN 1104a7-10) serves to explain the nature of precision to be expected from reflection on conduct. Aristotle states that "the that one can have concerning each single thing [form of action] can not be exact" and that one can therefore follow no general in the particular case, but should consider the occasion in itself He clarifies this idea by the example of two "it is just like in the case of medecine and navigation" This analogy is completely lost in Heidegger's reading, and it is exactly this that is my concern.
68. By this, I do not want to suggest that one should allow the other to be, as it were, virtuous in my place, neither do I negate the real possibility of entering into opposition to current values and ways of doing. But I ask whether the other is only part of the danger and not sometimes either my teacher in virtue or my companion in the exercise of it. Would the concession that the formation of depends on a social setting necessarily mean the impossibility of finding the mean, the dissolution into das Man?. Is it completely unimaginable that a real as Heidegger seeks it, could be socially formed? In any case, staring that virtue is formed only in opposition to the others rather than by social influence is very far from Aristotle's opinion.
69. For a useful bibliography of Heidegger's reappropriation of Aristotle's cf. J. Backmann, "Divine and Mortal Motivation," 259-60 n. 42.
70. "Unser In-der-Welt-sein ist immer charakterisiert durch diese Befindlichkeit des Gehobenund Gedrücktseins, und zwar so, daß wir uns in den Ausschlägen befinden, von einer Mißstimmung oder gehobenen Stimmung mitgenommen."
71. "Für unser Sein, charakterisiert durch die Jeweiligkeit, läßt sich keine einmalige und absolute Norm geben. Es kommt darauf an, das Sein des Menschen so auszubilden, daß es in die Eignung versetzt wird, die Mitte zu halten. Das besagt aber nichts anderes als den Augenblick zu ergreifen."
72. Translated usually as aptitude, Eignung could here also be taken to evoke the semantic field of eignen in the sense of possessing something, Aneignung, appropriation, or eigneleigen, one's own; introduced against the backdrop of the Jeweiligkeit, one could perhaps think of "daß es in die Eignung versetzt wird" as, "that it is moved to its ownness or Eigentlichkeit" The verb versetzen is also used in German in the sense of moving someone to feel in this or that way, and thus by using this verb Heidegger might be considered to be maintaining the link between and emotions.
73. It will become clear from the ensuing discussion of the distinction between Übung and Wiederholung that this claim is not only allowed for by the current text, but also supported by my preceding exposition of in §19 of GA 18.
74. It should be noted that Heidegger is here in contradiction with Aristotle who precisely illustrated the with reference to the of medicine and navigation.
75. "Das Gefaßtsein ist nicht ein beliebiges und unbestimmtes, in der liegt die primäre Orientierung auf den 'Ich bin da, es mag kommen, was will!' Dieses Da-sein, Auf-demPosten-Sein in einer Lage, seiner Sache gegenüber, das charakterisiert die Die also als eine Seinsmöglichkeit, die in sich selbst auf eine andere Möglichkeit bezogen ist, auf die Möglichkeit meines Seins, daß innerhalb meines Seins etwas über mich kommt, das mich aus der Fassung bringt."
76. Cf. for example Jean Grondin, "L'herméneutique dans Sein und Zeit," in Le tournant herméneutique de la phénomé nologie (Paris: Presses Universities de France, 2003), 38-56, especially 52-56.
77. Michel Haar has already shown that Heidegger's description of everydayness that underlies the whole of Sein und Zeit is "based on a presupposition that is non-phenomenological, since it does not depend on a description of the phenomena of the world, but on a preconceived idea of Dasein" as the authentic self (Soi propre). See Michel Haar, "L'énigme de la quotidienneté," in La fracture de l'Histoire. Douze essais sur Heidegger (Grenoble: Jérôme Million, 1994), 61-72 (citation, 66-67). The current essay is a contribution to an understanding of what is understood by Heidegger to be in contradistinction from this authentic self-at least that part of the everyday life that is the technical life-and how Heidegger went about to construct this preconceived idea oi Dasein.
78. I do not think that my analyses allow me to reject outright Heideggers notion of Verfallen and of Man, but it seems to oppose the ease with which he applies these terms categorically to everyday existence.
79. She draws of course from various other sources as well to develop her capabilities approach to a (partial) theory of justice, but see especially her "Aristotelian Social Democracy," in Liberalism and the Good, ed. R. B. Douglass, G. M. Mara and H. S. Richardson (New York: Routledge, 1990), 203-52
80. "Non-relative virtues. An Aristotelian approach," in The Quality of Life, ed. M. Nussbaum and A. Sen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 242-76
81. and "Aristode on Human Nature and the Foundation of Ethics," in World, Mind, and Ethics. Essays on the Ethical Philosophy of Bernard Williams, ed. J. E. Altham and R. Harison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 86-131.
82. I thank Will McNeill, Leopold Peeters, and Johan Strijdom for having read and commented on this article before its publication.