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Logos and the Essence of Technology

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The Multidimensionality of Hermeneutic Phenomenology

Part of the book series: Contributions to Phenomenology ((CTPH,volume 70))

Abstract

The present study takes up Martin Heidegger’s claim that today’s technoscientific reality cannot be properly understood unless seen as the issue of a 2,300 year “incubation.” Against long-lived clichés of romanticizing archaism—the “nostalgia for Greece” for example—this claim here appears in light of a consistently Pauline-Johannine futurism.

Accordingly, modern technology, that is “metaphysics” itself, is to be envisioned from a vantage point where, above all, world and language are known to arise from one and the same constitution, as implied in the key terms of logos and poiesis. Hence there must once again be talk of “the Greeks”: respecting Heidegger’s Sache as well as meditating upon his methods.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Heidegger (1977a), 10.

  2. 2.

    See, e.g., Kockelmans (1985), 173.

  3. 3.

    Heidegger (1996), first section.

  4. 4.

    On this, see Müller (1976), 22f.,with further references. The concept of “lifeworld,” in its therapeutic intention emphasized there, is shown in its provenance from Heidegger’s early lecture courses by Schmitz (1996), 19f.

  5. 5.

    Cf., e.g., Heidegger (1977b), 48.

  6. 6.

    See, for example, Heidegger (1984), 179.

  7. 7.

    On this see Babich (1993), 239–260.

  8. 8.

    Heidegger (1959), 107.

  9. 9.

    See here Heidegger (1994), 62ff.

  10. 10.

    Stellen corresponds to the verb “to sist,” taken in its old, broad sense: “to cause to stand, to order one before a court, to place or posit, etc.” OED. One may add that versions such as ‘positionality’ are utterly misleading, all the more so because the term pertains to Helmuth Plessner’s anthropological definition of human specificity as eccentric positionality.

  11. 11.

    On the Heidegger-Jünger relationship in general, see Franco Volpi (1990), 9–45. Here, 32 for Jünger’s reaction to Gestell.

  12. 12.

    Such use of the term Gestell would then be datable as subsequent to “The Origin of the Work of Art” (1936), where it had simply designated the “thetic” stance of the artwork in the strife of world and earth. Thus 1938, as the the time of Heidegger’s renewed (and by then decidedly critical) reflection upon Jünger’s “worker” seems to suggest itself. Precision of insight into Heidegger’s inner history during and after the Hitler empire seems occasionally hampered by negligence of Friedrich Georg Jünger’s pivotal role therein, especially with regard to the book Die Perfektion der Technik (2010 [1939]) and its significance for Heidegger’s changing view of technology: F. G. Jünger’s name is absent from, e.g., Zimmerman (1990); Milchman and Rosenberg (1996); Rockmore (1992); Rockmore and Margolis (1992); Macann (1996); Pöggeler (1994); Jamme and Harries (1992); Seubold (2000), 119–132.

  13. 13.

    Heidegger (1977a), 73f.; see also Heidegger (1967), 271.

  14. 14.

    Humboldt (1961), 30. The import of Heidegger’s references to Humboldt, particularly in light of the closing pages of his On the Way to Language, has frequently been underestimated. Cf. the author’s study, Schmid (1999), 92–98.

  15. 15.

    This and what follows: Heidegger (1977a), 6ff.

  16. 16.

    Compare, e.g., Met. I, 2, 1013a 31 with De gen. et corr. I, 7, 324 b 13 and De anima III, 5, 430a 12. Occasionally, as at Met. VIII, 6, 1045a 30f., Aristotle unhesitatingly drops all talk of finality to name the efficient cause as solely responsible for any transition from the possible to the actual in the shaping of matter (thereby approaching, once again, the Platonic identification of physis with poiesis from Symp. 205b).

  17. 17.

    See, e.g., Schürmann (1987), 224: “Unfortunately for conceptual clarity, this is where Heidegger’s language follows Hölderlin’s most closely.”

  18. 18.

    It may be observed that the silver chalice is Aristotle’s own example when characterizing the material cause: see Met. V, 2, 1013a 25 f. The fact that deliberation, which would expected to be phronesis, is shifted to logos seems due to the meaning assigned to Parmenides’ fr. 7,5 DK.

  19. 19.

    Heidegger (1975), 76.

  20. 20.

    See, e.g., Lacoue-Labarthe (1987), 87; Großmann (1996), 198.

  21. 21.

    Diels and Kranz (1951).

  22. 22.

    See, for example, Heidegger (1959), 170. Held (1970), 162–206, while emphasizing Heidegger’s philological merit in elucidating “the original meaning of the word ‘logos’” (204), does not mention fr. 93. Similarly, Bröcker (1965). See Kahn (1979), 43.

  23. 23.

    See De Pythiae oraculis, 21, Mor. 404 HD.

  24. 24.

    Cf. Marcovich’s discussion: “The saying seems to be an image (metaphor); its implication might be the following: ‘As Apollo neither speaks out all (100 %) nor conceals all (0 %), but shows forth a part of the truth (50 %), so also Logos inside things is neither inaccessible to human knowledge (0 %) nor self-evident (100 %), but requires an intellectual effort from men,’” etc. Marcovich (1967), 5l.

  25. 25.

    See also Delcourt (1955), 97.

  26. 26.

    Cf. Detienne (1994), 165ff.; see further Nagy (1996).

  27. 27.

    See Heidegger (1971), 97.

  28. 28.

    See Liesenfeld (1992), 199, n.l10, et passim. Subsequent divergences, precisely with regard to Platonism, are mentioned in Pöggeler (1994), 400f.

  29. 29.

    Cf. Boeder (1959); Böhme (1986).

  30. 30.

    Theunissen (2000).

  31. 31.

    See, e.g., Heidegger (1975), 77.

  32. 32.

    See Heidegger (1959), 64.

  33. 33.

    This essay was originally presented at the 2001 meeting of the Heidegger Circle convened by Babette Babich, Fordham University in New York City, on the 25th anniversary of the question Heidegger offered on April 11th 1976 to the meeting of the Heidegger Circle in Chicago.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Université de Lille 3, 24, rue de Thionville, F-59000, Lille, France

    Holger Schmid

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  1. Holger Schmid
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Correspondence to Holger Schmid .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Fordham University, New York, New York, USA

    Babette Babich

  2. St. Kliment Ohridski University, Sofia, Bulgaria

    Dimitri Ginev

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Schmid, H. (2014). Logos and the Essence of Technology. In: Babich, B., Ginev, D. (eds) The Multidimensionality of Hermeneutic Phenomenology. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 70. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01707-5_12

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