Gestell
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| - | "[[Death]] is the possibility of the absolute impossibility of [[Dasein]]" --''[[Being and Time]]'' | ||
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| - | "[[Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy]]" | ||
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| - | The relations between ''[[Heidegger and Nazism]]'' are a [[controversial]] subject in [[philosophy]]. Some claim that his philosophy is pure from historical and political [[contingencies]]. Others, such as [[Jürgen Habermas]] or [[Theodor Adorno]], strongly disagree, claiming that his historical engagement for the Nazi party derived from his philosophical conceptions. | ||
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| - | logy is the conversion of the whole universe of beings into an undifferentiated "standing reserve" (''Bestand'') of energy available for any use to which humans choose to put it. Heidegger described the essence of modern technology as ''[[Gestell]]'', or "enframing." Heidegger does not unequivocally condemn technology: while he acknowledges that modern technology contains grave dangers, Heidegger nevertheless also argues that it may constitute a chance for human beings to enter a new epoch in their relation to being. Despite this, some commentators have insisted that an agrarian nostalgia permeates his later work. | ||
| - | In a 1950 lecture he formulated the famous saying ''[[Language speaks]]'', later published in the 1959 essays collection ''Unterwegs zur Sprache'', and collected in the 1971 English book ''Poetry, Language, Thought''. | + | '''''Gestell''''' (or sometimes '''''Ge-stell''''') is a [[German language|German]] word used by twentieth-century German [[philosophy|philosopher]] [[Martin Heidegger]] to describe what lies behind or beneath modern [[technology]]. |
| - | Heidegger's later works include ''Vom Wesen der Wahrheit'' ("On the Essence of Truth", 1930), ''Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes'' ("[[The Origin of the Work of Art]]", 1935), ''Einführung in die Metaphysik'' ("[[Introduction to Metaphysics (Heidegger)|Introduction to Metaphysics]]", 1935), ''Bauen Wohnen Denken'' ("Building Dwelling Thinking", 1951), and ''Die Frage nach der Technik'' ("[[The Question Concerning Technology]]", 1954) and ''Was heisst Denken?'' (''[[What Is Called Thinking?]]'' 1954). Also ''Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis)'' (''[[Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning)]]''), composed in the years 1936–38 but not published until 1989, on the centennial of Heidegger's birth. | + | ==Heidegger's notion of ''Gestell''== |
| + | Heidegger applied the concept of Gestell to his exposition of the [[essence]] of [[technology]]. He concluded that technology is fundamentally enframing. | ||
| - | ===Heidegger and the ground of History=== | + | As such, the essence of technology is Gestell. Indeed, "Gestell, literally 'framing', is an all-encompassing view of technology, not as a means to an end, but rather a mode of [[human]] [[existence]]". |
| - | Heidegger believed the Western world to be on a trajectory headed for total war, and on the brink of profound [[nihilism]] (the rejection of all religious and moral principles), which would be the purest and highest revelation of Being itself, offering a horrifying crossroads of either salvation or the end of [[metaphysics]] and [[modernity]]; rendering the West a wasteland populated by tool-using brutes, characterized by an unprecedented ignorance and barbarism in which everything is permitted. He thought the latter possibility would degenerate mankind generally into scientists, workers and brutes; living under the last mantle of one of three ideologies, [[Americanism (ideology)|Americanism]], [[Marxism]] or [[Nazism]] (which he deemed metaphysically identical, as avatars of subjectivity and institutionalized nihilism), and an unfettered totalitarian world technology. | + | |
| - | Supposedly, this epoch would be ironically celebrated, as the most enlightened and glorious in human history. He envisaged this abyss to be the greatest event in the West's history because it would enable Humanity to comprehend Being more profoundly and primordially than the [[Pre-Socratics]]. | + | The point that Heidegger was attempting to convey with Gestell was that all that has come to presence in the world has been enframed. Thus what is revealed in the world, what has shown itself as itself (the truth of itself) required first an enframing, literally a way to exist in the world, to be able to be seen and understood. Concerning the essence of technology and how we see things in our technological age, the world has been framed as the "standing-reserve." Heidegger writes, |
| - | ===Influences=== | + | <blockquote>Enframing means the gathering together of that setting-upon which sets upon man, i.e., challenges him forth, to reveal the real, in the mode of ordering, as standing-reserve. Enframing means that way of revealing which holds sway in the essence of modern technology and which is itself nothing technological. |
| + | </blockquote> | ||
| - | arrangement with Heidegger | + | Furthermore, Heidegger uses the word in a way that is uncommon by giving Gestell an active role. In ordinary usage the word would signify simply a display apparatus of some sort, like a book rack, or picture frame; but for Heidegger, Gestell is literally a challenging forth, or ''perform''ative "gathering together", for the purpose of revealing or presentation. |
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| - | ==See also== | + | |
| - | * ''[[Aletheia]]'' | + | |
| - | * [[World disclosure]] | + | |
| - | * [[Heideggerian terminology]] | + | |
| - | * ''[[Hölderlin's Hymn "The Ister"]]'' | + | |
| - | * [[Ontotheology]] | + | |
| - | * ''[[Heidegger Gesamtausgabe]]'' | + | |
| - | * [[List of Nazi ideologues]] | + | |
| - | * [[Martin Heidegger and Nazism|Heidegger and Nazism]] | + | |
| - | * [[Daseinsanalysis]] | + | |
| - | * [[Ernst Cassirer]] | + | |
| - | * ''[[Sous rature]]'' | + | |
| - | * [[Khôra]] | + | |
| - | * [[Hannah Arendt]] | + | |
| - | * ''[[Black Notebooks]]'' | + | |
| + | ==Later uses of the concept== | ||
| + | *[[Giorgio Agamben]] drew heavily from Heidegger in his interpretation of [[Michel Foucault|Foucault's]] concept of [[dispositif]] (apparatus). | ||
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Gestell (or sometimes Ge-stell) is a German word used by twentieth-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger to describe what lies behind or beneath modern technology.
[edit]
Heidegger's notion of Gestell
Heidegger applied the concept of Gestell to his exposition of the essence of technology. He concluded that technology is fundamentally enframing.
As such, the essence of technology is Gestell. Indeed, "Gestell, literally 'framing', is an all-encompassing view of technology, not as a means to an end, but rather a mode of human existence".
The point that Heidegger was attempting to convey with Gestell was that all that has come to presence in the world has been enframed. Thus what is revealed in the world, what has shown itself as itself (the truth of itself) required first an enframing, literally a way to exist in the world, to be able to be seen and understood. Concerning the essence of technology and how we see things in our technological age, the world has been framed as the "standing-reserve." Heidegger writes,
Enframing means the gathering together of that setting-upon which sets upon man, i.e., challenges him forth, to reveal the real, in the mode of ordering, as standing-reserve. Enframing means that way of revealing which holds sway in the essence of modern technology and which is itself nothing technological.
Furthermore, Heidegger uses the word in a way that is uncommon by giving Gestell an active role. In ordinary usage the word would signify simply a display apparatus of some sort, like a book rack, or picture frame; but for Heidegger, Gestell is literally a challenging forth, or performative "gathering together", for the purpose of revealing or presentation.
[edit]
Later uses of the concept
- Giorgio Agamben drew heavily from Heidegger in his interpretation of Foucault's concept of dispositif (apparatus).
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