Re: _Die Schere_, EJ and Technical Development

[03643518060-0001@t-online.de (christopher brown)]

Bertil Haggman wrote:
> 
> Possibly but Erdgeschichte und Erdgeist
> would have to be analysed together with
> Erdvergeistigung. EJ has said: "Das Ziel
> der Technik is Erdvergeistigung" and I
> have problems, I gladly admit, to understand
> what is meant.

p.18 The Question Concerning Technology by Martin Heidegger.

...Man can indeed conceive, fashion, and carry through this or that in
one way or another. But man does not have control over unconcealment
itself, in which at any given time the real shows itself or withdraws.
The fact that the real has been showing itself in the light of Ideas
ever since the time of Plato, Plato did not bring about. The thinker
only responded to what addressed itself to him.
Only to the extent that man for his part is already challenged to
exploit the energies of nature can this ordering revealing happen. If
man is challenged, ordered, to do this, then does not man himself belong
even more originally than nature within the standing-reserve? The
current talk about human resources, about the supply of patients for a
clinic, gives evidence of this. The forester who, in the wood, measures
the felled timber and to all appearances walks the same forest path in
the same way as did his grandfather is today commanded by profit-making
in the lumber industry, whether he knows it or not. He is made
subordinate to the orderability of cellulose, which for its part is
challenged forth by the need for paper, which is then delivered to
newspapers and illustrated magazines. The latter, in their turn, set
public opinion to swallowing what is printed, so that a set
configuration of opinion becomes available on demand. Yet precisely
because man is challenged more originally than are the energies of
nature, i.e., into the process of ordering, he never is transformed into
mere standing-reserve. Since man drives technology forward, he takes
part in ordering as a way of revealing. But the unconcealment itself,
within which ordering unfolds, is never a human handiwork, any more than
is the realm through which man is already passing every time he as a
subject relates to an object.
Where and how does this revealing happen if it is no mere handiwork of
man? We need not look far. We need only apprehend in an unbiased way
That which has already claimed man and has done so, so decisively that
he can only be man at any given time as the one so claimed. Wherever man
opens his eyes and ears, unlocks his heart, and gives himsell: over to
meditating and striving, shaping and working, entreating and thanking,
he finds himself everywhere already brought into the unconcealed. The
unconcealment of the unconcealed has already come to pass whenever it
calls man forth into the modes of revealing allotted to him. When man,
in his way, from within unconcealment reveals that which presences, he
merely responds to the call of unconcealment even when he contradicts
it. Thus when man, investigating, observing, ensnares nature as an area
of his own conceiving, he has already been claimed by a way of revealing
that challenges him to approach nature as an object of research, until
even the object disappears into the objectlessness of standing-reserve .
Modern technology as an ordering revealing is, then, no merely human
doing. Therefore we must take that challenging that sets upon man to
order the real as standing-reserve in accordance with the way in which
it shows itself. That challenging gathers man into ordering. This
gathering concentrates man upon ordering the real as standing-reserve.

This is generally how I understand erdvergeisterung. It means more,
naturally, than what Heidegger represents here. But at the same time it
seems that it is both for Junger and Heidegger a process of
unconcealment/Being/Sein and Schicksal. To me that means that it is a
process of fate that the earth as a whole must pass through. The
"Spiritualisation of the Earth" might be a poor translation, but it is
"the task that must be fulfilled." This is why nihilism is not observed
as an end by Nietz., Heidegger, and EJ. It is only a nessecary phase we
must pass through.

> > But in the end it all remains simulation, even if they take on a "life
> > of their own" they will never have a soul, that is as humans and animals
> > have been given them. Their beings would simply be creations of mankind,
> > which in the end means that we are the ends and means, but I don't think
> > few "healthy" people would be willing to make this claim.
> 
> You are of course correct here and I think
> it may be here that Warwick fails. Will
> return on this subject when I have a
> copy of the book. Will also return on
> the subject of nanotechnology.
> 
> > I would certainly agree, what is your interpetation of the "neue
> > Erscheinung" which we are waiting for. Is this the new appearance of the
> > divine after two hundred plus years of Nihilism?
> 
> Would you please elaborate on
> "neue Ersheinung".

This is a term which EJ uses in die Schere, which we will certainly come
across with in the next reading. I believe it means a revelation. Not so
much in the sense of the Book of Revelations, but more in the sense of
Hölderlin's "wo die Gefahr waechst, da waescht das Rettende auch." In
other words that Being has the remedy at hand for the dangers of the
time. This would correspond in nature to the fact that poisonous plant
always have there antidotes nearby.

This for me then is the task of these great Authors. They are seeking
and to a greater or lesser degree have found a language to describe the
human experience in spiritual terms. 
 
I hope this clarifies those points a little. The idea is to develope
these ideas and make them "my own" so please forgive any mistakes. 

Looking forward to Your response,

with kind regards on this day of Mourning.
Abdalbarr.