Abstract
I propose an etymological translation of Ge-Stell, Heidegger’s word for the essence of modern technology, from its Greek and Latin roots as “syn-thetic com-posit[ion]ing,” which presciently portends our twenty-first century experience of the internetted WorldWideWeb with its virtual infinity of websites in cyberspace, Global Positioning Systems, interlocking air traffic control grids, world-embracing weather maps, the 24-7 world news coverage of cable TV-networks like CNN, etc., etc.—all of which are structured by the complex programming based on the computerized and ultimately simple Leibnizian binary-digital logic generating an infinite number of combinations of the posit (1) and non-posit (0). The sharp contrast between the global time-space technologically foreshortened into instantaneity and simultaneity and the radically local time-space of our situated historical existence—in short, the temporal-spatial tension between Ge-Stell and Da-Sein—is examined for ways and means of bringing them together in contemporaneous compatibility.
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- 1.
This talk, delivered on May 25, 2011 to the Heidegger Forschungsgruppe meeting in Messkirch, Germany, took as its example of virtually instantaneous global communication the raid on the compound of Osama bin Laden that took place in the early hours of May 2 East Asian time.
- 2.
Heidegger (1977b), 104. The citation is taken from the seminar at Le Thor in 1969.
- 3.
Ibid., 129. Citation taken from the seminar at Zähringen, 1973.
- 4.
Ibid., 126, Zähringen, 1973. The same point was already made in a rich note circa 1955, whose first sentence reads: “Im Wort ‘Gestell’ spricht die Versammlung des Stellens, in der ‘Versammlung’ spricht das Echo zum Logos, im ‘Stellen’ spricht das Echo der Thesis (Poiesis).” Heidegger (2009), 320; see also 327 and 365. Hereafter cited as GA76.
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
Ibid., 4/166.
- 8.
Ibid., 20/181.
- 9.
Here, stellen is translated in various idioms of “to set.” The typical translations of stellen are “put, place, set, stand,” with strong overlaps with the verbs setzen and legen.
- 10.
- 11.
Ibid., 24/17.
- 12.
Ibid., 27/19.
- 13.
Ibid., 61/173, citing from the essay “Wissenschaft und Besinnung.”
- 14.
Heidegger (1977b), 105–6.
- 15.
Ibid., 106.
- 16.
Ibid., 107.
- 17.
GA76, 307.
- 18.
GA76, 308.
- 19.
GA76, 307.
- 20.
GA76, 297.
- 21.
- 22.
Heidegger (1977b), 104.
- 23.
Ibid.
- 24.
Heidegger (1957), 27f./35.
- 25.
Heidegger (1957), 28f./36f.
- 26.
Ibid., 32f./40.
- 27.
GA76, 327.
- 28.
GA76, 255.
- 29.
GA76, 370.
- 30.
- 31.
Heidegger (1994), 45.
- 32.
Ibid., 46.
- 33.
Ibid., 53.
- 34.
- 35.
The adjective bodenständig is typically translated as “indigenous, native” so that the more abstract Bodenständigkeit etymologically suggests being native to a land or a nation and, even more starkly (and mythologically), having one’s roots in native soil. Whence the clear possibility of using this term for nationalistic and even for racist ends, as was the case in Nazi Blubo ( = Blut und Boden) propaganda. And Heidegger here is speaking directly to a post-war native German audience. But it should be noted that Heidegger first used the word often enough in the twenties in a phenomenological and so non-nationalistic context to connote the re-duction “back to the origins, roots, native ground” of original experience. This is important to note when we try to redirect his suggestions toward our own unique situation of being caught up in our twenty-first century Ge-Stell.
- 36.
- 37.
It might be noted here that Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who was born and raised not too far from Messkirch, also developed his poetic sense of the Germany for which he was willing to fight and die directly from schwäbischem Boden, inspired especially by the poetry of Hölderlin and Stefan George.
- 38.
- 39.
Ibid., 20/50.
- 40.
Ibid., 25f/55.
- 41.
Ibid., 27/56.
- 42.
Ibid., 26/55.
- 43.
Ibid., 28/56f.
- 44.
- 45.
Ibid., 161/160.
- 46.
- 47.
Ibid., 35/46f.
- 48.
Ibid., 36/48.
- 49.
Ibid., 37/48f.
- 50.
Ibid., 37/49.
- 51.
Ibid., 38/49.
- 52.
Ibid., 49/61.
- 53.
Ibid., 51/62.
- 54.
Ibid., 59/71. Emphasis added.
- 55.
Ibid., 52/64. Emphasis added.
- 56.
Ibid., 63/75.
- 57.
Ibid., 37/49.
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Kisiel, T. (2014). Heidegger and Our Twenty-first Century Experience of Ge-Stell. 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_9
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