Abstract
In The question concerning technology, Heidegger explores actuality in terms of danger. In chapter 3.6 ‘Who has forgotten Being?’ of his We have never been modern, Latour typically ridicules Heidegger and rejects no less than his whole thinking path. I contend that this criticism stems from an inadequate interpretation of Heidegger. By reading the latter in a modern register, Latour turns Heidegger into a modern thinker. Leaving aside the matter of modern elements in Heidegger’s thoughts, these are certainly not the elements that Latour brings forth. Indeed, to understand the danger that hides in actuality, if any, we should turn to Heidegger and read Latour from there.
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Notes
The Pope seems to agree with the philosopher rather than with the media: “Anyone who thinks that the only lesson to be learned [is] the need to improve what we [are] already doing, or to refine existing systems and regulations, is denying reality” (Francis, Fratelli tutti, §7).
This distance, however, is never absolute, as in an alleged ‘objective view from nowhere’.
Nonsense is the contrary of sense, its denial; Levinas’ absurdity is the absence of sense, its rejection.
“The absence of a common world we can share is driving us crazy” (Latour 2017: 2).
The fifth chapter of Paul van Tongeren, Friedrich Nietzsche and European Nihilism (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars 2018) is called ‘A threat that nobody appears afraid of’. I prefer ‘danger’ over ‘threat’ because the latter presupposes a subject that threatens, which is not what Nietzsche means.
When it is said that not wearing a mouth cap runs the danger of contamination, then this danger will in each case result within a certain time interval in either contamination or no contamination. Heidegger’s danger is not of that order and should be read in another register, as I will show.
Latour’s version of Cartesian dualism: “society gazing out at the natural world” (Latour 1999: 174).
Modern philosophy of history explains itself as the result of history as progress. This is also why modern sciences will introduce notions as evolution, economic or spiritual growth, developmental psychology, programmed instruction, etc.
This scheme also ‘represents’ the oscillation of God in Anselm’s Proslogion, where he calls God at the same time the highest one can think (the metaphysical scheme) and at the same time higher than what can be thought (the excess, outside). But this excess cannot just remain outside and leave the inside unaffected because then it would be no more than a complement. The oscillation however, was being kept ‘suppressed’ during metaphysics.
It is remarkable that different models in physics are mathematically translatable or derivable into each other, but their metaphors are not. Mathematics and metaphors, however, both seem to belong intrinsically to the paradigms. This becomes very clear when we deal with the particle and the wave models in quantum physics. Heisenberg completed the mathematics in a matrix, but ‘particle’ and ‘wave’ can never be translated into each other or united on any level–despite interesting attempts by scientists like David Bohm. It is all the more remarkable that this remarkable paradox has never been closely examined. Metaphors are just discarded as irrelevant. This still remains outside the ‘inside/outside’ scheme of science.
Metaphysics is not the result of a psychological faculty, of course. Metaphysics as a history, a mentality, and a system, seems to be the effect of what has the structure of a preference and a decision, as in an analogy.
As Jacques Derrida wrote to his Japanese friend: “What deconstruction is not? everything of course! What is deconstruction? nothing of course!” (Derrida 2008: 6).
The humanism that Heidegger criticizes belongs to traditional metaphysics. It treats human beings as “mere’ beings–animal rationale, for instance–instead of considering man as capable of ek-sistence, of hearing the call of Being. “In one respect, humanism overrates the role of man, placing him at the centre of the universe and assessing everything from man's point of view. In another respect, it underrates his role. It fails to recognize that man is not only one being among others, but the being that opens up a world, or beings as a whole, in the first place. For humanism, man is the spoilt child who thinks all the toys in the shop are for him. For Heidegger, man is the entrepreneur who founded and sustains the toyshop by resisting the temptation to consume its contents” (Inwood 2004: 102).
A radical example of this might be the following: Resurrection is an event whereas the empty grave is a fact. Without the theology of Resurrection, the empty grave remains a magic trick or a crime mystery. Holocaust, shoah, and Endlösung are three names of an event, the gas chambers are a fact.
(Vattimo 1993: 52). Gianni Vattimo hints at Heidegger’s critical philosophical allegiance to Kierkegaard. Although Kierkegaard was more critical of Hegel and Heidegger perhaps more critical of Descartes, Heidegger was doubtless influenced by Kierkegaard’s critique of metaphysics ‘in general’.
“In fact, among all the mutations that have affected the knowledge of things and their order, the knowledge of identities, differences, characters, equivalences, words–in short, in the midst of all the episodes of that profound history of the Same–only one, that which began a century and a half ago and is now perhaps drawing to a close, has made it possible for the figure of man to appear. And that appearance was not the liberation of an old anxiety, the transition into luminous consciousness of an age-old concern, the entry into objectivity of something that had long remained trapped within beliefs and philosophies: it was the effect of a change in the fundamental arrangements of knowledge. As the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end.
If those arrangements were to disappear as they appeared, if some event of which we can at the moment do no more than sense the possibility–without knowing either what its form will be or what it promises–were to cause them to crumble, as the ground of Classical thought did, at the end of the eighteenth century, then one can certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea” (Foucault 1989: 422).
This may well be one of the many transhuman scenarios.
This end is not a Hegelian end; it is not the ultimate Aufhobung that unites the whole of reality under one denominator. This end is, as far as we can think, an endless ending, a persistent erosion of the metaphysical system, of epistemological rigidity, and of theism.
The German Ereignis means event, what befalls. But Heidegger plays a word game here. With a hyphen, it also means ‘to mutually appropriate (each other)’–based on the translation of eigen as proper–and thus ‘to match each other,’ to ‘belong to each other’. Here, it is important to read Er-eignis as an event, not as a fact, a structure, or a system.
Being is where we belong (Nahe) but it is now far away from us (Ferne) because of technology; science is what we are all familiar with (Nahe) and yet it is what alienates us from our true vocation (Ferne), namely the appeal of Being.
It is remarkable that this title is absent in the bibliography of the original Nous n’avons jamais été modernes and nevertheless appears in the English translation. The English translation then erroneously refers to a quote as coming from The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. The reference ‘(1977b, 233)’ on page 65 should in fact be ‘(1977a, 233),’ referring to ‘Letter on Humanism’ in Basic Writings. As it is, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays counts only 182 pages. Since this only reference to The Question … is false, the title should not appear in the bibliography. One might argue that this is most unfortunate since that text would have allowed Latour to understand Heidegger a little better. This is, however, idle hope. After reading The Question Concerning Technology, Latour persists in reading technology in a technical way (Latour 1999: 174ff.).
This is not the only reference error in Latour’s rant. In the original French as well as in the English translation, Gianni Vattimo is called ‘Vatimo’ and in a quote from La fin de la modernité. Nihilisme et herméneutique dans la culture post-moderne (Le Seuil 1987)–‘(Vattimo 1987: 184)’ on page 168 (French) and 123 (English)–Heidegger’s Verwindung has become the non-word ‘Vermindung,’ again, in both the original French as well as in the English translation.
Remember the play between Nähe and Ferne. You could compare this with the theological humiliation/exaltation in Paul’s citation from a Christ hymn (Phil2:6–11) or the philosophical effacement/inscription Derrida’s trace.
The German das Wesen can be read as a verb or a noun. But to Heidegger, it always is a verb, even when it is grammatically used as a noun. In English translations, Heidegger’s Wesen will often be translated as essence, whether it is grammatically used as a verb or a noun. Das Wesen von then becomes ‘the essencing of’. Das Sein west becomes ‘Being essences’.
Therefore, to think technology as the sum total of all technical devices and strategies is a mistake. Latour makes this mistake (Latour 1999: 174ff.).
See again ‘Schritt zurück’ (Heidegger 1969: 49ff.).
Latour writes Constitution with a capital C to distinguish it from the constitution that separates politicians from judges, at the same time stressing the analogy with this political constitution.
Furthermore, the fact that scientists among each do not agree on almost anything could also be considered a symptom of modernity’s exhaustion. And then politicians in disagreement … nothing new there.
Actually, the notion of a hybrid world also seems wrong since it suggests a re-union of what was never actually separated.
It is what Vattimo would call the weakening of a metaphysical ground into a hermeneutic ground (Vattimo 1985: 103). Despite the philosophical potential of this notion, he never elaborated on it.
This does not mean that there is no future, as the punk movement claimed 50 years ago. It means that the concept of a future as extrapolation belongs to the advent of modernity and now manifests itself as such.
Of course, postmodernity does not come ‘after’ modernity. Postmodernity is still modernity, only marked by ‘post-’.
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Meganck, E. Heidegger and Latour on the Danger Hiding in Actuality. Hum Stud 45, 47–63 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-021-09609-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-021-09609-z