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    4 views13 pages

    Ahlers Is Tech Intrins Reepress 1970

    Uploaded by

    Eduardo Vega Catalán
    hbj

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    Syracuse University - ILL / interlibrary Loan Borrower ZRS Lending Sting: VKM,*SYB,VFL,XNC,VKC li numex:, 105479299 CAR 0 IF98275 Patron: Ahlers, Rol Policy [Chicago, s.n.] Billing Notes; We do not charge; if possible, please reciprocate. Please bill via IFM or EFTS. Charge Maxcost: 20, 001FM Billing Category: Exempt Sage Colleges Contact info: Fax. 201206 Asie 66.109.50.48 Odyssey: cdle-sage odie 9 Syracuse University Contact Info: Phone: 316-443-3725 Email: i@syredu Office Hours: Monday-Friday, 9am to Spm Delivered By: ‘Syracuse University ‘Syracuse University Library- ILL/IDS 222 Waverly Avenue Syracuse, New York 13244 ODYSSEY ve 688658 [IMIININNIUNIII Article Request Date: 6/6/2013 12:31:47 PM cat BX801 .C66 ocaton: Bird-2nd Floor (does not circulate) BoovounaiTae: Continuum. Volume: 8 Issue:issue: 1-2 yerSpring-summer 1970 Pages: 11 11,4123 Atte Tte: €cals Technology Intrinsically Repressive?a€ Book Author: Imprint: [Chicago, 8.) Ship to: Sage Colleges Sage Colleges LAND HUB-ALB i @O 3 2 5 a ! > a o o ‘We find in Heidegger the groundwork of Marcuse's criticism of European seientiom. IS TECHNOLOGY INTRINSICALLY REPRESSIVE? Rolf Ahlers Since American self-confidence has been shattered in recent years, it appears that the climate is right for a critique of technology and science and of our social and political institutions, the development of all of which is historically elated. In Germany there was around the turn of the cently and even into the twenties a similar disappointment, engendering romantic existentialism and phenomenology, “personalism,” “decisionalism,” “ssubjectivism,” “actualism,”” ‘and scores of other jejune movements. But, on the other hand, this disappoint ent also made room for a revolutionary socialistic literature. Crisis breeds saecatie retreat or progressive hope for emancipation: Both directions thoroughly discredit the present or given conditions as “decadent” or nomizing.” A sane and rational way of dealing ‘with the realities at hand seems to become problematical in either position. In this essay I would like to center the treatment of this common theme of decadenge manly in two thinkers: Heidegger and Marcie, ‘even though I must refer briefly also to Gadamer and Husser. ‘The theme ‘which is common to both is that the post-Cartesian trend toward a mathesis universalis is understood as dead-end road. Only revolutionary emancipation Out of it or romantic retreat Frome are geen as ways of dealing efectively with the situation. Heidegger Pro- subs Poses a “fundamental ontology” which provides the “worldhood” of the world which has been lost since the Cartesian attempt to mathematize reality. Marcuse Proposes a new science which makes it possible to live a humane life. There is a relation between Heidegger's attempt to redress the wrongs of Cartesian mathe- matization and Marcuse’s attempt to “transcend” the mathematized “whole” or “system.” I do not here wish to oversimplify the similarities or differences. am fully aware of the differences, but there are important connections, essen- tially the same connections which Hegel saw in the Romantic fixation on the Enlightenment’s break with historical continuity, ‘The question I would like to ask is does Heidegger really provide a new and better “worldhood.” Is his proposal legitimate? What are its flaws? What lies at the core of his proposal? Can Marcuse, on the other hand, really hope to arrive at a “new” science which renews the world so that it humanizes rather than heteronomizes man and world? What are the common presuppositions be- {ween Marcuse, Husserl and Heidegger? Since both developments put into ques tion the realities of our modern world and do not offer any meaningful way 0 deal with it except, on the one hand, a personalistic retreat into a world of “Verstchen” and, on the other, a revolutionary emancipation into a utopian and hardly realizable “pacified” world, I suggest that Hegelian philosophy, a least till and including the Phenomenology of 1807, could present us with a Profound analysis of the roots of modern emancipated reason, pointing out the Tealities which this situation has created in our world of technology where man has to find himself in and through work and industry. In Hegel’s thought the ‘ealities of the modern world are not only profoundly analyzed historically and Philosophically (to do both atthe same time is uniquely Hegelian); they are also affirmed — indeed, is it safe or even possible to do otherwise? without there- by over-looking the dangers and estranging qualities which the modern world, Structured by emancipated reason, brings about, or without providing means to deal with these dangers. Tet us begin with Herbert Marcuse, For Marcuse, the realization ofthe goals er—C—“‘“#Eh=——6 SF elimination of structures which are superfluous and tend to stifle free expression of human spontaneity, become impossible. Such elimination has been since the Enlightenment a sign of “rationality.” A society becomes a closed “whole” when Such changes are no longer possible; it becomes the “s stem,” commonly also called the “establishment.” Society becomes totalitarian, Totalitarianisms that Ae Plainly visible, like that of the German regime, from whose prisons MarcS¢ had to fice, are dangerous; but the totalitarianism of technologically structured society like our own, which is not recognized as an open danger, becomes almost err SE We have to observe, that Marcuse, in talking about rationally structured technological society, picks up a theme whi h Max Weber had developed: Weber had talked of “rationalization” in describing capitalistic economy, bour- geois law-systems, and middle-class by 112 / ROLF AHLERS regulated as well as all communication-channels. In this process old bases of legitimation are eliminated. The magical, ‘mythical, authoritarian criteria for amion of former times are discredited. Tradition becomes barrier to the progress of rationalization. Tn Marcuse’s thought, the term “rationality” changes, however, from the use whieh Max Weber made of it, For the latter the tery did not as yet have a fotalitarian and hence repressive overtone, Rather, “rationality” implied the inereasing elimination of irrational and repressiv® elements. To Marcuse, how- ever, the term rationality gains a new content which is historically conditioned. ‘This content implies the removal of the capacities to control, or to criticize once-established forms of purposeful action. Once strategies have been chosen, they cannot be critically ‘examined any more ina ‘technological society. The total interest of society is no longer at work, once society has chosen to rationally control all aspect of its life. ‘The way in which a society organizes the life of its members involves an initial choice between historical alternatives which are ‘getermined by the inherited level cate octet and intellectual culture. ‘The choice itself results from the play of the dominant interests, It anticipates specific modes of ‘transforming and utilizing man aonature and rejects other modes. Its one “project” ‘of realization among others But once the project has become operative in the ‘asic institutions and relations, it tends to become exclusive and to determine the evelopment of the society a5 & venue Ava technologie universe, advanced industrial society is a political universe, the latest stage in the realization of specific historical project namely, the €X- perience, transformation, and organization of nature 2S the mere stuff of domination. We cannot continue to look at the relations between Marcuse and Weber; we have to go on to the origins of the criticism of modern scientific and technologi- id that possibly dal workd.mastery, Is instructive to note that Marc once sai the person to whom he owes most is Martin Heidegger. Marcuse remarked in his first book on Hegel’s ontology (which appeared fn 1932) at the end of the preface: “Whatever this work contributes to an ‘unravelling of the problem, it wes to the philosophical work of Martin Heidegger.” And Habermas says about the later development of Marcuse: “Whoever no longer even suspects in the categories of the Freudian doctrine of basic drives, out of which Marcuse develops a Marxian construction ‘of history, whoever no longer suspects in his renewed anthropology the redressed categories ‘of Being and Time, is not secure from very concrete ‘misunderstandings” of Marcuse. _ ‘Marcuse’s older work, which appeared in Germany before his emigration, represents the first original attempt at @ phenomenologically oriented Marxism. Particularly the Parisian Manuscripts, Pinieh had at that time just been dis- covered, presented the unexpected point mt connection, to turn Being and Time inside-out, into a materialistic “analysis of ‘Dasein.” Only a long time after Marcase had somewhat departed from this concet did Sartre begin to take the road which Marcuse had taken earlier “and then the left Parisian Existen- tialists as well as the Marxist praxis-oriented philosophers in ‘Zagreb and Prague panes as the later work of Husserl — now in place of Marcuse’s earlier de- pendence on Heidegget — and worked his ‘Lebenswelt-analysis into their vvaterialistic understanding of the dialectic: development of history. Even though 113 / ‘TECHNOLOGY this Parisian and Eastern European development took place only after the end of the second World War, both — Marcuse and the Marxists of Prague and Zagreb — are heavily dependent on the phenomenological school. However Marcuse anticipated this development by several decades. And in 1964, Mar- Cuse recapulated the work of his colleagues. In One-Dimensional Man we find direct reference not only to Sartre and Heidegger, but also especially to Huser Indeed, we find in Heidegger the groundwork of Marcuse’s criticism of Euro- pean scientism. Heidegger noted: “The very fact, that man becomes the subject and the world the object is the result of the establishment of the essence of technology, not vice versa.” Technology establishes itself, but not without the willful decision of man, which Heidegger localizes historically in Descartes. The willfulness of modern man has totalitarian tendencies in this sense: tech- nology as such, once having gained ground, objectifies everything, even the so-called “dualism” of Cartesian philosophy. Technology establishes itself, and causes this “dualism” to dominate scientism. “Objectification” of all of nature's Processes is a direct result of the “willful decision” which Marcuse with Sartre calls a “project.” The religious and social structures of tradition — which had offered criteria for judgment — having disintegrated, Descartes attempted 10 regain some new basis of certainty for tradition-emancipated man, He recot- structed a new world of mathematical certainty, which led ultimately to the concept of the totally scientifically determinable world, But this reconstruction only made permanent the loss of the real world and of true space as the realm where man lives with the world. In Identity and Dif ference, Heidegger says: “By means of this conception of the whole of the {echnical world everything is reduced to man.” This reduction does not regain the security of the tradition which is left behind, but rather makes permanent ‘man's alienation from it. “The world loses its specific aroundness (Umhafit); the environment becomes the world of nature. The ‘world’ as a totality of equipment ready-at-hand, becomes spatialized to a context of extended things Which are just present-at-hand and no more, The homogeneous space of nature shows itself only when the entities we encounter are discovered i such a WY that the worldly character of the ready-at-hand ts specifically deprived of its worldhood,” * i Both man and world are lost in this Cartesian philosophy. For even the know- ing subject is understood as substance. World as “ex-tending” world is ontically predicated; but thereby the ontological structure of world is not gained, but lost. The same is true for the knowing subject: it too is described as a “thing,” the “res cogitans.” Descartes, according to Heidegger, does not penetrate to a real ontological analysis of the phenomena of I and consciousnece, but rather mis takes ontic labelling as ontological Penetration. Descartes “has confirmed the belief that to know an entity in the most rigorous ontic manner is our only pos- sible access to the primary Being of the entity which such knowledge reveals.” This “thingifies” — to use a Hegelian term — not only the knowing subject, but also the known world. One-dimensionaity is, to use Marcusien erminol ogy) an accomplished fact. But it was the only way whereby Descartes could regain the lost certainty. For Descartes, the only genuine access to the world Nes in knowing, intellectio, in the sense of the kind of knowledge we get in 114 / ROLF AHLERS mathematics and physics. Mathematical knowledge is regarded by Descartes CC give assurance that their Being has been securely grasped. If anything meastse® P in its own, kind of Being to the Being that is accessible in ‘mathematical knowledge, then tees in an authentic sense. Such entities are those which always are what they Fr Lr —_——™—| the real world which is not eternal and always opening new lori2ons before one — this real world is not found, but rather permanently lost, So man also is lost, for be is always a part of this real world. And according to Heidegger, the reality of man’s being in the world is lost. “All mere calculating penetration (Zudring- Tichkeit) turns into destruction” of life's spontaneity and vitality. Even if this calculating approach makes the appearance of world-domination and progress

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