Gestell

Last updated
Martin Heidegger Heidegger 2 (1960).jpg
Martin Heidegger

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. [1] Heidegger introduced the term in 1954 in The Question Concerning Technology , a text based on the lecture "The Framework" ("Das Gestell") first presented on December 1, 1949, in Bremen. [2] It was derived from the root word stellen, which means "to put" or "to place" and combined with the German prefix Ge-, which denotes a form of "gathering" or "collection". [3] The term encompasses all types of entities and orders them in a certain way. [3]

Contents

Heidegger's notion of Gestell

Heidegger applied the concept of Gestell to his exposition of the essence of technology. [4] He concluded that technology is fundamentally Enframing (Gestell). [5] 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". [6] Heidegger further explained that in a more comprehensive sense, the concept is the final mode of the historical self-concealment of primordial φύσις . [4]

In defining the essence of technology as Gestell, Heidegger indicated that all that has come to presence in the world has been enframed. Such enframing pertains to the manner reality appears or unveils itself in the period of modern technology and people born into this "mode of ordering" are always embedded into the Gestell (enframing). [7] 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. [8]

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. If applied to science and modern technology, "standing reserve" is active in the case of a river once it generates electricity or the earth if revealed as a coal-mining district or the soil as a mineral deposit. [9]

For some scholars, Gestell effectively explains the violence of technology. This is attributed to Heidegger's explanation that, when Gestell holds sway, "it drives out every other possibility of revealing" and that it "conceals that revealing which, in the sense of poiesis , lets what presences come forth into appearance." [10]

Later uses of the concept

Giorgio Agamben drew heavily from Heidegger in his interpretation of Foucault's concept of dispositif (apparatus). [11] In his work, What is an Apparatus, he described apparatus as the "decisive technical term in the strategy of Foucault's thought". [12] Agamben maintained that Gestell is nothing more than what appears as oikonomia . [13] Agamben cited cinema as an apparatus of Gestell since films capture and record the gestures of human beings. [14]

Albert Borgmann expanded Heidegger's concept of Gestell by offering a more practical conceptualization of the essence of technology. [15] Heidegger's enframing became Borgmann's Device paradigm, which explains the intimate relationship between people, things and technological devices. [16]

Claudio Ciborra developed another interpretation, which focused on the analyses of the Information System infrastructure using the concept of Gestell. [17] He based his improvement of the original meaning of "structural" with "processual" on the etymology of Gestell so that it indicates the pervasive process of arranging, regulating, and ordering of resources that involve both human and natural resources. [18] Ciborra has likened information infrastructure with Gestell and this association was used to philosophically ground many aspects of his works such as his description of its inherent self-feeding process. [18]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martin Heidegger</span> German philosopher (1889–1976)

Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is often considered to be among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th century.

The distinction between subject and object is a basic idea of philosophy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phenomenology (philosophy)</span> Philosophical method and schools of philosophy

Phenomenology is the philosophical study of objectivity and reality as subjectively lived and experienced. It seeks to investigate the universal features of consciousness while avoiding assumptions about the external world, aiming to describe phenomena as they appear to the subject, and to explore the meaning and significance of the lived experiences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giorgio Agamben</span> Italian philosopher

Giorgio Agamben is an Italian philosopher best known for his work investigating the concepts of the state of exception, form-of-life and homo sacer. The concept of biopolitics informs many of his writings.

Being-in-itself is the self-contained and fully realized being of objects. It is a term used in early 20th century continental philosophy, especially in the works of Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and the existentialists.

Biopower is a term which relates to the practice of modern nation states and their regulation of their subjects through "an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations". It was coined by French social theorist Michel Foucault. Foucault first used the term in his lecture courses at the Collège de France, and the term first appeared in print in The Will to Knowledge, Foucault's first volume of The History of Sexuality. In Foucault's work, it has been used to refer to practices of public health, regulation of heredity, and risk regulation, among many other regulatory mechanisms often linked less directly with literal physical health. It is closely related to a term he uses much less frequently, but which subsequent thinkers have taken up independently, biopolitics, which aligns more closely with the examination of the strategies and mechanisms through which human life processes are managed under regimes of authority over knowledge, power, and the processes of subjectivation.

Biopolitics is a concept introduced by the French philosopher Michel Foucault in the mid-20th century, which explores the intricate relationship between politics. At its core, biopolitics explores how governmental power operates through the management and regulation of a population's bodies and lives.

Neuromantic is a philosophical concept defined by anthropologist Bradd Shore as the cybernetic frame of mind among excited computer enthusiasts. These emerge as these individuals experience what Michael Heim called "the all-at-once simultaneity of totalizing presentness".

Hans D. Sluga is a German philosopher who spent most of his career as professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. Sluga teaches and writes on topics in the history of analytic philosophy, the history of continental philosophy, as well as on political theory, and ancient philosophy in Greece and China. He has been particularly influenced by the thought of Gottlob Frege, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Michel Foucault.

In the philosophy of technology, the device paradigm is the way "technological devices" are perceived and consumed in modern society, according to Albert Borgmann. It explains the intimate relationship between people, things and technological devices, defining most economic relations and also shapes social and moral relations in general.

The philosophy of technology is a sub-field of philosophy that studies the nature of technology and its social effects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Rabinow</span> American anthropologist (1944–2021)

Paul M. Rabinow was a professor of anthropology at the University of California (Berkeley), director of the Anthropology of the Contemporary Research Collaboratory (ARC), and former director of human practices for the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC). He worked with and wrote extensively about the French philosopher Michel Foucault.

<i>The Origin of the Work of Art</i> Book by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger

"The Origin of the Work of Art" is an essay by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Heidegger drafted the text between 1935 and 1937, reworking it for publication in 1950 and again in 1960. Heidegger based his essay on a series of lectures he had previously delivered in Zurich and Frankfurt during the 1930s, first on the essence of the work of art and then on the question of the meaning of a "thing", marking the philosopher's first lectures on the notion of art.

Albert Borgmann was a German-born American philosopher, specializing in the philosophy of technology.

Martin Heidegger, the 20th-century German philosopher, produced a large body of work that intended a profound change of direction for philosophy. Such was the depth of change that he found it necessary to introduce many neologisms, often connected to idiomatic words and phrases in the German language.

<i>The Question Concerning Technology</i> 1954 non-fiction book by Martin Heidegger

The Question Concerning Technology is a work by Martin Heidegger, in which the author discusses the essence of technology. Heidegger originally published the text in 1954, in Vorträge und Aufsätze.

Dispositif or dispositive is a term used by the French intellectual Michel Foucault, generally to refer to the various institutional, physical, and administrative mechanisms and knowledge structures which enhance and maintain the exercise of power within the social body. The links between these elements are said to be heterogeneous since knowledge, practices, techniques, and institutions are established and reestablished in every age. It is through these links that power relations are structured.

<i>Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life</i>

Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry is a 1984 book by Albert Borgmann, an American philosopher, specializing in the philosophy of technology. Borgmann was born in Freiburg, Germany, and is a professor of philosophy at the University of Montana.

Ousia is a philosophical and theological term, originally used in ancient Greek philosophy, then later in Christian theology. It was used by various ancient Greek philosophers, like Plato and Aristotle, as a primary designation for philosophical concepts of essence or substance. In contemporary philosophy, it is analogous to English concepts of nature, being, and ontic. In Christian theology, the concept of θεία ουσία is one of the most important doctrinal concepts, central to the development of trinitarian doctrine.


Søren Gosvig Olesen is an associate professor in philosophy at the University of Copenhagen and has written extensively in the tradition of continental philosophy as well as translating a number of philosophers central to this tradition: Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben. Olesen is a graduate from Université de Paris I-Sorbonne, and defended his doctorate degree with Wissen und Phänomen (1997) from Université de Nice. Olesen has notably advanced the notion of transcendental history.

References

  1. ↑ Mitcham, Carl (1994), Thinking Through Technology, University of Chicago Press, p. 52, ISBN   0-226-53198-8
  2. ↑ Safranski, Rüdiger (1999). Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. p. 391. ISBN   9780674387102.
  3. 1 2 Wendland, Aaron; Merwin, Christopher; Hadjioannou, Christos (2018). Heidegger on Technology. New York: Routledge. ISBN   9781138674615.
  4. 1 2 Loscerbo, John (2012). Being and Technology: A Study in the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. p. 109. ISBN   9789400982246.
  5. ↑ Godzinski, Ronald (January 2005), "(En)Framing Heidegger's Philosophy of Technology", Essays in Philosophy, 6 (1): 115–122, doi:10.5840/eip20056120
  6. ↑ "Martin Heidegger". Archived from the original on 2006-01-10. Retrieved 2006-01-12.
  7. ↑ du Preez, Amanda (2009). Gendered Bodies and New Technologies: Rethinking Embodiment in a Cyber-era. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 40. ISBN   9781443813235.
  8. ↑ Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (New York: Harper, 1977), p. 20.
  9. ↑ Boetzkes, Amanda (2016). Heidegger and the Work of Art History. Oxon: Routledge. p. 106. ISBN   9781409456131.
  10. ↑ Young, Julian (2002). Heidegger's Later Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 50. ISBN   0521809223.
  11. ↑ Agamben, Giorgio (2009), What is an Apparatus? and Other Essays, Stanford University Press, ISBN   978-0-8047-6230-4
  12. ↑ Binkley, Sam; Capetillo, Jorge (2009). A Foucault for the 21st Century: Governmentality, Biopolitics and Discipline in the New Millennium. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 110. ISBN   9781443804448.
  13. ↑ Kotsko, Adam (2017-07-14). Agamben's Philosophical Lineage. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. pp. 70–71. ISBN   9781474423632.
  14. ↑ Gustafsson, Henrik; Gronstad, Asbjorn (2014-01-16). Cinema and Agamben: Ethics, Biopolitics and the Moving Image. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. ISBN   9781623561253.
  15. ↑ Jeffrey, White (2015). Rethinking Machine Ethics in the Age of Ubiquitous Technology. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. p. 132. ISBN   9781466685925.
  16. ↑ Rasmussen, Larry (1993). Moral Fragments and Moral Community: A Proposal for Church in Society . Minneapolis: Fortress Press. pp.  78. ISBN   0800627571.
  17. ↑ Ciborra, Claudio (2002), Labyrinths of Information, OUP, ISBN   0-19-927526-2
  18. 1 2 Rossignoli, Cecilia; Gatti, Mauro; Agrifoglio, Rocco (2015). Organizational Innovation and Change: Managing Information and Technology. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. p. 92. ISBN   9783319229201.


This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.