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acting well in everyday situations, Heidegger is concerned only that we act in the light of what we truly are. But he has very little to say how this should be meaningful for us or how it should guide action. As long as we seize hold of our possibilities for being resolutely, which is to say that we commit ourselves to whatever it is we are doing in the light of the temporal horizon of our being (i.e. on the basis of our finitude), then there is nothing more to say.

There are several quite specific examples of how this plays out in Heidegger’s reading in terms of his interpretation of Aristotle’s ethical terminology. I would like to mention one in particular, which is the notion of hexis. Modern translators have struggled greatly with this term which seems to be partly captured by words like habit, disposition, state or capacity but to which none alone can do justice. Hexis is crucially important to Aristotle’s ethical schema. It is not just important but “all important” as he says (1093b25) because it involves the capacity to deliberate well, in the right way and in the right measure. It is interesting to see what becomes of the term in Heidegger’s discussion. In a lecture series on the

Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy, he says that hexis is not practice but repetition. Repetition does not mean the bringing-into-play of a settled completedness, but rather acting anew in every moment on the basis of a corresponding resolution. (Heidegger, 2009, p. 128)

Now, we should note that Heidegger’s rejection of the hexis as “a settled completedness” is to be commended since it avoids certain of the negative associations of habit that modern discussions tend to bring with them. He is attempting here to capture a dynamism in hexis which does not simply repeat the same actions in the same circumstances but which involves a circumspection that is thoughtful and measured. Aristotle too is clear that hexis involves more than just the agent doing what is right. She must also “decide on what is right for itself” and this “from out of a firm unchanging state” (NE 1105a20f.).1 This sounds very close to Heidegger’s notion of resoluteness (Entscholssenheit)inasmuch as it insists that the hexis be more than a response but one which is conscious of itself in responding and one in which it is the commitment as much as the action itself that is settled.

Heidedgger, in other words, captures some of Aristotle’s meaning and can be said to be especially instructive in drawing attention to the need for an interiorization of the good life, which blocks the cogency of any attempt to understand habituation and the role model of the phronimos as habituation in the ‘bad’, behaviorist sense.2

1See also 1105a20-25 where understanding is crucial.

2For example, in the way Gilbert Ryle describes habits as thoughtless automatisms (Ryle, 2000, p. 42). As against this, see (McGuirk, 2014).

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But the introduction of the notion of repetition seems once again entirely to ignore what is grasped in wise comportment and to focus only and exclusively on the business of grasping. Nor is it surprising to find that the term repetition (Wiederholung) is one that is fundamentally Kierkegaardian, so that here again, Heidegger grafts a Kierkegaardian concept onto an Aristotelian problem. Repetition, for Kierkegaard, is most closely associated with his reflections on how the single individual becomes a Christian. For Kierkegaard, the espousal of Christian doctrine is superficial and tells us nothing of how the Christian life is enacted. The enactment takes place, rather, through a continuous renewal of faith in the interior life of the Christian in which she constantly reaffirms her absolute commitment to what is, in itself, uncertain. As Kierkegaard puts it.

An objective uncertainty held fast in an appropriation process of the most passionate inwardness is the truth, the highest truth attainable by an existing individual. (Kierkegaard, 1992, p. 98)

What the Christian espouses in repetition does not change but how it is affirmed means everything and guarantees novelty in the process of renewal. The Christian, so to speak, starts anew every time the objective uncertainty of the Christian message is affirmed in inwardness.

It is clear that the how of commitment is important for Aristotle too but it is unlikely that he would be willing to go along with the fixedness of Kierkegaard’s what or, consequently, with Heidegger’s interpretation of hexis as repetition. Through this claim, Heidegger again insists that wise comportment is only wise so long as it involves decision (prohairesis) in the light of the ultimate horizon. This is compatible with Aristotle up to a point but only up to a point because both Aristotle’s commitment to the realization of this goal in pre-scientific life as well as his focus on the details of how the goal is to be realized (through good and measured deliberation) are dismissed by Heidegger as essentially irrelevant.

This is a significant problem, even more so for Heidegger than it is for Kierkegaard, owing to a major difference in their understanding of the what that is grasped in the repetition of hexis. Repetition for Kierkegaard involves the constant renewal of the individual’s commitment to the ethical or to the religious life, a commitment which is enacted on the basis of the individual’s individuality. Like

Heidegger, in other words, the individual commits himself on the basis of his singularity which is the horizon that gives all action its ultimate meaning. But while this is similar to Heidegger’s approach in making Dasein the “for the sake of which” of all commitments, it differs inasmuch as Kierkegaardian choice involves a kenotic movement in which the individual gives herself absolutely, in the case of the religious life, to the absolute Other. This is deeply paradoxical in that it entails that the absolute choice of oneself is a negation of oneself in order to enter into the relation in which one first truly becomes oneself. This is nothing short of Kierke-

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gaard’s philosophical reflection on the story of Job (Kierkegaard, 1983, p. 188f.) and on the Biblical passage “Whoever finds his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:25). What is affirmed in repetition for Kierkegaard is not irrelevant, it is simply unchanging. Indeed, it is only God to whom we can properly make this absolute commitment in repetition. Thus, while the how of commitment is made central in Kierkegaard’s account, there is only one what (God) which can allow this commitment of the individual to properly realize itself.

I mention this because the choice of service which is entailed by Kierkegaard’s notion of repetition opens for an ethical sensibility which I believe is more problematic in the Heideggerian discourse. There remains a distance separating

Kierkegaard’s ethics from Aristotle’s because, like Heidegger, he is too quick to ignore the way we deliberate about the Good life in favour of the fact that we make such commitments. However, that this movement of choice in Kierkegaard entails the transcendence of the existing individual into fundamental relationalities at least makes possible an ethical sensibility which is harder to find in Heidegger. The existing individual chooses in the light of its singularity but what it chooses lies beyond it as a value (the ethical life, God) which means that what it chooses in the relation itself with an exteriority that limits the individual at the same time as it allows it to affirm itself as individual.1

Is this possible for Heidegger? Dasein, to be sure, engages the world authentically through the resolute seizing hold of concrete possibilities for action, in the light of its grasp of its own inner nature. We have already noted that repetition is anything but vague or indefinite for Heidegger. But the resolution is only definite with regard to form. It tells us little about what we choose and given that Dasein chooses itself in such authentic resolution, it seems not to be limited by anything other than itself.

Concluding remarks

This reading provides Heidegger with poor resources with which to discern the good from the bad or the good from the evil. So long as we commit ourselves to action in the light of our own finitude, then it does not seem to matter much what we choose. Could this have anything to do with the failings in Heidegger’s own life which have so forcefully come to light in the recently published Zwarte Hefte (Heidegger, 2014a, 2014b, 2014c)? It might be unfair to make this claim on the basis of the evidence I have presented here and as Gregory Fried has recently claimed

1 In fact, for Kierkegaard, the singular individual is only really possible on the basis of the selfdenial that limits the self and allows it to become itself in relation to the Other, something which he contrasts to the self-annihilation of the self in its commitment to the crowd. (Kierkegaard, 1998, p. 111)

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in a defense of Heidegger, his question was never one of simple politics but was about the question of the meaning of being (Fried 2014). The question of who we are or who we wish to become, says Fried is what most concerns Heidegger and these are questions which are as pressing for us today as they were for Heidegger. It would be a mistake, he concludes, either to reject the Heideggerian problematic on the basis of his own resolution of these issues or to misunderstand the meaning of Heidegger’s anti-Semitism by removing it from this existential context and aligning it with the anti-Semitism of Hitler.

Fried is, of course, right to say that Heidegger’s Nazism was not of the crude jack-booted sort and needs to be contextualized against the backdrop of the question of how we are to respond to the challenges of the world into which we are thrown. Heidegger’s concern is with fundamental ontology such that it is unfair to expect him to have a fully worked out solution to all practical problems that may arise. He states quite clearly at several places, as we have already noted, that the discussion of resoluteness and falling are intended as existential categories of Dasein and not in any way as moralizing critiques or extolments of everyday Dasein.1

But then why anchor his reading of Aristotle in the Ethics? Even if we accept the re-appropriation of Aristotelian philosophy into the project of fundamental ontology, why not base the interpretation on the Metaphysics, De Anima or some other text? In short, it is one thing to colonize the Ethics in the name of ontology but if this is to retain its legitimacy, then it must also be able to deal with the questions of action guidance which are so crucial to Aristotle’s discussion. But Heidegger does not do this and instead dismisses these aspects of the texts as non-philosophical and irrelevant to the very question of the meaning of human being. He is justified, on this writer’s view, on insisting on a more robust contextualizing of the ethics discussion but he sacrifices too much in the process by entirely draining the question of value from Aristotle’s text. By repeatedly undermining ethics and discussions of value as non-philosophical except inasmuch as they shed light on ontological problematic, he does not integrate ontology and ethics but effaces the latter in the former and thereby weakens both.

Heidegger was no Nazi in the ordinary sense of that term but his great failing is that he establishes a philosophical scaffold that obliterates any criteria or even sensitivity to the Good or which would allow us to evaluate the way we think and act contributes to the realization of the Good. We did not need the Zwarte Hefte to tell us this. Heidegger’ persistent refusal to apologize for his sympathies during the

1 He states that, “…our own interpretation is purely ontological in its aims, and is far removed from any moralizing critique of everyday Dasein, and from the aspirations of a ‘philosophy of culture’” (Heidegger, 1979, p. 167).

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war already provided ample proof of this. His question was not Hitler’s question and his understanding of the inner meaning of National Socialism was not Hitler’s so that he had, in his mind, nothing to apologize for. But this is not good enough and demonstrates an extraordinary lack of humility or sense of the need to answer for the fruits of one’s actions. It seems that in the end, the Nazi era was nothing but a missed opportunity for Heidegger as his philosophical development had lead him to the point where he was capable of seeing nothing else.

If this much is convincing, it would seem that Heidegger is, on this point at least, a poor disciple of Aristotle through both his, at best, ambivalent relationship to the pre-scientific life and the evacuation of deliberation from the phenomenon of phronesis.

References:

1.Aristotle. (1985). Nichomachean Ethics. Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett.

2.Dreyfus, H. L. (1991). Being-in-the-world: a commentary on Heidegger's Being and time, division I. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

3.Fried, Gregory (2014). “The Kind is Dead: Heidegger’s ‘Black Notebooks’”, in Los Angeles Review of Books, September 2014.

4.Heidegger, M. (1979). Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

5.Heidegger, M. (1992). History of the concept of time: prolegomena. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

6.Heidegger, M. (1997). Plato's Sophist. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press.

7.Heidegger, M. (2001). Phenomenological interpretations of Aristotle: initiation into phenomenological research. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press.

8.Heidegger, M. (2002a). On time and being. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

9.Heidegger, M. (2002b). Towards the definition of philosophy: with a transcript of the lecture course "On the nature ofthe university and academic

study". London: Continuum.

10.Heidegger, M. (2009). Basic concepts of Aristotelian philosophy. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press.

11.Heidegger, M. (2014a). Überlegungen II - VI (Schwarze Hefte 1931-1938)

(Vol. 94).

12.Heidegger, M. (2014b). Überlegungen VII - XI (Schwarze Hefte 1938/39)

(Vol. 95).

13.Heidegger, M. (2014c). Überlegungen XII - XV (Schwarze Hefte 1939-1941)

(Vol. 96).

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14.Kierkegaard, S. (1983). Fear and trembling ; Repetition (Vol. 6). Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press.

15.Kierkegaard, S. (1992). Concluding unscientific postscript to philosophical fragments (Vol. 12). Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press.

16.Kierkegaard, S. (1998). The Point of view (Vol. 22). Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press.

17.Kisiel, T. (1993). The genesis of Heideggers Being and Time. Berkeley: University of California Press.

18.McGuirk, J. N. (2008). Phenomenological reduction, Epochë, and the speech of Socrates in the Symposium. Southern Journal of Philosophy, 46(1), 99120.

19.McGuirk, J. N. (2014). Phenomenological Considerations of Habit. Phenomenology and Mind, 6(1), 14.

20.Ricœur, P. (2008). From text to action: essays in hermeneutics II. London: Continuum.

21.Ryle, G. (2000). The concept of mind. London: Penguin Books. 22.Sokolowski, R. (2000). Introduction to phenomenology. Cambridge: Cam-

bridge University Press.

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UDC 13+101.1:316

S.V. Shachin

Martin Heidegger’s ideas in the context of searches of Northern identity

Keywords: north identity, experience nothing, negative and positive nihilism, Gestell, call of being to north man.

Synopsis

The offered article is sanctified to the analysis of basic signs of north identity on the base of methodological approach of Martin Heidegger. Thus descriptions of identity hatch in the process of research, but not come forward his pre-condition, that creates the danger of vicious circle in reasoning. As a result a north identity comes forward as fundamental description of social ontology and anthropology on the base of that consciousness of northerners is formed.

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UDC 101.1:316 + 13

V.M. Voronov

Human identity trapped in Ge-stell1

Abstract. This paper analyzes the phenomenon of human identity in the framework of the modern technocratic civilization. Specificity is defined in the modern manner proposed by Martin Heidegger, according to which its essence is revealed in the domination of a particular way of being human – Ge-stell. Ontic basis Gestell associated with the mechanisms in the representation and prerepresentation of identities. It is stated that Heidegger's Gestell considered in connection with the images of danger and salvation. Attention is paid to the third aspect of modern technology related to the way the traps. The essence of the trap is revealed in the fact that the possibility of constructivist (supplied) with respect to any self-identifications allegedly responsible ecstatic essence of the person.

Keywords: Ge-stell, identity, identification, en-framed identity, Martin Heidegger, the trap of Ge-stell.

It should be noted that attempting to reflect on the issue of identity and identification in the framework of M. Heidegger’s philosophy poses certain questions.

It is known that the project of transcendental Dasein analytics mean a certain degree of criticism to the very notion of identity. Dasein meant to embrace the holistic phenomenon of human existence is opposed by Heidegger to the multiplicity of identities of the “I” experience2. The German thinker turned to this term later but in a fairly complex and specific context. We mean the notion of Er-eignis (Event) unfolding as a meeting between a human and being. In this case, Heidegger viewed the issue of identity (identität) from the logical and ontological standpoint3. We speak about viewing the issue of the sameness of thinking and being that he solve in the context of his interpretation of the Eleatics philosophy. The identity as the sameness of a thing existent to its being for itself remains hidden. A human as a thinking entity can be understood as a special recording instance unfolding the being. Humans are therefore capable of both unfolding their own essence and (in mu-

1This publication was prepared with the financial support of the Ministry of education and science of the Russian Federation within the excution of the state task of the project "Social and cultural borders as the mechanisms of formation and reproduction of the identity of the European North of Russia" (project 362).

2Heidegger, M. Being and Time.SPb.:Nauka, 2006. P. 130.

3Heidegger, M. Principle of Identity // Conversation on a Country Path. M .: "Vysshay shkola", 1991, P. 69-79.

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tual belonging) the being. The concept of identification can be used to characterise the act (process) of recording.

Certain prerequisites of this Er-eignis are present in essential features of the present-day age. A crucial trait of the current age can be revealed through the Heidegger’s concept of Ge-stell. It should be noted that a translation into Russian suggested by V. Bibikhin (Po-stav) is quite appropriate (though not indisputable). In this case, an appropriate basis of the root morphemes is observed: stellen (Ger.) – stavit’ (Rus.). The specified root values when the call is of fundamental value for the author. Because we believe in this case, we can practice Heidegger’s style thinking with the root values of the Russian language. This is what Vladimir Bibihin to differ as the Russian supporter of Heidegger. Exactly mastering style of thought, rather than a literal results of mindset can do to deal with Heidegger (deep and essential thinking) to our deal.

Ge-stell is the essential basis of the present-day technocratic civilisation that starts from the modern history. The word describing the essence of a technocratic civilisation is not only the most known result of the way of thinking that is described in What is called thinking? And Der Satz vom Grunt, thinking here means a special way of seeing and hearing (primarily, seeing and hearing the language). The term is related to the way that Being, according to Heidegger, starts avoiding humans in the modern era. The avoidance happens primarily by perceiving everything as objects and subjects. The being is therefore interpreted as objectness of objects (subjectness of subjects). The framework (i.e. en-framing) of things existent by humans is the main feature of the modern-era worldview. The whole world becomes an object of calculating manipulations.

Anything which is “naturally” understood by us in its material separateness as a separate artefact of the present-day culture cannot be really viewed as an independent thing. The most suitable concept here is resources or standing reserve (der Bestand), the existence thereof being only as a result of its placing event (bestellen). It is not only about the features of the typical and the serial often referenced for translation of the Heidegger’s thought into own thinking. Obviously, the typical, serial, mass-purpose, and depersonalised features of most of things around is an obvious evidence for Ge-stell domination, however, a different thing is crucial. In the present-day age, almost every moral artefact appears as a result of a complicated chain of resource extraction, production, storage, distribution, advertising, sale, and consumption. Functioning of those chains is, in its turn, connected with other similar chains jointly forming the complex system of global production and consumption which can be viewed as an ontic dimension of Ge-stell. Consequently, any produced thing is more or less a product of the whole System, with the modern human viewing almost every natural phenomenon as a potential or actual resource to be included in the system.

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It should be noted that it is possible to identify two crossing lines of view on

Ge-stell by Heidegger: an “optimistic critique” and a “pessimistic critique.” One should bear in mind that the distinction, even though detectable textually and chronologically, is still tentative, since Heidegger does not aim to create a systematic teaching. If, following him, we understand his experience of thinking as a

“path”, we need to assume the presence of various turns and stops. Nevertheless, since we are dealing not with the path of thinking itself but with its results, specifying the said lines (or tones of thought) seems reasonable.

The “positive” (“optimistic”) sense of Ge-stell as a specific era of being may be understood differently. For instance, we can mean a possibility to find limits of the calculable and controllable by means of an increasing scope of control and calculation which will eventually coincide with the limits of what is calculable and controllable in principle. On the other hand, we can mean a synthesis of technocratic civilisation capacities and a creative (poetic) way of being a human. The very distinctness of danger (die Gefahr) may be a reason for a turn to the salutary. On the other hand, Heideggerian thought was not devoid of certain scepticism about possible overcoming of Ge-stell. Here, it is sufficient to recall the famous phrase in an interview to Der Spiegel: “…only God can still save us”1. The objective of thinking is therefore just a preparation to the appearance of God. In our view, apart from the essential possibilities of salvation and danger, realisation of getting into a possible trap is also required. A clarification of this possibility means a certain priorities shift in realisation of Gestell in the context of human identification. Selfidentification can be understood here as recording one’s position in relation to the Other and One’s Own.

According to Heidegger, the technocratic might of the present-day civilisation (Ge-stell) is primarily based upon a possibility of enframing natural energies. Using an expression by Vladimir Bibikhin, we can note that “the humankind is still warming itself by a fire in the forest”, since we are already using an ancient forest (oil) as firewood2 (Bibikhin understand the concept of a forest in a broad sense as a synonym for living matter). Yet using natural energies not only enables ubiquitous supply of goods, services, technologies, raw materials, and labour, but also requires this supply itself. Meeting this need is, in its turn, impossible without “enframing” of knowledge and information and, therefore, “setting” values priorities, i.e. certain formatting of human personality. Setting certain self-sameness (identities) becomes necessary. In our view, identifications enframing is a primary ontic basis of Gestell. No doubt that this text could not be created without a power-consuming computer

1Interview employees of the magazine "Der Spiegel" R. Augstein and G. Wolf with Martin Haydegger September 23, 1966 // Heidegger.ru (website) URL: http://www.heidegger.ru/shpigel.php (date of treatment 11/11/2014 )

2Bilihin V. Les (hyle). SPb.: Nauka, 2011. P.14-15.

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