Heidegger on the History of Machination

Abstract

Heidegger's discussion about the rise of the arbitrary power of "machination" (Machenschaft) in his late 1930s writings does not just echo his well-known later thinking on technology, but also affords a profound insight to the ontological mechanism of oblivion behind the history of Western thinking of being. The paper shows how this rise of the coercive power of ordering (Machenschaft) signifies an emergence of historically and spatially significant moment of completion: outgrowth of the early Greek notions of tekhne and phusis in terms of globally expanding systems of calculative orderings. The paper thus aims to show how the condition of machination marks a fundamental implementation of the hidden consummation of the mechanism of oblivion now being readopted into the operational clarity of calculative rationality. It is argued that the rise of machination became possible through the historical process of replacing the early Greek disposition of existence, the wonder, with calculative rationality of ordering.

Belonging and language

“… 4. By creating the illusion that there is an ultimate ground of ‘beingness’ (Seiendheit) behind the presence of things, a metaphysical condition of ‘permanent presence’, Western tradition of thinking has faded the finitude of unfolding to the background and hence darkened the original open-ness of be-ing. (Joronen, 2012: 352) …”