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[CRIT 13.3 (2012) 351-376] Critical Horizons (print) ISSN 1440-9917
doi:10.1558/crit.v13i3.351 Critical Horizons (online) ISSN 1568-5160
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012, Unit S3, Kelham House, 3 Lancaster Street, Sheeld, S3 8AF.
Heidegger on the History of Machination:
Oblivion of Being as Degradation of Wonder
Mikko Joronen
Department of Geography and Geology, University of Turku, Finland
mikko.joronen@utu.
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 aords a pro-
found insight to the ontological mechanism of oblivion behind the his-
tory of Western thinking of being. e paper shows how this rise of the
coercive power of ordering (Machenschaft) signies an emergence of his-
torically and spatially signicant moment of completion: outgrowth of
the early Greek notions of tekhne and phusis in terms of globally expand-
ing systems of calculative orderings. e 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 re-
adopted into the operational clarity of calculative rationality. It is argued
that the rise of machination became possible through the historical pro-
cess of replacing the early Greek disposition of existence, the wonder, with
calculative rationality of ordering.
Keywords: Being; Event; genealogy, Greek philosophy; Heidegger; mach-
ination; tekhne; wonder.
In Beiträge zur Philosophie (vom Ereignis) (Contributions to Philosophy [from
Enowning]), dating back to 1936–1938, Heidegger invokes perhaps one
of the most groundbreaking discussions concerning his notion about the
Event of being (das Ereignis). Although being signicant in more than one
way, this discussion, especially its way of emphasizing the simultaneous
happening of both, being (Sein) as a “ground of beings” (Seiendheit) and
be-ing (Seyn) as a “groundless openness” for the plenitude of unfolding,
claries the ontological ambiguity constitutive for Heidegger’s understand-
ing of being and its “happening” (das Ereignis). is paper aims to show
how this ontological ambiguity also leads to ambiguous understanding
about the history of being (das Geschichte des Seyns). By inconspicuously
352 MIKKO JORONEN
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unfolding a clearing of disclosure, yet only by concealing the fundamental
openness for the other modes of unfolding to take place, such Event leads
into a succession of nite happenings of concealing-revealing.1 e danger
is, as Heidegger claims, that we forget that particular monopolizations of
unfolding, our necessary “as”-takings and “is”-sayings through which we
understand things indirectly (i.e. ontologically) through their mode of
unfolding, only stand forth as nite Events holding sway against the open
be-ing, against the openness for the other unfolding to come about. Hence,
the danger is that we end up in the oblivion of open be-ing via its ground-
ing into metaphysically frozen and closed condition behind the presence of
things. Such metaphysical oblivion, then, is an unfortunate, yet not neces-
sary, historical epiphenomenon of the original concealment of open be-ing,
a way of grounding that completely loses the sense about the concealed
possibilities of open be-ing. By creating an illusion that there is an ultimate
ground of “beingness”(Seiendheit) behind the presence of things, a meta-
physical condition of “permanent presence”, Western tradition of thinking
has faded the nitude of unfolding to the background and hence darkened
the original openness of be-ing.2
Accordingly, such oblivion of be-ing, of its openness and nitude, con-
stitutes a double stance in relation to the question of history. On the one
hand, history builds fundamentally on the process of oblivion, on the total
concealment of be-ing and its nite happening through dierent monopo-
lizations of unfolding. On the other hand, history is an outcome of the
1. See M. Heidegger, On Time and Being, J. Stambaugh (trans.) (New York: Harper &
Row, 1972); M. Heidegger, “e Principle of Ground”, Man and World 7, no. 3 (1974),
K.Hoeller (trans.): 211–12; P. Livingston, “inking and Being: Heidegger and Wittgen-
stein on Machination and Lived-Experience”, Inquiry 46, no. 3 (2003): 327.
2. In such metaphysical understanding being becomes thought of, but only as “beingness
(Seiendheit) of beings”. Against this notion of “being as beingness”, the renewed version
of ontological dierence between Seyn and Sein proposes a possibility to think of the
unfolding of being (Sein) through its metaphysical (and onto-theological) determination
as “beingness” (Seiendheit), so that such thinking becomes possible, not out of beings
(since this would lead to a mere discovery of their “beingness”), but against the openness
of be-ing (Seyn) from which the meaning of “being” (Sein), hidden within “beingness”
(Seindheit), was granted in the rst place. e reason metaphysical thought is only capable
of thinking “being” (Sein) in terms of “beingness (Seiendheit) of beings” (Seiende) is due
to the fact that in its search of permanent ground for things metaphysical thought cannot
think of anything that is groundless, i.e., something that signies an obscure and contin-
gent openness against which all possible grounds of unfolding took place in the rst place:
the abyss of open be-ing (Seyn). See G. J. Seidel, “Musing with Kierkegaard: Heidegger’s
Besinnung”, Continental Philosophy Review 34, no. 4 (2001): 207; and R. Polt, e Emer-
gency of Being: On Heidegger’s Contribution to Philosophy (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell
University Press, 2006), 193.
HEIDEGGER ON THE HISTORY OF MACHINATION 353
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.
hidden incubation of what Heidegger calls a release of the latent powers
of “Machination” (Machenschaft), a disposition concentrating solely on
the manipulation of beings at the expense of losing the question of being.
By struggling with the issues of concealment and unfolding, limits and
openness, incubation and discontinuity, as well as of the in-historical and
non-historical ambiguity of the succession of Events the paper proposes
genealogical interpretation on Heidegger’s view of history as a process of
disposure based on inceptive metaphysical movement of the early Greek
thought.
e rst part of the paper discusses Heidegger’s understanding about
history in terms of oblivion of being in general terms. By building on
this, the second part of the paper shows how, through the mechanism of
oblivion (through the metaphysical grounding of unfolding into perma-
nent condition behind the presence of things) the legacy of Western think-
ing has created hidden incubation based on release of the latent powers
implicit in the rst metaphysical articulations of the early Greek thinkers.
It focuses on the creation of hidden potentialities for the emergence of pri-
mordial quality of unfolding Heidegger calls machination (Machenschaft),
especially on its inauguration in the early Greek notions of tekhne, phusis
and the basic attunement of wonder. e paper concludes by arguing for
spatial implications of such an incubation process: eventually the process,
the disposure of history, leads into an age of planetary technology, hence
releasing, through Nietzsche’s nal preparation, what is most essential for
the logic of machination.
Twofold Ambiguity: Between History and the Hidden Abyss
One can always suspect the obscurity of Heidegger’s way of discussing the
unfolding of being and its history in terms of oblivion of the self-concealing
mechanism of be-ing. At the same time Heidegger’s recovery of be-ing from
the sediments of metaphysical thinking is precisely a thinking about what
is “indenable” and comes “without ground”, and so it attempts to nd
proper ways to express this unspeakable richness and groundless abun-
dance against which the giving of every grounding intelligibility occurs.
In order to do so, Heidegger needs to articulate a way through which it
becomes possible to escape the roots of the prevailing epochal intelligibil-
ity, the imperatives and historical preparation of contemporary culmina-
tion of metaphysics in machination. As Feenberg claries, Heidegger is
“attempting to think the Western metaphysical tradition as a whole with-
out being limited to the terms of its latest stage, the stage in which, of
354 MIKKO JORONEN
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course, he himself is situated”.3 In order to overcome the tradition of meta-
physical determinations, Heidegger simply cannot use the concepts and the
language of the tradition, but needs to struggle against the legacy, which
means the more familiar concepts of the tradition cannot serve as explana-
tions, but become something we need to explain. Instead of the concepts
of the tradition Heidegger therefore talks about “revealings” and “conceal-
ments” that these concepts bring about.
It is in this way that Heidegger is capable of providing conceptual appa-
ratuses, which rise out of the very history he is trying to explain and over-
come, while at the same the fundamental aim is to think of the lost, but
intrinsic source of the whole tradition of oblivion precisely through the his-
tory this source itself has granted and made possible. is ultimate source
is what Heidegger calls open being (or be-ing by underlining its originary
non-metaphysical openness), while the hidden history the source of open-
ness has granted he discusses in terms of the Event of being (or the Event of
“appropriation”/“unfolding” as Ereignis is also translated). Heidegger, thus,
can properly struggle against the tradition of oblivion by showing how its
conceptual bedrocks and ontological standpoints have always worked in
accordance with the same mechanism of unfolding, which due to the meta-
physical mutations has lead to the obscuring legacy based on the growing
oblivion of be-ing. Genealogical exploration should thus aim to show how
dierent metaphysical intelligibilities have a common source on a broader
mechanism – on a mechanism of unfolding that reveals things by conceal-
ing other possible modes of unfolding – by following the oblivion, the
succession of metaphysical bedrocks, and hence retrace its concealed source
as well as the origin of the whole process of concealment. Such process of
recovery is thus constituted as a historical uncovering of the fundamental
force of be-ing – a force that has been operative throughout the history
without ever being allowed to unfold its mechanism of nite giving. It
is through such recovery of the genealogy of the oblivion of being that it
becomes possible to gain an access to the deeper mechanism of Appropria-
tion, to a mechanism that has made possible the whole history of dierent
and diering mutations of unfolding by covering their ownmost source –
the inexhaustible abyss of open be-ing – and their nitude – their nature as
the nite Events. All in all, Heidegger’s notion of the “Event of Appropria-
tion” (Ereignis) denotes neither a new concept nor a new ontological bed-
rock that would allow for a completely new (post-modern) epochal horizon
of unfolding to come about, but something that has already constituted a
3. A. Feenberg, Heidegger and Marcuse: e Catastrophe and Redemption of History. New York
and London: Routledge, 22.
HEIDEGGER ON THE HISTORY OF MACHINATION 355
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.
whole legacy of unfolding without ever being allowed to unfold its mecha-
nism of nite giving, its nature as a nite Event. Strictly speaking, then,
such genealogy of dierent modes of unfolding is not based on a “process”
at all, but upon “disposure” of nite Events appropriating their unfolding
out of the open be-ing.
According to Heidegger the originary “in-ception” (An-fang) of oblivion
was rst prepared and articulated by the early Greek philosophers. It was
Plato who collected the strains of pre-Socratic thought so that Aristotle
was capable of articulating the “unthought” of this collection in terms of
what formed the originary onto-theological constitution of “metaphysics of
presence”. Basically such “metaphysics of presence”, the “rst beginning”
of oblivion, denes what is the permanent presence of entities “that are”.
Metaphysical thinking thus has an onto-theological structure: it is both an
ontological decision concerning the essence of beings, their “whatness”,
as well as a theological decision concerning the existence of beings, their
“thatness”. e ontological sense of metaphysics thus asks what makes entity
an entity – it asks what is essential to things, what is their essence, the most
general ground shared by all entities. e theological sense of metaphysics,
in turn, seeks to explain the “thatness” of entities, the highest being which
counts for all beings. By asking “what is that which is” it thus seeks not just
the most higher and paradigmatic sense, but also in what sense this higher
sense exists.4
According to Heidegger, the onto-theological mechanism of oblivion
was rst articulated by Aristotle in his twofold notion of ousia as “pri-
mary substance” dening whether something exists (that it is present) and
4. See Heidegger, “Kant’s esis about Being”, in Pathmarks, T. E. Klein Jr. & W. E. Pohl
(trans.), 337–63 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998b), 340 and M. Heidegger,
Identity and Dierence (Chicago, IL and London: e University of Chicago Press, 2002),
70. As omson adds, theological sense of metaphysics seeks to know the two intertwined
aspects concerning the metaphysical understanding of beingness of beings: “which entity
is the highest and in what way is it”. Altogether, the onto-theological mechanism moulds
an ultimate metaphysical ground, which denes the essence (or “whatness”) of the totality
of beings as well as the highest principle (or “thatness”) upon which entities are existing
– as onto-theology metaphysics establishes the unity of permanence concerning how and
what entities are. In both occasions thinking (as onto-theology) falls to emphasize the met-
aphysical ground of things and thus ignores the question of the happening of being, the
Event of unfolding through which being took place and so aorded foundation for enti-
ties to become grounded through metaphysical mouldings. I. D. omson, Heidegger on
Ontotheology: Technology and the Politics of Education (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2005), 15, 30–35; See also A. A. Vallega, Heidegger and the Issue of Space: inking
on Exilic Grounds (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 44–56;
J. Backman, “Divine and Mortal Motivation: On the Movement of Life in Aristotle and
Heidegger”, Continental Philosophy Review 38, nos. 3-4 (2006): 241–61.
356 MIKKO JORONEN
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“secondary substance” dening what something (that is present) is. In
other words, by articulating the notion of ousia by virtue of (1) whether
something exists (that it is present; prote ousia, “primary substance”), and
(2) what something is (deutera ousia, “secondary substance”), Aristotle
was the rst to articulate the onto-theological dierence between that-
ness (existence) and whatness (essence), so dening the rst permanently
enduring ground behind the presence of things (i.e. the “metaphysics
of presence”).5 However, as Heidegger writes, “this occurred after Plato’s
thinking had responded to the claim of being in a way that prepared that
distinction”, which means that Aristotle articulated what Plato already
prepared without yet formulating it.6 Even though Plato thought being in
terms of supraheavenly essences (ideas), while Aristotle managed to plant
these essences back to actual things (as energeia), they both shared the ini-
tial onto-theological structure manifested in all metaphysical mutations:
the idea that beings are governed by the “substance” of perfectly complete
and everlastingly enduring presence of metaphysical ground.7 In other
words, Aristotle’s notion of ousia articulated the “unthought” of Plato
by dening on what ground things are present, so that such denition
became the self-evident dierence between the existence and essence in
medieval scholasticism – a dierence that Nietzsche turned upside down
in a manner that “ultimately though indirectly” had its consequence as
a global phenomenon we are witnessing today: the undierentiated use
5. M. de Beistegui, Truth & Genesis: Philosophy as Dierential Ontology (Bloomington and Indi-
anapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2009), 36–48; I. omson, Heidegger on Ontotheol-
ogy, 34–36.
6. M. Heidegger, e End of Philosophy, J. Stanbaugh (trans.) (Chicago, IL: University Chicago
Press, 2003), 4, 8–10.
7. e essential dierence between Aristotle and Plato was not merely grounded upon the dif-
ference between initiation and articulation, but also upon the fact that for Aristotle ideas
were forms of “energies” housed-in actualization of things, when Plato saw ideas (essences)
independent of the existence of things they created. Unlike in Plato’s “rationalism”, in Aris-
totle’s “empirism” movement of things were an outcome of energeia, actualization of their
potential through the telos. At the same time for Aristotle the aim of such “empiric” explo-
ration of things-at-work was precisely to articulate the ever-lasting rst principles and cat-
egories behind these moving things. Even though for Aristotle the actualization process of
energeia was thus ontologically fundamental, so that it had precedence to ideas (eidos), Aristo-
tle never repressed the notion of idea (eidos). Idea and material rather always went together:
the material (hyle) had the potential to become a nished work (energeia), an actualized
potential, which instantiates and brings ideas (eidos) into presence. In other words, even
though Aristotle thought ousia as energeia he was only capable of thinking so against the
notion of ousia as idea, and thus against the background constituted by Plato. See M. Hei-
degger, e End of Philosophy, 5–6, 9; A. Feenberg, Heidegger and Marcuse, 33; A. A. Vallega,
Heidegger and the Issue of Space, 47.
HEIDEGGER ON THE HISTORY OF MACHINATION 357
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.
and mobility of things as constantly present reserves for the machination
of globe-wide networks of ordering.8
Perhaps the most interesting point here is that according to Heidegger
this hidden mission of being, destined by the rst beginning, ends at the
rise of the planetary unfolding. In completed metaphysics all of its pos-
sibilities are exhausted so that we come to witness its inversion, the nihil-
ism of planetary technology, a total drive of willful ordering cast upon the
earth and things. Hence, it is “at the last (Eskaton), that is, at the depar-
ture of the long-hidden destiny of be-ing”, when the rst beginning of the
early Greeks “is gathered (Logos) in the ultimacy of its destining”, in the
total oblivion of be-ing through the self-expanding drive of technological-
instrumental manipulation and ordering of things as constantly present
and manipulable reserves.9 Eventually, even though be-ing is nothing other
than a succession of unique epochs continuously covering the nite hap-
pening of being, alteration in onto-theological unfolding forms a tradi-
tion, a legacy of oblivion, that consist of eschatological course where be-ing
withdraws to the point of its abandonment (i.e. to the total oblivion that
concentrates only on planetary-wide ordering and ecient manipulation of
beings; the machination).
How then does such maturation of oblivion take place so that nally,
in the age of planetary organization instigated by Nietzsche’s thinking, the
sphere of possibilities of the rst beginning becomes totally exhausted?
Such a claim seems to imply, as Haar observes, that the “rst beginning”
already latently included all the possible mutations of onto-theological
grounding, so that the inception of the “rst beginning” would have been
the fullest and richest moment, the completion of metaphysics in turn
8. Even though these revolutionary thinkers were apparently capable of turning the wheels
of onto-theology with an unpredictable and previously unknown manner, accordingly to
Heidegger their discoveries were at the same time always related to “what everyone sees
and grasps in comportment to beings”. M. Heidegger, Identity and Dierence, 38. Eventu-
ally these thinkers “are what they are insofar as being is entrusted to them”, such entrusting
having its origin in the originary oblivion, in the rst oblivion caused by the onto-theological
mechanism that took place through the metaphysical atmosphere of the “rst beginning” of
the ancient Greek thinking. M. Heidegger, “Vol III: e Will to Power as Knowledge and
as Metaphysics”, in Nietzsche: Volumes ree and Four, J. Stambaugh, D. F. Krell & F.A.
Capuzzi (trans.), D. F. Krell (ed.) (New York: HarperCollins, 1991c), 188. Hence, even
though Heidegger thinks that such metaphysical atmospheres constitute the basic disposi-
tions of an epoch, metaphysics can always be identied with a name of a thinker: Heidegger
is not denying the role of agency, but rather putting it into its proper place, to its position in
the historical course of being.
9. M. Heidegger, Early Greek inking (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1984), 17–18. See
also T. Schatzki, Martin Heidegger: eorist of Space (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2007),
74.
358 MIKKO JORONEN
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presenting exhaustion of these possibilities.10 Such interpretation, how-
ever, contradicts most of Heidegger’s writings, in particular with the fact
that according to Heidegger it is the open abyss of be-ing that denotes the
absolute plenitude of possibilities, not the “rst beginning”, which instead
conceals this abyssal openness. e other option is to understand these
particular concealments in terms of releasing unthought potentialities for
further articulations, these articulations in turn enabling further incuba-
tion out of what they, in their own happening, implicitly indicated and
left unthought. Heidegger seems to be implying this option, for instance,
when claiming that Aristotle’s formulation of the “metaphysics of presence”
created the unseen distinction between “existence” (that is) and “essence”
(what is), not by articulating such twofold notion of ousia out of nothing,
but out of Plato’s unthought and not yet articulated preparation. Out of
such “incubation of the unthought” it would be also possible to take into
account that Heidegger understands metaphysical postulates of intelligibil-
ity in terms of cumulating towards their nal gathering in planetary epoch,
so that the original inception was not a mere starting point in the past, but
something that remained sheltered throughout the history it inaugurated.11
e latter interpretation, however, does not explain out of what necessity
the nal recollection, blocking all further metaphysical development, takes
place. Perhaps the dramatic notion of eschatological completion should not
be taken in terms of pre-determinative condition, but in terms of phenom-
enological explanation of the actual genealogical disposal of be-ing opera-
tive ever since the inception of the rst beginning. Instead of seeing the
completion of metaphysics as a necessary outcome of the “system of his-
tory”, such genealogical reading would allow us to understand Heidegger’s
references to the “exhaustion of possibilities” that happens in “the end of
metaphysics” out of the conditions that actually took place.12 Moreover, it
would also be possible to understand the succession of oblivion as a free
series, which unfolds its preparatory aspects only out of its actual (but un-
predictable) happening, and thus from a viewpoint of contemporary out-
growth it so determined.
10. M. Haar, e Song of the Earth: Heidegger and the Grounds of the History of Being, R. Lilly
(trans.) (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993), 73.
11. Cf. Haar, e Song of the Earth, 75; omson, Heidegger on Ontotheology, 33.
12. As Krell and Elden have also suggested, Heidegger’s view about the incubation of onto-
historical bedrocks comes closer to genealogy than anything else. D. Krell, Daimon Life:
Heidegger and Life-Philosophy (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press,
1992), 109; S. Elden, “Reading Genealogy as Historical Ontology”, in Foucault and Hei-
degger: Critical Encounters, A. Michman & A. Rosenberg (eds), 187–205 (196) (Minneapo-
lis, MN: University of Minneapolis Press, 2003).
HEIDEGGER ON THE HISTORY OF MACHINATION 359
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e ambiguity within the “continuous-discontinuous preparation” of the
nal unfolding, it seems, is a rather curious matter. Although it is possible
to think of our contemporary epoch of planetary technology as unique and
unpredictable, as a something that instead of holding historical continuity
introduces an ontological break to preceding epochs, there is also a matura-
tion of fundamental preparations, a cumulative logic of metaphysical propo-
sitions. Even though at rst glance the sense of maturation between epochs
speaks against the discontinuity and uniqueness of singular epochs, there
is also a way of incubation that is able to happen without destroying the
singularity of a dierent unfolding of being. Basically, we just have to think
through the uniqueness dierently: since the ontological bedrock of prevail-
ing epoch, for instance, was unknown to prior historical epochs, it makes
our contemporary epoch unique, even though at the same time we should
explain its development through a series of grounding postulates, which by
covering the happening of be-ing have each prepared and made possible the
contemporary planetary epoch. Perhaps it would be appropriate to claim,
like Haar does, that ontological conditions always “free up possibilities” for
the following but dierent, unpredictable and unique conditions, so that
each epoch, as Taminiaux adds, is equally a “deletion” and “obliteration” of
the directions and capabilities oered by the preceding historical layers.13
Accordingly, even though dierent epochs, the unique modes through
which be-ing holds back, spring up suddenly and unpredictably, they all do
have one thing in common: they hide the nite happening of unfolding and
thus the source of open and abundant be-ing from which their own monopo-
lizations of concealing-revealing were granted in the rst place. Even though
epochs do not derive from each other, but are instead all based on a unique
unfolding of being, this is precisely what all of these epochs have in common:
their belonging to the hidden historical mission of be-ing revealing and veil-
ing itself. Dierent epochs, then, are all granted from the “selfsame”, but
this “selfsame” is nothing more than the unity of self-concealing-revealing
Event of be-ing, such sameness of the Event being precisely what the tradi-
tion has failed to discuss. In short, all epochs share the same onto-theological
mechanism of oblivion inaugurated by the rst beginning: eventually dier-
ent epochs are connected to each other, not merely through the sameness of
their source (the open be-ing), but through the continuity of its oblivion.
us, the only “law” that links unique epochal mutations of being to each
other is the correlation between the increasing oblivion of be-ing and the
accumulative emergence of metaphysical postulates further and further cov-
ering be-ing under their sedimented layers. As a manifestation of such “law”
13. J. Taminiaux, Recoupements (Bruxelles: Ousia, 1982), 124; Haar, Song of the Earth, 73.
360 MIKKO JORONEN
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of further oblivion, the series of epochs (i.e. the history of being) is cumula-
tive, but yet indeterminate: prior epochs only free up unthought possibilities
so that these potentialities are extended in a manner that following epochs are
always unforeseen and hence unknown for the preparing mutations of being.
As Heidegger writes in Metaphysics as History of Being, “the pro-gression of
metaphysics from its essential beginning leaves this beginning behind, and yet
takes a fundamental constituent of Platonic-Aristotelian thinking alone”.14
e “incubational maturation” of the oblivion, then, has a double outlet: the
history of being is not just a history of a loss of sense of be-ing and its nitude
through onto-theological groundings; it also presents a genealogical incuba-
tion of these grounding postulates through the unthought possibilities they
released. Conceptual progressions and purposeless changes, even seemingly
innocent linguistic translations, thereby contain a disposure, a legacy of for-
getting and veiling, by which be-ing hands itself from one epoch to another
through the veiling-revealings it denotes.
As is evident, the inquiry of the operative history of being never simply
returns to the past, but steps back to a domain, which has been systemati-
cally skipped over: the concealed destining caused by the oblivion of be-ing
and its nite Event. In so far as the coming into view of Ereignis uncovers
the primordial history of oblivion, it also brings forth and articulates this
legacy of disposure, where the oblivion of be-ing step by step incubates and
maturates until its overcoming in “other beginning” of more originary post-
metaphysical thought. Ereignis, then, is the “other beginning” that uncovers
the unnecessary oblivion of the necessary concealment, hence preventing
the obscuring power of “rst beginning” to mould grounds without ever
raising awareness about their nature as nite Events. In other words, the
history of being – throughout the process of the maturation of oblivion
from the origin of the rst beginning all the way until its consummation in
machination – is based on the oblivion of its “ownmost” source: the nite
Event that appropriates its happening from the open be-ing. Passing into
“other beginning” of nite Event thereby delivers, not just an overcoming
of the history of being as metaphysical oblivion, but also an abyssal realm of
openness, which makes a step beyond the oblivion inaugurated by the “rst
beginning”, including everything that can be imagined under its inuence.
Incubation of Machination: From tekhne to the Power of Ordering
Withheld between two decisive moments, one determined by the begin-
ning of Western thought – the onto-theological grounding of being as
14. Heidegger, e End of Philosophy, 10; See also Heidegger, On Time and Being, 24.
HEIDEGGER ON THE HISTORY OF MACHINATION 361
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.
“metaphysics of presence” – and the other now prepared – coming into
view of the nite Event – the evolvement of the abandonment of be-ing
culminates today in the dominance of the manipulative way of unfolding
things as orderable reserves constantly set ready for calculation and use.
Heidegger names the fundamental condition of this commanding way of
unfolding and organizing things as “machination” (Machenschaft). Machi-
nation is above all intensication of “makingness” (Mache), thus bearing a
close relation to power (Macht) of making (Machen) – machination oper-
ates in terms of power which turns every-thing makeable (Machbar) in pro-
portion to whatever purposes we wish.15 Machination hence indicates the
endgame of technical making as arbitrary ordering, so that such ordering
manifests the completion of the early Greek notion of tekhne, the know-
how of making and creating artefacts, in terms of willful power of calcula-
tive manipulation of things. As Bernard Stiegler compresses the issue: now
“technics command (kubernao, the etymon of cybernetics) nature. Before,
nature commanded technics.”16 Already in the Greek understanding of
tekhne there thus seems to be laying “the possibility of arbitrariness, of an
unbridled positing of goals”, and if this happens, Heidegger claries in the
Basic Questions of Philosophy, “then in place of the basic disposition of won-
dering, the avidity for learning and calculation enters in”.17 Such emergence
of the technical calculation and machination is thus an outgrowth of the rise
of the arbitrary ordering based on all-makeable power of human willing.
It is the “ordering”, the gure of commanding, domination, making and
manipulation, which machination characterizes: machination refers to the
power (Macht) of manipulative domination (Machenschaft), which installs
itself through what Heidegger later called a calculative and provocative
challenging (Herausfordern) of things through their total “enframing” and
“com-positioning” (Gestell) into orderable standing-reserves (Bestand).18 No
15. Heidegger, Nietzsche, Vol. III, 174–75, 180–81; cf. M. Heidegger, Die Geschichte des Seyns
(Frankfurt Am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1998c), 46–49, F. Dallmayr, “Heidegger on
Macht and Machenschaft”, Continental Philosophy Review 34, no. 3 (2001), 253, R. Sinner-
brink, “From Machenschaft to Biopolitics: A Genealogical Critique of Biopower”, Critical
Horizons 6, no. 1 (2005), 242.
16. B. Stiegler, Technics and Time, I:e Fault of Epimetheus, R. Beardsworth & G. Collins
(trans.) (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 24.
17. M. Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy: Selected Problems of Logic, R. Rojcewicz and
A.Schuwer (trans.) (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994),
155, see also 153–54.
18. Despite the circumstance that in German Gestell normally refers to a “rack” or a “frame”,
in Heidegger’s use Ge-stell apparently aims to name the overall Framework, the “enfram-
ing” or “com-positioning”, through which the manipulative commanding of machination
works: since the prex ge- denotes a sense of total, the noun Stell a “position”, and the verb
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wonder such unfolding has a planetary completion: for the willful power of
ordering, for the technological might of total enframing, everything not-
yet-known is opened as not-yet-ordered and thus as something not-yet-
taken-into-control. It is not just that this power is total in its positioning,
but also that “the whole planet is used as product of power”; in other words,
that the calculative commanding is extending its control to the limits of
“inhabited earth”, even into “atmosphere” and “stratosphere”, thus turning
the earth into a planet subjugated under the increasingly strengthening and
self-expanding networks of orderings.19
Such abolition of distance, however, is not merely a spatial issue, but
phenomenon that belongs to the last stage of the long-lasting legacy of
metaphysical oblivion of be-ing. In order to explicate the culmination of
the ancient Greek understanding of technics (tekhne) in terms of calcula-
tive power of technological ordering and machination, one should rst of
all realize that both of these modes of technical manipulation are related
to the unfolding of things. Like phusis, which is usually translated some-
what misleadingly as “nature”, for the Greeks tekhne brought something into
appearance. Since Greek tekhne and phusis were both manners of bringing
something into appearance, they also shared the original meaning of poiesis,
the idea of production and “bringing-forth”. e Greek sense of produc-
tion, poiesis, thereby neither meant a simple creation or making, nor a mere
production, but signied a mode of unfolding, a kind of “bringing forth
into appearance” that does not exclude nature (phusis). But whereas what
came to presence by means of phusis had an unfolding in itself, what came
to presence in the manner of tekhne had a bringing-forth not in itself, but
in the craftsman or artist. Since Greek tekhne may be regarded in terms of
doing activities of a craftsman – a kind of “know-how” – or in terms of art,
and thus, since it diered from what emerges by nature (phusis), what tekhne
essentially brought forth was precisely that which did not emerge by itself.20
stellen “positioning” or “setting up in position”, Gestell refers above all to a set up under
which every-thing is makeable and thus ordered in a position to wait calls for duty. See
M.Heidegger, “e Question Concerning Technology”, in e Question Concerning Tech-
nology and Other Essays, W. Lovitt (trans.), 3–35 (New York: Harper & Row, 1977a),
W.Lovitt, “A Gespräch with Heidegger on Technology”, Man and World 6, no. 1 (1973),
52; J. Taminiaux, Recoupements, 138.
19. M. Heidegger, Mindfulness, P. Emad and T. Kalary (trans.) (New York: Continuum, 2006),
14, See M. Heidegger, What is Called inking?, J. G. Gray (trans.) (New York: Harper-
Collins, 1968), 160, M. Joronen, “Dwelling in the Sites of Finitude: Resisting the Vio-
lence of the Metaphysical Globe”, Antipode 43, no. 4 (2011), 1127–154.
20. See M. Heidegger, “e Origin of the Work of Art”, in Poetry, Language, ought, A. Hof-
stadter (trans.), 15–86 (New York: Harper & Row, 2001a), 41; M. Heidegger, “e Question
Concerning Technology”, 10; W. Lovitt, “A Gespräch with Heidegger on Technology”, 48.
HEIDEGGER ON THE HISTORY OF MACHINATION 363
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Accordingly, for the ancient Greeks things emerged either by phusis or
tekhne. When things of phusis, the “nature”, were self-organizing and self-
manifesting – they had an arkhe in themselves – tekhne had its ground in
the making and know-how of an agent and thus consisted of producing
artefacts. Tekhne, however, was not a plain arbitrary manufacturing, but
a way of revealing that included logos about how things must come out
– be “gathered” or “collected”, as Heidegger suggests by referring to the
root meaning of the logos, the legein – through the process of artefact pro-
duction.21 Tekhne, then, required logos about how to make things that are
intelligible and thus at the end of the production process formed an intel-
ligible collection of various disperse aspects into a gathering that makes the
artefact a good and appropriate one. is logos, the act of gathering, in turn
was an articulation of certain intelligible model, the essential realm of ideas
(eidos). Accordingly, the mode of production of tekhne was based on a func-
tion of certain essential model (eidos) through intelligible gathering (logos)
of relations that made things what they were (i.e. a hammer as something
suitable for hammering). Technical knowledge was simply dened accord-
ing to its end: production of a hammer, for instance, required that in order
to produce one craftsman already needed to recognize the idea of hammer
– he needed knowledge about the essence of hammer, its “hammerness” –
as well as knowledge concerning the appropriate gathering of relationships
that were needed to nish the manufacturing process. Altogether, tekhne
signied an intelligible way of producing artefacts beyond the phusis, a way
of unfolding that did not exploit phusis, but held it into unconcealment
through the guidance of logos-oering (the intelligible gathering) eidos (the
ideal outcome).
Perhaps the most crucial point here is that, in spite of their dierence in
unfolding, tekhne and phusis were both understood on a basis of poiesis, as
modes of revealing based on the productive bringing-forth of things. For
the Greeks, then, the structure of production constituted the structure of
being.22 is, however, did not mean that for the Greeks all things, from
natural entities to artefacts, were merely manufactured, but that nature,
like the artefactual world, was a process of emergence, where things placed
themselves in appearance in proportion to their end, by producing their pre-
established telos. is process of emergence brought things into appearance
21. M. Heidegger, “On the Essence and Concept of Phusis in Aristotle’s Physics B”, in Pathmarks,
T. Sheehan (trans.), 183–230 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998a), 212–13.
22. A. Feenberg, Heidegger and Marcuse, 35–36; See also M. Heidegger, What Is a ing?
B.Barton & V. Deutch (trans.) (South Bend, IN: Regnery/Gateway, 1967), 81; Heidegger,
“e Question Concerning Technology”, 10.
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so that their nal looks were dened by their essence, their idea – the eidos.
Like technical artefacts, things of nature (phusis) were also considered in
terms of producing the predened essences. Phusis, then, was conceived
in terms of the end internal to things: for the Greeks phusis was a self-
producing way of revealing that had its ground and thus its telos in itself. In
other words, nature consisted of self-producing things through which ideas
(essences) placed themselves in the appearing entities directly, whereas in
the case of tekhne the craftsman was needed to nalize the production pro-
cess of artefacts. In the tekhne of craftsman ideas did not place themselves
directly in the appearance, but through the knowledge (the know-how)
concerning the essential features of artefact production.
Although diering from phusis in its mode of unfolding, it is evident that
in the “rst beginning” of the Greek thinking tekhne also belonged together
with phusis in the most essential manner: as a revealing based on a model of
production. In addition to the fact that phusis and tekhne both signied a
mode of unfolding in which structure was determined in terms of produc-
tion, as a something that emerges out of its own accord phusis also served
a precondition and thereby a limit for the craftsman’s making of tekhne. In
the Greek thinking tekhne was dependent on phusis in a way nature did not
depend on technics. According to Aristotle, for example, a carpenter can use
wood as a material for a bed, but this was only because the carpenter needs
to be mindfully attuned to the wood and its characteristics.23 Phusis, the
earth, was allowed to rise without violent and manipulative ordering. When
the type of unfolding in the Gestell is identiable as a calculative challenging,
as a manipulative extracting from the reserve constantly subjected to be on
call, in the rst beginning tekhne – in spite of its dierence with regard to
phusis – was a bringing-forth of something out of the command of phusis.24
e substantial dierence is that in the Greek understanding tekhne did
not command phusis in order to exploit it by setting it ready for the frame-
work of orderings like the manipulative power of machination does. Instead
of modern manifestation of the productive unfolding – i.e., the manipu-
lative and total producibility constituted by the coercive power of machi-
nation (Machenschaft) driving ahead into constant innovation of technical
improvements – for the Greeks production signied poiesis, a bringing forth
and appearance of things towards the ideal end dened by eidos.
What is crucial in the Greek understanding of nature and technics is
the placement of existence of things (that they are) in proportion to their
23. B. Foltz, Inhabitating the Earth, 96–97; T. Sadler, Heidegger and Aristotle: e Question of
Being (London: Athlone, 1996), 61.
24. Heidegger, “e Question Concerning Technology”, 14, 30.
HEIDEGGER ON THE HISTORY OF MACHINATION 365
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essences (what they are). Accordingly, it was Plato who enlarged the vision
of production to consist of all beings by holding that both, the growth of
natural entities and the manufacturing of artefacts, rely on production of
the ground laid by their essences. In short, all things (natural, artefactual)
have an end dened in terms of the production of their ideal outcome.
e onto-theological duality between essence and existence, between what
makes thing a thing (its essence, the idea) and by which way that thing
becomes a thing (existence as production of common ideas), rises from the
common source of productive mode of revealing. Accordingly, the onto-
theological structure of the “rst beginning” in the early Greek thinking
was dened in term of productionist mode of revealing: all things that
emerge produce their idea, which is why their existence and movement in
the world is always full of intention and meaning. Moreover, since things
have an end dened by their essences, such intention and meaning is not
created by us, but denotes something to which we apparently correspond to
when making artefacts through the know-how of tekhne or when gaining
knowledge (episteme) from the telos of nature. As Heidegger writes, tekhne
(production of artefacts) and episteme (knowledge of nature) both meant
“to be home in something, to understand and be expert in it”.25 e dier-
ence between the productionist revealing of the Greeks and the revealing of
Gestell is obvious: the former corresponds to the natural telos of the world
(is at home in it), while the latter commands it (is over it as Machination).
In spite of its obvious antagonism to the unfolding of Gestell, from
the viewpoint of contemporary consummation the Greek notion of tekhne
already held great dangers within, in particular the possibility that tekhne
may lose its embeddedness at the fundamental attunement of “wonder”.
By this Heidegger obviously refers to the wonder of Socrates that Plato
pointed out in eaetetus – “wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and
philosophy begins in wonder” – but goes further by claiming that this fun-
damental mood actually gave rise to the Greek thinking as such.26 Given
this, although the original sense of tekhne already diered from the mode of
unfolding of phusis, and further, although Greek understanding of unfold-
ing was based on a model of production (of ideal ends), in the Greek begin-
ning tekhne neither included a total control of beings nor did it completely
run against phusis by systematically ordering it to stand by for manipulation
and desired use. Unlike the manipulative power of “machination”, tekhne
did not originally arise from calculative and manipulative ordering, but
25. Heidegger, “e Question Concerning Technology”, 13.
26. Plato, eaetetus (eBooks@Adelaide: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/p/plato/p71th/, 2007);
Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy, 135.
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from the wondering of beings as beings, which instead of ordering phusis
let it come forth in terms of its own accord.27 For the Greeks wonder left
beings to become opened as beings that they were, thus allowing a ques-
tion concerning their being to arise, even though at the same time the
Greeks approached the question of being in a metaphysical way, as onto-
theologically dened and grounded property.
It was wonder, then, that on the one hand allowed the self-emerging
phusis to command the bringing into appearance of tekhne, although on
the other hand tekhne already had a possibility to “stand against” the phusis,
a seed that later grew to determine beings as orderable reserve set ready for
the use of will. e modern condition of technology rests precisely upon
the fact that tekhne became detached from wonder and hence turned will-
fully towards its own interdependency to phusis. Hence, today tekhne holds
sway as a manipulative power; it orders phusis by constantly demanding
and challenging it to be present as fully accessible and disposable resource.
It was thereby the disconnection of the Greek notion of tekhne from the
wonder, which prepared a way for the calculative process of technologi-
cal manipulation now ordering all things to stand by as makeable reserves
under the orders of the omnipotent power of arbitrary commands.
Due to the danger involved in tekhne – that tekhne could become
detached from wonder and turn into arbitrary ordering of modern Ges-
tell – it could be argued that Gestell is rooted in the rst beginning of the
Greek thinking and its productive way of revealing. Perhaps it is due to
such rootedness (i.e., that tekhne and Gestell are both productive modes
of revealing, yet dierent in their basic dispositions of wonder and calcula-
tion) that Heidegger wrote in Contributions of Philosophy that it is the pro-
ductive imperative of machination, which “dominates the history of being
in Western philosophy up to now, from Plato to Nietzsche”, while specify-
ing that “it seems to be a law of machination […] that more powerfully it
unfolds – for example in the Middle Ages and in modernity – the more
stubbornly and more machinatingly it hides itself as such”, thus darkening
the question of being through constantly growing manipulation of beings.28
As is evident, here Heidegger clearly interprets machination in terms of
not solely referring to the modern epoch, but to the whole history of the
oblivion of be-ing. However, as the former discussions indicate, these pas-
sages should be read in line with the discontinuous preparations through
27. Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy, 153–55; See also Livingston, “inking and Being”,
334–35.
28. M. Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), P. Emad and K. Maly (trans.),
88–89 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press).
HEIDEGGER ON THE HISTORY OF MACHINATION 367
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which tekhne becomes separated from the wonder through its assimilation
to the calculative ordering of machination. Machination is thus hidden
potential released by the breakdown of the Greek understanding of reveal-
ing. is kind of interpretation, where machination is seen as hidden poten-
tiality released through the breakdown of the Greek notion of wonder,
would be also in line with other passages in Heidegger’s writings such as
the one in Overcoming Metaphysics, where Heidegger argues, seemingly con-
trary to the former passages of Contributions of Philosophy, that machination
“arises from the being of technology”, as well as with Heidegger’s talk about
the modern “epoch of machination” in Mindfulness.29 Accordingly, in as
much as the emergence of Gestell was based on such detachment of wonder
from tekhne that released the hidden potentiality of total producibility (such
producibility not yet manifested in the Greek thinking), machination, the
drive towards total makeability and malleability of all, was a hidden and
unthought potentiality not fully manifested until modern times. is is the
reason why Heidegger writes even on a same page that on the one hand
machination emerges “as what is ownmost to beingness in modern think-
ing”, thus presenting “an essential distancing from phusis”, while on the
other hand holding that machination has dominated the history of being,
even though it did not “become fully manifest in its ownmost” in the rst
beginning of the Greek thinking.30 In short, machination was not ownmost
to the Greek thinking, but unthought potentiality of omnipotent power of
producability, a potentiality hidden within productionist mode of revealing.
Even though Heidegger held that the breakdown of the basic disposition
of wonder could turn tekhne arbitrary in proportion to things, it is curious
that according to Heidegger wonder was also the basic disposition out of
which the mechanism of metaphysical thinking was rst constituted, that
is, the mechanism that became manifested through the history of onto-
theological mutations, the history of the oblivion of be-ing. Regardless of
the circumstance that wondering allowed nature to come forth according
to its own telos, it was precisely “wondrous” thinking that produced the rst
onto-theological beginning, the “metaphysics of presence”. us, in spite
of the dierence between basic dispositions of Greek wonder and modern
calculation, wonder was a primordial preparation of Gestell, even twice
over: its breakdown freed up the possibility for the rise of the willful and
arbitrary power of machination, while it also constituted the rst form of
metaphysical oblivion of be-ing through Aristotle’s onto-theology.
29. Heidegger, e End of Philosophy, 110; M. Heidegger, Mindfulness, 13; See also M. Hei-
degger, Nietzsche, Vol. III, 174–76.
30. Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), 88–89.
368 MIKKO JORONEN
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is all comes back to the circumstance that the basic disposition
of the ancient Greek thinking, the wonder, found the usual itself to be
extraordinary. In wonder it was the most usual that turned into most
unusual.31 Unlike in calculative ordering, in wonder one was simply sur-
prised that things were as they were. Wonder then did not set the unusual
against the usual; wonder rather set human beings before the unsualness
of everything in their usualness. In wonder one was not surprised of the
extraordinary that happened, but of the usual, of the fact that things were
as they were. e wonder of the early Greeks, thereby, opened up the gap
between beings (the usual) and their way of beingness (their unusual-
ness). Instead of the usual and given sense of beings, wonder pointed
out the unsual sense of beings as beings. However, even though wonder
opened up the question concerning beings as beings and thus of their
mode of being (as beingness), it equally precluded the direct inquiry to
the unfolding. In wonder beings were seen as beings, as something that
are, which according to Heidegger opened up “beings as a whole, that
they are and what they are” – i.e. the basic schema of onto-theology –
thus enabling the grounding question of Greek metaphysics.32 For the
Greeks wonder was simply an acknowledgement of beings as beings, and
hence it questioned what beings were in their beingness without exploring
their mode of unfolding in itself; that is, the happening of be-ing (Seyn)
as a nite Event of unfolding.
As is evident, even though the basic disposition of wonder prevented
Greek tekhne from turning into manipulative ordering of phusis, wonder
also presented the basic onto-theological mechanism of metaphysical think-
ing. Wonder opened up the as-structure of beings (i.e. question concerning
their “beingness”), thus abandoning the direct inquiry into the happening
of unfolding through the ontological grounding of entities by virtue of
the highest theological principle behind their presence. Wonder, then, did
not only make the Greek notion of tekhne dierent from the challenging
revealing of Gestell; it also put forward the historical beginning of the basic
metaphysical schema, the mechanism of onto-theology, behind the entire
legacy of Western thinking. In fact, this is one of the basic reasons behind
Heidegger’s understanding of history of being in terms of growing obliv-
ion of be-ing: for the Greeks being of beings (as beingness) was the most
wondrous thing, when the contemporary technological thinking merely
31. Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy, 144; See also B. E. Stone, “Curiosity as the ief
of Wonder: An Essay on Heidegger’s Critique of the Ordinary Conception of Time”, Krono-
Scope 6, no. 2 (2006), 211.
32. Heidegger, Basic Questions of Philosophy, 146, see also 115, 149, 150.
HEIDEGGER ON THE HISTORY OF MACHINATION 369
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recognizes the question.33 us, for the Greeks being was a question about
the beingness of beings, when in contemporary technological “enframing”
only beings are worthy of thinking. While in the former disposition the
nature of beings “as beings” was wondered, the latter disposition merely
orders them. In this respect it was (literally) “no wonder” that Nietzsche,
as the one who released the hidden powers of technological ordering, abol-
ished being by recognizing only the will to power of beings. It was through
the discussion concerning Nietzsche’s understanding of “will to power”
that Heidegger showed how Nietzsche’s notion of “will to power” sus-
tained and empowered all beings according to its manipulative imperative,
and thereby, in spite of Nietzsche’s own certainty, did not propose a non-
metaphysical stance, but on the contrary, still operated within the tradition
of metaphysical oblivion of be-ing.34 But Heidegger went even further by
claiming that the “will to power” was an essential stage of what consti-
tutes the completion of the history of metaphysics: under the unfolding
of being as power, beings are revealed as makeable, as something dragged
under the power of human will and machination.35 Power of ordering and
33. With this Heidegger also reminds us from the fact that although he is trying to dene the
Greek attunement of wonder, we contemporaries are already devolved from it. e aim here
is not to restore us back to the wonder, but to point out the limits of the Greek sense of won-
dering as a basic attunement that gave birth to an entire era of the “rst beginning”. Hei-
degger, Basic Questions of Philosophy, 159.
34. With such “active nihilism”, which accepts the situation of a demise of old values – the
death of god and thus the disappearance of the transcendental sources of value – but inter-
prets power of beings as sustaining new values and the “superman” as the highest form who
goes beyond the present by following the way power always surpasses itself, Nietzsche iden-
ties only beings and their increasing and circular becoming as will to power. Even though
Nietzsche does not seek the essence of permanent being, but better, thinks of being as “empty
vapour”, he thinks of the nature of beings as such and hence as a whole. Heidegger, Nietzsche,
Vol. III, 163, 189; cf. Schatzki, Martin Heidegger: eorist of Space, 26–27.
35. See Heidegger, Nietzsche, Vol. III, 161, 171, M. Heidegger, Nietzsche. Vol. IV, F. A. Capuzzi
(trans.), D. F. Krell (ed.) (New York: HarperCollins, 1991d), 199–201; J. P. Lawrence,
“Nietzsche and Heidegger”, History of European Ideas 11 (1989), 716–17; M. Joronen, “e
Technological Metaphysics of Planetary Space: Being in the Age of Globalization”, Envi-
ronment and Planning D: Society and Space 26, no. 4 (2008): 602–604. Heidegger’s read-
ing of Nietzsche is of course a matter of controversy, telling perhaps more about Heidegger’s
than Nietzsche’s philosophy (see for instance, L. Lambert, “Heidegger’s Nietzsche Interpre-
tation”, Man and World 7, no. 4 [1974], 353–76, and L. P. iele, “Twilight of Modernity:
Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Politics”, Political eory 22, no. 3 [1994], 468–90). As Gadamer
points out, it is almost as though Heidegger does nothing but rediscovers himself and his
thoughts throughout the history of Western thinking. In some ways Gadamer’s claim is ade-
quate, since Heidegger attempts to read the history of forgotten unfolding of be-ing. Never-
theless, it is precisely for this reason Heidegger’s reading of Nietzsche is also adequate: rather
than corresponding Nietzsche’s thoughts merely for their own sake, Heidegger attempts
to uncover what remains hidden and unthought in Nietzsche’s thinking, the “will to will”.
370 MIKKO JORONEN
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production, thus, becomes the very thing, which on the one hand positions
us as willful commanders, but on the other hand orders beings through us
under the rule of arbitrary positioning of goals.
Altogether, it was the basic disposition of wonder that made Greek think-
ing in general as well as their notion of tekhne and phusis in particular dif-
ferent from the modern understandings, while at the same time wonder
presented an initiation of machination by establishing the onto-theological
schema of production. Moreover, through the displacement of wonder
metaphysical thinking eventually incubated into challenging revealing and
technological machination of things and thus to the further darkening and
oblivion of be-ing. In order to explicitly understand how the planetary spread
of machination was destined by the early Greek notion of tekhne, we must
thereby understand the succession out of which the power of willful com-
manding, the arbitrary machination, rises to the heart of tekhne and thus how
the emergence of tekhne as willful ordering brought together what seems at
rst perhaps furthest from each other: the manipulative power of calculative
machination and lived-experience (Erlebnis).
In Contributions to Philosophy Heidegger points out this unity between
machination and lived-experience quite straightforwardly: machination
means “Poiesis-tekhne”, denoting the victory of productive mode of unfold-
ing, but equally leads to anthropomorphist disposition of “lived-experience”.
Due to the promotion of “lived-experience” (Erlebnis), the coercive and
calculative forces of machination do not just produce and order beings, but
also integrate themselves to the subject. As lived-experience, machination
positions subjects to represent and manage beings under their will: “what is
lived through lived-experience and is so liveable” means equally that “only
what man is able to bring to and before him, [only that] can count as ‘a
being’”.36 Lived-experience shows itself in terms of the authorization of the
experience, and thus as a particular subject position, which turns beings into
useable reserves for the generation of lived-experiences.37 Lived-experience
hence poses a framework under which all beings are understood as experi-
enceable material under the order of subject’s will. Lived-experience thus
pre-structures the totality of beings in order to safeguard their represent-
ability as reserves useable for the lived-experiences.
H-G. Gadamer, Heidegger’s Ways, J. W. Stanley (trans.) (New York: State University of New
York Press, 1994), 165.
36. Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), 90.
37. See M. Heidegger, “e Age of the World Picture”, in e Question Concerning Technology
and Other Essays, W. Lovitt (trans.), 115–54 (New York: Harper & Row, 1977c), 132; Hei-
degger, Nietzsche, Vol. III, 175: See also Livingston, “inking and Being”, 331.
HEIDEGGER ON THE HISTORY OF MACHINATION 371
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e historical emergence of the basic disposition of lived-experience
shows above all how the productive unfolding of machination sets up a
peculiar subject position, where human beings are set to produce and order
beings. As Heidegger held in a lecture course Traditional Language and Tech-
nological Language given as late as 1962, “what is most peculiar to modern
technology is no mere human amassed to power. Today’s humans are them-
selves challenged forth by the demand to challenge nature forth into arrange-
ment. Humans themselves are set up (gestellt); they are thereby demanded
to correspond to the aforementioned demand [my emphasis]”.38 As lived-
experience, power of machination becomes able to hide itself within the
guise of subjective willing. Underlying such hiding – although machina-
tion does not mean a conspiracy of being, but names pure accessibility to
beings by a way of calculation – the manipulative power of machination
apparently starts to look like “scheming”. e world becomes a picture,
a structured Gebild, represented and produced as a one coherent reserve
under the ordering power of the will.39 Machination simply poses a com-
positioning “Framework” under which beings as a whole are understood as
experienceable material for the heroic will. Under the contemporary rule of
machination the most fundamental domain of “control” is evidently found
at the level that is not usually considered as mastery at all: the coercive force
of machination does not dene our relation to things from the outside, but
ows through all relations between us and other beings by unfolding them
in terms of being set ready for the omnipotent orderings of machination.40
e belonging-togetherness of machination and lived-experience is pre-
cisely the technological gure Heidegger found within Nietzsche’s notion of
will to power. Under the “will to power” beings share the organized impera-
tive of machine: the eternal production of the ordered selfsame, where will
is ordered to stretch out to things only to level them to more of the same,
that is, as a set of arrangements for the use of the will. Nevertheless, the will
to power does not just lead to the “eternal recurrence of the same”, to the
innite circulation and becoming of all beings. Out of the commanding
of all beings to stand as reserves for the arbitrary means of the will, beings
become equally subjected under the growing power of the will.41 Under the
38. M. Heidegger, “Traditional Language and Technological Language”, Journal of Philosophical
Research 23 (1998d), 138.
39. Heidegger, “e Age of the World Picture”, 128, 134; Heidegger, Nietzsche (Vol. IV), 149.
40. K. Ziarek, “Art, Power and Politics: Heidegger on Machenschaft and Poiesis”, Contretemps
3 (2002), 177; B. Davis, Heidegger and the Will. On the Way to Gelassenheit (Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press, 2007), 179.
41. M. Heidegger, “Vol I: e Will to Power as Art”, in Nietzsche: Volumes One and Two, D. F.
Krell (trans. and ed.) (New York: HarperCollins, 1991a), 60; M. Heidegger, “Vol II: e
372 MIKKO JORONEN
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.
machination, the “will to power” turns into technological “will to will”:
“will wills” itself forevermore and hence is directed towards the strength-
ening and overpowering of its own power. Power, then, is not centred on
subject, but better, power positions subjects to will, value, and command
beings within the structure of continual return and increase of the selfsame,
the will to will more of the power of willing. Accordingly, even though
through the lived-experience the thought of subject may take the form
of re-presenting (Vor-stellen), the ruling sense of “machination” should be
understood in terms of coercive “pro-posing” and “pre-presenting” of things
as reserves set ready for the utilizing drive of self-strengthening power, the
machination.
e Endgame: Emergence of tekhne as Machination
As the paper has argued, Heidegger’s view of history is based on ontologi-
cal ambiguity of the Event: exploration to Ereignis, to the multiplicity of
its unfolding, uncovers the unnecessary oblivion of the necessary conceal-
ment. It is the oblivion that becomes unveiled and remembered through
the recognition of the nite nature of dierent ontological monopoli-
zations of unfolding. However, such recognition of hidden nitude, an
“experience of the limits” as Simon Critchley puts it, also holds chance for
the “other beginning” of post-metaphysical thought, which does not just
bring out the longstanding foundations of metaphysical oblivion (along
with their “rst beginning”), but also prepares an “existential saving” that
escapes the obscuring logic of metaphysical rationality.42 Such “overcoming
of metaphysics”, thus, is not a mere negative destruction of the ontological
bedrocks of Western thinking, where the ossied layers of metaphysical
thought, further and further covering the source of open be-ing under their
sediments, are cleared away, but equally a positive issue, where something
long concealed becomes nally released.
In spite of the evident relevance of Heidegger’s well-known later writ-
ings on technological ordering and manipulation of things through their
“enframing” (Gestell), it was already Heidegger’s earlier, the so called mid-
period work dating back to the late 1930s writings such as Besinnung
Eternal Recurrence of the Same”, in Nietzsche: Volumes One and Two, D. F. Krell (trans. and
ed.) (New York: HarperCollins, 1991b), 109.
42. S. Critchley, “Very Little… Almost Nothing. Death, Philosophy, Literature (London: Rout-
ledge, 1997), 12, See also M. Heidegger, “e Turning”, in e Question Concerning Technol-
ogy and Other Essays, W. Lovitt (trans.), 36–49 (New York: Harper & Row, 1977b), 42–46.
HEIDEGGER ON THE HISTORY OF MACHINATION 373
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.
(Mindfulness), Beiträge zur Philosophie (vom Ereignis) (Contributions to Phi-
losophy (From Enowning)) and Die Geschichte des Seyns, that along with the
Nietzsche lectures written between 1936 and 1946, aorded a profound
insight to the ontological scaolding constitutive for the whole history of
Western thinking of being. However, in spite of the similarities the shift
from Heidegger’s discussion of Machenschaft in the 1930s to his writings
about Gestell in the mid- and late-1940s evidently includes substantial
rethinking of some key matters. Heidegger’s early talk on machination in
the 1930s lectures, for instance, seems to emphasize the role of human
beings as the willful masters over beings, when the notion of Gestell refers
also to human beings as useable reserves part of this mastery of calcula-
tive ordering. Nevertheless, already in the last Nietzsche lectures Heidegger
discusses machination in a manner that seems to correspond to the later
notion of enframing.
As Heidegger writes in the fourth volume of Nietzsche lectures, “the age
of the fulllment of metaphysics – which we descry when we think through
the basic features of Nietzsche’s metaphysics – prompts us to consider
[…] the extent to which we must experience history as the release of be-ing
into machination”.43 It is hence possible to understand Heidegger’s dier-
ent readings of machination in proportion to the historical development, so
that eventually in the mature planetary stage of (late) modernity machina-
tion mutates in such a way that “the subject-object relation as pure relation
takes precedence over the object and the subject”, so that also human beings
become secured as standing-reserves.44 Moreover, as Heidegger continues in
the Overcoming Metaphysics, it is Nietzsche’s thinking where the “sphere of
pregured possibilities” of metaphysical thinking has gone through, and thus,
where the “completed metaphysics” as a ground for the “planetary manner of
thinking” gives the scaolding for an order of the earth. Heidegger’s notions
on the historical emergence of the manipulative power of “machination”
(Machenschaft) as a possessive and coercive force (Macht) of ordering and
technological “enframing” (Gestell) of things into exibly mouldable reserves,
both then insightfully articulate the moment of completion of the legacy of
Western metaphysical thinking: its outgrowth in terms of globally expand-
ing systems of calculative rationality and willful orderings. ey thus aord
a profound view to the operational logic behind the technological ordering
of planetary space – to an ordering that takes place by framing spatial rela-
tions of things through the self-strengthening systems of coercive orderings
43. Heidegger, Nietzsche Vol III, 196.
44. M. Heidegger “Science and Reection”, in e Question Concerning Technology and Other
Essays, W. Lovitt (trans.), 155–82 (New York: Harper & Row, 1977d), 173.
374 MIKKO JORONEN
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2012.
imposed upon the earth. Today market mechanisms and business rationali-
ties seem to span the whole earth as nothing other than a big market place
subjugated under the domination of the self-intensifying logic of calcula-
tive organization, under the strange aimlessness and homelessness produced
by alienating forces of technological societies against which the critique of
modernity and capitalism, from Marx and Weber to critical theories of the
Frankfurt School thinkers and Zizek, have found their standpoint.
Mikko Joronen is in the Department of Geography and Geology, University of Turku,
Finland. He has published on Heidegger and globalization and his research broadly
focuses on globalization, political geography, Heidegger’s philosophy, history and
ontology of space and place.
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