Pythagorean ethos: a reflection on Gestell as a concept and as a phenomenon

ACADEMIA Letters and as a phenomenon Marco Maringoni, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID), Geneva Martin Heidegger writing about technology put it in historical perspective. He distinguished between an ancient concept of technology and a modern one. By focusing on what constitutes the essence of modern technology according to him, I illustrate how it lies in continuity with Antiquity, both as a concept, drawing a comparison with Pythagorean thought, and as a phenomenon, using the emergence of the concept of space as an example. On 18 November 1955 in Munich Heidegger delivered a lecture entitled Die Frage nach der Technik (The question concerning technology). He put technology in historical perspective focusing on its etymology which he traced to Technikon, as in “that which belongs to techne”[1]. Techne related both to the skills of the craftsman and to the arts of the mind. It had a poietic nature as it brought something forth i.e. it was a modality of aletheuein, (unveiling). This was the most relevant aspect of techne, rather than manufacturing something. Heidegger distinguished between technology in Ancient Greece and what he called modern technology. Modern technology was related to unveiling too. But it was a different type of unveiling which had to with the challenging (herausfordern) of Nature, the act of its turning into Bestand (standing reserve), a resource ready to be used. He named it Bestand, and not stock, because Heidegger wanted to emphasise that that resource had been commanded and organised[2]. The essence of modern technology was Gestell [3](Enframing). Modern technology modality of revealing is one that, when summoned, orders. Heidegger tied together techne and episteme (scientific knowledge) as they both are “names for knowing in the widest sense”[4]. Such connection exists in Modernity too because Heidegger also tied together modern technology and modern science. In fact, Humankind’s ordering attitude displays itself in the “rise of modern physics as an exact science”[4]. Modern physics Academia Letters, December 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Marco Maringoni, marco.maringoni@graduateinstitute.ch

is not experimental, because “it applies apparatus to the questioning of nature[5]”. Physics as pure theory sets nature up to show itself as a “coherence of forces calculable in advance”[6]. To understand this, it is necessary to illustrate the essence of the concept of theory, its evolution, and the meaning and implications of the words exact and calculable. In a lecture entitled Wissenschaft und Besinnung (Science and reflection) delivered on 4 August 1953, Heidegger, among other matters, reflected on what theory meant in the statement “science is the theory of the real”[7] and how it changed across the Western tradition. Theory stems from the word theorein whose noun is theoria with its meaning being the result of the coalescing of thea and horao. Thea, connected to theater, is the external appearance in which something offers itself. For Plato, having seen this aspect is to know. Horao means to “look at something attentively”[8]. So, “theorein is thean horan”[9] i.e. to look attentively at the external appearance through which something manifests itself. The current meaning of theoria is detached from the original one. Heidegger explained that by looking at the Latin and German translations of the word. The Romans translated theorein by contemplari, theoria by contemplatio. Contemplari means “to partition something off into a separate sector and enclose it therein”[10]. Latin templum is the equivalent of Greek temenos, which has an origin entirely different from theorein, as temnein means to divide. Latin templum originally refers to a sector carved out of the sky which diviners used to make their prophecies based on the behaviour and habits of birds. In German contemplatio becomes Betrachtung (observation). Theory is the observation of the real. At a first glance this seems similar to the original Greek meaning of theoria. In fact, that is not true. Betrachtung derives from trachten (to strive) corresponding to the Latin tractare (to manipulate). To strive after something means “to work one’s way toward something, to pursue it, to entrap it in order to secure it”[11]. Accordingly, theory as Betrachtung corresponds to an entrapment and refining of the real. Modern science claims to wish to grasp the real in its purity. In reality, it traps it and refines it. The real is “what presences as selfexhibiting”[12]. Modern science sets up the real and captures it in its objectness. In this way, the real becomes surveyable. The words exact and calculable are related to this process of pursue, entrapment, and securement. Max Planck is quoted saying: “that is real which can be measured”[13]. The principal modality through which the pursuing, capturing, and securing of the real is achieved is through the act of reckoning i.e. “to set something up as an object of expectation”[14]. All objectification of the real is a reckoning (causality, morphology, etc.) as long as it “secures and guarantees some coherence of sequence and order”[15]. Mathematics is reckoning too, but not simply because it undertakes operations with numbers with the goal of obtaining quantitative results. Mathematics is reckoning because it “has set up as the goal of its expectation the Academia Letters, December 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Marco Maringoni, marco.maringoni@graduateinstitute.ch

harmonizing of all relations of order”[16]. If modern technology and modern science are tied, if the essence of modern technology is ordering, and if the essence of modern science is a capture allowed by reckoning through mathematical instruments, the modernity of this concept is questionable. It seems very ancient in fact. Many Presocratic philosophers shared the idea of a cosmos, an ordered world, including the Pythagoreans. While Pythagoras has not left any writings, some who followed in this tradition did. Among them, one of the most prominent is Philolaus of Croton who was probably the first Pythagorean to write a book, On Nature, of which a few fragments remain. In Fragment 1 Philolaus wrote that physis is cosmos: “Nature in the world-order was fitted together both out of things which are unlimited and out of things which are limiting both the world-order as a whole and everything in it”[17]. In Fragment 6 Philolaus underlined the importance of harmony: “it is necessary that such things be bonded together by a harmony, if they are going to be held in an order”[18]. Because of harmony, this ordered world, this cosmos, is accessible, it can be captured. The modality through which such reckoning can take place is mathematics as in Fragment 4 Philolaus wrote: “Indeed, everything that is known has number, for nothing is either understood or known with-out this”[19] i.e. one can really understand something when one can decipher the structure of, and the relationship between, its various parts[20]. The acts of ordering and reckoning through mathematical means that characterise Gestell are already present here. This is not simply an abstract comparison between concepts in Heideggerian and Pythagorean thought. One can observe it as a phenomenon too. Vincenzo De Risi in Mathematizing Space reflected on the definition of geometry as the “science of space”[21], on space emerging as a concept, and on its mathematization. In Antiquity, the concept of space did not exist as an independent being that could have been mathematised[22]. While for Plato matter itself was unknowable because one’s experience was always informed by Platonic forms and never independently of them, for Neoplatonic metaphysics matter became quantified and extended. Among the many developments that occurred, a notable one concerned the idea of place. While place used to be only an ecological concept, in late Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance, it acquired a three-dimensional dimension becoming an extension which could have been quantified and mathematised. However, it was considered measurable only by virtue of its capacity to receive matter. Towards the end of the Renaissance, these developments originated something new. Ficino when translating Plotinus’ Enneads translated ฀γκος (mass) usually deployed to mean “quantified matter” (understood as “pure extension”) as spatium. Ficino did not draw consequences from his translation. However, years later, Francesco Patrizi, a Neoplatonic disciple of Ficino had the idea of superimposing the “metaphysics of quantified matter onto that of three-dimensional space”[23] obtaining as a result Academia Letters, December 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Marco Maringoni, marco.maringoni@graduateinstitute.ch

a “three-dimensional infinite extension which is independent of matter and bodies, and is pre-existent to them as a condition of their own existence”[24]. This was probably the first occurrence of such a claim. While Patrizi did not have the mathematical skills to change Classic geometry, a mathematical reflection on space started to emerge in painting when thinking about perspective and about a new form of spatial organization found in pictorial representation. Piero Della Francesca and Albrecht Dürer, among others, contributed to its mathematical codification. The emergence of the concept of space and its mathematisation show that the process that sees the ordering effort accompanied by the reckoning one through mathematical instruments existed long before Modernity. Therefore, while perhaps less sophisticated and effective in their conceptual and phenomenal manifestations in Antiquity and later on, the essential elements of Gestell do not seem an exclusive of Modernity then, but rather the embodiment of what one could call a Pythagorean ethos. Academia Letters, December 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Marco Maringoni, marco.maringoni@graduateinstitute.ch

[1] P. 12, Heidegger, Martin. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Translated by William Lovitt. Works. New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1996. [2] P. 17, ibidem. [3] Heidegger used the term Gestell at least twice before, once in “The Origin of the Work of Art” (1935-1936), and in a lecture entitled “Das Gestell” presented on 1 December 1949 in Hamburg. In “From Gestalt to Ge-Stell: Martin Heidegger Reads Ernst Jünger”, Wolf Kittler described how Heidegger was impressed by Jünger’s work and reflected upon it. In “Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity: Technology, Politics, and Art” Michael E. Zimmermann wrote that Heidegger’s Gestell is “analogous” (p. 80) to Ernst Jünger’s concept of Gestalt. I would not go as far as Zimmermann when he wrote: “This later usage of Gestell is, in fact, Heidegger’s term for Jünger’s Gestalt of the worker” (p. 124). Heidegger was influenced by Jünger, but he was influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche as well (among others). In “Die Frage nach der Technik”, there are (at least) two elements that make Heidegger’s Gestell an original concept and not a mere analogy: the relation with “rechnendes Denken” (calculative thinking) and the relation with Ancient Greece. Also, Zimmermann seems to compare Heidegger’s “beingness” (sic) (p. 81) to Jünger’s Gestalt rather than comparing Gestell and Gestalt themselves, Ed. [4] P. 13, Heidegger, Martin. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Translated by William Lovitt. Works. New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1996. [5] P. 21, ibidem. [6] Ibidem. [7] Ibidem. [8] P. 163, ibidem. [9] Ibidem. [10] Ibidem. [11] Ibidem. [12] P. 167, ibidem. [13] Ibidem. [14] P. 169, ibidem. [15] P. 170, ibidem. [16] Ibidem. [17] Ibidem. [18] P. 37, Huffman, Carl A., and Philolaus. Philolaus of Croton: Pythagorean and Presocratic: A Commentary on the Fragments and Testimonia with Interpretive Essays. Cambridge [England] ; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 1993. [19] P. 124, ibidem. [20] P. 58, ibidem. [21] P. 71, ibidem. [22] P. 1, De Risi, Vincenzo, ed. Mathematizing Space: The Objects of Geometry from Antiquity to the Early Modern Age. Trends in the History of Science. Cham: Birkhäuser, 2015. [23] P. 4, ibidem. [24] P. 8, ibidem. [25] Ibidem. Academia Letters, December 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Marco Maringoni, marco.maringoni@graduateinstitute.ch

References De Risi, Vincenzo, ed. Mathematizing Space: The Objects of Geometry from Antiquity to the Early Modern Age. Trends in the History of Science. Cham: Birkhäuser, 2015. Heidegger, Martin. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Translated by William Lovitt. Works. New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1996. Huffman, Carl A., and Philolaus. Philolaus of Croton: Pythagorean and Presocratic: A Commentary on the Fragments and Testimonia with Interpretive Essays. Cambridge [England] ; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Kittler, Wolf. ‘From Gestalt to Ge-Stell: Martin Heidegger Reads Ernst Jünger’. Cultural Critique, no. 69 (2008): 79–97. Zimmerman, Michael E. Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity: Technology, Politics, and Art. The Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Technology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. Academia Letters, December 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Marco Maringoni, marco.maringoni@graduateinstitute.ch