Heidegger on Machination as Representation
In the previous blog post, we discussed Heidegger’s conception of Machination as makeability. In short, machination is how we experience the “abandonment of Being.” As abandoned to the world of others, entities come to appear as present-at-hand, which is made in such a way with certain parts. Makeability yields to the scientific demand put upon the world, which says that everything that exists must be secured through calculation. It appears available through calculation.
Heidegger provides a second interpretation of Machination as representation. Similar to makeability, representation relies on the scientific aim for objectification as necessary for security (and certainty). Heidegger states…
“This objectification of beings is accomplished in a setting-before, a representing aimed at bringing each being before it in such a way that the person who calculates can be sure, and that means be certain, of the being.”
A being is represented when it is set before a calculating person. It is represented in a way such that the person maintains a firm grasp. The person calculates the representation in order to understand it, and thus secure it in place. With a secure image, the doubt once intruding upon the entity falls away.
In an age of representation, the “exists” predicate is dominated by the securing by calculative representation. To exist means to be calculated into a representative way. Heidegger terms this representation as the “world picture” and it means to “construct a representational production.”
The world picture is not like a photograph or a painting. It is not aesthetic. It is instead systematic. It is more like a diagram, a mapping out of relations between entities: a representation of the system. For example, consider writing a paper on the universe. In constructing a representation, a calculative reduction of what there is aims to explain all contents and properties of the thing. It is this reductive thinking that creates models that contributes to the representational production Heidegger here refers to. Such a model is not objectively how things are, but is conditioned by the mode of access (i.e. calculative) that is used to construct it. By making all that exists a part of the model, one comes to further grasp and secure that which is represented.
According to Heidegger, “Everything ‘is made’ and ‘can be made’ if only the ‘will’ to it is summoned up.” This will is a derivative of Nietzsche’s will to power, which aims to extend itself beyond itself to infinite. It is the self-propelling wheel which constantly absorbs all that is made accessible to it. It becomes so dominant that it also engulfs the human subject which creates it.
In machination, human experience also becomes objectified into the representational hierarchy created by calculative thinking. It exists only insofar as it relates to the whole representation. Experience is no longer a subjective engagement in the world, but an objectified understanding of it. One “goes to the movies” or “drinks a pina colada at a seaside spa resort.” Experiences become immediately available for consumption by humans. One gets what one sees. The human merely plays the functionary role of consuming it. And this propelling of objectified experience further reinforces the representational mode of being from which it is borne. But the human is not merely a play actor, but a conditioned being. Heidegger gives the example of a radio:
Every radio listener… thinks he is entirely free to turn the device on and off… suppose that suddenly everywhere radio receivers were to disappear… who would be able to fathom the cluelessness, the boredom, the emptiness that would attack…
The ever-expanding machinational way of being is driven by a form of a will to power. However, in the late 1940s, Heidegger changes his thought, arguing for a new age of positionality, a new ontological development, which has taken off from machination. And its effects will be constitutive of our technological epoch. In the next blog post, we’ll cover what Heidegger means by positionality and its relationship with technology.
