Heidegger, Positionality, and Standing Reserve
Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) turns towards technology in the late 1940s. He makes explicit his lack of enthusiasm for the “philosophy of technology,” which he describes as a fascination with machines. Instead, he seeks an access the essence of technology: that which makes technology, technology. He concludes that positionality (das Gestell) is the essence of technology. Positionality demands that all that exists shows up as standing reserve. Standing reserve is immediately available to be effortlessly orderable and delivered. Standing reserve is constituted in three ways of being:
Standing Reserve as Available
When an object is called out into availability, it discloses itself as a part of a whole. For example, if I hold up an apple, I see the front-side of the apple. The back-side is not accessible. If I turn the apple, now the back-side is accessible, but the front-side has become concealed. In our way of approaching the apple as an object, it is always partly concealed and partly unconcealed in the context of the totality of the apple.
Availability is an ontologically different way of being. It is no longer an “object”, as perceived by a subject with concealment. Instead, it is fully given over all at once. It is violently pulled out of the world through requisitioning, which demands all that exists to be orderable and delivered. The standing reserve persists only insofar as it is imposed upon by requisitioning. It is constituted by the will to make all that exists immediately available and orderable for the sake of orderable-ness.
Therefore, the situation is no longer that of a subject perceiving an object, where the object is partly concealed. Instead, requisitioning demands items to fully show themselves for the sake of being swept up into the order-for-order-sake of the standing reserve, not directed towards any other end.
Standing Reserve as Immediate
Objects are mediated. The subject perceives the object through mediation. The object is a part of the whole of the context from which it is perceived. It “plays its part” insofar as it maintains relation to the totality.
Standing Reserve is immediate. There are no “parts” of the standing reserve; there are only “pieces.” Each piece is separate, isolated, and never shares itself. In this way, it is essentially as it shows itself: in its bare nakedness. All pieces lack differentiation due to the lack of mediate relationships with others. All is the same. Positionality sets all in place as a single whole. Pieces of the standing reserve become detached from all else, completely decontextualized and pushed forth into the furnace to continue future orderability
The question of “the what” is never brought to the fore. In its immediacy, such a question is absurd. Without mediate relations to the totality of the world, all pieces of the standing reserve sit isolated and solely towards the standing reserve.
Standing Reserve as Orderable
Standing reserve is arranged in a way to facilitate distribution. It is never stable or enduring, but always en-route towards future orderability. The immediate availability of the standing reserve, in its decontextualized and exposed way of being, makes it malleable for ordering. And what is ordered is always already set towards the next succession in ordering as its consequence. It enables ordering-for-the-sake-of-ordering.
The object has its place and context with its environment. But the piece of the standing reserve has no place and no relation to the environment. It exists solely to be driven along by requisitioning for future orderability. And there is no final ending or starting place.
Positionality is the way of being that demands all that exists into the standing reserve. The standing reserve is available in that it is fully exposed by the sensibility afforded by requisitioning. It is also immediate and fully decontextualized from others, owing its complete essence towards the orderability of the standing reserve. Finally the standing reserve is orderable: always swept up in the future orderability of its pieces in order to maximize orderability. There is no meaning to the orderability other than for the sake of its own orderability. Identical for-the-sake-of-which can also be exemplified by capitalism: which harbors the desire for money for the sake of being rich. Heidegger might argue the same pattern for the essence of technology. Thus the essence of technology and the modern technological way of being that has engulfed the world has demanded for this order-for-the-sake-of-order, that continually deprives objects of relational meaning and sweeps up all into the unending swirling of requisitioning.
