Poetically Dwells Man

Heidegger and Spiritual Rebirth

Prefatory note: After having fruitful conversations on Martin Heidegger’s “The Question Concerning Technology,” it was agreed upon that A Forest Rebel and I would each publish essays on the text. These essays are now presented for your enjoyment. Neither of us have read the other’s essay; we hoped that an independent approach would result in synergy that could stimulate further discussion. A Forest Rebel’s essay can be found at The Forest Rebellion.

…poetically dwells man upon this earth.

                           -Friedrich Hölderlin as quoted by Martin Heidegger

             What if the gods returned? Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) spent more time than most pondering that and related questions.

His thought is notoriously (and justly) considered extremely obscure and dense. Yet, there is no one more important to read and to study. Heidegger provides the most profound critique of modernity going. His hints at what might be a way out have stirred the brains and imaginations of countless students of his thought. He would make pretty much everyone’s top five list of the most important thinkers of the 20^th century and many people’s top 2 list. He occupies the top spot on my personal list. Here, we’ll focus in mainly on his brief essay The Question Concerning Technology, to a lesser extent, Building    Dwelling    Thinking, and finally on one quote from a 1966 interview he did with the news magazine Der Spiegel.

A tale of two tables

             Heidegger does not explain himself or give illustrations of what he is talking about: he just thinks and puts the ideas out there. I think it will actually go a long way to helping us get what he was on about if we start with an illustration, the significance of which will become clearer as we go along.

             When I was a kid, Mr. Franzen was an old man and a master finish carpenter who went to the same church as my family. I forget for what purpose a small table was needed for the rear of the church, but I remember the table that he made. It was beautifully crafted, finely finished and had intricate inlays of varying color woods on its top. On the one hand, it was a simple piece of furniture and did not draw attention to itself. However, if you once noticed it, you would immediately know it was in fact an artwork produced by a master craftsman.

I am not a carpenter. Yet, I can well imagine the sort of process Mr. Franzen went through to produce this table. The essential thing is he had to work with the materials he used. Though he had to have an idea of the table he would make in advance, he also had to know a lot about wood. Which type wood would fit the purpose best: cherry, oak, poplar, ash? Once chosen, the type of wood would determine, to an extent, the rest of the process of making. Then once that was decided, he would need to pick the actual pieces of lumber to use. This one? What of that knot?

Having selected his materials, his tools too would have a say in the final outcome. The awls, files, chisels, and saws with which he had worked a lifetime. Each one had a personality known only to Mr. Franzen. This hammer for this purpose. This awl used with just this movement of the muscle and flex of the wrist.

In the example of Mr. Franzen’s table we have an instance where the human artificer is listening to nature just as much as he is telling it what to do. His tools are virtually an extension of his body with which he has intimate relationships. The table itself is a thing of beauty as well as utility and is absolutely unique.

Now let’s look at another table. This one sits in my home and a television screen rests atop it. This table was not made by a person; nothing less than a whole corporation could be responsible for its manufacture. I have no idea what the actual company is called, but let’s give it one of those corporate-speak names: Wuudtech. To overcome the resistances Mr. Franzen encountered in the quality woods he worked with, Wuudtech just grinds a bunch of scrap wood up into pulp and using a bonding agent can form it into ‘boards’ of any dimensions it pleases. To finish it off, Wuudtech designs a faux wood pattern on a bit of CAD software and prints off plastic sheets of ‘wood grain’ veneer to glue on top of the pulp wood mess.

From a distance, the Wuudtech table looks ok. It serves its purpose, and absolutely nothing else. It was cheap to manufacture and cheap to buy. It was mass produced in the thousands and each unit was predictably and consistently of the same quality, size, and appearance. The Wuudtech people did not listen to nature. They told nature to shut up and lie down and then they did with her as they pleased and got what they wanted out of her. The tools used were large and largely automated. The worker (certainly not the craftsman) tending them served them, nearly as a flesh and bone appendage.

Mr. Franzen’s table speaks of a way of being in cooperation with nature which is also a very human way of being. The Wuudtech table speaks of the domination and mutilation of nature and, though humans were absolutely in control of the whole process, it is an inhuman way of operating.

Technology

My project in what follows will not be to offer a full explication of Heidegger’s thought or even a small bit of it. Instead, I’ll seek to make a few core concepts intelligible while preserving a sense of the suggestiveness of his thought which is what makes the people who love it do so. Also, I’ll weave a thread through those concepts to, hopefully, shed some light on what might be the central conundrum of our situation.

Heidegger seeks to show that technology is not just a matter of neutral tools. Modern technology represents a whole way of experiencing being (existence, nature). Hence, his account will also present a view of what is involved with the disenchantment of nature.

The core of his argument is that what was to be a means employed by humans has come to impinge on what it is to be human. The tool reshapes the user.

To get at just what he means, and to point to how deep existentially this goes, Heidegger will talk of how things present themselves to us as ‘presencing’. Think of a river. To an iron age Celt, the river may have presented itself as alive, as the home of river spirits, or as something otherwise sacred. To us the river might present itself as a causeway for water traffic, a source of hydro-electric power, or at most a ‘pretty sight’. Same river; very different ways of coming into the presence of two distinct humans.

So, when we approach the world, nature, with our ingrained technological mindsets, the world reveals itself to us differently than it did to our ancestors. Heidegger asserts “Technology is therefore no mere means. Technology is a way of revealing.”[i] Further, when we approach nature in this way the revealing that occurs is a “challenging” and a “setting upon” of nature. This is how Wuudtech approached the tree: ‘be what I want you to be, not what you actually are.’

This stance toward the natural world will make it reveal itself as “standing reserve.” It is resources. It is nature as viewed exclusively in terms of its use value. And humans are not immune or exempted. Do we not speak of ‘human resources’? So much labor power, so much cost, so much productivity.

So, far from being a mere set of tools, technology rebounds as it were, on the user, changing how we experience the world and, in the process, changing our relationship to the world. It changes our mode of being-in-the world. We exist differently in the modern world than our ancestors did.

Poetry

             At one level, the problem here is that nature reveals itself, when viewed technologically, as how it may be used, not how it is. That is, our knowledge of the world ironically becomes distorted. We no longer know the tree as tree but only as resource for wood. With the dominance of modern technology and science we know the world less well!

             Heidegger says there is another way people have gone about making things in the world. He borrows the old Greek term poesis to denote this. Though this is the word from which our ‘poetry’ derives, it has a much broader meaning here. He translates poesis as “bringing forth” and says that “Bringing-forth brings out of concealment into unconcealment.”[ii] That is, if we act ‘poetically’ toward nature, it reveals itself to us as it actually is. Think of Mr. Franzen’s table. He never demanded that the wood be something other than it was. He wanted his table, but he adapted himself to the wood as it was. I think Heidegger would affirm that Mr. Franzen actually knew wood, as it is, better than the modern technologist or scientist. The person existing poetically can cooperate with nature, not domineer over it.

             Heidegger goes on: “Always the destining of revealing holds complete sway over men. But that destining is never a fate that compels. For man becomes truly free only in so far as he belongs to the realm of destining and so becomes one who listens, though not one who simply obeys.”[iii] We start to see why he has that reputation for obscurity and denseness. He’s basically saying that how we exist-in-the-world will determine how the world will reveal itself to us; in the case we’re looking at, either technologically or poetically. In the poetic way of existing and interacting with nature, we listen to nature, just as Mr. Franzen listened to the wood-what kind of table do you want to be? Which boards should I use? How should I proceed? Further, he connects existing freely with this ability and willingness to listen. That might sound very weird, but think back to our example: who was freer in their work, Mr. Franzen or the worker who was the appendage to the machinery?

Dwelling

             ‘Dwelling’ will be the special term Heidegger employs to denote our proper mode of existing on the earth. “We attain to dwelling, so it seems, only by means of building,”[iv] he observes. So Heidegger isn’t suggesting that we can somehow not use nature at all. We are active beings meant to build things and we will use nature to do that. Yet, there is a way of doing that (poetically) that allows us to dwell, to be at home, on the earth and a way that alienates us from that (technology).

             In contrast to the technological “setting upon” of nature, our proper mode involves a “sparing.” “To dwell, to be set at peace, means to remain at peace within the free, the preserve, the free sphere that safeguards each thing in its essence. The fundamental character of dwelling is this sparing.”[v] The “free” is the space that is allowed to continue to exist in which each thing can remain what it is. The tree can continue to remain a tree. It might get turned into a table, but it is still what it is. It never had its nature negated. The Wuudtech approach is the negation of the tree, mulch it up, make it be what we want it to be, not what it is.

             Hence, to dwell, to be at home, to be at peace, to be what we actually are, entails letting the rest of nature remain what it is. That is at least moderately profound. Further, we see more clearly that when we refuse to allow that space of freedom for things to be what they are, we to a considerable degree cease to be what we actually are and lose our sense of peace and of being at home in the world.

             In the very next paragraph, not content with the level of (suggestive) obscurity he had thus far reached, Heidegger just dives right off the high board into an abyss of mysticism. When he does this, it’s just best to take a great big old gulp of Heidegger and try to make something of it afterward. He is not thinking analytically and trying to break it down in little logical pieces is not the way to go. I will quote him at length. As Hölderlin says, “Man dwells on the earth”. Heidegger elaborates, “But ‘on the earth already means ‘under the sky.’ Both of these also mean ‘remaining before the divinities’ and include a ‘belonging to men’s being with one another.’ By a primal oneness the four—earth and sky, divinities and mortals—belong together in one.” The ‘earth’ he calls the “serving bearer” which is “blossoming and fruiting.” The sky is the “vaulting path of the sun” and the course of the changing moon. “The divinities,” he goes on, “are the beckoning messengers of the godhead. Out of the holy sway of the godhead, the god appears in his presence or withdraws into the concealment.” The ‘mortals’ are we.[vi]

             In this “fourfold” as Heidegger calls it, the mortals dwell in such a way as to preserve the unity of the fourfold and their manner of dwelling on the earth is to save it, to spare it: to leave it free to preserve its essential essence (to let things be what they are).

             Ok, well that is pretty mind boggling and I’m sure it is meant to be. Really all Heidegger is doing here is putting in very simple terms what has always, until fairly recent times, been humanity’s understanding of the world we inhabit and our proper place in it. The heavens above, the earth under our feet, with our fellows, in the presence of the gods. That can’t help but sound weird to us moderns. Let’s say two things. First, so much the worse for us perhaps. Second, Heidegger has at no point ventured to argue for the existence of gods or a God. He is exploring the human encounter with our world. Humans used to experience the divine around them: the sky god while on the sacred mountain top, the river dryads in the valley, perhaps faeries in the sacred grove, and perhaps demons in the deserts. Now we don’t.

             What Heidegger is wanting to insist upon is that both the pre-modern and the modern ways of being human and experiencing the world are factually both human ways of being in and experiencing the world. In both cases, being (nature) is revealing itself to us. In some (pre-modern) circumstances the gods were present. Nowadays (modern) the gods are gone into concealment. It is interesting that as a student of Nietzsche he is altering that thinker’s famous proclamation that ‘God is dead.’ Heidegger is substituting ‘the gods have withdrawn’ which, as we shall see, admits of a little bit of hope. No matter how atheist we might want to consider ourselves, the concealment of the gods still haunts us. He or she who defines themselves  as an a-theist is still defining themselves in relation to the divine. We seem to understand that we can’t quite fathom what the human is without reference to the divine, whether present or absent.

             Further, I think we can get a better glimpse at what Heidegger is up to here if we look at a few more of the lines in Hölderlin’s poem “In lovely blue,” from which Heidegger had quoted the line about man poetically dwelling on the earth. He writes:

As long as friendliness and purity
dwell in our hearts, we may measure ourselves not unfavorably
with the divine. Is God unknown? Is he manifest
as the sky? This I tend to believe. It is the measure
of the human. Deserving, yet poetically, we dwell
on this earth. The shadow of night with its stars,
if I may say so, is no purer than we
who exist in the image of the divine.[vii]

As the darker night, with its lesser lights, might be thought of as the natural supplement, almost the reflection of the ‘lovely blue’ of the daytime sky, so might we be thought of as a reflection (an image) of the divine. Not equivalent to the divine. But not disconnected from the divine either.

             I don’t want to push this too far and make an argument where I don’t think Heidegger has made one. He is attempting to show us something. As with Plato, who when he had pushed an argument as far as he felt reason would take it, but when there was yet something important to see, essentially said ‘now, let me tell you myth.’ I think Heidegger does a similar thing. He tries to point to a deeper or more fundamental truth that just can’t be explicated in fully logical thought. We might take that as cheating by a philosopher. Well, nothing says existence has to be logical all the way down. If it isn’t, then the actual truth-teller is the one who doesn’t discount that which lies below or vaults above the logical and rational.

             What he is drawing out, I think, is that we felt at home on the earth when we inhabited a life-world in which all four of these elements held together. For us moderns, the gods have withdrawn, the earth has been reduced to ‘standing reserve,’ and we ‘mortals’ remain: alone. That is not home and we are not ourselves.

Care

             Having outlined what living ‘poetically’ would entail, Heidegger points to what would constitute the universal human vocation. We are to live lives of ‘care.’ Heidegger unpacks this as follows: “The way in which you are and I am, the manner in which we humans are on the earth, is baun, dwelling. To be a human being means to be on the earth as a mortal. It means to dwell. The old word bauen, however, also means at the same time to cherish and protect, to preserve and care for, specifically to till the soil, to cultivate the vine. Such building only takes care—it tends the growth that ripens into its fruit of its own accord.”[viii]

             Heidegger has now shown us what he takes to be the means and end of proper human existence. We are to live poetically, listening to the world around us and cooperating with it. The aim of this life is to manifest care which allows the world around us to grow and be fruitful. Should we be surprised that Heidegger has come to the same conclusion as the early sections of the book of Genesis which express our vocation as living in the presence of God, tending the garden, and enjoying a way of being in which the divine, the human, and the natural all coinhere?

God

             What does Heidegger mean by god (usually expressed in the lower case whether spoken of by him in the singular or the plural)? With the scheme of the fourfold (earth, sky, mortals, divinities) before us, I think the most obvious meaning would be that which is not mortal. It might not really be what is eternal either.  Perhaps we should be literal and leave it as the ‘godhead’ as Heidegger said above. The ‘primordial’, that which is ‘always already’ there is possibly near the mark.

             When Heidegger does his god talk, we are on notably obscure and contested ground.  I don’t think anyone has formulated what would count as the authoritative interpretation of this stuff. I think a reasonable way of thinking about this is that whatever the eternal is (Tao, Logos, Being, or whatever) when we as a species are in proper attunement with the cosmos, we can discern this. That is what most religions and ancient philosophies teach. I would suggest that when we are in a position to listen to nature what we hear speaking to us from nature is what Heidegger calls ‘god’ or ‘the gods’.

             I think that is at least helpful in getting us to better understand what Heidegger is ultimately talking about. It will also help us work through the following famous (infamous?) quote from that late interview he did with the German news weekly (just imagine coming across something like this in Newsweek or Time today!!). There Heidegger said: “If I may answer briefly, and perhaps clumsily, but after long reflection: philosophy will be unable to effect any immediate change in the current state of the world. This is true not only of philosophy but of all purely human reflection and endeavor. Only a god can save us. The only possibility available to us is that by thinking and poetizing we prepare a readiness for the appearance of a god, or for the absence of a god in [our] decline, insofar as in view of the absent god we are in a state of decline.”[ix] Oh, my. I think we have entered more than moderately profound territory.

             Only a god can save us. If my above interpretation is correct or at least credible, that would mean that the only thing that can save us modern humans is if nature, or what is behind nature, Being, god/gods chooses to speak to us again. Heidegger is very insistent that we can’t make that happen. To think we can is to remain within the technological mindset of making the world do what we want which then, of necessity, distorts and destroys. But we can prepare a readiness. We can attempt to return to poetic ways of living on this earth as the mortals we are which is characterized by cooperation with nature and care for her and our fellow humans. We can think. I will not have time to unpack that in this already too long essay. Suffice it to say that in “Building    Dwelling    Thinking” Heidegger develops a conception of what it is to think that is in accord with poetic building and dwelling upon the earth. He would intend for his thought to serve as an example, perhaps in its openness to listening, not commanding via argument.

             So, we can do that. The gods may then return. This would constitute a re-enchantment of nature. If they do, we may again be at home on the earth. But they may not. We may never hear nature speak to us of our proper way of being again. In that case, we continue our decline.

---

[i] Martin Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology,” in Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, edited by David Farrell Krell, HarperSanFrancisco, 1977, p. 294.

[ii] Ibid, p. 293.

[iii] Ibid, p. 306.

[iv] Martin Heidegger, “Building    Dwelling    Thinking,” also in the basic writings, p. 323.

[v] Ibid, p. 327.

[vi] Ibid, pp. 327-328.

[vii] In lieblicher Blaue – In lovely blue: A poem by Friedrich Holderlin – panathinaeos

[viii] Op cit, p. 325

[ix] Only a God Can Save Us (ditext.com)