The Metaphysics of Globalization in Heidegger

: By referring to Heidegger ’ s understanding of metaphysics in his later philosophy, a fundamental relationship between the tradition of metaphysical thinking and the globalization of the principles of modernity may be considered. Both metaphysics and globalization share the same concept of world, which since the beginnings of modernity is understood as the accessibility of beings in their entirety. The principles of modernity — such as world-accessibility, quantification, energy-funding, accumulation and dominance — are grounded in a metaphysical understanding of the human condition that is characterized by the subject-object division. This metaphysical understanding of the man-world relationship is considered to be the deeper rationale of all essential phenomena of the modern age — such as philosophy, technology, natural science, economy, politics of power, and even humanism — which all tend to globalize their fundamental principles. Investigating the Heideggerian criticisms of metaphysics helps in understanding the deeper meaning of the notion of ‘ world ’ , as this term is used in the discourse about globalization.


Marco Kleber
The Metaphysics of Globalization in Heidegger Abstract: By referringt oH eidegger'su nderstanding of metaphysics in his later philosophy, af undamental relationship between the tradition of metaphysical thinking and the globalization of the principles of modernity maybeconsidered.Both metaphysics and globalization share the same concept of world, which since the beginnings of modernity is understood as the accessibility of beings in their entirety.The principles of modernity-such as world-accessibility, quantification, energy-funding,a ccumulation and dominance-are grounded in a metaphysical understanding of the human condition that is characterized by the subject-object division.Thism etaphysical understandingo ft he man-world relationship is considered to be the deeper rationale of all essential phenomena of the modern age-such as philosophy, technology, natural science, economy, politics of power,a nd even humanism-which all tend to globalize theirf undamental principles.Investigating the Heideggerian criticisms of metaphysics helps in understanding the deeper meaning of the notion of 'world',a st his term is used in the discourse about globalization.

Globalizationa nd the concept of world
Metaphysicsisinall its forms and historical stages aunique but perhaps necessary,fateof the West and the presupposition of its planetary dominance.T he will of that planetary dominancei sn ow in turn affectingt he center of the West.( Heidegger1 973,p. 90) Here, Heideggerc onnects the planetary dominance of the western hemisphere (the globalization thato riginates from within Europe in the context of western imperialism and colonialism, but which became ac onnected systemic order and, therefore, turns back affecting its center)w ith ac ertain 'wayo ft hinking'-'metaphysics'-that is meanttobethe presupposition and deeper rationale of global modernity.What metaphysics and globalization do have in common is preciselyt his 'will to domination'.M etaphysics 'as philosophy' is ad iscourse about what is meta, 'over' the physis;t he certain beingsi nt he world, and about what is 'transcendent' to those beings ( Heidegger 1998,p .9 3).What goes beyond the certain 'beingsi n 'the world was interpreted by the tradition of metaphysical thinkingas'the world itself'-the 'totality' of all beings."'World' serves, here, as aname for beingsintheir entirety."(Heidegger 2002,p.67)Since its beginningsi na ncient philosophy, metaphysicsh as givent hought to this totality called 'world',a nd, by doing so, attempted to subordinatet he totality of beingstothis thinking,tomake it accessibletohuman thought.Otherwise,metaphysics would not have been able to think about beingsintheir entirety,and, if so, there would be no metaphysical philosophyatall.It is indeed of necessity to the logic of thought to refer to this entireness, and,t herefore, metaphysics became the 'fate' of the west.T hough, thinking of the world as aw hole at first leads to 'dominating' it.Thereby,t he same problematic reference to the totality of all beingsisinherent both to metaphysics and to globalization: the world as a whole is affected by globalization and needstobemade available and connected within the ongoing process of globalization.
Metaphysics and globalization do indeedhavethe same will to domination, because they boths hare the same concept of 'world':a satotality that is accessible to human will and thinking.The notion of world, preciselya st his termi s used in contemporary discourse about globalization (world society,world market,worldt rade, world bank, world system, world order,world currency, world war,world fair,world citizenship,worldwide networkinga nd orientation) is actuallyametaphysical concept; it originates from the history of metaphysical thinking.The history of the concept of cosmos (κόσμος), mundus and world starts with Pre-Socratic philosophy( like Heraclitus) and can be retraced through the Gospel of John and in Christian philosophy( Augustine, Thomas Aquinas) to moderntimes (Kant)and, from its beginnings, shows certain kindsofambivalences (Heidegger1 998,.These ambivalences alsoc oncern the globalized principles of modernity.M odernity always tends to totalize the will to make the world accessible: to expand towards all spots of the globe (including the seabed), towardsi nterplanetary space, as well as into the inner cores of atoms and the biological micro-structures of life, and towards all aspects of human society.

Phenomenao ft he age
Modernm etaphysics,a ccordingt oH eidegger,i sb ased in the philosophical principle of subjectivity and, therefore, is characterized by radical subject-object division.The fact that man is nowphilosophicallyinterpreted as asubject (fromthe Latin subiacere,which means 'to liebelow')saysthat he now understands his own existence andreasoningasthe instance in whichall beings are grounded: Unauthenticated Download Date | 5/28/19 3:15 PM The word names that-which-lies-before,that which, as ground, gathers everythingonto itself.This metaphysical meaningoft he concept of the subject has,i nt he first instance, no special relationship to man, and none at all to the I. (Heidegger2 002, p. 66) Therefore, to understand oneself as asubject meanstorealize aspecific relationship to the worldofbeings: for those, 'to be' now means to be an object thatmay be represented and known by the subject.All beingsa re (and the world is) now defined by the principle of subjectivity and its corresponding principle of objectification."Beingsa sawhole are now taken in such aw ay thatabeing is first and onlyinbeing insofar as it is set in place by representing-producing[vorstellend-herstellenden]humanity." (Heidegger2002, pp.67-68) Because the world is now defined by its capability of being representablebythe subject,and as far as a 'representation' is synonymous with a 'picture',H eideggerc an re-name modernity as TheA ge of the WorldP icture,w hich is the title of his famous essay from 1938 (Heidegger2 002, p. 57).
This essence of modernity-that all beingse xist as representable objectivity and that the world itself is understood as such arepresentation-is the 'ground' of all so-called 'essential phenomena' of the age.That means, with regard to all those basic "phenomena [Erscheinungen], their metaphysical ground must allow itself to be recognized in them" (Heidegger2 002, p. 57).This recognition of the phenomena must be the onlyargument to justify the assumption of ametaphysical ground of an age, or,ofm odernity being the ageo ft he world picture.What are, according to Heidegger, these essentialp henomena of modernity?
Firstly,there is metaphysics itself,a st he philosophyo ft he 17 th to up to the 20 th century.I ti sp recisely "the guiding thought of modern philosophy" that "something 'is' onlyi nsofar as af oundedc ognition has secured it for itself as its object."(Heidegger1 991, p. 27)T his can be found in Heidegger'sI nterpretation of Leibniz's principium rationis -the principle of sufficient reason-that is essentialt oe arly-modern philosophya nd which says that "Nothing is without reason.The principle now says that every thing counts as existingw hen and onlywhen it has been securelyestablished as acalculable object for cognition."(Heidegger1991, p. 120) To saythat everythingexists onlywith reason, and nothing without reason, impliest hat everything,e very beingi sa ccessiblet oh uman cognition (as the criteria of this being), which can always represent the reason whyt his being exists.Metaphysics,w hich, throughout its history,m ore and more tendedtointerpret 'being' at all as 'being an object',isunderstood by Heideggera st he effect of an 'erroneous trend' within western culture, with global modernity as its final manifestation.Itsp reconditions go back to Parmenides and his famous assessment "that, namelyt he same, is perceiving as well as being" (Heidegger 1991, p. 73), but this seed sprouted onlyw hen it was "in the metaphysics of Descartes that,f or the first time, the beingi sd efined as the abjectnessofrepresentation, and truth as the certaintyofrepresentation" (Heideg-ger2002, p. 66).Heideggerevenincludes his ownphilosophyofhis earlier writingsi nto his criticism of objectivizingm etaphysical thoughts, when he, in 1929, implicitlyargues against his first major work Being and Time from 1927.Thisapproach, by mistake, identified the ontological context of object-usagew ith the phenomena of the world (cp.Heidegger1 998, pp.121, 370, footnote 52).
Secondly: Because of metaphysics defining 'world' as the totality of beings, which is 'accessible' to human thought,m odernt echnology is the most consistent realization and materialization of the essence of metaphysical thinking (Luckner 2008, pp. 59,9 3).What distinguishes 'modern' from 'traditional' technology-for example, ah ydroelectric power plant from at raditionalw atermill -is that the mill indeedu ses the water flow of the river, but that the power plant represents the idea of 'whole' natureb eing an accessible resource for the demand of accumulating energy.M odern technology,l ike the power plant, "puts to nature the unreasonable demand that it suppl[ies] energy that can be extracted and stored as such."(Heidegger 1977,p .1 4) Unliket he movement of the mill thati sb uilt into the river, energy is-like money-an abstract category that can, in principle, be accumulated infinitely (Luckner 2008, p. 114).'Whole' nature, then,becomes primarilyaresourcefor technology.Thus, modern technology is, indeed, not essentiallydefined as auseful means to an end, but as a( metaphysicallyd etermined) conception of what nature in its entirety is.
Thirdly: Insofar as modern 'natural science' understands natureinits entirety as acalculable coherence of forces and energies (which can be anticipated by referringt on atural lawa nd made controllable by experiments using measurement and mathematical calculation as its basic methods) it totallyc omplies with the essence of modernt echnology( Heidegger2 002, pp.61-66;1 977, p. 21).By referringt o' nature' as quantifiable, mathematized and, therefore, secured to human disposal, the world of natural sciencesisnothing other than the entireness of potential technological (and economic) resources.If anything cannot be represented and imagined as ac alculable coherenceo ff orces and, thus, cannot become open to technological and/or economical access, it is not at all 'nature' in the sense of modern 'natural' science.
Fourthly: Heidegger addresses the 'economy' as an essentialp henomenon of the modern agei nthe context of hisr eception of Marxa nd Hegel.He points out thatMarx'sconcept of 'dialectical materialism'"does notconsist in the assertion thate verything is simplym atterb ut rather in am etaphysical determination accordingt ow hich every being appears as the material of labor" (Heidegger 1998, p. 259).The metaphysical background of labor was,b eforeM arx, first thought in "Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit as the self-establishingprocess of un-conditionedp roduction, whichi st he objectificationo ft he actual throught he human being, experienced as subjectivity" (Heidegger2 008, p. 295).Every being-the whole metaphysical world-appears as the material of labor,w hich transformsn atural beingi ntot echnology and,b yt his, labor produces the added-value which is needed for the self-establishing process of capital accumulation in modern societies.C apitalism is exactly that kindo fe conomics ystem thatc an at itsb este xecute them etaphysical objectification of world and thee ssence of technology.
The metaphysical trinity of technology,science and economyeffectuates that politics have to give rise to the claim to make the world accessiblet o objectification and technological access.Thereby,p olitics transforms itself into 'politics of power' and, from aglobalperspective,into 'geopolitics'.The political leaders of nation states,inside and outside, have to push forward mechanization and technological progress,which causes the clash of nations and leads, according to Heidegger, to geopolitical conflicts,includingthe world wars (Vietta 2015, p. 163).The newly-published Black Notebooks by Heideggerd eal, among other things, with the global political power blocks after World WarI I -the Soviet Union and the United States-which seem to have oppositional political ideologies, but are indeed drivenb yt he same concept of power (Heidegger 2014, p. 173 -174;Vietta 2015,p .164).
The struggle between those whoa re in powera nd those whow ant to comet op ower: On every side therei st he struggle for power.[… ]T his struggle is of necessity planetarya nd as such undecidable in its beingb ecause it has nothingt od ecide […].(Heidegger1 973, p. 102) There is athinking related to spheres of influenceand global supremacying eopolitical situations, drivenb yt echnological and economical constraints, in which this planetary struggle, with power being an end in itself and its object being the entire world, has not necessarilya nything to decide, because the categoriesofpower itself and its 'understanding' of the world as accessible to men -the 'metaphysical' approach of technologya nd economy-is never questioned as such.
Sixthly: The aforementioned aspects and consequences of metaphysical thinking about the world ultimatelyr esultf rom the self-understanding of man as asubject and,therefore, relate to humanism and its anthropology.Humanism intends to moralize man and,with this, to let him recognize his owndignity.Indeed, all variants of humanism "presupposed the most universal 'essence' of the human being to be obvious.The human beingi sconsidered to be an animalr ationale."(Heidegger 1998, p. 245) Regarding this definition, the subject-object distinction is repeated and duplicated within the human being itself.Man is 'animal',i .e.al ivingc reature understood as ab iological organism; in addition to this, man is rationale,with the ability to be rational and reasoning.Inthe formula man =organism +rationality, 'human being' divides itself into being asubject and being an object.H uman existencei tself is now understood as being-an-object to asubjectand enters the realm of accessibilitytothe metaphysical subjectivity.M an himself becomes ar esource on behalf of technology: "Man, who no longer conceals his character of being the most important rawm aterial,i sa lso drawninto this process."(Heidegger1973, p. 104) With this being an implication of the humanist understanding of man, the basic ideas of humanism, such as freedom and human dignity,a re (not in an unproblematic way) simply oppositional to the exploitation or even self-exploration of humans.Heideggerr elates these negative dialectics of humanism to the idea of the absolutev alue, which is regarded as human dignity: Rather,itisimportantfinallytorealize that preciselythrough the characterization of somethingas'avalue' what is so valued is robbed of its worth.That is to say, by the assessment of somethingasavalue whatisvaluedisadmitted onlyasanobject for human estimation.
[…]Every valuing,evenwhere it values positively,isasubjectivizing.It does not let beings: be." (Heidegger1 998, p. 265) The paradoxo fh uman dignity is that, by attributing an absolutev alue to himself, man attributes to himself and transforms himself into an object that is relative to this attribution, and, therefore, does not seem to relate to himself anymore as absolute.On the contrary,t his does not mean that it is possiblet o denyh uman dignity,b ut rather that "Humanism is opposed because it does not set the humanitas of the human being highe nough" (Heidegger1 998, p. 251).Furthermore,t his meanst hat we have to think about the essence of human dignity in an ew and morer adical way, by considering the negative aspects that the ideas of humanism mayh ave.
These abovementioned aspectso ft he phenomena of the age-modern philosophy, technology,science, economy, politics of power and humanism-are related to metaphysics,because metaphysics refers to the world of beingsi nt heir entirety,o rt on ature-and because this entireness is also addressed within the phenomena that are essentiallyd efined as conceptsa bout what 'being' or 'world' actuallym eans.Heidegger'sb asici ntention is to fulfill the so-called 'Turning' (Heidegger1 977, p. 36), which means to think botho fb eingsi nt heir entirety and of the relation of human existence to this entireness in an ew way: to think the "transitionfrom metaphysics to the thinkingofbeing in its historicality" (Heidegger2 012,p .5 ).At first,t his means to consider that the phenomena of an agea re grounded in ad eeper understandingo ft he world.Be-cause, concerning the ageofmodernity,anunderstandingofthe world as 'accessible' to mana ppears as essential to all phenomena of modernity,m odernity as such tends to globalize its principles, such as power,q uantification, mathematization, technologization and energy production.The metaphysical concept of the world is indeed inherent to modernity.The ageo ft he 'world picture' is the ageo fg lobalization.
Twoc onceptso fw orld: the universe and the globalization Accordingt ot he humanistic definitiono fm an-which, accordingt oH eidegger, is 'not false' but 'conditioned by metaphysics' (Heidegger 1998, p. 246)-the human being is an animalr ationale;ad efinition that appears within ancient and medievalp hilosophya st he Latint ranslation of the Grecian zoon logon echon (ζϖον λογονε χον)-the living creature that is able to think and to talk.To be rationalm eans to be able to have thoughts, and this implies the ability to form sentences and phrases, or,touse language.One of the most fundamental logical principles of languageispredication: the possibilitytosay that anybeing is another determination, like, for example, a 'quality' of this being.What does this 'is' mean?Incontrast to the 'certain' being in the world (which is defined by as ummary of its actual or possibled eterminations and can be separated and distinguishedf rom other beings), the 'is'-which appears within human languagea nd, by this, must be meaningful-has no certain qualities.That the being is, must be something else than how and what it is.
This is what Heideggerc alls the 'ontological difference':t he distinction between "beings in their being,a nd being of beings" (Heidegger1 998, p. 105).B ecause man can understand 'is' or 'to be' within the usageoflanguage, the 'being of all' beings is related to his existence.Andbecause this 'being' does not mean something special-no particularf act or thing in the world-but that being is, human existence is not limited to certain areas of beings, but has an essential relationship to the entireness of beings, to the world.Indeed, this world is not an object to ah uman subject,l ike 'certain' beingsc ould be objectivized.This marks the erroneous trend bothw ithin the tradition of metaphysical thinking, and the culturalh istory that leads to the principles of modernity-to the age of the 'world picture'-that always tends to subordinate the entireness of beings to an object of calculation and disposal.But the turning to ad ifferent wayo f thinking concerning the world can be madethroughout the metaphysical definitions.To Heidegger, human being (Dasein)now stands in arelationship to world that is defined as the 'transcendence' to certain beings: "We name world that towardw hich Dasein as such transcends,and shall now determine transcendence as being-in-the-world."(Heidegger 1998, p. 109) As the hyphens in Heidegger's new phrase indicate, 'being-in-the-world' is meantt ob eastructure in which there is af undamental unity concerning the relationship between human existence( which is called Dasein)a nd being of beings, called world.The emphasis of this unity avoids the subject-object division of earlymodern philosophyupto the 20 th century,which complies with the problematic principles of modernity as such.Again: what is the problem concerning the modern understanding of 'world'?
Heideggerexplains whyt here always appears aproblem when the essential human-world relationship-the 'being-in-the-world'-is divided into subject and object,o r, equally, when the unity of the world is 'abstracted' atwain: It is thereforeequally erroneoust oa ppealtothe expression worldeitherasadesignation for thetotality of naturalthings(thenatural conceptofworld),orasaterm forthe communityof human beings (the personal concept of world).Rather, what is metaphysically [52] essentialin themoreorlessclearly highlighted meaningofκόσμος, mundus,world,liesinthe fact that it is directed toward an interpretation of human existence [ Dasein] in itsr elationt obeingsasa whole.
[…]W orld belongst oarelational structured istinctive of Daseina ss uch, as tructure that we called being-in-the-world.( Heidegger1 998, The fundamental man-world relationship is undermined by subject-object division, and by the understanding of world as representational.This leads to an understandingof'world' in which there are actuallytwo totallydifferent usages of the notion: the natural concept of world and the personal concept of world.The two are equallyerroneous-the formera sadesignation of the totality of all natural objects( without the human subject), and the latter as an ame for the community of human beings( to which nature is accessible).
In his book Mind and Cosmos,Thomas Nagel points out that the "great advances in the physical and biological sciences weremade possible by excluding the mind from the physical world.Thishas permittedaquantitative understand-ing of that world, expressed in timeless,m athematicallyf ormulatedp hysical laws."(Nagel 2012,p.8)Themain thesis of his book is that this leads to an aporia, "since mind is the product of ap artlyp hysical progress"-even the mind of the scientistwho works with the theory-but these physical sciences "have been developedf or am indless universe" (Nagel 2012,p .1 2).O pposing the supreme paradigms of Neo-Darwinism and materialism, and for the sake of the future development of our scientific culture and theory,the question should be asked of how amore comprehensive understanding of the physical reality,which includes the mind (phenomenas uch as consciousness,c ognition, value, conclusion), might be possible (cp.Nagel 2012).It could be true that it is the most important characteristic of matter or of the physical universe that it can bring mind into reality and that matter should be re-thought in categories of the mind.
While the paradigms of modern natural science are onlym ade possible by excludingf undamental aspects of existencea nd life from these sciences, the human self-understanding is always implicitlyi nt he background.The universe that is defined as pure objectivity is determined by manw ho, since the beginningso fm odernity,exists as as ubject.The 'natural' world is defined as the entireness of the behaviorofpure matter.This is the metaphysical world, accessible to human disposal.The universe, aconcept that 'underdetermines' human being in the world by excludingt he principle of subjectivity,i sa ctuallyl inked to an 'overdetermination' of the human will within the modern understanding of 'world'.Then, man suddenlystandsaboveall othernatural things, which are reduced to their capacity to be objectivized and manipulated as energy resource, as experiment,a nd as commodity.T hisi se xpressed by ad ifferent usageo f the notion of world: the world that is connected and made accessiblebyorwithin the world society,t he world market,t he world trade, the world bank, the world system, the world order,t he world currency, the world wide web, etc.This concept of 'world',which defines it as the summary of all human involvements, is the world-concept of globalization, which is without doubtp resent in all current discourses about what globalization might be.
While the 'natural' concept of world excludes human activities and relationships from its definition of the universe, the second concept of world, by contrast,e xcludes nature from what is meant to be the world.However,t his is so onlyif'nature' is understood in the old, Aristotelianway-as thatwhich is in-accessible to human disposal and manipulation, because it exists and moves on its own, aconcept which is remarkablydifferent to the understanding of 'nature' as ar esource for energy production and economic growths (cp.Luckner 2008, pp. 103 -104).With this,the twoconcepts of world are obviously linked; they result from the same abstractness that divides the essential relation and openness of human existencetothe cosmos-arelationalstructure that is named being-inthe-world by Heidegger-into ap ure object-sidea nd ap ure subject-side.
Globalization'su nderstanding of the world arises duringt he beginning of European modernity with the exploration of North America,the decentralization of the globe in the Copernican revolution, the development of the central perspective within art,and the Cartesian philosophy.Allthese events have in common that the world (which is quite oftenimagined as the planetary globe) is objectivized by an external perspective.S ince this, globalization expands towards all areas of the natural world, includingman'sown bodilynature and life, tending to make this world accessible.This process of globalization is understood by Heideggerasthe quantification of the world, which can be seen in the "destruction of great distancesb yt he airplane, in the representations of foreign and remote worlds in their everydayness producedatwill by the flick of aswitch" (Hei-degger2 002, p. 71).
As shown, global modernity and metaphysics share the samec oncept of world.With this, metaphysics is the necessary presupposition of the planetary dominance of the West (the globalization of the European principles of world-accessibility) and the rise of aconnected systemic order thatinturnaffects the center of the West.