A. Geschlecht, Gemächte, and Technology in Heidegger

Heidegger's concept of politics as it is presented in Being and Time is not politically neutral. Rather, it is a brilliant summary of the politics of the revolutionary Right and as such is directed against the conservative Right, liberals, social democrats, communists, and socialists like Paul Tillich. Leaving aside the issue of repetition and construed according to the formula of the political used a lot nowadays, that is, in terms of «the other,» the different concepts of decision can be summarized as: decision or Ent-scheidung as Ausscheidung, the excretion of the other and the other within oneself, accompanied by the destructive turn against the other as in Heidegger; decision as the intensification of the antagonistic relationship to the other so that finally, in a classless society, the polemical relationship to the other can be overcome, as in Lukács's model; finally, as in Tillich, decision as the end of separation that allows one to make a covenant, an alliance, with the other, a covenant that acknowledges the other and the other within oneself and thus prevents oneself and the other from drifting apart, which would result in an Ausscheidung of the other. The act of Ausscheidung of the other presupposes the Ausscheidung of one's own ordinary or inauthentic Dasein, the Ausscheidung of oneself as «they» and of Gesellschaft, in order to reconstitute oneself as a healthy and pure Gemeinschaft. For some this act was painful. However, the political Right managed to make many people think that they would eventually be rewarded for the act of Ausscheidung with the blessings of the revitalized Gemeinschaft.

The concept of fate or destiny, used by philosophers and politicians on the Right, drew its impact and power from its polemical character in regard to the Center and the Left. As long as there was the common enemy, that is, the liberals and the leftists, many people on the political Right felt no need to consider their actual and possible alliances with other groups on the political Right. Many rightists did not join the National Socialist Party. However, Heidegger had built into his brilliant summary of revolutionary rightist politics in Being and Time an option for the National Socialists, and there was nothing in Being and Time on which he could have based a critique of National Socialism. Heidegger joined the National Socialist Party in 1933—notably, on May I, prior to 1933 the national holiday honoring the working class, an achievement of the Left.

Conservatives as well as National Socialists used the term «Opfer,» sacrifice, for the Ausscheidung. In the sections on Hitler and Scheler, I have already mentioned some occurrences of Opfer. In a speech, "The University in the National Socialist State," delivered on November 30, 1933, in Tübingen, Heidegger said:

We of today are in the process of fighting to bring about the new reality. We are merely a transition, a willing sacrifice. As the warriors in this struggle we must be a hard race {ein hartes Geschlecht}, that cares for nothing of its own, that rests firmly on the foundation of the people and the nation {auf den Grund des Volkes}. The struggle is not about individuals and colleagues, nor about empty tokens and general measures. All genuine struggle bears some permanent mark of the image of the combatants and their work. Struggle alone reveals the true laws whereby things are brought into being. The struggle we seek is one in which we stand shoulder to shoulder, man to man.^[1]

«(Geschlecht» can be used in several ways. As Derrida remarks, depending on its contexts it can be translated by «sex, race, family, generation, lineage, species, genre/genus»^[2] or «sex, race, species, genus, gender, stock, family, generation or genealogy, community.»^[3] Nowadays the word «Geschlecht» is used in bureaucratic and administrative forms and documents, in science, and in words like «Geschlechtskrankheit,» (venereal disease) or «Geschlechts-verkehr» (sexual intercourse). In these contexts, it is used as a descriptive term without any emotional connotations. Nevertheless, in other' contexts it can be given dramatic flavor, as in the passage Derrida quotes from Fichte,^[4] in the quote from Heidegger above, or in the statement a somewhat old-fashioned Heideggerian today might make, namely, that our Geschlecht is living in the closure of metaphysics. In this last sense all human beings alive in the present are the current Geschlecht. The term can also have emphatic connotations when used in the sense of lineage, family, dynasty as the Geschlechter in aristocratic societies («Agamemnon belongs to/is of the Geschlecht of the Atrides»). The emphasis is on the nobility of the Geschlecht whose members

are noble because of the nobility of their blood. Of course, it can also mean race or Volk as, for instance, in the quote from Heidegger. Again, the emphasis is on the nobility and purity of the race or the Volk. «Hart» is «hard,» «hart wie Krupp-Stahl,» «as hard as steel made by Krupp,» as the Führer wanted German soldiers to be.

«Geschlecht» in the sense of race or Volk implies that there are several Geschlechter here on earth, and for right-wingers only some are noble and pure. Drawing upon this sense of Geschlecht, Heidegger could easily indicate in one word the imperialistic mission of the German Volk to act as the proxy of mankind. Empirically, the German Volk is one among several Geschlechter; because of its nobility, however, it can and must act «for» (BT 435; SZ 383) all the Geschlechter, that is, for the entire generation, for the human Geschlecht, that is, for all human beings. The passage wiederholt, repeats, section 74 of Being and Time and in particular the sentences on Erwiderung and Widerruf. The call in Being and Time demands that authentic Dasein erwidert the call of the Volk, that is, that Dasein hands itself down to the Volk in order to regain a stable identity in the face of the vacillations of ordinary and inauthentic Dasein. In the same way, in Heidegger's speech, Dasein is called upon to rest firmly on the Grund, foundation, of the people, for only the people provides Dasein with a stable identity. Already in Being and Time this requires that Dasein widerruft, scheidet aus, cancels, eliminates itself as the ordinary Dasein it has been so far. Thus in the speech Dasein no longer cares for anything «of its own,» that is, it sacrifices all what is its own. («Eigenem» [«its own»] is not «eigentlich,» «authentic,» as in «authentic» and «inauthentic,» but rather is that which belongs exclusively to oneself, one's individuality or, as in Eigentum,^[5] one's private property one has to give up; that is, it is what belongs to inauthentic Dasein; authentic Dasein has to give up its individuality.) In Being and Time , having sacrificed its ordinary Dasein and having found its Grund in the Volk, Dasein is called upon to properly realize the Grund, the Volksgemeinschaft; that is, it is called upon to carry out the Widerruf of the Gesellschaft. Thus, in his speech, Heidegger says: «We of today are in the process of fighting to bring about the new reality.» In Being and Time , the realization of the Volksgemeinschaft is a rerealization of Gemeinschaft or of destiny. Destiny is not produced by the authentic Daseine. Rather, «only . . . in struggling {im Kampf} does the power of destiny become free» (BT 436; SZ 384). Similarly, in the speech struggle does not create the law of the new reality. Rather, «struggle alone reveals the true laws whereby things are brought into being» (italics mine, J. F.).^[6] The struggle for the new reality requires the sacrifice of «us» as Gesellschaft as well as of those whom we ausscheiden, expel, from the Gemeinschaft. In the first step we expel our Jewish, liberal, or social democratic colleagues out of the university,^[7] then out of Germany, «und morgen die ganze Welt» («and tomorrow we conquer the entire world,» as the song of the

National Socialists had it). We as well as those whom we ausscheiden might die in this battle. Thus, «we are but a transition, a sacrifice.» However, this sacrifice of our colleagues and maybe also of ourselves is a rightful claim the Volk has on all of us. For, «the battle is not about persons or colleagues.» Therefore persons and colleagues must be sacrificed if need be. Furthermore, we gain something, we gain on a large scale what bourgeois subjects enjoyed only in a fallen version in the privacy of their chambres séparees, that is, the public intimacy of «heart to heart, man to man» as the fulfillment of the promise of Gemeinschaft.

The speech, "The University in the National Socialist State," was Heidegger's last public speech outside of Freiburg under the National Socialist regime.^[8] At the time, he was already somewhat at odds with the empirical realities of National Socialism, though he remained a National Socialist and faithful to Hitler (MH 158). After the war, Heidegger came to regard politics and action as practiced in the kairos of the twenties and the thirties as metaphysical. He considered the cause he fought for as well as its consequences— namely, Auschwitz—as sent by Geschick and Gestell, destiny and enframing, for which individuals are not responsible,^[9] and promoted a post-metaphysical notion of praxis, namely, Gelassenheit. In several of his texts of that time, he used another word with the notorious prefix «ge-» whose meanings overlap with those of the word «Geschlecht.» Concerning sex and gender, the word «Geschlecht» often means specifically the male or female sex organ, the vagina or the penis.^[10] Another word for the male Geschlecht, the male sex organ, is das Gemächte, nowadays an old-fashioned term. Nonetheless, even in 1970 Marg renders «» in lines 180 and 188 of Hesiod's Theogony —that is, the genitals of Ouranos, which his son, Chronos, cuts off and throws into the sea, out of the foam of which Aphrodite emerges—as «Gemächte.»^[11] In 1939, in his essay on Aristotle's notion of nature, Heidegger uses «das Gemächte» as a technical term and as his translation of the Greek word He comments on Aristotle's Physics , 192 b 16-20:

In opposition to beings like "plants," animals, earth, and air, Aristotle now sets beings like bedsteads, robes, shields, wagons, ships, and houses. The former are "growing things" ["Gewächse "] in the same broad sense that we use in speaking of a "field under growth." The latter are "artifacts" (), in German, Gemächte , although this last term must be stripped of any derogatory connotations. ^[12]

Probably Heidegger arrived at this term in three steps. He begins, so to speak, here on earth, within «a 'here' and a 'yonder'» to which each «'there' {Da}» points (BT 171; SZ 132f.). Thereupon, several individual cases of these «'here'» and «'yonder'» allow for some, so to speak, floating generality. In the

third step, Heidegger claims that, as death in Being and Time , something else «enters into » (BT 292; «in dieses hereinsteht, » SZ 248; literally «stands into») this floating generality. The verb «machen» (to make, to do, to produce, to fix, to manage, to arrange, to perform, to finish) is a word of everyday language used especially when the action performed does not need to be specified. I have ordered a chair at a carpenter's shop, or I have taken a jacket to a tailor for mending. When I go to pick it up, however, the person says: «I have es not yet fertig gemacht, finished it.» Or, the person might say, «It is still in der Mache, in the making.»^[13] In an art gallery someone admires a canvas. Proudly, I point to myself and say: «I have gemacht it.» Accused of having produced this or that mess, I point to someone else and to the mess and exclaim: «Der da hat das (da) gemacht!» (That da [-sein over there] has done this [mess over there]!). Or, babies or children «machen Pipi,» or «machen sich in die Hose,» that is, urinate or defecate into their pants. As one can already see from these examples, the word—or at least the noun, das Gemachte, or das Machwerk—has a flavor of craftsmanship. It belongs, as it were, to the ordinary world «in the mode of its genuineness» (BT 189; «im Modus seiner Echtheit,» SZ 148), the world of «preparing, putting to rights, repairing, improving, rounding-out» (BT 189; SZ 148) where we see things «as a table, a door, a carriage, or a bridge» (BT 189; SZ 149); it belongs to our human-all-too-human everyday affairs in which we proudly present or tenderly cover up «das nackte Vorhandene» (SZ 150; «some naked thing,» BT 190), or try to blame someone else for it. Still, as the most general term it can be used in almost any situation to point to the cause of something. In this sense Heidegger says in "The Question Concerning Technology": «The fact that the real has been showing itself in the light of Ideas ever since the time of Plato, Plato did not bring about {hat nicht Platon gemacht}. The thinker only responded to what addressed itself to him {Der Denker hat nur dem entsprochen , was sich ihm zusprach }» (BW 299; VA 21, italics mine, J. F.).^[14]

Machen is a verb («I mache something»), gemacht is the perfect participle, used both in the active and passive voice: «I have gemacht it,» and «The table is gemacht.» The participle can be made into a noun: «The table is a Gemachtes.» Or, as Hegel says, the constitution of a state should not be regarded as «ein Gemachtes.»^[15] Thus, we have a general noun that can be used for everything produced by human beings, for the corresponding comportment of human beings, and maybe also for what brings about this comportment. However, Heidegger could not leave it at das Gemachte, for as a general term in the theory of epochs of Being the word is just too naked and sober. If it has a flavor, it is by no means the entsprechende for the philosopher of destining history of Being. Also, it might have affirmed the illusion that we are the author of what brings about the comportment in which we treat everything as a Gemachtes or as raw material for a Zu-Machendes. Thus, Heidegger crowned das Gemachte with diacritical marks (Umlaut) and asks

us to abstract from its derogatory usage. «Das Gemächte» is indeed a very old and by now outdated expression for what a person or nature has produced or for what God has created. Crowned by the Umlaut, in Heidegger Gemächte is supposed to acquire some sort of Güte.^[16] Heidegger uses the term «Gemächte» for all products of human beings from Plato and Aristotle onward up to the present day and, at the same time, points out a decisive difference between modem products and Gemächte in Aristotle.

There is a remarkable shift in his basic vocabulary from the essay on Aristotle to "The Question Concerning Technology." In the essay on Aristotle, Heidegger uses as the common term for natural products and technical products—that is, as the common term for «Gemächte» and «Gewächse» (see the quote above)—«Herstellung» or «Herstellen.» Physis is «das Sich—aus sich her, auf sich zu—Herstellen» (WM 367; «production of itself from out of itself unto itself»).^[17] This allows for the term «Gestellung.» In quite an unusual maneuver, Heidegger translates Aristotle's with «Gestellung in das Aussehen» and comments:

By translating   as placing into the appearance {Gestellung in das Aussehen}, we mean to express chiefly two things which are equal in the Greek word but thoroughly lacking in our word "form." First, placing into the appearance is a mode of becoming present,  .   is not an ontic property present in matter, but a mode of Being . Secondly, "placing into the appearance" is being-moved,   which "moment" is radically lacking in the concept of form. ^[18]

Thus, a «Gewächs» is the result of a «Herstellung» as a «Gestellung.» However, a «Gemächte» is the result of a «Herstellung» as a «Machen.» Still, according to Heidegger, there is a difference between human products at Aristotle's time and in modernity. Heidegger maintains that Aristotle wrote lines 192 b 23-27 «in order to avoid misunderstanding as a kind of selfproducing and the merely as a special kind of artifact {eine besondere Art von Gemächten}.»^[19] In a rather unusual interpretation of these lines Heidegger maintains that, according to Aristotle, « can only cooperate with , can more or less expedite the cure; but as it can never replace and in its stead become itself the of health as such.»^[20] The latter, however, is the notion of technic in modernity: «That could only happen if life as such were to become a "technically" producible artifact {"technisch" her-stellbaren Gemächte} . . . Sometimes it seems as if modem man rushes headlong towards this goal of producing himself technologically . »^[21]

From this perspective of modem man, the «Gewächse» in ancient Greece are misinterpreted. For, as Heidegger argues, «the idea of "organism" and of the "organic" is a purely modem, mechanistic-technological concept according to which "growing things" are interpreted as artifacts that make themselves {sich selbst machendes Gemächte}.»^[22] In "The Question Concerning Technology," however, q calls production in nature and technology no

longer «Herstellung,» but rather «Hervorbringen.» Physis is the «Her-vor-bringen» («bringing-forth») that has the «Aufbruch des Her-vor-bringens» («bursting open belonging to bringing-forth») in itself, whereas technology is the «Hervorbringen» which does not have the «Aufbruch seines Hervorbringens» in itself (VA 15; BW 293). Surprisingly enough, however, both terms for physis in the essay on Aristotle, «Herstellung» as well as «Gestellung,» are used in "The Question Concerning Technology" for technology. «Her-stellen» or «Darstellen» («producing and presenting») is used for the Greek poiesis (VA 24; BW 303). «Gestellung,» however, is stripped of its suffix «-ung» and becomes the technical term for modem technology, «Ge-stelb» («enframing») (VA 23; 301). Thus, «Gemächte» is no longer a term for artifacts in Aristotle nor for the products of modem technology. Consequently, «das Gemächte» is used only three times, and always in the negative.^[23]

One reason for these changes is probably that «Her-stellen» and «be-stellen» («Bestand,» «Gestelb») allowed Heidegger to distinguish between Greek poiesis and modem technology also in his terminology. Furthermore, Hiroshima, Dresden, and Auschwitz happened after he wrote the essay on nature in Aristotle. Since in "The Question Concerning Technology" he talks in an oblique way about the «skeleton {s}» (BW 301; «Knochengerippe,» VA 23) in Auschwitz, and how to forget about them,^[24] it would be somewhat indecent to use a word for the male sex organ too frequently. In the section on historicality in Being and Time , Heidegger characterized authentic Dasein as the Dasein that—in contrast to inauthentic Dasein—is able to relate itself properly to its death as well to its birth and thus to the Volksgemeinschaft of the Germans. "The Question Concerning Technology" was delivered as a speech in Munich in 1953 and published in Vorträge und Aufsätze in 1954. It might have embarrassed some listeners and readers if the two cornerstones of Being and Time , death and birth, had recurred in that speech as the skeletons in Auschwitz together with the frequent usage of a word for the male sex organ.

As far as I know, studies of Heidegger's use of terms for sex organs have not yet addressed the passages I have discussed here. Those who maintain that Western metaphysics is phallocentric might find further support in Heidegger's use of the noun «Gemächte.» Furthermore, the passage on the «harte Geschlecht» seems to indicate that crucial motifs of the Heidegger of Being and Time have remained the same in his thinking after the Machtergreifung, as I will explain in the next section.