BCDU (2014) – Gestell

(BCDU  )

In German, the word Gestell usually means frame( work ), mount, setting. As Heidegger remarks, “In ordinary usage, the word Gestell refers to some kind of apparatus, for example, a bookrack. Gestell is also the name for a skeleton” ( Question concerning Technology ). The word entered the philosophical vocabulary in Heidegger’s work—probably in the 1953 lecture “The Question of Technology,” where it characterized the essence of modern technology—or technology as such. Although it is not a neologism, the term must nonetheless be understood as a neologism in view of the fact that it is used by Heidegger in a broad, unexpected, unusual sense to designate the whole or the collection ( which is indicated by the prefix Ge- ) of all the modes of setting ( Ger. stellen ) that causes man’s way of wanting to impose modern technology on the whole planet ultimately to enslave him as the servant of what he intended to have at his service.

Starting in the 1950s, Heidegger called Gestell what in the 1930s he had called Machenschaft—not, of course, in the common sense of “machination,” but as “the realm of doing” or even “efficiency.”

Regarding the choice of the term Gestell, Heidegger told the German news magazine Der Spiegel  :

Das Wesen der Technik sehe ich in dem, was ich das “Ge-Stell” nenne. Der Name, beim ersten Hören leicht mißverständlich, recht bedacht, weist, was er meint, in die innerste Geschichte der Metaphysik zurück, die heute noch unser Dasein bestimmt. Das Walten des Ge-Stells besagt: Der Mensch ist gestellt, beansprucht und herausgefordert von einer Macht, die im Wesen der Technik offenbar wird.

( I see the essence of technology in what I call the Ge-Stell. This term, which is easily misunderstood when first heard, when correctly conceived refers what it designates back to the innermost history of metaphysics, which still determines our existence. The reign of the Ge-stell means: man is subject to the control, the demands, and the provocation of a power that is manifested in the essence of technology. )

( “Martin Heidegger im Gespräch,” in Antwort; M. Heidegger, Reden und andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges )

As he remarked as early as a lecture given in 1953, Heidegger proposes to interpret Gestell in a “completely unusual” ( völlig ungewohnt ) way, on the model of Gebirg ( mountain range ) or Gemüt.

Let us attempt here a brief comparison of two French translations of the term Gestell. Arraisonnement, a public-health term, means “a careful examination of a ship that is suspect for health reasons” ( Littré ), and arraisonner un navire also means, in a maritime and hygienic context, “to find out where a vessel is coming from and where it is going.” But, in addition, arraisonner means “to seek to persuade by giving arguments.” It is this twofold meaning that A. Préau   has in mind when he justifies his translation: “Technology calls nature to account, boards and inspects it [l’arraisonne], requires that everything justify itself before the tribunal of reason and in accord with its norms” ( translator’s note in “La question de la technique,” tr. Préau  , 26 ). The translation of Gestell by arraisonnement is certainly a discovery that stimulates thought by situating the essence—or rather the site of modern technology—in the realm of reason and the principle of reason, rationem reddere. But it is also open to criticism because the Gestell does not express itself using the vocabulary of reason. “A good translation” and at the same time one that is “eminently interpretive,” says F. Fédier  , and in addition one that “lets us glimpse what the word Gestell means as Heidegger uses it,” but only on condition that the word arraisonnement be understood “to express a rational, systematic treatment in which everything is already grasped in the framework of arrangements to be made in order to provide a solution for problems” ( Regarder voir, pp. 206–8 ). Fédier   himself proposes dispositif ( apparatus ) as a translation for Gestell or, in a more developed way, dispositif unitaire de la consommation, meaning by that “all the prior measures by means of which everything is made available in advance in the framework of a putting in order.” Here all explicit reference to reason has disappeared. On the other hand, the root stell of the verb stellen ( set, set up ) has a prominent place in the apparatus. Nonetheless, a circumlocution is necessary to render the meaning of the German collective prefix Ge- : unitaire and the cum in consommation indicate it doubly.

Pascal   David