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4 Planetary Politics and the Essence of Technology
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Political theory and practice are ever dependent upon at least an implicit ontology; that is, they necessarily presuppose a commitment with respect to the nature of political phenomena. As we have seen in the preceding chapter , this ontology is part of a metaphysical position which, according to Heidegger , articulates in a coherent manner a concept of human being, a concept of being in general, a concept of the essence of truth, and the manner of standard -giving. Following Heidegger, we can say that the ontological commitment that pervades the modern epoch and holds sway over political thinking and doing begins with the metaphysics of subjectivity initiated by Descartes and is completed by Nietzsche in the metaphysics of will to power. There are three significant implications of this claim: (a) sovereignty, as the ordering principle of political thought and practice in the modern period, is fundamentally consistent and possible conjointly with the dominant metaphysical conception of the human being as preeminent subiectum and autor; (b) selfliberation and self-legislation enable and give rise to fundamental positions of subjectivity (or modes of subjective egoism) which are manifest in the political domain in that strife characterizing such basic antinomies as individualism versus collectivism, pluralism versus universalism; (c) in the absence of compelling transcendent norms, and as the movement towards 119 CHAPTER FOUR Planetary Politics and the Essence of Technology human self-determination abandons its ‘hesitant’ character, the Nietzschean anticipation of the Overman remains imminent as that “type” of human being ultimately required by the acme of subjectivity. That is, lordship of the Earth—global governance instituted by and for humanity on its own authority in response to an “age of meaninglessness”—is the acme of political sovereignty consistent with the acme of subjectivity in which the human essence is taken as will to power and man himself is taken as the measure. As Heidegger puts it: The age of consummate meaninglessness is therefore the era in which “world views” are invented and promulgated with a view to their power. Such worldviews drive all calculability of representation and production to the extreme, originating as they do essentially in mankind’s self-imposed instauration of self in the midst of beings—in the midst of mankind’s unconditioned hegemony over all sources of power on the face of the earth, and indeed its dominion over the globe as such. Whatever beings in their individual domains may be, whatever used to be defined as their quiddity in the sense of the “Ideas,” now becomes something that the self-instauration can reckon with in advance, as with that which gauges the value of every productive and representative being as such (every work of art, technical contrivance, institution of government, the entire personal and collective order of human beings). Calculation on behalf of this self-instauration invents “values” (for our culture, and for the nation). Value translates the essentiality of essence (that is, of beingness) into an object of calculation, something that can be estimated in terms of quantity and spatial extension.1 In short, whether one advances the cause of individualism or collectivism, pluralism or universalism, the metaphysics of subjectivity holds sway over contemporary political theory and practice. Thus, contemporary world order thinking, too, unavoidably remains steeped in subjectivism. In recognizing that world order thinking has its ground in the metaphysics of subjectivity, we nevertheless take note of Heidegger’s thesis of closure to the Western tradition of metaphysics. This means that the West is today claimed simultaneously by the metaphysics of subjectivity and another thinking that is not metaphysical. That is, the history of the West as the history of Being’s self-unfolding in epochal configurations or formations of thought, word, and deed is today characterized by a precarious and ambiguous tension—between (a) the first beginning inaugurated by Plato and now in its extreme possibility in the metaphysics of will to power, and (b) a new or second beginning whereby metaphysical thinking and the possibility of essential thinking (wesentliche Denken) initially are in tension. However, 120 Theoretical Critique [3.85.9.208] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 08:24 GMT) what is critical in this historical moment, i.e., fundamentally decisive, is that the closure of metaphysics (the completion of philosophy understood as metaphysics) means that Western history “broadens out” into world history, giving that world history determination in thought, word, and deed via the hegemony of the Western valuation: “The end of philosophy means: the beginning of the world civilization based upon Western...