Ways of Being, Technology, and Self-Alienation, Pt. 1

Almost as badass as Nietzsche

German philosopher Martin Heidegger, one of the leading figures of the existentialist movement and of 20th-century philosophy in general, claimed in his masterwork Being and Time that there were three distinct 'modes of Being.'  There is the Being of physical objects, or 'substantiality,' which roughly corresponds to the way things appear when viewed from a detached or scientific perspective; that is, when we view a thing merely as an object with certain physical properties.  For example, when I take apart a computer and study its inner circuitry, I am viewing the computer as it is in the mode of substantiality.

There is also the mode of Being of equipment, what Heidegger calls 'ready-to-hand.'  Things appear to me in this mode when I immediately apprehend them as tools to be used in my everyday life.  For example, I immediately understand, without any thought or reflection, that doorknobs are to be used for opening doors.  Likewise, I understand intuitively that chairs are meant to be sit in, books are meant to be read, and food is meant to be eaten.  All of these things present themselves to us as meaningful objects, related to other objects and to us in meaningful ways.

Finally, there is the mode of Being peculiar to us as conscious creatures, which Heidegger calls Dasein in German—'Being-There' in English.  We differ in our Being from that of mere substances or physical objects and equipment in that we take a stand on our being.  In other words, we have an awareness of our own being, which distinguishes us from things like rocks (substances) or hammers (equipment); furthermore, this awareness allows us to 'comport' ourselves in certain ways, to adopt certain attitudes toward our own existence.

My knowledge of Heidegger does not extend much beyond what I've written above, as he's an extremely complex and difficult thinker and I've just begun to explore his work.  So, my thoughts at this point are more my own musings that take his thoughts as a launching point.

It seems to me that, in our daily lives, most of us do not recognize this distinction between 'ways of Being.'  The prevalence of the scientific attitude, in fact, tends to reduce everything, including human life, to the status of physical phenomena to be studied under the microscope.  Cognitive neuroscience attempts to explain human behavior in terms of chemical processes in the brain; meanwhile, the dominant trend in psychiatry is to treat mental illness as a biological disorder to be treated with drugs.  We do not see ourselves as beings who can take a stand on our being, but merely as physical objects with certain powers to manipulate ourselves—via drugs or other "techniques," as promoted in many self-improvement guides—and other physical objects.  Our  models of the human brain are based on what we know about computers, because we do not see any difference between opening up a computer and examining its wiring and examining the wiring of the human mind.

Heidegger was also concerned with the attitude towards life which was brought about technology, an attitude towards being in which we feel  called upon to manipulate nature to our ends.  I know very little about this area of his thought, but I'm excited to explore it.  I get the sense that he was on to something very deep and very pressing here.

To be continued...


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