Heidegger, Work, and Being 9781472546838, 9781847063724, 9781441156471

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For my parents

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Acknowledgments

It is not an overstatement to say that my love of philosophy and theology is owed almost entirely to Joseph Milne. I am indebted to him not just for introducing me to the richness of philosophical hermeneutics, but more significantly, for providing such fruitful discussions over the span of 15 years. My eternal thanks is here expressed for the many paths of reflection that he has shown me. I owe a great deal of gratitude to my former supervisor, Jeremy Carrette, who has provided a much-needed critical engagement with my work as well as offering me vital support with respect to my past and current research. Of course, I cannot fail to mention his quality of enduring patience which was put to the test when discussing with me ontology according to the most “primordial” of Heideggerian contexts! I would like to thank George H. Taylor for encouraging my research in Ricoeur and providing crucial comments on my understanding and employment of the relation between Heidegger and Ricoeur. I hope the seventh chapter on thanking lives up to hermeneutic expectations! To my wife, Patricia Baker, I owe not just the many hours of labor spent reading the entire text (twice), but more important, her original and illuminating comments on the cultural and social contexts of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds . . . phusis kruptesthai pilei. Sarah Francis has provided substantial help with clarifications over Aristotle and Homer. I hope my overtly Heideggerian interpretation of Aristotle does not cause any offence! I am grateful to Philip Goodchild and Ian MacKenzie for their extensive engagement with an earlier form of this book, which was my PhD thesis, and for their moral support to my research interests. I would like to thank Ken R. Westphal who has provided invaluable support in discussing with me the relation between hermeneutics and epistemology, and especially, richer interpretations of Kant. My thanks to Scott Davidson for organizing the first conference on Paul Ricoeur at Oklahoma City University in 2007 which has provided a rich community for discussion and debate and has given rise to the Society for Ricoeur Studies (USA). As always, “The Circle of Shmoes” (of which I am perhaps the founding member) cannot be forgotten. To Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, Chris Daley, Brian Edwards, Valentin Gerlier, David Lewin, and Duane Williams I owe gratitude for the many discussions of philosophy and theology that always bordered on

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the absurd, if not a laying down of a gauntlet in the streets of Canterbury. I am especially indebted to Valentin Gerlier for reading many different drafts and versions of the chapters and occasioning a much-needed atmosphere of humor in translating philosophical positions into animated hand gestures. My thanks to the University of Kent Religious Studies Research Group, in particular Geoffrey Cornelius, Chris Deacy, Jeff Harrison, Dmtri Hatzioakim, Jean Lall, and Peter Moore. Although no longer in existence, the weekly presentations by fellow graduate students and faculty proved an ideal context for critical discussion. An equal debt of gratitude must also be expressed to the University of Kent’s philosophy department, not only for accepting me as part of their teaching staff but also for giving me the opportunity to engage more directly with analytic philosophy. My thanks, in particular, to David Corfield and Sean Sayers for starting the Alasdair MacIntyre discussion group. Last and never least, I must thank my parents who have supported me with the utmost generosity and encouragement in my endeavors, wherever they seemed to lead me. And these endeavors have led all over the place, from filmmaking and insurance claims adjusting, to rock climbing and the martini. I hope this work, which is dedicated to you, has not come too late. I would like to thank The Journal of French Philosophy for their permission to publish a revised version of my article, “Form and Figure: Paul Ricoeur and the Rehabilitation of Human Work”, 16:1 and 2 (Spring and Fall 2006), as Chapter 5 of this book.

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Abbreviations

General title references in the text and abbreviation of works by Plato and Aristotle always refer to the English translations from the Loeb Library unless stated otherwise. The Oxford Greek texts listed in the bibliography have been used to confirm line numbers. Cratylus

EE Gorgias Laws Meta NE Physics Physics 2 Pol Rep Rep 2 Rhetoric Symposium Timaeus

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Plato (1926), Cratylus, Paremenides, Greater Hippias, Lesser Hippias. H. N. Fowler (trans.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Aristotle (2003a), Eudemian Ethics. H. Rackham (trans.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Plato (1939), Lysis, Symposium, Gorgias. W. R. M. Lamb (trans.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Plato (1989), Laws, Vol. II: Books VII–XII. R. G. Bury (trans.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Aristotle (2003b), Metaphysics, I–IX. H. Tredennick (trans.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Aristotle (2003c), Nicomachean Ethics. H. Rackham (trans.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Aristotle (1963), Physics, Vol. 1. P. Wickstead and F. Cornford (trans.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Aristotle (1960b), Physics, Vol. 2. P. Wickstead and F. Cornford (trans.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Aristotle (1998), Politics. H. Rackham (trans.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Plato (1999), Republic, Books I–V. P. Shorey (trans.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Plato (2000), Republic, Books VI–X. P. Shorey (trans.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Aristotle (1939), The “Art” of Rhetoric. J. H. Freese (trans.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Plato (1939), Lysis, Symposium, Gorgias. W. R. M. Lamb (trans.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Plato (1952), Timaeus, Critias, Cleitophon, Menexenus Epistles. R. G. Bury (trans.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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Chapter 1

Introduction

“In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” So Gen. 3.19 announces a relation between existence and work that would appear hardly contestable: work is necessary in order to live. Indeed, how could one contest the necessity of work that fulfills the want of material, biological, and economic sustenance? At the same time, nonetheless, the identity between work and necessity is not a complete and satisfactory description. Is there not something innate to work that transcends toiling in necessity, the lack of which would reduce work to a means of a punishment perhaps best captured by the mythic figure of Sisyphus who is condemned to roll a rock up a hill repeatedly? While it is appealing to associate work with noble effort, this effort by itself does not summarize the narrative of human struggle but names only an aspect of it. It would seem that beyond this superficial description of work, the human will aspires to greater things than longevity and perpetuation of the species. Is not the milieu of work greater than biological metabolism? The second part of the verse from Genesis suggests a provocative question: does not the expectation of death (“unto dust shalt thou return”), that is coemergent with the exile from Eden, open, or at least make problematic, the meaning of work which one might be too quick to define by necessity? For if death is the final event of a human life, then does not the toil in between birth and death make work, to quote Eccl. 1.2, “vanity?” Because humans are marked by the capacity to reflect and foresee, work is situated in view of possible ends and consequences. Work is directed beyond mere fulfillment of necessity, if not for eschatological reasons then for the uniquely human capacity to anticipate death, both individually and collectively. Finitude places the immediate toil and effort of work within a larger, narrative milieu. There is, to use Frank Kermode’s phrase, “the sense of an ending” (1967) that pervades human existence and places the awareness of the actions one undertakes in the moment in an extended view of

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the possible ending toward which one moves closer. This narrative sensibility has its roots in the ancient Greek thinking that places the choices one makes in view of a synoptic interpretation of the meaning of being. For the Greeks, it generally holds true to say that excellence, or virtue (arete), discloses the sense of ending that informs and elevates the conduct of human life. The necessity of work is therefore situated in view of something greater than the simple activity of toil and effort which, of course, more dubiously sustains the separation of the free citizen, who has the leisure to think, and the doulos (slave), who must fulfill necessity. One can say the attempt to seek the most divine things through human activity in the Greek has a detrimental correlation in terms of neglecting, or at the very least leaving unaccounted, the inclusion of all social distinctions in this divine pursuit (cf. Williams 1993: 112–13, 117).1 But is this division necessarily the price to pay for such lofty aspirations? It is perhaps needless to say that the current condition of work contrasts greatly to that of the Greeks. However, there is something noteworthy in the Greek orientation toward nature. In general, it seeks to understand nature as a self-presencing of meaning and not simply as a brute state in which human relations are reducible to a fear of extinction. “Where the ultimately real consists more in the formal order of things than in their actual existence,” observes Louis Dupré of the ancient Greeks, “the maintenance of the cosmic equilibrium becomes a crucial ontological issue” (1993: 19). There is more to be understood in nature than mere process and mechanization. There is form and harmony which marks out (dike) the lawfulness of the cosmos and so calls for an adequate response from human beings. While this stance toward necessity lies at the inception of Western history, the contemporary attitude toward work seems to have traversed as much conceptual and practical distance from this origin as it has in time. General notions of efficiency (whether referring to cost, time, resource, labor expenditure, and even environmental sustainability) tend to dominate perceptions of what work processes and strategies should be sanctioned in order to be viable. As I will discuss in Chapter 4, this approbation of efficiency was foreign to the Greek understanding of work, and the purpose of this historical allusion serves in my introductory remarks to set the hermeneutical tone by which I will attempt to deconstruct the suppositions underlying the modern understanding of work, as well as the path by which I will offer a reconstruction of it. The hypothesis of this study, as sketched above, is that the contemporary understanding reduces work to necessity. Necessity means those conditions of existence that need to be fulfilled in order for one to live and the attempt

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that arises from this understanding to secure an enduring means of control over this struggle. Though this may vary according to historical circumstances, my point is that regardless of the variation, there is a fundamental misinterpretation involved when confining work to necessity alone. This reduction becomes most discernible in how the concept of utility is defined according to an immediate application that attempts to keep any nonimmediate meaning (transcendent, supererogatory, or otherwise) from entering into its determination. In identifying the modern understanding as a reduction, I am not arguing for the conceptual elimination of necessity and utility but a manner of understanding them according to a broader participation in being. I will speak of their ontological transformation in which they are redeemed and elevated according to the meaning of being. Thus in this study, I choose to pursue an understanding of work according to a hermeneutical analysis that attempts to resituate it within an ontological depth informed largely by the works of Martin Heidegger and Paul Ricoeur. While the title of this book appears to indicate a study devoted to drawing out a philosophy of work from Heidegger’s texts, it is more accurately an application of Heidegger’s hermeneutics to the question of the meaning of work. There are two features of his hermeneutics that will become readily apparent: first is the application of a hermeneutic critique to the historical and intellectual foundations of the modern conception of work; and second, an articulation of the nature of work as a manner of giving thanks to being. This second feature is what can be more properly defined as a Heideggerian philosophy of work where I see the question of the meaning of being and the question of the meaning of work to be integral to one another. What the revivification of ontology offers is an insight into how the primary role of work is the actualization of ontological possibility, as opposed to being solely necessary. But the question of the meaning of work requires more than an ontology. It requires a practical structure commensurate to its practical gaze that seeks an end in a completed activity or fulfillment in a vocation. Ricoeur’s interest in the regional application of ontology, in such disciplines as linguistics, provides a way in which Heidegger’s thinking can be drawn out critically and concretely. This will become most apparent in my turn to Ricoeur’s theory of metaphor and how it gives a definitive structure in which to understand an ontology of work. In general, I do not see Ricoeur’s critical engagement with Heidegger as being combative. The questions and problems Ricoeur alights upon in relation to Heidegger often identify areas of his ontology that require fuller explication. I will say more on this, as well as my reading of the unity of Heidegger’s texts, in a separate part of this introduction.

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What the hermeneutical analysis provides is a structure of understanding in which the ontology of work becomes viable. As I will show, this structure emerges first in parallel to the linguistic feature of metaphor and then in terms of thanking and mutual recognition. Work is therefore not just a response to necessity but takes into account a nonliteral meaning, that is, a meaning beyond the immediate appearance of life’s exigencies. Work not only responds to necessity but also transforms it according to a metaphorical capacity of projecting a meaning that is greater than seeking necessary fulfillment. This capacity is itself metaphorically expressed in the gesture of the human hand that suggests, points, intends, and discloses through fabrication. This gesture guides human production beyond itself. Given these precursory comments that portray necessity as a limited concept, I can express my thesis. Work is not undertaken for necessity alone and therefore not for human beings alone, but is primarily an activity that gives thanks to being itself. I define thanking as a reciprocal response that emerges from the recognition of what is appropriate to the understanding of being. Situating work within the givenness of being means not only that work is in some way made possible by it but also that we should understand work as an activity that is directed to being by means of a reciprocal responsibility. As we will see in the last chapters, the reinterpretation of work along the lines of thanking provides some significant changes in terms of how we understand the things fashioned in work and what the nature of human vocation is.

The Question of Modernity My use of the term modernity is central to encapsulating my hypothesis concerning necessity as a principle of understanding that grounds our age. My usage of modernity entails two key philosophical assumptions: (1) the predominance of the subject as an agent who understands its autonomy in terms of control and domination and (2) the reduction of work to necessity. The presupposition underlying this definition of modernity is that despite any variation that may depart from these two criteria, such variation would exist as an anomaly still held sway by the modern discourse. This presupposition will become more evident when I discuss the second of these two criteria below. The first criterion concerns an area fundamental to Heidegger’s own thinking that begins with Being and Time and the phenomenology of Dasein seeking to decenter subjective, representational thinking. It culminates in

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the notion of giving thanks in Heidegger’s later thinking that locates reflection in a pious attending toward being (cf. Rojcewicz 2006: 207–11). In an ontology of giving thanks, there is no room for the worldless self that occupies much epistemology since Descartes. Later, as we will see, Ricoeur takes up this theme in terms of the reversal of the Copernican revolution in order to illuminate the nature of mutual recognition. The second criterion is the inevitable effect when human subjectivity sees nature as a mechanical process lacking any purpose of meaning. So nature is not only mechanistic but also value-neutral. This neutrality is essential in legitimating mechanism since it allows human reflection to “bracket out” any values or theories that seek to show how nature is not in fact devoid of meaning. If nature is neutral in its processes, then we can remain disengaged from its operation, leaving aside any personal or human addition of meaning and sentiment. We can just focus on the mechanistic relations themselves. This, in turn, allows such things as efficiency and utility to run unchecked since in order to critique value-neutrality one has to show how meaning is invested in the very thing claimed to be neutral. One of the main obstacles, therefore, is that efficiency and utility are not easily recognizable as ideologies. Bolstering their viability is a definite role attributed to rationality, wherein it is assumed that the aim of efficiency and usefulness is neutral and coherent. Thus, the status quo of the modern preunderstanding is that efficiency is good and its practical application need not be readily challenged, something that Charles Taylor refers to as the inducement of mechanism whose “reification” influences the modern common sense to accept mechanism as the default model (1993: 321, 327). What this suggests is that a great inertia must be overcome in order to provide a critique of the mechanism assumed in the modern disposition and its various off-shoots preoccupied with value-neutral practices and institutions (MacIntyre 1984a: 74). Can a hermeneutical approach to ontology provide a sufficient alternative? Despite criticisms of Heidegger that reduce his thinking to a vain, special discourse that withdraws into Being (Habermas 1987: 139), one can see that the pertinence of this unconventional meditation is its ability to bring to our attention a reflection on the nature of being that is excluded by mechanism. Ontology, in other words, attempts to initiate a metanoia by which prevailing conceptual prejudices are ruptured. Let us consider an example of the kind of prejudice involved. Who could question whether or not work should be efficient in production and function? The self-evident applicability of efficiency makes it seem as if no other nature of work existed. In this way, efficiency conceals the manner of being of things since beings are seen as simply an efficient

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component of a mechanism aiming at one end. This concealment is not one of distorting but more of obfuscating, that is in the Heideggerian sense, of placing something else before it that breaks-up or inhibits an encounter with the thing itself (Heidegger 1993b: 179). Along these lines, efficiency and utility “stand in front of” work and prevent one from inquiring into an understanding of it within a broader context. Because the protocol of efficiency makes no demand that one reflect on a greater purpose than the fulfilment of ends within a given process, the articulation of a broader understanding in which necessity, utility, and efficiency are less significant features is required in order to resituate ourselves in relation to work and being. This will become more evident when I turn to the ancient Greek distinction between different kinds of understanding in order to show how a more concrete ontological understanding of work is possible. Thus, when I speak of modernity, I am not being condemnatory of it, nor am I calling for a return to an archaic attitude, or what Ricoeur often refers to as a “first naiveté” (1967b: 19). My use of the term modernity invokes a hermeneutical situation that expresses both the problematic and the possible solution contiguous to modernity itself. Because the notion of modernity is one that inherently refers to the “now” (modo) of history (Dupré 1993: 145; cf. Kolb 1986: 1–2), it encapsulates a moment of interpretation that stakes its sense of present meaning—even urgency and crisis—on how it views the past as having led to and culminated in the present situation. But what does this say about the fate of modernity whose arrival at some point in the future will itself be referred to as the modern? The earliest occurrences of the modern referred to a distinction from one age to the present—for example, the Roman and pagan age to the Christian (Kolb 1986: 1–3). Thus, if the term modern was originally used to mark a definitive break with the past and something new, today this notion of progression has been critically questioned. That is to say, if modernity is a break from the past, it is not a complete break but an intermediary lacuna wanting to make sense of the relation between the history and possibility of human being. It is a point of ekstasis that initiates reflection. In this spirit, Ricoeur therefore observes, “Modernity is neither a fact nor our destiny. It is henceforth an open question” (1995a: 63). He does not suggest there is one answer to this question or that there is a final point at which the question will no longer remain pertinent. Rather, with the distinction of being “modern” which is inherited by each subsequent age, we have perpetually set before ourselves a hermeneutical exigency that is constantly renewing. This renewal is not futile but productive insofar as this exigency calls us to

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reinterpret constantly our relation to the past in order to understand the present and future.

Interpreting Heidegger Because my analysis does not focus on any one moment of Heidegger’s intellectual career, one of my key presuppositions concerns the unity of his works and how his later thought is, in fact, constituted by a turn that is not antithetical to his earlier writings.2 More radically, Thomas Sheehan (2000: 4) argues that the turn (die Kehre) does not refer to an actual pivot in Heidegger’s thinking but refers to the way his thinking operates. Whatever the modification, my unitive reading of Heidegger is not suggesting that his thought is uniform and unproblematic. But it is saying that Heidegger’s thinking as a whole should be viewed hermeneutically; that is, a study of Heidegger must admit that it is a specific way of interpreting him in relation to a specific theme, and from within a specific epoch that historically determines our general theoretical orientation. Moreover, in whatever way one wishes to perceive the change of which Heidegger speaks, it is worthwhile noting that this turning invokes a participation in the heart of the matter with which Heidegger was concerned. In this regard, the turn, or whatever it may be, provokes the activity of thinking essential to human being-in-the-world. Jeffrey Barash notes that the turn was referred to by Heidegger as a “reversal” and a “completion” (1988: 231). Reversal does not necessarily mean a contradiction, and the subsequent “completion” suggests a complement to the initial analytic of Dasein in Being and Time. Barash (1988: 235; cf. Sinclair 2006: 72) emphasizes that Heidegger saw that one of the main problems of his earlier work was its reliance on an anthropological description. The subsequent turn from “man in relation to Being” to “Being and its truth in relation to man” is not antithetical but refers to a completion of the analytic of Dasein, that is, of carrying out its implication. In other words, if one of the aims of Being and Time was to disclose Dasein’s ontological ground and depth, then Heidegger’s later thinking attempts to think from within this originality. It is no longer involved in a reformulation but is thinking after this reformulation, that is, within it (cf. Sheehan 2000: 13).3 While admitting a unity of his works, what I have described also admits difference. If the earlier works of Heidegger (pre-1935) are marked by the attempt to reformulate thinking, it is still preoccupied with the destruction of prevalent patterns of thought. With respect to this period, I generally see

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that there was a reflective momentum in Heidegger’s thinking whose obstacle of inertia was the prevailing understanding of the tradition (and not the tradition itself). Arriving “after” Heidegger, as it were, contemporary commentators may take it for granted how challenging his critique was and had to be in order to clear the ground for a new direction. The force of his critique can therefore appear to be axiomatic rather than “instrumental” or necessary for the times. The position that I assume in this study is therefore a synthetic one that reads the diversity of Heidegger’s thinking in view of a reinvigoration of the reflective appreciation of being itself in relation to other derivative questions. Ricoeur’s work is a definitive example by which the fruit of ontology can reinvigorate and transform other disciplines. Ricoeur encapsulates his relation to Heidegger succinctly as a grafting of hermeneutics onto phenomenology (1974: 6). Ricoeur’s approach concerns a manner of recovering method for the human sciences, and so the ontology disclosed by Heidegger is turned toward the question of texts and language. It is not only because texts are the central medium through which philosophy engages with itself over the many eras but also because the text has its own manner of being—the text is autonomous—that Ricoeur focuses his methodology here. One need only compare Heidegger’s statement “language is the house of being” (1993b: 217) to Ricoeur’s reflection on language as fixed, or written, discourse—that is, the sentence as “the simplest unit of discourse” (1991: 46). In comparison to Heidegger’s project of self-understanding in ontology, Ricoeur proposes the model of the text with its world that reconfigures one’s self-understanding. While Heidegger’s statement leads directly to a reflection of being and language, Ricoeur’s analysis is more extrovert in the way it seeks to construct a hermeneutical structure showing how the text proposes a new mode of being-in-the-world according to its ability to reconfigure that which is configured in the reader (Ricoeur 1991: 137–55). In contrast, Heidegger’s analysis of language leaves little indication for textual exegesis in a public way. Indeed, whereas for Heidegger the notion of “public” is related (though not reducible) to everydayness and flattening down, for Ricoeur the public domain is primarily the domain of proper discourse and communication (cf. Ricoeur 1965: 68 and Heidegger 1996a: H127;4 cf. Ihde 1971: 4, n. 2). Ricoeur constructs a definite structure of understanding from an ontological foundation. His hermeneutical studies therefore allow exegesis to breakout beyond the boundary of competing pluralistic interpretations and into communication. Because of this structure, a great space is allowed in which dissimilarity and anomaly can be ontologically interpreted: “[t]he more radical and dissimilar the elements, the more will the ensuing gain in meaning be unpredictable” (Valdés 1991: 25).

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Having said this, the difference between Heidegger and Ricoeur is one I try to suspend and mediate (and not reconcile). Ricoeur’s criticisms are to a large extent adopted by the general scholarship critical of Heidegger, while Heideggerians themselves tend not to provide an answer against the need for methodology.5 Perhaps this in itself is telling, but Ricoeur’s criticism can only remain polemical if it is left reified against Heidegger unilaterally. Heidegger is not heard in this respect. And what remains unheard, but nonetheless said, is Heidegger’s argument that a methodology will conceal the nature of being itself. The method will become a mere technical means elevated to the level of meaning.6 In this sense, a methodology merely reflects the metaphysics of its age, and has no way of engaging itself beyond its manner of enframing (Gestell). The challenge to Ricoeur, then, is one in which the engendering of his methodology must continuously answer to the call of being and not simply sediment within its own structure. To be sure, this challenge is one Ricoeur saw clearly in relation to Heidegger’s ontology of language: I will not take this Heideggerian way towards language, but let me say in conclusion that I have not closed it, even if I have not explicitly opened it. I have not closed it, in that our own progress has consisted in passing from closure of the universe of signs to the openness of discourse. There would then be new scope for meditation on the “word” . . . . But if this ontology of language [Heidegger’s] cannot become our theme, by reason of the procedure of this study, at least it can be glimpsed as the horizon of this investigation. (1974: 96) Despite this qualification, nonetheless, there is no guarantee that Heidegger’s ontology is remembered. The methodology can never secure or keep secure the radicality of Heidegger’s ontology since a method tends to seek employment rather than remain at the level of ontology. In view of this, I wish to keep the tension between Heidegger and Ricoeur alive as a means of provoking constant reengagement. The critique that Ricoeur alights on in regard to Heidegger is one that is not unilateral but more cautionary. It is not as if we must denounce Heidegger altogether for his analytic of Dasein or his ontology of language! On the contrary, as Ricoeur notes, “The presupposition of hermeneutics construed as an epistemology is precisely what Heidegger and Gadamer place in question. Their contribution . . . must be seen as an attempt to dig beneath the epistemological enterprise itself ” (1981: 53). Heidegger’s ontology is that which must remain within the provenance of thinking if it is not to be forgotten. It would seem that this orientation allows for the tradition’s continual renewal and development as

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evidenced in the many modern thinkers who take up the dialogue following after Heidegger.

Outline of the Book I have set forth my study according to three phases: (1) a deconstruction of the modern assumptions historically underlying work, showing how they presuppose necessity as the origin and purpose of work; (2) an ontological reconstruction of the foundation of work that shows how a certain disproportion within being, and not necessity, motivates work and consequently means that the nature of work is metaphorical (figurative or symbolic); and (3) a reinterpretation of use that places work in the role of giving thanks to being rather than as the utilization of material and resources for human mastery and efficiency. Beginning the deconstructive phase, Chapter 2 exposes some key presuppositions of Marx’s philosophy. This project consists in seeing how his philosophy overdetermines the relationship of work to necessity, barring any self-interpretive content from it despite the process of objectification central to the development of the self-consciousness of the worker. This critique is by no means new but has been articulated by many of his critics. In any case, I believe it is worth rearticulating through a hermeneutical lens. Where I explicitly venture into new territory is in elaborating this critique in terms of its ontological limitations. Marx’s notion of praxis, I argue, culminates in an ontological cul-de-sac because his notion of freedom presupposes a teleological commitment that he cannot accept for reasons concerning his elevation of praxis and denigration of reflection (theoria). Habermas notes this problem well as a conflation of praxis into instrumentality. I attempt to show how this oversight reveals its own weakness if one follows Marx’s teleology to its conclusion. Paradoxically, because necessity is a false origin and purpose, what emerges despite Marx’s efforts to elevate action over thinking is an ideal content. This means that the determination of necessity itself arises from an ideal reflection, and if this is the case, it opens the remit of a philosophy of work. What else besides necessity? Chapter 3 addresses the philosophical assumptions informing the everyday understanding of utility. I refer to utilitarianism in a general sense which includes the notion that things have their most obvious meaning in terms of whatever utility can be applied. This disposition often assumes that practical use has its end in being effective since it conforms to rational

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structures and processes. In arguing contrary to this position, I show how the everyday understanding of utility unawaringly relies on a metaphysical reduction of reality to the most immediate aims. Because metaphysics is not properly addressed, utility cannot sustain any long term, meaningful interpretation of being and so culminates in futility. While this analysis of utility appears similar to Heidegger’s treatment of technology, it is slightly different in that the modern phenomenon of technology deals specifically with use and understanding through technical things. My focus on utility refers to the everyday understanding that does not see itself as necessarily being involved in technology but more as a simple matter of fact. Suffice it to say, in the Greek thinking, as we will see, the meaning of use (chresis) and techne was bound up together. Initiating the reconstructive phase is Chapter 4. This turn provides a necessary clarification of the relation between theoria, praxis, and poiesis (or Aristotle’s three modes of knowing truth) which, as I argue, not only permeates current conceptions of work but also has been blurred since Marx’s elevation of human production as social practice. This recursion allows us to gain a better sense of how a nonutilitarian understanding of work is possible and plausible. While I am not arguing for a nostalgic return to the past, I am intent to show that the foundation of our Western history is not as “philosophically excavated” as one might first suspect. Thus, by showing how the notion of work is entirely different in the ancient Greek thinking, I make the argument that a rehabilitation of its meaningfulness is not as radical or “impractical” as one might object. Indeed, there is a domain to the meaning of work that is obscured today and resides in the ancient sources. This return to Aristotle is one that I see in concert with Heidegger’s own method of destruction and retrieval. Recently, Franco Volpi (1994), Catriona Hanley (2000), and Walter Brogan (2005) have highlighted the significance of this kind of turn in reading Heidegger, and more generally, in doing philosophy at the present time. My rereading of Aristotle is heavily indebted to these three philosophers, especially Hanley who provides a concise and convincing study of the hermeneutical unity of theoria, praxis, and poiesis. Following Brogan, I do not think Heidegger’s “critique” of Aristotle is as unilaterally against Aristotle and his emphasis on production (poiesis) as some commentators have held (e.g., Zimmerman 1990: 158). Brogan has done a remarkable job of showing how Aristotle’s treatment of poiesis itself participates in a concernful questioning of being. In Chapter 5, my thesis is that work is essentially metaphorical as opposed to necessary. Ricoeur’s studies on metaphor have revealed how language performs a function of reinterpreting ontological possibilities of

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being-in-the-world. Here, I explore Ricoeur’s thought on metaphor and poiesis as it relates to a philosophy of work, arguing that it provides a foundation by which an ontological depth to work can be explicitly appreciated. This recovery consists in distinguishing between two levels of meaning in work: the literal form, that pertains to necessity and survival, and the metaphorical figure, that refers to greater possibilities of being. Chapter 6 marks the reinterpretation of work in taking the central concept of any philosophy of work: what is use? My treatment of use is key in substantiating my reinterpretation because it not only continues the momentum of my critique of simple notions of efficiency and utility but also opens the meaning of work because it transforms how we might understand use itself. In other words, if the concept of use can be sufficiently and ontologically broadened and enriched, then this removes one of the main obstacles operating within our preunderstanding, namely, that use is utility. Heidegger’s reflections on ancient Greek thinking and historicity here prove essential in showing how use involves an ontological appropriateness that becomes configured as a human destiny. Chapter 7 draws together use and work according to the theme of thanking. In order to move beyond a simple ontology of thanking and also as a way of guarding against a dangerous reduction of my thesis to a subjective pietism, I turn to Ricoeur’s analysis of mutual recognition to show the extent and nature to which human beings can only express thanks through the things of work, not only as gifts but also in terms of how an understanding of indebtedness arrives through the world made and structured by work. Work is, in this respect, not just necessary to thanking but essential to it. Chapter 8 addresses the loss of the meaning of vocation. I revivify its meaning as a calling toward which one is naturally drawn and as that which is presupposed in one’s orientation to build, render, and exert one’s effort. If work is no longer conceived as a mode of giving thanks, of engaging with something in the joy of labor, then vocation is replaced by the language of necessity—perhaps known all too well in the prevalence of the vocabulary of managerial science (skill sets, human resources, value-added practices, and so on). In contrast, I examine how vocation is a response to being that culminates in thanking and that this thanking is a manner of becoming appropriate to being itself. This event of appropriation is a mutual disclosure of meaning in which the unity of being is differentiated through the human response to and realization in vocation.

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Chapter 2

Marx and the Philosophy of Work

It would be a severe oversight to discuss the philosophy of work without some treatment of Karl Marx. Yet because he provides perhaps the most substantial analysis of human labor in the history of philosophy, it is often a great temptation simply to appropriate (even if critically) his conceptual determinations rather than to refuse the reflective momentum of his system. As I will argue, it is not requisite to attempt a full engagement of Marx insofar as one can demonstrate how an alternative philosophy of work can be distinguished from some of his basic tenets and systematic assumptions. In doing so, I am attempting to arrive before Marx rather than “behind” him (Thomas 1991: 52–3). It should be said, nonetheless, that because of Marx’s novel and primary concern for human socialization, his thinking still constitutes a substantial background against which alternative philosophical systems are articulated, and any departure from Marx constitutes also an engagement with him. My analysis intends to delineate how a philosophy of work does not begin with him, and this is mainly due to the way in which Marx uses the concept of necessity not only to confine but also to predetermine the scope of human work. Part of the difficulty of assessing the significance of Marx with respect to a philosophy of work is in defining the relation between his suspicion of theoria (the ideal), on the one hand, and his commitment to human freedom realized through praxis, on the other hand. It is important to note that while Marx does not repudiate theoria altogether, his privileging of praxis allows for only the kind of thinking that sustains the praxical dimension. Dupré summarizes this feature well: “Since the praxis is at the origin of all theory, historical materialism refuses to be merely a science—it is a theory of action, founded in action, and returning to action” (1966: 178). The emphasis on praxis appears to be drawn up in contradistinction to ideology, though some commentators dispute whether Marx meant ideology pejoratively since definitive textual evidence is lacking for this conclusion (McCarney 1980).1 While I do not offer any extended engagement

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with this contention, I do nonetheless hold that Marx’s employment of “ideology” in The German Ideology is in fact to contrast two distinct ways of understanding one’s relationship to the real. To interpret the meaning of ideology as nonoppositional and not confined to a pejorative meaning, or as McCarney (1980: 22) proposes in terms of a functional medium of class struggle, lessens the grounding confrontation between the ideal and the material that drives Marx’s pursuit of what constitutes the consciousness of real life.2 Ideology stands in opposition to the real, and if one speaks of Marx’s decision not to define a category of ideology, it is at the very least, as Ricoeur states, representative of his attempt to discern a phenomenology in which the real can be untangled from what it is not (Ricoeur 1986b: 102). Furthermore, despite any transformation of Marx’s analysis in his later work, the dichotomy original to The German Ideology nevertheless persists throughout his thinking. This dichotomy is not, I should emphasize, a false consciousness in opposition to an authentic one, where “false” means epistemologically deceived or defective. False consciousness is a mode of mistaken or umastered understanding that misinterprets its situation by virtue of what it takes to be its determinative criteria (Ricoeur 1986b: 121). It is in this sense that falsity bears the sign of dialectical, and not logical, contradiction that ascends to greater degrees of self-consciousness. This is most apparent, as I will argue, in how the human response to necessity is identified with praxis and how any form of thinking that does not take this relationship to be primary risks becoming ideological in the most pejorative sense. My analysis will focus primarily on how Marx attempts to legitimate praxis according to a teleology of freedom. In fact, there is not only a relation between the two but also, more precisely, an identity in which action is both the purposeful recognition and realization of freedom. Thus, the defining aim of work has its celebrating moment in freedom, that is, a particular kind of freedom where the perpetuation of the self-realization process involved in objectification and social practice is continuously affirmed as something for its own sake and not an ideal(ogical) end (Gould 1978; Klagge 1986; Eagleton 1997; Sayers 2002). On this reading, it is possible to conclude that Marx successfully avoids a theoretical content to this freedom, handily avoiding the exigency to justify any kind of ideal or ultimate telos. However, another reading of the meaning of freedom is possible in which freedom loses its identity in labor and is consequently conflated with necessity. This interpretation constitutes the critiques of such commentators as Arendt (1998), Habermas (1972), and Ricoeur (1986b) who cite Marx for a failure to distinguish between the reflective and the technical aspects of

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work (cf. Loewenstein 1976: 86–90; Cohen 1989). But in order to appreciate these critiques, it is necessary to consider the favorable reading of Marx in order to understand how it faces significant problems and eventually falls short of being a tenable position. This will then allow us to see that the critiques concerning the reduction of freedom into labor and necessity are not just alternative readings but are derived from closer analyses of the internal structure of his thinking. My attempt to isolate and examine Marx’s foundational philosophical assumptions concerning necessity suggests I am assuming a certain amount of contiguity between his texts. While I make no deliberate effort to justify my unitive reading (cf. Ling 1980: 4; Klagge 1986: 775), the manner in which I trace the theme of necessity will nonetheless offer this support indirectly.3 My argument in this chapter will proceed in three stages: (1) demonstrating how necessity is the origin of Marx’s philosophy of work; (2) examining the contradiction between freedom and necessity in Marx’s philosophy; and (3) considering the problematic implications of Marx’s understanding of freedom according to individual self-realization.

Necessity and Naturalism First, let us engage with Marx according to his phenomenology of work, that is to say, the manner in which he understands the basic constitution of human production, the bare facticity and truth of work. I use the term phenomenology to mean the clarification and explanation of the phenomenon of work, or essentially what is presented in his earlier oeuvres, the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and The German Ideology. This phenomenology concerns the identification of how and to what extent humans are “conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these [forces]” (Marx 1998: 42). In order for this phenomenology to be viable, one must first dispense with those products of an ideology that have inverted the world “as in a camera obscura” (Marx 1998: 42). And so a phenomenology of work is really based upon a philosophical anthropology that identifies humans with the necessity of material life: hence the famous dictum that “[i]t is not consciousness that determines life, but life that determines consciousness” (Marx 1998: 42). To be sure, this notion of “life” is “real life” (Marx 1998: 42), that is, human life engaged in direct relation with nature and necessity, through its real “language” in which the individual comes to know himself or herself through objectification (cf. Ricoeur 1986b: 34; Marx 1998: 42).4

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However, the language of real life is not merely necessary but substantive since it involves a fundamental determination of what constitutes the scope and horizon of human existence. In this sense, one can read into Marx’s analysis that prior to the objectification in labor is a philosophical supposition that a human being is at work in order to fulfill necessity. What appears as a simple truism about work as a means of fulfilling needs becomes conceptually fixed the more Marx elaborates upon this foundation. For instance, while the identification of survival with production is an essential one for Marx (cf. Mandel 1971: 29), what results is the development of this identification through an increasingly cohering historical narrative. It is the history of social awakening and upheaval moving from a false consciousness to real life,5 a movement which is driven by the sum of productive forces whose increase of wealth in the capitalist system increases the depth of alienation the laborer undergoes (Marx 1998: 54, 61–2).6 However, the question of whether production is ever really free of necessity—in the sense that it comes to signify a meaning beyond necessity—is an ambiguity that is at first glance aggravated in an attempt to read a unity of meaning in Marx’s thought. This is because the earlier Marx makes the case that a mode of consciousness that does not attend to the necessity of existence, as is the case with religious symbolism (1998: 63, 142), is in fact distortive, while it is the later Marx of Grundrisse and Capital who hints at the possibility of a realm of freedom apart from labor (and necessity). This ambiguity of meaning will occupy the second section of this chapter. For the moment, let us take note of the significance of necessity that Marx presents as his foundation: the more his system relies on the unmediated encounter with necessity, the more his delineation of the meaning of labor will assume necessity to be its singular core. All human action for Marx points toward the immediate and practical, the immanent and not the transcendent; for what is given to the unreal is taken away from the human (Turner 1991: 324). Perhaps the most readily observable tension that drives Marx’s thinking is the one between reality and thought. Thinking, as ideology, has misconstrued reality and allowed for an unjust economy of alienated labor. In The German Ideology it is the material life and the fact that humans distinguish their life apart from animals by virtue of production that precedes and supersedes even the human ability to think (1998: 36–7). Thus, Marx identifies the human ability to produce with the immediate apprehension of necessity, whereas thinking is that which can interfere with this apprehension when it takes the form of ideology. Speaking against the German philosophy that mistakenly descends from “heaven to earth” (1998: 42), Marx states, “history does not end by being resolved into ‘self-consciousness’ as ‘spirit of spirit,’ but that each stage contains a material result” (1998: 61–2).

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Marx’s critique of Hegel is of course of this kind (1974: 92; cf. Dupré 1966: 88–93; MacIntyre 1968: 15–16, 34–5, 57), arguing against his inadequate reduction of class contradiction to synthesis in the Idea. It patently ignores the exploitation of the working class. In contradistinction to interpreting human praxis as being derived from the Idea or Spirit, according to the Manuscripts, the primary function of human being resides in the objectification process by which human beings express themselves in human life. Marx writes, [I]t is only when the objective world becomes everywhere for man in society the world of man’s essential powers—human reality, and for that reason the reality of his own essential powers—that all objects become for him the objectification of himself, become objects which confirm and realize his individuality, become his objects: that is, man himself becomes the object. (1988: 107–8—emphasis in original) While Marx does indeed comment later in this same passage that “man is affirmed in the objective world not only in the act of thinking, but with all his senses” (1988: 108—emphasis in original), we should understand that thinking here is not meant pejoratively, nor is he giving thinking equal significance to the objectification process. Thinking serves praxis and cannot by any means transcend it. “Thus,” writes Marx, “the objectification of the human essence both in its theoretical and practical aspects is required to make man’s sense human, as well as to create the human sense corresponding to the entire wealth of human and natural substance” (1988: 109— emphasis in original). Thinking in this natural sense contributes to the process of objectification; as a part of the realization and actualization of oneself, but it is subject to praxis. Or, as Dupré comments, for Marx “praxis is more than a principle of consciousness: it is a prereflective unity of nature and consciousness, which can be explicated in thought, but not initiated” (Dupré 1966: 216; cf. Axelos 1976: 273; Ricoeur 1986b: 38–9). Thinking as ideology differs from the more natural form of thinking insofar as the ideas and aims ideology introduces distract us from and distort our relationship to the objective world (reality). Thinking, in the end, should be subservient to praxis. The tension between thinking and reality is instantiated more primordially at the level of necessity and freedom, where human freedom is specifically characterized as the possibility of seeing reality for itself and therefore being free from the necessary limitations of reality. What is central to Marx is the ability to see the fundamental relation of human beings to necessity, that is, their responsiveness to necessity by means of production and

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objectification in order to actualize themselves in labor. Objectification in labor and the objective world produced by labor are the natural and mutual poles in an unalienated manner of human being. It is here, as Dupré notes, that Marx sees the path toward freedom in the alignment of praxis and its unhindered response to necessity: “As the living unity of consciousness, human activity produces both a real freedom and a free reality” (1966: 216). The significance of necessity in Marx can in this sense be overshadowed by analyses which often understandably highlight the importance of alienation. One should not lose sight of the fact that given the later Marx’s lengthy and probing critique of capitalism, his system stems from the simple assumption that necessity is the foundation of an understanding of work, and he can therefore develop this understanding in terms of materialism (cf. Arendt 1998: 183). Indeed, the link between necessity and materialism can be found in Marx’s emphasis on nature. If he understands the basis of human existence according to necessity, this also means that the object of human interaction, where this response to necessity occurs, is equally determined by necessity. This object is nature, and any naturalism associated with Marx is a subordination of nature to human praxis. According to W. L. McBride, we should therefore not see Marx’s use of the term naturalism to be any accident since it is used specifically and antithetically to Hegel’s “relegation of nature to a necessary but negative position within his idealist philosophy of ‘Spirit’” (1977: 25). “Marx’s central criticism of Hegel,” comments David McLellan, “was that alienation would not cease with the supposed abolition of the external world” (1980: 117). Indeed, for Marx, the external or natural world was what contained the real necessity to be confronted. It was “part of man’s nature and what was vital to establish the right relationship between man and his environment” (McLellan 1980: 117). For Marx, nature and naturalism define the human possibilities of living in harmony; that is, nature is necessary and positive.7 Marx at one point and at some length in the Manuscripts speaks a great deal about naturalism. Perhaps the most pronounced occurs when he states that communism is “fully developed naturalism” which “equals humanism, and as fully-developed humanism equals naturalism” (1988: 102). Elsewhere he writes, Nature is man’s inorganic body—nature, that is, insofar as it is not itself the human body. Man lives on nature—means that nature is his body, with which he must remain in continuous intercourse if he is not to die. (1988: 76—emphasis in original)

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This naturalism, as we will see, provides the context for the “resolution” of “freedom and necessity” since there is a primordial identity between the resolution of alienated labor and nature’s own capacity to be free: if human being is free, then so is nature. As Marx states later in Capital, freedom from necessity begins by bringing nature under “collective control” (1976c: 959).

The Contradiction of Freedom and Necessity What is to be made of the centrality of necessity in Marx? The short reply is that it occupies a rightful place since human existence is in fact reducible to necessary response. This reply, however, concerns necessity in a simple sense of everyday action, that is, along the lines of practicality and not more totally with respect to a teleological horizon of being. I will address this understanding in the next chapter in dealing with conventional interpretations of utility. The more formidable response to my foregoing analysis is that necessity is validated by Marx’s concern for a just economic system; for without this emphasis on necessity, the division of labor and distribution of wealth can too easily be skewed and legitimated by competing interests subversive of the welfare of the community. But it is precisely this designation of necessity as the origination of real action that I see as problematic. As a defining, conceptual origin, necessity cannot furnish a sufficient content to a concept of freedom. In other words, necessity is an insufficient beginning to support a teleology in view of freedom, since the meaning of freedom would be delimited by necessity. If not by the elimination of necessity, then how is freedom to be understood? If it is necessity (arche) that somehow gives rise to freedom (telos), then the end of freedom is in some way defined and even confined to necessity. Precisely because Marx admits no theoretical content to freedom, the conceptual scope of its meaning is confined to its original ground, that is, necessity. A larger milieu is lacking in which freedom might be defined otherwise; yet of course to do so means relying on a theoretical understanding “from the outside,” that is, from somewhere other than the field of praxis. Thus, even if the self-objectifying process of human labor transforms material, there is the question of how consciousness can in turn be transformed by that which is inert and external from the start. Transformation of the material, external world does not necessarily mean that human consciousness is subsequently transformed. If life determines consciousness, the substance of this life is rooted in the lowest common denominator of existence—that is, necessary existence.

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There is, of course, a counterargument to my critique that consists in seeing freedom rooted in self-realization, where the human being creates freedom out of and from its own productive activity. In this respect, the meaning of freedom remains immanent to praxis since it can be tied to the protagonist of action, the self. Thus, through objectification, humans produce, or cause, an emergent identity. However, this conceptual shift to the self has a correlative reduction: in legitimating freedom through the immanence of the self, it tends to reduce the relations beyond the self to mere instrumentality. Let us see this by degrees. To begin, I should note that my argument is respective of what some recent commentators have argued in terms of seeing necessity and freedom as complimentary (Klagge 1986; Sayers 2002), and in doing so, as hinted earlier, I understand that any contradiction in Marx’s juxtaposition of the two is dialectical (versus logical). Contradiction is the process of “the negation of negation” that, contra Hegel, is actualized in human production. But even relying upon dialectic becomes problematic. As Dupré recognizes, Marx replaces Hegel’s dialectical end in the Idea with an activity—that is, human production (Dupré 1983: 68–72). While this substitution is faithful to Marx’s critique of ideology, it means that where Hegel has a telos defined by a theoretical concept, Marx has a self-perpetuating activity. Is this inversion problematic? Only an extended treatment of freedom can tell. The well-known passage concerning freedom and necessity in Capital runs, “The realm of freedom really begins only where labour determined by necessity and external expediency ends; it lies by its very nature beyond the sphere of material production proper” (1976c: 958–9). A conventional argument is that Marx posits a duality between necessity and freedom that is never reconciled, a criticism that attacks the edifice of his philosophy since Marx begins with the intention to reappreciate labor. However, this contradiction is arguably resolved if one reads further on in Capital: But this [collective control of nature] always remains a realm of necessity. The true realm of freedom, the development of human powers as an end in itself, begins beyond it, though it can only flourish with this realm of necessity as its basis. (1976c: 959) A more accurate account of Marx would consist in saying that he sees necessity as foundational to human being and production; yet production itself tends toward a higher realization that in turn releases labor. This realm is where freedom is pursued for its own sake. According to Julius Loewenstein (1976: 88), Marx believed he had overcome any contradiction between

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freedom and necessity in this passage since necessity now serves as the basis for freedom. Sayers argues that it is a common mistake “to infer that the realm of necessity is therefore a realm of unfreedom” (2002: 2; cf. Klagge 1986: 771). Herbert Marcuse (1969: 20–5) takes the contrary view arguing that Marx did not overcome the dichotomy of freedom and necessity, and any attempt to address or resolve this issue is an interpretive move beyond Marx. The wager of the more apologetic reading of Marx contends that freedom is mutual to the human response to necessity. Where ideology subjugated the many—the epitome existing as the alienation of the laborer— the liberation of labor is the direct correlation of work to freedom (Sayers 2002: 2–3). Freedom in this respect is not opposed to necessity since freedom allows human production to be correspondingly liberated. The “realm of freedom” develops specifically (and historically) because of the exigency the “realm of necessity” creates: it demands that human beings adapt “free human development” to their historical needs (Sayers 1998: 55). As mentioned earlier, this means the sums of productivity in an unjust economic system augment the drive and tension by which the realm of freedom is seen increasingly to be a necessity—that is, in the end, a necessity of revolution. As a result of this liberation, labor itself becomes more creative; in fact it can “overcome the antagonistic relation which has existed historically between work and freedom” (Sayers 2002: 6; cf. Marx 1998: 44). Thus, freedom for Marx occurs when production is no longer only fulfilling necessity. Quite literally, for the human being, freedom is “[t]he absolute working out of his creative potentialities” (Marx 1973: 488); it is above all constituted by individual free will to act and labor according to how one sees fit in order to reap what is rightfully one’s own (i.e., self-consciousness). In this broader reading of the dichotomy, even necessary action can be free since the end product is not alienated from its producer; that is, labor can be a “liberating activity” (Sayers 1998: 40). It is as if freedom has been the real content of necessity all along. But, of course, Marx could not begin with this premise since freedom is traditionally associated with leisure and contemplation. Essentially, the defining feature of freedom is not so much individual free will but participation in the self-creating, self-realizing acts that uphold the identity of the individual (Gould 1978: 107). Marx writes in Grundrisse, [L]abour obtains its measure from the outside, through the aim to be attained and the obstacles to be overcome in attaining it. But . . . this overcoming of obstacles is in itself a liberating activity—and . . . further,

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the external aims become stripped of the semblance of merely external urgencies, and become posited as aims which the individual himself posits—hence as self-realization, objectification of the subject, hence real freedom, whose action is, precisely, labour. (1973: 611—my emphasis) According to this passage, the legitimation of action through self-realization is identical with “real freedom.” But at the same time, the content of this realization is tied to the overcoming of the external world, and the conclusion is that the emergence of real freedom is a matter of the individual confrontation with externality: “the external aims become stripped of the semblance of merely external urgencies.” But is Marx’s description of freedom based upon the individual tenable?

Freedom, Individual Action, and Theoretical Content While modern liberal notions of freedom often tend toward interpreting the essence of freedom in terms of lack of constraint upon the individual, or what is known as negative liberty, Marx’s philosophy of work similarly relies to some degree on removal of restraint, albeit restraint concerning the economic alienation inherent to capitalism. The difference is that modern democratic liberty, in privileging the neutral space of self-determination, sees freedom arising from the individual, whereas Marx sees freedom arising from a collective response to necessity that subsequently allows the individual to flourish. For Marx, there is no individual first without social transformation in social praxis whereas versions of liberalism, for instance, place the individual first as the basis for social flourishing.8 All subtleties aside, the Manuscripts and The German Ideology are largely concerned with demystifying the preconceptions upon which individual self-consciousness has been traditionally determined, and what emerges from this is the dimension of the real—real language, real life, real liberation of the individual (Marx 1998: 42–3; cf. Ricoeur 1986b: 68–86). Consequently, despite whatever differences in thought have occurred in moving from this earlier period of writing to Capital, it is nonetheless evident that the philosophical anthropology of the individual is presupposed by the economic remedies Marx proposes in terms of money, commodities, property, surplus-value, and economic rent. In this respect, Marx’s reliance on self-realization results in an abrupt and unfortunate philosophical irony. While he intends to appreciate and reground human labor in material consciousness, the emphasis on the individual

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reinforces its isolation from the external world, and this to the point where nature itself conforms to a passive role in which it can be exploited (cf. Marx 1973: 410). Because the tension within this self-determination is one where the laborer overcomes external necessity, Marx gives a specific ontological designation to the world, and this occurs despite any enlargening of praxis as a collective response. If the external necessity is tantamount to the forces of nature, Marx ontologically suspends the world itself as that which has little bearing on the human understanding. The world is not an object of interpretation but merely the material for it. Indeed, the role of the external world, which is at the same time the realm of compelling necessity, is simply raw material for human production. The world therefore accords a secondary status to that of individual flourishing. If this is true, then freedom is the isolation, or suspension, of the self from world—the nihilating withdrawal where the locus of action is on self-production and selfdetermination. It annihilates in order to engage with the real; and thereby it is a means of self-determination: Marx’s view is “activist” in the most radical sense of the word; the truly liberated man is the one who transforms and refashions reality according to his own ends. The world is not seen as an unalterable order, specified by necessary laws which man can do no more than recognize, but rather as the highly malleable raw material for man’s self-oriented activity. (O’Rourke 1974: 39; cf. Smart 1991: 68–9) Dupré extrapolates this activism more systematically when he writes, The subject of Marx’s philosophy is man as a self-creating, dynamic, and historical being who shapes his destiny in a real (not purely ideal) relation to the world. Its starting point is the pre-reflective and wholly given reality of the praxis by which man, in communion with his fellow man, appropriates nature. Its end is a messianic salvation of man so total that all need for a transcendent redemption ceases to exist. (1966: 230— emphasis in original) Hence in Marx, activity pertains above all to human being, a self-production that ignores the alterity of the world in its designation of it as raw material for production. In a sense, this must be the case if human beings are to realize themselves in a nonabstract, and therefore nonestranged, manner. This emphasis of the self over nature is, despite Marx’s (1988: 165) refusal of Hegel, tied to the same root notion of human mastery. Regardless of

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whether it is spirit or matter at stake, self-consciousness is that which is to be obtained despite the natural world. Marcuse comments, The world is an estranged and untrue world so long as man does not destroy its dead objectivity and recognize himself and his own life “behind” the fixed form of things and laws. When he finally wins this self-consciousness, he is on his way not only to the truth himself, but also of his world. And with the recognition goes the doing. He will try to put this truth into action, and make the world what it essentially is, namely, the fulfillment of man’s self-consciousness. (1954: 113—emphasis in original; cf. 259–60 and Schmidt 1971: 98–9) On this view, the essence of the world for Marx is in human self-consciousness; it is a self-consciousness that in the first instance is not concerned with the world (except as raw material for its own development). It is worthwhile pointing out that the primacy Marx gives to commodities in Capital (and hence surplus value generated by exchange value) fundamentally conceals the ontological significance of world, and this can be discerned most remarkably in how he interprets the role of land as rudis indigestaque moles, that is, “a rude and motley mass” (1976c: 954). In short, Marx sees land reducible to labor because any value beyond its use originates only from labor: “Value is labour. So surplus value cannot be earth [die Erde]” (1976c: 954). Die Erde, which means earth and soil in the sense of something to be cultivated,9 is not the same as something which has its own role distinct from labor. As matter, land has its meaning only in relationship to labour that transforms it through production. Thus in translating Economist Sir William Petty, Marx writes, “Die Arbeit ist sein Vater, wie William Petty sagt, und die Erde seine Mutter” (1971: 58; cf. 848 n. 21). The standard English translation of Marx’s rendering of Petty’s quotation is “As William Petty says, labour is the father of material wealth, the earth [die Erde] is its mother” (1976c: 134). The actual quotation from Petty’s work is “Labour is the Father and active principle of Wealth, as Lands are the Mother.”10 The substitution of earth (die Erde) for land is not a small one. Land, as a factor of production, is not the same as earth as matter to be rendered by labor. Guy Routh (1975: 39) points out that the significance of Petty’s observation is that his theory departs from the classical conception of the labor theory of value since he sees value arising from labor and land, that is, land as a sui genris factor of production. While Marx was critical of the Classical conception of the labor theory of value, as Ernest Mandel observes

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(1971: 40–51; cf. Dupré 1983: 169–98), he came to accept it, albeit altering it radically to the point where the human subject is the self-creator of meaning and value. And thus what else can land be but simply valueless material there to be given value through the laboring process? As a corrective to this overdetermination of the self-creating human individual, there is, of course, the response of providing rules or laws in qualifying liberty. For example, in arguing that for Marx freedom involves rational self-determination, Gould claims that self-realization “is a process of social activity and not merely individual activity.” It “generates not only actions but rules of action” (Gould 1978: 112–13; cf. Sayers 1998: 77). In turn, the tension between individuals and collective social activity projects a mediating structure according to which individuals can debate about specific activities in relation to collective action. The impasse here is that once one admits of something like rules of action and a mediating structure by which rules can be accepted or rejected, one admits of a standard or system of values that guides this mediation. The self-realization process, which in turn becomes self-legislating, cannot remain merely a form of neutral practice dedicated to human production. It cannot simply be instrumental, even to one’s own consciousness, because this instrumentality requires choices that affect others. Indeed, here is precisely Habermas’ critique of Marx: he fails to distinguish between instrumental and practical reason, reducing the latter into the former (Ricoeur 1986b: 221–4):11 The philosophical foundation of this materialism proves itself insufficient to establish an unconditional phenomenological self reflection of knowledge and thus prevent the positivistic atrophy of epistemology . . . . I see the reason for this in the reduction of the self-generative act of the human species to labour. (Habermas 1972: 42—emphasis in original) Practical reason, beyond instrumental reason, is self-reflexive. In short, it refers to theoretical content that provides precepts by which it can reason toward its ends (hence why praxis is related to the uniquely ethical virtue of phronesis in Classical thinking). Locating freedom within the realm of material consciousness and instrumental reason fails to confront the problem of how an individual encounters ethical choices, choices which require deliberation in view of understanding action in terms of a “for-the-sake-ofwhich.” Practical reason is addressed to understanding goods and symbolic meaning and the actions needed to attain them (Ricoeur 1986b: 226). There is, in this respect, a revealing conceptual dependency in Marx’s shift from a critique of tradition to the remedy in action.

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This dependency involves, on the one hand, the definition of the individual in relation to real material consciousness and, on the other hand, the construction of a social praxis founded on this real material consciousness. What drives the transformation from false consciousness to a real one is the abolition of the former. In other words, from the start Marx’s remedy is driven and defined by getting rid of what he sees as false and unjust, but this remedy, this real consciousness, has no genuine telos that defines the content of his philosophy of action. Its teleological content is negative, seeking the removal of misunderstanding in favor of the ability to respond to real material conditions and needs. Consequently, this real form of consciousness has no unique substance apart from its relation to matter; it is delimited by its relation to achieve what it previously was unable to do— that is, render matter for itself. Thus, Marx does not illuminate the effects of this freedom beyond self-realization through matter. This is why reason for Marx has been called instrumental. He writes that when “life determines consciousness,” consciousness “conforms to real life, it is the real living individuals themselves” (1998: 42–3). Furthermore, [t]his manner of approach is not devoid of premises. It starts out from the real premises and does not abandon them for a moment. Its premises are men, not in any fantastic isolation and fixity, but in their actual, empirically perceptible process of development under definite conditions. As soon as this active life-process is described, history ceases to be a collection of dead facts. (1998: 43) The question this passage inevitably raises is exactly what constitutes the real life-process? Where does a living history of real things and real consciousness go? Does it not anticipate the classless society? In The German Ideology, Marx comments on how a communist revolution abolishes the rule of any one class that can subjugate others since there is no specific designation of labor activity carried out by one specific class (1998: 60). But while the classless society describes a historical end, it does not describe the philosophical content that sustains and nurtures this society. A classless society only describes a collective state of being in which activity is tied to material consciousness. One finds that the only consistent way to defend against this accusation without admitting theoria through the backdoor is to say that the historical end of society is somehow the philosophical content. It is, states Marx, “the real ground of history; it does not explain practice from the idea but explains the formation of ideas from material practice” (1998: 61—emphasis in original). However, this reduction only aggravates the problem because it suggests that any content

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arising from the idea exists as a result of material production and is superfluous to the production itself. At worst, this idea-content is itself illusory to production and must be somehow kept in check by it. At best, the ideacontent is an affirmation of individual liberty. Individuals are free to realize their own consciousness through production, and the heart of a defense of Marx’s philosophy of freedom rests upon the preeminence given to individual self-realization. This appeal, however, must ultimately be empty because any preference given to the individual admits the individual determination of action by his or her own ideas and perceptions. So even if reducing reality to the production of a stick takes precedence over the religious consciousness, to take Marx’s example (1998: 47), it is that same stick that potentially exists as the object of symbolic transformation in reading a narrative of human life beyond necessity: the stick that becomes a staff, and the staff that becomes a serpent, as in Exod. 4.3. On this view, individual self-realization can only be really defined in terms of one’s involvement in material production and not in the development of any ideas or concepts arising from this involvement. The ideal content must necessarily follow after human praxis since the acquisition of any other significance conflicts with the primacy of action over idea. Individual liberty and self-realization would then amount to private preference—preference because ideal content can never expropriate the privilege of material collective consciousness. Individual preference cannot be the real teleological movement; it must be the privilege of material consciousness that directs the movement of understanding. It provides a horizon that defines and motivates the locality of human identity and reason for being in relation to the rendering of material. Thus, Dupré notes, Marx’s dialectic is caught within an irresolvable contradiction, not resolved (or negated) by Marx himself: “In giving his dialectic a progressive interpretation, Marx reveals his unwavering allegiance to an unavowed teleology” (1983: 141). According to Dupré (1983: 145–64), the “unavowed” teleological scheme Marx’s dialectic presupposes means that one must either insist that the dialectical process is never-ending, and that therefore, no teleology is needed, or that one must identify and commit to this telos. The former is what Dupré (1983: 158) characterizes as the unfortunate position of declaring that society must exist in a constant state of the negation of negation, that is, social upheaval and revolution. The latter problem consists in allowing an ideal content to reenter into Marx’s dialectic—that is to say, freedom culminates in a definite state or end that we can philosophically posit. The means-ends of dialectic does indeed have an end. Dupré bars the former conclusion on the basis that no society would affirm a perpetual state of upheaval, and it is the latter problem which offers a greater interpretive challenge in reading

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Marx. Dupré, in this respect, sees this challenge as producing a lawful schism within Marx-ism, and the question over ideology and dialectic is decisive for determining two kinds of interpretive positions. One school is more humanist and existential in that it is concerned with the development of human freedom, as in Sartre and Alexander Kojève. It sees Marx throughout his writings as aiming at an emancipated anthropology (Dupré 1983: 135–6).12 The other school is politically and economically focused, arguing that the real basis of Marx’s system is not an anthropology, and therefore an ideology of human nature, but a historical-scientific structure of contradiction actualized in economics. One can say in this instance that dialectic is in the inherent reality of things and so moves toward communism regardless of a telos (Dupré 1983: 138–41). However, this intent to avoid teleology fails since a historical structure, even if scientifically determined, still infers an end. And while not overtly committing to a telos from the outset, it nonetheless arrives at one. Thus this latter position would argue that validation of a telos would arrive through examination of law-like generalizations arising from the base structure. It might therefore speak of this end as being “objectively” determined, but this object still remains to be interpreted in human reflection and therefore attains a teleological meaning to be affirmed, questioned, or repudiated.13 In either case, my argument is that the insufficiency of necessity as an originating principle and the self-creating role the individual has in relation to this principle are fatally flawed from the start. According to Marx’s phenomenology of work, one is placed within a decision between two options: (1) refute the scope in which ideology can emerge in attempting to reduce human action to practical activity or (2) readmit ideology after its distorting nature has been critically reconstituted. The former position involves a hopeless kind of reduction; hopeless because in one sense it asserts that human existence is really nothing more than toil and labor. And though suggesting that freedom is much more than necessity, it cannot affirm anything greater than the necessary activity that defines humankind. Freedom is inevitably reducible to a mode of toil, or what Ricoeur refers to as “the rehabilitation of work” that triumphs “in a void” and that tends “towards the very indeterminate notion of a militant and non-contemplative form of human existence” (1965: 198). So innate to this first position is a kind of withdrawal from any commitment besides immediate practical activity. Indeed, Habermas sees Marx’s system as a critical philosophy that adapts the Kantian notion of transcendental synthesis to the labor producing scheme. It is where, as Ricoeur summarizes, “we have the constitution of the object through work and consumption” (Ricoeur 1986b: 217). Thus,

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the intellectual/ideological principle of the “transcendental ego as bearer of the synthesis of the object” is replaced by the “productivity of a working subject as materialized in his or her work” (Ricoeur 1986b: 217). Habermas writes, That is why labor, or work, is not only a fundamental category of human existence but also an epistemological category. The system of objective activities creates the factual conditions of the possible reproduction of social life and at the same time the transcendental conditions of the possible objectivity of the objects of experience. (1972: 28—emphasis in original) Thus, in one decisive respect, the specter of Marx’s thinking lies in the overdetermination of necessity. Indeed, if Marx’s philosophy of work is grounded in necessity throughout his writings, then it remains ineluctably tied to the original assumption he never questioned—that is, necessity as the most natural realm of human existence. The second position requires a move away from Marx since ideology is reconstituted positively to the point where it is privileged over production. As we will see in Chapter 7, this is not a reversion of Marx in order to return to the traditional thinking he repudiated. Rather, it is retrieval of theoria from its contemporary misunderstanding. In this sense, Ricoeur can say of ideology that it has a certain ethical function; it attempts to make sense of the accidents of life, the painful aspects of existence. We must introduce an existential language; when we speak of contradiction, it is not a logical contradiction, a conflict between structures, but a lived contradiction, a contradiction between our capacity to adjust and the demands of reality. (1986b: 139)14 In this respect, the contradiction between the distorting function of ideology, in which it misrepresents lived reality, and the ethical or “integrative” (Ricoeur 1986b: 139) function of ideology, in which it enables one to adjust to questions and problems that challenge our praxical and everyday orientation to the world, is constitutive of a fuller account of ideology that mirrors the fullness of life. Herein is a tacit reconfiguration of the classical role of practical reason (phronesis) with theoretical content (theoria), where ethical deliberation seeks direction from the theoretical apprehension of the nature of reality. If this is true, then even with Marx (albeit against his intentions), it would seem praxis is not just action but action with “an ideological layer” (Ricoeur 1986b: 223).

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Chapter 3

The Metaphysical Foundations of Utility

Utility is not synonymous with utilitarianism in which epistemology is used to justify the reduction of actions to a common end or single principle. Mention to a person, who in an everyday sense prioritizes the usefulness of things over all other properties, that he or she is a utilitarian, and this person will not understand the necessity of such a term, let alone an elaborate philosophical explication of what is involved in utilitarianism. This is because in our everyday relation to things in terms of practicality, we generally assume that whatever utility we have in mind is not something whose validity needs to be questioned in the immediate application of a thing or instrument to its intended use. One is being practical for its own sake and nothing more. However, the everyday concept of utility does share with utilitarianism an implied reliance on principles, even if prereflectively, in the way it reveals a manner of interpreting how to use things. For Heidegger, utility always presupposes a manner of care; in using things, we take care of these things and the things to which use applies. Care names “a possible being-in-the-world” (Heidegger 1996a: H57), and the care involved in using is one in which what we call “utility” presupposes an ontological interpretation of things. The everyday conception of utility has an intentional comportment that describes how we understand our relation to things in using them. In this chapter, my analysis is devoted to discerning the metaphysical foundations informing our modern, everyday notion of utility that is generally disassociated, if not divorced, from a larger scope of understanding. My concern is to deconstruct the implied principles of the common-sensical assumption that utility requires no further critical consideration beyond its immediate and intended application. The theme according to which this deconstruction will occur is how the prevalence of a reductive understanding of utility is only possible, at least within the history of metaphysics as I am presenting it, when nature is interpreted without any ontological

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significance of its own. In short, the metaphysical foundations of utility reside in a removal of the “meta.” It insists on interpreting nature (phusis) as an immanent, mechanized process. A qualification should be made. When examining utility in this chapter, I am not being critical of utility as such but its overdetermination according to its metaphysical grounding. What prevails in this overdetermination is a reduction by which the justification of activity is evaluated according to an immediate context of necessity and practicality. How this context is determined, however, remains outside the scope of its consideration. The convenience and availability of things which enhance utility, for example, are held in high regard and stand as those values to which we make things in general conform. To think of communication as anything less than available and convenient after mobile technology is to posit an entirely different structure of social practice and ethical expectation. One can consider the art of letter writing and the ethos of the world of correspondence. The time it takes for a letter to be written and mailed and the distance it must traverse in arriving at its intended recipient creates a profound delay. This delay is productive insofar as it bestows a sense of worth on correspondence and appropriateness in making a response (cf. Milbank 1995: 150–1). In the delay arises a certain kind of ontological meaning: letters are not essentially disposable but are traces of thoughts, emotions, times, and places. The ethos of the letter is largely unknown by younger generations whose primary mode of communication is not the spoken or written word but electronic text messages in which the sense of space and time is punctuated and abbreviated. Perhaps letter writing is archaic, but in this description is not so much the sign of the times and the march of technological progress as it is the sign of our manner of care toward another who is on-call and at-hand to be reached. My thesis is that for utility to be understood as an application of action to immediate contexts and ends, there must have been a metaphysical shift in which the individual’s relation to nature was conceptually severed and then reinforced. I will make my argument in three parts. First, while the case can be made that this attitude toward nature is in fact integral to epistemology since Descartes and its preoccupation with a type of indubitable beginning in the self, my concern here is not the individual as much as it is the philosophical representations of nature. As we saw with Marx in the last chapter, nature was given the status of raw material, and despite his critiques of Jeremy Bentham and J. S. Mill that accuse them of abstracting the notion of necessity and attaching to it false needs created by

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class ideology (Sayers 1998: 133–6), his concept of nature can be seen as a direct inheritance of the Enlightenment epistemology in which humans are the masters of meaning. Prior to the Enlightenment, nonetheless, was a definite problem for Reformation theology in which the very heart of understanding the relation between humankind, nature, and God was in crisis. Weber was the first to identify this crisis in terms of social causes, and I will recapitulate those aspects of his analysis I believe to be directly pertinent to the reduction of nature. The notion of a work ethic should be seen as a watershed event in Western history where, as Weber shows, otherworldly transcendence and asceticism paved the way for the denigration of the world and subsequently focused human effort to conform to a rationalized interpretation, stripping the world of meaning. This shift culminates in what Weber refers to as inner-worldly asceticism which provides a rational code of conduct encouraging the accumulation of capital. It therefore forms the basis of his argument of how capitalism was able to escalate and spread in a significant way since the Reformation. We will not, however, follow Weber this far since the socioeconomic flourishing of capitalism is a separate subject.1 I will be engaging with and moving beyond his analysis in showing how a reified metaphysical system that posits the absolute dualism between immanence (creation, nature, world) and transcendence (God) gives rise to the demeaning of nature, and inevitably human action as such. For this reason, I will concentrate mostly on the theological content of Weber’s analysis which can at times be obscured by his concerns for social causes and ideal types (cf. Ricoeur 1986b: 213–14), and this means giving more philosophical significance to Weber’s own reading of the development of the theological understanding at that time. I will speak of a hermeneutical shift in interpretation and not just social causes that have given rise to rationalization. Because there is a commitment involved in interpretation, there are not simply causes, no matter how nuanced, but an ontological assent to meaning that at the very least seems viable. Charles Taylor (2007: 12–13) in this sense predicates his analysis of secularism on the conditions of belief, conditions existing not as a collective pool of external stimuli but as an ontological background of understanding in the Heideggerian sense of preunderstanding. Second, from this understanding of nature arises a loss of contextualization for the individual: there is no meaningful and purposeful milieu in which the self can find a teleological horizon of self-understanding. Taylor sees mechanization involving “withdrawal” into immanence (2007: 284), and this is the shift upon which the remit of utility can also be reduced to

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immediate ends. Utility withdraws from a broadened understanding of the world. Indeed, the very claims of relinquishing the yolk of tradition require the loss of teleology, and subsequently more immediate concepts are designated as suitable and rational aims. While traditional metaphysical principles appear empty and superstitious, the practical realm of utility, desire, and want are concrete and open to rational scrutiny. This revision, nonetheless, does not dissolve the problem of teleology but only replaces it with other ends whose reliance on utility as a broad concept allow it to pass as a more self-determined and agreeable principle. This philosophical sleight, as we will see, ends up betraying its original intention. Third, I attempt to show the consequences of accepting utility as a metaphysical principle, highlighting in particular how it succumbs to futility since it cannot relate human labor to anything beyond its act of toil and production. I turn to Hannah Arendt’s study in The Human Condition, arguing that her descriptions of animal laborans and homo faber are not categories but modes of being which can predominate in an individual and a culture at any one time. For Arendt, the revivification of action lies in understanding its real significance, and this means appreciating action through contemplation. A clarification needs to be made with respect to the relation between utility and technology since, from a Heideggerian perspective, the remarks I have made so far in this chapter and that I will be making may raise the question, “Should I not be really focusing on the philosophy of technology?” My concern is much more basic, or perhaps more accurately, phenomenological. The philosophy of technology concerns the relation of human activity with and through technology, however this latter term may be defined. In this respect, it already commits to an interpretation of human activity as being technologically embedded. This is, no doubt, a very fruitful area of study given current environmental and bioethical questions. Yet what needs to be pointed out is that in focusing on technology (whether through a critique or apology), the question of the nature of work itself begins to recede, as if we should no longer speak of human work but only technology. In addition, and consistent with Heidegger’s thinking, to remain solely at the level of technology is to remain enframed by it (Heidegger 1977: 25–35). The key to technology, in this respect, is not its resolution but the returning, or stepping back, to the ground that bears still the ontological, hermeneutical question that drives technology to be in the first place: why work? And beginning with this moment leads to the complimentary question of how and why we use the things made by human work. Here, the question of utility is more primordial than technology, and therefore

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within the scope of my study, more appropriate in investigating the nature of work itself.

The Question of Nature Martin Luther’s theology captures perhaps the most dramatic statement about cosmology in Reformation theology. In giving sin such a prevalent role, even to the point where, from the human perspective, it eclipses God, Luther affirms a break between nature and grace that, according to Dupré (1993: 204–20), theology at that time could not overcome. In Luther’s lectures on Genesis, sin emerges as an obstacle, synonymous with the state of nature, in which humans have lost almost every quality related to divine knowledge: “Of this knowledge we have feeble and almost completely obliterated remnants” (Luther 1958: 67; cf. Schneewind 1998: 31). If sin inheres so totally in human existence, then hermeneutically speaking human understanding is deprived of the means of participating in anything higher than the corrupted state of nature. Of course, this emphasis, which is but one kind of theological interpretation, magnifies the inscrutability of the divine will and the dispensation of grace (cf. Taylor 2007: 83). Unlike in previous kinds of theology, for Luther divine mystery is not productive by means of attraction but debilitating in magnifying and isolating the finiteness of the individual.2 Human existence becomes more an interval of extreme anxiety in which one can only hope for redemption. “For now man is mortal,” writes Luther, “and a sinner. But if these thoughts do not move us to hope and longing for the coming Day and the future life, nothing could move us” (1958: 73). For Weber, this gulf between the divine and nature became a lacuna for social transformation in which the denigration of nature and the isolation of the human will allowed worldly activity to break-off on its own. The emphasis on divine will became an uncontestable law under which all earthly roles for humans were homogeneous in status. According to Weber, in Luther’s thinking there remains, more and more strongly emphasized, the statement that the fulfillment of worldly duties is under all circumstances the only way to live acceptably to God. It and it alone is the will of God, and hence every legitimate calling has exactly the same worth in the sight of God. (2003: 81; cf. Bainton 1978: 233, 245)

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All worldly concerns and situations, the realm of the existential as such, was fixed according to a divine will that in turn called for absolute submission to this will (Weber 2003: 85). And yet if “[i]n this faith all works become equal” (Luther 1966: 26), then the good works encouraged by Christianity lose their meaning, and consequently what becomes definitive is an adjustment of the human will that no longer has esteem for a sense of spiritual work but only secular work. This shift is decisive, for it rejects the possibility of “spiritual pride” that can arise in good works (Taylor 2007: 266) and embraces and elevates the mundane realm of toil. The will Luther describes is one derived from a faith in which one “simply serves God with no thought of reward” (Luther 1966: 27). What is implied here is a substantive rationality in which while one does not focus on results arising from the accomplishment of works, one is nevertheless encouraged to work harder as a means of conforming to the divine will and as a means of affirming to oneself (and to others) the steadfastness of one’s faith. According to Weber, this rational structure of Christianity encourages an ethical code of conduct centered on worldly affairs despite the fact that this work has no real and direct relation to salvation (Lehmann 1993: 205). Because of this, Weber states that in this metaphysical system “the most important thing was that . . . labour came to be considered in itself the end of life, ordained as such by God” (2003: 159). Work is, therefore, something like the “working-proof” of one’s devotion to God even though it ultimately has no bearing on the possibility of salvation. What is furthermore involved in this ethos is the displacement of meaning in the other world of transcendence, a move that in Weber’s mind is encouraged by the ascetic tendency of Christianity: For the saints’ everlasting rest is in the next world; on earth man must, to be certain of his state of grace, “do the works of him who sent him, as long as it is yet the day.” Not leisure and enjoyment, but only activity serves to increase the glory of God, according to the definite manifestations of His will. (2003: 157) The difference between the spiritual asceticism of the monk and the asceticism of the worker concerns the mode in which the asceticism is practiced. “God wants to be glorified by active asceticism in the world” (Jaspers 1964: 233—emphasis in original; cf. Taylor 2007: 266), and this means that the world becomes merely the vehicle for a spiritual transformation that resides in the otherworld of divine transcendence. So the status of the world as a

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vehicle is both instrumental and substantial; it is a world stripped of meaning that anticipates the rational disenchantment of modernity that will eventually excise the faint connection to the divine which the Reformation had assumed. Dupré (1993: 206) is less polemical in his reading and contends that interpreting Luther’s theology is problematic because he swings between “dialectical extremes,” and it would be less work in one sense to derive his dualism from the nominalist theology of the late Middle Ages that upheld the separation between the divine and worldly. Accordingly, nominalism culminated in a theological “two-edged sword” where salvation rested in the hands of the believer according to good deeds, on one side, and where due to “God’s absolute sovereignty” an individual could ultimately do nothing to receive grace, on the other side (Dupré 1993: 204–5; cf. Schneewind 1998: 23–5). While this analysis fits well with Weber’s interpretation, it ends up being too unilateral for Dupré (1993: 204) since it misses the more nuanced aspects of Luther’s theology that at times admits the immanence of God.3 Instead, Dupré wishes to remain with the striking novelty of Luther’s thought in which “opposition rather than synthesis” (1993: 206) marks an especially modern disposition. For Luther, human knowledge is undercut by uncertainty and the sense of finiteness. But even with this qualification, the reduction of the meaning of nature in Luther’s theology is not avoided. The emphasis on the fragilité of the human being is inseparable from Luther’s insistence to put the individual first. This primacy appears, on the one hand as I have said, in the prevalence Luther gives to sin and, on the other hand, in how the individual stands apart from the Church, sufficient unto itself in understanding Scripture. This elevation of the individual marks a new concern for personhood, but equally, it neglects related concepts which were once more wholly related in Renaissance and Medieval theology—most notably, nature and God. It would appear therefore that the negative conception of nature that Luther relies upon in order to give strength to the role of individual conscience and assent to divine will precludes its redemption. To illustrate this point, one of the most prominent effects of this transformation was the change in meaning of vocation, or calling (Beruf ). Wilhelm Hennis suggests that the difference between the Medieval and modern ages (beginning with the Reformation) is the point that we must remember in looking at Weber’s analysis. For the Medieval age, the presence of God and His relation to work (vocation) was “an unbroken whole” (Hennis 1988: 93). As in Aquinas’ thinking, and despite the fact that the Reformation

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inherited much from him (Dupré 1993: 205), the Medieval age was characterized by a significant meditation on the presence of God: God is present everywhere in everything: not indeed as part of their substance, but in the way agents are present to and in causal contact with what they act upon. Since existence itself is what God is by nature, he it must be who causes existence in creatures. During the whole period of a creature’s existence, then, God must be present to it in the way its own existence is. (Aquinas 1989: 22 [I.8.1]; cf. Taylor 2007: 91) The immanence and indwelling of God presents no division between a worldly and spiritual vocation since the world itself, as the emanation of God in being, embraced human work as that which was moved by Him. Indeed, as Gen. 2.2–3 says, the Creation is the work of God, sanctified by God. In this respect, one would expect to find a less condemnatory understanding of sin, and with Aquinas there is the distinction that with sin humankind did not lose “natural freedom from compulsion” but the “freedom from guilt and unhappiness” (1989: 129 [XI.83.2–3]). In being set within the tension of guilt and unhappiness, human deliberation is more consciously driven toward what is good, or ultimately what is God (cf. Aquinas 1989: 155–6 [XIV.105.3–5]; cf. Schneewind 1998: 26). In contrast, the Protestant rendering of calling as both spiritual and temporal exists within, so to speak, a broken theology where humans, whose will is futile, are irreparably separated from the presence of God. Our corrupt knowledge forgoes a deliberate, conscious participation in divine union. Humans therefore struggle by will alone within a metaphysical dualism in which, “Above all, God and Mammon cannot be reconciled.”4 For Weber, the thinking of the Puritan theologian Richard Baxter (1615–91) epitomizes this split: In one’s calling, writes Baxter, “[c]hoose not that in which you may be most honorable in the world; but that which you may do most good and best escape sinning.”5 Work becomes a means of escaping sinning, and more important, the external world itself is implicitly identified as the location of sin itself. Nature is corrupt. Any calling in which one might realize their God-given gifts then acts as a mobilization in spite of nature. In effect, the worship of secular work is the effort to remove oneself from the Creation. Harvey Goldman observes, [T]he calling is a mode of asceticism for legitimating the self by sacrificing it in its natural form and building a new and higher self devoted to an ultimate value or cause. It sanctifies the person through service, creating

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a sense of meaning, purpose, and personal value in a world rationalization has emptied of meaning. (1993: 170) The secular work ethic is then a participation in emptiness in order to arrive elsewhere. Similarly, though with a focus on theological reasons instead of social causes, Dupré (1993: 3–5, 87) offers the argument that the passage to modernity begins with an ontotheological breakdown, in which meaning is derived from the human subject separated from both nature and grace. The dualism between “God” and “Mammon,” between heaven and earth, begins the slow process where the divine and an inherently meaningful universe are concealed. The call to be is not a call to align oneself with a meaningful universe but, as with Marx, it is a call to create oneself. The emptiness upheld by the Reformation thinking on work promotes an empty understanding of use in which all use serves some other end, that is, an end exclusive of the world, nature, and finally and ironically, human being itself. The Reformation is, as Taylor puts it, the “engine of disenchantment” (2007: 77).

Mechanism, Utility, and Nature In this section, I complete the turn away from Weber in attempting to see the metaphysical reasons (and not simply the social causes) for mechanism. What substantiates this move is my privileging of cosmology over the social realm, something which suggests a hierarchical dependence at a metaphysical level (cf. Taylor 2007: 60). One can characterize this dependence in terms of a commitment latent in thinking itself. The silent center around which the history of philosophy revolves is its interpretation of nature, silent because at stake in any metaphysical position is an interpretation of what nature means. However, this interpretation is rarely made explicit and is more the subject of tacit metaphysical presuppositions because a metaphysics rarely considers how it has already decided to interpret and relate to nature. Thus, as Heidegger is well-known for arguing, a metaphysical understanding often conceals the larger interpretation of nature involved (Heidegger 1977: 115–54; cf. Dupré 1993), and one can view the history of philosophy as a historical relation to the meaning of nature. What this means more problematically is that in reading historical sources, nature is often interpreted through the prevailing metaphysical view. Herein, for example, the Greek phusis is explained according to the modern understanding of reality or nature, and this is essentially an anachronistic move

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(cf. Solmsen 1963: 473–96; MacIntyre 1988: 12–29). As R. G. Collingwood points out, for the Greeks “the world of nature is saturated or permeated by mind” (1945: 3). Dupré adds, “Contrary to later rationalism, however, that logical quality did not have its origin in the human mind: it constituted the very core of the real itself” (1993: 23; cf. 2004: 17). Because of a historical distance, which implies a conceptual distance as well, an act of historical retrieval is often an act of concealment in which philosophical terms specific to one metaphysical system are appropriated by another system without saving their distinction. Alasdair MacIntyre describes this as “the adroit, although doubtless unconscious, use of a series of devices designed to mask difference, to bridge a discontinuity and to conceal unintelligibility” (1984b: 33). Heidegger similarly refers to the inversion of the meaning of the ancient Greek “subject” (hupokeimenon) which originally meant “that which is at the basis” and “lies present as the ground for statements about something” (1996b: 9; cf. Zimmerman 1986: 209; Dupré 1993: 112). Today, the meaning of subject refers specifically to the self, perhaps most notably since Descartes who designates the self as a thinking substance. This manner of centering both doubt and truth on the human subject, which is clearly a concern of Enlightenment epistemology and thereafter, shifts the focus from a meaningful and substantial relation of the human being and nature to one in which this relation has to be verified in establishing necessary and sufficient conditions of knowing. The status of the external world is largely in doubt and ultimately dependent upon the human mind that perceives it. Here, despite their differences, realism and antirealism share a common beginning (cf. Heidegger 1985: 93–5). Thus while epistemology arises as one of the central concerns for philosophy during the Enlightenment, the correlative effect of its reduction of nature as the object of philosophical proof is its extantness whose substance cannot be known except as a mechanized process.6 Mechanism refers to the interpretation of nature as a process with no inherent meaning; and moreover, that one can master the workings of the process itself (Dupré 2004: 25; cf. Taylor 1993: 323–4). A mechanistic understanding implies and requires no final cause and allows a scientific investigation of nature to reduce its remit to the working relations within the mechanistic system, the so-called calculable logic of operations (Heidegger 1977: 135). It concerns itself with the origin of the efficient cause and its subsequent effects that can be controlled through identifying the efficient cause. This is readily apparent in how technological and scientific thinking focus their research on smaller and smaller parts in order to increase results. This kind of reduction is, for example, prevalent in how an understanding of the functioning

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of human beings is reduced to units that represent causes. Thoughts are merely chemical reactions and behavior is mechanistically determined according to genes. In short, this amounts to an understanding of being as a “theory of the real” (Heidegger 1977: 171) which conceptually mediates our encounter with reality through representation. If mood is a problem, one does not, under this scheme, attempt to understand the nature of the mood in question, but is asked instead to ingest a chemical to affect the causal units (i.e., the chemicals influencing psychological moods). What is interesting in this calculative remedy is that the notion of abnormality is something that is not in direct view of critical questioning but is merely accepted as a default component of this scheme that does not need to be understood, only neutralized. The inclination to reduce meaning to an analysis of smaller parts relies on the justification that the universe is not really, as a whole, invested with meaning. The larger play of things is merely the effect of some smaller origin that is yet to be found. Consequently, the human involvement in mechanism tends to bracket out any questions larger than those at play in the immediate system of operations (its technological rationality). While perhaps presenting itself as a removal of needless and unanswerable metaphysical questions, there is in the mechanistic reduction of nature an interpretive move of metaphysical proportions: namely, there is the removal of meaning as an attribute of the world. This goes hand-in-hand with mechanism’s exclusion of final cause since a supereragatorial telos defies the basis of reason upon which a mechanistic understanding is grounded (Dupré 1993: 72; cf. Cottingham 1998: 9–11). Mechanism can only assert that there is a process ongoing; and as the observer of this process, the human being is in the position not only to interrogate its operations but also to take control of them. As Taylor (1993: 323; 2007: 284–6) points out, this manner of taking hold of nature does not include a reflection on its manner of engagement since the notion of engagement is precisely what lies outside its mechanistic view. In contrast and from Heidegger’s point of view, because the unity of the world is prior to any existential determination, “[t]he essential possibility of Dasein concerns the way of taking care of the ‘world’ . . . of concern for others, and always already present in all of this, the potentiality of being itself” (1996a: H143). For Heidegger, it is care for being that determines how Dasein subsequently dwells in and renders the world, and it is precisely a role for human caring that is occluded from the mechanistic world view since it holds that the world is something to be mastered by

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humankind. This mastery, however, is not seen to be substantive but neutral. The mastery itself reveals efficient means that are not necessarily aligned to any kind of hierarchy of goods or preferences; they are merely a more efficient means of doing which is separate from any particular ethical directive (cf. MacIntyre 1984a: 84). This assumption of neutrality is directly evinced in the general directions which utilitarianism can take. Arriving at the ultimate expression of a utility principle means, in part, arriving at a rational consensus at what works best for the common good. If reason is universally human, its development in each individual will allow him or her to recognize the same principles and ends. One can note, in this respect, that utilitarian justification attempts to have the philosophical version of “having one’s cake and eating it too” by simultaneously balancing a general principle that is confirmable by all, while at the same time offering a nontotalizing imperative, that is, nontotalizing because it is rational. Reason identifies a telos that presumably all other rational persons can accept, and this assent arises through an individual liberty absent of the obligation of having to adopt a hierarchy of values or ethics requiring metaphysical principles. One reasons one’s way there. The allure of utilitarianism is that its justification of actions is straightforward, a way of saving the appearances of basic desire for happiness as long as it conforms to the greater good (Taylor 2007: 580). This synthesis of desire for happiness and the greater good creates its calculus of practice(s). Nonetheless, in attempting to avoid a metaphysically posited telos, utilitarianism does not escape interpreting the human relation to reality. While metaphysical principles may be purposefully absent, what emerges is still a metaphysical effect (cf. Taylor 2007: 599). This becomes most apparent when, according to MacIntyre, utilitarianism removes a metaphysical principle (e.g., the Good) and replaces it at another level by a personal yet universal concept (e.g., happiness). It achieves this by psychologizing its utility concept according to the “attraction to pleasure and the aversion to pain” (MacIntyre 1984a: 62). For MacIntyre a utility principle is tragically reliant upon the confusion of a universal principle and an individual psychological experience that anticipates the emergence of emotivism in contemporary moral philosophy.7 A unifying psychological concept gives the appearance of collective recognition without relying on metaphysical suppositions because the psychological concept is confirmable by each individual without any further definition. It requires only its recognition by the individual and so seems to avoid the need to posit and rely upon a

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universal axiom. But this only seems to be the case. Ken Westphal decisively identifies this problem of focusing too much on the individual, rational agent: There are at least two problems with this individualist answer. First, if we were to abstract from a human mind everything it derives from the society and traditions which have formed it, it would be capable neither of following nor even of understanding principles or procedures. Second, in practice, this individualist view of reason tends to fail us precisely where issues of rationality and legitimacy are most important. In circumstances of unclarity and indecision, rather than helping discern or develop mutually acceptable principles, it tends to reinforce faction. (2002: 3) As has been well noted, this means that if moral philosophy is conceived on the basis of individual psychological experience, then it cannot “function as an absolute obligation” (Dupré 2004: 146). What is instrumental in the light of happiness is not for happiness itself or for the greatest number of people since instrumentality will be directed to the multitude of actions and objects that appeals first to one’s own experiential sense of what it means to be happy. John Bowlin therefore observes that utilitarian arguments can hardly appeal to a “common currency” of the good since there is a “fundamental diversity of goods we recognize” (1999: 67). In this way “absolute obligation” eludes the moral philosophy of utilitarianism, affecting not just moral action but even practical action (Ricoeur 2005: 90; cf. Schneewind 1998: 423–4). Similarly, Taylor concludes, “[t]he utilitarian lives within a moral horizon which cannot be explicated by his own moral theory” (1989: 31; cf. 22–3; 2007: 599; Meikle 2000: 260–4). This inability of utilitarianism reflects at a more formal level something inherent to utility itself which is shrewdly identified in Lessing’s famous question: “And what is the use of use?” (Arendt 1998: 154). The question, meant rhetorically, is posed to show that a reduction of use to pure utility succeeds insofar as it reduces the remit of its relations to a simplified logic of operations that can be justified in relation to the aim it sets out to achieve. When the question of its meaning is broadened, for example, to an existential context, the utilitarian engagement in activities in relation to finitude is unable to appreciate work outside its confined logic of calculability. When uncritically assumed, either by choice or by habit, this calculability inevitably induces a repetitive cycle, that in gaining momentum, empties existence of a proper relation to work. Nietzsche, in this respect, performs his well-known role as the prophet of nihilism: “More and more, work enlists all good conscience on its side; the desire for joy

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already calls itself a ‘need to recuperate’ and is beginning to be ashamed of itself” (1974: §259, 329—emphasis in original). Rest is rejuvenation for work ad infinitum. This dislocation between human action and purpose encourages a more rational and efficient functioning of human action for its own sake. At the same time, what has largely gone unnoticed on a collective level until recent concerns for climate change, is that nature is treated as a means to more efficiency. The meaning of being remains unaddressed, concealed, and forgotten, while humans ceaselessly work with immediate aims and uses in sight but without any reflection given over toward its telos, save as a concern for private individuals. Thus, the expressly metaphysical and theological aspect of human work is inverted. It is not the most universal or uniting thing but the most disparate and solipsistic. The acceptance of this inversion only aggravates the natural human inclination to affirm by doing, for the only meaning to be affirmed in this case is the individual, setting humanity within an age of anxiety and bestowing upon nature the status of being raw material for the increasingly efficient process moving from life unto death: “I will show you fear in a handful of dust” (Eliot 1969: 60).

Utility and Futility: The Case of Hannah Arendt Hannah Arendt approaches a critique of the utilitarian attitude that exploits the futile nature of its premises and ends. Her analysis in The Human Condition concerns, as I will argue, an existential interpretation of the failings of work when reduced to necessity.8 My reading, in this respect, is unconventional in its interpretation of the distinctions she draws in defining labor and work. Her analysis constitutes a dynamic existential description, wherein her definitions are not scientific, sociological, or political categories but describe modes of human being always at play with one another in work and that are presupposed by an ontological intentionality.9 One of the key distinctions in her study is between animal laborans and homo faber, bodily labor and the work of the hands.10 It is animal laborans who knows only bodily toil in order to satisfy biological necessity (survival) while it is homo faber that eases labor through technological innovation and shapes work according to specific ends. The difficulty with Arendt’s analysis is that the distinction between labor and work is a loose one (Parekh 1979: 68). And this appears to be deliberate: if not to prevent her humanistic analysis from being reified into a rational system, which she would oppose (cf. Bakan 1979: 61), then to allow us to see how a purely biological notion of labor is not specific to biological processes only (e.g., metabolism) but can

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be seen to infect the modern understanding of work through a curious transformation. Animal laborans and homo faber do not designate stages of human development, or even different classes within society, but existential modes referring to a manner of comportment toward the understanding of what human work is. We find, for example, that while she defines labor as bodily work within nature that simply seeks to perpetuate and sustain metabolism, she later demonstrates how this notion of labor has taken on a peculiarly modern inflection in the automation of work in the factory (Arendt 1998: 7–8, 305; cf. 126–35, 141–53). Here the dehumanization of work involves the reduction of any meaningfulness of effort to mere bodily toil (labor). Thus, the tragic “victory of animal laborans” (Arendt 1998: 320–5) in her final analysis must be understood as the victory of a manner of understanding the meaning of work according to a reduction of this meaning to a biological necessity. The common critique of Arendt’s distinction between labor and work is often set against the inadequacy of her description to achieve a comprehensive, categorical applicability. John White, for example, argues how Arendt’s definitions of work and labor are insufficient. They are too slippery and cannot distinguish, he states, between work and labor for such occupations as a politician who appears to be involved in no manner of bodily toil or work of the hands (White 1997: 36, 38–9; cf. Bakan 1979: 52–3). However, in this pliability of definition, there is a subtlety that emerges in Arendt’s analysis. The seemingly different roles of the cabinetmaker and the politician, for example, are not different if one reads her analysis as an existential description. The fact that the former’s work involves the making of things while the latter’s work involves political discourse does not negate Arendt’s definition of terms. The work of either is dependent on how each is ontologically comported in its doing. Accordingly, if labor “never designates the finished product” (Arendt 1998: 80) but the toil and pain involved in physical effort, the term is not meant to describe types of actions but the intentional comportment presupposed by such actions. Thus, while it is true that labor does indeed result in an end product, the products made by the sweat of labor promote nothing toward transcending biological necessity. So laboring designates a mode of work that sees its purpose in nothing more than perpetuation of metabolism, that is, toil. To refer back to the example of the politician, the politician, especially in a Greek sense, is involved in an occupation that is already above toil. Political discourse is only possible when necessity has been fulfilled, or is currently being fulfilled by someone other than the politician. The politician is therefore free to engage in the polis.

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This political activity rightly constitutes the “work of the politician” where work is the deed of speech and action. Furthermore, according to the Greek definition politics cannot become labor since the fulfillment of labor is what makes the political possible. Whether or not this holds true for the modern age is itself a question worth posing: in what way, according to Arendt’s definition of labor, can political discourse be involved merely in a manner of doing that perpetuates the interpretation of existence as survival without looking to the ideals and possibilities of the human polis? In other words, can legislation and policy making not be predicated on these myopic ends as opposed to a greater comprehension of well-being?11 But we will not pursue this question any further than by merely posing it rhetorically since it constitutes a more political concern.12 Arendt is not therefore saying that we as humans exist in one way or another, as animal laborans or homo faber ; rather, both of these are modes of being for human effort and must be distinguished in order to see how human work produces from and reproduces one of these modes, or what Pierre Bourdieu (1977: 78–87) defines in terms of the dialectical nature of habitus whose ability to sustain itself in production requires an unmastered form of consciousness (or recognition) that unknowingly reproduces some originary or generative principle. Arendt’s analysis also points to a second problem of how an understanding of human work itself may be confused because the distinction between labor and work has not been taken into consideration. In this respect, there is an ontological intentionality implicit in Arendt’s description of the role of instruments: The same instruments, which only lighten the burden and mechanize the labor of the animal laborans, are designed and invented by homo faber for the erection of a world of things, and their fitness and precision dictated by such “objective” aims as he may wish to invent rather than by subjective needs and wants. (1998: 144) Arendt is observing that by virtue of being human one is involved in an understanding of human action (vita activa). She states that labor, work, and action constitute the three fundamental activities of the vita activa “because each corresponds to one of the basic conditions under which life on earth has been given to man” (1998: 7). The ontological distinction between labor and work is more evident when Arendt writes, No work is sordid if it means greater independence; the selfsame activity might well be a sign of slavishness if not personal independence but sheer

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survival is at stake, if it is not an expression of sovereignty but of subjection to necessity. (1998: 83 n. 7) There is the implication in this passage that work tends toward freedom while labor is merely the “subjection to necessity.” For Arendt, labor considers only its first impetus to satisfy necessity while work reaches toward the specifically human sphere. Labor is situated in the beginning (archein) while work drives reflection toward a consideration of final cause and purpose (Arendt 1998: 189–90). Thus, human action is always the disclosure of “who” one is; and action figured in work is the disclosure of “who” one is that is freed into the world; it is transmitted, communicated, and left open to all who choose to be in the world. To be deprived of this is “to be deprived of the possibility of achieving something more permanent than life itself” (Arendt 1998: 58). Yet while this distinction remains, and insofar as labor and work describe two existential modes, both tend to succumb to utilitarian ends. In other words, they share the lack of being able to question their manner of “engaged agency,” to use Taylor’s words (1993). Neither has the capacity to step outside their modes of effort in order to question them and indeed come finally to a realization of human freedom. Instead, they become bound up in circle of futility in which the continuation of its activity of labor and work is its end. However, this does not suggest that work itself is futile, but on the contrary, that when work is not understood in relation to a meaningfulness greater than its simple productive processes, only then does it descend into an absurd relationship. Arendt thus states, “utility established as meaning generates meaninglessness” (1998: 154). This meaninglessness is possible in one respect because work is characterized by a unilateral momentum that begins from a reflective impetus but paradoxically becomes noncontemplative as it becomes increasingly involved in working. In other words, work removes the possibility of reflection on the very meaning of work itself. The type of involvement in human work tends toward a homogeneity wherein a thing that is useful is often reduced to this use. Thus, the clock is understood as that thing which tells time, but the clock in no way reveals the significance of our orientation toward time as a sequence of “nows.” That is to say, in using the clock we are in no way aware of how the clock has established a definite manner of relating to things through its interpretation of time as sequential. If things of use take into account a specific function, it also removes this function from our circumspection as something which can be questioned and related to larger practices and interpretations of being. The implication of the human

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relationship with tools and equipment, then, is one in which their usefulness, that already is disclosed in our being-in-the-world, conceals the possibility of thinking about them in any other way. It conceals but does not eliminate this possibility altogether. It is in this sense that Arendt states that for all its handiness and work of the hands, the meaningfulness of this world “is beyond the reach of homo faber” (1998: 155; cf. Canovan 1992: 106–11). This transparency of useful things that contributes to the reduction of work to necessity can be seen in relation to both animal laborans and homo faber. In the case of animal laborans, human beings become part of the mechanical process; they are subsumed under the efficiency of means and consequently “disappear” in the process. Arendt argues along these lines when referring to how the modern worker is now no longer seen to be included in the final production of a product: [M]ost work in the modern world is performed in the mode of labor, so that the worker, even if he wanted to, could not “labor for his work rather than for himself,” and frequently is instrumental in the production of objects of whose ultimate shape he has not the slightest notion. (1998: 141)13 Arendt is explicit in stating how the modern understanding of work is one that really sees work as labor. In the disappearance of the human worker in the modern factory, no meaningfulness for the reason of working is apparent. It simply fulfills the necessity to earn a living. Thus it is here that the autonomy of work, once expressed as the promise of technology, paradoxically results in the automation of the worker who is absorbed by mechanized production. But this is so not only for the factory worker but also for the office professional assigned to minute and repetitive tasks at the computer. The joy of labor of “earning one’s bread in the sweat of thy brow” has become the joy of the will to labor which has subsequently usurped the will to live (Arendt 1998: 140). This reduction of work into labor prevents any further reflection on the meaning of work itself, for it cannot take into consideration the meaningfulness of life that labor initially seeks to affirm beyond the fulfilling of necessity. The modern reflection of this persists in the attitude that work is not that which is to be contemplated but escaped. In affirming nothing but unceasing necessity of survival, survival itself becomes tedious. At the level of homo faber, work reduced to necessity takes on a more worldly quality insofar as the efficient means of work moves toward the production of things in order to secure one’s manner of being-in-the-world.

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With this human rendering of the world, the emergent human world is meant to endure (Arendt 1998: 7). Human work reifies by drawing materials from nature in order to build uniquely human things. While the making of homo faber can indeed be characterized as having an aim in this sense, it still does not consciously take up the meaning of its making. Homo faber becomes enthralled with the efficiency of making itself (cf. Ellul 1965: 20–2). This is a degradation of work insofar as the things wrought in work are not allowed to disclose any use beyond being involved in efficient means, whose exemplary modern expressions are convenience and disposability (cf. Lewin 2006). Thus, the transparency of equipment and tools is prevented from being seen because of the enthrallment of creating more and more efficient means. And the effect of an oblivion to this is the enframing of a world of efficient means, of utility: [T]he tragedy is that in the moment homo faber seems to have found fulfillment in terms of his own activity, he begins to degrade the world of things, the end and end of product of his own mind and hands; if man the user is the highest end, “the measure of all things,” then not only nature, treated by homo faber as the almost “worthless material” upon which to work, but the “valuable” things themselves have become mere means, losing thereby their own intrinsic “value.” (Arendt 1998: 155; cf. 121) The implication here is that if the world is rendered by human beings, then any tragedy humankind faces is most likely one which the world faces as well. What can therefore rescue human work from this plight? Arendt appears to give us a hint in this passage in referring to “intrinsic value” but then does not elaborate on what this might involve, that is, unless one makes definitive the implicit connection between action and contemplation that she mentions at the end of her book. If Arendt’s analysis is to propel us from the dualistic split between world and human being that is largely Cartesian, as she states (1998: 285–94), and into seeing what possibility of meaning lies beyond this, then “intrinsic value” must refer to another level of discourse related to work but requiring a further treatment than is possible in Arendt’s analysis of work. In this sense, one can observe that Arendt’s reappreciation of the vita activa is not opposed to the vita contemplativa. Rather, her argument (1998: 324–5; cf. Canovan 1974: 54) is that the vita contemplativa can be the life of the many instead of the few once we have reappreciated the realm of action which permeates all levels of existence. The vita activa, in other words,

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requires that human reflection be continuously given over to questioning the nature of the means and ends of work. Indeed, this appears to be a legitimate point when one considers that the aim of modern work is largely expressed as retirement. That this should be considered a legitimate end demonstrates the conflation of human meaningfulness into a strictly futile circle. Retirement in itself means nothing more than a nodal termination point marked by the death of one worker whose toil is to be taken up by others. “To strive from necessity and not for some good—driven and not drawn—in order to maintain our existence just as it is—that is always slavery,” writes Simone Weil (1963: 159). How is it then that we can disclose in a meaningful way the “intrinsic value” of human work? If human usage can be broadened beyond simple utility, then what emerges is a reflective exigency to follow through the implications of this interpretation. Because conceptions of use inevitably are linked to notions of utility, my attempt to reinterpret the meaning of use requires a necessary reconstruction of the key and guiding concepts informing work and existing at the foundation of the history of philosophy.

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Chapter 4

The Aristotelian Activities and Work

My analysis of the philosophical foundations of the modern concept of work has argued that necessity is its defining concept. It therefore interprets the real as ontological inertness, there to be controlled for the utility of human being without regard for any ontological status the real itself may have. This attitude was unknown to the ancient Greek orientation to reality which generally acknowledged that order was coemergent with the cosmos (Solmsen 1963; MacIntyre 1988: 13–15), thereby apprehending it as something in its own right and not simply subject to human will. As Heraclitus says, “Order was not made by god or man. It always was and is and shall be an ever-living fire” (Waterfield 2000: F36, 41–2). Is this ontological difference worth noting? In this chapter, I begin a reconstruction of the philosophy of work by retrieving what Aristotle describes as the three activities essential to the well-being of the polis: theoria, praxis, and poiesis. These activities still permeate to some degree or another our modern philosophical conception of work, and it is worth bearing in mind that these activities correspond to three intellectual virtues:1 Virtue sophia (divine wisdom) phronesis (practical reason) techne (technical knowledge)

Activity ¤ ¤ ¤

theoria (contemplation) praxis (action/practice) poiesis (production/making)

It follows, for example, that theoria is the activity of sophia; one theorizes when contemplating things that are eternal and most divine. The intellectual virtues are, in this sense, dispositions (hexeis) and their activities modes of revealing truth. The activities themselves can be further identified in terms of their actuality and movement, and this distinction will be drawn out in a later section.

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My analysis in this chapter is formed of four parts. First, a clarification of the concepts of theoria, praxis, and poiesis is necessary since it is after Marx that the modern preunderstanding equates work with praxis (cf. Habermas 1972: 44) and antithetically opposes it to theoria (hence the well-known opposition of theory to practice). I provide some illumination on how the modern notions of action (praxis) and thought (theoria) differ from the Classical distinction. My revision of the modern understanding in view of Aristotle will allow us to see that work is more properly understood as poiesis rather than praxis. Second, I examine Aristotle’s treatment of praxis and theoria in detail, focusing on the relation between divine principle and the temporal realization (energeia and kinesis) of such principles. My aim here is to broaden the concepts of praxis and theoria so that their interrelation can be seen hermeneutically as opposed to categorically. This reinvigoration of Aristotle will allow for a more generous analysis of poiesis in the next section. Third and fourth, in equating poiesis (and not praxis) with human work, I will show how poiesis is hermeneutically linked to the project of living virtuously. Hence, poiesis is not an activity isolated from the higher activities of praxis and theoria because it is limited to necessary toil; rather, poiesis itself is the productive articulation of the good life without whose goods and products human existence would not be possible. This recovery of poiesis involves a twofold project addressed to the two sides constituting human work: use and production. On the one hand, I will identify the manner through which products of work (erga) provoke a self-reflexive response from human beings in understanding how things are to be used, or what is chresis. This is because life is essentially self-reflexive, seeking to link particular forms of understandings (i.e., the practical and the poetic) to a theoretical interpretation of the possibility of being itself. On the other hand, if the productive process of work is to be retrieved from its reduction to necessity, it is requisite to show how within Aristotle its conceptual foundation is tied to and not broken from the divine. This linkage, I argue, occurs due to form (eidos).

Situating Praxis and Theoria in the Modern Context Marx’s well-known thesis eleven on Feuerbach marks a transition in the history of philosophy which cast a sense of immovable suspicion upon the tradition that preceded him. While Marx’s main opponent is the German Idealist thinking, his critique extends back to the Classical sources by way of

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the centrality such sources assumed in German philosophy (Sadler 1996: 23). Bearing in mind the radicality of Marx’s overall project to change the status-quo, his famous thesis eleven should be read in reference to the immediate philosophical tradition and the more established Classical thinking: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it” (1998: 571—emphasis in original). Thesis eleven gains greater force when juxtaposed with thesis eight: “All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice” (1998: 571—emphasis in original). “Change” in thesis eleven and “practice” in thesis eight are integral to one another since the change that Marx is referring to is both a change through practice, or praxis, and a change that places praxis at the centre of a socially conscious philosophy. Hence, Marx equates a well-reasoned solution dispensing with “mysticism” to the identification of praxis with the aim of philosophical understanding. Praxis is first because society is defined by it: “all social life is essentially practical,” that is, a practice by which social relations are made by human production (Marx 1998: 61; cf. Dupré 1983: 68–9). As we saw earlier, theoria, on the other hand, is subsequent to this production and must reflect upon that which comes before it. Thus, theoria serves the role of appreciating praxis. But does Marx’s inversion provide a remedy, or does it merely aggravate a problem in understanding the relation of praxis to theoria that still has yet to be addressed? In the Classical arrangement, praxis can be marginalized to the point where the realm of action itself is denigrated. Nowhere else but in Aristotle is this most pronounced when he announces that the life of contemplation is the highest and most complete mode of human being (NE 1177a18–22). But is the resolution to this problem, as Marx proposes, simply a reversal of the premises? Let us recall from my earlier treatment of Marx that in his inversion theoria becomes the denigrated activity since it perpetuates a distorted relationship to reality. It seems that both characterizations—the Classical and the Marxist—construe an inadequate relation between thought and action where one is celebrated to the detriment of the other. On the one hand, how can the Classical arrangement justify a life of contemplation when the necessary metabolism of a society must be sustained? On the other hand, how can a Marxist critique argue that praxis is first when in fact such a recognition is itself theoretical, that is, an interpretation of being? Granted that praxis may be first, what if Marx’s interpretation of praxis is not adequate or is even incorrect? Ricoeur summarizes this dilemma as a question:

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“Is not the process of interpretation so primitive that in fact it is constitutive of the dimension of praxis?” (1986b: 10—emphasis in original). Where to turn? A new theory of praxis and theoria? My position is that the problem is in fact not with praxis or theoria per se, but in the interpretation of the Classical sources. Hence, the resolution is not, as Marx assumes, with replacing one mode of human engagement with another. There is a more fruitful hermeneutic response that sees the two complimenting each other. When praxis is understood as simply referring to action, or practice, the depth of the Classical understanding is lost. The consequence of the equation of praxis with practice is a nullification of any intermediary structures between human thought and action (Ricoeur 1974: 53, n. 17). As we will see shortly, praxis is aligned with practical reasoning (phronesis) and therefore is not simply action that does something in order to achieve an end. Rather, praxis refers to an action that is itself a realization of phronesis. Work, as a practice, does not fit into this distinction because work is not directed by phronesis but techne, or technical expertise. Nevertheless, as I will show, for Aristotle the relation between all three activities is integral: (1) the practical reason (phronesis) that sees what should be done; (2) in alignment with the good contemplated by theoria; and (3) the technical action that produces according to the orientation to reality predicated by phronesis and theoria. The ethical understanding that informs house-building, for example, is separate from the technical expertise that knows how to build it. Whereas the technical concerns the excellence of the product, the practical reasoning (or the ethical) is addressed to the relation of the house as a dwelling (and the activity that produces it) to being or reality. The technical concerns the expertise involved in making and producing while the ethical devotes itself to the question of the produced thing and how, or to what degree, it is appropriate within the larger context of precepts. The praxical act of ethical deliberation, in this instance, refers to a realized structure that is practicable according to reason (logos). It is not just “practical” for utility’s sake but for a certain interpretation of being seen to be harmonious, or ethical. Technical questions of material and design then stand in view of ethical questions, such as, environmental sustainability, well-being, and so on. When praxis is set against thinking—a sentiment that is often read back into Aristotle—the practical sphere and the contemplative sphere are split so that human being simultaneously, yet dualistically, dwells in a world of action and a world of thought. Philosophically, the worlds parallel one another but never merge, and consequently praxis, which was originally

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related to reason, loses its fullness and risks being reduced to action in and by itself. This separation is radicalized when the reason that informs praxis is separated from the highest activity, theoria. Theoria, as Andrea Nightingale writes, is “a distinct activity that is an end in itself, completely cut off from the social and political realm” (2004: 6). But rather than assuming this reading of Aristotle to be our arrival point, I recognize it as the grounding problematic for our hermeneutical departure. The distinction between theoria and its practical applications is by no means an easy one to resolve and requires an attempt to reread Aristotle apart from a post-Marxist suspicion. While some commentators are keen to reify the distinction by opposing theoria to praxis and poiesis (cf. Roche 1988), I see the architectonic that Aristotle proposes in his ethical thinking to imply mutual relations. Indeed, as Bernard Williams (1993: 27–8), Martha Nussbaum (2001: 89–121), and Alasdair MacIntyre (1988: 74–102) refer to this distinction as well, they observe that this emphasis on theoria as a philosophical activity is an attempt to express an adequate understanding of the poetic and the very issues that require expression if the polis is to be self-sufficient.2 Surely, Aristotle’s elevation of theoria is a recognition that the most divine activity for human being is also the most unifying, and therefore, that the flourishing of theoria is determinative of the flourishing of the polis.

Praxis and Theoria in Aristotle’s Ethics If praxis is neither work nor antithetical to theoria, then what is it? For Aristotle, this question requires that one see phronesis, or practical wisdom, as a concern for an ultimate good that determines our relationship to human goods. In this way, the notion of practicality is enlarged from a concern for aims attached to specific acts to a concern for the good as well. The practicality of reason refers to not only logical relations and correspondences (by which anything practical can be declared) but also, more supremely, the cosmic harmony that is presupposed by this reason (cf. Mei 2009). Reason reflects a higher principle by which reality is in fact “reasonable” and ordered according to a divine nature. This elevation of reason to a principle of the cosmos is, as I mentioned earlier, implied in the Greek preunderstanding of the cosmos as ordered and good, and this can be seen in terms of how Aristotle designates human action as its own end. In Book VI of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle distinguishes animals from human beings insofar as the nature of animals does not correspond to any

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endeavor to be truthful or virtuous in how they exist. This point is so crucial that Aristotle notes that animals have perception (aisthetike zoe) “but do not share in action” (NE 1139a20).3 Aristotle is referring to a specific meaning of action that is not simply an event of doing since mere existence is involved in action on the whole. To the contrary, where Aristotle comments “perception is not an originator (arche) of any sort of action” (NE 1139a18–19, Rowe translation), there is the suggestion that sensory perception by itself cannot begin from a principle (arche) that is reasonable and intelligent. The use of the senses as the basis of decision precludes it from intelligence (nous), and therefore perception by itself cannot participate in praxis (cf. Gadamer 1989b: 124–5). Genuine human activity requires participation in reason and order. This distinction becomes more definitive when Aristotle identifies what constitutes the nature of this kind of action. Praxis participates in reason and order insofar as its origin (arche) is a principle that is also its end (telos). In other words, praxis is an action whose act of doing is also its completion. To show this Aristotle contrasts praxis with an action that is not like it, that is, poiesis (production), and unfortunately with respect to my larger claim in this chapter, it seems at least at this point that Aristotle sees poiesis as a denigrated kind of activity: “For the end of production [poiesis] is something distinct from the productive process, whereas that of action [praxis] will not be; here, doing well itself serves as end” (NE 1140b6–7, Rowe translation). Aristotle defines action according to its end, noting that the act of making (poiesis) is different from praxis. Poetic activity aims at an end separate from its actual process. Aristotle refers to the building of a house which is an act of production that arrives at a separate end. At no one time while someone is building a house can one say the house is finished. Similarly, the productive processes of nature, where things generate and grow, entail activity that is never finished until they reach their final form. Poiesis is a manner of acting whose end “is not yet in existence during the course of action” and is therefore identified with kinesis, or change through time (Ackrill 1965: 122–3; cf. Nussbaum 2001: 326). In contrast, for Aristotle praxis is identified as an activity which is essentially determined by a limit (peras) that would define whether or not it is complete (cf. Meta 1048b18–27).4 For instance, “living well” has no limit but is an ongoing activity that enacts or practices ethical reason, whereas “housebuilding” ends with the completion of the house (cf. Ackrill 1965: 122). Praxis is an action whose end is in itself, not requiring any specific duration of time for its completion. It is therefore often identified with energeia, that is, as an activity whose performance is its actuality. In praxis, the mode of

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action is one in which, according to Metaphysics (1050a21–2), the actuality is the action that realizes the end. Nevertheless, as I will argue later, the division between the two—praxis-energeia, on the one hand, and poiesiskinesis, on the other—does not suggest a categorical dualism but refers to constituent modes of being in reality which stand together. But for now, let us seek to understand a more obvious correlation—that between praxis and theoria. Within Aristotle’s understanding, one cannot separate praxis from its relation to the divine, assuming that action simply involves the human agent and whatever ends it designates as worthwhile. The worthiness of action for Aristotle is bound up with the theoretical apprehension of the divine nature which, as I have said, is most overtly instantiated in terms of the ordering of the cosmos and how human beings are therefore to exist in harmony with this order. If this is the case, the two are complimentary: praxis arises from a theoretical contemplation of a principle (arche). In Aristotle, however, this argument is part of a still lively debate and is generally described according to two positions as the “dominant end” and the “inclusive end” arguments (Roche 1988). The “dominant end” argument, in part represented earlier in Nightingale’s remark, is often referred to as the “intellectualist interpretation” because it sees theoria as the highest mode of being according to Aristotle’s own treatment of it in Nicomachean Ethics X (Roche 1988: 176). Both theoria and praxis are the modes of being involved in their appropriate forms of understanding: sophia and phronesis, respectively. Because Aristotle describes theoria as the highest mode according to the highest virtue (sophia), the intellectualist argument is that theoria is a manner of being according to this one “dominant end” to which phronesis does not correspond or relate. The implications of this argument become radical since it assumes that the collective affairs and self-sufficiency of the polis are really unrelated to the most divine of human activities. This not only tends to read theoria as a “selfcentered” activity (Roche 1988: 176) but also imports a Neo-Kantian styled dichotomy between the divine and the realm of appearances. The inclusivist position interprets the ergon (function) of human being, or the manner and extent to which human being is involved in theoria, as extending throughout the practical domain of existence. It is important to mark the distinction: theoria extends to but cannot be conflated to the practical domain of existence. Aristotle asks in Book I of Nicomachean Ethics (1097b24–8) whether or not the function (ergon) of human being is just like any other function of a thing where its excellence resides in its enacting or performing of the function itself. This question is not one that is asked hypothetically but is posed as a way of initiating the task of seeing how the

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ergon of human being is one that extends through every phase and sphere of human existence, and therefore, in some sense completes it. Nussbaum refers to this in terms of the Greek concern for an intelligent self-sufficiency in the face of luck, or fortune (tuche) (2001: 19–20). The difference between the two schools of interpretation on this point resides here. While the “intellectualists” claim that theoria characterizes the final and single end (telos) by which all other things become marginalized, the “inclusivists” argue that Aristotle is referring to an end that in fact actualizes itself through the practical sphere of human being. Thus Roche observes, “Aristotle argues that the good for man is not to be placed in the category of a possession (ktesis) or state (hexis) but in a use (chresis) and activity (energeia)” (1988: 180; cf. Frank 2005: 54–80). This, in turn, allows Roche to conclude that the performative aspect of praxis is an integral part to having ethical understanding: “[T]he ergon of man is to be defined in terms of the actual exercise of reason, not merely the potential for it” (1988: 180; cf. Sinclair 2006: 42). On this view, theoria expresses a reflection on metaphysical principles while praxis is a manner of acting commensurate to this reflection to some degree and in fact practices the good in aiming at it (cf. Rorty 1980: 377). Ricoeur takes up Aristotle in this same way when remarking that “ergon [function] is to life, taken in its entirety, as the standard of excellence is to a particular practice” (1992: 178). This correlation means that in the same way in which excellence proffers the actualization of ethical practice, so the ergon of human being, in contemplating the ethical and divine nature of things, directs the actualization of life. Here, life “in its entirety” is constituted by several kinds of practices that remain to be united in living one’s life, that is, what would be a living unity. Thus according to the proper ergon of human being—which above all is divine and ethical—there exists a mutually defining tension between what one perceives to be the good that directs one’s entire existence (phronesis) and the specific practices by which one enacts this and so performs in the eyes of another (praxis): [I]t is in unending work of interpretation applied to action and to oneself that we pursue the search for adequation between what seems to us to be best with regard to our life as a whole [phronesis] and the preferential choices that govern our practices [praxis]. (Ricoeur 1992: 179; cf. MacIntyre 1988: 92) Indeed, exactly how this occurs is precisely the question of ethics. Hence the reason why praxis is so central: it relates an understanding of the good to the performance of good deeds; or, it unites the universal good to the

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particular instance in which it should be enacted. Yet while this may be true for praxis, the inclusion of poiesis appears much more problematic since while theoria and praxis are in the most proper sense energeia (where action constitutes the end), poiesis involves kinesis (where the end resides separate from the action).

The Question of Poiesis My argument in this section follows a simple strategy in which the activity of poiesis is admitted into the theoretical and ethical realm by broadening the scope in which poetical activity is seen to participate. This relies on discerning how the kinetic activity of poiesis is not categorically excluded from being an energeia according to the broadest possible meaning. Energeia is problematic in defining since it can mean actuality, activity in a general sense, and more specifically, a certain kind of activity whose end is its act of being performed. Part of the difficulty here is the equation of actuality with a static state of being complete and the subsequent identification of actuality with the most refined sense of activity: a genuine activity is one in which its state of being is its completeness. Recent hermeneutic interpretations of Aristotle have convincingly (and I believe rightly) challenged this reading of energeia (cf. Sachs 2002; Brogan 2005). Energeia is not a static mode of being, but a manner of performance, or being-at-work. While the essential quality of praxis, in which its enacting is its completion, is obvious in this way of defining energeia, the performative understanding of energeia allows a link to poiesis. As we saw earlier, Aristotle defines poiesis as an activity whose end is separate from its being performed (NE 1140b6–7). Poiesis acquires the description of being kinesis, or change that is reliant upon temporal succession, and its relation to praxical and theoretical energeia is somehow complicated, if not precluded, since it has completion, not in the moment of being performed but at its separate and distinct end. While J. L. Ackrill (1965) has famously pointed out the difficulties in attempting to provide a definitive clarification of how energeia and kinesis are different, my treatment of the two here is not an attempt to resolve this aporia.5 Rather, specific to the retrieval of poetic activity, my intention is to see that despite whatever differences there might be between energeia and kinesis, in the last analysis, Aristotle assumes that the kinetic nature of poiesis is integrally related to and not severed from ethical well-being. Ricoeur provides the paradigmatic example when taking interpretive liberty in extending the notion of praxis to poetic activity. Ricoeur’s studies

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are radical when viewed from the dichotomy between praxis and poiesis, for he is arguing that poiesis is really linked to praxical understanding (e.g., Ricoeur 1991: 339, 428). One of his main theses is that narration (poiesis) is ultimately involved in praxis since in narrating one is in fact mimetically telling a story that reconfigures reality, and by virtue of this novelty, provokes the listeners to reinterpret their relation to the world and themselves. Consequently, poiesis does not end with narration and the audience’s act of listening. Rather, poiesis is extended through time: the act of interpretation carries poetic activity into the existential practice of interpreting being; the narrative is appropriated into one’s life that gives rise to a new self-interpretation. For Ricoeur, it can be said that narration is ultimately a form of praxis, and this explicitly combines poiesis with praxis to make narration and the interpretation of narratives an ethical form of understanding. We can therefore refer to a narrative praxis that is constantly ongoing and to this extent is contiguous with the entirety of human existence (Ricoeur 1983: 52–87). Similar to this extension of praxical deliberation in the reception and interpretation of narrative, I argue that while productive activity seeks an end separate from its action, this end is inevitably related to the practice of the good life itself. On this view, poetic activity, even though distinct from ethical activity, is not excluded from but integrated within the flourishing of the polis. Poiesis participates in the actualization of the whole, and this is immediately apparent in how self-sufficiency (autarkeia) requires human production. Harmony cannot be exclusive of its parts but must presuppose their union (Pol 1253a20;6 cf. Meta 1034b30–3). Within Aristotle’s treatment of nature, in which matter (hule) and form (eidos) interact, there is the notion that even when things are moving toward actualization, any state of becoming is perfected when it is in fact actualized (Meta 1050a15–17). This means that potentiality is constituent of actualization (Meta 1049b12–27, 1051a2–3), and their correlation describes an ontological feature of the cosmos in which its harmony moves. If there were no movement, then everything would be static, or numerically the same, and there would be no distinction between the eternal and human existence. Thus, the movement in being—that is, human use—expresses the movement of this order (the cosmos is eternity in movement) (cf. Physics 2 234b8–9; Timaeus 37d; Brogan 2005: 64–5). Because of his emphasis on completion, for Aristotle actuality, as a final cause, gives movement so that potential things can move from an incomplete state toward rest in their actual end (Meta 1047a20–31).7 If this were not the case, then nature itself (phusis), which is both the substantial nature of things and their becoming,

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would be an impossible thought (cf. Physics 193b3–21, 199a8–20; Meta 1015a11–19, 1049b5–10; Solmsen 1963: 491; Dupré 1993: 15). A key difference, nonetheless, is, as Ackrill cites in Physics (201b30–3), that “kinesis seems to be a kind of energeia, but imperfect” (1965: 138). “[I]mperfect” is a misleading translation of ateles since it suggests that change through time is somehow ontologically flawed. Ateles, to the contrary, should be understood as a temporary mode of being incomplete, temporary because its kinetic movement is one of moving toward completion. We can read Aristotle as saying, “kinesis seems to be a kind of energeia, but incomplete.” But how does this make Aristotle’s statement less problematic? Being incomplete means that something is on the way to completion. Therefore, the incomplete nature of kinesis does not suggest that the process of poetic activity is a denigrated form of energeia, nor that the ends actualized by poetic activity are somehow less perfect. Rather, incompleteness describes the unique way in which kinetic activity actualizes whatever is potential (Ackrill 1965: 139–40), that is, it requires a fixed amount of time to bring about completion. Kinesis, in this sense, is not imperfect because its relation to temporality and change somehow places it outside divine perfection. The unique nature of kinesis, to the contrary, suggests that its manner of movement in some way magnifies human participation in the good; I say magnifies because like the obstacle of luck in ethical well-being, the feature of having to carry out something on the way to its completion involves a direct engagement with ends and material. This is why Aristotle suggest that we should view kinesis according to its completed end or its entire process, that is, from its beginning to end considered as a whole (NE 1174a19–21). Aristotle, in other words, would appear to be making a clarifying distinction as to how we should understand the nature of kinesis as opposed to excluding it from its relation to energeia. This, of course, raises the question of how movement and change through time participates in the so-called “perfection” of theoria and praxis. Let us consider that if energeia and kinesis differ by virtue of how they arrive at their ends, this suggests that there is also a difference in the kinds of ends energeia and kinesis actualize. These ends cannot be arrived at according to any way one chooses because as ends, they are also final causes that call forth the respective and necessary activities that seek them. With energeia, the end calls for an activity in which use of an existing disposition or ability figures as a way of performing the activity. For example, the activity of seeing is the act of using sight, the activity of philosophizing is the act of using sophia (cf. Eudemian Ethics 1219a13–18).8 In such activities, there is no alteration but an exercising of a perfection (Ackrill 1965: 141; Heidegger

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1995a: 163). These ends, moreover, do not result in concrete products, or reified works (erga) but are actualized without the rendering of material and are a kind of self-actualization. In contrast, with kinetic activity poiesis occurs as the change and transformation of material whose end is the actual thing, or work (ergon), it produces. But if poiesis lacks in any way because its activity is not its end, it gains in the sense that it produces actual things which not only endure but also come into a unique relation to human deliberation. Herein lies the key. Things completed in human work are actualities, something latently expressed in the etymological relation between ergon and energeia (literally the work that arises through being-at-work). As such they stand in relation to human activity and deliberation, that is, as a part of human being. Indeed, Heidegger’s phenomenological reading of Aristotle contends that kinesis should be understood in terms of ousia, and ousia should not be interpreted to mean presence, enduring, or permanence, but presencing (Brogan 2005: 81). Things produced by techne reveal themselves, not as extant entities to be used instrumentally in daily activity but as that which come to articulate the unique kind of human involvement in the cosmos. Techne in this sense is distinct from phusis because for the most part it has a different generative principle, where things of techne cannot regenerate from themselves (Physics 193b8–9), and as well, because things of techne are not necessarily in conformity with nature. Nonetheless, whatever gap there is between phusis and techne, it is not an ontological lack but a hermeneutical question as to how things made by humans can conform to and affirm natural harmony. This means, moreover, that techne must rely on those modes of knowing that take harmony within the cosmos as its concern. Theoria and praxis disclose the reflective conditions and background in which human making flourishes. Thus, one can see that poiesis has its relation to the ethical and theoretical activities not by any similarity in the kind of knowing or in the kinds of activities specific to each, but in the question of how things made by poetic activity are to be used. In short, the use of things is a mode of practicing. This ethical dimension of human use (chresis) is evident in the way in which what is “marked out” (dike) by the polis is there specifically for the mediation of human relations and activities that are subsequently subject to the measure of virtuous living and justice (dikaiosune) (Belfiore 1984: 144; MacIntyre 1988: 97). So something like the modern notion of utility for utility’s sake is excluded from the Greek conception of virtue. As Aristotle remarks, retail trade is not intrinsic to the making of things in general; nor is its techne tied to the accumulation of wealth. Neither is a shoe made to be an object of barter nor is the accumulation of wealth meant to exceed

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simple means (Pol 1257a6–19). Because of the preeminence of ethical concern, for Aristotle work is directed by a qualitative concern for excellence over such things as efficiency, something especially evinced in Aristotle’s understanding of the four aitia in which the final aition directs the way in which a person understands how to be appropriate in work and in use (Mei 2009). I will return to this in more detail in Chapter 6 when discussing Heidegger’s appropriation of chresis. Both Arendt (1998: 47–8, n. 38) and Jean-Pierre Vernant (1983: 258–62) refer to how the modern understanding of the division of labor in order to increase efficiency is entirely absent from the ancient Greek understanding.9 Division of labor to the Greeks concerned how the performance of tasks could be done more excellently and not efficiently. Similarly, Nussbaum highlights the Greek understanding of use over against the practice of mere utility within a techne : [W]hat makes shoemaking artful and good, rather than merely adequate, may not be specifiable externally and in advance: for once the art exists, its own activities—fine stitching, elegant ornamentation—tend to become ends in themselves. The Greeks recognized this from the time of Homer. Achilles did not value his shield simply because it served well the requirements he could have set down antecedently. It is an example of high techne- just because the craftsman has done so much more than Achilles’ untutored imagination could have conceived or requested. (2001: 98— emphasis in original) It would appear then that because the question of human use is integral to the actualization of the good life, poiesis is directed by ethical precepts and acts as a specific kind of activity (poetic, kinetic) within the larger, broader activity of ethical well-being. Despite the numerous differences one may be able to draw between energeia and kinesis in Aristotle’s texts, in the specific instance of human production, poetic kinesis is constituent of ethical energeia. Support for this claim is particularly convincing when turning to the Eudemian Ethics in which use becomes the determining activity linking production to ethical concerns. And the work of each thing is its end [telos]; from this, therefore, it is plain that the work is a greater good than the state [hexis], for the end is the best as being an end, since the greatest good is assumed as an end and as the ultimate object for the sake of which all the other things exist. (EE 1219a6–11)10

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Aristotle states that the superlative nature of a work is not its state (hexis) in which it can be possessed but its end (telos). This is because while the end of a thing is complete in terms of its form (eidos), there is beyond this end the question of how such a thing will be used and simply possessed by humans, or the “for the sake of which” (hou heneka) something exists (cf. Physics 200a5–15). In other words, “the greatest good” of a thing’s telos includes more than its physical extantness, or state of being complete, and one can say that Aristotle suggests that the virtue of a produced thing is not simply present in its final form, nor in its being possessed, but in its being used (cf. Pol 1258a25–7). Use, in short, is actualization derived from a care of how to relate to things, and one can say according to a rich line of interpreting Aristotle, that any possession of a thing or quality is not fulfilled until it is practiced (e.g., Heidegger 1995a: 158–62; Frank 2005: 57–70). “For we think that to do well and live well are the same as to be happy; but each of these, both life and action, is use (chresis) and activity, inasmuch as active life involves using things” (EE 1219b1–3).11 The emphasis on use suggests not only that living well (eudaimonia) is an activity (as opposed to a state) but also that use and activity are integral to this kind of living. The use of things participates in the total enactment of the good life (MacIntyre 1988: 131; Roche 1988: 180; Broadie 1991: 382). Use is the application of actual things according to the principles informing reason. Human production, then, is excellent not only according to the eidos of a thing that a craftsman apprehends (cf. Meta 1046b24–8, 1050a30–4) but also according to the practical reason of a person who employs a thing in activity. Here, the question of virtue includes the actual completed thing and how someone will use this thing within the polis. While there is no definitive and singular correlation of a thing and its usage that one can set down as a kind of code of conduct, the ethical question of how to use something in one’s manner of being continually persists. A knife crafted for whittling, for example, should not be used for butchering. Its form and sharpness dictate a specific use but also an appropriate degree of human participation with it. Aristotle’s well-known example of the Delphian knife (Pol 1252ab1–5), as a thing that lacks virtue because it has many uses, can subsequently denigrate the activities in which such a knife is used. Why use something for which it was not specifically intended? The answer for Aristotle would inevitably fall upon a failure of practical reason and perhaps a lack of a character virtue, such as temperance. A person impatient with a task to be performed will more likely use an inappropriate thing in order simply to get the task done.

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This emphasis on use is precisely what relates human work to virtuous living because it is not simply that humans use things according to their own desires, but that the things themselves disclose a range of appropriate uses to us.12 To use something for which it was not intended is not only a lack of good judgment on our part but also an obliviousness to what the thing itself reveals to us as the essence of its art. To phrase this hermeneutically, the use that resides in the manner of being of a thing discloses itself to the human subject as a calling for appropriate participation with it. This places a double exigency on human poiesis. On the one hand, for the craftsman, things must be crafted well in order to actualize excellence. I will say more on this in the next section. On the other hand, for those who require these things, there is the ethical question of how to dwell in appropriate usage, a usage that is not limited to the single user but extends to the ongoing activity of the entire polis. A complete life is one whose nobility permeates each aspect of existence encountered or touched upon by human dwelling, and use is therefore no mere instrumental handling of things but constitutes the mediative heart by which work and the things produced by work are linked to the highest of human aspirations in the good life.

Necessity and Human Work The overall momentum of my retrieval of Aristotle suggests that work itself was not something unilaterally denigrated by the ancient Greeks, something that seems readily apparent in their views toward natural slavery and manual labor (NE 1177a6–11; Pol 1254b25–32, 1337b4–15). Yet if use is as central to the definition and distinction of things in Aristotle as I have argued, then it would be a misinterpretation to see the definition of things, such as a slave, reliant on the determination of common properties. More accurately, it would seem that what is definitive for Aristotle is the manner in which one is engaged in an activity, either by habit or decision. This is not to say everything is potentially mutable according to the human subject but that some things are capable of being transformed as they relate to ethical decision.13 One can see this ethical dilemma for the craftsman in how it is techne, or know-how, that gives rise to products of work (erga). It is a knowledge that brings forth the virtue of a thing as a thing. Vernant points out, “the ergon of each thing or being is the product of its own particular excellence, of its arete” (1983: 248—Greek transliterated). The ergon Vernant (1983: 249) refers to is that which is the product of poiesis. As a process, poiesis is reliant

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upon techne in order to achieve excellence, an excellence expressly for the benefit of the public and not only for the home (oikos). Thus, excellence is highly significant in the craftwork of techne since it upholds the public realm (polis) in and through this excellence (Arendt 1998: 49). Because of this public feature, Nussbaum (2001: 95–6) notes that from various Greek sources one can extrapolate four requirements of techne: universality, teachability, precision, and explicability. Universality concerns the overall applicability of whatever the techne performs in relation to the universal laws of phusis. Teachability concerns how expert knowledge must be transmittable through apprenticeship. Precision refers to accuracy of practice and, for the physician in particular, the precision of understanding the temperamental balance of the body and how to rectify an imbalance. Explicability involves the ability to see the craft or product in relation to its intended application or use, what can be predicted based upon the nature of the thing made or action taken. Again, for the physician this is obvious in the ability to see what types of remedies work for a specific imbalance, but even in crafts such as carpentry there is the same kind of explicability in the knowledge of woods in relation to climate, use, durability, odor, etc. In general, techne can be seen as an understanding of how to do and make, whose effects give greater structure, coherence, and articulation to the cosmic order (cf. Solmsen 1963: 495). Techne arises from a logos within the cosmos and gives greater articulation of this logos in its enactment. The excellence of techne is therefore reliant upon the manner in which its knowledge can adequately grasp the nature of the things it makes in relation to the nature of reality to which it will apply (or be used). In the Greek, this nature is identified as the eidos—the form or idea by which the craftsman envisions the product.14 In human work, the eidos is that by which a thing comes into being. It is precisely the eidos that allows matter (hule) to be rendered into a specific form (morphe). Through human work, the essential eidos is given a specific “look” according to the craftsman’s understanding of how one is to use a particular thing, or one can say that the craftsman’s apprehension of a thing’s eidos is coemergent with the thing’s use. Vernant observes, When considering a product, the ancient Greeks were less concerned with the process of manufacture, the poiesis, than with the use to which the article was to be put, the chresis. And, for each piece of work, it is this chresis that defines the eidos that the worker embodies in matter. (1983: 261—Greek transliterated)

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With use as its center, one can see the relation of the eidos to a thing of work in terms of a reciprocal bond where human work must produce in an appropriate way (Vernant 1983: 254). To recall what I said earlier, this appropriateness is the harmonious instantiation of a thing of work according to its eidos which then calls for appropriate use in our everyday participation with things made well. This, for Heidegger, is apparent in Aristotle’s elucidation of poiesis and logos in Metaphysics Θ 2 when logos is understood by Aristotle to include an intentional concern that moves toward its aim only by virtue of recognizing the contrary absence (privation) of this aim. Poetic production is therefore an art in which one deliberates to produce well (Heidegger 1995a: 115–23). On a cosmological scale, one can say that this reciprocal bond is characterized by a divine justice where the human being must respond in measure to the order of things; this, of course, is the heart of divine and virtuous living that extends to every aspect of human existence. The divine nature of the cosmos is immanent. “The Greeks are not, therefore, zealots of the fantastic,” writes Jean Beaufret, “but those to which everything, including the gods, has the nature of being manifest. In this way, they are men of manifestation or appearing, which they think in its plenitude” (2006: 101). But it should be remembered that this potential for appropriateness and harmony always remains to be actualized, hence why practical reason (phronesis) is distinct from techne. In other words, there is a link between the two, but there is no guarantee that this relation will always be in place. Because work tends to focus on its productive ends, as Arendt argued in the previous chapter, it can divorce itself from a broader scope of understanding. It is in this respect that work, whether in producing or in using, retains a possibility of being or not being (cf. Meta 1050b9–12), that is, it can fail to be fully actualized. This uncertain nature of work seems to underlie its mythic representation in the god of craft, Hephaestus, and I offer these concluding remarks as a way of bolstering my reading of Aristotle through his “mythological sources,” sources that would have no doubt remained open to continuous reinterpretation by the ancient Greeks on the whole. The clubfoot and limp of Hephaestus have generally been interpreted as indications of the ancient Greek attitude of disdain toward disability and hence work.15 However, the significance of his crippled leg discloses a dual aspect of the nature of work and not just a singular meaning. One should consider along with the god’s disability, his divine power of transformation. For instance, when Hephaestus cleaves open the head of Zeus, Athena and the other crafts are born: war, weaving, and olive cultivation (Roochnik

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1996: 22–3). Hephaestus also renders divine weapons, tools, and artifacts whose techne no other god can equal, either in terms of their own techne or in wisdom in general—for example, the throne he designed to ensnare Hera and the web that caught Ares and Aphrodite. Furthermore, Hephaestus is often identified with fire which occupies a similar dual role insofar as fire can be “destructive” and “profane” or “beneficial” and “sacred” (Kirk 1974: 86). But perhaps most illuminating is the god’s marriage to one of the Graces, Aglaea, whose name means “splendor.”16 This union with grace suggests that when craft is wed to the charity and beauty of the cosmos, it comes into an appropriate relationship whereby techne achieves a kind of making (poiesis) that articulates, or re-forms, reality in a more harmonious manner. That is to say, the function of work is not simply to respond to necessity but render the superabundant givenness of phusis according to reason and harmony, or what is encapsulated in the single Greek concept of form. Work thereby gives greater expression of the unity of the cosmos according to its differentiation in the works it produces. Finally, one should not forget that the etymology of the god’s name (from phaeos istora),17 which relates to a shining forth, can be primordially tied to the shining forth of forms in the phenomenon of phusis. One can juxtapose the “shining forth” of the natural phusis to the “bringing forth” of the human techne, not as enemies or strangers to one another, but as reciprocal interlocutors. Work in this sense constitutes “the stuff” of the narrative of the human journey to enact the good. On this reading, Hephaestus’ disability refers to the possibility that work can either be “crippled,” as when it is reduced to necessity and utility, or to the contrary, a mode of “bringing forth” whose form is in accord with the divine itself. This double meaning of the god does not suggest that the latter, divine significance wholly transcends the former, mundane one. Because work is an activity placed within the toil of existence as such, the double meaning refers to a tension by which the latter, divine meaning can only be realized in living through the first, necessary one. Thus, while Aphrodite rejects Hephaestus when taking Ares as her lover,18 we find still that the nature of work is only possible according to Love itself. In this sense, work can never attain a complete union with Love but is always moving toward it and is drawn forth in its making by its gaze. In Plato’s Symposium (192d–e), Aristophanes refers to Hephaestus as the one who can join lovers in harmony, not as such, but only in and through work: “Do you desire to be wholly one? for if this is what you desire, I am ready to melt you into one and let you grow together.” Furthermore, it is in this same vein that necessity (ananke) is appropriated to a higher principle since human work

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is elevated as a form of love or adoration. Similar to the myth of Necessity in Timaeus (48a) where Reason persuades Necessity to “bring the greater part of created things to perfection,” Agathon states just after speaking of Hephaestus’ craft as being guided by Love, “dreadful deeds were done among the gods, for they were ruled by Necessity; but now since the birth of Love, and from the Love of the beautiful, has sprung every good in heaven and earth” (Symposium 197b).19 Necessity describes more than brute conditions or basic ground rules for the Greek thinking; it refers to an order and exigency redeemed by the good and beautiful that takes shapes over the course of the flourishing of life within the polis. And this is to say that work and its effects are, above all, directed by these principles.

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Chapter 5

Work as Metaphorical

My aim in this chapter is to reconstruct the way in which we conceptualize the nature of human work. If, as I have argued, the Greek concepts of theoria, praxis, and poiesis reveal that for Aristotle human work is integrally related to the good life and that harmony in human practice was preeminently wed to ethical understanding, then the prevailing tendency today to elevate necessity as the defining feature of work has forgotten something essential. While I will not be attempting to reinterpret work in the form of a Neo-Aristotelian concept, the richness of Aristotle’s thinking allows us to pursue a reconstruction of work according to a different path more akin to ontology than the emphasis on the supremacy of the form.1 The key to reconstructing the modern understanding of work in view of this lies in a meditation on poiesis as a manner of production and as a poetic act, and the correlation I wish to draw can be expressed as the poetics of work to the poetics of the word (cf. Symposium 205c). Unfortunately, we cannot move to this correlation all at once. It will require understanding, from a phenomenological point of view, how work seeks to burst beyond the domain of necessity, that is, how necessity is but one aspect of its ontological nature. In the first section, I identify the necessary level of work in terms of the formative, or formal, capacity through which it responds to needs.2 The making involved in work therefore has literal functions of providing, securing, and enduring that we associate most often with its necessary uses. But within these functions, we will see that a supranecessary meaningfulness informs the motivation of work, that is, a meaning that transcends the necessary but does not destroy it. One can speak of work, in this sense, as being motivated by a reflective, ontological concern: to interpret being in order to live it and not merely to survive. The second section of my analysis seeks to find a fuller relation of reflection to work: while arising from reflection, work also provokes it. I examine how work contains, in addition to a formative capacity, a figurative dimension. Because the human hand gestures toward new possibilities of being, it

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is this same ontological richness of the gesture that informs the heart of human work. Yet while this can be seen phenomenologically, it requires a hermeneutical elaboration as to how it performs this figurative function. In order to do this, I draw upon Ricoeur’s detailed study of metaphor (1977) and its power to transfigure reality and human self-understanding. My argument is that work is an instance of metaphorical meaning, and so I seek to equate the figurative aspect of work with the metaphorical capacity of language. So in the third section, I correlate this linguistic analysis of metaphor to work, showing the direct lineage between the two. Work has a capacity of disclosing the possibility of transcending necessary limits of survival in view of something greater, that is, an interpretation of the meaning of being that gives greater purpose and direction than the aim of survival and metabolism. Thus, through the figurative capacity of work, necessity is in the service of something greater than toil and exertion; it has a reflective and ontological content. What is crucial here is that transcendence does not mean a negation or denigration of what it transcends. To the contrary, necessity constitutes the most basic kind of noncoincidence in being that must be “lived” in order for it to be transformed into higher possibilities of being. Consequently, necessity itself is elevated and transformed, and the more radical implication of my analysis is that to perceive necessity merely as something requisite is to denigrate its nature. As we will see, this analysis follows one of Ricoeur’s rules of metaphorical language: that is, in order to understand metaphorical meaning, one must pass through the literal or necessary, but it is the metaphorical level that constitutes the richest kind of meaning because it is the most ontological.

The Formative Function of Work The formative function of work refers to the ability to render or objectify material as things or products, and so necessity would appear definitive in understanding its formative function. However, this function presupposes a reflective synthesis in which material can be transformed into something with a specific purpose that is reflectively anticipated. Hence in defining the nature of “a thing,” Ricoeur states, “It is the unity that is already realized in a correlate of speech and point of view; it is the synthesis as effected outside” (1986a: 37). A thing of work, in other words, presupposes a reflective relationship to it: to name and refer to a thing is to have already grasped it reflectively. Ricoeur captures this aspect quite succinctly in relation to the specific knowledge used in work (techne) and the reflective interpretation

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that directs it according to the question of the meaning of being. He writes, referring to reflection as “the word,” The word has, moreover, a function of foundation with respect to all the pragmatic activities of man. It conveys the “theoretical” function in its entirety. There is no technique which is not an applied knowledge, and there is no applied knowledge which is not dependent upon a knowledge which at first repudiated all application. Praxis does not give us the whole of man. Theoria is its raison d’être. (1965: 218—emphasis in original; cf. Heidegger 1996a: H172) This reflective presupposition may be overt in terms of a conscious act of interpreting existence in order to render something according to this interpretation. The sacred space that fills cathedrals, for example, is of this nature since sanctity takes on a specific kind of structuration.3 Or, this presupposition can be unconscious, as the kind involved in a preunderstanding. Here, an attitude toward existence has been inherited or adopted uncritically and carries over in the manner one goes about working. Most relationships drawn up in the work-world are of this kind. The wages earned even by the most innocuous of jobs participates in an enframing of ontological relationships. The wages deposited into a bank are, in turn, invested by the bank into certain areas that have direct impact upon the shaping of the culture. A bank’s investment in land speculation, for example, reinforces the “buy-to-let” frenzy which in turn drives land values up; and therefore, the gap between those who must rent and those who own land is widened. In this instance, to agree or disagree with land speculation always arrives after the fact that it has been affirmed in one’s involvement in work itself—by earning a wage and by paying rent. It would appear, then, that the ontological nexus of being-in-the-world provides an already active milieu in which the motivations and ends of work are appropriated. To speak of motive and end is to acknowledge a circle of disclosure wherein work is as much an activity of “carrying out” (ergon) as it is an effect provoked by or indebted to the totality of relations that makes it possible. This disclosure has its greatest prominence in terms of the work itself that stands “there” as an enduring, formative presence; and so it becomes quite easy to overlook this circle of disclosure in which work is driven and drives toward. Indeed, formation is so central to work that it is what characterizes the “durability” of its objects in view of finitude. The formative power of work,

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in other words, is what gives constancy and enduring in the ever-changing, external world that is permeated by transience. Work’s formative nature has its enduring presence in terms of objectification: [T]he things of the world have the function of stabilizing human life, and their objectivity lies in the fact that . . . their ever-changing nature notwithstanding, can retrieve their sameness, that is, their identity, by being related to the same chair and the same table. (Arendt 1998: 137) On the basis of enduring, the objects of work form the structures by which human interaction can occur; and according to the demands of necessity, the increasing complexity of these structures suggest a more efficient manner of addressing such needs. But it is at this stage of our analysis that human work seems to separate itself from the natural world. Is it not questionable to what degree the formative nature of work is natural, for the objectification process is itself predicated on a model of how things are to be rendered and subsequently used (Arendt 1998: 140)? Behind every tool or instrument is a possibility of the creation or destruction of something else. In this sense, atomic energy is different to the sustainability of fire not only by degree but also according to its unnatural manner of challenging nature that can unleash unimaginable productive and destructive powers in a single moment. Work, at this level, seems wholly natural to humankind but unnatural to nature. One may here recall Bertrand Russell’s reductive definition: “Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so” (1976: 13). This notion of work endorses a negative meaning of the relationship between human being and nature, and subsequently, between human beings themselves whose relationship is enframed according to a division of labor. Ricoeur summarizes this attitude well: Work calls into play the power of relations of man over man within the context of the relations of force between man and nature. Indeed, through work, human existence takes on the character of a rationally organized battle against nature that makes nature appear as a reservoir of forces to be conquered. . . . Now, the force of man’s work also figures among the forces to be mastered. The rational organization of the battle against nature also implies an organization of human efforts in projects, plans, and programs. (1986a: 116)

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According to this general description, the more abstract and technological processes are also work since such efforts are formative of human being’s relation to nature and itself. In this way, formation does not necessarily mean production of a physical object but includes so-called abstract processes of work (e.g., intellectual property) whose abstractness takes objective form in terms of it being an expression that is valued and gives value to other things and processes. Indeed, if this is not true, then the litigation regarding intellectual property rights would be unnecessary. Thus work’s formative function includes also intellectual formations.4 Let us return to the description of work as “effort in order to dominate” which must be critically assessed. The notion of the domination of nature does not identify a phenomenology of work but reads a specific value of human action into it. Domination cannot be identified with work unless one perceives domination as the mode of human being per se (cf. Arendt 1998: 139). If what I have argued in the deconstructive phase of this study is true, then the utilitarian attitude that holds sway in the modern understanding means that critiques of our current abuse of nature are not critiques of human work as such but of our interpretation of nature. Thus the sum total of malevolent effects unleashed by human action in fact instantiates a utilitarian attitude and its mechanistic view of nature. In this sense, the abuse of nature expresses more accurately that a certain misrelationship to it prevails according to a transparent understanding. Domination results from a definite ontological comportment toward nature and is not inherent to human being: interpretation and not domination is Dasein’s existentiale. Ontologically, one can see that work responds to a call to interpret being in becoming involved in work. Through work one clears space in the world in order to form a structure in which one can dwell (Heidegger 1971: 154).5 It is work that indeed structures the world according to how it perceives its possibility, or as the Heideggerian turn of phrase goes, work “worlds” the world (1977: 49; cf. 1971: 44). Heidegger says elsewhere, “The work as work sets up a world. The work holds open the Open of the world” (1971: 45; cf. Arendt 1998: 7). In other words, work’s formative function opens the world to the extent that it makes a home through its interpretation of being (cf. Young 2001: 34). Jeff Malpas observes in Heidegger that human building “arises out of dwelling spaces and preserves, and in so doing allows things to come forth as things, and so also allows the world to come forth as world” (2006: 271–2). This occurs because work sets forth beings in a particular way where the natural being of the earth in phusis is transformed by human techne. Phusis, as the “emerging and rising in itself” (Heidegger 1971: 42), is

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encountered by Dasein whose manner of encountering is to transform, work upon, and make space. In referring to the example of a sculptor, Jean Beaufret notes, “it is the techne residing in him which ‘moves the hands’ without any violence. When violence gains the upper hand the tragedy of Prometheus occurs” (2006: 98). Techne, then, is the manner of revealing unique to Dasein that “reveals whatever does not bring itself forth and does not yet lie before us” (Heidegger 1977: 13). The difference between phusis and techne is exemplified in the blooming of the flower that does not require Dasein in anyway and the working upon the oak tree that is to be hewn and made into wood for building. In phusis, the blooming allows the flower to fulfill its own manner of being whereas in techne, the tree is revealed as wood, or material for building (Heidegger 1998: 219–21). Heidegger draws the following conclusion in seeing how earth (as primordial phusis) is rendered into world: “The work moves the earth itself into the Open of a world and keeps it there. The work lets the earth be an earth” (1971: 46—emphasis in original). There is another way in which work can be seen as responding to the question of the meaning of being. To speak of work’s capacity as one that merely objectifies is to underappreciate its formative capacity. To give form to something in work is to refer to a primordial kind of act that gives form to matter. This relation, according to Heidegger, is present in Aristotle’s understanding of hule which designates the natural material to be worked and fashioned by human being: Hule in the ordinary sense means “forest,” “thicket,” the “woods” in which the hunter hunts. But it likewise means the woods that yield wood as construction material. From this, hule comes to mean material for any and every kind of building and “production.” (1998: 209–10—Greek is transliterated; cf. Roochnik 1996: 18–20) Hence to work is to further develop and enhance the order of the cosmos: it is to give greater order to the natural ordering of things in human activity. Matter, in this sense, is not simply “formless stuff” ready to be rendered in work but has unique to it a natural manner of being that calls for an appropriate form (Brogan 2005: 87). But what then is appropriate? One can say that to objectify in work is not only to produce something in terms of an object but also to interpret reality in a new way such that relations are now drawn and mediated by the objects of work (cf. Brogan 2005: 17–18). With Marx, of course, as a response to necessity this objectification process is irreducible to anything else. Yet what Marx neglects is the range

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according to which necessity can be interpreted in view of human possibilities. Necessity has a “for,” for which it is necessary. In this sense, it can be said animals also externalize themselves in their use of natural objects to survive, but humans alone see a possibility in the involvement with tools and instruments beyond necessity.6 This possibility can only come about by internal reflection on what can be. Thus Ricoeur refers to how overdetermination of objectification can result in a denigration of the worker: One can easily see in the evolution of crafts—including that of intellectual—that there is a limit toward which this movement of objectification is tending: this limit constitutes my destruction in the gesture devoid of meaning, in activity which is literally meaningless because it is without horizon. (1965: 212) Here, “horizon” refers to an existential gaze that looks upon the possibility of being. When this is removed, the making and objectification performed in work is emptied of the specifically human content. But when united with the existential nature of concern, work is a form of testimony in which “the greatest interiority of the act” corresponds to “the greatest exteriority of the sign” (Crump 2002: 180). In this respect, Georges Friedmann’s analysis of the modern factory process and how its monotony and overspecialization disassociates an end product from the actual labor required to make it announces a hallmark of the modern workplace (1955: 129–56; 1961: 32). This disassociation is not only a disruption of the “interiority” of the work act but also a disregard for the relation of work to an interpretation of finitude. In this case, the “exteriority of the sign” is emptied of any real, existential content, and the products of work are reduced solely to serving necessary ends. One is reminded of Eliot’s well-known verse from the Four Quartets: “We had the experience but missed the meaning” (1969: 186). That is to say in this case, we had the experience of work, but the absence of a reflective involvement caused us to miss its meaning. Contrary to this, the capacity of work to open a world, as Heidegger puts it, lies precisely in its response to found a contemplative abode within being from which all other relations can be redrawn (cf. Young 2001: 57–8). Work opens what was formerly closed to human being at the level of necessity, and the formative function of work can be said to open beyond necessity to something greater. Or, from a phenomenological perspective can we not say that the object rendered in work bursts beyond itself?

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The Figurative Function of Work Whereas the formative function of work indicated that reflection on the meaning of being presupposes the ability to render matter into things, the figurative function of work refers to how reflection is provoked at the other end of the human relation to work, that is, in dwelling with what is made. The etymological relation between the German bildung and the English culture (Gadamer 1989b: 9–12) suggests that work cultivates thought by virtue of its building a public structure. This double involvement of reflection in work can be summarized accordingly: if the formative function arises from an ontological interpretation, then reflection remains constitutive of work and is articulated in a figurative way that gives rise to further thought. It is precisely this figurative dimension that projects to us, proposing new possibilities of being-in-the-world. Through the objects of work, the meaning of a particular kind of use enacts a particular interpretation of existence. For example, one can distinguish between the focus of the act of hammering in a particular task (e.g., nailing a plank) to the enframing that has allowed and determined such an activity (e.g., nailing a plank to a fence that divides land).7 Any particular task that is apparently transparent in its enacting (focus) is open to a larger milieu that bears relations of ontological significance (enframing). The construction and maintenance of a fence bears a definite interpretation of the “socius of the neighbor” that “innovates a hyper-sociological mutuality between one person and another” (Ricoeur 1965: 100). The fence divides, encloses, and attests to the private space away from and elevated above the public sphere. The neighbor is someone merely nearby as opposed to “someone to whom one draws near” (Ricoeur 2005: 222). The fence gives status to the suburban developments and the gated communities of contemporary America over against a social discourse of participation (cf. Halmos 1958). In Baudrillard’s words, the epitome of this new kind of city is the hypermarket and the shopping center around which everything else is “satellized” (1994: 77); suburban developments are landscapes without communal centers. But in the activity of mending the fence, none of this is readily associated with the simple, practical activity that requires nothing but direct focus on how and what to nail. What this suggests is that the things produced by work are not objects in any dead, reified sense of the term. It is not as if the self-consciousness deposited by the laborer in work is only an “autobiographical” meaning that pertained to the laborer alone. To the contrary, because the formative

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process of work is involved in a communal participation that is within history, whatever singular meaning or intention its artificer had is but one possibility of its use. The objects of work are not simply pertinent to one applicability but contain within it a range of possible uses; thus what emerges through the formative function of work is specifically an ontological possibility. If this is so, then the form of work is more than simply formal since it has a manner of being that discloses ontological possibility to us. And we should speak not of the static formation that results from work but its power of gesturing. Gadamer once remarked that [t]he whole being of the gesture lies in what it says. At the same time every gesture is also opaque in an enigmatic fashion. It is a mystery that holds back as much as it reveals. For what the gesture reveals is the being of meaning rather than the knowledge of meaning. (1986b: 79; cf. 80–1) His comments pertain directly to the work of art, and while there is a crucial distinction between artwork and work that I will refer to later, it suffices for this project of reconstruction to argue that this ontological dimension of gesture is extended to work. Heidegger therefore sees the gesturing power of the hand as essential to the openness of work and craft. The hand is more than an evolutionary appendage that facilitates survival, rather the human gesture presupposes the ability to think, to interpret relations and milieus, to refer to more than can be contained in any instrumental reduction. The openness made possible by the gesture of the hand is coeval with the ability to think: “Only a being who can speak, that is, think, can have hands and can be handy in achieving works of handicraft” (Heidegger 1968: 16; cf. Teilhard de Chardin 1955: 170; Sinclair 2006: 63). The gesture embodies, according to Ernst Cassirer, “a constructive process” of interpretation that bears meaning within a “structural whole” (1972: 142; cf. Ricoeur 1986a: 19). The nature of work is fundamentally related to the signifying power of gesturing in which every function of facilitating the fulfillment of necessity corresponds a broader realm of meaning by which necessity is turned. The gesture, in this respect, turns and transforms by its touch, and where a thing of work might have only served a single purpose to suit metabolism, it now exists as that thing through which human effort recognizes the horizonal plenitude before which meaning, hope, and life merge. Things of work therefore not only give rise to the landscape of human

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dwelling in a physical sense but also give locality to human dwelling in relation to the horizon of possibility ontologically. But there is a further significance to pursue here. The essential relation between human work and human dwelling means the gesture of work has a specifically narrative quality in which ontological meaning is referred back to the human subject, as laborer and dweller. Because the nature of gesture is to point to something beyond itself, it is along this trajectory that the figurative function of work holds within it the capacity to refigure the understanding of the interpreter. This, according to Ricoeur, is what underlies narrative schemes (1991: 148–53), and I want to argue that this in fact underlies the process of work not only because the human story of work can be read as a narrative—in Pascal’s words “as one man who continues to exist and constantly learns” (Ricoeur 1965: 74)—but also because work itself has an inhering quality common to narrative.

Metaphor and Work If work and metaphor are poiesis in the broadest sense, they are not only a manner of producing but also a manner of bringing forth into reality. This kind of bringing forth, as I have argued, is one that reshapes reality, not only in the literal sense of making new things but also in proposing or projecting new possibilities of being (Ricoeur 1977: 284; 1991: 85, 332). But how is a speech-act, in which literal or necessary meaning is transcended, similar to a work-act, in which necessity never really disappears but remains constant to the task of working? While there is an enormous range of debate concerning the metaphor in different disciplinary fields, the hermeneutical philosophy of Ricoeur allows us to enter into a consideration of metaphor at the ontological level, that is, where the linguistic function of it can be seen to correspond to an ontological refiguration of meaning. My reliance upon Ricoeur is strategic insofar as he accounts for the lengthy debate between opposing understandings of metaphor, as “stylistic elements” (e.g., as trope or substitution) and as emergent meaning. He argues (1977: 65–100) that those who tend toward the latter (e.g., I. A. Richards, Max Black, Colin Turbayne, Monroe Beardsley, and Douglas Beggren) have subsequently prepared the way for an ontological/hermeneutical understanding of how metaphor reshapes reality, that is, provides a “metamorphosis of both language and reality” (1991: 85; cf. 1977: 98–9). The general transition Ricoeur traces extends from the

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Classical consideration of metaphor as word (trope) to its involvement in discourse (semantics) and how therefore metaphorical referent involves a third level of an ontological projection of a lifeworld (hermeneutics) (Ricoeur 1977: 303–11). In textual analysis, the process of self-interpretation implies a specific relationship to the already existing context of the text before which one finds oneself. This “before” refers to a projection of the world of the text, the encounter with which allows the reader to understand something new (Ricoeur 1991: 97, 315). For Ricoeur, metaphor constitutes this projective power of the text par excellence since its specific function of juxtaposing different meanings in order to propose novel meaning encapsulates the larger project of the text itself (1977: 85–8; 1991: 305–13). In this sense, if metaphor provokes self-interpretation, it is not possible on the basis of a newly created language but on the use of existing linguistic means in order to refer to a novel meaning. Because the so-called “twist” of metaphorical meaning relies on the preexisting range of literal meanings and connotations in order to form a nonliteral meaning, metaphor is by no means a radically free act (Ricoeur 1991: 77–81; cf. 1977: 303–4). Rather, it is indebted to the very givenness of language itself that, for many thinkers like Plato and Aristotle, constitutes the intelligibility of the cosmos (cf. Heidegger 1995a: 103). It is because metaphor’s novel meaning is indebted to the language that precedes it that its referent therefore bears on reality itself. In this respect, there must be a literal level at which one can relate to the metaphor in order for change to occur, and we can therefore speak of two levels of metaphor: a literal level that can be identified readily and a nonliteral or properly metaphorical level that refers to the emergent meaning. While this double aspect of metaphor can be reduced to its logical absurdity or internal contradiction, Ricoeur follows upon the work of Richards, Black, and Beardsley, asserting that the opposition of meanings in metaphor does not occur on the same plane since there is a contradiction at the primary, literal level of meanings in order to attain a secondary signification that could not be attained otherwise (Ricoeur 1977: 109–10; 1991: 306–7). Ricoeur refers to this in terms of how the literal, or first level of sense, activates the secondary or metaphorical sense: If it is true that literal sense and metaphorical sense are distinguished and articulated within an interpretation, so too it is within an interpretation that a second-level reference, which is properly metaphorical reference, is set free by means of the suspension of the first-level reference. (1977: 221)

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Elsewhere, a word receives a metaphorical meaning in specific contexts within which they are opposed to other words taken literally; this shift in meaning results mainly from a clash between literal meanings, which excludes a literal use of the word in question and gives clues for the finding of a new meaning. (1991: 307) For Ricoeur, this suspension is decisive since the metaphorical suspends in order to preserve and refigure the literal. Moreover, this suspension has greater implications for the overall aim of interpretation. It discloses the nature of interpretation as a suspension of the ego in order to realize a new self-understanding. Interpretation is not a self-projection of meaning but an encounter with something entirely new, or “the disclosure of new modes of being” (Ricoeur 1991: 316—emphasis in original). This kind of encounter, says Ricoeur, “gives to the subject a new capacity of knowing himself” (1991: 316). In this way, the emergence of meaning through the act of interpretation is correlative to the emergence of self-interpretation that “gives a self ” to the ego (Ricoeur 1981: 193—emphasis in original). Hermeneutically, the distinction of the two levels of metaphor allow for a dialectical relation between literal and metaphoric meaning where one is necessary to the other. One would not, for instance, equate Blake’s “Tyger!” with the literal animal since the poem discloses this metaphor as that which burns bright in the forest of the night. Nor, would one be able to apprehend the magnitude of what the poem projects as the “Tyger!” without initially understanding it in opposition to the most conventional sense of the animal (cf. Knights 1965: 157). Hence Ricoeur writes on symbolic meaning, which is akin to metaphor in this sense: “It is by living in the first meaning that I am led by it beyond itself; the symbolic meaning is constituted in and by the literal meaning” (1967b: 15). For our purposes, the distinction between symbol and metaphor is not important, but let it suffice to say that according to Ricoeur the difference between the two, generally speaking, is that symbol is prereflective, as in myth, while the metaphor is not and is formed according to a “semantic lacuna” that the author fills in (cf. Ricoeur 1967b: 10–18; 1977: 315–20; 1991: 117–28). Following upon metaphor’s reliance of preexisting linguistic means in order to create novel meaning, we can observe that similarly the conception of work as figurative stands opposed to the idea that human work is a rendering “out of nothing.” Rather, work is a figuring of what precedes it (i.e., matter) and makes possible anything like the human response in work.

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This was suggested earlier, as Heidegger noted, in the relation between hule and morphe. Human production is not a making out of nothing but “imprinting and molding, i.e., by the act of ‘forming’” (Heidegger 1998: 210; cf. 1995a: 123–5). Human work is therefore not creative in the Promethean sense since human beings can do nothing more than reshape what is already given. This point is crucial since it suggests that the creative freedom of the worker is still and always bound to that which has allowed it to be. That is to say, human working owes itself to phusis, or in this case, nature. This is why, according to Dupré (1993: 15–41), the idea of “new” is foreign to the Greek notion of poiesis; the task of human making is to render in accordance with the natural order of the cosmos. Rephrasing this principle ontologically, one can say that in its being free to make, human work is responsible to the pregivenness of being that allows work to take place, or what Heidegger encapsulates in his well-known rendering of the German “es gibt,” or “it gives” (1972: 5). An act of being for Dasein is a response to the being “that gives” because this givenness is presupposed by Dasein. Jean Greisch therefore remarks that “Between ‘there is’ and es gibt no passage is possible.”8 In other words, one is already in givenness. This also means that human work is not a kind of radical creation (sui generis) which tends toward an undetermined freedom of self-expression and self-realization (as I argued with Marx). Beaufret (2006: 100) notes that this misconception is revealed in the translation of the Greek poiesis into “making” which aligns the productive act to an efficient cause. He states instead that the Greek poiesis is closer to letting something appear. The consequence of this misconception is that this freedom elevates the self above the ontological givenness of being, and in doing so, it risks perceiving nature as material for its own self-rendering. Radical self-creation refers to an interminable series of aims since each self can posit its own end according to its desire—a tragedy where desire outruns desire. “The originality of the desires of having, of power, and of worth,” writes Ricoeur, “lies in their undetermined terminus: the desire of desire has no end” (1986a: 127). One should say contrary to the Promethean conception of work that its free play lies precisely in its ability to give form. In giving form, it gives greater cohesion and expression to the world, thereby freeing up future relations for greater possibilities of meaningfulness. This seems to be evinced above all by the collective participation in the figurative dimension of work that seeks a community in and through the human structures of the world. The hermeneutical nature of this process of transformation, or refiguring, can be seen more clearly in focusing on how interpretation encounters the literal, or necessary, and moves to the figurative, or supranecessary.

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First, at the level of the literal there is the proposition that one works in order to live. The realm of necessity constitutes the most literal level of work. There is at first glance nothing nonliteral at this level of existence that is defined by sheer effort. To remove necessity would be tantamount to removing life. Second, at the level of the figurative, if use attends to a specific end, this end is always encompassed by the greater impetus of the ontological disproportion where working makes in order to “make sense.” Making sense implies a translative function of work that sees beyond its immediate structures and uses—that is, the literal—toward something greater. Eventually through an entire nexus built by human effort does work provide an open vista that discloses something that was never before conceivable at the base level of metabolism. In this sense, the figurative gesture of work is refigurative of reality; it provides a metamorphosis by which new possibilities become actual.9 Thus work, according to the nature of metaphor, allows reality to become something more when perceived according to new possibilities of being. One can see this readily, for example, in the relation between the architect’s pencil and the realization of the blueprint (eidos) through the hands of the builders. Matter is rendered creatively through human hands into something with a distinct ontological significance, one through which a bare phenomenology has locality and place in terms of dwellings, institutions, and landscapes. What is made (the object) does not stand as an occurrent entity but as something. The bank is not just a bank (i.e., a building) but an institution with certain services and functions that require one to conform and honor specific customs in order to dwell along with it. Even in something more abstract like insurance, there is the relation between the metaphoric gesturing of the underwriter whose signature signifies approval of a risk. Thus whatever business or person is insured is also affirmed within a social nexus of risk and negligence, security, and financial solubility. An insured entity is not only affirmed but so is its entire comportment to reality itself; and in turn, the discourse and thinking of the insurance industry is adopted into everyday life, a life that is above all characterized by the uncertainty that insurance would seek to control. Cannot one say that life is translated into the discourse of insurance (e.g., indemnity, premium, negligence) by the gesturing of the underwriter’s pen (Mei 2007a)? Nothing appears to escape the gesture of the human hand through which thoughts and actions become embodied . . . for better or worse. The gesture of work, that originates in the gesturing of the hand, carries its meaning beyond the initial situation of the event of making. This means that the basic needs for survival and metabolism are fulfilled before an interpretation of greater ontological significance can be fully engaged. This

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seems a point of common sense to a large degree, but it maintains at the same time a crucial link backward where the figurative meaning cannot forsake or leave behind the literal. Indeed, one can say that the figurative does not destroy or make obsolete the literal form. Rather, it gives figure, or body and contour, to the literal. I suggest that because the uniquely human engagement with things is never only necessary that the human relation to the necessary is itself that which can be refigured. The necessary is not left behind but placed within a larger ontological milieu in which it is connected to the philosophical and theological hope for the potential of humankind. In this sense, we can read back onto work, at the necessary level, a kind of potency that instils and elevates work itself. If work is often seen as the use of hands to make and alter (homo faber), then it is this use of the hands which is essentially a gesture that carries over to its complete product. Work’s meaning is, in this sense, emergent; it is projected as a possibility that is witnessed when a thing of work comes into use by a human being. Ricoeur therefore states that the relevance of meaningful action goes beyond its situation, breaking discourse with all ostensive references (1981: 207–9). The figurative dimension of work prohibits one from reducing it to the circularity of production and consumption because it constantly breaks with this mundane discourse. Its nature is to open the world to intercommunication and discourse of possibility: by the interaction of different communities linked by the trade of commodities and ideas, by the transmission of technics from one generation to the next, and by the inheritance of knowledge in monuments and artifacts embodying ritual and sanctity. This ability to transmit itself refers to a feature of work that is already metaphorical: it appears as one thing at the necessary level and yet bears meanings and intentions at an ontological level. For example, in the building of a temple, as Heidegger observes, space is made on the earth for the temenos, or sacred space surrounding the temple (1971: 41–2). And conversely, the sacred space endures by virtue of the temple that gathers it. But its space is not only that of sanctity that invokes, celebrates, and allows for propitiation but also, by virtue of its being demarcated against the space that is not the temenos, a place to be questioned, either within the immediate community that erected it or by scholars arriving centuries later and attempting to understand the sacred in relation to the profane. In short, if human effort moves within an economy of work, this economy is also one of discourse and dialogue. In this richer ontological, or supranecessary, sense, work produces and uses objects that never stand as simple, obvious determinations. To recall

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Heidegger’s famous notion of the “as-structure” (1996a: H148–53), the objects of work exist as something: the hammer as a hammer, the table as a table, and so on. No set of attributes, no matter how complete, can define an entity because it is precisely the entity’s involvement in being that is its dynamic actualization of its potential meaning. According to Heidegger, this is what Aristotle formulated as energeia, or the being appropriate in work as an object (1998: 218–19; cf. Hanley 2000: 76; Sinclair 2006: 157–61). An object of work is not static but attains its renewal according to its potentiality of meaning that is activated by Dasein’s use of it. In relation to the metaphorical nature of work, one can say that things cannot be defined “once and for all” according to the as-structure because they always participate in a manner of human being that is engaged in working toward an end. Thus, the “as” of a tool or object is appropriated for that moment according to an end, or possibility to be actualized. For Heidegger, the as-structure captures both the actual there-ness of a thing’s being and its potential use in which it will be activated. So, the thing that we see as a hammer is not a representation of any original idea but is the idea’s manner of presencing: the thing we see or make as a hammer is presencing the essential nature of the hammer.10 Heidegger’s famous example of a jug therefore does not refer to a representation (Darstellung) of an idea (or use or function) but as the presencing of an interpretation of being according to which the jug is both actually and potentially appropriate (Sinclair 2006: 168–85). It is actual in the sense that the jug is indeed an entity with there-being, declaring its own manner of being to Dasein; and it is potential insofar as the jug awaits to be used for its end or purpose. In the following well-known passage, Heidegger identifies a jug’s ability to “outpour” as both its actuality and potentiality: [T]he gift of the outpouring is what makes the jug a jug [actuality] .... If the pouring is for consecration, then it does not still a thirst. It stills and elevates the celebration of the feast. The gift of the pouring is now neither given in an inn nor is the poured gift a drink for mortals. The outpouring is the libation poured out for the immortal gods. The gift of outpouring as libation is the authentic gift. In giving the consecrated libation, the pouring jug occurs as the giving gift [potentiality]. (1971: 172–3—my bracketed comments) Without the purpose or end (telos) of “outpouring,” the jug would not exist, and this is what gives the jug its actual being. At the same time, nonetheless,

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the jug in its being proposes a new possibility for Dasein who, in using the jug as a manner of outpouring, can either still a thirst or give libation. As something involved in a meaningful relation, an entity participates in a dynamic mode that discloses its own nature, and in doing so, potentially transforms Dasein’s self-understanding. According to this double nature of actuality and potentiality that is encapsulated in the as-structure of work, one can say that the things of work are finite beings (actuality) with an almost infinite range of meanings (potentiality) and therefore propose a corresponding range of ontological interpretations.11 And if this is so, then the original division between form and figure that I propose is one for conceptual clarity and not ontological categorization. One can say that the actual form of work constitutes the freedom of work because the structure that it erects allows for greater possibility of being. In other words, it is this structuration that opens; it is the objectness of work that releases figurative meaning. Work, in this way, provides an ontological structuration for renewal, a kind of concretized muthos that is “the bearer of possible worlds” (Ricoeur 1991: 482). We will have to return to a fuller treatment of actuality and potentiality in the next chapter in order to more adequately address the philosophical reception of the nature of work. At this point, one qualification requires attention, and this concerns the difference between the work of art and the work of labor as mentioned earlier, a distinction that Collingwood has famously made problematic. While my intention here is not to provide a definitive demarcation between the two, it is necessary to comment, especially in line with the sources upon whom I draw, how the artwork responds to a different kind of necessity than human work proper, and therefore has a different manner of being. Ricoeur refers to this distinction in highlighting how human work “makes,” or manufactures, whereas in artwork this way of understanding the productive process is inimical to the being of art: Tell a creator, say Van Gogh or Cézanne, that he is fabricating a worldversion. He will not recognize himself in this account of what he is doing . . . . The painter—at least this kind of painter—understands himself as the servant—if not the slave—of that which has to be said, depicted, exemplified, expressed. (1991: 211) Rendering refers to the artistic act of surrendering to the very vision that bodies forth in artistic creation. It has no commitment to necessity and practical use, and this occurs to the extent that what is involved in the creative act is not determined by material necessity and the intention to form

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a practical-structural version of the world. Making, on the other hand, refers to the capacity to fabricate according to what has been given within a structural whole of production without requiring a reflection on the nature and meaning of the production itself. My hesitation in contrasting the two in any categorical way has to do with the inevitable conclusion which results from such a division—namely, that human work can never be art. This appears to me to be a false dichotomy if it is diametrical. If one can speak of an enlightened and artistic kind of productive process, it is because the ontological comportment toward work, that arises from reflection, redeems the encounter with necessity. This must be the case if, as Ricoeur states, there is “a power to the spoken word which traverses and penetrates everything human, including the machine, the utensil, and the hand” (1965: 199). Accordingly, it is the word that sustains work and prevents it from becoming mere instrumentality.12 In this respect, the necessity of work is not its relation to metabolism, but beyond this, its vital link with human reflection. It needs reflection in order to be elevated. Thus for Heidegger (1971: 29–30), there is a crucial distinction between work and art, whose delimitation serves not to separate but make their relation stronger. The artwork has a manner of being that is open and self-sustaining. Because it is free of necessity from the start, or at least has an entirely different kind of necessity dependent on inspiration, frenzy, or revelation, one can say that the work of art is free to be engaged or not. It has a free play of participation—whether in Kant’s purposiveness without purpose, Coleridge’s suspension of disbelief, or the invocation of the Muse—in which its manner of being is sustained by the human contemplation of it. With human work, one finds that this kind of contemplation is not requisite since labor is initially guided by techne, as opposed to theoria. Ignore a work of art in human contemplation and its world of meaning simply abides for the next willing listener; ignore a reflective engagement with work and it descends into meaningless repetition and use. It would seem that this difference between the two serves to enhance the specific exigency of human work—that its demand lies not in responding to necessity but in interpreting necessity according to a greater ontological meaningfulness which art in some sense takes for granted. It would seem only then that anything like work could share in the origin of art.

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Chapter 6

Use and Appropriateness

I would like to draw out, according to its greater ontological significance, how my thesis of work understood as metaphorical applies to the most practical sphere of meaning according to which work is generally identified. This will also serve to link my retrieval of Aristotle’s understanding of poiesis with a more contemporary reflection within the context of Heidegger’s philosophy (which my interpretation of the Aristotelian activities anticipated). In the preceding chapters, the crux of my analysis rested on reversing our perception of the nature of work. Comments on use remained integral to this discussion but also underdeveloped. In this chapter, I would like to show precisely how use is involved in the most significant possible context of meaning. In this sense, my argument here completes the reversal from which, in the next chapter, I can move directly into my claim that work is essentially an act of giving thanks. In other words, it is not until we fully vindicate the most practical meaning associated with work—that is, use— that we are adequately prepared to follow the path that leads to an identification of work with thanking. In his reading of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Heidegger pays particular attention to the Megarian thesis of dunamis, that is, the potential or capacity that comes to be actualized in being through a manner of being-at-work (energeia) (Heidegger 1995a: 143). Aristotle summarizes the Megarian thesis as that in which the unity of being is conceived as presence and therefore cannot be manifest except in terms of being present. Thinking or understanding the being of a thing according to change is excluded from this manner of presence because when a thing changes, it is somehow tainted by nonbeing as it “moves out of one thing into another, is no longer that but not yet this” (Heidegger 1995a: 141). So change, in this sense, cannot constitute the real nature of a thing which is always a unity with itself. Change, to the contrary, must be something that arises and passes away as unrelated to the unity of a thing. A thing persists in its being, not in its coming to be through change. Change, in this respect, is identified with kinesis, or movement.

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Earlier, in Chapter 4, I discussed kinesis in relation to temporal duration, choosing to interpret it as describing activity that arises through a temporal unfoldment—for example, house-building. Herein, the ontological significance of kinesis emerges more directly— does change and movement participate in a thing’s being? What is crucial in understanding the relation between potential and movement (dunamis kata kinesis) is how potential comes to be enacted in movement. The enacting of the potential is a change in how a being persists. Therefore, according to the Megarian thesis, dunamis kata kinesis does not affect a thing’s being but its existence. Movement is only constituent of a thing’s existence and not, as we would say today, its essence (Heidegger 1995a: 144). Dunamis kata kinesis may have factical existence in its movement and its enactment, but it is nothing essential since a thing can be deprived of a potency yet still be; or more substantially rendered, a thing’s being is actual, is always being, and is not potential. For the metaphysics of presence, which apprehends beings only as static entities and not in their manner of being, movement, becoming, and change constitute its enemies. Thus arises the full weight of the translation of dunamis as potential: as potential it is nothing actual in any substantial sense. Its “actuality” is momentary, and whatever is potential does not persist except in its moment of being enacted. This poses a difficulty for understanding dunamis since it suggests that a capability or potential is only actual when it is enacted or at work and never at any other point; otherwise, potential would be actual in a more complete sense and the two would be identical to one another (Meta 1047a10–20). Thus, the Megarians, according to Aristotle, see dunamis to mean that “a thing only has potency (dumasthai) when it functions, and that when it is not functioning it has no potency” (Meta 1046b29–30).1 The Megarians refer to the example of a house-builder whose dunamis as a house-builder is only present when actually building a house. Where does this potential go when not building houses? How can it be said to arise repeatedly as the same techne if it is only present when being-at-work in building? For both Aristotle and Heidegger, this aporia gives rise to an alternative understanding of dunamis wherein the capacity of doing something can be present in some way when one is not involved in its corresponding activity. One can speak of the capacity of the house-builder who retains the capacity to build houses according to the appropriate techne without having to be engaged in house-building. Whether resting or performing some other kind of work, one would be hard-pressed to say that the house-builder is no longer a house-builder simply because he or she is doing something other than building a house. Heidegger is therefore keen to point out Aristotle’s

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radical contribution in which he recognizes how dunamis is present in being without necessarily requiring one to be at work: The intent of the Aristotelian refutation is not just to show that the actuality of a capability does not lie in its enactment, but rather he basically wants at the same time to demonstrate that the Megarians posit actuality in this only because they are not capable of adequately comprehending the essence of enactment itself. (1995a: 163) To phrase this in the language of today’s philosophical dichotomies, one can say that the Megarians misunderstand dunamis as potential because they do not understand the nature of essence. Within this misunderstanding, the existence/essence dichotomy is interpreted to be exclusive and categorically distinct. To the contrary, Heidegger emphasizes the ontological significance of Aristotle’s understanding: potentiality (dunamis) and actuality (energeia) are simultaneous and mutual and therefore not open to categorical distinction. Aristotle, according to Heidegger, observes that dunamis names a disposition (hexis) in which a capacity is held back when one is not engaged in action. Furthermore, this “holding itself back” is simultaneously a “holding onto” the capacity for the sake of future action (Heidegger 1995a: 157). Holding onto a capacity means not only the ability to recall the technical aspects of a craft (cf. Gadamer 1989b: 317) but also a manner of vision in which its techne can be held in view of larger concerns. Ontologically rendered, this means that dunamis is a mode of practice in which the mutual poles of action and holding back are together a mode of disclosing and affirming within oneself what is understood to be practiced (Heidegger 1995a: 158). So when a dunamis is not actually being practiced, it nonetheless can be said to still persist in its holding back. How, though, is it held back? The answer to this lies in what we have already witnessed in the unity of the three modes of disclosing truth—theoria, praxis, poiesis. When it is not literally at work, the knowledge informing poetic activity (i.e., techne) is held back and in dialogue with the praxical and theoretical modes of understanding so that it is continually shaped by ontological interpretations of the meaning of being, or what was referred to above as the realm of the for-the-sake of future action. As I discussed earlier, this dimension of praxis is tied also to the theoretical since theoria characterizes the general open receptivity to being as such. It is precisely this ontological distinction in understanding dunamis that interests me in turning to a reinterpretation of the nature of work. The

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question of dunamis appears here as the question of work par excellence since it asks how an activity we might normally see as present only in its act (beingat-work) might have its nature also constituted by something other than its immediate enactment. Within a larger theoretical context, what is at stake here is not simply the nature of the concept dunamis but the entire philosophical disposition toward the realm of productive action. Thus while Aristotle’s discussion of dunamis occurs at the universal level of concepts, his reference to an activity of work (i.e., house-building) is not incidental. It has a lofty aim that sets itself against a formidable inertia: apart from the unity of the One, human action appears to participate in the realm of becoming. It has no real part in the metaphysics of the One since work strives to render that which it does not possess. And it is therefore consistent to say that the kind of knowledge involved in productive action (techne) must resemble this incomplete (ateles) nature insofar as it is only present when the human agent is acting from this knowledge. The Megarian thesis is, in this respect, representative of the metaphysical tradition that favors a static oneness over becoming (cf. Brogan 2005: 57–109). It also figures central to the Protestant ethic that reduces work to the secular realm apart from the divine grace, eventually giving rise to a secular philosophy of work legitimating itself according to a reduction to the human subject. Without an unbroken relation to a principle or origin, work takes the form of a selfactualizing practice whose attitude, as we saw earlier with Marx, is a nihilation of the other beings and the world. Hence instead of engaging with the One, these two tendencies insist on an immovable gap, the former in the name of God’s radical transcendence and the latter under the project of becoming conscious of material necessity through self-actualization. Especially for Marx, the question of work is no longer one of work per se (as deed, activity, and artifact) but of labor, that is, the self-willing activity of the human being as master craftsman/producer (cf. Sheehan 1993: 88–9). Yet through his engagement with the Megarians, Aristotle intends to argue how productive action participates in being. The actuality of work, its energeia, is not only a manner of being-at-work or being present in a work, as in the instance of the Megarian house-builder, but also a manner of not-being-at-work. For Heidegger (1995a: 161–5), this suggests that in Aristotle’s thinking dunamis and energeia are not opposed to one another. Brogan summarizes, Against a long tradition, Heidegger is attempting to defend the claim that potentiality is not just an accidental feature belonging to beings. It is

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not a force that just happens to belong to the being, but is their way of being. (2005: 112) Deriving from this project is the thesis that work is no longer a denigrated activity simply contributing to the fulfillment of moments of metabolism that succeed in time. One can say that Aristotle sees the being of work as being defined by the mode of not-being-at-work. Why? Because it is in the negative mode, that is, the absence (steresis) of work, where productive action is interpreted according to the concerns of theoria and praxis—the divine and ethical modes of understanding. To put this in another way, while not-being-at-work, the question concerning the nature of work is interiorized according to deliberative concerns and then projected in terms of a possibility of being. Work is a capacity to do as well as a potential that, when not active, becomes conscious of its relation to its overall comportment to being. Thus when we speak of the necessity of work, we often have in mind the application of work to specific and practical ends; yet we find that in having to think about work within an extended temporal framework, such as the whole of one’s life, these specific ends are interpreted with a view to something other than immediate fulfillment. The ontological reading of dunamis2 allows for this twofold intentionality of work in which there is an irreducible immediacy to the enactment of a capacity of techne to complete a task and a reflective comportment which views such tasks in relation to the possibility of being. This latter dimension will have to be drawn out in terms of the individual relation to being and the possibility of being itself, but for now let us note that when a capacity is not actualized—for example, when one is at rest—this mode of not doing allows for an interpretation of the relation between the capacity to do and the question of how to be, something that Ricoeur brings to our attention as noted earlier (1992: 178–9). Furthermore, if dunamis is at the same time a capacity to do and a capacity that is oriented by one’s overall comportment to being, then its twofold nature is directly related to the two levels of the necessary and the metaphorical that constitute work itself. The actualization of a capacity of work is directed at necessary ends while the larger understanding of the possibility of being informs the meaningfulness of human activity as such. The dilemma of ontology, at least within a Heideggerian understanding, is not in choosing one over the other but in being able to think the two together. What makes this possible for Heidegger is the richness of the ontological constituency of use. Use, as we will see, occurs because it mediates between necessity and a meaning beyond it.

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Use and Order The depth of Heidegger’s notion of use is partly contained in his essays on early Greek thinking, in particular his interpretation of Anaximander’s fragment. Following the historical trajectory from Anaximander, what is evinced in this fragment will come to full reflection in Aristotle when he understands ethical deliberation as a form of practice. Anaximander’s fragment, nonetheless, has the advantage of presenting the radical turn proposed since Heidegger shows the inadequacy of the traditional commentary that reads the fragment as a reduction of nature to a necessary process of generation and decay. For this reason, I will not only be engaged with Heidegger’s discussion of the fragment but also involved in using the fragment as a centerpiece of analysis through which I will relate various aspects of Heidegger’s radical proposals. The Hermann Diels translation of the fragment runs, “But where things have their origin, there too their passing away occurs according to necessity; for they pay recompense and penalty to one another for their recklessness, according to firmly established time” (Heidegger 1984: 13).3 Taken superficially, this fragment seems to be an observation of how time is related to the decay of things which return to their origin, or base elements. Hence, Simplicius reads the fragment as a poetic, but nonetheless scientific, exposition of how different elements constitute the origin of all things into which, by necessity, these things return.4 Heidegger, however and as he is notorious for, reads the fragment “ontologically.” True to his understanding of historical retrieval and interpretive appropriation, Heidegger does not offer a more accurate translation of the fragment according to philological standards but a translation that brings two features to the foreground of reflection: first, the recognition and the questioning of our own suppositions that go into interpreting the fragment; and second, following from this exposure, how the possibility of a new meaning can arise that allows the essence of the thought in the fragment to disclose itself and transform the way in which we understand being. Thus Heidegger can say of the act of interpreting and appropriating philosophical sources, The situation of the interpretation, of the understanding appropriation of the past, is always the situation of a living present. . . . The past opens itself only according to the resoluteness and force of the ability-to-layopen which a present has available to it. (1992d: 358) Without retracing the arduous path by which Heidegger arrives at his own translation of Anaximander’s fragment, I will provide his translation

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first and then discuss the significant changes and insights behind them. Heidegger offers, “But that from which things arise also gives rise to their passing away along the lines of usage; for they let order and thereby also reck belong to one another (in the surmounting) of disorder” (1984: 40–58).5 The first significant change is the removal of the phrase “according to necessity,” taken from the Greek kata to chreon. Heidegger sees in the Greek the need to translate the phrase according to the word chre, that is, use. Hence, he writes “along the lines of usage” when translating this phrase. “Chreon is derived from chrao, chraomai. It suggests he cheir, the hand; chrao means: I get involved with something, I reach for it, extend my hand to it” (1984: 51—Greek transliterated). From this, Heidegger asserts that this handing over is not an imperative, of “what ‘must be’” (1984: 52; cf. 1968: 186–7). This ability to extend the hand is reliant on a more primordial relation. “To use,” says Heidegger (1984: 53), is to allow something to come into fruition. Indeed, elsewhere Heidegger (1968: 190–2) says chre (use) is safe-keeping since it allows something to lie before one and emerge. This fuller understanding of use moves beyond mere utility, for it sees the nature of usage as a manner of affirming, practicing, and actualizing a manner of being-in-the-world. As such, it relates to beings and discloses them in a certain way that only the hand can do through its touch and gesture. It is precisely the human touch that therefore originarily defines the relation of use to beings as one of care and safe-keeping. Use, in this sense, should be contrasted with the inadequate notion of techne as simply know-how. For Heidegger, techne is not just knowledge of how to do something but a knowledge that discloses truth: “what is decisive in techne- does not lie at all in making and manipulating nor in the using of means, but rather in the aforementioned revealing [as a mode of truth]” (1977: 13). The unique nature of techne is that it discloses the world in terms of lived structures and things. What constitutes a fallen understanding of techne (e.g., technology) is therefore derivative of fallen modes of use in which things fashioned by expert, technical knowledge are merely manipulable objects for the ends the technical knowledge takes into consideration in its making. This culminates in the standing-reserve (Bestand) in which beings as mere entities are “ordered to stand by, to be immediately at hand, indeed to stand there just so that [they] may be on call for a further ordering” (Heidegger 1977: 17). Nonetheless, wherever use is concerned, there is only (not always) the possibility of its reduction to serviceability and utility. So it would appear there is at least a double possibility of use that corresponds to the mode of being of Dasein. The fallen and inauthentic mode is one in which use is nonreflective of its involvement, seeing things purely in terms of their physical attributes and accidents (res extensa) so they can be

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manipulated by us (Heidegger 1971: 21–2, 31). The second is a mode that apprehends the ontological depth to things in general, as in Heidegger’s examples of the gathering bridge (1971: 152–4), the visage of Apollo (1998: 58), and the gifting nature of the jug (1971: 172–4). Clearly in the former way of interpreting things, what is involved is an unreflective process of declaring that things are accessible through certain attributes (Heidegger 1996a: H90) while at the same time not noticing that such attributes are recognized as “value predicates” that presuppose an interpretation of the meaning of being, which in this case is purely instrumental (Heidegger 1996a: H98–9). The latter mode of interpretation, while making no claims to a pure objectivity, attempts to open human understanding to an encounter with things and how they disclose themselves. Use of objects is not simple serviceability or instrumental application but an involvement with things in view of what the interaction of human understanding and the use of things reveals. Heidegger refers to this interaction as a “belonging together” (das Zusammengehören) (1969: 30) which suggests that the nature of this togetherness is a response to being. Far more than simply being a commitment to immediate application, use is an ontological event of declaring how an interpretation of being gives rise to relation, or one’s manner of beingin-the-world and being-with things. Heidegger comments, “To ‘belong’ here still means to be in the order of Being . . . . Man is essentially this relationship of responding to Being” (1969: 31—emphasis in original). The reference to “the order of Being” is not gratuitous as there is the suggestion that the nature of being is constituted by an order according to which things come to be and pass away. Order necessarily means an appropriateness, or harmony, in and to which humans respond. Use, in this respect and as Heidegger goes on to show in Anaximander’s fragment, involves the relation of chreon to dike (1984: 43). Use, in other words, is coemergent with the order of the cosmos. The primordial fruition of being that comes to presence in use is intrinsic to the cosmos as order. Heidegger summarises this pithily as “Order is kata to chreon” (1984: 49— Greek transliterated), that is to say, order follows along the lines of usage. Using, thought of in this way, is no longer, is never the effect of man’s doing. But conversely, all mortal doing belongs within the realm in which the chre makes its appeal. Using commends the used thing to its own nature and essence. (Heidegger 1968: 196; cf. 187, 191) If order is integral to use, then what follows is that appropriate use will render proportionate consequences according to this order. Likewise, misuse

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(whatever this may be) will render tragic consequences. MacIntyre provides a concise observation of the ancient Greek cosmology when saying, “The cosmic order can be transgressed, but the consequences of transgression are themselves signs of that same order” (1988: 23). Yet order is nothing merely formal as a static framework lacking any other significance than its ability to provide structure. The ordering is the form in which being is temporalized and historicized—that is, in which truth manifests according to time.

Use, Appropriateness, Destiny If one might attempt to summarize the significance of order in post-Cartesian metaphysical thought, what is noticeable is that order is determined by the human subject. Even prior to Kant’s Copernican revolution, in which the objects conform to the human faculty of intuition (1929: Bxvi–xvii), there is the decision to place the ordering of entities and objects under the project of epistemology. Order is defined in advance according to the scope and limits of human knowledge and not as a quality inhering in the nature of reality itself. In this vein, order derives from the recognition of subjective rules and criteria that correspondingly delineate being, not in terms of selfunderstanding but in terms of volition “in conformity with a rule” of necessary or natural origin (Ricoeur 2005: 53—italics omitted).6 This is because if reality itself has no inherent meaning, its determination must be subjected to specific epistemological values that impose, inform, and make intelligible the opposite world of sensations and impressions. Whether this volition is motivated by the passions or by rational categories, order is nothing more than the human projection of value into being. It is on this reading of the nihilism inherent to metaphysics that Heidegger states the notion of giving value is an act of imposing order: “Every valuing, even where it values positively, is a subjectivizing. It does not let beings: be. Rather, valuing lets beings: be valid—solely as the objects of its doing” (1993b: 251). How then does Heidegger contend that there is an understanding of order that lets beings be? Returning to Anaximander’s fragment, Heidegger introduces the term “reck” for Diel’s “paying of recompense.” To have reck is to have regard and care. It denotes the intercommunication between things and human beings, and so the term “recklessness” that appears in the Diels translation (“for they pay recompense and penalty to one another for their recklessness”) conceals the more primordial relation to care that Heidegger observes: to pay penalty for recklessness presupposes a relation between a cosmic order

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and the human use that participates in this order. In this sense, Heidegger’s reading of the fragment is much subtler. If the things used by humans attest to the ordering of the cosmos, then it is by virtue of this use (or misuse) that other things are cared for (reck) and further articulated and actualized in being (Rojcewicz 2006: 136–9). Heidegger’s translation interprets the fragment as an artifact of ancient Greek thinking that does not make a propositional statement about reality but offers an insight into our relation with it. This relation, moreover, is not the ground for a systematic exposition of the science of existence but a provocation in which the meaning of being can be thought. Furthermore, because human use (and misuse) is itself an attestation to the cosmic order, it means that human beings are inextricably linked to the manner of being of the cosmos itself. This link comes to its philosophical expression as dunamis which I referred to earlier in terms of capacity and potential but which Heidegger translates as force. Each translation has its own merits and risks, and force should not be misunderstood as deriving from the will. It refers to the origin, or arche, that gives rise to movement and action (Heidegger 1995a: 57), whereas capacity and potential lack this distinction in suggesting that dunamis is contained in the human subject alone. For example, as rational principle, arche has the force of selfmovement since the principle allows one to recognize the proper aim or end of action (cf. MacIntyre 1988: 156). With dunamis, one can say what is within one’s capacity is there because one understands in advance to some degree what it is that will require enactment. At the same time, the enactment is a form of practice which leads toward technical mastery (Heidegger 1995a: 163–4). In this double movement of understanding and practice, then, human action is not an accidental event within the cosmos, nor simply a repetitive one. Rather, it is transformative. What is missed, nonetheless, is the reliance of this force on the arche, that is, the origin. It is too easy to forget about this origin in looking toward the ways in which human action can transform and attain never-before-reached heights of technical achievement. The origin, precisely because it is the origin, is always there as that which has already given itself so that anything like human action can occur (cf. Heidegger 1977: 31). In this manner, the philosophical link between humans and the cosmos derives from an ontological abundance. Heidegger refers to Dasein’s existentiale as care, that is, as being responsible and indebted to cosmic order that gives prior to any asking and grants despite any refusal. Our relation to this ontological abundance takes shape specifically in the form of narrative understanding in which the enactment of human use and misuse is

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actualized and sedimented as history. What overflows in being and as being cannot help but take shape in terms of a story that is sustained not only by memory but also in being spoken, and thus speaks the relation and nonrelation between others. Perhaps this power is known too well by religion, for the recognition characteristic of religious understanding is how it fills history with the revelation of a destiny that eschatologizes and excludes (Goodchild 2002: 185–91). Heidegger is less committal and seeks to point out the depth of meaning residing in destiny. Indeed, it is clear on what he says about Christianity as a positive science (1998: 43–54) that religion arrives late in being able to see the depth of the relation between use and destiny since it takes up a mode of use according to an existing narrative.7 Alternatively, he sees moira, or what is apportioned out as destiny, as a playing out or presencing of being according to human use: “Apportionment is the dispensation of presencing, as the presencing of what is present, which is gathered in itself and therefore unfolds of itself. Moira is the destining of ‘Being’” (1984: 97). For Heidegger, use and misuse become apparent only in terms of a selfreflection on what has been revealed and the possibility of what this revealed content projects: “In the sending of the destiny of Being, in the extending of time, there becomes manifest a dedication, a delivering over into what is their own, namely of Being as presence and of time as the realm of the open” (1972: 19). The “open” refers to the manner in which human thinking and action opens the world and declares a manner of belonging within and to being. What is destined, in this sense, is that which is consequent upon the manner of human use and how it is seen (cf. Heidegger 1984: 56). But this is not to say Heidegger adopts a consequentialist ontology. To assume that ends can be predicted is itself a mode of technological enframing, and so what Heidegger wishes to highlight is the ontological moment in which an appropriate human response can be made. This, of course, is the praxical mode of being for Dasein that attunes itself according to the kairological recognition of the fullness of time in which “the for-the-sake-of” (hou heneka, das Worumwillen) is apprehended. Thus, it cannot be overemphasized that appropriate response refers to an ultimately hermeneutical ground upon which the recognition of what is appropriate stands prior to any categorical or propositional statement. This is why the danger inhering in decision, or the concealing nature of truth, is to be heeded as much as the horizon of possibility at which the human being naturally gazes. As Heidegger’s well-known quotation of Friedrich Hölderlin’s poem runs, “But where danger is, grows/The saving power also” (1977: 28). Would it be too presumptuous to make the step from an ontology of use as discussed above to a correlative determination of the hermeneutical

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nature of work? Heidegger finds that the activity of work is permeated with care and appropriateness: “The care which belongs to production unites precisely . . . holding to the right path and avoiding going off track and awry” (1995a: 130—emphasis in original). Here, the designation of work as an ontological activity of self-objectification and even self-interpretation falls short, for it remains under the shadow of the subject-oriented epistemology derived from the Copernican reversal announced by Kant.8 Referring to the “ruin of representation” in his critical comments on Kant, Ricoeur (2005: 55) refuses to follow the tradition of understanding the human subject as “the master of meaning” (2005: 27) who subjugates objects according to the will of representing them: “consciousness apprehends itself only as objectified in a representation struck with the seal of necessity and of unity” (2005: 46).9 Similarly, my reflections on use refer to a radical refusal. Obviously this declination takes issue with the reduction of work to necessity, but it also concerns the repudiation of initially and categorically defining the things made by work as artifacts primarily given meaning by humans, or as with Marx, material for the development of material consciousness. The things of work must in some way not only allow care to manifest through our activity of use, as in how we give structure to our socially complex interaction through things, but must also codetermine, along with the human subject, the ontological meaning of this care. In other words, remaining true to Heidegger’s ontology, we must seek a way of elucidation in which we understand how the things of work participate in being and project their own ontological meaning. It would seem, from a historical perspective, a philosophy of work has been calling for this since Marx. This is the force of the refusal.

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Chapter 7

Work, Recognition, and Thanking

An ineluctable course appears to emerge when understanding use as appropriateness. If use is no mere utilization but an actualizing activity that gives or discloses, we find its nature resides in revealing something in a more complete (teleios) way. To use is to actualize into fuller being. I do not think this overtly Aristotelian reading of Heidegger’s conception of use is misguided. The appropriateness that manifests as use cannot simply be for its own sake since this disposition would degenerate into an appropriateness centered on itself. For Heidegger, the telos toward which appropriateness turns is to its origin or source—that is, being (Heidegger 1969: 64–73). While this turn is a return to a groundless ground (Heidegger 1998: 134) and prohibits the identification of an ontotheological source, it contains the seed of a well-known misreading that interprets Heidegger to say that this return is a submission into being (Haar 1993b: 66). Against this confusion, one should note that the return to the origin through appropriateness is constituted for Heidegger by a fuller actualization of being, and this is possible only because the actualizing activity of humans has a pious kind of dedication to being which allows it to abound, complexify, differentiate, and reverberate.1 Use, as appropriateness, therefore takes the course of thanking as the highest comportment of being human because it is a manner of indebtedness that responds to the gift, or givenness, of being. Yet, as I will claim, the relatedness of appropriate use and thanking is not as simple as assuming it. In this chapter, I plan to follow Heidegger’s ontology of thanking by drawing it out in terms of a more hermeneutical structure in which thanking has a definitive bearing on how we can understand work. My reasons for this will become clear in leading up to this transition, and for now I will only mention that I see this decision once again adhering to the hermeneutical project that draws out Heidegger’s ontology. Owing to Ricoeur (2005), I will choose to approach the act of thanking in terms of mutual recognition which clearly defines the relation between two protagonists—giver and

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recipient—but also brings attention to the autonomy of the third crucial participant indicated in our refusal of the Copernican reversal—the thing made in work.

Thanking and Mutual Recognition One could not speak of Heidegger’s understanding of thinking without also including thanking. Here, the appropriateness toward being is fundamentally determined by our response in thinking, that is, in giving thought. Heidegger writes, Real thanks . . . never consists in that we ourselves come bearing gifts, and merely repay gift with gift. Pure thanks is rather that we simply think— think what is really and solely given, what is there to be thought. (1968: 143) This ontology of thanking is present in how human understanding relies on something more fundamental than its own ability to determine, order, and carry through tasks. This reliance on the “other than ourselves” guides the manner in which we dwell with things. Thanking, says Heidegger, “is the gathering of all that concerns us, all that we care for, all that touches us in the sense that it defines and determines our nature, what we care for, we might call contiguous or contact” (1968: 144). Tying this ontological analysis to my previous comments on dunamis, one can see there is a rich relation between the ability, or capacity, to recognize what is given and the act of thanking: dunamis is a holding of oneself in readiness for thanking (cf. Heidegger 1995a: 188), that is, all human capacity is the capacity for thanking. If this capacity resides in work, which Heidegger’s treatment of the Megarian thesis supports, then what attains in the form and figure of a work is a transference of this capacity. And yet this transference is not a direct genetic inheritance that we might isolate in terms of definitive predicates, but known according to how the thing of work presences and stands forth. In informing the thought (eidos) that guides the craft of making, the appropriate nature of use comes to fruition as the thankful quality of a thing that indwells in the thing itself. The work discloses a specific kind of locality unique to it that then gives a certain kind of space for dwelling with it. The ergon, or work, has an energeia, or manner of actively disclosing itself. I will return to this etymological relation later. Heidegger’s well-known examples of the jug, the temple, and the bridge have their truth in their ability to invoke thanks according to their forms

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that invite our participation with them. To recall the jug, in giving thanks, it not only distils a thirst but also illuminates the relation between the spring which dwells in the rock or “the fruit of the vine . . . in which the earth’s nourishment and the sky’s sun are betrothed to one another. In the gift of water, in the gift of wine, sky and earth dwell” (Heidegger 1971: 172), and through the jug and our use of it, we dwell with what it gifts. Even things made according to cost-efficiency have a manner of thanks that pervades its being; such things are appreciated for their profit, at one end, and their bargain, at the other. If it did not, profit-bargain dwelling would not be a readily perceptible comportment of human being which is not only evinced in individuals but also in the emergence of its institutions, such as the outlet store. If humans dwell poetically, then the nature of this poiesis is not neutral but enacts a praxical understanding of how to be. Heidegger writes, Cultivating and caring (colere, cultura) are a kind of building. But man not only cultivates what produces growth out of itself; he also builds in the sense of aedificare, by erecting things that cannot come into being and subsist by growing. Things that are built in this sense include not only buildings but all the works of man’s hands. (1971: 217) In this sense, things that at first appear to us as merely present and there to be had at our disposal are reinterpreted according to a concern that does not possess the things in question but possesses an interpretation of their manner of being. Possession, therefore, is ontological (as opposed to an ontic having of things) because we possess an interpretation that discloses the manner in which things lie before us. For Heidegger, ontological possession is derived from Aristotle’s notion of hexis, or virtuous disposition, where it is through a disposition that one holds oneself in relation to things (Brogan 2005: 144–57). So one can say the heart of ontological possession is not a privative ownership but the disposition that allows one to enact and use things according to an interpretation of how to be, or what in short is ontological usufruct. A revision of use according to the ontological nature of thanking may prove helpful since we might directly revise the ways in which we conceive and practice our ways of using. The gap between appropriate use and thanking is, nevertheless, one that cannot be traversed by simply moving from one concept to the other because this distance requires further clarification of the nature of indebtedness. Failure to reflect on this distance produces a temptation to remain simply content with an ontology of thanking. We could speak of a pietism about work where we dedicate ourselves in thanks with each deed of rendering and use.

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We examined earlier, for example, the twofold nature of use in which appropriate use requires a proper relation to things and determines how things will be made in work. We could have easily (and hastily) substituted the word thankful for “appropriate” in saying that thanking governs use, but this would have neglected the distinct problem of how thanking has become almost impossible to think in our current climate. A simple return to the maxim of thanking without this elucidation produces a subjectivism in which the quality and extent of thanks tends to be measured by internal values without a fuller recognition of the other things with which one is involved. The irony here is that such a subjectivism makes thanking an activity of thanklessness.2 The gap is not insubstantial but the result of a destiny of being in which we are already involved; that is, a destiny in which the immediacy of gift and thanking is displaced to the realm of idealism, possibility (or as with Derrida, impossibility), and archaism. Hence, we know thanking largely as a concept that arrives only through the loss of the “first naiveté” of human understanding in the wake of disenchantment. Critical reflection hopes to provide some beneficial distance through which we encounter, question, and set apart from our own cosmology, for example, the ancient Greek assent to order and beauty that innately constitutes the everlasting cosmos. We can suppose, in other words, that the ancient interpretation must derive from some other intellectual or psychological cause, whether as the lack of a more fully rational mind or as a construction of philosophical terms according to social values, without actually regarding what has been said. Within a preunderstanding that first apprehends nature and the universe as either mechanical or inert, the elaboration of the significance of thanking meets resistance. The critical and suspicious stance, when taken as the final stage of critique, precludes thanking as an ontological feature of dwelling. Its gratis nature encapsulates its irrelevance as something that arises “in addition to,” something which parallels the reduction of the religious and sacred to private spaces. Yet there is no complete oblivion in the passage to modernity, as Dupré (1993) and others have argued. Whatever schism has resulted from the distance between our present situation and our historical sources provokes further examination that must eventually form a link. Distance, as the hermeneutical maxim runs, provokes and provides understanding (cf. Ricoeur 1981: 110–11). So part of making this distance productive is in resisting the pietist drive that not only affirms the subjectivism outlined earlier but also fails to understand how in fact the nature of work is constituted by thanking. Because pietism reduces the things and persons encountered to manipulable objects of thanking—that is, things there to be rendered for the availability of one’s

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giving thanks—the contemplative nature of giving thanks then degenerates into a voluntarism, a-will-to-thanking. This denouement is representative of a reduction common to ethics and theology where the principle meant to instill self-reflection takes the form of an imperative (juridicalism). The principle itself is interpreted to be self-sufficient, not requiring reflection on our part, and so can be elevated to a unilateral maxim. Bound in this manner, thanking approaches a juridical application which, oddly enough, makes gratitude reciprocally necessary. As we will see at the end of this chapter, these problems are very real in attempting to understand how gift and thanks constitute work and yet escape the well-known pressure of brute economic reciprocity. Avoiding this denouement requires an additional step of delineating the relationship between the protagonists (giver and recipient) and the artifact that arises in work. The hermeneutical, as opposed to strictly ontological, nature of thanking then becomes a necessary detour of reflection. To use things is to have a response to them that recognizes both their virtue (excellence) as well as the significance of those beings that stand in relation to them, within the so-called totality of references (Heidegger 1996a: H70–1). This response is not an instrumental action or reaction but is above all rooted in a recognition of what presences—it is a recognizing response. So in work and the use of the things of work is a recognition, that is, an identification, of something with which we take up a specific way of relating. But furthermore, as a way of relation, recognition opens and discloses the meaning of what presences so as to elicit engagement and therefore heighten the relation between things (cf. Heidegger 1998: 222). We can speak here of Heidegger’s example of the jug in terms of what is recognized in its “jugness,” that is, in its being a jug. What is recognized in the jug is precisely the relation of the fruit of the vine to the earth, the offering of wine in relation to the feast, the feast in relation to the guests and its occasion for celebration. One can no longer only reduce intentional modes of being to the standpoint of the human subject since what occurs at this level of interrelation is a recognizing response that acknowledges the desire of another through the thing of work. Things are not merely physically extant but open the community of human being. What arises through the work, in this sense, is the desire of another to be acknowledged in some manner. Desire should be understood here in the ontological sense of movement, or an ontologically “compelling need” (Heidegger 2008: 99), that further illuminates a manner of being. It is a wish in view of a lack, absence, or privation which can be fulfilled only through the acknowledgment of another. It is not reducible to a psychological motive, since it does not arise from the

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self, but is a feature inherent to the movement within being as such that seeks fuller comprehension through sight, greater articulation through language, more complete presence through listening, and that therefore must be constituent of the very disclosure of to be. (In this sense, desire is presupposed by a psychological motive that is already directed to things as objects of personal intention that arise through the project of understanding, that is, the question of the meaning of being.) For Heidegger, this lack is what constitutes the play of being, its movement as such, since, as Brogan observes, being withdraws in order to “grant to beings their way of being” (2005: 108). Thus, understood in relation to movement (kinesis), dunamis is a capacity in which the desire and the wish, in this ontological sense, come to be fulfilled in movement toward things. What is held back when dunamis is not active is the readiness to initiate this movement and de-distancing of things when the moment is appropriate. Things of work are therefore participants in this movement since they are used ontologically as the means of enactment. Yet we should say more than simply that the thing of work allows a recognizing response of the other or is simply a means of recognition; it also bears on it and determines it. Its allowing act proffers. Ricoeur highlights the significance of recognition in terms of its active and passive modes of meaning. To recognize is to actively identify in terms of grasping, expressing, and above all, distinguishing true from false, one thing from another, and so on (Ricoeur 2005: 25). We can speak in this sense of the phenomenology of being where care describes how it relates to things but can equally speak of the epistemological project of a theory of knowledge that attempts to establish the grounds for necessary and sufficient conditions of knowing (recognizing what is true). The human subject enacts this kind of recognition, as Ricoeur has pointed out, according to three distinct strands. There is narrative identity in which the protagonists stand in relation to one another through emplottment (Ricoeur 2005: 99–104). In narrative understanding, one recognizes oneself and others through their involvement in the “what” of narration. I recognize a villain through his action of deception (or an act that exposes his intention to deceive) or an ally through her affinity with a common aim or concern. Second, there are acts of the memory and promising in which recognition of the past and future arises through a fidelity in which others besides myself depend on “my word” (Ricoeur 2005: 134). Political memory survives on the basis of those who can remember or, more extremely, are allowed to remember past events especially where no written word exists. And even where textual evidence provides a trace, our memory of the past

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is a recognition arriving only through how we interpret such texts, that is, how we put into words the words of others. With historical understanding, the past is never finally known, never finally excavated (cf. Williams 1993: 11–20). Finally, there is the collective of social practices in which institutions form a public level of recognition of its citizens through the definition of capacities, roles, liberties, restrictions (Ricoeur 2005: 139–46),3 and indeed as I will address in the next chapter, our sense of vocation (cf. Milbank 2003: 184–6). Dramatic distinctions between the coerced State, Augustine’s City of God, and communalism constitute a collective network of institutions (e.g., the bureaucracy, the Church, the family) in which we recognize ourselves and others. The institutional framework of genealogy, as Ricoeur highlights (2005: 192–6), features one’s name that is given at birth as the gift of a lineage in which one recognizes oneself not only as the entity “I am” but also according to an origin prior to my birth and the possibilities that this lineage allows. Given this sketch, one can say the active meaning of recognition moves outward toward things in attempting to understand the relation of things to the human subject, but it does not yet take up the self-reflexive nature of this relation where things speak or shine forth (phainomena). To be recognized, on the other hand, is the passive mode in which one desires to be known through a mutual relation (Ricoeur 2005: 19). It is a desire that arises in view of another and presupposes the outward act of identification or lack of identification from another being. Here there is a symmetry between the desire to be recognized and the active sense of recognition through narrative, memory, and institution. The passive desire is but the extension of the desire to be in which the affirmation of “I am” stands within the gaze or speaking of another. Thus, to say “I am that” is to seek a kind of recognition in which one is in some way “that.” This can be contrasted with the apotheosis of the phrase in sacred-symbolic language where the affirmation of Yahweh, “I am that I am,” serves as the origin and motivator of recognition. Here the “desire” to be acknowledged takes the form of grace, or agape, that overflows according to the self-sustaining divine act and yet also has another effect. Because it overflows, in the symbolic language it descends without any reliance on human agency though it in fact elicits our response. Even the jealous God is one whose love descends and requires a response. His jealousy is the countenance, as Ricoeur explains, viewed from within the fragility and uncertainty of our human existence in which deciding well is difficult and never straightforward. Jealousy is the reaction to error, ignorance, and oblivion. Without this reciprocal

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structure, the symbolic meaning of redemption would be empty because there would only be a status-quo. Thus, human existence has as its distinct exististentiale a movement into understanding this love that requires an appropriate response to it (Ricoeur 1967b: 63–70). This response is, to be sure, an act of recognition of the divine passive desire to be recognized that subsequently defines other relations. At the very least, this symbolic narrative of affirmation and recognition reveals the interconnection between things and how with the sudden light of recognition, a metaphor carried by the Platonic description of sunlight and seeing, forms the invisible bond between the protagonists. Let us be clear that such a bond is not the result of the active recognizing act alone but also the passive side of the other who wants to be recognized, as for example, in the love arising in friendship that can only be affirmed in a mutual belonging together (Ricoeur 2005: 190) or in jurisprudence where one is the subject recognized by the law, duties, and responsibilities to which all within a society are expected to abide (Ricoeur 2005: 197–8). The expectation involved in the legislation of a law is a recognition of the individual’s desire to be acknowledged as a citizen, that is, a member of a community. Gadamer’s placement of “the exemplary significance of legal hermeneutics” (1989b: 324) in the context of self-understanding presupposes in the capacity of the law the ability to recognize the members of the community through the retrieving and interpreting act of the legal hermeneut. This act is not simply an application but the recognition of “a valid meaning” of the law (1989b: 328) that provides a continuity in which mutuality between citizens can be actualized. Following this course of mutual recognition, it would seem that all along our problem with a philosophy of work has been one of recognizing mutuality itself as a decisive feature of its nature since necessity and utility preclude the acknowledgement of beings according to their own manner of disclosure. Why is there an obstacle in relating together the themes of use, work, appropriateness, and thanking? Does the recognition of the significance of mutuality require a change, a metanoia? Yes. In Ricoeur’s words, we “make the transition from a sense of recognition that is still a recognition for—a kind of identification—to that of mutual recognition” (2005: 230—emphasis in original). Owing to Ricoeur’s clarification we can ask “should the things fashioned by work remain outside this moment of mutual recognition?” And if they are included, would they merely be things over which this recognition rules? Or, is there not something more to the thing of work than its role as a vehicle of thanksgiving? What, in other words, does the gift of the work instantiate for the giver and recipient?

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Work: Mutual Recognition and Thanking My thesis in this section is comprised of two parts. First, according to hermeneutics we are already acquainted with the protagonists in this mutual recognition—being and human beings—that occurs through the retrieving and interpreting act in view of the horizon of the meaning of being. This mutuality, however, is not simply between the protagonists of being and human beings but requires the things fashioned in work as the medium through which this mutuality manifests. What can be misleading in speaking of mutuality is the notion that two protagonists can face one another directly and that the realm of given objects is merely an adjunct or byproduct. This illusion of mutuality, in excluding the thing, is akin to the Cartesian wish for the Archimedean point of reflection—it vanishes with every act of seeing. Second, we have already discussed in one sense how work gives locality and place to the bareness of primordial being and how the act of work is a response to being. In other words, the act of work is by its nature an act of recognition of the ontological generosity that has been given by being. This would suggest that work has a hermeneutical nature precisely because as a work it offers an interpretation as its distinct manner of being. Moreover, this offering is not neutral or there to be filled in by the recipient of the work. As works made with a use in mind, their use is an offering that gives rise to, or proffers, a specific relation to other beings. Works actualize the reality of our being-in-the-world by suggesting or projecting a way of dwelling within the world. They are not simply vehicles, tools, instruments, or byproducts of a more original act of labor, but according to their use they open possibilities of being. Let me therefore magnify this quality of work in proposing that works constitute this reality and reveal it as the reality that could only be known through them. Heidegger brings this to our attention in observing that techne enframes (1977: 19–21), but what is not fully expressed is that the things of work are what proffer the very actuality of the enframing.4 They presence. This is why work makes, fabricates, produces, sediments, and lasts. If the constructive nature of work had no genuine ontological power of transformation, it would be merely reproductive, and we should speak of a reality beyond work which it could never attain. Hence, the thanking nature of work manifests superlatively through its things as the countergift in which the disclosure of meaning perdures and is given a specific kind of locality (difference). I say “perdure” because meaning continues to exist and change through the various ways in which we come to use and be involved in works; this is opposed to “endure” which means to

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exist in the same state and does not take heed of the ontological process of change through revealing and concealing (cf. Heidegger 1969: 67). In summary of this two-part thesis, the work appears as both the medium and the meaning of mutual recognition. As the medium, it allows the recognition between the protagonists to occur; as the meaning, the specific nature of the work is to disclose a meaningfulness which determines the course in which recognition takes place. Ricoeur (2005: 232) in this manner speaks of a double sense of recognition in which one recognizes the very gesture of giving that is mediated by the gift and the identification of the relation mediated by a third item, or what in other words, is a meaning transcendent to the protagonists. My earlier distinction between form and figure employed in understanding the metaphorical nature of work comes to fruition in this relation to mutual recognition. If the literal and necessary aspect of work, identifiable in terms of its formative activity, provides the things by which we come to know the world, others, and ourselves, then its nonliteral and supranecessary aspect, impressed upon us as the figurative dimension of meaning, is the decisive feature by which the object of work gives a greater ontological significance to our course of recognition. Can we not say that the figurative dimension affects the way in which we gaze at others, including being itself? The figurative projects itself as a work, and in facing a work, we then are able to receive its address. We therefore never have a simple and direct gaze of the other, as if at a ground zero of perception. Mutual recognition requires a third object that instantiates and affirms the bond or jointure between the two protagonists. The richness of this relation between work, being, and human beings is contained in the Greek notion of work/deed as ergon where ergon is the work that stands forth in actuality (energeia). A work therefore has its manner of presencing and revealing as its “having been produced” (Heidegger 1995a: 154—italics omitted; cf. 1977: 160). Accordingly, for Heidegger the work calls to us because its form allows it to “say” being. This saying is not empty but like human speech is directed to someone about something. As a work, it stands there in being and therefore presences to us a possibility of being. Perhaps nothing is more apt at illustrating this than the work of the house. What is provided for us in terms of houses, for example, presence or “say” a specific mode of dwelling. In a city such as London, where many different styles and periods of architecture perdure, one can see different comportments to existence—for example, what is recognized as communal space, how it is situated in relation to the hearth, and what figures as private space and whether or not it is self-contained. The common halls of

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Medieval homes are in this sense the heart of the home that gives locality to the conviviality of relations between family members, guests, and their recognition of each other. Is this common room merely a space? Or, is it determined above all by an understanding of use in which the hearth is central. The hearth, in this respect, gives the space and time of the room (Heidegger 1971: 156–8; cf. 2008: 103–4). It mediates meaning as a communion of family and guests. Seeing the work as a third object of mediation, we then move away from reifying the work as merely a vehicle of the transforming consciousness— that is, as the vehicles of our own representations. If what I have suggested is true, then one cannot subsume the work within an ideality of the “I am” since as a being, as a thing that has arisen from an interpretation of the meaning of being, a work projects a certain relation to the things it brings together. It arrives in the wake of the donation of being that drives, through its various trajectories of identity, willing, desire, love, necessity, sacrifice, suffering, and homecoming, the response to be. It is true to say that works have their being only as a result of the human action that sets itself to work in making things, but this event does not necessarily constitute the work’s essential being. Akin to the autonomy of a text, can we not now speak of work as having an autonomous being by virtue of the initial eidos that gave rise to its actuality? Furthermore, as my remarks on dunamis indicated, is it not true that this actuality is constantly refigured in terms of the work’s capacity to be used according to the appropriate response it elicits in relation to new situations and questions? A work’s actuality may be in standing there as a thing, in being. But this is not to say as well that its actuality is fixed according to one use that, in the end, is synonymous with its form. I am not here speaking of multiple instrumental uses but of the way in which a thing of work opens new relations from itself. The idea of multiple uses seems too close to a profane imposition of the human will, akin to Aristotle’s example of the vulgarity involved in the Delphian knife. I am referring to the very force (dunamis) of the thing itself that invites us to participate in new possibilities of being-in-the-world, possibilities that nevertheless arise from and are contiguous to the preunderstanding that has led us to encounter any one work. We therefore need not find an epistemological point of beginning for this relation, and can speak hermeneutically of a world of work already in being and continuously transforming. Odysseus’ bow is, in this respect, not just a work for war or hunting but one whose use is intimately tied to the social roles set within an understanding of the just social relations of which MacIntyre speaks (1988: 12–29; cf. Williams 1993: 75–102). Thus when Odysseus strings the bow there is a

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moment that requires recognizing the bow itself as something that can fulfill a destiny. Odysseus, Homer tells us, turns the bow “all up and down,” testing it for worms who may have eaten the horn (XXI. 394–5). More specifically, we are told that this recognition is a manner of redeeming what has gone by in “the master’s absence” (XXI. 395). So the bow is a work that ties together the bonds between Odysseus and Penelope, his relation to his son Telemachos who dwells in the reputation of his father, and the wellbeing of the kingdom while Odysseus has been far away. The symbolic meaning of distance, with respect to relations and destinies of characters, comes to a culminating point in the moment Odysseus picks up the bow. According to the “arrow of meaning” that has been driving the narrative, the bow’s manner of standing-there, or ek-sisting to use Heidegger’s word, announces another appropriateness that we ourselves recognize symbolically as homecoming and whose symmetrical side is the exile and death of the suitors. This moment, that is made possible only by the work of the bow, comes into being when Homer sings, “A great sorrow fell now upon the suitors, and all their color was changed, and Zeus showing forth his portents thundered mightily” (XXI. 412–13). Following upon this moment is Odysseus’ own recognition of divine favor, the winning of the competition, and the speaking to his son. This speaking to Telemachos extends the course of recognition, for it is his son who grasps firmly and securely his own spear which, as Homer is sure to tell us in Book I (125–44), symbolized a legacy he was not ready to assume.5 Although one cannot speak of the infinite use of finite means, as with language (Ricoeur 1991: 66), there is certainly a horizon innate to a work that illuminates a vast range of possible meaning in which things can be known for the first time or anew. How many times are we brought back to reflect upon an excellent work only after using it—the pen that seems to facilitate thought as well as writing, the lamp that casts light discriminately and softly in a way that warms the room, the mug that restores to drinking tea or coffee a sense of ritual and deliberateness? Work produces things that structure and mediate our relation and also grant a specific light in which these relations are understood. Can one not say in this sense that work, in giving objects, donates an understanding through its ability to enframe? If so, then we arrive at a decisive break from the instrumental: the donative nature of the work lies in how it allows and affirms mutual relation itself. True, the thing of work remains invisible in the word mutual. Where is it? According to Heidegger, it is transparent only because it has disappeared in the prevalence of our involvement in being (Heidegger 1971: 65;

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1996a: H69). The hammer disappears in our hammering. The cane disappears in our being able to walk. Our use at once declares the relevance of things yet conceals them, not because we have neglected them out of any deliberate decision but because, by virtue of their force (dunamis), the things of work disclose a meaningful horizon and end that outshines the immediacy of the thing itself. Or, as Heidegger would say (1969: 64), being is overwhelming (Überkommnis). We can say the thing disappears because it illuminates and draws our concern elsewhere. It accounts for something in order that we may account for other things; the thing of work seems to grant to us this reflective freedom and the extension of relation to other things. This would seem to be contained in the metaphor of “the horizon of understanding” the work reveals and whose end-point illuminates everything around it. Do not the shoes and the cane disclose the world around us in facilitating our walking? In the end, we can say a thing disappears in order to disclose. Yet in this manner of disappearance always seems to lie the possibility of oblivion where we no longer are aware of the thing that proffers the relation. In this event, our relation to mutuality itself disappears. The disappearance, in other words, is interpreted according to our own needs of serviceability which bar the language of thanking. This, in fact, seems to be the onus innate to mutual recognition itself which, by definition, requires an openness foreign to necessity and self-interest. At this moment, a final protest against the reduction of work to necessity can be articulated. This identification of needs with oblivion suggests that the category of necessity is inadequate in describing work because the mutual recognition it allows can only be fostered according to a freeness that grants the occasion of acknowledgment of the other. Mutual recognition, in its genuine sense, cannot be coerced since this would violate the bond of mutuality. This freeness, by virtue of its meaning, is that which necessity cannot provide. If it was necessary, the interrelation between beings would be guided by the terms of simple reciprocity. Furthermore, if we are to equate nature with necessity, we find the human drive is never content with mere necessity and that the work of human beings is the attempt to at once address necessity so that it can liberate it. We therefore find that in the last analysis human work is never simply necessary. Have we covered the gap? Against pietism, the ontological prevalence of the things of work allow us to redescribe the relation between appropriateness and thanking. Appropriateness (or an appropriate understanding) is a disposition (hexis) that is held back (dunamis) and enacted as a way of thanking (energeia) when the moment itself is appropriate. This includes not only the activity of work itself (vis-à-vis Heidegger’s response to the Megarian

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thesis) but also our participation in the world fashioned by work. The willto-thanking, on the contrary, determines these moments in advance, necessarily according to what it takes to be the telos of its will. It acts for-itself. Nonetheless, in saying this, the elevation of work above simple reciprocity immediately squares itself with something integrally related to work’s social being. Let us juxtapose this affirmation of work to the realm of economics which does not operate, at least conventionally thought, from within ontology (cf. Taylor 2007: 176–85). As an ontological feature of the world instantiated in work, thanking would seem to be pitted against the domain of economics in which nothing is given freely but by means of the logic of equivalence and reciprocity. It would appear that ontology remains confined to the domain of idealism and theory, that the interpretation of work I have set forth as thanking is annulled by the economic sphere. And this is to say, it cannot exist.

Work and the Economy of the Gift There can be no doubt that a philosophy of work is intimately tied to questions concerning economic practice, particularly because economics is the structure of relations in which work flourishes (or deteriorates). Work is not simply isolated activity but requires exchange, and this exchange is not merely socioeconomic, but as I have indicated, integral to the affirmation of ontological meaning and understanding. If this is true, then economics can be viewed like any other science relating to the human spirit (Geist), that is, as a development of a regional hermeneutics. One could reinvoke the antiquated term “political economy” as the hermeneutics concerned with the relation of the whole of the nature of economics to the particular practice of exchange, distribution, reciprocity, and use. But there seems an enormous gap between political economy and the domain of thanking. Derrida’s refusal to allow any reduction of gift to the economic domain, with its privileging of the principle of reason (equivalence), attempts to safeguard the uniqueness of the gift. But in doing so, it is also a refusal to retrieve necessary activity. Derrida begins from a provocative aporia: the gift, by virtue of being a gift, cannot necessitate any particular action. As Ricoeur succinctly notes, “If the first gesture in giving is one of generosity, then the second, given under the obligation to make some return, annuls the gratuitous nature of the original gift” (2005: 229). Derrida, in this vein, attempts to keep-safe the gift, yet in doing so, he overdetermines its gratis nature: “For there to be a gift, there must be no reciprocity, return, exchange, countergift, or debt . . . . For there to be a gift, it is necessary that the donee

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not give back, amortize, reimburse”; and later, “It is thus necessary, at the limit, that he [the donee] not recognize the gift as gift” (1992: 12–13— emphasis in original). The superlative impossibility he attributes to gift is reacting against an economy of equivalence where encounter and occasion are reduced to simple reciprocation (cf. Derrida 1983). While Derrida’s argument is situated within a critique of commodification and the reduction of things to exchange value (Goodchild 2002: 114–15), he not only misinterprets the nature of gift, as John Milbank has pointed out convincingly (1995; 2003: 156–7), but also, by implication, marginalizes and denigrates work since it is an activity of reciprocation (to needs, to being, etc.). Even as a response to the gift of being, within Derrida’s limitations of exchange work annuls the generosity of what gives. In part, he achieves this in highlighting the nonimmediacy of work in which he seems to say that the “as-structure” of things is really an “as if” (Derrida 2002: 234). While securing a nonobjective reduction of things in which economic exchangeability distorts a thing’s arrival (cf. Derrida 1991: 410), he nonetheless prohibits any concreteness in which we can say work, as a performance, effects both things and, as I have argued, a possibility of being-in-the-world. When speaking of work, Derrida comments, “If what arrives belongs to the horizon of the possible, or even of a possible performative, it does not arrive, it does not happen, in the full sense of the word” (2002: 234). Ricoeur is more ambiguous over the relation between economics and gift. Though providing a crucial link between thanking and everyday human action, he nonetheless maintains a distinction between gift and mutual recognition, on the one hand, and economic reciprocity, on the other hand (Ricoeur 2005: 232–45). This distinction appears to replicate on another level the polarity he establishes between theology, as “economy of the gift,” and philosophy, as the “logic of equivalence” (Ricoeur 1995a: 293–302). Can the two be mutual and not just distinct? This question, which I think Ricoeur by no means prohibits, is hermeneutical insofar as the distinction must persist in order for there to be a response. In other words, if there is a mutuality in which the economy of the gift can be actualized according to daily reciprocal actions in the marketplace, then it is one in which the distinction is not lost. It constitutes a reflective tension that motivates rather than reduces. Hence, if the difference between the nature of gift and work is one of distinction rather than separation, then along with Milbank one can speak of a “purified exchange” (1995: 131). It is neither the giver nor the recipient that finally holds a mediating power over the relation of giving–receiving– returning. Rather, it is the gift itself that transforms the subjectivity of the protagonists because of its disclosive power, or what for Milbank is ultimately

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its divine revelatory power, that reshapes (nonidentically repeats) our selfunderstanding (character) (2003: 203). A proper response to the gift, that I will summarize as an open receptivity, participates in this transformation. To refute this kind of receptivity is not only to prohibit the gift but also to close viciously the hermeneutic circle of understanding. Thus by an open receptivity one understands, at the very least, a willingness to encounter both the gift and one’s own prejudices, and for Milbank this is not possible because of the human will to be open but ultimately because the nature of the gift itself transcends our spatialized determinations and breaks with any familiar status, negotiating with “an unknown other” (2003: 169). So what for Derrida can never be a benevolent exchange in gift-giving is, to the contrary, an event of mutual recognition in which the giver and the recipient are transformed by the gift itself. This recovery of gift constitutes the path that seeks to safeguard the uniqueness of the gift while at the same time maintaining its relation to being-in-the-world. Its radical implication is that if gift is a genuine constituent of being and work, then one should find a public structure derivative of this superabundance. Such a structure will inevitably entail the distributive and reciprocal relations tied to this giving and thus refer to just exchange. Economics concerns one sphere of these relations, and one might therefore be compelled to speak of an economy of the gift in which the gift is no longer held captive by subjective volition but is affirmed as a public way of being together. If I am right in maintaining the relation and distinction between gift and work, then a philosophy of work and a political economy come into view within a mutual and not an antithetical relation. This relation would seem to consist in deriving an economics from an interpretation of a philosophy of work. Or more proper to the original intention of political economy, one can speak of elaborating laws and practices in a deductive fashion from the principles disclosed in an understanding of the nature of work. The nature of work presented in this study presupposes just relations within economics that allow work’s overall bond to the realm of gift to remain intact. However, this philosophy does not clearly indicate how this economics can arise. In a separate study, I plan to explicate the principles of a political economy when interpreted from the philosophy of work that I have set forth. At this point, I would like to turn to a fuller reflection on the significance of mutual recognition between being and human beings and how it effects a differentiation within unity.

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Chapter 8

Vocation: Unity in Differentiation

The concluding argument of this study entails showing how the philosophy of work I have proposed revivifies the concept of vocation since it allows us to see the uniquely personalized quality of work that is integral (and not just incidental) to the way in which being discloses itself. All along my concern has been to show that work is not merely constructivist in the most literal sense of adding things to or within being, according to a hostile division between phusis and techne, but resides within an ontological moment of disclosure. This claim was bolstered with respect to the concept of mutual recognition in which the thing of work resides within an ontology of thanking and gift, offering a bond between the protagonists that allows them to recognize one another according to the specific locality that a work may open. In this chapter, I would like to add to this thesis that a significant qualification that concerns the unique nature of recognition is its personalizing and individuating force. This has specifically to do with the self-reflexive momentum of recognition that, once having occurred, cannot reverse itself except by an act of forgetting (voluntary or involuntary) that eradicates memory from a private or public record. Recognition, in other words, innately has a quality of enhancing the personalized self-understanding. Following this course may seem to be a return to one pole of mutuality, that of the human subject who recognizes and desires to be recognized. But I see this turn really as an afterthought, or perhaps a continuation of the recognition of work, seeking to appreciate how within the mutuality of work, what occurs is not simply a state of mutual appreciation or benefit but a personalizing drive in which mutuality is the milieu where one becomes more oneself. It is work, in this respect, that provides through its world of fabricated things the locality in which one participates in a continuing mode of recognizing oneself, and of course by this, the capacity (dunamis) to recognize others. Through work, one becomes involved in recognition

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par excellence. So one can see here that mutuality as a manner of belongingtogether has also a differentiating and individuating drive. My claim is nothing new but one encapsulated under the notion of vocation. The richness of this concept, nonetheless, has been concealed just as the philosophy of work has been depleted by instrumentalist and technological reduction. So my intent here is to offer a clarification as it follows from my thesis. I should also comment that in establishing the vital link between vocation and the disclosure of being, I do not see what I have to say as adding anything radically new to what Heidegger has already explicated in terms of the call of conscience in Being and Time (§56–7) and what appears later in Identity and Difference in his discussion of the nature of belonging-together between being and beings. Nonetheless, the clarity I am attempting to provide will make the character of mutuality in Heidegger’s ontology teleologically motivated. Elsewhere I have attempted to draw out this teleology latent in Heidegger’s ontology (Mei 2008b), and herein I will assume the conclusions of this analysis as presuppositions so that I may focus specifically on vocation. What are these presuppositions? It should become apparent in my ensuing discussion of unity and difference that I understand this teleology in the broadest ontological sense where its end or purpose is to actualize a more complex unity of being through the differentiation of beings. The telos therefore participates in the activity that is drawn from ahead. Accordingly, it should be made clear that by unity I mean nothing static or transcendent in any radical sense. Unity is a belonging-together through the differentiation of beings. Heidegger’s description of this relation as “vibrating within itself” (1969: 37) suggests that the teleology that calls for differentiation is not simply forward driving, though it must be in some fundamental sense since being temporalizes. Rather, it is more accurate to say the teleological drive is one which moves forward and backward at the same time. We may here recall Heidegger’s invocations of the leap forward that is the step back (e.g., 1969: 64–72; 1972: 30; 1996b: 75). Understanding moves forward in an interpretation of the for-sake-of-which of being while moving backward in an act of retrieving the past. The forward driving motion that pursues the arrow of meaning cannot occur without the hermeneutical moment of appropriation that retrieves the past in order to be (Heidegger 1996a: H391–2). Thus future possibility is one that arises on the basis of how we interpret the past in terms of inheriting knowledge, problems, questions, and presuppositions that need to be clarified, refused, or reinterpreted: “Only because care is grounded in having-been, can Da-sein exist as the thrown being that it is” (Heidegger 1996a: H328).

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My point here is to avoid a common reduction of teleology to a reified, nonreflexive end point since clearly for Heidegger the nature of human understanding becomes open only by means of its historical engagement that recognizes something other to which it is beholden in its thinking (1996a: H391–2). Heidegger’s teleology, on this basis, cannot be thought within the confines of a linear temporality in which the telos is the final point at the end of a sequence of “nows” (cf. 1993a: 103). The ecstasies of time (past, present, future) characterize the end, or the for-the-sake-of, as one that is constantly reinvoked by virtue of the temporality that being is. This is the reflective burden of finitude which, in apprehending an end, can only realize it through constant ontological movement that never finally arrives there: “It [Da-sein’s] finitude does not primarily mean a stopping [at an end], but is characteristic of temporalizing itself” (Heidegger 1996a: H330). Inherent to being is its actualization through its own movement. With respect to human understanding, this self-reflexive actualizing is integral to the structure of care (Heidegger 1996a: H323–31) and to what I have also argued in the way of the kind of mutual recognition involved in thanking. Teleological concern that manifests in terms of the reciprocal act of thanking draws human reflection out of itself in order to be. Because of the ontological nature of this teleology, the misunderstanding of telos lies in conceiving it as an end point that one, in this instance, might be tempted to identify as “unity” or “difference,” totality or singularity, rather than as a fulfillment of belonging-together whose end is a recurrence through action and practice. The ontological nature of telos, in direct contrast to an understanding of telos in terms of chronological progression, is a kind of repetition that transforms according to greater degrees of care. This becomes most apparent in vocation itself which joins the project of living, that is apprehended as a concern to be through what one does, with the question of the meaning of being. We never expect the two poles of personal calling and the meaning of being to be ultimately separated; and it is the apprehension of “this one life that is mine” that is actualized in the face of adversity only because the notion of that which unifies effort and decision, perseverance and temperance, affirms what is possible above and beyond possible negation. The coincidence of the primary affirmation of to be and the apprehension of an end (being-toward-an-end) is perhaps better expressed as the coincidence of natality and finitude. The relation between vocation and teleology has its greater significance as a teleological call that draws one ahead, and in drawing one ahead, gives fullness to the present situation in which one lives. In this sense, the ecstasies of time are predicated on a notion of being that calls, or strikes, Dasein

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to live its mode of understanding. My shift here concerns seeing the call from ahead as precisely the call from unity, since we recognize this unity in terms of the horizon that beckons from beyond us and yet gives a sense of locality, depth, and breadth to being. Unity may be “too prior to be possessed, too lived to be known,” vanishing “as soon as it is recognized,” as Ricoeur observes (1965: 194), but this does not mean we are not animated by it. Thus, the horizon bestows the sense of personal dwelling, that is, one’s unique role in which the “I am” seeks its fullest, most personalized articulation. Unity is never present as itself but known through the encounters that become the subject of human reflection and desire. This fleeting yet pervasive quality of unity captures in part what I mean by the belonging-together of unity and difference. It becomes quite clear how human work is a response to unity in terms of differentiating through its projects, not least of all the institutions it builds that allow a collective dwelling together. Here a correlation emerges: the more differentiated, the more unified; the more unified differentiation, the more necessity is freed from the repetition of biological existence and is redeemed under the name of a fundamentally human kind of dwelling. To recall, what instantiates this for Aristotle is the polis (cf. Mei 2009). There is another aim of this chapter I hope, a more general effect distinct from its philosophical meditation on work through the conceptual scheme of unity and difference. Perhaps once again we might be able to speak of work in terms of vocation and that the richness of this word might override and outrun the language of managerial science that attempts to make work, in the most banal sense, a concern for the worker and his or her prospects within the marketplace. My revivification of the word vocation is not merely a semantical shift but one that recognizes that language, in naming things, determines the interrelation between human beings and beings (Taylor 2007: 760; cf. Heidegger 1968: 120). To speak of vocation in this hermeneutical sense (whether it is seen to be hermeneutical or not in our preunderstanding), is to provide a bond between the manner in which we encounter work and the innate question of the meaning of being that resides within it. This is not a final step but is nonetheless a decisive one in which necessity can be transformed by a new locus that I have described along the lines of thanking.

Vocation and Volition Let me express the decision I see to be central to the recovery of vocation. If the human will is no longer adequate as the motivating concept through

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which we can speak of a philosophy of work, then any description of the human involvement in work can no longer assume volition to be its center. The mutuality of recognizing and being recognized, which forms the bonds between the protagonists of work and the things rendered, prohibits defining work as a purely outward action or even an outward action motivated by the internal will. What the reduction to the self-willing will tragically misses in its assertion is how it is a response to something other, a something which must exist in relation to it for there to be a desire that “acts upon.” Luther’s introduction of the term vocation in describing work magnifies the responsive nature involved in understanding how worldly action should be directed to something other.1 The richness of Luther’s contribution is the recognition of how kairos positively opens human receptivity beyond itself. Despite its eventual association with ethical precepts grounded in a distant and inscrutable will of God, what Luther brings out clearly is the relation between work and a calling beyond simple toil. What one does in work is called for in some way; work as vocation is a response to a call. Today the overtly theological dimension of vocation is unbelievable, and we often choose to find its source elsewhere. The disenchantment of the meaning of vocation, that today often refers to an intuition of where one’s talents lay, is not a simple subtraction of the divine and theological, as Taylor (2007) has pointed out, but a move to make immanent within oneself the source according to which one recognizes the direction of one’s life. This privileging of the inner source, as Taylor argues time and again, occurs as a consequence of a “buffered” self which imposes itself, its talents and, in the parlance of today’s managerial science, its skill sets according to how it believes it should live. Work is an extension of the moral philosophy that sees ethical decision as an act of self-willing. So the notion of a work ethic is quite apt in capturing this sense of self-creation according to what one naturally finds oneself inclined to do. The ethic of work expresses a personal preference of the will according to whatever skills and talents one has, and the similarity to the Protestant ethic of “by faith alone” is, if not identical to this preference of interpretation, at least correlative. It is worthwhile noting that the modern meaning of talent is conceptually rooted in our foregoing discussion of capacity (dunamis) since when speaking of talent we often refer to abilities and capacities innate to an individual. We speak really of virtuous dispositions that enable one to achieve certain ends when they are employed. However, the language of talent and skill remains still too entrenched within mechanism. We may often speak of one’s talents as gifts, but our preunderstanding obliges us to see these gifts as the result of the pedigree of our biological make-up.2 Contrarily, in seeing the talents that direct one’s vocation in relation to dunamis, we are

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revisiting the question posed by Plato: is virtue learned or a gift of the gods? Let me highlight the force of this dilemma: are virtues and talents gifts? A positive response to this question implies that whatever gifts one has presupposes that one (as the donee) is beholden or responsible in their employment. Here, we enter into the realm of gift exchange unless the source of these gifts is seen to be a component within a mechanistic process or is reducible to some biological efficient cause. A mechanistic reduction of gift negates any exchange since efficient causality has no bond of responsibility; one is not beholden to an efficient cause but merely gains or acquires something from it. As Marcel Mauss (2002; cf. Milbank 1995: 131–2) and many after him have claimed: there is no such thing as a pure or free gift. Responsibility in this reduction loses its origin, and gifts become the instruments of a self-willing. The alternative is to say that such gifts are teachable, that is, the product of techne. This overdetermination of techne, akin to instrumentalism and utilitarianism, assumes a homogenous field in which all humans are entitled to equal access of techne’s products despite differences (cf. Meikle 2000: 260; Taylor 2007: 713–14). The reversal can be well marked: there is no such thing as a calling of work, there is interest in, or personal preference for, what one wants to do without regard to what one may be suited to do. While this gives attention to individual choice, it also allows this choice to be overdetermining or at least directed by other voices, such as the marketplace. Clearly, there is no simple answer (cf. Plato’s Meno and Protagoras; cf. NE 1177a13–17), for what is at stake in this dilemma is the recognition of how the gift of one’s talents relates to a specific actualization of them in work. In other words, the learning of virtue is possible only because it has been given to human beings, on the one hand, while its bestowal is no guarantee of its flourishing, and so it must be thought out in relation to the whole and the parts, on the other hand (Sallis 1996: 101–2; cf. Gadamer 1986a: 50–1). It would seem that the two, talents and techne, mutually disclose one another, and we return once again to what I commented on earlier in Aristotle’s discussion of how virtue requires practice. What interests me here is that if we remain within an understanding of talents as gifts, the relation of vocation to mutual recognition is immanently germane. In adopting the language of gift, we at the same time refuse the preunderstanding of the self-willing worker whose talents are there, to use Sartre’s term, for-itself. Instead, within the course of mutual recognition what is given over to each individual facilitates a further recognition of oneself and others. In this sense, the one who recognizes his or her own unique abilities and interests to a greater degree is able to recognize in a much

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richer way the possibility of their own being. What one finds is that in this recognition, which again is what I see as constituting the essential nature of responding to what is already given (in contradistinction to the idea that response is at root out of necessity and lack), there is an apprehension of a meaningfulness toward which one turns. As Heidegger’s well-known remark on vocation runs, “The call comes from me and yet from beyond me” (1995b: H375). Heidegger’s emphasis on the “from me” and “beyond me” refers to the dialogical nature of vocation in which one hears a call. In hearing a call one hears something in oneself yet something in contradistinction to oneself. Ricoeur’s emphasis on passive recognition is implicit in Heidegger’s observation (1996a: H163–4) that in order to hear, one must be silent in desiring to be recognized as the one to whom being speaks. It is “from me” in the sense that one recognizes to some extent what it is that calls. It is me who recognizes the call. Yet at the same time, it is because that which calls comes from “beyond me” that I have perspective. I can differentiate it from myself and other things. There is no such thing as a mass of aural sensations but a definite locality in which things are identified as something. Much closer to us than all sensations are the things themselves. We hear the door shut in the house and never hear acoustical sensations or even mere sounds. In order to hear a bare sound we have to listen away from things, divert our ear from them, i.e., listen abstractly. (Heidegger 1971: 26; cf. 1996a: H164) In order for something that calls to us to have meaning it must occur in a unity of relations (cf. Heidegger 1996a: H76–83). In this sense, the call of being gives rise to our own human kind of calling where language and work provide a structure in which the unity of relations can occur—that is, the totality of signification that includes at its limits those meanings and ideas whose imminence lies in rupturing this totality. Human using is, in this respect, already a response to this call (Heidegger 1968: 196). Heidegger provides a striking instance of the relation between the call of being and human calling when commenting, On a day of changeable weather, someone might leave a mountain lodge, alone, to climb a peak. He soon loses his way in a fog that has suddenly descended. He has no notion of what we call mountaineering. He does not know any of the things it calls for, all the things that must be taken into account and mastered. (1968: 123)

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We can perhaps see here how what I am referring to as the call of being emerges in relation to exploration, itself motivated by a kind of wonder. The technics which arise in relation to this wonder depend upon the nature of the project—that is, a projected interpretation of how to be (Heidegger 1996a: H146)—which in this case is mountaineering. The piton, the carabiner, the dynamic rope, the safety harness, and the special rubber that allow climbing shoes to adhere more to the rock surface arise as products of the techne devoted to this kind of project. (We might also as easily speak of space exploration and the development of the computer and how projects of a seemingly elaborate and unpractical nature give rise to things that have practicality in other areas of life not integral to their original intention.) Clearly, the improvement of the technics involved in mountaineering would not have arisen without the climbers whose talents and skills for climbing required improved gear to climb more technical and difficult peaks and faces. The more abled climber attempts to ascend faces with less features that can be used to place protective gear. This in turn requires a more dynamic rope that can accommodate severe falls. A static rope will not only place more force on the gear securing the rope to the rock but also cause injury to the climber whose body must suffer the force of the fall that a dynamic rope would absorb. Another effect occurs in how mountain sides that where once unscalable acquire names through the calling that arises in mountaineering: a broad rock face is called a shield, a sharp and steep corner an arete, and so on. In §57 of Being and Time where Heidegger discusses the call as conscience, the “beyond me” is never developed in the sense of something like the unity of being but is regrounded in Dasein. “Conscience,” writes Heidegger, “manifests itself as the call of care: the caller is Dasein” (1995b: H277— italics omitted). It would be surprising to assume that Heidegger is merely reducing the call to subjectivism: the caller is Dasein. What breaks this reduction is the horizon of being, of ontological possibility for being, that resides beyond Dasein. Thus, the summoning nature of the call is the possibility which comes from beyond Dasein, from the concern for being that runs ahead of it (1995b: 277–8). Once again, for Heidegger care breaks the viciousness of any circular assertion. If the caller is Dasein in this sense it is not simply Dasein speaking to itself according to what it wills, but a speaking to itself in order to disclose more fully its possibility of being, then the caller is also being. We merely need recall being gives, and speaking (legein) is the way in which this giving is illuminated and known. What follows from Heidegger’s discussion of calling is what I would like to say is a recognition of the unity of being in terms of ethical deliberation,

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its possibilities and its consequences. Ethical understanding resides at the heart of how a calling is received and subsequently interpreted. This is why Heidegger speaks of the call in terms of conscience which, as Gadamer (1976b: 201; cf. Volpi 1994: 205) has pointed out, is praxis. In other words, conscience is the apprehension of the for-the-sake-of-which of being. Here, and in recalling my earlier arguments in sustaining the link between praxis and poiesis, we find that the for-the-sake-of-which of praxical deliberation directs the general orientation of work. Let us recall that for Heidegger it is the not-being-at-work that is integral and decisive to the essence of work because it defines the dunamis kata kinesis, that is, the manner in which work comes to movement. Work first requires a moment of not-being-at-work in order to find its center, and indeed without a conscious recognition of this relation, work becomes instrumental and technological since it becomes a way of practicing and actualizing without a reflection on the possibility of being. It assumes an end without thinking; it is, to use Taylor’s apt word, “disengaged” (2007: 294) from any genuine concern about being. Thus in recalling that work (poiesis) is not by itself sufficient as a mode of truth, one can see that the freedom of work lies in an application of its technical knowledge according to a praxical understanding of how to be. Praxis, according to Heidegger, is the unique manner of “being free to choose” that Dasein has before itself. Freedom is the root of ontological anxiety that invokes a responsibility of interpreting and actualizing beingtoward-an-end (Heidegger 1996a: H191). “[E]verything is bound,” writes Otto Pöggeler, “to a ‘for-the-sake-of-which’ [hou heneka, das Worumwillen] made possible by Dasein’s being-able-to-Be” (1978: 90). In this sense, praxis frees itself to heed the call of being that, in turn, is the basis upon which poiesis can be set free to realize itself. Work is no longer simply for necessity but bound up according to the praxical response; work is the response to a call. This is what Heidegger suggests when he says, “Freedom alone can let a world prevail and let it world for Dasein” (1998: 126—italics omitted). The world could not prevail if human work did not seek, through its link to praxical freedom, a way of rendering as its work the project of being-in-the-world. Yet, at the same time, humans are free to decline this invitation or what is the decision to flee into the everyday where ontological questions do not arise or seem relevant (Heidegger 1996a: H253–5, 276). There is a correlation suggested here between the givenness of being and the call according to which humans choose to or choose not to respond. If Jean Greisch is correct in his comment cited earlier that “Between ‘there is’ [Dasein] and es gibt [It gives] no passage is possible,” then we can observe

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the following correlate: for human being there is no gap or distance between the “It gives” (Es gibt) of being and the “It calls” (Es ruft) of being. Emergence into the world is an emergence into a praxical structure that foregives a possible meaning to be heard. Just as we cannot reject the givenness of being, so we cannot choose to ignore its call, though we may subsequently decline to take heed of it. “The call,” writes Heidegger, “is precisely something we ourselves have neither planned nor prepared for nor willingly brought about. ‘It’ calls, against our expectations and even against our will” (1996a: H275—emphasis in original). In Heidegger’s thinking, one can see a play between the will of oneself (Willen) and the praxical “for-the-sake-ofwhich” (Unwillen) in which one’s own will is called to the other that it heeds (cf. Heidegger 1998: 126). The “for-the-sake-of-which” initiates the teleological movement by which Dasein surrenders itself, that is, surrenders its will. Vocation would then replace the primacy of a disengaged self-volition. It is worth pointing out a danger when leaving things as a surrendering to being or the language of being.3 Dwelling in ontology tends toward a quasimystical poeticization where one can simply celebrate a manner of poetic dwelling without seeing the particularities in how human beings may “poetically dwell” (Heidegger 1971: 213–29). In this respect, Michael Haar’s criticism that Heidegger’s notion of appropriation simply makes humans dependent on Ereignis (Appropriation), failing to “fundamentally change the definition of man’s essence” (Haar 1993b: 67), provokes a further reflection on the relation between being and Dasein. How is this mutual growth and nurturing also an articulation of human being and not simply a subjugation to another metaphysical principle?

Vocation and Appropriation In speaking of vocation, we are asked to see the calling involved in work as one that is fundamentally tied to a broader horizon of understanding than the simple application of talents. We can speak of an individuating effect in which vocation emerges as a response to the whole of being and becomes more particular through the individual sense of how to be through work. It is in this sense that the “who” of being arrives through the exigency of the call of being. The “who I am” arrives through the vocation of work, and this implies that whatever exigency lies in unity that elicits one’s response, the essence of this response is not simply a subjugation to something beyond oneself. Unity requires differentiation in order for it to be, and this dependency reverses the initial primacy one might wish to commend to unity.

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In other words, and introducing a theme that I will here make crucial, the peripeteia of the relation between unity and difference has as its essential nature a temporal feature in which beings acquire an identity of their own through a narration of events, hopes, and possibilities—that is, what constitutes recognition. This mutuality expresses a dynamism that can become antagonistic, but is nonetheless, one that I think to be primarily unknown and mysterious as in the productive sense of Socratic wonder and existential perplexity. Furthermore, it is according to this reversal that the reflective momentum is not simply made to flow the other way (as in a radical reduction to relativism or pluralism) but gives rise to a more complex meaning of identity. We speak not just of the identity (self-sameness) of unity but of identities within unity, that is, of a differentiation of unity through individuation. This differentiating effect is the momentum that pervades and drives further our reflective motivation: to find who we are in the totality of where we are. Ricoeur summarizes: “The unity of the world and the unity of man are too near and yet too distant: near as an horizon which is never reached, distant as a figure seen through an infrangible pane of glass” (1965: 195). Hence, out of this reversal arises a relation which cannot itself be reversed. “The unity of the world,” which I have taken to express unity as such, and the identity of the human being are now juxtaposed as if in direct relation, yet they are noncoincidental because the two require reflection in order to be synthesized. Unity is then interpreted by the person and through the person, and still more, communicated to the other—the other person as in communication, the other as the unknowable as in praise and prayer. When differentiation is understood in mutual relation to unity, it expresses greater coherence in being by virtue of beings becoming more themselves. Differentiation occurs in how the “who” of each person takes shape according to the manner of work in which one becomes involved. It is the “who” that responds to the call and subsequently becomes identified with “what” one does in work with respect to one’s vocation. Yet while one’s vocation appears concrete, the “what” of work is never final for it refers to the role in which one, as a physician for example, participates in being. In recalling my remarks on work as metaphor, one can see that if work provides for a discourse of the word, then the tension between “who one is” and “what one is” in a vocation is a productive, narrative-like tension. The poietic disclosure of work, that is akin to the linguistic power of world disclosure in metaphorical and symbolic meaning, provides the rich milieu in which we find ourselves already participating as protagonists in a story. Here, I would like to suggest that Marx’s notion of objectification, where the laborer recognizes himself or herself in the work-product, is enlarged.

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The self-recognizing process of work includes an interpretive narrative wherein work-objects refer to an “ideological” understanding already embedded in how one chooses to live one’s life through a special calling. To recall from my analysis of Marx, Ricoeur points out that what Marx attempts to identify as “the language of real life” (1986b: 77) is not free of ideology, and that even in Marx there appears to be a lacuna where ideology is set against praxis only because ideology is reproduction or representative (Vorstellung) and not real production (praxis) (Ricoeur 1986b: 77). Ricoeur concludes that the crux in Marx concerning ideology “is not between true and false but between real and representation” (1986b: 77). What this allows for is a real production that is in fact a kind of primary ideology, an ideology that integrates the real language of life in its primordially symbolic form. Following Clifford Geertz, Ricoeur holds that “there is no social action which is not already symbolically mediated” (1986b: 258), and so the language of real life refers to a productive (and not reproductive) symbolic action and self-understanding. Ideology is no longer a superstructure added on to praxis but a part of the praxical base itself. Ricoeur therefore maintains that ideology is not the distortion of communication but a rhetorical milieu in which meaning manifests symbolically “with reference to cultural traditions, norms, institutions, the linguistic structure of communication, and interpretation” (1986b: 259). Here, one can see that remaining true to his thesis on hermeneutics, Ricoeur locates the problem not in the thing as such (i.e., ideal life) but in the hermeneutical relationship to how one interprets life.4 Thus, he concludes that what the philosophical encounter with Marx inevitably offers is not a complete rejection of ideology and symbolic mediation but a desymbolization of its misconceptions. Accordingly, Ricoeur sees class struggle not as a stage leading toward a total intellectual revolution and break with tradition but as “a part of the movement from alienation to recognition within the symbolization process; it is a movement of desymbolization” (1986b: 231). One finds in view of Ricoeur’s clarification that the alreadiness of the world (and its unity) bestows at once a sense of identity and its means of reinterpretation. Let me make this line of clarification more definitive: the interplay between the phronetic understanding of the “how” of living (praxis) and the “what” of work (poiesis) assures to some extent that the ideological content is under pressure to change and be reinterpreted by oneself. If ideology, in other words, “preserves identity,” then it can only be reinterpreted through the “resistance” one confronts as the sedimentation of who one thinks they are (Ricoeur 1986b: 266). This reinterpretation is motivated

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by phronesis which confronts dead meanings and the need to desymbolize them in apprehending new possibilities of being. This praxical dimension, nevertheless and as I have stressed in the chapter on the Aristotelian virtues, is ineluctably dependent on the mode of understanding that can stand outside any preserved identity; and this is theoria. That is to say, ideological refiguration and integration has its basis in a return to a theoretical meditation on symbolic action, otherwise the question of change could not be posited since, according to the Aristotelian scheme, phronesis and techne are concerned with particular relations. Without theoria, hermeneutics remains enclosed within its circle since the agent and the thing produced remain merely the subject of an already predicated and incorrigible ideology. Yet in giving theoria this “privileged” place, unity appears to once again ascend over difference since theoria is the mode of contemplation concerned with the highest, unifying principles. In keeping with my metaphor of the reversal, even this return to unity is qualified. If unity is privileged in any sense, it is not one of authority and a derivative morality (cf. Ricoeur 1974: 445–55). Rather it is a privileging of the givenness of unity that offers itself in order that it may be known through individual identity. Theoria remains the one activity not entirely invested and preoccupied by the practical, and it is for this reason that Heidegger ultimately sees reflection at this level as useless and poor because it has no immediate concern for the state of affairs (1977: 181): “In reflection we gain access to a place from out of which there first opens the space traversed at any given time by all our doing and leaving undone” (1977: 180). Theoria, in being unconcerned with the state of affairs, opens a space in which our relation to these affairs and being is illuminated. It is ecstatic, or as Aristotle would say most divine, because its mode is receptive to the givenness of being as a reflection on the nature of this givenness. From the human perspective, because of theoria, the privileging of unity occurs as a revitalization of this world since it is presupposed by the ethical and productive. Here, the privilege is a further granting for reflection. Being gives. Heidegger’s notion of “overwhelming” (Überkommnis) (1969: 64), in this sense, should not be construed as an overthrow but as an overflow of meaning.5 The fecundity of being perpetually out shines the thanking acts of work that attempt to be appropriate to the gift of being. It is the overwhelming that can never be contained once and for all by human use because it remains without use, without force, without compulsion. Thus, if human usage is a manner of keeping safe, as Heidegger suggests when seeing use as a way of admitting something “into its essential nature” (1968: 192), then we should hear in the word “safe” a double meaning. Safe means both to

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guard, and by guarding, to set against or exclude.6 So, the guarding is the shepherding that nurtures and repeats an ontological interpretation while the excluding refers to a manner of choosing that takes a certain and definite path. The keeping safe is itself something that eventually calls for a reinterpretation since it cannot contain being; and according to this disproportion, the open givenness of being overwhelms any one particular way of safe keeping. One can say in this respect that Heidegger’s account of the development of human being in differentiation is not, as Haar assumes, a failed attempt at appropriation because Heidegger simply conflates Dasein into being. Haar questions Heidegger’s emphasis on being in asking, “[t]o be called the mortal, must he [man] not continue to be differentiated?” (1993b: 66—emphasis in original). Haar appears to miss the subtlety of how appropriation, as a mutual disclosure, means that humans become more themselves—that is, more differentiated—and are not simply dispersed into being. For Heidegger, human beings, by virtue of hearing their vocation, are situated in the midst of the play of decision and use, work and the word, beings and being—that is, in short, difference. This reversal, as I have been calling it, magnifies the personal center of vocation as the point at which the ontological nature of calling reverberates since it is both heard and vocalized by the human involvement in the discourses of work and the word. It is at this point that the significance of vocation gains a superlative meaning since it breaks the singular expression of the self-willing will so often identified with the creative nature of work. This break, constituted by the reversal between unity and difference, then shifts the reflective horizon. It is raised, and the necessity we once thought synonymous with our work, henceforth affirms a reciprocal bond between ourselves and that which has been given. Work gives thanks to this in terms of things, structures, institutions, and vocations, through which continues the momentum of a gracious dispensation. In the nexus of this kind of recognition and production, is there any sense of affirmation, let alone a meaning for it, that does not in some way take thanking as the locus of human making?

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Chapter 9

Conclusion

Philosophical analysis has the task of showing how whatever it illuminates to be a good of human inquiry has its ramifications in ways that were hitherto concealed or not fully disclosed. One often finds, nonetheless, that the ingenuity and rigor of a philosophical analysis often disappears as soon as its architectonic finally falls into place. What aspect of the architectonic do we take first in recapitulating, explaining, and clarifying to others in discourse? I suppose in this sense if there is one guiding idea that remains at the heart of my thesis, it is the interpretation of work as metaphorical. I say this because this claim resides halfway between necessity and the open horizon of givenness and thanking. As such, it is a medium point of reflection remaining in dialogue between the two animating poles of necessity and gift. It therefore avoids reduction to two forms of voluntarism: one that resides in the will to work (to recall Ricoeur’s words, a “triumph in a void”), the other that persists in the will to thanking (a subjectivist pietism). Yet, at the same time, I think by virtue of making this distinction human inquiry is ineluctably forced to consider the pole of thanking as its horizon. Let me further articulate how this becomes crucial for future reflection on work. The horizon of giving thanks emerges, as I mentioned, through the course of mutual recognition since it is here that mutuality, or at least its possibility, shatters the circle of subjectivism. The metaphor “speaks” possibility, and in work this possibility takes definitive shape in terms of our tools, institutions, and homes. It is the third object of work that bestows the simplest features of human identity. One is struck in this sense in how a thing of work might suddenly become the focal point in which a prior understanding is ruptured and new meaning revealed. This is why we set up a shrine of the Graces in a public place, to remind men to return to kindness; for that is a special characteristic of grace,

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since it is a duty not only to repay a service done, but another time to take the initiative in doing a service oneself. (NE 1133a3–5) In this passage, Aristotle breaks from his analysis of reciprocity in order to show how a monument that symbolically instantiates the quality of grace rules over what we might normally attempt to explain and justify in terms of a strict logic of equivalence or juridical debt. It is true, of course, that such works can also have the contrary effect of perpetuating isolation through instrumentalism, and this is why the entirety of work’s relation to human reflection is essential to consider. The everyday perception of use for its own sake is tempting, not so much because it appears to be true but because, as I have argued, we do not have a completely adequate way of articulating an alternative that is viable beyond subjective preference. In leading from work’s metaphorical nature to use, appropriateness, destiny, gift, and vocation, I hope this study has at least made some progress toward this telos. As I mentioned earlier, the compliment to a philosophy of work is an economic elaboration of its principles. While I intend to follow this study with a hermeneutics of political economy, what appears striking at first glance is that if we are to take thanking and gift as principles of the philosophy I have set forth, then the preunderstanding that describes economics as dismal, because it is primarily situated in lack and want, must be repudiated. If I might speak of another reversal, one of political economy, then what emerges is a radical and ambitious project: the economy of the gift, not as possibility but as practice. At the very least and to return to the scope and intention of this study, the philosophical conditions for a reinterpretation of work according to the meanings of metaphor and gift constitute a wager that in-itself, by virtue of its being said, might offer enough reflective momentum. “If releasement towards things and openness to the mystery awaken in us,” writes Heidegger, “then we should arrive at a path that will lead to a new ground and foundation. In that ground the creativity which produces lasting works could strike new roots” (1966: 56–7).

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I disagree, nonetheless, with Williams’ analysis of slavery in Aristotle which occurs through a distinctly modern moral sentiment and which, ironically, muddles the comparison between modernity and the Greek that he is attempting to make (e.g., 1993: 115). For a recent study that attempts to look at Aristotle’s argument for natural slavery on its own historical and philosophical terms, see Heath (2008). The question of slavery for Aristotle was not a blind class distinction but one he saw as partly based on the lack of noble desire (thumos) to seek a self-sufficient life (Bentley 1999; Heath 2008). In her recent study of democracy, Jill Frank (2005: 32–8) argues that Aristotle defines slavery according to the failure or inconsistent use of the ability to make a judgment about choosing (prohairesis) and not primarily according to physical features, types of non-Greeks, and so on. For support of my position, also see Dominique Janicaud (1995b), Ricoeur (1974: 224), and Hans-Georg Gadamer (1994b: 25–7). Part of the problem with Being and Time in relation to Heidegger’s later thinking, as Jeff Malpas (2006: 223) points out, is that it tends toward a grounding of meaning in Dasein’s subjectivity and therefore implies a subjectivist/idealist anthropology. When referencing Being and Time, the page number from the 7th edition of the German text will be indicated with “H” and is the number that appears in the columns of both the Stambaugh and Macquarrie translations. In many ways, my point is anecdotal, but one need only survey the secondary literature on Heidegger to see that points raised by Ricoeur have not been addressed. Walter Brogan (2005: 148–57) is an exception to this. At the same time, those interested in Ricoeur (e.g., see Kemp 1996) tend to regard Heidegger’s weakness as a failure to address the being of the other, especially ethically. See Heidegger (1996a: H27) where he compares the phenomenological method to other methods that are subservient to technical devices and thus are incapable of thinking on “things in themselves.” See also “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking” (1993b: 434–5) where he sees philosophy as coming toward its lawful end in being governed by scientific technique, once again a method determining thinking in terms of things already represented in a technical way, denying “any ontological meaning.”

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My thanks to Ulrich Mühe and Ken R. Westphal for pointing out the McCarney text to me. It also simply forces the identification of any criteria Marx relies upon to another level. McCarney’s grounding of ideology in class struggle still assumes a primary role for praxis (1980: 126). So in effect, McCarney may be making an important semantic distinction, but this clarification does not dissolve the epistemological burdens he wishes to escape. Indeed, McCarney (1980: 120) at one point uses the word authentic to describe proletarian ideology. For an analysis of the different ways of interpreting the unity of Marx’s thinking, see Ernest Mandel (1971: 164–86). My thanks to Sean Sayers for providing clarification on varying points of view with respect to the enormous amounts of commentary on Marx. My thanks to George H. Taylor for bringing this to my attention in Ricoeur’s lectures on ideology. I am very much aware of McCarney’s contention over the attribution of false consciousness to Marx, but my reading of this term, as indicated earlier, is not based upon epistemological criteria that might indicate some kind of cognitive deficiency (McCarney 1980: 95–100). Rather, the inclusion of consciousness refers to an orientation toward reality, an intentional affirmation. So a false consciousness would mean an intentionality whose comportment is involved in an inauthentic relation to reality. Falseness then would not be a defect but a misrelationship that results in a misinterpretation of the nature of reality, not the empirical facts about reality. On my reading, reality is mistaken to be constituted by something which is not necessary, such as religious otherworldliness. Eagleton (1991: 89) seems to accept this reading of falseness, though in citing McCarney (1980: 95) as a reference he seems to overlook that fact that McCarney does not accept self-deception as one of the viable readings of ideology. An interesting inverse relation occurs between the diminishment of the selfrealization of the laborer and the increase in exchange value in what Marx calls the self-realization of capital (1973: 305, 310–14). By “naturalism,” I do not mean or refer to the notion that Marx’s understanding of social progression, for example, from capitalism to socialism, is a naive form of historicism. Sayers (1998: 121–2) notes this as a problem. Dupré (1983: 60–1) sees Marx’s reference to nature as being pejorative inasmuch as the purpose of social emancipation is to be free from nature. I think that Marx’s reference to nature is highly dependant on the context, and in this case, Marx’s equation of naturalism and humanism refers not to a romanticized conception of nature but human beings acting naturally in a state of free labor. In this respect, Scott Meikle (1985: 41–2) argues that Marx relied upon the essentialist and organicist conception of nature derived from Aristotle, though Marx transforms this conception. But I disagree with Meikle (1985: 42) on this, and also over the point that Marx’s conception of nature is not mechanistic because it includes a telos. Mechanism, too, has a telos which it tends to reduce to immediate practical ends or the means of practicing itself (which I will argue Marx does in terms of self-realization).

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See, for example, Jeremy Carrette on the role of individual liberty in the economics of F. A. Hayek (2007: 94–9). My thanks to Sandra Döring for confirming the meaning of die Erde and to Louis Dupré for offering comments on this section on Marx and value theory. Hull (1899: 68), as quoted in Guy Routh (1975: 40). In the chapter on the Aristotelian activities, I discuss how Marx confuses the meanings of poiesis (production) and praxis (action). Despite the conflict between the existentialist individual and the Marxist collective that Sartre attempted to mediate, the epistemological role of freedom as a self-positing and sustaining aim is similar. By this, I mean the shared problem between Sartre and Marx is not one of individual freedom vis-à-vis group or collective freedom, but that of individual freedom without regard for the world. Joseph Catalano (1986: 4–5) summarizes the debate in observing that Sartre’s own assessment of his relationship to Marx may not necessarily be correct. Sartre’s relationship to Marxism has been described by his commentators as “Neo-Marxist,” “existentialist Marxism,” and “Marxist existentialism.” For a different critique of structuralist readings of Marx, see Bourdieu (1977: 83–4). This is not the same as McCarney’s position on ideology as he argues (1980: 120–1) that ideology serves class consciousness, and it is the proletarian ideology which is grounded in science. Ricoeur (1991: 133–8), in contrast, is arguing that ideology has a productive capacity that reshapes reality, though he would also include scientific models in this symbolic and metaphorical capacity.

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There is precedent for this in Weber’s own work. The introduction of the second edition of The Protestant Work Ethic refers to how Weber adapts the thesis of the book to support his larger argument in Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religions-soziologie which concerns the distortion of the self and its loss of meaning within the process of rationalization and disenchantment (Tenbruck 1989: 45, 49–59). Later, I compare an excerpt from Aquinas to Luther, but other theologians that feature divine presence as opposed to dualism are John Scotus Eriugena, Meister Eckhart, Bruno, and in a more modern light, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Joseph Milne (2008: 33–46) points out that the prevalence of the presence of God versus his absence often comes down to whether or not an emanationist (versus a creationist) interpretation of reality is adopted. Cf. Luther on grace (1956: 324–5). Recent debate between proponents of Radical Orthodoxy and proponents of the theology derivative of the Reformation evinces the problem with theological sources. John Milbank’s study of gift is generally set in opposition to Lutheran and Calvinistic notions of presence and donation (Milbank 1995). At a session on theology and economics at the annual meeting for the American Academy of Religion (November 2007), Milbank stated that he rejected all of Luther’s ninety-five theses. For an example of a critical reaction to Milbank, see J. Todd Billings (2005). For an alternative, yet complimentary reading of how secularism arises, see Taylor (2007: especially 773–6).

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From Baxter (1678: 110), as quoted in MacKinnon (1993: 223). Cf. Luther (1958: 141–2). Baxter, Ibid. (MacKinnon 1993: 222–3). Two of the most prominent empiricists, Locke (1975: 9–10) and Hume (1978: xx–xxi), therefore see the role of philosophy as existing in subservience to the physical sciences. Summarizing the struggle that utilitarian philosophers engaged in, from Bentham to Alan Gerwith, MacIntyre argues that the inevitable psychologization of happiness in the individual was a lawful consequence of the inability of moral philosophy to ground a justification for moral action in happiness (1984a: 64). Cf. H. M. Jones’ study of happiness (1953: 146–7, 160–1) in relation to the psychology of William James. George Kateb (1984: 3) refers to Arendt’s analysis as pointing to the “existential” failure of hitherto understandings of human action. Margaret Canovan (1992: 101–6) argues that Arendt’s main motivation in The Human Condition was the misunderstanding of human action as conceived by Marxism and totalitarianism. She also points out while this is so, she does indeed think from but is not limited to Heidegger’s ontology. For a more critical reading of the relation between Arendt and Heidegger’s ontology, see Benhabib (1996). For alternative interpretations of Arendt’s categories, see Gregory Pence (2001: 93–105). I omit a discussion of Arendt’s analysis of action because it refers to the already integrated activity of human being that transcends and therefore unifies the activities of labor and work according to an ethical mode of apprehension and personal identity, two features outside labor and work (Arendt 1998: 179–80; cf. Ricoeur 1991: 115). Public tax cuts are often the target of such criticisms since what is presented as a cut in one form is taken from the public sector in another. Inflation, in this respect, can also be considered a form of taxation implemented by a government when it does not try to relieve it. For a recent study of Aristotle’s understanding of democracy as it can apply to the contemporary situation of political theory, see Jill Frank (2005). Arendt quotes from Yves Simon, Trois leçons sur le travail (1938) and refers to Georges Friedmann’s Problèmes humains du machinisme industriel (1946: 211) in regard to the lack of knowledge of the end of labor for the worker.

Chapter 4 1

Aristotle’s discussion of the relation between the virtues and their activities occupies Book VI of Nicomachean Ethics. English translations are from H. Rackham (2003c) unless otherwise noted. All lines in Aristotle’s works have been confirmed in the Clarendon Press editions of the Greek. As mentioned in the introduction, my retrieval of Aristotle is undoubtedly Heideggerian in its orientation, and though I do not make the relation between Aristotle and Heidegger my explicit theme, it is apparent that my attempt to integrate theoria, praxis, and poiesis relies, in the words of Franco Volpi (1994), on “ontologizing” the Aristotelian concepts.

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This means extending the temporal and participatory nature of the activities in relation to a final cause that motivates being. I note, nonetheless, that in Nussbaum’s updated edition of The Fragility of Goodness (2001: xxvi–xxviii), she seeks to separate herself from the “antitheoretical thinkers” (i.e., Williams and MacIntyre among others). Nussbaum, in addition, states that she is perplexed that such movements assimilate her work into their arguments (2001: xxvii), omitting Williams from this criticism. My response to this is that in accepting the label of “antitheoretical,” for MacIntyre in particular, is to misrepresent and misinterpret the place of theoria. To the contrary, MacIntyre accords the highest role to reason and theory in being able to discern the narrative continuity and teleology of human life (e.g., 1984a: 211–12; 2006: 205–15). He seeks a broadened understanding of theoria, one not confined to the rationalist reductionism of modern moral philosophy which he seeks to overcome, as made clear in the first chapter of After Virtue. So, from the point of view of the broken, moral discourse of modern philosophy, MacIntyre’s ethics must necessarily seem “antitheoretical.” I have used the Rowe translation (2002) since Rackham reads aisthesis as sensation and koinonein as capability. Translations from H. Tredennick (2003b). Ackrill is more concerned with generating rules to observe the categorical distinction between energeia and kinesis as it appears in Aristotle’s various texts. His article, as he states, is designed to point out inconsistencies and difficulties (in both Aristotle and some of his commentators) in order to provoke further inquiry. Among some of the differences that Ackrill notes respectively of energeiakinesis: in Meta VI, present and perfect tense (1965: 122–8), activity without a set limit and those with (1965: 125); in Nicomachean Ethics X.4, the question over the necessity of the lack of duration in energeia (1965: 128–31); and more generally, the conflict between Aristotle’s examples of each kind of activity (1965: 131–41). A response to this aporia, is provided by Heidegger (1995a) who argues that such things as dunamis and energeia are not categories of being (Brogan 2005: 114–37). I am using the H. Rackham translation (1998). Cf. Solmsen (1963: 484). Movement itself is not potential (Meta 1050b20–8). As Brogan (2005: 34) points out, Physics 2 253b9 is central to Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotle in which movement is fundamental to the disclosure of being. Translation from H. Rackham (2003a). Cf. M. I. Finely (1977) who has observed this with respect to later thinking. But also see, for example, Plato’s Republic (370c; 374c–d) and Laws (846d–847a). For a recent treatment of the four causes and the themes of care and appropriateness in mind, see Richard Rojcewicz (2006: 15–66). It should be noted that my thesis concerning the unity of theoria-praxis-poiesis goes against Vernant’s understanding of work in Greek thought (1983: 262). Capitalization of “End” has been omitted. Cf. EE 1219a21–23: “so if there is such a thing as shoemaking goodness and a good shoemaker, their work is a good shoe”; and NE 1174a21: “Hence a motion is perfect either when viewed over the whole time of its duration, or at the moment when its end has become achieved.”

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I have replaced the translator’s use of the word “employment” for chresis with “use” for the sake of consistency. Cf. Rhetoric 1361a23–24, as Meikle (1995: 48) points out, and Plato’s Rep 2 601d. I deal with this quality of mutuality in more detail in Chapter 7. For now, it suffices to say that it remains implied in the ancient Greek philosophy and its emphasis on piety. For a reinterpretation of natural slavery in Aristotle along these lines, see Frank (2005: 26–49). See in particular Gorgias 503e and Meta 1032a32–1032b14. See, for example, N. Vlahogiannis (1998: 23). R. Garland (1995: 61) notes M. Delcourt’s interpertation of the god’s lameness as one of being compensated for by his divine techne (Héphaistos ou la legende du magicien, Bibliotèque de Philosophie et Lettres de l’Université de Liège, fasc. 156, Paris, pp. 121–8) and M. Detienne and J. P. Vernant’s interpretation of the god’s club foot as a symbol of his metis, that is, his wisdom and intelligence (1991: 272). M. Rose (2003) challenges perceptions of lameness in antiquity but does not offer a reinterpretation of Hephaestus in her reference to the god. My thanks to Patricia Baker for directing me to these sources. Hesiod, Theogony, II.945–6. Cf. Hephaestus’s connection to charis (grace or beauty) in Homer’s Odyssey, VI.234–7. See Socrates’ explanation of the god’s name in Cratylus 407c. The Odyssey VIII.308–12. Also, in the coupling of Hephaestus with Athena, there is the suggestion that craft requires wisdom; see Laws 920d–e.

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For a discussion on the centrality of form and ousia in relation to ontology in Aristotle, see Giovanni Reale (1980: 28–31). Walter Brogan (2005), however, makes a convincing case in saying that Aristotle is actually ontological and not simply concerned with the ontic state of beings. My thanks to Sean Sayers (2003) for pointing out that the concept of formation is central to Marx and Hegel in their philosophy of work. Brian Keeble (2005) explores the role of the conscious act of meditating on the nature and principles of work in terms of the arts and crafts movement, that is, Eric Gill and W. R. Lethaby. For an interesting application of Ricoeur’s hermeneutical philosophy to commodities and law, see George H. Taylor and Michael Madison (2006). I am assuming that the relation between work and art in Heidegger is a mutual one in which the origin of art is really also the origin of work. Heidegger’s critical treatment of the “thingly” nature of work and its serviceability are not directed at the things of work per se but their reduction to res extensa and instrumentality. An ontological reinterpretation of work sees things and use in an entirely different way as evinced in his essay “The Thing” (1971). I treat the distinctions between the two later in this chapter.

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Heidegger’s analysis of Aristotle’s distinction between animals and humans in Metaphysics is interesting (1995a: 99–110). While animals have psuche this does not guarantee that their actions participate in logos. This is because, as Heidegger notes, perception is central to how humans, in contradistinction to animals, have a concernful gaze of their surroundings. Thus, he translates logos as “conversance” (Kundschaft), and while humans are meta logou, animals are empsuchon (ensouled) but alogon (without conversance) (1995a: 110). I have adopted in part Max Black’s terms “focus” and “frame” that he uses to describe how metaphor is open to a larger range of meaning (frame) that is manifested in the particular metaphor (focus). Albert Borgmann (1984: 196–210) uses the term “focal” to refer to practices and things that bring a focus on the nature of a practice or thing itself in its relation to nature and being. This use of the term “focus” is therefore quite different from mine since by the term I mean the immediate application and intention of the use of a thing. Heidegger refers to the focus of equipmentality as location (Platz) and the enframing as region (Gegend) (Malpas 2006: 241). As quoted in Ricoeur (1977: 283), from Greisch (1973: 473). Implicit in my discussion, but tangential to it, is the ontological contention that being and becoming, actuality and potential, are not two categories of being but two senses of being which exist together. For a more detailed argument of this, see, for example, Brogan (2005) on Aristotle and Heidegger and Paul Tillich (1951: 178–82) on the being and becoming dichotomy. This is the difference between presence and presencing for Heidegger where the former refers to occurent entities (e.g., the metaphysics of presence) and is therefore pejorative (Thomson 2005a: 34). The latter refers to a dynamic mode of being (or becoming) that is its essence. There is a crucial relation between the German Anwesen and the Greek ousia that bears out this relation of what we today would call essence in relation to existence. For a more detailed analysis, see Sinclair (2006: 19–46; cf. Brogan 2005: 14). This refers to Ricoeur’s distinction between metaphorical sense and referent (meaning) where sense refers to the diverse range of definitions (e.g., as in a dictionary) and meaning refers to what emerges anew by virtue of being used in a sentence. Thus, words have senses and sentences have meaning (1991: 69–70). The correlation to work is that objects have a diverse range of potentials uses (senses) but this use becomes meaningful only when in participation with human being. The object is then actively something. For a detailed discussion of use in the writings of Eric Gill and David Jones, see John Hughes (2007: 180–210).

Chapter 6 1

Heidegger’s translation of this passage: “the ability to do something is present only while a force is at work, but when it is not at work, then there is no such ability” (1995a: 139). I am much indebted to Jill Frank’s work on Aristotle (2005) which helped me to understand more distinctively the significance of use, capacity, and virtue.

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For a detailed study of Heidegger’s thesis that Aristotle recognizes the radical nature of being as ontological, see Brogan (2005). The transliterated Greek: ex on de he genesis esti tois ousi kai ten phthoran eis tauta ginesthai kata to chreon didonai gar auta diken kai tisin allelois tes adikias kata ten tou chronou taxin. Commentary on Aristotle’s “Physics,” CAG IX, 24.14–25 as quoted in Waterfield (2000: 14). Anaximander’s fragment is often interpreted as being scientific since, according to Charles Kahn (1960: 3), he initiated in Western history peri phuseos istoria (Greek transliterated)—that is, “the investigation of Nature.” Istoria can alternatively mean inquiry, connoting less of a modern scientific disposition. He does not translate the passage all at once, and so here I have joined together the argument and analysis for his translation from several pages. Ricoeur observes later that Kant’s moral philosophy, which is centered on volition and action, oddly enough does not contribute to a theory of action but a philosophy of right. This is because the imperative integral to Kant’s emphasis on volition in moral action marginalizes the self-reflexive capacity of the moral agent. The agent is “the synonym of the will that in the synthetic judgment underlying the idea of autonomy combines with the idea of the law” (2005: 90). Cf. Bernard Williams (1993) in relation to the self-reflexive nature of shame. But not too late. I agree with those commentators like Joanna Hodge (2006) who see a profound engagement with Christianity in Heidegger’s thinking despite his overt comments which appear to be directed at interpretations of the religion which require destruktion. With respect to narrative, this would mean interpreting the symbolic language of scripture as nonrepresentational, something which Heidegger comments on obliquely in the appendix to “Phenomenology and Theology” (1998). Indeed, this way of interpreting can be seen directly and indirectly in modern theological approaches that take being as a central point of theological understanding, as in Bultmann and Tillich. It is perhaps interesting to recall that in the chapter on Marx, Habermas critiques Marx because he merely replaces the transcendental ego as the bearer of the synthesis with the self-objectifying subject. In many ways, the phrase refusal of the Copernican reversal is strategic insofar as I recognize that what I am refusing may have not been Kant’s intention. In this respect, recent commentary on Kant has attempted to clarify and separate the scope and aim of the critiques from a modern understanding of the project of epistemology. This separation has specifically to do with reversing the supposition of epistemology which sees the human subject in cognitive isolation. Ricoeur (2005: 55) himself is aware of these attempts. In any event, the expression of refusal is not just rhetorical since it denotes my turn toward hermeneutics, away from epistemology. That is to say, it privileges Dasein as “the place where question of being arises,” where one is no longer a “subject for which there is an object” (Ricoeur 1981: 54). Hence, we can ask about the meaning of work ontologically, as opposed to how one might see the relation of work and the object of work as the determination of the cogito or the unity of consciousness. This determination is already too strong.

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I address this distinct teleological feature of Heidegger’s thinking in Mei (2008b). A parallel can be offered in what Mary Douglas notes in relation to Marcel Mauss’ work on gift where the nature of gift is often misunderstood to mean free gift, that is, gift that does not require countergift. This disrupts the economy of exchange, responsibility, and meaning (Mauss 2002: ix–xxi). Free gift is not the same as a gift “without price” (Ricoeur 2005: 235) since the absence of price still requires a form of return, as in the case of Socrates who teaches without a fee, yet what his teaching requires in return, as long as one stays with him, is participation in dialogue. Let it suffice to say that my synopsis of Ricoeur’s points remains selective and incomplete. The nature of The Course of Recognition is, as he says, a hypothesis (2005: 19). Singular attention would be required if one were to draw out and elaborate many of Ricoeur’s observations in this book in relation to the diverse regional disciplines he mentions. I say “not fully expressed” by Heidegger because in essays like “The Question Concerning Technology” (1977: 3–35), he is concerned with showing the oblivious nature of human subjectivity in relation to technology and enframing. The description here is thus negative because his meditation is deconstructing an ontological prejudice prevalent within the tradition. My thanks to Sarah Francis for pointing out the significance of Telemachos’ spear. It should also be noted that my interpretation of this episode in relation to mutual recognition is against Ricoeur’s own thesis when he concludes that the Homeric characters are capable of “a recognition that passes through others, but which we cannot yet call mutual, because it is still focused on a single protagonist and limited to those who stand in the entourage of the master” (2005: 75). Clearly, Ricoeur, as he tells us later (2005: 151–3), intends to measure mutual recognition according to greater degrees of the recognition of others. I think, nevertheless, it would be too much in keeping with a historical privileging to prohibit any kind of mutuality whatsoever. In the case of the Homeric epic, there is definitely a mutual social recognition that extends according to its unique structure of roles. Can we not emphasize degrees of mutual recognition actualized in the structures erected by shame (Williams 1993)?

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Bainton (1978: 233) notes the expression “vocational guidance” comes directly from Luther. For a contrast to the modern disposition, see The Book of the Courtier, I.14–16. Adorno (1973: 50) famously refers to this as the “jargon of authenticity”: “Heidegger has praise for the ‘splendor of the simple.’ He brings back threadbare ideology of pure materials, from the realm of handicrafts to that of the mind—as if words were pure, and, as it were, roughened material . . . . Heidegger wants, synthetically, to create a primal sense for pure words.” From a completely different

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approach, Derrida (1995b: 85) sees the act of naming (“the gift of the name”) as giving that which it does not have. In this respect, Heidegger would therefore appear not to have gone far enough. The former is traditionally epistemological insofar as it concerns a mode of knowledge attempting to discern the thing itself while the latter is hermeneutical since it refers to a mode of understanding in relation to how the truth of a thing discloses itself to the human subject (cf. Ricoeur 1981: 53–9). Elsewhere Heidegger (2003: 38) refers to “overabundance” as “the excess of what presences” and therefore results in wonder (thaumazein). As made famous by Derrida who performs a play on the French word “sauf” (1995b). For Derrida, the negative theology that refers to that which is beyond being or God still must name the thing to which it refers. Because of this naming that rests in a thing, Derrida writes, “The name itself seems sometimes to be there no longer safe . . .” (1995b: 65; cf. 55–8). But instead of taking up a definitive path that might arise from negation, Derrida attempts to reside in that moment of negation that surrenders to “the other,” that is, “the impossible” (73–5). In any event, the play on “sauf ” is also the meaning of Hegel’s Aufhebung, that is, a sublation that preserves and destroys. My thanks to Jeff Harrison for pointing out this connection.

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Heidegger Primary Sources Where applicable, original publication or lecture dates appear in brackets. GA refers to the collected works volume (Gesamtausgabe). Heidegger, M. (2008) [1926, GA 22], Basic Concepts of Ancient Philosophy. R. Rocjewicz (trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. —(2003) [1976, GA 15], Four Seminars. A. Mitchell and F. Raffoul (trans). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. —(2001) [1921–22, GA 61], Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle: Initiation Into Phenomenological Research. R. Rojcewicz (trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. —(1998) [1976, GA 9], Pathmarks, in W. McNeill (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —(1997) [1924–25, GA 19], Plato’s Sophist. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer (trans). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. —(1996a) [1927, GA 2], Being and Time. J. Stambaugh (trans.). Albany: SUNY Press. —(1996b) [1955–6], The Principle of Reason. R. Lilly (trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. —(1995a) [1931, GA 33], Aristotle’s Metaphysics Θ 1–3: On the Essence and Actuality of Force. W. Brogan and P. Warnek (trans). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. —(1995b) [1927, GA 2], Being and Time. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (trans). Oxford: Blackwell. —(1995c) [1929–30, GA 29/30], The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude. W. McNeill and N. Walker (trans). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. —(1993a) [1941, GA 51], Basic Concepts. G. E. Aylesworth (trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. —(1993b), Basic Writings (revised 2nd edn), in D. Krell (ed.). London: Routledge. —(1992a) [1925, GA 20], History of the Concept of Time. T. Kiseil (trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. —(1992b) [1928, GA 26], The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic. M. Heim (trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. —(1992c) [1942–3, GA 54], Parmenides. A. Schuwer and R. Rojcewicz (trans). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. —(1992d) [1922], “Phenomenological interpretations with respect to Aristotle: indication of the hermeneutical situation.” M. Baur (trans.). Man and World, 25, 355–93.

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Ricoeur Primary Sources Ricoeur, P. (2005), The Course of Recognition. D. Pellauer (trans.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. —(1996), Paul Ricoeur: The Hermeneutics of Action, in R. Kearney (ed.). London: Sage. —(1995a), Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination. D. Pellauer (trans.). Minneapolis: Fortress Press. —(1995b), The Just. D. Pellauer (trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —(1995c), The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, in L. Hahn (ed.). Chicago: Open Court. —(1992), Oneself as Another. K. Blamey (trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —(1991), A Ricoeur Reader: Imagination and Reflection, in M. J. Valdés (ed.). New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. —(1986a), Fallible Man. C. A. Kelbley (trans.). New York: Fordham University Press. —(1986b), Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, in G. H. Taylor (ed.). New York: Columbia University Press.

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Aristotle Primary Sources Aristotle (2003a), Eudemian Ethics. H. Rackham (trans.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. —(2003b), Metaphysics, I–IX. H. Tredennick (trans.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. —(2003c), Nicomachean Ethics. H. Rackham (trans.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. —(2002), Nicomachean Ethics. C. Rowe (trans.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. —(2002), Nicomachean Ethics. J. Sachs (trans.). Newburyport: Focus. —(1998), Politics. H. Rackham (trans.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. —(1992), Eudemian Ethics (2nd edn). M. Woods (trans.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. —(1991), Ethica Eudemia, in J. M. Mingay (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. —(1964), Politica, in W. D. Ross (ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. —(1963), Physics, Vol. 1. P. Wickstead and F. Cornford (trans). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. —(1960a), Aristotle’s Physics, in W. D. Ross (ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. —(1960b), Physics, Vol. 2. P. Wickstead and F. Cornford (trans). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. —(1957), Metaphysica, in W. Jaeger (ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. —(1939), The “Art” of Rhetoric. J. H. Freese (trans.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. —(1894), Ethica Nichomachea, in J. Bywater (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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translation as “Razionalità e relativismo: Il significato storico e contemporaneo della risposta hegeliana a Sesto Empirico,” trans. Dr. C. Ferrini, Etica e Politica 4.1. Retrieved March 6, 2009; Available from http://www.units.it/~etica/2002_1/ index.html White, J. (1997), Education and the End of Work: A New Philosophy of Work and Learning. London: Cassell. Williams, B. (1993), Shame and Necessity. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wrathal, M. A. (2006), “The revealed word and world disclosure: Heidegger and Pascal on the phenomenology of religious faith,” Journal of the British Society of Phenomenology, 37:1, 75–88. Xenophon (1959), Memorabilia and Oeconomicus. E. C. Marchant (trans.). London: William Heinemann. Young, J. (2001), Heidegger’s Philosophy of Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zimmerman, M. E. (1990), Heidegger’s Confrontation With Modernity: Technology, Politics, Art. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. —(1986), Eclipse of the Self: The Development of Heidegger’s Concept of Authenticity (revised edn). Athens: Ohio University Press. Zuidervaart, L. (2001), “Art, truth and vocation: validity and disclosure in Heidegger’s anti-aesthetics,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, 28:2, 153–72.

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Name Index

Achilles 67 Ackrill, J. L. 63, 65, 143n5 Adorno, Theodor 147n3 (Chapter 8) Aglaea 72 Anaximander 100–3, 146n4 Aphrodite 72 Apollo 102 Aquinas, Thomas 38–9, 141n2 Arendt, Hannah 16, 35, 45–51, 67, 71, 142n8, 142n9, 142n10 Ares 72 Aristophanes 72 Aristotle 11, 55–73, 74, 79, 84, 89, 95–100, 109, 117, 126, 128, 135, 138, 139n1, 140n7, 142n1, 143n5, 145n6 Athena 71 Bainton, Roland 147n1 Baker, Patricia A. 144n15 Barash, Jeffrey 7 Baudrillard, Jean 81 Baxter, Richard 39 Beardsley, Monroe 83–4 Beggren, Douglas 83 Benhabib, Seyla 142n9 Bentham, Jeremy 33, 142n7 Beaufret, Jean 71, 79, 86 Billings, J. Todd 141n3 Black, Max 83–4, 145n7 Blake, William 85 Borgmann, Albert 145n7 Bourdieu, Pierre 47 Bowlin, John 44 Brogan, Walter 11, 98, 112, 139n5, 143n7, 144n1 Bruno 141n2 Bultmann, Rudolf 146n7

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Canovan, Margaret 142n9 Carrette, Jeremy 141n8 Cassirer, Ersnt 82 Cézanne, Paul 90 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 91 Collingwood, R. G. 41, 90 Derrida, Jacques 110, 120–2, 148n3, 148n6 Descartes, René 5, 33, 41 Diels, Hermann 100, 103 Douglas, Mary 147n2 (Chapter 7) Dupré, Louis 2, 15, 19, 20, 22, 25, 29, 30, 36, 38, 40, 41, 86, 110, 140n7, 141n9 Eagleton, Terry 140n5 Eckhart, Meister 141n2 Eliot, T. S. 45, 80 Eriugena, John Scotus 141n2 Francis, Sarah 147n5 Frank, Jill 139n1, 142n12, 144n13, 145n1 Friedmann, Georges 80 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 9, 82, 114, 131 Garland, Robert 144n15 Geertz, Clifford 134 Gerwith, Alan 142n7 Gill, Eric 144n3, 145n12 Goldman, Harvey 39 Goodchild, Philip 105 Gould, Carol 27 Graces, the 72, 137 Greisch, Jean 86, 131

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Habermas, Jürgen 10, 16, 27, 30, 31, 146n8 Hanley, Catriona 11 Harr, Michael 132, 136 Heath, Malcom 139n1 Hegel, G. W. F. 19, 20, 22, 25, 148n6 Hephaestus 71–3, 144n15, 144n16, 144n19 Heraclitus 55 Hodge, Joanna 146n7 Hölderlin, Freidrich 105 Homer 67, 118 Hume, David 142n6 Jones, David 145n12 Jones, H. M. 142n7 Kahn, Charles 146n4 Kant, Immanuel 30, 91, 103, 106, 146n6, 146n9 Kateb, George 142n8 Keeble, Brian 144n3 Kermode, Frank 1 Kojève, Alexander 30 Lethaby, W. R. 144n3 Locke, John 142n6 Luther, Martin 36–8, 127, 141n2, 141n3, 147n1 McBride, W. L. 20 McCarney, Joe 16, 140n2, 140n5, 141n14 MacIntyre, Alasdair 41, 43, 59, 103, 117, 142n7, 143n2 McLellan, David 20 Madison, Michael 144n4 Malpas, Jeff 78, 139n3 Mammon 39–40 Mandel, Ernest 26, 140n3 Marcuse, Herbert 23, 26 Marx, Karl 10, 11, 15–31, 33, 40, 56–9, 79, 86, 98, 106, 133, 134, 140n2, 140n3, 140n5, 140n6, 140n7, 141n12, 146n8 Mauss, Marcel 128, 147n2

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Meikle, Scott 140n7 Milbank, John 121–2, 141n3 Mill, J. S. 33 Milne, Joseph 141n2 Nietzsche, Freidrich 44 Nightingale, Andrea Wilson 59, 61 Nussbaum, Martha 59, 62, 67, 70, 143n2 Odysseus 117–18 Pascal, Blaise 83 Petty, William 26 Plato 72, 84, 114, 128 Pöggeler, Otto 131 Prometheus 79, 86 Richards, I. A. 83–4 Ricoeur, Paul 3, 5, 6, 8–12, 16, 30, 31, 57, 62–4, 75, 77, 80, 83–6, 88, 90, 91, 99, 106, 107, 112–16, 120, 121, 126, 129, 133, 134, 137, 139n5, 141n14, 145n11, 146n6, 146n9, 147n2 (Chapter 7), 147n3 (Chapter 7), 147n5 (Chapter 7) Roche, Timothy 62 Rose, M. 144n15 Routh, Guy 26 Russell, Bertrand 77 Sartre, Jean-Paul 30, 128, 141n12 Sayers, Sean 23, 140n3, 140n7, 144n2 Sheehan, Thomas 7 Sinclair, Mark 145n10 Sisyphus 1 Socrates 147n2 (Chapter 7) Taylor, Charles 5, 34, 40, 42, 44, 48, 127, 131, 141n3 Taylor, George H. 140n4, 144n5 Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre 141n2 Telemachos 118, 147n5 Tillich, Paul 145n9, 146n7 Turbayne, Colin 83

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Name Index

171

Van Gogh, Vincent 90 Vernant, Jean-Pierre 67, 69–71, 143n9, 144n15 Volpi, Franco 11, 142n1

Westphal, Ken 44 White, John 46 Williams, Bernard 59, 139n1, 143n2, 146n6

Weber, Max 34, 36–40, 141n1 Weil, Simone 51

Yahweh 113

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Zeus 71, 118

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Subject Index

abode 80 see also home absence 71, 99, 111, 118 see also privation; steresis action 1, 10, 15, 16, 18, 21–31, 33, 35, 43–8, 50, 55–64, 78, 87–8, 97–9, 104–5, 111–12, 117, 120–1, 125, 127, 134, 135 see also praxis actuality 55, 60–1, 63–4, 89–90, 96–8, 116–17 see also energeia agape 113 see also grace aitia 67 see also cause; four causes aletheia see truth alienation 18, 20, 23–4, 134 alreadiness 134 already 35, 40, 42, 49, 75–6, 84, 86, 88, 97, 104, 110, 112, 117, 129, 133–5 animal laborans 35, 45–7, 49 anxiety 36, 45, 131 aporia 63, 96, 120 appropriate (adjective) 4, 12, 67–9, 71–2, 79, 89, 96, 102, 105, 107–10, 112, 114, 117, 119, 135 see also inappropriate appropriate (verb) 15, 25, 41, 64, 72, 76, 89 appropriateness 12, 33, 71, 102, 106, 107–8, 114, 118–19, 138 see also harmony appropriation 12, 67, 100, 124, 132, 136 see also Ereignis

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arche 21, 48, 60–1, 104 see also origin Archimedean point 115 architectonic 59, 137 arete 2, 69 Aristotelian 96–7, 107, 135 see also Neo-Aristotelian art 33, 67, 69, 71, 82, 90–1 see also poiesis asceticism 34, 37, 39 as-structure 89, 90, 121 authentic, the 16, 89 see also inauthentic autonomy 4, 8, 49, 108, 117 being 2–12, 28–9, 35, 39, 42, 45, 47–8, 55–8, 61, 63–71, 74–6, 78–83, 85–7, 89–91, 95–106, 107–12, 115–22, 123–6, 129–33, 135–6 being-in-the-world 7–8, 32, 49, 76, 81, 101, 115, 117, 121–2, 131 belonging-together 102, 114, 124–6 see also community calculative thinking 41–4 call 9, 40, 78, 124–7, 129–33 see also calling; vocation calling 12, 36, 38, 39, 125, 127–32, 134, 136 see also call; vocation capacity 1, 4, 21, 31, 48, 74–5, 79–80, 83, 85, 91, 95–106, 108, 113, 114, 117, 123, 127 see also dunamis; force care 32–3, 42, 68, 101, 103–6, 108, 112, 124–5, 130 see also concern

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Subject Index Cartesian 50, 103, 115 cause 22, 34, 39–40, 41–2, 48, 64–5, 86, 110, 128 see also four causes chresis 11, 56, 62–70 see also use commodification 121 community 21, 86, 88, 111, 114 see also belonging-together concealment 5–6, 9, 26, 40–1, 45, 49, 103, 105, 116, 119, 124, 137 concern 11, 15, 38, 42, 47, 58, 59, 66, 67, 71, 74, 80, 97, 99, 108, 109, 112, 119, 125, 126, 130, 131 see also care conscience 38, 44, 124, 130–1 contemplation 23, 30, 35, 48, 50, 55, 56–63, 80, 91, 111, 135 see also theoria Copernican revolution 5, 103, 106, 108, 146n9 cosmology 36, 40, 71, 103, 110 cosmos 2, 55, 59, 61, 64, 66, 70–2, 79, 84, 86, 102, 104, 110 Creation, the 39 culture 35, 76, 81 danger 105, 132 Dasein (Da-sein) 4, 7–9, 42, 78–9, 86, 89, 90–1, 101, 104, 106, 124–5, 130–2, 136 death 1, 45, 51, 118 Delphian knife 68, 117 desire 35, 43–4, 69, 72, 86, 111–14, 117, 123, 126, 139n1 destiny 6, 12, 25, 103–6, 110, 118, 138 dialectic 16, 22, 29–30, 38, 47, 85 difference 41, 55, 115, 124–6, 133, 135, 136 see also unity differentiation 72, 122, 123–36 dikaiosune 66 see also dike; justice dike 2, 66, 102 see also dikaiosune; justice

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173

disappear, disappearance 49, 83, 118–19 disclosure 12, 48, 76, 85, 112, 114, 115, 123, 124, 133, 136 discourse 4–5, 8–9, 46–7, 50, 81, 84, 88, 133, 136 disenchantment 38, 40, 110, 127 see also rationalization disposition 55, 65, 97, 109, 119, 127 see also hexis distance 41, 109, 110, 118, 132 domination 4, 78 dunamis 95–9, 104, 108, 112, 117, 119, 123, 127, 131 see also capacity; force dwelling 69, 78, 81, 83, 108, 109–10, 115–16, 126, 132 see also ethos earth 18, 26, 37, 40, 47, 73, 77–9, 88, 109, 111 economics 21–3, 24, 30, 34, 111, 120–2, 138 ecstasies 125 eidos 56, 64, 68, 69–73, 87, 108, 117 see also form; morphe emanation 39 energeia 56, 60–2, 63–9, 89, 95–9, 108, 116, 119 see also actuality enframing 9, 35, 50, 76–7, 81, 105, 115, 118 see also Gestell Enlightenment 34, 41 Ereignis 132 see also appropriation ergon 56, 61–6, 69, 76, 108, 116 es gibt 86, 131–2 essence/existence 95–9, 102, 131–2 ethics 27, 31, 34, 37, 40, 43, 58–73, 98–100, 111, 127, 130–1 ethos 33, 37 see also dwelling eudaimonia 68 see also good life; happiness excellence 2, 58, 61, 62, 67, 69, 70, 111 see also arete; virtue

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Subject Index

false consciousness 16, 18, 28, 140n5 figurative (meaning) 81–3 first naiveté 6, 110 focus 81–3, 145n7 force 98–9, 104–6, 117, 119 see also dunamis; capacity form 2, 12, 26, 39, 56, 60, 64, 68–73, 74, 79, 86, 88, 90, 103, 108, 116, 117, 134 see also eidos; morphe for-the-sake-of (-which) 27, 97, 105, 125, 131–2 see also hou heneka four causes 67, 143n9 see also aitia; cause freedom 10, 15–20, 21–31, 39, 48, 86, 90, 119, 131 Gestell 9 see also enframing gesture 4, 75, 82–3, 87–8, 101 gift 89, 107–14, 116, 120–2, 123, 128, 135, 137, 138 givenness 4, 72, 84, 86, 107, 131, 132, 135, 136 God 34, 36–40, 98, 113, 127 gods 55, 71, 73, 89, 128 good life, the 56, 64, 67–9, 74 see also eudaimonia; happiness grace 36–8, 40, 72, 98, 113, 137, 138 see also agape ground 7, 28, 35, 41, 105, 107, 138 see also hupokeimenon habitus 47 hand, the 4, 74, 82, 87, 91, 101 happiness 43–4 see also eudaimonia; good life harmony 2, 20, 59, 61, 64, 66, 71–2, 74, 102 see also appropriateness hearing 129, 132, 136 hermeneutics 8–9, 84, 114, 115, 120, 134, 135, 138 hexis 55, 62, 67–8, 97, 109, 119 see also disposition

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historical understanding 113 historicity 12 history 2, 4–7, 11, 18, 28, 32, 34, 40, 105 holding back 97, 106, 108 home 70, 78, 117, 137 homo faber 35, 45–50, 88 hope 36, 82, 88 horizon 9, 18, 21, 29, 34, 44, 80, 83, 105, 115, 118, 119, 121, 126, 130, 132, 133, 136, 137 hou heneka 68, 105, 131 see also for-the-sake-of-which hule 64, 70, 79, 86 see also matter human being 6, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 40, 45, 50, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61–2, 66, 77, 78, 79, 80, 89, 109, 111, 132, 136 hupokeimenon 41 see also ground identity 16, 23, 29, 77, 112, 117, 133–6, 137 ideology 15–24, 30–4, 134–5 immanence 22, 34, 38, 39 inappropriate 68 see also appropriate inauthentic, the 101 see also authentic inclusivist, reading of Aristotle 61–3 instrumentalism 128, 138 see also mechanism instrumentality 22, 27, 44, 91 integration 135 intellectual virtues 56–73 intellectualist, reading of Aristotle 61–3 jug, the (Heidegger’s) 89–90, 102, 108–9, 111 justice 66, 71 see also dikaiosune; dike kairos 127 kinesis 56, 60–9, 95–9, 112, 131 ktesis 62

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Subject Index labor 15–31, 35, 37, 45–51, 67, 69, 77, 80–1, 90–1, 98, 115 see also toil laborer 18, 23, 25, 81, 83, 133 see also worker land 26–7, 76, 81 language 8–10, 17–18, 24, 31, 75, 83–4, 97, 112, 113, 118, 119, 126, 129, 132, 134 legitimation 24 leisure 2, 23, 37 liberty 24–31, 43 limit 60, 80, 103, 121 see also peras literal, the 75, 83–91, 116 locality 83, 87, 108, 115, 117, 123, 126, 129 logos 58, 70, 71 love 72–3, 113–14, 117 marketplace 81, 121, 126, 128 materialism 15, 20, 27 matter 26, 28, 64, 70, 77, 79, 81, 85, 87 see also hule mechanism 5–6, 40–5, 127 see also instrumentalism Megarians 95–9, 108, 119 metabolism 1, 45, 46, 57, 75, 82, 87, 91, 99 metamorphosis 83–91 metanoia 5, 114 metaphor 83–91, 99, 114, 116, 119, 133, 137–8 metaphysics 32–45, 62, 96, 98, 103 modernity 4–7, 38, 40, 110 moira 105 morphe 70, 86 see also eidos; form muthos 90 natality 125 naturalism 17–21, 140n7 nature 2, 5, 17–21, 22, 25, 32, 33–5, 36–45, 46, 50, 60, 64, 66, 77, 78, 86 see also phusis

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necessity 1–4, 6, 15–31, 33, 45–6, 48, 49, 51, 55, 56, 69–73, 74–80, 82, 83, 87, 90, 91, 98, 99, 100–6, 114, 117, 119, 126, 129, 131, 136, 137 Neo-Aristotelian 74 see also Aristotelian nihilism 44, 103 nothing 85–6 nous 60 nows, sequence of 48, 125 objectification 16, 17–20, 22, 24, 77, 79, 80, 106, 133 oblivion 50, 110, 113, 119 ontology 3, 5, 8, 9, 74, 99, 105, 106, 120, 124, 132 ontology of thanking 12, 107, 108–14, 123 ontology of work 3–4 ontotheology 40, 107 open, the 78–9, 105 order 2, 25, 55, 60, 61, 64, 70, 71, 73, 79, 86, 100–6, 110 origin 10, 15, 21, 41, 42, 60, 91, 98, 100, 104, 107, 113, 128 see also arche ousia 66 overwhelming, the 119, 135 peras 60 perdure 115–16 phenomenology 8, 16, 17, 87, 112 phenomenology of work 17, 30, 78 phronesis 27, 31, 55, 58, 59, 61, 62, 71, 135 see also practical reason phusis 33, 40, 64, 66, 70, 72, 79, 79, 86, 123 see also nature pietism 12, 109, 110, 119, 137 poiesis 11, 12, 55, 56, 59, 60, 63–73, 74, 83, 86, 95, 97, 109, 131, 134 see also art; production possession 62, 68, 109 see also ktesis

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Subject Index

possibility 3, 6, 18, 19, 42, 56, 71, 78, 80, 82, 83, 88, 89, 90, 99, 105, 116, 121, 124, 129, 130, 131, 137, 138 potential 62, 64, 65, 89, 90, 95–9, 104 practical reason 27, 31, 55, 58, 68, 71 see also phronesis praxis 10, 15–31, 55, 56–69, 74, 76, 97, 99, 131, 134 see also action privation 71, 99 see also absence; steresis production 4, 5, 11, 17–31, 35, 47, 49, 55, 56, 57, 60, 64, 67, 68, 71, 74, 78, 79, 86, 88, 91, 106, 134, 136 see also art; poiesis profane, the 72, 88, 117 see also the sacred Promethean conception 79, 86 Radical Orthodoxy 141n3 rationalization 34, 40 see also disenchantment real, the 16, 24, 25, 41–2, 55 reality 11, 18, 19, 20, 25, 29, 30, 31, 40, 42, 43, 55, 57, 58, 59, 61, 64, 70, 72, 75, 79, 83, 84, 87, 103, 104, 115 receptivity 97, 122, 127 reciprocity 111, 119, 120, 121, 138 recognition 4, 12, 47, 59, 105, 107–22, 123–36, 137 Reformation 34, 36, 38, 40 repetition 91, 125, 126 representation 42, 89, 106, 134 reproduction 31, 134 retirement 51 sacred, the 72, 76, 88, 110 see also the profane safe-keeping 101, 120, 122, 135–6 secular, the 34, 37, 39, 40, 98 self-actualization 66, 98 self-realization 16, 17, 22–9, 86 self-understanding 8, 34, 75, 85, 90, 114, 123, 134 self-willing 98, 127, 128, 136 sin 36, 38, 39 slavery 51, 69, 139n1

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sophia 55, 61, 65 space 24, 33, 76, 78, 79, 81, 88, 108, 110, 116, 117, 135 standing-reserve 101 steresis 71, 99 see also absence; privation subjectivism 110, 130, 137 superabundance 72, 122 surplus value 24, 26 see also value techne 11, 55, 58, 66, 67, 69–72, 75, 78, 79, 91, 96–101, 115, 123, 128, 130, 135 technology 11, 33, 35, 49, 101 telos 16, 21, 22, 28–30, 42–3, 45, 60, 62, 67–8, 89, 107, 120, 124–5, 138 temporality 56, 63, 65, 96, 99, 103, 124, 125, 133 thanking 4, 12, 95, 107–120, 121, 123, 125, 126, 135, 136, 137, 138 theology 34, 36–40, 45, 88, 111, 121, 127 theoria 10, 11, 15, 28, 31, 55–63, 65, 66, 74, 76, 91, 97, 99, 135 see also contemplation thinking 4, 7, 9, 10, 15, 16, 18, 19, 40, 41, 58, 87, 95, 108, 125, 131 time 2, 33, 48, 60, 64, 65, 99, 100, 103, 105, 117, 125 toil 1, 2, 30, 35, 37, 45, 46, 51, 56, 72, 75, 127 see also labor totality 76, 111, 125, 129, 133 tradition 8, 9, 27, 31, 35, 44, 56, 57, 98, 106, 134 transcendence 34, 37, 75, 98 truth (aletheia) 7, 11, 55, 97, 101, 103, 105, 131 unity 12, 19, 20, 42, 62, 72, 75, 96, 98, 106, 122, 124–6, 130, 132, 133–6 see also difference use 11, 12, 32, 35, 40, 44, 48, 50, 51, 56, 62, 64–82, 85, 87–91, 96, 99, 100–6, 107–11, 114, 115, 117, 118, 119, 120, 135, 136, 138 see also chresis

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Subject Index utilitarianism 10, 32, 43, 44, 128 utility 3, 5–6, 21, 32–51, 55, 66, 67, 72, 101, 114 value 5, 12, 24, 26–7, 39–40, 50–1, 67, 78, 102, 103, 121 see also surplus value virtue 2, 27, 55, 61, 66, 68, 69, 111, 128 see also arete; excellence vita activa 47, 50 vita contemplativa 50 vocation 3, 4, 38–9, 113, 123–36, 138 see also call; calling volition 103, 122, 126–32 voluntarism 111, 137

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whole, the 82, 128, 132 will, the 1, 23, 36–9, 43, 49, 55, 98, 104, 106, 117, 120, 122, 126–8, 130, 132, 136, 137 will-to-thanking 111, 120 worker 10, 37, 49, 51, 70, 80, 86, 126, 128 see also laborer world 8, 12, 17, 19, 20, 21, 24–6, 31, 33, 34, 35, 37–40, 41–2, 47–50, 57, 58, 64, 76–81, 84, 86, 88, 90–1, 98, 101, 103, 105, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120, 123, 131–5 worldly activities 36–9, 49, 127

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