12. Ontological Rejection of Calculative Debate Causes Worse Harms

Figure 14: Survival of the species requires technic management, not abandoning our duty.

1. Heidegger’s critique of technology cannot be turned into a simple argument that calculative thinking is bad. Society has already adopted ecological ethics as relevant, and this cannot preclude evaluating specifics. Lewis (2005) argues that Heidegger’s call to do nothing means not abandoning technological activity but carrying it to its limit via case debate, thereby revealing that its endless drive to actualize has no ultimate ground or purpose: “when Heidegger issues his rare ethical imperatives which suggest that we 'do nothing', it is rather the form of action known as praxis that we should refrain from. This action is solely the business and the busyness of actualization, an action already occurring as the calculative operation that characterizes technological activity. Proper acting is, as we have seen, not a withdrawal from such a technological expansion of actuality — such a thing would be both impossible and undesirable from the point of view of being — but rather a repetition or continuation of this praxis which takes it to its logical conclusion: this extreme will make it clear that such will to will, ultimately for its own sake, rests upon nothing, is carried out for no ultimate purpose and so skirts an abyss to which it must blind itself.” Buckley (1996) makes the point directly: “This ‘gap’ does not mean that calculative thought is somehow ‘bad,’ or that contemplative thinking is ‘better.’ To judge contemplative thought as superior to calculative thought is to think calculatively, and hence cannot be the task of authentic philosophy. [...] Neither is Heidegger claiming that the nature of modern science as calculative is to be viewed as negative. [...] Heidegger wants to undermine the exclusivity of calculative thinking without denigrating it. He desires to open a space for other forms of thinking.” Heidegger’s aim, then, is to keep calculative reason from crowding out every other mode of thought, not to abolish it. Their critique commoditizes philosophy into a standing reserve of powertagged lines that outright repeats the calculating it claims to reject by comparing the case’s path leads to worse impacts. To step back from the technological project causes extinction, explains Kateb (1997): “It is scarcely conceivable that Western humanity—and by now most of humanity, because of their pleasures and interests and their own passions and desires and motives—would halt the technological project. Even if, by some change of heart, Western humanity could adopt an altered relation to reality and human beings, how could it be enforced and allowed to yield its effects? The technological project can be stopped only by some global catastrophe that it had helped to cause or was powerless to avoid. […] [N]o one would want the technological project halted, if the only way was a global catastrophe.” War outweighs as it prevents all species from ontologic awareness, argues Macauley (1996): “Who needs nuclear war, Heidegger asked rhetorically, if entities have already ceased to be? For many environmentalists, such a question reveals the extent to which Heidegger remained part of the human-centered tradition that he wanted to overcome. By estimating so highly human Dasein's contribution to the manifesting of things, Heidegger may well have underestimated the contribution made by many other forms of life, for which the extinction of humankind's ontological awareness would be far preferable to their own extinction in nuclear war!”

2. Rejecting technology offers no workable path forward. Turning inward in search of Being has political consequences. Graham (2000) argues that a culture preoccupied with the self leaves the field open to those who exploit it: “emphasising the problem of the ‘ontological self’ […] confines the navel-gazing, ‘narcissistic’ masses to a permanent present which they self-consciously sacrifice for a Utopian future. […] Meanwhile transnational businesses go about their work, raping the environment. […] The ‘problem’ of subjective death threatens to give way, once again, to unprecedented mass slaughter.” He concludes that “the numbed condition of a narcissistic society, rooted in a permanent ‘now’, a blissful state of Heideggerian Dasein, threatens to wake up to a world in which ‘subjective death’ and ontology are the least of all worries.” Waiting for Being to reveal itself is not neutral. It is a choice that hands the field to the forces Heidegger’s critics most fear. Ecological reality removes the option of standing still. Bowman (2001) acknowledges that “land managers can use the enormous complexity of landscape change and the absence of clear goals as an excuse not to act. But this strategy ignores a basic lesson from environmental history that it is impossible to ‘do nothing’ in dynamic systems. […] I suggest that the most basic goal of land management should be to minimize the rate of species extinction.” Levy (1999) reaches the same conclusion and spells out what action requires: “We are nevertheless unable simply to leave the environment as it is. There is a real and pressing need for more, and more accurate, technical and scientific information about the non-human world. For we are faced with a situation in which the processes we have already set in train will continue to impact upon that world, and therefore us, for centuries. It is therefore necessary, not only to stop cutting down the rain forests, but to develop real, concrete proposals for action, to reverse, or at least limit, the effects of our previous interventions. […] Such policies and proposals for concrete action must be formulated by ecologists, environmentalists, people with expertise concerning the functioning of ecosystems.” Technical and scientific knowledge is not the problem to escape. It is the necessary means of limiting harms we have already set in motion.

3. Heidegger was right to warn that calculative thinking can crowd out other ways of relating to the world, but rejecting technology is neither coherent nor possible. Pattison (2000) explains how the critics misapply ontology: “his retreat from the public world of political decision-making makes it all the more difficult to see how what he has to say might help us in the face of environmental degradation […] [T]he distinction between the ontic and the ontological does not of itself involve neglecting the former. It doesn't have to be a matter of either/or. We don't have to stop being religious in order to reflect on the ontological structures disclosed by the religious life […] Similarly, it would not seem necessary to suspend our efforts to solve particular environmental problems until we have succeeded in refiguring the world in a post-technological way. So, Heidegger need not be construed as saying that there is no point in doing what we can while we can to improve things in the here and now […] He will not give us concrete answers to concrete problems […] Unless we change at the fundamental level of values and of vision we will find ourselves, later if not sooner, passing the point of no return and rendering our planet humanly uninhabitable. On this line of reasoning, we not only need technical solutions, we also need the vision thing. Alongside ecology we need 'deep ecology', a spiritual re-orientation.” Herzog (2002) advocates that “we must use the ontological for the sake of the other; to ensure the survival of the other we must resort to the technico-political systems of means and ends. The paradox of politics is that it is both the origin and the cure of hunger. The Other is dying because of politics, but he/she does not die automatically, thanks to politics. […] However, the solution to hunger will come from the state, not from me.” “Heidegger's dissatisfaction with modern technology stems from his assumption of a decontextualized attitude of nostalgic romanticism […] In fact, technology has always been part of the human landscape […] To build a temple is to create a quarry or deforest a wood. To gather here is to separate there. The issue in understanding technology is not to deride it as such, which is equivalent to deriding the human condition as such (which is a theological rather than a philosophical position), but to grasp and then evaluate” (Cohen, 2006). Teams misread this critique to wish for everyone to stop doing and think how to treat the environment more ethically. It is an insulting oversimplification to avoid debating the issue, when debate is the very space for reflection. Retreating from technical knowledge only leaves its direction to others and abandons the people and ecosystems that need protection. The responsible path is to use science and technology deliberately and ethically, as tools for repairing the harms we have already set in motion. The permutation centers of case debate to persuade which calculative thought would replicate specific errors, but the critique framework precludes the very discussion space their authors want.