Fabio Grigenti

Im Rahmen seiner Systemphilosophie hat Hegel keine explizite Theorie der MaschineMaschine entwickelt. Einige Elemente seines Denkens trugen jedoch zur Konstruktion weitreichender Visionen über die Beziehung zwischen Menschen und Artefakten bei, die bereits Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts in alle Bereiche des menschlichen Lebens eingedrungen waren. Exemplarisch stelle ich hier zwei gegensätzliche Betrachtungsweisen der Rolle von Technik unter den veränderten Existenzbedingungen der europäischen Zivilisation nach der industriellen Revolution vor: zum einen die von Ernst Kapp als „Anthropotechnologie“ in den Grundlinien einer Philosophie der Technik 1877 entwickelte und zum anderen die sicher bekannteste Reflexion, die Marx fast gleichzeitig im Rahmen seines systematischen Hauptwerkes Das Kapital entfaltete.

Macchina -- La macchin[a] a vapore : il tecnicismo umano e l'espansione macchinale -- Andrew Ure e Samuel Butler : dalla filosofia delle manifatture alla distruzione delle macchine --Karl Marx : la macchina utensile e il sistema di fabbrica -- Ernst Kapp : il cavo elettrico e la proiezione organica -- Ernst Jünger e Friedrich Georg Jünger : la macchina da guerra : la mobilitazione totale e il consumo dell'essere -- Martin Heidegger : la macchina da miniera : il disvelamento e l'impianto -- Arnlod Gehlen : la macchina cibernetica : su carenza e azione -- Günther Anders : la bomba : su vergogna e apparato -- Alan Turing : il computer : su calcolo e gioco dell'imitazione -- Considerazioni finali.

The aim of this work is to provide a preliminary analysis of a much more far-reaching investigation into the relationship between technology and philosophy. In the context of the contemporary German thought, the author compares the different positions of Karl Marx, Martin Heidegger, Ernst and Friedrich Jünger, Arnold Gehlen and Gunther Anders. The term “machine” is used precisely to mean that complex material device assembled in the last quarter of the 18th century as a result of the definitive modern refinement of certain fundamental technologies, i.e. metallurgy, precision mechanics and hydraulics. The “machine” discussed here arrived on the scene of man’s history when the processes of spinning and weaving were entrusted to semi-automatic means; when the water wheels used in mills, hitherto always made of wood, were supplanted by the metal levers of the steam engine; and especially when the steam engine was connected to the weaving frames, to the metalworking hammers, and to other machines used to manufacture other machines in an endless reiteration of assemblies and applications, the enormous outcome of which is what subsequently came to be described as “mass production”. The philosophers discussed here were also dealing with the type of machine described above and in their works she we can identify three model images of this idea of machine. These images have been drawn on at various times, also outside the realms of philosophy, and they still provide the backdrop for our knowledge of the machine, which has circulated in a great variety of languages.

In this chapter are confronted the different visions of the machine in the work of Ernst and Friedrich Georg Jünger. By Ernst Jünger we analyzes: (a) the concept of total mobilization (Die Totale Mobilmachung). With this notion Jünger means that real process which, thanks to the development of technology, makes it feasible in practice to mobilize the totality of the power (Macht) available in the universe. For Jünger, power is not the accumulation of a substance waiting to be developed and completed, but the rapidity with which energy is converted; (b) the idea of perfection of technology, the ultimate expansion of total mobilization, the final settling of the technological dynamism in the spatial domain, will be complete when that immovable point of balance is achieved where the machine has completed its conversion into an organic form, i.e. when the human body, in the Typus of the Worker, will have definitively acquired the structure of the mechanism. By Friedrich Georg Jünger is the distinctive way in which the machine mobilizes the world can be elucidated more clearly by looking at the category of over-exploitation (Raubbau). Friedrich Georg uses this term in the sense that it acquired in the German language in the technical vocabulary of the timber industry: Raubbau precisely indicates the practice of cutting down trees without reintegrating the stock to make up for the plants being destroyed.

In this chapter is presented the analysis that Marx leads about the transition from the mere tool (Handwerk) to the machninery (Maschinerie). According to Marx the consequences of this transfer of the manual implement from man to machine are: (a) the machine becomes the active, super powerful, but completely depersonalized subject in the production process; (b) the human body has to learn new actions that are dominated by automatic repetition; (c) the introduction of particular type of relationship between humans and machines: in this new “technological” master - slave relationship it is no longer a case of the instrument serving the man, but of the man serving the machine; (d) the new aspect of machinery: the enduring symbiont.

In this chapter are discussed: (a) The basilar concept of promethean protocol as succession of steps – obtaining the raw material, softening, modelling, firing, refining and firing again – clearly form a sequence in which none of the single stages can change places without partly or wholly jeopardizing the quality of the end product; (b) a brief history of the different “gestural theories”; (c) the process of machine’s expansion during the industrial revolution. The new place of machine: after thousands of years in which the machine had occupied a modest place in man’s world, it suddenly came to the fore, becoming the leading character in the dominant practice of our times: the mechanistic mass production.

In this chapter is presented the pessimistic diagnosis of Gunther Anders about the world dominated by technology. Anders observes: (a) the diffusion of a new sentiment amongst human beings, occurring in parallel with a frighteningly rapid rise in techno-science. He describes this different emotional mood (Stimmung) as a sense of “Promethean shame” (prometeische Schäme) that describes it as a hitherto unknown, but increasingly widespread sense of shame that man experiences when he sees the embarrassingly high quality of the objects that he himself has constructed; (b) the concrete realization in the present time of the by Anders is called the “mega-machine” that can be configured like a sort of huge ideal state in which every human and no human component serves the functional needs of the whole. According to Anders, the fusion of each particular apparatus into a single, large apparatus marks the achievement of a new ontology. From the point of view of the apparatuses, the essential meaning of things becomes the one according to which “being” means “being part of an apparatus”.

In this chapter is discussed the “basic anthropology” of Arnold Gehlen. In this author the idea of the machine is connected to: (a) the concept of Mangel, which expresses not the mere absence of something, but a more complex condition of poverty and inadequacy. The organic deficiency relates to the being of the thing, rather than to any non-presence of certain properties. It is intended to reflect the core idea of non-specialization (Unspezialisierung); (b) the idea of Man as being not designed for any specific natural environment. He must constantly adapt to every living world he happens to encounter in nature. He relies primarily on a self-referential circuit of actions which, in the particular case of technological manipulation, takes the form of compensating for or substituting the missing organ. It is through integration, intensification and facilitation that tools and machines compensate for man’s natural organic shortcomings. In Gehlen’s anthropology machines are simply the exact reflection of our weaknesses, a sort of nature artificielle. The promotion/destruction of life by the great technological man is apparent from the increasingly.

In this chapter are interpreted certain passages of Heidegger’s essay Die Frage nach der Technik. Special attention is given to the concept of enframing (Gestell). In our reading this term refer to mechanical supporting structures, i.e. to devices that are not particularly complex, but they serve fundamental purposes such as supporting or containing in the broadest possible sense, so we might also translate Gestell as “assembly” or “framework”. With Gestell Heidegger attempts to express the essence of modern technology in the way that it reveals its “mechanicality”. The assembly is not just a device among others, but the horizon on which all the resources of the technological world, including human beings, are collected and coordinated. The object touched by the machine is thus converted into a “standing- reserve” (Bestand), or stock, something to be extracted, converted and consumed.

In this chapter is discussed the important theory expressed by Kapp in the work Grundlinien einer Philosophie der Technik (1877). In his vision Kapp supports the idea that mankind was the engine principle of history and culture, who used technics to submit the world in the process to self-awareness. Kapp argued that everything mankind produces, as a result of projection of its organs, is to be interpreted as technics, then the only road to self-awareness leads through technics. Moreover, the only thing mankind can learn about itself is that in essence mankind is a technical species. This double movement is called “law of organic projection”. In our interpretation he is true not only for the tools but also for each type of machine.

L’articolo ricostruisce il rapporto tra giustizia e compassione nel pensiero di Arthur Schopenhauer. A partire dalla situazione dell’ingiustizia come elemento primo e originario, si dimostra come ogni ideale di giustizia, inteso quale semplice ristabilimento di un limite violato, non possa costituire una vera alternativa all’ingiustizia. Solo la compassione, che nella condivisione del dolore altrui supera ogni limite, permette un autentico ristabilimento della giustizia. Tale giustizia si configura in modo concreto come regressione ascetica dei bisogni potenzialmente illimitati dell’individuo.The article analyzes the relation between justice and compassion in Arthur Schopenhauer's thought. According to Schopehauer injustice represents the first and original state of affairs and every ideal of justice is a simple re-establishment of a violated limit that can not be a real alternative to injustice. Only compassion, which in the sharing other people’s pain passes every limit, allows an authentic justice re-establishment. This justice concretely symbolizes an ascetic regression from potentially illimited needs of man

La Genealogia della morale si presenta al lettore come un compatto ma articolato crocevia di temi e di problematiche del pensiero di Friedrich Nietzsche. L'opera è certo caratterizzata da una particolare unità tematica, ma è al tempo stesso ricca di spunti che offrono accessi a questioni di non secondaria importanza e che, nel loro complesso, definiscono la trama di un pensiero che manifesta la propria ricchezza e originalità al lettore più accorto. Di tale ricchezza si è cercato di rendere conto nel presente volume, che raccoglie una serie di incursioni nel testo di Nietzsche a firma di studiosi italiani e stranieri, alcune delle quali sono state originariamente discusse nel corso di un seminario di ricerca svoltosi nell’ambito della Scuola di Dottorato in Filosofia dell’Università di Padova. Questi contributi affrontano, ciascuno a suo modo, la Genealogia della morale, illuminandone alcuni passaggi cruciali e intervenendo nella discussione di aspetti che si dimostrano significativi non solamente per approfondire ulteriormente la qualità e la rilevanza filosofiche dell'opera di Nietzsche, ma anche per valutarne il ruolo nella storia del pensiero occidentale contemporaneo.