For Work / Against Work
Debates on the centrality of work

References for Theme: Heidegger Citations

  • Heidegger, Martin
    • Being and Time (1962)
      (p.100) The work produced refers not only to the "towards-which" of its usability and the "whereof" of which it consists : under simple craft conditions it also has an assignment to the person who is to use it or wear it. The work is cut to his figure; he 'is' there along with it as the work emerges. Even when goods are produced by the dozen, this constitutive assignment is by no means lacking; it is merely indefinite, and points to the random, the average. Thus along with the work, we encounter not only entities ready-to-hand but also entities with Dasein's kind of Being- entities for which, in their...
    • Being and Time (1962)
      (p.102) When we concern ourselves with something, the entities which are most closely ready-to-hand may be met as something unusable, not properly adapted for the use we have decided upon. The tool turns out to be damaged, or the material unsuitable. In each of these cases equipment is here, ready-to-hand. We discover its unusability, however, not by looking at it and establishing its properties, but rather by the circumspection of the dealings in which we use it. When its unusability is thus discovered, equipment becomes conspicuous.
    • Being and Time (1962)
      (p.105) The structure of the Being of what is ready-to-hand as equipment is determined by references or assignments. In a peculiar and obvious manner, the 'Things' which are closest to us are 'in themselves' ["Ansich"]; and they are encountered. as 'in themselves' in the concern which makes use of them without noticing them explicitly-the concern which can come up against something upusable. When equipment cannot be used, this implies that the constitutive assignment of the "in-order-to" to a "towards-this" has been disturbed. The assignments themselves are not observed ; they are rather 'there' when we concernfully submit ourselves to them [Sichstellen unter sie] . But when an assignment has...
    • Being and Time (1962)
      (p.116) With the "towards-which" of serviceability there can again be an involvement: with this thing, for instance, which is ready-to-hand, and which we accordingly call a "hammer", there is an involvement in hammering;with hammering, there is an involvement in making something fast; with making something fast, there is an involvement in protection against bad weather ; and this protection 'is' for the sake of [ um-willen] providingshelter for Dasein-that is to say, for the sake of a possibility of Dasein's Being. Whenever something ready-to-hand has an involvement with it, what involvement this is, has in each case been outlined in advance interms of the totality of such involvements....
    • Being and Time (1962)
      (p.143) Dasein's spatialization in its 'bodily nature' is likewise marked out in accordance with these directions. (This 'bodily nature' hides a whole problematic of its own, though we shall not treat it here.) Thus things which are ready-to-hand and used for the body-like gloves, for example, which are to move with the hands-must be given directionality towards right and left. A craftsman's tools, however, which are held in the hand and are moved with it, do not share the hand's specifically 'manual' ["handliche"] movements. So although hammers are handled just as much with the hand as gloves are, there are no right- or lefthanded hammers.One must notice, however, that the...
    • Being and Time (1962)
      (p.153) The answer to the question of the "who" of everyday Dasein is to be obtained by analysing that kind of Being in which Dasein maintains itself proximally and for the most part. Our investigation takes its orientationfrom Being-in-the-world-that basic state of Dasein by which every mode of its Being gets co-determined. If we are correct in saying that by the foregoing explication of the world, the remaining structural items ofBeing-in-the-world have become visible, then this must also have prepared us, in a way, for answering the question of the "who". In our 'description' of that environment which is closest to us-the work-world of the craftsman, for example,-the...
    • Being and Time (1962)
      (p.412) When we are using a tool circumspectively, we can say, for instance, that the hammer is too heavy or too light. Even the proposition that the hammer is heavy can give expression to a concernful deliberation, andsignify that the hammer is not an easy one-in other words, that it takes force to handle it, or that it will be hard to manipulate. But this proposition can also mean that the entity before us, which we already knowcircumspectively as a hammer, has a weight-that is to say, it has the 'property' of heaviness : it exerts a pressure on what lies beneath it, and it falls if...
    • Being and Time (1962)
      (p.413) In the 'physical' assertion that 'the hammer is heavy' we overlook not only the tool-character of the entity we encounter, but also something that belongs to any ready-to-hand equipment : its place. Its place becomes a matter of indifference. This does not mean that what is present-at-hand loses its 'location' altogether. But its place becomes a spatia-temporal position, a 'world-point', which is in no way distinguished from any other. This implies not only that the multiplicity of places of equipment ready-to-hand within the confines of the environment becomes modified to a pure multiplicity of positions, but that the entities of the environment are altogether released from such confinement [entschrankt]...
    • Being and Time (1962)
      (p.98) Equipment can genuinely show itself only in dealings cut to its own measure (hammering with a hammer, for example) ; but in such dealings an entity of this kind is not grasped thematically as an occurring Thing,nor is the equipment-structure known as such even in the using. The hammering does not simply have knowledge about [um] the hammer's character as equipment, but it has appropriated this equipment in a waywhich could not possibly be more suitable. In dealings such as this, where something is put to use, our concern subordinates itself to the "in-order to" which is constitutive for the equipment we are employing at...
    • Being and Time (1962)
      (p.99) The work to be produced, as the "towards-which" of such things as the hammer, the plane, and the needle, likewise has the kind of Being that belongs to equipment. The shoe which is to be produced is for wearing(footgear) [Schuhzeug] ; the clock is manufactured for telling the time. The work which we chiefly encounter in our concernful dealings-the work that is to be found when one is "at work" on something [ das in Arbeit befindliche]-has a usability which belongs to it essentially ; in this usability it lets us encounter already the "towards-which" for which it is usable. A work that someone has ordered [das...
    • Being and Time (1962)
    • Poetry, Language, Thought (1971)
      (p.109) [Extract from: What are Poets for?]-The whole objective inventory in terms  of  which  the  world  appears is given over to, commended to, and  thus  subjected to the command of self-assertive production. Willing  has in it the character of  command;  for purposeful  self-assertion  is a mode in which the attitude of the producing, and the  objective  character of the world,  concentrate  into  an  unconditional  and  therefore  complete  unity. In  this  self-concentration, the command character of the will announces itself. And  through  it  in the course  of  modern  metaphysics,  the  long-concealed  nature of the long-since existing will as the  Being of beings...
    • Poetry, Language, Thought (1971)
      (p.112) [Extract from: What are poets for? This extract in particular is discussing Rilke's poetry and emerges from a discussion on 'Americanism']-In  place  of  all the  world-content  of things  that  was  formerly  perceived  and used to grant freely of itself,  the  object-character  of technological  dominion  spreads  itself over the earth ever more quickly,  ruthlessly,  and  completely.  Not only does it establish all things as producible in the process of production; it also delivers the products  of  production  by  means  of  the  market. In  self-assertive  production, the  humanness  of  man  and  the  thingness  of  things  dissolve  into  the  calculated  market  value of ...
    • Poetry, Language, Thought (1971)
      (p.113) [Extract from: What are poets for?]-Among  those beings, plants and beasts, too, none  is  under  special  protection,  though  they  are  admitted into the  Open and secured in it. Man, on the other hand, as the being who wills him-self,  not  only  enjoys no  special  protection  from  the  whole of  beings, but rather is unshielded (line 13). As the one who proposes and produces, he  stands  before  the  obstructed  Open. He  himself  and his things are thereby exposed to the growing danger of turning into  mere  material  and into a function  of objectification. The  design of self-assertion  itself extends the  realm...
    • Poetry, Language, Thought (1971)
      (p.158) [Extract from: Building, Dwelling, Thinking  ]-We are attempting to trace in thought the nature  of dwelling. The next step on this path would be the question: what is the state of dwelling in our precarious  age? On all sides we hear talk  about  the housing shortage, and with good reason. Nor is there just talk; there is action too. We try to fill the need by providing houses, by promoting  the  building  of  houses, planning the whole  architectural enterprise. However hard and bitter, however hampering and threatening  the  lack of houses remains, the real plight of dwelling does not lie merely...
    • Poetry, Language, Thought (1971)
      (p.158) [Extract from: Building, Dwelling, Thinking  ]-We are attempting to trace in thought the nature  of dwelling. The next step on this path would be the question: what is the state of dwelling in our precarious  age? On all sides we hear talk  about  the housing shortage, and with good reason. Nor is there just talk; there is action too. We try to fill the need by providing houses, by promoting  the  building  of  houses, planning the whole  architectural enterprise. However hard and bitter, however hampering and threatening  the  lack of houses remains, the real plight of dwelling does not lie merely...
    • Poetry, Language, Thought (1971)
      (p.180) [Extract from: The Thing]-Men alone, as mortals, by dwelling attain to the world as world. Only what conjoins itself out of world becomes a thing. 
    • Poetry, Language, Thought (1971)
      (p.28) [Extract from: The Origin of the Work of Art]-A piece of equipment, a pair  of shoes for instance, when finished, is also self-contained like the mere  thing, but it does not have the  character  of  having  taken shape by itself like the granite boulder. On the other hand, equipment displays  an  affinity  with  the  art  work insofar  as  it  is  something  produced  by the  human  hand. However, by  its  self-sufficient  presence the work  of  art  is  similar rather to the mere thing which has taken shape by itself and is self-contained. Nevertheless we do not count such works among mere ...
    • Poetry, Language, Thought (1971)
      (p.33) [Extract from: The Origin of the work of Art]-From  the  dark opening  of the  worn  insides of the  shoes  the  toilsome  tread of  the  worker  stares  forth.  In  the  stiffly  rugged  heaviness of the shoes there is the accumulated tenacity of her slow trudge through the far-spreading  and ever-uniform  furrows of the field swept  by a  raw wind.  On  the  leather  lie  the  dampness  and  richness  of  the  soil.  Under  the  soles  slides  the  loneliness  of  the  field-path  as evening  falls.  In  the  shoes  vibrates  the  silent  call  of  the  earth, its  quiet  gift  of  the  ripening  grain  and  its ...
    • Poetry, Language, Thought (1971)
      (p.57) [Extract from: The Origin of the work of Art]-We think  of  creation  as  a bringing  forth.  But  the  making  of  equipment, too, is a bringing forth.  Handicraft—a  remarkable play of  language—does  not,  to  be  sure,  create  works, not  even  when  we  contrast,  as we must, the  handmade with the  factory product. But  what  is  it  that  distinguishes  bringing  forth  as  creation from bringing  forth  in  the  mode  of  making?  It  is  as  difficult  to  track  down the  essential  features of the  creation of works and the  making of equipment  as it  is easy to  distinguish  verbally between  the  two  modes  of ...
    • Poetry, Language, Thought (1971)
      (p.62) [Extract from: The Origin of the work of Art]-In the creation of a work [of Art], the conflict, as rift, must be set back into  the earth, and the earth itself must  be set forth  and used  as  the  self-closing  factor.  This use, however, does not use up or mis-use the earth  as matter, but rather  sets it free to benothing but itself. This use of the earth is a working with  it that, to  be sure, looks like the employment of matter in handicraft. Hence the appearance  that artistic creation  is also an activity of handicraft.  It  never is....
    • Poetry, Language, Thought (1971)
      (p.83) [Extract from: The Origin of the Work of Art]-In accordance with what has so far been explained, the meaning of the noun "Ge-Stell" frame, framing, framework, used on page 62, is thus defined: the gathering of the bringing-forth, of the letting-come-forth-here  into the rift-design as bounding outline (peras). The Greek sense of morphe as figure, Gestalt, is made clear by "Ge-Stell," "framing," so understood. Now the word "Ge-Stell," frame, which  we  used  in  later writings  as the explicit key expression for the  nature of modern technology, was indeed conceived in reference to that sense of frame (not in reference to...
    • Poetry, Language, Thought (1971)
    • The question concerning technology (1977)
      (p.10) But in what, then, does the playing in unison of the four ways of occasioning play? They let what is not yet present arrive into presencing. Accordingly,  they are unifiedly ruled over by a bringing  that brings what presences into appearance. Plato tells us what this bringing is  in  a  sentence from the Symposium (20sb): he gar toi ek tau me onton eis to on ionti hotoioun aitia pasa  esti poiesis. -"Every occasion for whatever passes over and goes forward into presencing from that which is  not presencing is poiesis, is bringing-forth [Her-vor-bringen] ."9-It  is of utmost importance that  we  think...
    • The question concerning technology (1977)
      (p.14) What is modern technology? It too is a  revealing. Only when we allow our attention to rest on  this fundamental characteristic does that which is new in modern technology show itself to us. And  yet  the revealing that holds  sway throughout modern technology does not unfold into a bringing-forth in the sense of poiesis. The revealing that rules in modern technology is a  chal­lenging [Herausfordern], which puts to nature the unreasonable demand  that it  supply energy that can be extracted and stored as such. But does this not hold true for the old windmill as well? No. Its sails do...
    • The question concerning technology (1977)
      (p.17) Yet an airliner that stands on the runway is surely an  object. Certainly. We can represent the machine so. But then it conceals itself as  to  what and how it is.  Revealed, it  stands on the taxi strip only as  standing-reserve, inasmuch as it  is  ordered to  en­sure  the possibility of transportation. For  this it must be in its whole structure and in everyone of its constituent parts, on call for duty, i.e., ready for takeoff. (Here it  would be appropriate to  discuss  Hegel's definition of  the  machine as  an autonomous tool. When applied to the tools of the craftsman,...
    • The question concerning technology (1977)
      (p.18) Wherever man opens his eyes and ears, unlocks his heart, and gives himself over to meditating and striving, shaping and working, entreating and thanking, he finds himself everywhere already brought into the unconcealed. 
    • The question concerning technology (1977)
      (p.27) when we consider the essence of technology we experience enframing as a destining of revealing. In this way we are already sojourning within the free space of destining, that in no way confines us to a stultified compulsion to push on blindly with technology. . . . [M]an, precisely as the one so threatened, exalts himself and postures as lord of the earth. In this way the illusion comes to prevail that everything man encounters exists only in so far as it is his construct. This illusion gives rise in turn to one final delusion: it seems as though man everywhere and always encounters only himself. ....
    • The question concerning technology (1977)
      (p.5) The current conception of technology, according to which it is a  means and a  human activity, can therefore be called the in­strumental and anthropological definition of technology. Who would ever deny that it is correct? It is in  obvious con­formity with what we are envisioning when we talk about tech­nology. The instrumental definition of  technology is  indeed so uncannily correct that it  even holds for modern technology, of which,  all other respects, we maintain with some justification that it  is,  in contrast to  the older handwork technology, some­thing completely different and  therefore new.
    • The question concerning technology (1977)
    • Nietzsche: Volumes One and Two (1991)
      (p.113) […] it is an old lesson based on incontrovertible experience that academically organized community efforts, arranged and outfitted for some more or less specific purpose, and "cooperative labors" among the sciences springing from utilitarian motives petrify sooner or later. They grow hollow and vacuous, precisely because of the excessive proximity, the familiarity, and the "routine" shared by the co-workers.
    • Nietzsche: Volumes One and Two (1991)
      (p.124) Three good things are proper to art: elegance, logic, beauty; along with something even better: the grand style. When Nietzsche says that these remain foreign to the "masses," he does not mean the class concept of the "lower strata" of the population. He means "educated" people, in the sense of mediocre cultural Philistines, the kind of people who promoted and sustained the Wagner cult. The farmer and the worker who is really caught up in his machine world remain entirely unmoved by swaggering heroics. These are craved only by the frenetic petit bourgeois. His world-rather, his void-is the genuine obstacle...
    • Nietzsche: Volumes One and Two (1991)
      (p.174) [Quoting Plato] "But, of course, the Ideas for the clusters of these implements are two: one in which 'bedframe' becomes manifest, and one in which 'table' shows itself." Here Plato clearly refers to the fact that the permanence and selfsameness of the "Ideas" is always peri ta polla, "for the cluster of the many and as embracing the many." Hence it is not some arbitrary, undefined permanence. But the philosophic search does not thereby come to an end. It merely attains the vantage point from which it may ask: how is it with those many produced items, those implements, in...
    • Nietzsche: Volumes One and Two (1991)
      (p.175) But there is something else we have to emphasize in the fact that craftsmen manufacture implements. For the Greeks themselves it was clearly granted, but for us it has become rather hazy, precisely because of its obviousness. And that is the fact that what is manufactured or produced, which formerly was not in being, now "is." It "is." We understand this "is." We do not think very much about it. For the Greeks the "Being" of manufactured things was defined, but differently than it is for us. Something produced "is" because the Idea lets it be seen as such, lets...
    • Nietzsche: Volumes One and Two (1991)
      (p.176) But how would it be if there were a  man, [hos panta poiei, hosaper heis hekastos ton cheirotechnon (596c)], "who produced everything that every single other craftsman" is able to make? That would be a man of enormous powers, uncanny and astonishing. In fact there is such a  man: hapanta ergadzetai, "he produces anything and every-thing." He can produce not only implements, [alla kai ta ek tes ges phuomena hapanta poiei kai zoia panta ergadzetai], "but also what comes forth from the earth, producing plants and animals and every-thing else"; kai heauton, "indeed, himself too," and besides that, earth and...
    • Nietzsche: Volumes One and Two (1991)
      (p.80) With the distinction of hyle-morphe, which pertains to beings as such, a second concept is coupled which comes to guide all inquiry into art: art is techne. We have long known that the Greeks name art as well as handicraft with the same word, techne, and name correspondingly both the craftsman and the artist technites. In accordance with the later "technical" use of the word techne, where it  designates (in a way utterly foreign to the Greeks) a mode of production, we seek even in the original and genuine significance of the word such later content: we aver that techne...
    • Nietzsche: Volumes One and Two (1991)
      (p.81) If man tries to win a foothold and establish himself among the beings (physis) to which he is exposed, if he proceeds to master beings in this or that way, then his advance against beings is borne and guided by a knowledge of them. Such knowledge is called techne. From the very outset the word is not, and never is, the designation of a "making" and a  producing; rather, it  designates that knowledge which supports and conducts every human irruption into the midst of beings. 
    • Nietzsche: Volumes One and Two (1991)
    • Nietzsche: Volumes Three and Four (1991)
      (p.175) The prepotence of Being in this essential configuration is called machination.* It prevents any kind of grounding of the "projections" that are under its power and yet are themselves none the less powerful. For machination is the prepotence of all unquestioning self-assurance and certitude in securing. Machination alone can hold the stance it adopts toward itself under its unconditioned self-command. Machination makes itself permanent. When meaninglessness comes to power by dint of machination, the suppression of meaning and thus of all inquiry into the truth of Being must be replaced by machination's erection of "goals" (values). One quite reasonably expects...
    • Nietzsche: Volumes Three and Four (1991)
      (p.194) Nietzsche himself in his published works scarcely spoke of will to power. This may be taken as a sign that he wanted to protect as long as possible what was most intrinsic to his recognition of the truth concerning beings, and to take it  into the custody of a  uniquely simple saying. Will to power is mentioned, but not yet singled out as a key expression, in the second part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883). The title of the episode in which the first sovereign insight into the essence of will to power is achieved offers a  clue for the...
    • Nietzsche: Volumes Three and Four (1991)
      (p.196) The age of the fulfillment of metaphysics-which we descry when we think through the basic features of Nietzsche's metaphysics-prompts us to consider to what extent we first find ourselves in the history of Being. It also prompts us to consider-prior to our finding ourselves-the extent to which we must experience history as the re-lease of Being into machination, a release that Being itself sends, so as to allow its truth to become essential for man out of man's belonging to it.
    • Nietzsche: Volumes Three and Four (1991)
      (p.260) Will to power marks the final metaphysical position of modernity; eternal recurrence implies the end of metaphysics as such (section 2). Will to power may, at least "initially," be identified as quiddity, the "what-being" of beings; recurrence as their existence or "that-being." This distinction coincides with the all-sustaining metaphysical distinction between ontos on (proper being) and me on (nonbeing), in-sofar as the "what?" becomes the guiding question of Western meta-physics. Nietzsche's celebration of Becoming thus actually transforms Becoming into Being; it  remains within the purview of beingness as permanence of presencing and of truth as correctness (section 3). The truth...
    • Nietzsche: Volumes Three and Four (1991)
      (p.267) [From Lecture Analysis By DAVID FARRELL KRELL]-When in "The Question Concerning Technology" Heidegger insists that the essence of technology is nothing technological, that it is rather a "destining of revealing" and hence a turning toward the "saving power" of disclosure as such, is there not a  tendency and a  hope to reach that "immovable center" of technology-its core, its heart, its saving grace, its meaning? Whatever the answer to that question may be, it is important here to emphasize Heidegger's reluctance to assume Ernst Junger's embattled yet heroic posture. Indeed, Jünger's Nietzscheanism is one that Heidegger can neither embrace nor...
    • Nietzsche: Volumes Three and Four (1991)
    • Logik als die Frage nach dem Wesen der Sprache (Logic: The Question of Truth) (1998)
      (p.128) “the determinate feature (of ourselves) in this sense is the stamping and structuring of our entire behaviour and attitude on the basis of what is for us our mission and assignment. To realise our destination, and, depending on context, to posit it in a product of work (ins Werk setzen) and to bring it to a complete product of work (ins Werk bringen) – that is what is called working”(original German text)Bestimmtheit in diesem Sinn heißt Prägung und Fügung unseres ganzen Verhaltens und unserer Haltung aus dem, was für uns Sendung und Auftrag ist. Unsere Bestimmung erwirken, je nach Umkreis...
    • Contributions to Philosophy: From Enowning (1999)
      (p.100) the name machination [Machenschaft] should immediately refer to making [Machen] (ποίησις, τέχνη), which we assuredly know as a human activity. This latter, however, is itself possible precisely only on the grounds of an interpretation of beings in which their makeability comes to the fore, so much so that constancy and presence become the specific determinations of beingness. The fact that something makes itself by itself and consequently is makeable in a corresponding operation: the making itself by itself is the interpretation of φύσις carried out in terms of τέχνη and its outlook on things, in such a way that now...
    • Contributions to Philosophy: From Enowning (1999)
    • Reden und andere Zeugnisse eines Lebensweges (2000)
    • Overcoming Metaphysics (2003)
      (p.86) The fact that man as animal rationale, here meant in the sense of the working being, must wander through the desert of the earth's desolation could be a sign that metaphysics occurs in virtue of Being, and the overcoming of metaphysics occurs as the incorporation of Being. For labor (cf. Ernst Junger, Der Arbeiter, 1932) is nowreaching the metaphysical rank of the unconditional objectification of everything present which is active in the will to will. If this is so, we may not presume to stand outside of metaphysics. Collapse and desolation find their adequate occurrence in the fact that metaphysical man, the animal rationale, gets fixed as the laboring...
    • Logic as the Question Concerning the Essence of Language (2009)
      (p.105) One talks much today about the historicity of the human being, and yet one does not come to know the essence of this historicity. One does not comprehend the inner demand that lies in the essence of historicity. This comprehending is only possible in a  transformed relationship with time, in an original experience of time. In order to incorporate this transformed time-concept into our Dasein, it is necessary to subject our kind of experiencing and understanding of time to a  fundamental change, as well as to bring about and to carry through a fundamental experience. We do not experience time...
    • Logic as the Question Concerning the Essence of Language (2009)
      (p.106) § 24. The experience of time through the experience of our determination Yet, what does "determination" mean here? In our discussion, we use the expression "determination" in a clearly defined meaning-in a determinate meaning, we could have also said, "determinate," no longer comprehended as characterization of an arbitrary thing or concept. We want to give the word "determination" a fuller, more original sense. The word can be applied at will in everyday usage. We violate it. However, this violence with which philosophy uses words and deter-mines words belongs to its essence. Only in the eyes of the philistine and columnist is...
    • Logic as the Question Concerning the Essence of Language (2009)
      (p.107) § 24. b) Labor-The second sense, which we ground on the first sense, preserves the determination as we take it over in such a  manner that we create it. Determinateness in this sense means [a] forming and fitting-together of our entire comportment and our bearing from that which is mission and mandate for us. To effect our determination, to set to work and to bring to work, in each case, according to the sphere of the creating-that means to labor. Labor is not any occupation that we attend to out of calculation, need, pastime, boredom, but labor is here the determination that...
    • Logic as the Question Concerning the Essence of Language (2009)
      (p.110) [Extract from §25. Original and derived experience of being and of time. Temporality and within-timeness.]-We have tried to make time visible as fundamental power of our Dasein. With this, it  is  already indicated that time is characteristic of the human being and belongs to him alone, that, therefore, time-belonging to the human subject-is, accordingly, something subjec-tive. According to the current determination, which we experience as our own happening, the occurrences on the earth, in plants or animals are certainly flows and processes in the framework of time, but stones, animals, plants are themselves not temporal in the original sense as...
    • Logic as the Question Concerning the Essence of Language (2009)
      (p.111) To be sure, animal and plant do not labor, not because they are carefree, but because they cannot labor. Even the horse that pulls the wagon does not labor; it is only hitched up to an event-of-labor of the human being. The machine does not labor either. That it labors is a misinterpretation of the nineteenth century. This misinterpretation of labor goes so far that physics has taken up the concept "labor" as a concept of physics. Because labor was granted to the machine, then conversely the human being as laborer was degraded into a machine-a conception that is most...
    • Logic as the Question Concerning the Essence of Language (2009)
      (p.112) [Extract from §25]-Mandate and mission, future and beeness are an original power that is connected in itself, which closed in itself determines presentness and dominates our being as historical; we characterize it as labor of the human being-labor, not as arbitrary occupation, but as the execution of the forming of and disposing over that which poses itself as task to us in work in our historical Dasein. Mandate, mission, and labor are as this unifying power at the same time the power of the attunement that carries us. 
    • Logic as the Question Concerning the Essence of Language (2009)
      (p.125) The Experience of the Essence of the Human Being from His Determination -§ 27. The in-one-another of mood, labor, mission, and mandate -The experience of being-human in and from its determination in a three-fold sense is to be raised to the light more sharply in its rendering, to be made conceptually graspable and effective for the acting understanding. 
    • Logic as the Question Concerning the Essence of Language (2009)
      (p.127) The Experience of the Essence of the Human Being from His Determination -§ 27. B) Labor -We characterized labor as the present. That shall not mean that labor is that which is respectively present at the time. Labor, according to its spirituality, is present, insofar as it transposes our being in the binding appropriate to work, in the liberation of beings themselves. (We remind ourselves that we have made the following assignment: Mandate-future; mission-beenness; labor-present, respectively, moment.) In labor and through it beings first become manifest to us in their determinate regions, and as laborer the human being is  transported into the...
    • Logic as the Question Concerning the Essence of Language (2009)
      (p.128) The Experience of the Essence of the Human Being from His Determination -[Specific Extract from § 27. B) Labor] -That is why the enjoyment of one's labor is so important. It is not a mood that only accompanies our labor; it is no addition to labor, but joy as fundamental mood is the ground of genuine labor, which in its execution first makes human beings capable of existence. 
    • Logic as the Question Concerning the Essence of Language (2009)
      (p.129) The Experience of the Essence of the Human Being from His Determination -[Extract from]-§ 27. c) Mission and mandate -Precisely by virtue of mood, the human being is never an individual subject, but he stands always for-or against-one another, in a with-one-another. This is also valid when, as in longing, the other is not yet immediately there. The being-with-one-another of human beings is not in virtue of the fact that there are several human beings, but several human beings can only be in community, because being-human already means: attuned being-with-one-another, which is  not lost, if a  human being is alone. The exposedness...
    • Logic as the Question Concerning the Essence of Language (2009)
      (p.133) The Experience of the Essence of the Human Being from His Determination -[Extract from §28. The blasting of the being-subject through the determination of the Volk] -The lore of history is given only for him who stands in resoluteness; only he can and may know the inevitability of the historical Dasein. However, the unknowing ones, and even those who are drifting around in the unessence of history can, all the same, never release themselves from history and labor. For, even the irresoluteness [Unentschlossenheit], the self-shutting [das sich verschliej3ende] just-barely-still-staggering-along, is always, because essential, different from the snapping ensnarement of the animal in...
    • Logic as the Question Concerning the Essence of Language (2009)
      (p.136) [Extract from §28. The blasting of the being-subject through the determination of the Volk]- e) The State as the historical being of a Volk -Because the being of the historical Dasein of the human being is grounded in temporality, that is, [in] care, therefore, the State is  essentially necessary-the State, not as an abstract, and not [as] derived from a right [that is] invented and relative to a timeless human nature that is in itself, but the State as the law of the essence of historical being, by virtue of whose decree the Volk first secures for itself historical duration, that is,...
    • Logic as the Question Concerning the Essence of Language (2009)
      (p.53) [Extract from § 14. Reply to the first interposed question: What is that, a Volk?]- The first question can be set in motion in different ways. We intentionally take an external point of departure, namely, with the word ''Volk." We are briefly pursuing the fact that the word "Volk" diverges into a manifold of meanings; for this, we give examples of the most common word usage. In the review of the word "Volk," however, we remain conscious of the fact that, through the gathering together of the word meanings and the extraction of an average meaning, we are not able to grasp...
    • Logic as the Question Concerning the Essence of Language (2009)
      (p.55) [Extract from § 14. Reply to the first interposed question: What is that, a Volk?]- We came on this way, however, only to see the We, in a manner of speaking, from outside-as an assembly of individual human beings. We tried then another way, namely, from out of the moment. We said: We are here, admitted into the happening of education of this university and, with this, fitted into the vocation, which we willed with its professional tasks, [and] with this, fitted into the order and the willing of a State. We are here, fitted into this happening today, we are here...
    • Logic as the Question Concerning the Essence of Language (2009)
    • Being and Truth (2010)
      (p.162) [Extract from Lecture On 30 January 1933: Kolbenheyer]-We are grateful for the role that spiritual workers of this sort play in life, for  they  are  doing  nothing  but  bringing  to  light  a  perhaps  unintended justification of the most trite reactionary position. The facts demonstrate it: the weightiest objection to the speech and the clearest sign of how questionable  it is, is the  deafening  applause  that  I  do  not  begrudge  Herr Kolbenheyer.8. Whoever has experienced and grasped even the slightest part of the  new  German  reality  that  stands  before  us  must  already know after Kolbenheyer’s first sentences how things stand with his...
    • Being and Truth (2010)
      (p.166) Only insofar as Being is care does a way of Being become possible such as resoluteness, labor, heroism, and so on. But because man has these  possibilities,  he  also  has,  on  the  other  side,  the  possibilities  of innocuousness,  busy-ness,  cowardice,  slavery,  money-grubbing,  and so  on.  These  are  not,  as  it  were,  regrettable  additions.  Only  where there  is  busy-ness  is  there  labor.  Only  on  the  basis  of  this  Being  (as care) is man a historical entity. Care is the condition of possibility for man’s ability to be a political entity.
    • Being and Truth (2010)
  • Heidegger, Martin; Mitchell, Andrew J J
  • Heidegger, Martin; Wolin, Richard
    • The Heidegger controversy: A critical reader (1992)
      (p.29) [Extract from: "The Self-Assertion of the German University" ("Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universitlit") by Martin Heidegger first appeared in 1933 with Kom Verlag in Breslau. lt Was republished in 1983 by Klostermann Verlag in Frankfun.]-Assuming the rectorship means committing oneself to leading this uni-versity spiritually and intellectually. The teachers and students who constitute the rector's following [Gefolgschaft der Lehrer und Scbiiler) will awaken and gain strength only through being truly and collectively rooted in the essence of the German university. This essence will attain clarity, rank, and power, however, only when the leaders are, first and foremost and at all...
    • The Heidegger controversy: A critical reader (1992)
      (p.31) [Extract from: "The Self-Assertion of the German University" ("Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universitlit") by Martin Heidegger first appeared in 1933 with Kom Verlag in Breslau. lt Was republished in 1983 by Klostermann Verlag in Frankfun.]-But what is theoria for the Greeks? It ts said that it is pure contemplation, which remains bound only to its object in its fullness and in its demands. The Greeks are invoked to support the claim that this contemplative behavior is supposed to occur for its own sake. But this claim is incorrect. For, on the one hand, "theory" does not happen for its own...
    • The Heidegger controversy: A critical reader (1992)
      (p.32) [Extract from: "The Self-Assertion of the German University" ("Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universitlit") by Martin Heidegger first appeared in 1933 with Kom Verlag in Breslau. lt Was republished in 1983 by Klostermann Verlag in Frankfun.]-Only if we resolutely obey this decree to win back the greatness of the beginning, only then will science become the innermost necessity of our existence. Otherwise, science will remain something in which we become involved purely by chance or will remain a calm, pleasurable activity, an activity free of danger, which promotes the mere advancement of knowledge [Kenntnisse]. If, however, we obey the distant decree...
    • The Heidegger controversy: A critical reader (1992)
      (p.33) [Extract from: "The Self-Assertion of the German University" ("Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universitlit") by Martin Heidegger first appeared in 1933 with Kom Verlag in Breslau. lt Was republished in 1983 by Klostermann Verlag in Frankfun.]-If we will the essence of science in the sense of the questioning, unsheltered standing firm in the midst of the uncertainty of the totality of being, then this will to essence will create for our Volk a world of the innermost and most extreme danger, i.e., a  truly spiritual world. For "spirit" is neither empty acumen nor the noncommittal play of wit nor the busy...
    • The Heidegger controversy: A critical reader (1992)
      (p.34) [Extract from: "The Self-Assertion of the German University" ("Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universitlit") by Martin Heidegger first appeared in 1933 with Kom Verlag in Breslau. lt Was republished in 1983 by Klostermann Verlag in Frankfun.]-The German student's notion of freedom is now being returned to its truth. Our of this freedom will develop for German students certain bonds and forms of service. The first bond is the one that binds to the ethnic and national community [Volksgemeinschaft]. It entails the obligation to share fully, both passively and actively, in the roil, the striving, and the abilities of all estates and members...
    • The Heidegger controversy: A critical reader (1992)
      (p.36) [Extract from: "The Self-Assertion of the German University" ("Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universitlit") by Martin Heidegger first appeared in 1933 with Kom Verlag in Breslau. lt was republished in 1983 by Klostermann Verlag in Frankfun.]-The three bond through the Volk to the destiny of the state in its spiritual mission-are equally original aspects of the German essence. The three forms of service that follow from them-labor service, military service, and knowledge service-are equally necessary and of equal rank. 
    • The Heidegger controversy: A critical reader (1992)
      (p.37) [Extract from: "The Self-Assertion of the German University" ("Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universitlit") by Martin Heidegger first appeared in 1933 with Kom Verlag in Breslau. lt Was republished in 1983 by Klostermann Verlag in Frankfun.]-The discipline will only be a discipline if it places itself from the very outset within the realm of this spiritual legislation, thereby bringing down disciplinary barriers and overcoming the musty and false character of higher education as superficial professional training.[...] But there is, to be sure, one thing that we do know which follows from the essence of science as indicated above, and that is that the...
    • The Heidegger controversy: A critical reader (1992)
      (p.47) [Excerpt from German Students (November 3, 1933)]-Do not pervert the knowledge you have struggled for into a  vain, selfish possession. Preserve it as the necessary primal possession of the leader [Uhrerischen Menschen] in the völkisch professions of the State. You can no longer be those who merely attend lectures [die nur "Hörenden']. You are obligated to know and act together in the creation of the future university [hohe Schule] of the German spirit. Every one of you must first prove and justify each talent and privilege. That will occur through the force of your aggressive involvement [Einsatz] in the struggle of...
    • The Heidegger controversy: A critical reader (1992)
      (p.53) [Complete article written by Heidegger for the Freiburger Studentenzeitung]-The Call to the Labor Service (January 23, 1934) -The new path that is being followed by the education of our German young men [Jungmannschaft] leads through the Labor Service. -Such service provides the basic experience of hardness, of closeness to the soil and to the implements of labor, of the rigorous law that governs the simplest physical-and thus essential-tabor in a group. -Such service provides the basic experience of daily existence in a  camp community, an existence that is strictly ordered according to the require-ments of the tasks that the group has undertaken. -Such service...
    • The Heidegger controversy: A critical reader (1992)
      (p.54) [Excerpt of article written by Heidegger for the Freiburger Studentenzeitung]-The Call to the Labor Service (January 23, 1934) -There is only one single German "estate" [" Lebensstand'']. That is the estate of labor [Arbeitsstand] which is rooted in and borne by the Volk and which has freely submitted to the historical will of the State. The character of this estate is being pre-formed in the National Socialist Workers' Party movement. A call to the Labor Service is being sounded.
    • The Heidegger controversy: A critical reader (1992)
      (p.55) [Complete Speech, Given by Heidegger at Freiburg University to 6oo beneficiaries of the National Socialist "labor service" (Arbeitsdienst) program . Published in Der Alemann: Kampfblatt der Nationalsocialisten Oberbadms, February 1, 1934]-National Socialist Education (January 22, 1934):-German Volksgenossen! German Workers! -As Rector of the University, I cordially welcome you to our institution. This welcome will at the same time be the beginning of our work together. Let us start by understanding clearly the significance of the fact that you, for whom the City of Freiburg has created jobs by emergency decree, are coming together with us in the largest lecture hall of the...
    • The Heidegger controversy: A critical reader (1992)
      (p.56) [Excerpt from National Socialist Education (January 22, 1934)]-The creation of work must, first of all, make the unemployed and jobless Volksgenosse again capable of existing [daseinsfiihig] in the State and for the State and thereby capable of existing for the Volk as a  whole. [...] Everyone of our Volk who is employed must know for what reason and to what purpose he is where he is. lt is only through this living and ever-present knowledge that his life will be rooted in the Volk as a  whole, and in its destiny. Providing this knowledge is  thus a necessary part of the creation...
    • The Heidegger controversy: A critical reader (1992)
      (p.57) [Excerpt from National Socialist Education (January 22, 1934)]-What, therefore, is the significance of the fact that you are assembled here in the auditorium of the University with us? This fact is a  sign that a  new, common will exists, the will to build a living bridge between the worker of the "hand" and the worker of the "head." Today, the will to bridge this gap is no longer a  project that is doomed to failure. And why not? Because the whole of our German reality has been changed by the National Socialist State, with the result that our whole past...
    • The Heidegger controversy: A critical reader (1992)
      (p.58) [Excerpt from National Socialist Education (January 22, 1934)]-In its essence, the knowledge of true Wissenschaft does not differ at all from the knowledge of the farmer, woodcutter, the miner, the artisan. For knowledge means: to know one's way around in the world into which we are placed, as a community and as individuals. [...] We no longer distinguish between the "educated" and the "uneducated." And not because these are both the same, but because we no longer tie our estimation of a  person to this distinction. We do, on the other hand, differentiate between genuine knowledge and pseudo-knowledge. Genuine knowledge is...
    • The Heidegger controversy: A critical reader (1992)
      (p.59) [Excerpt from National Socialist Education (January 22, 1934)]-Like these words "knowledge" and "Wissenschaft," the words "worker'' and "work," too, have a  transformed meaning and a  new sound. The "worker" is not, as Marxism claimed, a mere object of exploitation. The workers [Arbeiterstand] are not the class of the disinherited who are rallying for the general class struggle. But labor is also not simply the production of goods for others. Nor is labor simply the occasion and the means to earn a living. Rather: For us, "work" is  the title of every well-ordered action that is borne by the responsibility of...
    • The Heidegger controversy: A critical reader (1992)
      (p.61) [Excerpt from Heidegger's Letter to the Rector of Freiburg University, November 4, 1945]-I  was nevertheless absolutely convinced that an autonomous alliance of intellectuals [der Geistigen] could deepen and transform a  number of essential elements of the "National Socialist movement" and thereby contribute in its own way to overcoming Europe's disarray and the crisis of the Western spirit. Three [sic] addresses by a man of no lesser rank than Paul Valery ("The Crisis of Spirit," "The Politics of Spirit," "Our Sovereign Good," "The Balance of Intelligence") constitute sufficient proof of the seriousness, concern, and profundity with which the destiny of the West...
    • The Heidegger controversy: A critical reader (1992)
  • Wolin, Richard
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