Termin

One of the most common ways in which the distinction – and corresponding incommensurability – between the “early” and the “late” Heidegger has been developed is in terms of “activism” vs. “quietism”. By adopting the former, agency is won at the expense of an account of the broader social-historical forces that shape it and, therefore, remains naïvely voluntaristic. Endorsing the latter, by contrast, secures a compelling diagnosis of the historical epoch of technics at the expense of possibilities for emancipation. This picture not only misses the fact that the “late” belongs to and is the fulfillment of the “early” (emancipatory) project, but that it only appears to endorse “passivity” or “quietism” on the presupposition of a causal account of agency and a form of dialectical negativity that is its corollary. But the “early” project of fundamental ontology was crucially animated by the dismantling of the causal model of agency and the passive/active distinction that is a holdover from the metaphysical tradition, an endeavor further developed and radicalized in Heidegger’s later work. Hence, I argue that in order to better understand the relationship between the “early” and “late” projects and, more importantly, to elaborate an account of resistance in the age of Ge-stell that does not participate in its reproduction, it is necessary to attend to the guiding thread of Heidegger’s critique of agency as causality and negativity as dialectics.

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