IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Summer 2013 - 18
du /namij, because metabolh / can
mean not only "change" but also
"exchange." So what, you might
say. From the context it is perfectly
clear that "change" is the appropriate meaning, and this meaning
is indeed perfectly adequate to
Aristotle's intentions and also to
the phenomena themselves, such
as house-building, which Aristotle
explicitly has in view. And even if
"exchange" is included as a possible
meaning of metabolh /, one could
ask why that is a problem, especially considering that Aristotle
sees that for every active du /namij
there is a passive du /namij, so
that there would be an "exchange"
between an active and a passive
du /namij. For instance, the wood
and stone that is worked on by the
builder, in whom the du/namij of
the knowledge of house-building
resides, must themselves have the
passive du/namij to suffer the
changes wrought upon them by
the builder. But are the wood and
stone then a)rxai /? No, not at all.
They only suffer the change; they
only react to the active du/namij in
being able to bear it and are therefore not themselves starting-points,
origins.
As Aristotle points out in Book
Delta of the Metaphysics, an a)rxh /
is always a o q
( / en, a "whence." In
the case of a te /xnh such housebuilding, the know-how of housebuilding is clearly the "whence,"
the point of origin, whence the
change or transformation of the
building materials proceeds, and
not the building materials themselves, which at most are ai tioi,
)/
i.e., causes to which something is
indebted. The metaphysical casting of power depends essentially
on one pole being the active source
of power and the other pole being
the "object" that suffers the change
brought about by this power. It
must be emphasized that the being
upon which the power works when
it is exercised in its e )ne /rgeia is
always a some-thing. This is apparent especially in the limiting case
18
|
of Aristotle's frequent example of
medical treatment, for the patient
is treated bodily, physically by
the physician. The physician has a
know-how of the possible means
of treating the patient's body to
make it healthy, and the patient
suffers this bodily treatment. The
powers considered by Aristotle
are always powers over things, or
human beings qua things, and this
conception of power is essential
to the entire metaphysical tradition of thinking on power. Power as
thought in productionist metaphysics always emanates from a source
that governs a change in something
else or a human being considered
as a passive thing. The action and
reaction between an active and a
passive power does not alter this
but is precisely part of the conception of a unidirectional power emanating from a source which is the
a)rxh / for the metabolh / brought
about by the du /namij.
The difference in the ontological structure between change
brought about from a source governing that change and the phenomenon of exchange becomes
clear when we consider the simple
example of a market exchange. The
phenomenon of exchange itself
is much broader and richer than
market exchange, encompassing,
say, not only the exchange of views
in a discussion but also the subtle
interplay in which human beings
acknowledge and esteem each
other. People associate and maintain social intercourse with one
another by exchanging greetings,
views, opinions, news, compliments, insults, blows, kindnesses,
gifts, waves, glances, sexual favors,
etc. But to keep to a very simple
example: When goods are sold in
the market, there is a seller and a
buyer. The seller does not simply
suffer to have his goods acquired
by the buyer. Nor does the buyer
simply suffer to have his money
taken out of his pocket by the seller.
The sale or purchase transaction is
based on an agreement between
buyer and seller. There is no single
source governing the exchange, but
rather there are two sources, two
a)rxai /, which must reciprocate and
intermesh in an agreement if the
exchange is to be effected at all.
Exchange cannot be thought without an interplay between at least
/, and this circumstance
two a t|ak
)
already bursts the ontological
structure of xf /|oh rqkhxklh /
that is the paradigm for Aristotle's concept of dy /oankg and
the entire metaphysical tradition's
thinking on power.
Heidegger's comment that the
fundamental concepts of philosophy grew out of Plato's and
Aristotle's interpretation of the
phenomenon of production refers
precisely to the ontological structure of du /namij in which there
is a single source of power that is
potentially put to work in mastering
some thing. All metaphysical thinking on power from the Greek beginning up to the present day comes
to grief on the phenomenon of the
interchange between human beings
as somewhos, each of whom must
be considered as its own source,
its own a)rxh./ This circumstance
has hitherto not been brought into
sharp focus by philosophical thinking, despite even Hegel's famous
dialectic of recognition and the rise
of dialogical philosophy in the midnineteenth century.
Here attention is drawn to
the circumstance that violence
is done to all phenomena of
social exchange and interplay
by metaphysical thinking and
even Heidegger's post-metaphysical thinking6 because metaphysics'
6
This despite Heidegger's thorough phenomenological interpretation of the Aristotelean
pair of concepts, du /namij and e )ne /rgeia in his
lecture course on Aristotle's Metaphysics Book
Theta 1-3 in Summer Semester 1931 in which
he notes, "... For which reason it is no accident
that today, despite the long tradition of this pair
of concepts, we do not have the slightest serious attempt in philosophy to really get to the
phenomena hidden behind the term du /namij"
(GA33:74).
IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE
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SuMMEr 2013
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