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In the dialogue between Socrates and Polos in Gorgias at 477e, Plato presents an innocuous, if not to say naive, view of money-making:

Σωκράτης: τίς οὖν τέχνη πενίας ἀπαλλάττει; οὐ χρηματιστική;
Πῶλος: ναί.

“Socrates: Now what is the art that sets free from poverty? Is it not money-making?
Polos: Yes.”

The very art, or technique, whose usefulness is said is to reside in setting free from poverty, also induces it for, as it turns out, this art is the germ of what will become a couple of millennia later full-blown capitalism. There are today countless apologists for capitalism who point out that capitalism has raised millions and millions out of poverty, with poverty being measured by how many dollars an individual has to spend daily, e.g. one, or even two, dollars a day. Not a word about how capitalism, through its essential striving for surplus-value, simultaneously destroys the way of life of a people. With this destruction, especially of the environment, people have no choice but to seek to earn an income some other way. This may result in their entering the fray of competition for urban jobs. Indigenous peoples lose their roots in an old culture that goes under in the modern, market-mediated way of capitalist life.

Capitalism started out very modestly as τέχνη χρηματιστική, the art of money-making. It manifested itself above all in commerce and trade. Commerce is the coming-together of goods on the market, where they can be and are exchanged. In doing so, they are mutually estimated, valued for what they are worth as exchange-value. Usually this is done through the medium of money, in which they are quantitatively valued. As medium of exchange, money is merely a serviceable means to an end, namely, exchange. The mediation of exchange is thus listed as one of the functions of money. This seems reasonable enough.

The art of money-making had to take over the production process of goods to transform itself into genuine capitalism, that is premised upon money-capital buying the means of production and hiring labour power to employ them producing goods. This extension and transformation of money-making into mature capitalism took millennia. Greek thinking did not have this development in its sights. For the Greeks, τέχνη χρηματιστική was just one τέχνη alongside other τέχναι including, notably, τέχνη ποιητική. The art of making useful things existed alongside the art of making money, but it was the former that played an essential role in Greek thinking, serving as it did as the paradigm for investigating the ontology of movement.

The question of movement was at the core of Greek philosophical thinking when it arose in the sixth century B.C.E. It focused on the investigation of κινούμενα, things that can be moved, physical things, which is the subject matter of physics. Aristotle’s Physics is itself at the heart of his metaphysics, but he does not take the natural movement, say, of celestial bodies, as the paradigm for physical movement. Instead he investigates the movement of making things, i.e. τέχνη ποιητική, to fashion the key concepts of his ontology of (productive) movement which then, fatefully, has been transferred to other kinds of movement for which it is ill-suited, thus obscuring the truth of the pertinent phenomena..

Another paradigm residing in τέχνη χρηματιστική was available for an alternative ontology of another kind of movement, viz. interchange, but this was left to one side by Greek thinking. Seriously taking up and unfolding this alternative leads to an alternative interpretation of the world by an alternative cast of mind. So far in Western thinking, this opportunity has been missed and dismissed. Be that as it may, without Aristotle’s ontology of productive movement, the crucial importance of energy (ἐνέργεια) would not figure in today’s world. The unbridled will to power over productive movement would by hindered. It would lack an indispensable concept. The so-called March of Progress would be held up.

The interweaving and intermeshing of productive movement with the exchange movement on the various exchanges and markets of global capitalism characterize what we today call capitalism. An ontology of exchange and interchange, however, has so far been lacking. Among other things, it would allow the intermeshing of the two kinds of movement to be suitably conceptualized. I have attempted to fill this lacuna with an ontology of exchange that serves not only as key to conceptualizing capitalism, but also as the basis for a social ontology of how we sociate with each other in society through mutual estimation of who we are. Such a power play of whoness requires concepts entirely different from those required for an ontology of productive, efficient causal movement at the heart of all the modern sciences. Unfortunately, the modern mind is currently not up to thinking ontologically, and will be out of action for another time to come.

Neither Plato nor Aristotle had, nor could have had, something resembling capitalism in view or in mind. In this sense, they remained necessarily naive. Nevertheless, the two paradigms of productive movement (τέχνη ποιητική) and gainful movement (τέχνη χρηματιστική) slumbered in the Greek world. Especially the latter has clandestinely sprung to life in our own, attaining an eery, destructive independence from any human intentions in the valorization of thingified value. The former does show its face, albeit obscurely, in the guise of the thoroughly empiricist modern sciences. Yet humans kid themselves that everything is still under control, viz. under the control of us humans as subjects.

Further reading: Plato Gorgias. Greek: https://el.wikisource.org/wiki/Γοργίας_(Πλάτων)

Social Ontology of Whoness: Rethinking core phenomena of political philosophy De Gruyter, Berlin 2019.

‘Technology, Technique, Interplay: Questioning Die Frage nach der Technik’ in Technology and Society Magazine IEEE Issue 2, Summer 2013 pp. 13-21.

One of the most famous and oft-cited of Hegel’s pronouncements comes from the Preface to his Philosophy of Right (Rechtsphilosophie 1821, 3rd ed. 1830), translated into English by T.M. Knox as “What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational” for the German: “Was vernünftig ist, das ist wirklich; and was wirklich ist, das ist vernünftig.” (RPh. Werke 7 S.24). Hegel’s dictum is pronounced authoritatively, but it is not a dogmatic assertion. Rather it is a concentrated distillation of his entire system whose origins can be followed up. The English translation is problematic, relying as it does on Latin filtered through French, and, even remaining within German, the interpretation of this pithy pronouncement remains controversial. I will cut to the chase by concentrating upon the interpretation of “actual”/”wirklich” and especially “rational”/”vernünftig”, both of which originate in Greek thinking, and I will not stick to interpreting only Hegel.

‘Actuality’ for the Greeks, i.e. Aristotle, is ἐνέργεια (_energeia_), i.e. the at-work-ness of a power (δύναμις _dynamis_) in productive movement toward an end (_telos_ τέλος). This movement can be understood, in particular, as a process of becoming (Werden) and so not necessarily as an existing, attained state of affairs. ‘Actus’ in Latin signifies correspondingly an ‘act’ as the action of a power (potentia) at work toward some final goal. ‘Wirklichkeit’ and ‘wirklich’ in German signify similarly the dynamic action of a power at work rather than a static, realized state of affairs, i.e. what we today call ‘reality’. In today’s German, ‘Wirklichkeit’ equates pretty much with ‘reality’ which, in turn, is derivative of Latin ‘res’ (thing, matter). Hence e.g. a republic (res publica) is a form of government concerned with public matters, whereas a res extensa is a physical thing.

German ‘Vernunft’ is a standard translation of Latin ‘ratio’, which in turn is a rendering of Greek λόγος (_logos_) or νοῦς (_nous_), hence ‘mind’. ‘Mind’, in turn, is ‘Geist’ in German, one of the key, load-bearing concepts in Hegel’s thinking as a whole. It figures in Hegel’s first major work from 1807, Die Phänomenologie des Geistes, a title misleadingly rendered these days in English as Phenomenology of Spirit, rather than, more adequately, as Phenomenology of Mind. For Hegel, it is Geist/mind that comes to actuality in the world, step by step, in the movement of world history (Weltgeschichte), culminating in Hegel’s philosophy of “absoluter Geist” (absolute mind) that simultaneously brings the history of metaphysical thinking to a close.

To be brief, my interpretive translation of Hegel’s pronouncement reads: “What is actively at work in the world corresponds to an historical hermeneutic cast of mind”. This interpretation, of course, does violence to Hegel’s understanding of his own system and especially his philosophy of history conceived as a progress of mind realizing (actualizing) itself in the world. Pace Hegel, the final, actual, historical world cannot be conceived as the actuality of the Christian god as known through absolute mind, with the positive connotations of such an actualization. What is actualized in the world is certainly an historical cast of mind, for the world ‘is’ or ‘essences’ only for the mind, and that in an interpretation of its phenomenality, especially its key, elementary phenomena, starting with being itself, time, movement. All three phenomena are subjected to rigorous interrogation and reinterpretation by the major philosophers throughout Western history, who therefore figure as historically situated co-casters of world. They are not necessarily welcomed by their contemporaries.

In particular, two philosophers stand out whose interpretation of the historical world can be regarded as dystopian: Heidegger and Marx. Both are deeply indebted to Aristotle. It is not only worthwhile, but crucial and pivotal to engage critically with these two thinkers if today’s world is to be interpreted at all adequately. In earlier work I confronted these two thinkers with one another (Capital and Technology: Marx and Heidegger, published also in German and Chinese). Each pin-points how we have come to this historical pass in a cast of world=cast of mind that is anything but the achievement of reaching a final historical ‘fair’, rather than ugly, destination.

For Heidegger, the seeds for an absolute will to power over all kinds of movement (as I reformulate Heidegger) were sown already with Aristotle’s ontology of productive movement, which is why he characterizes Aristotle’s Physics as the “Grundbuch” (foundational book) of Western thinking. These have flourished into what he calls the Ge-Stell, which I call the set-up. The Ge-Stell can be regarded as Heidegger’s final diagnosis and verdict over what was set in train with the “first beginning” in metaphysical Greek thinking, whose ontological branch focused on investigating, i.e. on bringing to conceptual light, ‘the being as being’ (τὸ ὂν ᾗ ὄν). The set-up represents the culmination of the absolute will to power over all kinds of movement in endless technological progress, which all the modern sciences serve in one way or another. Especially the late Heidegger proposes the alternative of “another beginning”.

Marx, whose philosophical thinking Heidegger more or less completely neglected, to his own detriment, presents with his enormous, unfinished three-tome Das Kapital, what I have come to interpret as a social ontology of capitalism along with a critique of the capitalist cast of mind that covers up and suppresses in multiple ways the truth of this historical mode of economic life. This cast of mind is actualized in what I call the gainful game (Gewinnst) played atop the underlying essential movement of endless valorization of thingified value. Such valorization is the hidden global law (or principle) of movement governing today’s global capitalist economy behind the backs of the players in the gainful game.

Today we are all such players, rather than “Angestellte des Ge-Stells” (Heidegger). As players we may be winners or losers in the game, more or less satisfied with our lot, at least in the ‘developed’ West. Losers are legion. The principle of valorizing movement itself, however, is pernicious and indifferent to life, for it is posited on the exploitation of both human labour power and the Earth. Thingified value valorizes by generating surplus value whose magnitude is only diminished by what is paid to employees in wages and to landowners as ground-rent. Nature as such is defenceless. All movement is a contradiction, but the movement of valorization is a pernicious contradiction harmful to both mortals and the Earth, albeit that participation in this movement on the surface may even appear delusively as the “pursuit of happiness” in the necessarily competitive, combative gainful game.

There is therefore an endless struggle between functioning capital and labour power as well as devastating exploitation of the Earth that has become increasingly visible today after centuries of capitalism. The endless principle of valorizing thingified value is both pernicious and ruthless. Humans hiring out their labour power to valorizing capital can resist their exploitation through struggle, whereas the Earth suffers utter devastation unless humans intervene.

What Heidegger calls the Ge-Stell (set-up), that stands for endless ‘improvement’ in the will to power over all kinds of movement, intermeshes with the valorization of thingified value in that it enhances valorization through productivity increases, including the acceleration of turnover time of circuits of capital. In this sense, the set-up is a means for the gainful game and its underlying movement of valorization. Valorization plays the lead role, assisted in the supporting role by endless technological ‘progress’. Both the gainful game and the set-up are casts of mind that intermesh and are actual (at work) globally in today’s world. Together they constitute today’s Geist as the consummation of what Hegel regarded as world history. The principle of endless valorization, aided and abetted by the absolute will to power over all kinds of movement, is today’s actuality, its Wirklichkeit, no matter whether the truth of this pernicious global law of movement comes to light of not. That is the task of philosophy today to be ‘activated’ against all odds.

Technological progress presents itself to today’s cast of mind as for the sake of improving the lot of humanity, but in truth it is for the sake of endless valorization. Economic growth is an enigmatic fetish in today’s world, fervently adored by economists, along with most ‘level-headed’ people. Technologies are only developed (through research and investment) and deployed under the condition that they enhance valorization. Mortal humans struggle to gain a share of the thingified value generated by technological progress. This share has the form (eidetic look) of income of various kinds, which mortals, in turn, spend as consumers to fulfil their indispensable role in the gainful game helping circuits of capital to turn over. Despite surface appearances to the contrary, they consume ultimately for the sake of thingified value’s valorization. Consumers are therefore hounded by advertising to consume, whether it contributes to the devastation of the Earth or not.

For Hegel this would be a horrifying vision for the consummation of Geist in world history. Nevertheless it perversely confirms, with the appropriate hermeneutic finesse, that “What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational”.

Further reading: Hegel’s Philosophy of Right translated with notes by T.M. Knox, Clarendon Press 1952, O.U.P 1967.

Martin Heidegger ‘Das Ge-Stell’ Bremer Vorträge 1949 in Gesamtausgabe Bd. 79 ed. Petra Jaeger, Klostermann, Frankfurt/M. 1994.

‘Capital and Technology: Marx and Heidegger’ in: Left Curve No. 24 May, Oakland, California pp. 95-128 2000. Third revised and expanded paperback edition CreateSpace, North Charleston 2015.

Kapital und Technik: Marx und Heidegger Verlag J.H. Röll, Dettelbach 117 pp. 2000. Third revised and expanded paperback edition CreateSpace, North Charleston 2015.

‘Capital and Technology: Marx and Heidegger’ (Chinese translation by Li Yanjun, Tianjin) in: German Thought Review (Deyizhi Sixiang Pinglun) Vol. 3, 2007.5, Tongji University Press, Shanghai pp. 37-112.

On Human Temporality: Recasting Whoness Da Capo De Gruyter, Berlin 2024.

Excerpt from 12.2 ‘A neuroscientific brain/mind experiment’ in Chapter 12 ‘A subversive thought threatens’ of Tale of the Qua: A Philosophical Comedy. The book takes on several delusions bamboozling the degenerated modern mind, partly through the semi-divine Aiona, the main female character.

“Aiona’s wayward, still very much nascent ideas, especially the most radical one of an alternative, three-dimensional, or even four-dimensional time, could perhaps be thwarted and even snuffed out — nipped in the bud, as it were — by employing means from the latest advances in neuroscience. […]

[M]odern neuroscientific techniques could be employed to stifle a vigorous, maturing mind on the cusp of an alternative way of thinking and turn it round, thus furthering neurophilosophy’s secret ambition to eliminate the self. Her brain/mind had been infected somehow […]

The experiment would consist in showing how a brain/mind (Aiona’s) infected with highly dangerous thoughts that might just trigger a pandemic of irrationality could be brought under control through neuroscientific techniques based on neurophilosophical principles. If thoughts were caused by neural activity in the brain, then thoughts themselves could be read by decoding the neural signals. In the meantime computers were available that were up to the task of breaking the intricate code of neural signals to reveal the thought behind them. Enormous sums of money were required for such research, but it was readily available from angel investors (as Pleon Exia noted smilingly from above) who were especially interested in enhanced manipulative techniques for advertising. In this way, employing the new transceiver, it would be possible to receive and read Aiona’s very thoughts once they worked out how to intercept neural signals constantly emitted from her brain. But neurophilosophical principles allowed a further step to be taken: if the language of neural signals was understood well enough by the neuroscientists, they would be in a position to define the neural patterns that corresponded to a given thought. This amounted to deciphering the neural signals, to decoding them. If Aiona’s neural patterns (her brain-codes) were known and interpreted, that is, decoded, then a precise modification of the code itself would represent a different thought that could be uploaded to her brain using the transmitter to generate precisely this different thought in her conscious mind. The experimental design thus possessed its own cogency, at least for these A.I. researchers. […]

On the basis of a knowledge of these correspondences, Aiona’s very thinking, her ideas (as they were erroneously called), could be influenced, perhaps even controlled by transmitting the appropriate code to her brain. The main objective, however, would be to overwrite the dangerous thoughts arising from radical ideas in her mind with more innocuous ones in line with run-of-the-mill clichés of thinking. It was presupposed that her dangerous thoughts corresponded to certain neural traces in her material brain that could be obliterated by overwriting them with conventional patterns encoding conventional thoughts. In this way, not only would the status quo be secured, but Aiona herself would be able to lead a happier and more auspicious life because she would fit in better and come up against less resistance. […]”

Cyberskinning is a theme running throughout Tale of the Qua: A Philosophical Comedy. The theme of cyberskinning, in connection with the algorithmization of all movement in the world, is taken up and elaborated from many different angles.

Here is an excerpt from 5.1 Conundrums of the cyberworld:

“The electronic cyberskin grafted onto the bodies of the young at birth enabled them to live in the cyberworld continually via personal avatars that were algorithmized versions of themselves through which they had interchanges with other avatars. These sophisticated digitized self-representations were fully sensate, so that even smell, taste, touch, hot and cold, could be electronically shared. Unlike the mythological Hindu avatars of deities descended to Earth in an incarnate form, these digital avatars resulted quasi from the ascent of incarnate young humans to the cyberworld of digital entities and thus represented a deincarnation into pure binary code, as if this generation had been unknowingly wholly transmuted into a mathematized, logical form of existence for which their bodies remained merely a manipulable material substrate.

Especially the sense of cyber-touch enabled an unprecedented explosion of eroticism in the cyberworld among cyberskinned youngsters. Apart from hugging, cuddling and kissing, more erotic sensations through to sexual intercourse of all imaginable Kama Sutra kinds were also technically enabled, and promoted and monetized by cyber-porn sites. This posed an urgent dilemma for sexual morality, especially among the puritanical, due to cyber-promiscuity, under-aged sex, sexual acts such as cyber-buggery deemed perverse in certain societies and cultures, rampant cyber-harassment, in brief: there was a pandemic of unbridled cyber-lewdness in general, with many young children being groomed by adults for cyber-fucking of all imaginable kinds. Criminals had gotten in on the act. Adolescents were stretched beyond their limits by the boundless licentiousness.”

In later chapters youth rebel against their encapsulation and incarceration in an artificial cyberworld steered solely by algorithms, targeting a huge U.S. corporation called Skin Corp. that makes both the operating system, Pores, and the corresponding hardware. Skin’s CEO is the world’s richest man. The cyberskinned are of necessity life-long subscribers to Skin’s hard- and software. Cyberskinned youths figure out ways of hacking their cyberskin through “blackheads” to discover and experience the would-be superseded natural world. Their sabotage launches the Anti-Cyberskin Action movement, that meets with savage resistance from Skin Corp. and governments.

We’re celebrating the 30th anniversary of arte-fact.org: 1996—2026.

The site presents a unique collection of phenomenological writings by Michael Eldred, along with many recordings of his philorock songs featuring pithy, philosophical lyrics.

Astrid Nettling uses the site for presenting her personal profile and for documenting the many radio programs she has made since 1994 for German national and regional radio, focusing on fundamental questions in philosophy, religion, literature and art.