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DOI: 10.1177/0952695113500973
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2014 27: 51 originally published online 19 September History of the Human Sciences
Gavin Rae
technology and the overcoming of anthropocentrism
Heidegger's influence on posthumanism: The destruction of metaphysics,
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Article
Heideggers influence
on posthumanism:
The destruction of
metaphysics, technology
and the overcoming of
anthropocentrism
Gavin Rae
American University in Cairo, Egypt
Abstract
While Jacques Derridas influence on posthumanist theory is well established in the
literature, given Martin Heideggers influence on Derrida, it is surprising to find that
Heideggers relationship to posthumanist theory has been largely ignored. This article
starts to fill this lacuna by showing that Heideggers writings not only influences but
also has much to teach posthumanism, especially regarding the relationship between
humanism and posthumanism. By first engaging with Heideggers destruction of
metaphysics and related critique of anthropocentrism, I show that, while rejecting
Heideggers conclusions for being too humanist, posthumanism shares, and indeed is
largely unreflectively defined by, Heideggers critique of the binary logic underpinning
anthropocentric humanism. With this, posthumanism aims to go beyond Heidegger by
overcoming all forms of humanist understanding, an attempt that brings us back to the
relationship between humanism and posthumanism and Heideggers notion of trace.
With this, I not only show that Heidegger influences posthumanism through his
destruction of metaphysics, critique of anthropocentrism and notion of trace, but also
point towards an understanding of posthumanism that distinguishes it from humanism
and transhumanism.
Corresponding author:
Gavin Rae, Department of Philosophy, American University in Cairo, AUC Avenue, PO Box 74, Cairo
11835, Egypt.
Email: gavinrae@aucegypt.edu
History of the Human Sciences
2014, Vol. 27(1) 5169
The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/0952695113500973
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Keywords
anthropocentrism, Martin Heidegger, metaphysics, posthumanism, trace
Attempts to chart the geneaology of posthumanist theory have tended to focus on non-
philosophical sources, such as developments in computer science, engineering and
evolutionary theory, or philosophical figures, such as Donna Haraway or Jacques Der-
rida (Wolfe, 2011: 189; Badmington, 2004: 12). While the former are no doubt impor-
tant, this article will focus on the latter and, by taking seriously Leonard Lawlors
insistence that Derridas thought would not exist without that of Heidegger (Lawlor,
2007: 46), will suggest that Heideggers influence on Derrida, and Derridas influence
on posthumanist theory, point to an intimate, and overlooked, relationship between
Heidegger and posthumanist theory.
1
The aim of this article is to start to highlight this
relationship by showing how posthuman theorys attempt to overcome the anthropo-
centrism of humanism is, inadvertently, influenced by and responds to Heideggers
destruction of metaphysics, attempted overcoming of anthropocentrism and account
of technology.
To show this, I first focus on posthumanisms attempted overcoming of anthropo-
centrism, which I argue emanates from and is influenced by Heideggers destruction
of metaphysics, before moving to posthumanisms relationship to technology. Specifi-
cally, by briefly exploring the notion of originary technology, I suggest that posthuman-
ism tries to overcome the humanist humantechnology opposition by showing that
human being does not simply have an instrumentalist relationship to technology, but
is, in fact, intimately and ontologically connected to technology. Having done so, I then
suggest that this conceptualization emanates from a trace of Heideggers thinking on this
subject, an argument that requires that I turn to Heideggers analysis of technology.
While most commentators focus on his damning critique of the enframing of technology
in The Question of Technology, I follow Don Ihdes (2010: 139) suggestion that there is
another, superior, account of technology found in Heideggers earlier writings, specifi-
cally his account of readiness-to-hand in Being and Time, which offers an account of the
sort of humantechnology symbiotic relationship constitutive of posthumanisms notion
of originary technicity. While this reveals that posthumanism is influenced by Heideg-
gers destruction of metaphysics and shares similarities with Heideggers account of
technology, I then turn to the relationship between humanism and posthumanism to
reveal two different senses of the post in posthumanism before suggesting that posthu-
manism entails a stylistic mode of thinking which aims to break down the binary opposi-
tions of humanism. This, however, means that posthumanism does not entail a rupture
with humanism, but a continuous struggle to ensure thinking does not fall into the anthro-
pocentric, binary oppositions of humanism. In so doing, I distinguish posthumanism
from transhumanism and, by revealing that posthumanism entails a continuous relation-
ship to humanism, suggest that, in line with Heideggers notion of trace, a trace of
humanism will continue to adhere to posthumanism. With this, we see that Heidegger
continues to influence posthumanist thinking through his critique of anthropocentrism,
analysis of technology, and destruction of the binary logic underpinning metaphysics.
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Heideggers project: The question of being and the destruction
of metaphysics
While Heidegger sets out the generalities of his project in Being and Time, whereby he
aims to raise anew the question of the meaning of being (1962: 1) through an initial
questioning of human being, or Dasein as he calls it, this resurrection first requires a
detailed historical engagement with the way being has been thought, the aim of which
is to destruct the metaphysical tradition he insists has dominated thinking. An initial out-
line of what Heidegger means by metaphysics and destruction will, therefore, not
only be necessary to frame the subsequent discussion of Heideggers critique of anthro-
pocentrism and attempted rethinking of human being in line with the question of being,
but will also provide the frame through which my argument regarding Heideggers influ-
ence on posthumanist thought will be outlined.
Heideggers critique of anthropocentrism emanates from and feeds into his critique
of, what he calls, metaphysics, which details not an account of the nature of reality, but
a framework through which being is thought. Understanding Heideggers destruction of
metaphysics requires, therefore, a brief word on what he means by metaphysics. First,
thinking is metaphysical if it operates from certain, fixed, unquestioned assumptions
which act as the ground from which that particular worldview emanates (1977a: 225).
The reason why this occurs is because, second, thinking fails to remember Heideggers
ontological difference between being and beings/entities and, rather than engage with
entities as a precursor to answering the question of being, remains as a questioning of
entities (ibid.: 226). In other words, metaphysical thinking does not ask about the truth
of being itself (ibid.), but simply takes over an assumed interpretation of being, which
then provides the foundation for its analysis of entities. The third aspect to metaphysics
that Heidegger identifies relates to its logic. For Heidegger, metaphysics is based on bin-
ary oppositions, wherein one aspect of the opposition is privileged. Not only has no anal-
ysis of the being of each being been undertaken meaning this privileging is based on an
assumption, but Heidegger suggests two binary oppositions dominate: the division
between essence and existence and that between subject and object (ibid.: 232, 234).
This leads Heidegger to claim modern thinking is defined by the fact that man becomes
the measure and the centre of beings. Man is what lives at the bottom of all beings; that
is, in modern terms, at the bottom of all objectification and representability (1991: 28).
Heideggers great problem with this is that it forgets the question of being to merely dis-
tinguish humans from other entities, a methodology that, for Heidegger, cannot truly
reveal the truth of the object under discussion. His entire project aims to bring to light
the lacunae of metaphysical thinking, a substantial part of which is its anthropocentrism,
and, through a re-raising of the question of the meaning of being, reformulate our under-
standing of being, human being and the relationship between the two.
However, because the forgetting of being is not a modern phenomenon, but goes back
to the very beginnings of ancient thought, overcoming metaphysics is far from straight-
forward and requires a particular methodology. For example, in a point that we will
return to when we distinguish posthumanism from transhumanism, Heidegger rejects the
notion that overcoming metaphysics is achievable through the intensification of the
metaphysical standpoint so that we simply do more metaphysics (1977a: 254). Far
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from overcoming metaphysics, this simply re-enforces the metaphysical standpoint. But
neither is it a matter of simply choosing to inquire into entities through the question of
being because doing so risks examining the question through the lens of the thinking that
covered over it, a method that would only reaffirm the metaphysical perspective to be
overcome. For Heidegger, reraising the question of being and, in so doing, overcoming
the anthropocentrism of metaphysics requires that thinking traverse back through the
metaphysical tradition to destruct and clear away its assumptions and underlying logic.
Through the destruction of the tradition, thought will burrow back to the originary
domain from where metaphysical thought emanated to reveal the concealing of the ques-
tion of being inherent to metaphysics. As a consequence of this destructing, thought will
not only recognize the necessity of the question of being, but will come to explore alter-
native ways in which this question can be thought (1962: 44).
Importantly, however, destruction is different from annihilation, devastation, rejec-
tion, opposition, or critique. Rather than simply annihilate metaphysics and the metaphy-
sical tradition, Heidegger goes to great lengths to point out that destruction is essentially
different to (1) annihilation and devastation which aim at obliterating the tradition by
laying waste to it (2010a: 12; 2006: 16), (2) rejection, which simply entails turning ones
back on metaphysics to leave it behind, a position Heidegger calls naive (2010b: 21),
(3) opposition, because any mere countermovement . . . necessarily remains . . . held fast
in the essence of that over against which it moves (1977c: 61) meaning opposition fails
to divorce itself from that which it aims to, and (4) critique, because, for Heidegger, cri-
tique simply opposes a position, a conclusion that brings us back to his critique of oppo-
sition. Rather than annihilate, devastate, reject, critique, or oppose the tradition,
Heidegger claims that destruction entails an engagement with a position wherein some-
thing is always left over for example, with the destruction of a building the rubble is
left, even if it is pulverized into the finest dust and blown away. So there is no remain-
derless destruction, any more than there is a round square. Even the most extreme
destruction is but a change of condition, whereby something always remains preserved
(2010a: 12). In other words, destruction is not destructive in the sense of annihi-
lating for the sake of annihilation; it is the laying-free of the beginning in order to
restore its exhausted fullness and strangeness that is still hardly experienced in the begin-
nings earliest inceptuality (2006: 54).
Whereas the metaphysical tradition settles on a definition of being and then quickly
and quietly forgets this decision was made, the destruction of metaphysics entails a
patient engagement with the metaphysical tradition to strip it down to its originary
domain to identify which aspects of it are to be abandoned and which are to be reformu-
lated to open up future possibilities (Heidegger, 1999: 34). The aim is to return to the
primordial experiences in which we achieved our first ways of determining the nature
of being the ways which have guided us ever since (1962: 44). Destruction does not,
therefore, entail a critical smashing and shattering (2010b: 139), but a patient and
subtle working within a position through which a return to its foundational point is
made possible. By engaging with and traversing through the metaphysical tradition,
Heidegger claims it will be possible to point to the so-called fundamental experi-
ences and therewith into the proper sphere of the origin that every genuine philoso-
phical problem can be directed back to, or vice versa, from where it must be decisively
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motivated (ibid.). This act of return, or purification as Heidegger calls it (1999: 154),
will not only identify what was concealed by metaphysics, but will also offer the option
of identifying the positive possibilities of the tradition and, from these, an alternative to
metaphysics (1962: 44).
Two points emanate from this destructive method, points that will be important when
we discuss posthumanisms relation to humanism. First, rather than overcoming meta-
physics by simply rejecting it or leaving it behind, Heidegger recognizes that any over-
coming requires that that which is to be overcome be encountered. Rather than simply
abandon metaphysics, it is only by working back through the metaphysical tradition that
it will be possible to overcome the tradition. Rather than rupture with that to be over-
come, overcoming entails a twisting-free (2013: 40) that returns to the tradition to
depart gradually from it. Second, as a twisting-free, Heidegger reminds us that overcom-
ing entails a transition, meaning that overcoming never entails a complete liberation
from that which it overcomes. Because destruction always leaves a remainder of that
destructed, a trace (1991: 4) of that which is destructed remains in the debris from
which the alternative will be built and, indeed, finds expression in that which is con-
structed from the debris. Put simply, a trace of that which is destructed always survives
its destruction. Destruction entails, therefore, a reorganization of the materials from
which the metaphysical tradition emanated. With this, the aim is to identify and so avoid
repetition of the failures of the tradition, while also revealing an alternative pathway out
of the originary domain from where metaphysics arose.
While Heideggers destruction of metaphysics and attempted rethinking of the ques-
tion of being entail critiques of the technological being and way of thinking associated
with metaphysics,
2
to further outline Heideggers critique of metaphysics, it will be help-
ful for our discussion of posthumanism to now provide a brief, rather schematic, outline
of the key aspects of Heideggers critique of anthropocentrism and subsequent rethink-
ing of human being from the perspective of being. As mentioned, Heideggers great
problem with anthropocentrism is that it forgets/ignores the question of being. Rather
than overcome metaphysics through more metaphysics, Heidegger steps back to think
the human being through the question of being (1977a: 234). As a consequence, he
comes to a particular revelation: rather than being defined by its difference to other enti-
ties, human being is defined in relation to being because human being has a unique rela-
tionship to being in that it, and it alone out of all entities, ek-sists in the clearing of being.
To see what this means, it is perhaps easiest to engage with Heideggers critique of bin-
ary oppositions, which are problematic for Heidegger because they fail to engage with
the being of each aspect of the opposition. By positing the binary opposition human
animal, thinking becomes locked in an opposition, wherein even a reversal of the pri-
vileged term fails to truly understand the between that brings them into relation.
Given that both the human and animal are different forms of being, Heidegger will claim
that, for all their differences, each shares the commonality of being, or existence; they just
have different forms and types of existence (1991: 1923). Once this is recognized, Hei-
degger maintains the key question for understanding both the human and the animal is to
engage with this common aspect: being. Importantly, understanding this relationship does
not emanate from looking within the entity or by comparing entities; it comes from look-
ing at the type of being each entity has.
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Heidegger claims doing this will reveal an understanding of human being fundamen-
tally different from the understanding of humanism. While Being and Time suggests it is
the humans capacity to care for its own being that differentiates it from other entities
(1962: 32), in the Letter on Humanism, this is complemented and deepened by the sug-
gestion that it is the humans intimate relationship to being that distinguishes it from
other entities. In particular, the Letter reveals the human is the only being defined by
ek-sistence, by which Heidegger means a particular relationship to being, defined by the
possibility emanating from beings temporality (1977a: 228). Indeed, my suggestion will
be that it is this unique relationship to being, what Heidegger calls human ek-sistence,
that underpins Being and Times insistence that the human is differentiated from other
entities by its capacity to care for its own being. In other words, it is because the human
being ek-sists in a unique relationship to being that it is able to care for being in a way
that eludes other entities.
For this reason, and contrary to anthropocentrisms tendency to affirm a fixed, inter-
nal essence to define human being, human essence lies in ek-sistence (1977a: 248).
Lying between being and other entities means human being is fundamentally different
to animals. While Heidegger agrees with metaphysics that the human is privileged over
animals, going so far as to state that the human and animal are separated by an abyss
(ibid.: 230), he rejects the way this privileging is affirmed by metaphysics; that is, the
way metaphysics privileges humans over animals by comparing the former with the lat-
ter. For Heidegger, the abyss separating humans and animals, indeed all other entities,
does not result from thinking the relation between them, but requires that thinking thinks
each entitys relation to being. The abyss between the two entities lies here and ensures
that, while animals exist in an environment, human being exists in a world, meaning, as
mentioned, that human being is intimately connected to the possibilities inherent to
beings becoming (ibid.: 230, 252).
By examining human beings ek-sistence, Heidegger is led to a fundamental insight:
whereas anthropocentrism maintains human being is unique and occupies a privileged
place among entities that allows it to shape being for its own ends, Heidegger maintains
human beings ek-sistence reveals otherwise. Its dependence on being means human being
does not determine being, but is determined by being. Rather than being the lord of being,
deciding and shaping being in terms of its desires and ends, human being is the shepherd
of being (1977a: 234). Human being looks after being; it does not determine it. While this
initially appears to be a demotion for human being, insofar as human being goes from
being the central pivot point for entities to a position of subordination in relation to being,
such is beings importance that Heidegger claims this rethinking actually elevates human
being. Such is the importance of being that being subordinate to being is still far more pri-
vileged than being dominant over entities. As a consequence, and while defining humans
in relation to entities, such as animals, may reveal an aspect of human being, it does not
reveal its true ek-sistential essence. For this reason, Heidegger maintains that, even as
he displaces human being from its central position, thinking human beings ek-sistence
allows thinking to recognize the proper dignity of man (ibid.: 233). The dignity of human
being is not found in being the master of entities, but in being the shepherd of being.
As Heidegger recognizes, this rethinking does not obliterate the notion of human
being, nor does it even displace human beings special place in relation to entities. It
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is a rethinking that occurs through a repositioning of human being in relation to being not
entities and, as such, remains a humanism. However, by distinguishing between the
metaphysical humanism of anthropocentrism and his rethinking of humanism based
on human beings ek-sistence, Heidegger is able to conclude that not only are there dif-
ferent forms of humanism, but the proper way to reveal the dignity of human being is by
thinking of human being in the service of the truth of being (1977a: 254). While anthro-
pocentrism insists on a fixed definition of human being based on its difference to entities,
this locks human being within a particular world-view and conceals alternatives which
are open to it given its nearness to being. Rather than being locked within a binary oppo-
sition and reduced to two alternatives, recognizing human ek-sistence opens up other
vistas (ibid.: 250).
While the continued privileging of human being in Heideggers account has been crit-
icized for not going far enough in deconstructing the anthropocentric tendencies of
humanism (Derrida, 1982: 124; Wolfe, 2010a: 1256), Heidegger would, presumably,
defend himself by appealing to the notion of trace. In other words, it is no surprise that
anthropocentrism continues to adhere to Heideggers deconstruction of metaphysics
because a trace of that which is overcome remains in that which overcomes. Those who
demand an absolute purging of all aspects of humanism from that which overcomes
humanism fail to understand Heideggers destruction of metaphysics and the trace of
metaphysics that remains. By making this demand, they utilize a simplistic binary oppo-
sition between metaphysics/non-metaphysics and so inadvertently perpetuate the logic
of binary oppositions upon which metaphysics rests. While the relationship between
metaphysical humanism and Heideggers ek-sistential humanism is subject to much
debate and could itself fill another study (see Rae [2010] for a fuller discussion), it does
point towards the relationship between humanism and posthumanism and, in particular,
what the post means. While we will return to this issue shortly, my guiding contention
is that posthuman theory has come to recognize that its fundamental challenge is to
account for its continual relationship to humanism by thinking and accounting for the
remainder of the human that does and will remain in posthumanism. To demonstrate this,
I now turn to outline some of the major themes of posthuman thinking. Given the diver-
sity of the various posthumanisms, my presentation will necessarily have to be schematic
and rather selective. However, by appealing to a variety of textual sources, I will not only
lay the foundations for the version of posthumanism defended throughout this article,
but, in so doing, will hope to be able to show Heideggers influence on posthuman think-
ing in terms of posthumanisms critique of binary oppositions, rethinking of the human
technology relationship, and relationship to humanism.
Posthumanism and the logic of binary oppositions
of anthropocentrism
As Heidegger notes, humanism is a disparate theme that recurs, in different forms,
throughout history. Following his understanding, however, we see that these apparent
differences are united by a common underlying logic based in a forgetting of the question
of being, the use of assumptions to build a world-view, and a logic of binary oppositions.
In particular, humanism, in its anthropocentric form, is based on the idea that the human
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being is defined in terms that are radically different from other non-human entities and
that, as a consequence, human being has a privileged role to play in existence. From this,
Heidegger decentres the human being from its privileged position by reraising the ques-
tion of the meaning of being. Through this reraising, the binary logic of metaphysics is
also usurped as thought no longer focuses on the humananimal difference, but, rather,
on the difference between the being of the human and the being of the animal. However,
while certainly innovative, Heideggers privileging of being has been criticized for being
empty and obtuse (Derrida, 1982: 124, 128, 131).
3
For this reason, my suggestion, which
will be defended as the discussion proceeds, is that posthumanist theory is both inspired
by Heidegger and pushes off from him. In other words, what links the various posthu-
manisms is a common, Heideggerian-inspired attempt to overcome the logic of binary
oppositions of humanistic anthropocentrism that departs from Heideggers insistence
that doing so requires and must emanate from a primordial inquiry into the question
of the meaning of being. In its general orientation, posthumanist theory can be thought
to maintain that, rather than abandon the human being for the question of being, simply
paying closer attention to human being will reveal an embedded, socially constituted,
blended, emergent being that is entwined with its environment in a way that calls into
question the hard and fast oppositions of anthropocentric humanism (human v. animal,
human v. world, human v. technology, etc.).
While there are many ways to chart the various paths posthumanist thinking takes as it
tries to overcome the binary oppositions upon which humanist thinking is based, I think
Donna Haraways early work, and in particular her famous Cyborg Manifesto, most
clearly demonstrates this not only because of the clarity of her position, but also because
of the impact it had, whether intended or not, on subsequent posthumanist thinking.
While it is true Haraway latterly dismissed the idea that she is a posthumanist (2008:
19), my suggestion is that, regardless of her dismissal, her early thinking on the cyborg
played a crucial role in stimulating debate about posthumanism. Without naming him,
Haraway follows Heideggers suggestion that the history of western thinking has been
dominated by a number of dualisms, which, far from being a neutral occurrence, has led
to various forms of domination. In particular, she names the self/other, mind/body, cul-
ture/nature, male/female, civilized/primitive, reality/appearance, whole/part, agent/
resource, maker/made, active/passive, right/wrong, truth/illusion, total/partial and
God/man oppositions as being not only particularly prevalent, but also particularly trou-
bling (1991: 177). Her position is that these binary oppositions simply do not hold in an
era where the humantechnological relationship, aided in part by technological devel-
opments, is breaking down. Running with this theme, she argues that we have become
cyborgs, part biological, part machine, and uses this metaphor to show why the huma-
nist boundaries no longer hold. In other words, far from our being opposed to technol-
ogy so that we chose to use technology in an instrumental relationship, Haraway
suggests the machine has melded together with the human body to form a synthesis
of the two. As such, the machine is increasingly organic and the organic increasingly
machinic (ibid.: 152). Haraways ironic use of cyborg imagery is not, however, simply
confined to discussions about the way the humanist humantechnology division no longer
holds, but is extended to show how and why the humanist division between the human and
other non-humans no longer holds (ibid.), which not only calls into question what the
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categories human and non-human mean, but questions the relationship between these
categories.
Later posthumanist thinking has continued to explore ways in which the human/non-
human divide can be overcome. In particular, two strands can be identified: (1) a strand
of thinking, exemplified by the work of Cary Wolfe (2003), that criticizes the humanist
perspective by focusing on the issue of speciesism (2003: 1); and (2) a strand, exempli-
fied by the work of N. Katherine Hayles (2005), that breaks down the human/language
division by showing that the human being is intimately connected to and formed from
language. Starting with the first strand, Wolfe aims to overturn the anthropocentrism of
humanism by focusing on the question of the humananimal relationship to show that
humanism overlooks the ways in which the human is itself intimately connected to anim-
ality. In so doing, Wolfe not only agrees with Haraways attempt to call into question
human exceptionalism (Haraway, 2008: 11), but undermines the binary logic of human-
ism. Indeed, Wolfe argues that this undertaking is not simply an exercise in deconstruction,
but has a political intent aimed at undermining the institution of speciesism (2003: 7), by
which he means the ethical acceptability of the systematic noncriminal putting to death
of animals based solely on their species (ibid.), an action he maintains we all have a stake
in because, in the systematic killing of animals, he sees a process of normalization that can
be extended to humans so that exclusionary practices and domination inherent to institu-
tional speciesism can escape the humananimal relationship and be used to sanction vio-
lence by some humans against other humans (ibid.: 8). In other words, for Wolfe,
humanist speciesism entails a logical structure, between human and animal other, that can
too easily be used to sanction and justify discrimination against any other, whether this is
the gender, racial, class, or sexual other.
Running alongside Wolfes encounter with speciesism is another strand of posthuma-
nist thinking, exemplified by Eugene Thackers work on biomedia (2004) and N. Kather-
ine Hayles work on intermediation (2005: 7), that aims to undermine the human/
language divide of humanism. By holding that the humanist discourse is structured
around an instrumentalist account of language, wherein language is taken to be a mere
tool that humans use to express themselves, posthumanists have charged that humanist
thinking fails to understand the ways in which human being is constituted by linguistic
meaning. Far from simply using language, this aspect of posthumanist thinking holds
that the human being is a linguistic construct. Far from entailing a biological/linguistic
opposition, code permeates language and is permeated by it; electronic text permeates
print; computational processes permeate biological organisms; intelligent machines
permeate flesh [meaning that] boundaries are both permeable and meaningful; humans
are distinct from intelligent machines even while the two are becoming increasingly
entwined (Hayles, 2005: 242). In this way, posthumanist thinking tries to show that the
presuppositions of anthropocentric humanism are baseless: the human is not distinct
from linguistics, or code, but is intimately connected to, immersed in and formed by
linguistics.
While these strands are far more complicated than I can hope to demonstrate with this
brief, schematic presentation, this short exposition does reveal that, through various
engagements, strands and questionings, posthuman thinking follows Heideggers cri-
tique of binary logic. As such, while there are various forms of posthumanist thinking,
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they have a common target: the logic of binary oppositions that places a clearly defined
human in opposition to a clearly defined non-human. By blurring the humanist distinc-
tions between the human and non-human, posthumanist thinking not only tries to show
the fallacy of humanist understandings of the human as a clearly defined entity, but also
calls into question human exceptionalism. With this, we see that Heideggers thinking
influences posthumanist thinking in two different, but related, ways: first, his insistence
that the various humanisms share a common logic of binary oppositions has been, unre-
flectively, taken over by posthumanist thinking with the consequence that, second, post-
humanist thinking follows Heidegger in trying to destruct this logic. We will see what
this entails as we proceed, but it is important to note that this is not the only way in which
Heideggers influence is felt in posthuman theory. While Heideggers destruction of the
binary logic of metaphysics underpins the general posthumanist project, we now turn to
his understanding of technology to reveal how this has influenced posthuman theory.
Heidegger, technology and posthumanism
While the binary oppositions of humanism would appear to posit a strict binary opposi-
tion between a self-referential human subject and a instrumental technological tool used
for the ends of the human, posthumanism rejects this binary opposition and rethinks the
relationship to show that far from an instrumental relationship based in and from a pri-
vileged human subject, the human is substantially entwined with technology. While this
again demonstrates my point regarding posthumanisms attempt to undermine the binary
logic of humanism, a project that, I suggest, emanates from Heideggers destruction of
metaphysics, I will go further and claim that the way posthumanism undermines the
humanist understanding of technology also emanates from Heideggers thinking on tech-
nology. To do so, a brief, preliminary word on Heideggers account of technology will be
helpful.
Heideggers most famous account of technology is found in The Question Concerning
Technology, where he counters the humanist claim that a privileged human uses technol-
ogy to achieve its predetermined ends. The anthropocentrism of the humanist position is
undermined by Heideggers claim that the essence of technology relates, not to a produc-
tion practice, but, rather, to a particular way of revealing the world. In summary, modern
technology reveals the world in a closed, partial, quantifiable manner whereby only
knowledge that conforms to these requirements is deemed worthwhile. As such, Heideg-
ger introduces the famous notion of Gestell [enframing] to explain the way in which
modern technology enframes the temporal becoming of being to reveal it in a partial,
closed, quantifiable manner wherein technology is taken to be an instrument for manip-
ulation for human ends. By showing that technology shapes and determines our view of
the world, Heidegger reveals that humans do not control technology, but, rather, are
determined by the revealing of technology; an argument aimed at calling into question
the instrumental and anthropological definition of technology (1977b: 5). But, at the
same time, Heidegger appears to be deeply troubled by technology seeing it as a distort-
ing prism that undermines the true revelation of being. In other words, while he under-
mines the metaphysical, anthropocentric, instrumental notion of technology by placing
the human at the mercy of the enframing of technology, not only does this appear to point
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towards a thoroughly negative view of technology, but it also appears to simply reverse
the metaphysical notion of technology so that rather than humans controlling technol-
ogy, technology controls human being. However, as Heidegger notes in his critique of
Jean-Paul Sartres reversal of the essence/existence opposition, reversing a binary oppo-
sition does not escape metaphysics, but remains metaphysical (1977a: 232). While I have
suggested elsewhere that this is not Heideggers true conclusion (Rae, 2012), it is no
surprise that, to many, it appears that Heidegger sees no way out of the enframing of
modern technology.
Such a view appears to inform David Wills argument that we must rescue Heideg-
gers thinking from a reductionist dismissal of technology (2008: 33) by turning back to
technology to not only show how one-dimensional and anthropocentric Heideggers
account is, but, following Bernard Stieglers (1998) groundbreaking work, also develop
an alternative symbiotic account of the humantechnology relationship called originary
technology (Wills, 2008: 12). This leads Wills to claim that humans are not distinct
from technology, nor do they have a strictly instrumental relationship to technology,
but are ontologically entwined with technology insofar as the human exists by turning
towards technology. The problem is that the technological aspect of human being is
hidden behind the human, with the consequence that we typically think our turning
towards it is out of choice whereas Wills assures us it is part of what it is to be human.
As he puts it, the human is, from the point of view of this turn, understood to become
technological as soon as it becomes human, to be always already turning that way
(ibid.: 4).
While Wills symbiotic account of the humantechnology relationship appears to be
fundamentally different from Heideggers critique of the way the enframing of technol-
ogy reveals human being in a distorted manner, we have to be careful about coming to
such a hasty conclusion. After all, while Heideggers views on the enframing of modern
technology are justly famous with the consequence that posthuman thinking, exempli-
fied by Wills discussion, tends to focus on them to show how originary technology dif-
fers, we have to be aware, in a way I am not sure posthumanist theory is, that Heideggers
thinking on technology cannot be reduced to his notion of enframing. On this point, Don
Ihde differentiates between Heideggers later thinking on technology, exemplified by the
discussion of enframing in The Question Concerning Technology, and his early thinking
on technology, exemplified by the discussion of readiness-to-hand in Being and Time, to
claim that his earlier work is richer in terms of the possibilities it offers for re-thinking
the humantechnology relationship (2010: 139). In so doing, Ihde points to a branch of
Heideggerian scholarship overlooked by Wills, an occurrence that, by briefly outlining
Heideggers notion of readiness-to-hand, will show that the early Heidegger develops a
position on technology that appears to be remarkably similar to Wills.
Heidegger starts his discussion by noting that humans exist in a world of objects
through which they act. Importantly, the objects that humans exist alongside take two
forms: (1) present-at-hand objects which are those that simply exist passively in a place
beside humans; and (2) ready-to-hand equipment, by which he means those objects
which human being turns towards in a particular way to use for a particular activity
(1962: 81). While present-at-hand objects imply a passive relationship to objects, ready-
to-hand equipment entails an active relationship wherein the human uses an object to
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achieve an end. While this appears to re-enforce the instrumental view of technology, the
key point is that in the use of the ready-to-hand thing, the human and tool synthesize to, in a
sense, become one. The point behind the argument is to show that human being is defined
by activity with this activity being dependent on the realization of a number of projects
(eating, sleeping, drinking) that are dependent on humans non-thematically using (read
synthesizing with) tools to achieve. The important point here is that, while humans use
tools to achieve projects, this use is non-thematic, meaning it is simply taken up by
humans without any of the reflective calculation inherent to instrumental utility. In other
words, Heidegger is distinguishing between use in the sense of the instrumental ration-
ality of humanism constituted by a privileged human reflectively deciding how to use a
tool for its freely chosen ends and use in the sense of a humantool symbiosis wherein
the human simply pre-reflectively picks up the tool to engage in the activity necessary for
it to live. By focusing on the latter sense, we find that Heidegger demonstrates that our
primary interaction with beings comes through using them, through simply counting
on them in an unthematic way . . . All human action finds itself lodged amidst countless
items of supporting equipment (Harman, 2002: 18). With this, Heidegger makes a number
of connections that not only offer a different perspective to his later views on technology,
but also bring his thinking into line with Wills notion of originary technology. In partic-
ular, Heidegger claims human being is defined by action which is dependent on an intimate
relationship with technology; a connection that reveals human existence and technology
exist together in symbiosis. While humanism maintains a humantechnology division
which suggests that humans (1) have a purely instrumental relationship to technology and
(2) can live without technology insofar as the humans use of technology appears to be
dependent on its freely chosen goals, Heideggers notion of readiness-to-hand can be read
as indicating that the human beings ek-sistential survival is dependent on its use of tools to
achieve the projects that will allow it to exist in the world. In other words, humans do not
choose to use technology, human embodiment is immersed in, constituted by and symbio-
tically related to technology.
Developing this further, Andy Clark looks at the issue from the perspective of (1)
technology, and thereby shows that the notion of technology as a static, passive thing
opposed to human being is simply fallacious insofar as there are many technologies that
have become integrated into the functioning of human life; and (2) human being, to show
that the humanist notion of the human being as a rational, disembodied, transcendent
mind fails to understand the ways in which the human is embodied, with embodiment
being intimately connected to the non-human. As a consequence, he reiterates that, far
from privileged users of passive technologies, we are thoroughly technological beings
who exist in an emergent, symbiotic relationship with an external, technological world.
To make his point further, he distinguishes between opaque and transparent relationships
to technology. The former occur when we distinguish sharply and continuously between
the user and the tool (Clark, 2003: 37); a position clearly seen from the humanist under-
standing of the humantechnology relationship. For Clark, however, there is another far
more fundamental, transparent relationship to technology that is, in many respects, the
essence of the humantechnology relationship. Mirroring Heideggers discussion of
readiness-to-hand, Clark explains that the transparent relationship occurs when, through
an activity, the distinction between myself and the technological object I am using
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disappears and I become through that object (ibid.: 38). There is, in other words, a sym-
biosis between the human and technology, wherein far from the human maintaining an
instrumental relationship to the latter, the humantechnology distinction disappears as
they synthesize into a humantechnology hybrid. The example given is that of the writer
who, when writing, sees through the pen/keyboard to focus solely on what he or she is
writing, but Clark also points to a number of others, including cochlear implants, stem
cell research and prosthetics, to show that human being is intimately connected to tech-
nology and that this relationship is a transparent one, insofar as humans non-thematically
use technology all the time simply to live (ibid.: 195). As a consequence, we are not
becoming cyborgs, but are, in fact, natural-born cyborgs (ibid.: 31); that is, by our
nature, we are indistinguishable from technology, a relationship that has ensured our
evolutionary survival.
However, while Clark calls into question the instrumental, anthropocentric opposition
between human being and technology, and, in so doing, is subtle enough to recognize
that this will lead to alterations in our experience of the world, not all of which will
be for the best, he then maintains that if I am right if it is our basic human nature
to annex, exploit, and incorporate nonbiological stuff deep into our mental profiles then
the question is not whether we go that route, but in what ways we actively sculpt and
shape it. By seeing ourselves as we truly are, we increase the chances that our future bio-
technological unions will be good ones (Clark, 2003: 198). By doing so, Clark not only
reaffirms the binary logic of humanism (good v. bad outcomes), but, with his notion
that the human can choose how to use the nonbiological stuff it is intimately related to,
reaffirms the anthropocentric notion of human mastery his theory is supposed to over-
come. As such, Clarks theory serves a dual purpose for us: it not only highlights the
posthumanist notion of original technology, but, by falling back into the binary logic
of humanism to make his point, also brings us to the question of the relationship between
humanism and posthumanism and, more specifically, what the post in posthumanism
means; a discussion that will bring us back to Heideggers notion of trace.
The meaning of post: The trace of humanismin posthumanism
While posthumanist theory is heterogenous, there are, I think, two main ways in which
the post in posthumanism can be thought. First, the post in posthumanism can be used
to delineate the end of a particular period of social development or organization termed
humanist. In other words, this interpretation would understand the post in posthumanism
temporally, wherein it relates to a temporal rupture from humanism. As such, posthuman-
ism means after-humanism. The problem with this approach is, as Neil Badmington
explains, that it ignore[s] humanisms hydra-like capacity for generation and, quite liter-
ally, recapitulation (2004: 110). While it is tempting to posit posthumanism as that which
comes after the human, Heideggers notion of trace reveals that the transition to posthu-
manismcannot be thought in such simplistic, temporal terms. The danger of simply turning
our backs on humanism is that it continues to, implicitly, adhere to posthumanist thinking.
Obviously, this is not always apparent and so the danger is that humanist anthropocentr-
ism, with all the limitations this entails, continues to define our world even when we think
it does not. But how would this occur?
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Perhaps the thinker that has gone furthest in showing how attempts to call into ques-
tion the anthropocentrism of humanism inadvertently continue to depend upon and so
affirm an anthropocentric position is Cary Wolfe. Over a number of writings, Wolfe
examines a variety of different thinkers to show that, while they claim to be upsetting
traditional boundaries, their thinking continues to perpetuate a form of humanism. Space
constraints mean I will not be able to discuss all aspects of Wolfes analyses, but by
focusing on a few examples, his point should become clear. In the first instance, Wolfe
takes aim at the animal rights philosophy of Peter Singer and Tom Regan to argue that,
while these thinkers share his goal of overcoming the speciesism inherent to anthropo-
centrism, their argument that this is achieved by imbuing animals with rights in the same
way as humans are defined by universal human rights is mistaken. In fact, it is not just
mistaken but actually ends up reaffirming the speciesism Singer and Regan criticize by
(1) insisting on the notion that the human and animal have universal rights, a position
that continues to adhere to a universal, essentialist ontology; and (2) thinking the animal
from the perspective of humans, a position that continues to affirm the human privileging
they profess to want to overcome (2003: 8).
Wolfe also takes aim at the thinking of Judith Butler and Jean-Francois Lyotard to
suggest that, while they both go to great pains to develop a post-anthropocentric ontol-
ogy, they ultimately fail because, when their thinking enters the realm of ethics, they
return to a humanist perspective; in the case of Butler, Wolfe charges that she continues
to operate with a notion of agency that emanates from Rawls liberal humanism (2010b:
14), and, in the case of Lyotard, the humanism of Kant (2003: 11). In other words, Butler
and Lyotard, while professing to rethink the categories through which human being is
thought, cannot help but reaffirm humanist categories, in the form of universal laws
or human agency, when they move into the realm of ethics. Far from accepting the valid-
ity of these universal categories, Wolfe uses these examples to offer (1) a specific cri-
tique of Butler and Lyotard that charges that they continue to adhere to humanist
forms of thinking and so simply do not stay true to the post-anthropocentric position they
profess; and (2) a general critique that, echoing Heidegger, reveals it is all too easy for
thinking that appears to leave humanism behind to inadvertently reaffirm the humanist
perspective. As Wolfe puts it, while posthumanist thinking may appear to be posthuma-
nist in its blurring of the categories through which the external world is thought, by
continuing to adhere to humanist categories, it may still be quite humanist on an internal
theoretical and methodological level (2008: 7).
Due to these problems, the second way of thinking of the post in posthumanism is
far more fruitful insofar as, rather than think posthumanism temporally as an after-
humanism, it thinks of it in terms of a style of thinking. More specifically, by aiming
to overcome the binary logic of humanism, posthumanism entails a different style of
thinking than humanism, one that aims to deconstruct the human/non-human dichotomy
of humanism to show the various ways in which the human is immersed in and constituted
by the non-human.
4
Far from describing a temporal transition from humanism to an after/
post-humanism, posthumanism aims to deconstruct the false boundaries imposed on the
human and non-human by humanism to not only rethink the categories human and non-
human, but to also reveal the complexity of the human/non-human relationship. As such,
it aims to call into question anthropocentrisms notion of a self-referential entity called the
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human, and to do so in a way that reveals its intimate connection to the non-human.
Indeed, it is this that distinguishes posthumanism from transhumanism, insofar as, while
transhumanism maintains the humantechnology division but aims to use technology to
make the human stronger and healthier, thereby transcending what is currently called the
human, posthumanism rejects such an approach because it: (1) simply entails an intensi-
fication of humanistic privileging and the instrumental view of technology (Bergsma,
2000: 404; Wolfe, 2010a: xv); and (2) holds that transhumanism starts with an account
of an unencumbered, non-technological human being and looks for ways to add technol-
ogy to it to make it better, an approach that fails to understand that human being exists in
a symbiotic relationship with technology. Posthumanism differs from transhumanism
because, while the latter intensifies the binary oppositions of humanism by using more
technology to overcome what is currently called the human, posthumanism entails a con-
stant questioning of the binary oppositions upon which humanism and transhumanism
depend. This is not simply a negative project of deconstructing previous ways of thinking
to show how and why they fail to properly understand human being, but is constructive
insofar as it challenges us to attend to that thing called the human with greater speci-
ficity, greater attention to its embodiment, embeddedness, and materiality, and how these
in turn shape and are shaped by consciousnesss, mind, and so on (ibid.: 120). As such,
posthumanism aims to deconstruct the binary oppositions of humanism to open alternative
vistas; an attempt that shares much in common with Heideggers attempt to open alterna-
tive vistas through his destruction of metaphysics.
However, while Heidegger overcomes anthropocentrism through a reconstituted form
of humanism, posthumanist thinking criticizes this approach for not going far enough.
Indeed, for Wolfe, Heideggers approach falls back into the humanist project because
it cedes too much to humanism (2010a: 125). Returning to his claim that the hydra-
like nature of humanism means that thinking that claims to be posthumanist can, never-
theless, inadvertently reaffirm human privileging, Wolfe aims to deconstruct the huma-
nistposthumanist relationship to develop a fully fledged posthumanism. To do so, he
notes that a theory has an inner and an outer aspect to it. The inner aspect refers to the
way a posthumanist theory conceptualizes the human, while the outer refers to the way
a posthumanist theory conceptualizes the non-human and the boundary between the
human and non-human. As a consequence, and as we saw above when Wolfe discussed
animal rights theory and the thinking of Butler and Lyotard, even though a theorys
external relations to its larger environment may be posthumanist in taking seriously
the existence of nonhuman subjects (ibid.: 123) it may remain internally humanist
insofar as it continues to operate with definitive, universalist notions taken from the
humanist tradition.
As a consequence of this insight, Wolfe develops a helpful matrix distinguishing
between various forms of humanism/posthumanism to show what a truly posthumanist
posthumanism entails. More specifically, we find four variations on the humanismpost-
humanism relationship: (1) humanist humanism, wherein a privileged and essentially
defined, self-referential human self exists in strict opposition to a strictly defined exter-
nal non-human world; (2) humanist posthumanism, that conceptualizes a privileged,
internally self-referential human against a blurred, malleable, emergent world; (3) post-
human humanism, wherein an internally disordered, malleable, emergent human self
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exists in opposition to clearly defined, external non-human boundaries; and (4) posthu-
man posthumanism, wherein an internally disordered, malleable, emergent human self
exists in a relation of entwinement with a differential and differentiating external world
(Wolfe, 2010a: 1246). For Wolfe, the first three positions fail to go far enough in
destructing humanist anthropocentrism and so, for all their sophistication, end up reaf-
firming the humanism to be overcome. For this reason, he affirms a posthumanist
approach to posthumanism (2008: 7) because it is only through this approach that (1) the
self-referential notion of human being underpinning humanism is called into question;
(2) the non-human is thought in differentiated, changing and emergent ways; and (3) the
binary relationship between the human and the non-human of humanism is blurred to
reveal the embeddedness and entanglement of the human in all that it is not, in all that
used to be thought of as its opposites or its others (2003: 193).
While this is obviously different from Heideggers attempt to rethink the root of the
human beings privileging in relation to being, their different conclusions do mask a com-
mon understanding, insofar as Wolfe is only too aware of the way in which posthumanist
posthumanism, if ever attained, needs to be maintained. In other words, both Heidegger
and Wolfe recognize that the overcoming of metaphysics/humanismis not a one-time deal,
once attained, forever attained; it is a continuous process. As such, Wolfe recognizes that a
posthumanist posthuman position does not simply overcome humanism once and for all.
Building on Heideggers notion of trace, posthumanismmust always tarry with humanism,
especially given humanisms powers of rejuvenation. As a consequence, while posthuma-
nist thinking aims to go beyond Heideggers ek-sistential humanism by destructing the
trace of humanism that remains in Heideggers thinking, it must continually do battle
against humanism. Indeed, my suggestion is that this is what defines posthumanism: its
continuous battle against humanist categories, thinking and binary oppositions. The
hydra-like nature of humanism means that posthumanism entails a style of thinking that
must be continuously on its guard to prevent aspects of humanist thinking from gaining
a toehold, let alone a beach-head, in its thinking. The difficulty of this should be evident
fromWolfes description of the non-posthumanist posthuman positions, but is also evident
from the way in which, despite the subtlety of his position, humanist binary oppositions
creep back into Wolfes analysis through, for example, his use of the inner/outer opposi-
tion to identify the various forms of humanist/posthumanist thinking. But I should also
point out that my presentation of posthuman theory does not escape this charge insofar
as my insistence that the post in posthumanism can be thought temporally or stylistically
itself betrays a binary opposition that reveals that an aspect of the binary logic of human-
ism remains in my discussion. While it may be questioned why, having recognized this,
I have not gone back to amend this discussion to overcome this binary opposition, I have
purposefully left things this way to try to not only show the ways in which the binary logic
of humanism can imperceptibly reappear in the most innocuous ways in any analysis, but
to also reveal the enormous difficulties that any attempt to think a posthuman posthuman-
ism faces. Whether thought can meet this challenge remains an open question, but we
should be clear that the challenge facing posthuman thinking is not only to continue its
questioning and undermining of the binary oppositions of humanism by recognizing the
blurred nature of the categories human and non-human, but, in so doing, also continu-
ously guard against inadvertently reaffirming the binary logic of humanism.
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Notes
1. While it may be objected that there are figures prior to Heidegger, most notably Nietzsche, who
may be thought to be the true philosophical ancestors of posthumanism and so should be dis-
cussed in this article, my response is that (1) while Nietzsches influence on posthumanism
is, indeed, an interesting topic worthy of further study, doing justice to the complexities of
Nietzsches thinking would require a separate article, (2) this article focuses on Heideggers
influence because, given that posthumanist theory is intimately connected to developments
in 20th-century European philosophy which is itself intimately connected to Heidegger, his
influence on posthumanism is far more immediate, and (3) Heideggers troubled relationship
to Nietzsche, wherein the former sees the latter as the last metaphysician, means that including
both Heidegger and Nietzsche would require an engagement with the validity of Heideggers
critique of Nietzsche and, in so doing, complicate and lengthen an already structurally compli-
cated article beyond the bounds of acceptability. Readers interested in the relationship between
Nietzsche and trans/posthumanism may, however, find Keith Ansell-Pearsons (1997) Viroid
Life to be of interest.
2. See Rae (2012 and 2013) for a detailed discussion of Heideggers account of technology and
critique of metaphysical thinking.
3. It should be noted that, to his credit, Heidegger rejects the absoluteness of his reraising of the
question of the meaning of being. As he explains, whether and howbeing is must remain an open
question for the careful attention of thinking (1977a: 236) whose validity can be confirmed or
denied only after [each] has tried to go the designated way, or even better, after he has gone
a better way, that is, a way befitting the question (ibid.: 247). In other words, while Heidegger
clearly privileges the question of being over all other questions, he would accept that, if his
attempt to reraise the question of being does not inspire thinking, it should be abandoned in search
of an alternative path.
4. At its most radical, this version of posthumanism not only calls into question the premises of the
humanist selfother divide, but in fact rejects that this divide ever actually existed; a position best
summed up by Bruno Latours claim that the modern world has never happened (1993: 39).
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Wolfe, C. (2011) Response to Christopher Peterson, The Posthumanism to Come, Angelaki:
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Author biography
Gavin Rae is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. He
is the author of Realizing Freedom: Hegel, Sartre, and the Alienation of Human Being
(Basingstoke, Hants: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and has published numerous articles on various
figures in post-Kantian philosophy, including Heidegger, Hegel, Sartre, Deleuze, Kierkegaard and
Marcuse.
Rae 69
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