What follows is the original abstract to the version published in Stance under a different name in April, 2017: Sherry Turkle’s concept of “the virtuous circle” will be used to bring insights from Heidegger and Levinas into mutually generative dialogue. Turkle argues that the distraction and escape made possible by our devices tend to undermine achieving solitude and genuine solicitude [when you read “solitude” and “solicitude” from me just think “being-with-oneself” and “being-with-others”], thus pFosing a danger to the interdependent possibilities of authenticity and ethical living. For Heidegger, the call of conscience is one’s ownmost possibility, death. Levinas argues that the call of conscience is instead ethical, instigated by the face of the Other. Rather than conflicting, these two phenomenological accounts of conscience will be shown to be mutually affirming once brought into harmony via Turkle’s framework.
This was the second essay I ever published, and it is probably the one I am most proud of, in the sense that the journal it was published in, Stance, is peer reviewed by a highly selective international review board of philosophers. Thank you to the professors at Boise State University in the philosophy department who encouraged us in the philosophy club to submit to Stance. Without that kind of encouragement and constant reminders, I would have most likely never done so, which would have meant I would have never presented this piece at the University of Hawai’i East-West Philosophers’ Conference, or at the 7th International Colloquium on the Philosophy of Technology in Cordoba, Argentina. Though it is important to mention that an earlier seed of what became this essay had also been presented at Duquesne1 University in Pittsburgh, for the Pittsburgh Continental Philosophy Network Conference.
Without getting published or finding my voice and ability to speak to others at conferences, I would have most likely never started an online education platform on YouTube or anywhere else. So thank you to the professors at the philosophy department who encouraged us all to always submit abstracts to journals or conferences—and especially for teaching us about how to ask for money for such things from departments, colleges, and student government. It honestly felt like cheating when I learned about research travel grants.
A final note on the following essay: This work is fundamental to all my thinking because it was how I learned to use conceptual frameworks to bring together different thinkers to generate new ways of thinking about technology and media. When I wrote this, I considered it a work of “philosophy of technology,” which is not incorrect. However, “critical media theory” better describes what this work is doing. Philosophy of science or technology are both necessary elements of critical media theory, but, as Heidegger says at the beginning of his Question Concerning Technology, the goal is “to bring us into a freer relationship with technology.” Because technology conditions the background of all we perceive and do, it is hard to gain the critical distance necessary to think about it in ways not already over-simplified and banal.
“Media” in the sense used in the term “critical media theory” does not signify The Media, as used to mean the news networks. Instead, “media” is used Marshall McLuhan’s way in The Medium Is The Message or Understanding Media. Media are technologies for extending or refining our ability to perceive reality; moreover, when you hear “media” you should think of the word “mediate” because any technology that is technically media mediates your present perception by re-presenting to consciousness that which is not otherwise immediately present. Media represents reality. This definition of media includes the written word, which is the medium of representation par excellence.
Video, radio or podcasts, and social media are all also forms of media that mediate and re-present what gets taken to be reality to consciousness. Insofar as one uses philosophers of social reality to theorize and critically analyze the ways the human condition is impacted by technological developments in media, one can be said to be doing critical media theory. Therefore, this essay that follows is my first published work in critical media theory.
I hope there will be many to follow as I develop the conceptual means and methodology necessary for doing this kind of work because it is more important now than almost anything else.
In case I die before getting around to it, I someday hope to write a work that will argue the foundational thinkers to critical media theory are Marx, Heidegger, McLuhan, and Arendt—usually only McLuhan gets mentioned out of this list of names but, I claim, he is as important (not more important) as Marx, Heidegger, and Arendt, who should all be read as foundational to this emerging field. For now, if you find the idea of critical media theory alluring, start with McLuhan’s Understanding Media, Arendt’s The Human Condition, and then go to Marx’s “Estranged Labor” and Heidegger’s “The Question Concerning Technology.”
Introduction
“We will be questioning concerning technology.”
– Martin Heidegger
Average everyday life in developed 21st-century countries is essentially technological. René Descartes’s vision for an “infinity of devices” enabling a “trouble-free enjoyment” of all the earth’s goods has been realized: our devices and applications offer a world of utility, convenience, and entertainment.2 Yet new dangers accompany otherwise seemingly positive developments. Taking Martin Heidegger’s analysis of the essence of technology as “enframing” for our point of departure, this paper will examine some of these dangers so as to bring us into a freer relationship with technology, ourselves, and one another.
The distraction and escape made possible by our devices, what Sherry Turkle calls “friction-free living,” is a danger to the interdependent possibilities of authenticity and ethical living. Her conception of “the virtuous circle” will be used to begin bringing Heidegger and Levinas, the philosophers of authenticity and the Other, respectively, into a constructive dialogue about timeless issues that are only becoming more timely within the sway of enframing.3
Part I introduces Heidegger’s conception of the essence of technology and then his view of authenticity. For Heidegger, the call of conscience is one’s ownmost possibility: death. Part II brings in Levinas’s response, arguing that the call of conscience is instead ethical, instigated by “the face” of the Other. At this point, we will have two phenomenological views of conscience: responsibility to be true to oneself vs. responsibility to the Other. Part III will then bring Heidegger and Levinas face to face for a complimentary dialogue via Turkle’s conception of the “virtuous circle,” which is the reciprocally dependent interplay between solitude and solicitude.4
I. Technology, Falling, and Authenticity
Our average everyday technological disposition, what Martin Heidegger conceives of as “enframing,” reduces the earth to base material resources to be exploited, challenged forth and put on call as “standing reserve” (Bestand). As both the essence of technology and the spirit of our age, enframing casts a totalizing grid over the world, within which entities are fractured into elements for human appropriation. Uprooted and displaced from their meaningful places and times, things are uniformly rendered calculable and exchangeable, their value ascribed by the standards of usefulness and money, the measures of power and profit. The earth is thereby reduced to a conglomeration of resources to be extracted, expedited, and exposed as to produce “the maximum yield at the minimum expense.”5 Anything failing to fulfill a function within this self-referential grid of serviceability is rendered obsolete or meaningless. Although this situation gives rise to the illusion that we have become “masters and possessors of nature,” Heidegger shows how these hubristic and imperialistic delusions backfire.
“Dasein” is the subject of Heidegger’s analysis in Being and Time. This is the (human) kind of being that is inextricably absorbed within a world of care and involvements. Dasein lives always thrown within a referential totality of language, things, equipment, and other dasein. Because dasein is inextricably being-in-the-world, enframing the world means that dasein is also enframed. Just as things in the world are put on call as means for the fulfillment of our ends, within the sway of enframing we ourselves are reduced to calculable and exchangeable “human resources.”6 Much has already been written about the negative effects of enframing on Earth’s ecology. Instead, we will examine the effects of enframing on personal growth and social living and the problems thereby posed for living an authentic or ethical life.
No one, in Heidegger’s account, can ever fully achieve authenticity. Dasein is thrown into the world, “falling” and immersed in Theyness—the averaged understanding of a given public. Theyness provides dasein with a world of universalized, ready-made possibilities and attainable, though superficial, knowledge. Heidegger characterizes falling as a threefold, reciprocal, interdependent cyclical process consisting of three phenomena: ambiguity, curiosity, and idle talk. These are technical terms, not to be confused with their typical connotations.
By “curiosity” Heidegger means a superficial and non-committal pursuit of novelty and endless stimulation.7 Antithetical to being present, to belonging or dwelling, “curiosity is concerned with the constant possibility of distraction”8 (original emphasis). Driven by the uncanniness and unease of anxiety,9 curiosity propels dasein from one thing to the next, never allowing the commitment required to gain true understanding that requires dedication and perseverance. “Idle talk” is the day-to-day chatter and non-committal sharing of information that is a necessary feature of our lives. As the quick passing along of information occurs, we become so inundated by information that we are naturally discouraged from deepening our understanding, thus losing a sense of what really matters.10 Having no real stake in these conversations, one can pass information along regardless of its truth or relevancy, without taking responsibility for what is said.
The result of curiosity and idle talk is ambiguity. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy adeptly defines ambiguity as “a loss of any sensitivity to the distinction between genuine understanding and superficial chatter.”11 Without first practicing the courage, humility, and patience required for genuine discourse, we lose the deeper senses of meaning, understanding, and belonging that allow us to distinguish between what is genuine and what is not. The diminishment of this ability, and the difficulty of its recovery, discourages commitment, thus habituating us to lives of detachment or ironic posturing. This decrease in genuine conversations therefore blurs one’s ability to tell the trivial from the essential.
According to Heidegger’s analysis, this vicious cycle—sustained by the interplay between ambiguity, curiosity, and idle talk—has us freewheeling, lost in the undifferentiated space of inauthenticity. Every human is thrown into the culture of his or her birth. Pre-given notions for how to go about comporting ourselves guide us as we are raised. Thus, Heidegger says, certain universalized possibilities have been set before us to the exclusion of those more relevant to our particular situations. Each and every one of these pre-defined possibilities is itself modeled after what-has-been-actual alone, rather than on the full scope of what is possible for one’s unique place in history. Because the universalized possibilities have been made by and for the aggregated masses, no dasein can discover its “ownmost possibilities”12 when lost in the vicious cycle. The turbulence levels qualitative distinctions and reduces every other to the same One (das Man). We thus implicitly compare ourselves and others to an elusive and universalized abstraction that eclipses our particular possibilities.
It will be argued (via Turkle) that the vicious cycle Heidegger characterizes as falling is only exacerbated by technological media in our age of enframing. However, we will first turn from the subject of authenticity (responsibility to self) to that of ethics, as developed by the philosopher of responsibility to the Other par excellence.
II. Responsibility & the Other
Emmanuel Levinas was deeply influenced by Heidegger’s Being and Time, attending his lectures a year after its publication in 1927. However, his admiration quickly soured when Heidegger joined the Nazi party in 1933. With the outbreak of the Second World War, Levinas, a French Jew, returned to France to fight for the allied forces. He was soon captured and spent the remainder of the war in a German P.O.W. camp. After the war, Heidegger never made a public apology for his participation in the party. Some speculate that his refusal to publicly disavow the Nazi party was due to his prioritization of “personal authenticity” over the opinions of the public.13
Levinas suspected that Heidegger’s focus on the all-encompassing nature of Being and individual freedom had eclipsed the possibility of his appreciation for the radical alterity14 we experience when encountering others. Levinas’s phenomenological project thus turns Heidegger’s on its head. Whereas “the call of conscience” in Heidegger’s analysis is the individuating force of death anxiety that compels dasein to be true to its “ownmost possibilities” in spite of the They, the call of conscience for Levinas is the felt weight of responsibility instigated in the face of the Other15 (where we understand “face” to be all human expression). His phenomenology founds everything else on this responsibility, which is why Levinas claims that ethics is first philosophy.
Levinas argues that our very freedom is conditioned by the Other. A self only emerges in the face of the Other, as it is in this encounter that it is naturally compelled to justify and therefore individuate its self (“apology,” in the Greek sense). This being addressed and having to account for itself reifies self-hood in developing self-reflection, character, language, rationality, conscience, and consciousness (which are inextricably entwined for the French, who have only one word for both: conscience). Conscience, therefore, owes its very being to the Other, which beckons it into the light of Being. This beckoning compels, leading to the naturally felt obligation to, on the one hand, justify one’s beliefs or actions to the Other, and also to be hospitable to others just as one desires to feel welcomed by the Other.
Our desire to be welcomed by the Other, which is no ordinary desire, only increases in proportion to its fulfillment. Levinas terms this “metaphysical Desire,” which he characterizes in one place as “genuine discourse.” Totalization renounces genuine discourse.16 For the possibility of the fulfillment of metaphysical desire, I must be open to the transcendence of the other that ruptures my totality by calling it into question.17
The responsibility to welcome, critique, and respond to the Other renders us vulnerable and can be exhausting. We therefore tend to retreat into the comforting and secure confines of our own totalized worlds. This act of totalization resembles the appropriative nature of our digestive processes, attempting to subsume that which is other to the same18 via knowledge acquisition.
We can never truly subsume the Other, yet conceptualization instigates the imperial delusion that we can grasp, acquire, and possess knowledge of those who are beyond oneself.19 There is a sense in which a concept of a mere thing surrenders said thing to our power. But a concept signifying an actual other person is necessarily deficient and misleading, as it cannot possibly contain that to whom it refers. A signifier cannot contain its signified. The signified other overflows conceptualization.
Equipped now with both Heidegger’s understanding of authenticity and Levinas’s reversal of focus to that of ethics, I hope to show that these two accounts can find mutually illuminating accord within Turkle’s portrayal of “the virtuous circle.” By doing so, I hope to show that neither philosopher’s phenomenology of conscience need be rejected for the sake of the other. Instead, both of their projects develop a richer understanding if seen as two interdependent facets of our lived experience.
III. The Virtuous Circle
“Language … has created the word ‘loneliness’ to express the pain of being alone.
And it has created the word ‘solitude’ to express the glory of being alone.”
– Paul Tillich
In her 2015 bestseller Reclaiming Conversation, sociologist and clinical psychologist Sherry Turkle argues that our trends toward short and sporadic, virtually based media of communication are posing problems for leading both authentic and ethical lives. This is because virtual access to one another and instantaneous entertainment hinders what she calls “the virtuous circle,” which is the healthy interplay between the interdependent experiences of solitude and genuine solicitude. This framework provides a clearing within which to situate face to face both Heidegger and Levinas, the philosophers of authenticity and the Other, respectively.
In our age of an “infinity of devices” and apps, Turkle states that “being alone” has become something seen as “a problem technology should solve.”20 Our phones promise a “friction free life” wherein we will never be lonely, bored, or unheard. However, learning to get past the angst, boredom, or loneliness experienced when by ourselves undistracted is, according to psychoanalysis, essential to achieving solitude, which is itself fundamental in the development of confidence, imagination, creativity, and empathy. “Solitude reinforces a secure sense of self, and with that, the capacity for empathy.”21 Stronger empathy leads to forming deeper bonds with others, whose conversations then provide the rich material for self-reflection and imagination. Imagination leads to creativity, while self-reflection builds the self-esteem and empathy needed for quality engagement with others.22
To truly achieve solitude, one must become comfortable with allowing one’s mind to wander, free of distractions.23 However, the gadgets we find increasingly saturating our lives are created for the sake of distraction, offering us enframed ways of escape from raw experience.
When we thereby fail to develop a secure sense of self that is confident—having something to offer others24—we become more likely to project onto others. Thinking with Levinas, we see this increases our tendency to totalize, which he says renounces genuine discourse.25
By habituating ourselves to superficial distractions at the mere onset of boredom, we become more easily bored by anyone or anything not saying or doing exactly what we are immediately interested in. Thus the loneliness or angst felt when alone carries into social situations, which we then attempt to resolve via the same manner of fleeing—our devices. This is how the virtuous circle of solitude and genuine solicitude breaks into a vicious downward spiral.
Reaching out for genuine connection becomes conflated with reaching out for distraction. We begin implicitly treating one another as resources for escape, literally on call (remember Bestand?). Enframing in this manner, we are likewise challenged forth by others. Now we feel obligated to keep our phones on when in private. This increases the permeability between the boundaries of our public and private spheres, thus further corrupting our possibilities for being fully present when alone or with others. Turkle characterizes this as a reversal of the virtuous circle, resulting in a process of alienation and indeterminacy. Because the reciprocal interplay of the virtuous circle is non-linear, “reversal” does not seem conceptually appropriate. I propose that this breakdown of the cyclical model be characterized as the formation of a binary opposition between refractory poles:
We therefore see that our phones are enabling and encouraging fleeing in the face of anxiety into the distractions offered by theyness, thus deafening Heidegger’s call of conscience which compels us to be true to our ownmost possibilities. Consequently, this movement drives us to become more totalizing in our ways, thus renouncing Levinas’s call of conscience instigated by the Other, which closes off our possibilities for the satisfaction of metaphysical desire through genuine discourse. The “friction free life” made possible by our smart-phones becomes akin to Frodo’s ring, tempting a short-term escape from raw confrontations with our immediate situation.26
As with substance abuse, utilizing a short-term means of escape weakens our ability to cope, lowers resolve, and thereby strengthens addiction. Studies show that our tendency to flee difficult encounters is made easier and more frequent with technology.27
Considering the fact that real conversations often require a little boredom, awkwardness, or the ability to pay attention to what the other is saying, this poses a serious problem. Taking the easy way out (often) cheats us. Levinas would say that what is being diminished by this phenomenon is the twofold act of both welcoming and answering to the transcendence of the other, which is our a priori28 obligation and the foundation of ethics. Our tendency to shun responsibility to the Other (totalization) is therefore reified technologically by friction free living.
Likewise, Heidegger is brought to bear, as taking a resolute stand toward one’s ownmost possibilities brought to light via anxiety is also his key to authenticity.29 The harder it becomes to achieve fulfillment in solitude, the more we pursue superficial distractions (curiosity), which breaks down the virtuous circle until we find ourselves living in the difference between. This is where I want to inject Heidegger’s characterization of falling, which we were earlier referring to as “the vicious cycle.” Having not established a secure center, dasein becomes lost in the universalized possibilities of the They. Thus the two interdependent and complimentary experiences of solitude and solicitude break down into the refractory poles of loneliness with self and loneliness with others. These repellent movements then propel the vicious cycle of ambiguity, curiosity, and idle talk.
Never fully present, lost spinning in the undertow of the They’s leveling turbulence, we are repelled away by both the transcendence of the Other (real solicitude) and the necessary angst which must be confronted resolutely in order to come face to face with one’s ownmost thrown possibilities. The Other challenges our leveled and superficial totalizations, but we flee into the comforting confines of the They’s understanding that renounces genuine discourse and refuses to welcome critique. Rather than taking a resolute stand to our own thrown possibilities, we are seduced by the distractions and pursuits established by the totalized Other in the form of the They.
Various proposals for ways to ameliorate these problems have been put forward by the thinkers drawn from throughout this chapter. For the sake of brevity, we will simply conclude by saying that the immediate two-part answer is to take time for poetic dwelling with oneself free of distractions, allowing one’s mind—and feet—to wander outside the possibilities provided by devices, apps, or literal paths and roads. Then, when in public, making a deliberate point to practice being fully present to the transcendence of others, thereby cultivating the possibilities for reclaiming undistracted and genuine conversations. As the old Thai Buddhist proverb goes, “When alone, practice right thought. When with others, practice right speech.” Consider this insight in the context of this chapter: When alone, practice resoluteness in the face of anxiety. When with others, practice genuine discourse with the Other.30
1 A pronunciation pointer for fellow pleebs: “Due-Cane.”
2 René Descartes, Discourse on Method for Conducting One’s Reason Well and for Seeking Truth in the Sciences, trans. Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998), 35.
3 This paper will not try to settle Levinas and Heidegger’s disagreement about the primacy of Being vs. the Other.
4 The version of this essay published in Stance uses the word “sociality” instead of solicitude. Ever since its publication I wished I had used “solicitude” instead of “sociality.” The issue with using both solitude and solicitude is that these words get used differently depending on the philosopher who might implement them. I mean nothing other than “being-with-oneself” for solitude and “being-withothers” for solicitude.
5 Martin Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology,” in Basic Writings (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 322.
6 Ibid, 323
7 Heidegger, “Question Concerning Technology,” 214.
8 Ibid, 216.
9 Not to be confused with the typical meaning of the word, Heidegger argues that angst is the mood that underlies and defines all the others. Whereas, for Heidegger, fear has a definite object, anxiety has no definitive object. As he says elsewhere, dasein’s very essence “means being held out into the nothing.” This sense of impending nothingness is the “bewildered calm” that repels us into our being-in-the-world. “What is Metaphysics?” in Basic Writings (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 103.
10 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie and Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 211.
11 Michael Wheeler, “Martin Heidegger,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2015), ed. Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/heidegger/
12 Think of “ownmost possibilities” as the possibilities which are unique to oneself specifically because of one’s particular situation. My possibilities are not yours, and if you tried to fill my role, then the possibilities would change. The fact that this basic truism is novel to some people testifies to the pervasiveness of the They.
13 Iain Thomsons portrays the fallout between Marcuse and Heidegger in “From the Question Concerning Technology to the Quest for a Democratic Technology,” Inquiry 43, no. 2 (June 2000): 203-15.
14 “Alterity” simply means the otherness of things or people. It is that which is beyond or outside of oneself.
15 “Other” should be understood as the abstract presence of any and all others: past, present, and potential future encounters. The Other is always with us, even when others aren’t. *2021 update: I’ve kept this footnote here because it’s what was published, but actually uppercase O “Other,” for Levinas, means the concrete Other… the one with whom we have a face-to-face encounter. He uses lowercase “other” as well as “alterity” to get at “otherness” though more generally. This is even more confusing due to the fact that Lacan’s uppercase O “Other” is more akin to the social order, not the concrete other.
16 Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 42.
17 “Metaphysical desire” is just one of the many weird terms developed and used by Emmanuel Levinas. Basically it is our desire to be with, understand, seen, heard, and understood by others.
18 “Same” is another way of talking about that which is not other than oneself.
19 Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 44, 188.
20 Sherry Turkle, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age (New York: Penguin Press, 2015), 10.
21 Ibid., 17.
22 Ibid., 25.
23 There is an important possibility for bringing Zhuangzi to bear for which this current rendition does not have time to do justice.
24 Turkle, Reclaiming Conversation, 10.
25 Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 42.
26 Frodo is a character from Lord of the Rings. The ring he bears provides the magical power to disappear—and, it’s important to mention for the sake of this analogy to our devices, use of the ring is highly addictive.
27 Ibid, 34.
28 A priori just means the stuff we can know without empirical research. Levinas’ whole life project advances the argument that moral responsibility is a priori.
29 I do fear being pegged as one trying to pound a circular peg into a square hole. It should be said that Turkle only opens the space for which to bring in Heidegger’s project. Both thinkers have different things in mind, and Heidegger’s own project is infinitely more complex and goes significantly further in-depth than can be adequately respected in a piece of this length. Though with that said, Turkle is surprisingly based in continental philosophy, at least via Lacan.
30 Of course, doing either of these practices in any seriously sustained way requires setting aside and investing routine time-energy, which was not yet a concept in my lexicon at the time of writing this piece.
