Female Mountain, Masculine Mining: an Interpretation of Entbergen

Authors

  • Ave Mets University of Tartu

Keywords:

Martin Heidegger, Carolyn Merchant, technology, science, unconcealment, ecofeminism

Abstract

Unverborgenheit (unconcealment) is truth in Heidegger’s Greek-inspired view that happens in Entbergen, or bringing forth. Technology is a way of bringing forth and the truths brought forth in ancient and contemporary science-based technologies are essentially different, the latter being destined by enframing or Gestell that is the essence of contemporary science and technology. Here I give an etymological-ecological-feminist interpretation to the essences of ancient and contemporary technologies as ontogeneses and their unconcealments. A turning point is also identified, on the basis of Carolyn Merchant’s eco-feminist account of the mental-spiritual change due to technical change of earth-bound practices, specifically mining, during the commercial revolution and the rise of contemporary science. As Heidegger’s wording strongly hints to mountains as salvaging the not-yet-concealed, and human relation to mountains as finding the concealed, Merchant’s account of the female nature, or Mother Earth, and male science as penetrating her dark plots for secrets to be exploited by humans, and its connection to mining practices, seems in some respects to clarify Heidegger’s somewhat dark notions of unconcealment and truth.

Author Biography

Ave Mets, University of Tartu

Research fellow for philosophy of science

PhD in philosophy (University of Tartu, 2013)

References

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Published

2018-04-23

Issue

No. 29 (2018): July-December

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