ABSTRACT
Advances in techno-science and its industrial application over the past hundred years have significantly harmed the natural environment. This environmental degradation is, in Heidegger’s terms, the result of Gestell: the disclosure of the world as nothing more than raw material for the relentless expansion of our technology-based economic system. Although environmental degradation has been particularly severe in the 20th century, Heidegger sees it as the culmination of Western history or a specific “ontological destiny” that originates with tool use and our initial attempt to manipulate and control the natural environment in Ancient Greece. In the face of Gestell, Heidegger calls for Gelassenheit: i.e., a releasement from our ontological destiny of world-controlling technology that would enable a ‘new beginning’ in which we ‘let things be’ and no longer reduce the world to commodities. In this chapter, I examine Heidegger’s account of Gestell and Gelassenheit and then assess the importance of these concepts for Deep Ecology and the environmental movement, generally.
