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HEIDEGGER: In the experiment which we undertake, there is no question of wanting to conjure up Heraclitus himself. Rather, he speaks with us and we speak with him. At present, we reflect on the phenomenon of steering. This phenomenon has today, in the age of cybernetics, become so fundamental that it occupies and determines the whole of natural science and the behavior of humans so that it is necessary for us to gain more clarity about it. You said first that steering means "bringing something into a desired course." Let us attempt a still more precise description of the phenomenon.
FINK: Steering is the bringing-into-control [In-die Gewalt-Bringen] of a movement. A ship without rudder and helmsman is a plaything of the waves and winds. It is forcibly brought into the desired course only through steering. Steering is an {GA 15: 26} intervening, transfiguring movement that compels the ship along a specific course. It has the character of violence in itself. Aristotle distinguishes the movement that is native to things and the movement that is forcibly conveyed to things.
HEIDEGGER: Isn't there also a nonviolent steering? Does the character of violence belong intrinsically to the phenomenon of steering? The phenomenon of steering is ever and again unclarified in reference to Heraclitus and to our present-day distress. That natural science and our life today become ruled by cybernetics in increasing measure is not accidental; rather, it is foreshadowed in the historical origin of modem knowledge and technology.
FINK: The human phenomenon of steering is characterized by the moment of coercive and precalculated regulation. It is associated with calculative knowledge and coercive intervention. The steering of Zeus is something else. When he steers he does not calculate, but he rules effortlessly. There tends to be noncoercive steering in the region of the gods, but not in the human region.
HEIDEGGER: Is there really an essential connection between steering and coercion?
FINK: The helmsman of a ship is a man of skill. He knows his way about in the tides and winds. He must make use of the driving wind and tide in correct manner. Through his steering he removes the ship coercively from the play of wind and waves. To this extent one must thus see and also posit the moment of coercive acts in the phenomenon of steering.
HEIDEGGER: Isn't present day cybernetics itself also steered? {GA 15: 27}
FINK: If one would think of εἰμαρμένη [destiny] in this, or even fate.
HEIDEGGER: Isn't this steering noncoercive? We must look at various phenomena of steering. Steering can be, on the one hand, a coercive holding in line, on the other hand, the noncoercive steering of the gods. The gods of the Greeks, however, have nothing to do with religion.