Technics and Time, 1 - Part II: The Fault of Epimetheus - Prometheus's Liver - Non-immortals

Non-immortals

Stiegler then cites the Prometheus myth, as recounted in Plato's dialogue, Protagoras, noting that it is by deviating from the equilibrium of animals, a departure engendered by Epimetheus's mistake, that mortals occur. Fruit of a double fault—of forgetting (to distribute a quality to human beings), then theft (of fire from Zeus)—human beings are naked and defenceless, lacking (as yet) the art of the political. This is not a fall, but a default of origin, in one blow.

But before interpreting this version further, Stiegler turns to the Hesiodic version, and its interpretation by Jean-Pierre Vernant. Again, this version begins with humans banqueting with the gods, that is, before the advent of humanity as mortality. If the Prometheus myth is an anthropogony, it is so as a thanatology. Mortals come to be through obtaining their condition of dying, a condition arising as a result of the deceptive gifts of Prometheus. Sacrifice places mortals between beasts and gods, and this opens the (political) question of community as the originary departure from all origins. Prometheus's failure confers upon the separation of mortals and immortals the character of a fall. This fall, dying, is the origin of eris (contest, jealousy)—and this means the threat of stasis (war), but also the dynamic factor of the community, emulation (or competition). But with the end of the golden age human beings are yoked to labour and to handling instruments.

Returning to the Protagorean version, the forgetfulness of Epimetheus is doubled by Prometheus's theft, resulting, for human beings, in the advance of their prematureness that is their eternal delay. Religion, speech, politics, and invention arise from this default of origin. Human beings invent and imagine, and realise (i.e., make) what they imagine, because they are endowed with reason, logos. Or: because human beings realise what they imagine (as technics), they are endowed with reason and language. The being of human being is to be outside itself.