Standing reserve is one of the terms that appear repeatedly in Heidegger’s critique of modern technology and the modern-technological world.
According to Heidegger, standing reserve is a characteristic of entities, deciding and determining entities as continuously standing by, that is, as constantly being ready, available, accessible, and disposable.
Standing reserve is a mode of revealing, through which entities show themselves and appear in their constant readiness to be stored, ordered, offered, planned, produced, used, and replaced.
In a word, standing reserve is a mode of appearing or revealing through which entities appear and are offered to us in their constant availability, accessibility, and disposability. Standing reserve thus signifies continuous readiness, constant availability and accessibility, and sustained disposability.
Heidegger says that in the modern world, where technology decides everything and completely holds sway, everything is seen in terms of its ability to be transformed into what can be stored so that it could be rendered available and plannable at any time, so that it could be offered, used, produced, and replaced at any time.
Examples of standing reserve in today’s world are reserve funds, assets, resources, human resources, supplies, goods, livestock, stores of goods, cash on hand, material goods, information, and energy. That is, the entirety of the world appears to us, and is offered to us, in the technological age as standing reserve.
Standing Reserve and Objectivity
For Heidegger, standing reserve, as the dominant mode of revealing in modern technology, departs from the objectivity of modern science, the objectivity that modern science constantly endeavors to achieve and sustain, for standing reserve means standing by and not standing over against, in which a subject stands over against an object.
Modern technology marks the end of the objectivity of modern science. In other words, modern technology is itself the disappearance of the objectivity of modern science because it transforms the objectivity of modern science into accessibility, disposability, availability, and orderability. Yet this does not mean that the subject-object relation either fades away or loses its force.
The subject-object relation, Heidegger says, now reaches its full potential and complete dominance, for it becomes, for the first time throughout its whole history, purely and truly relational, since both the subject and the object become themselves now standing reserve, offered, seen, and appearing only through their orderability, disposability, accessibility, and availability.
Both the subject and the object appear and are seen and offered now as merely what can be ordered, used, planned, offered, and replaced. There are no longer any objects; there are only assets, production materials, and consumer goods; constantly available, ready, and disposable.
The subject, the human being itself, is seen merely as what can be planned, managed, used, and offered so the production materials and the consumer goods could be rendered available, ready, and disposable. The human being is itself transformed into a mere resource, a mere asset, that must be offered, planned, used, and produced.
Since everything is transformed into what can be offered, the offered becomes abundant, and the abundant appears and is itself offered only in terms of its replaceability and disposability.
In the technological age, everything is replaceable, nothing is ever repaired, completely used, re-used, or exhausted, for everything is replaceable, disposable, available, and constantly ready.
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