Tokyo Lectures on Continental Philosophy of Technology

1. Introduction to Philosophy of Technology

I. What is philosophy of technology?

A. Branch of social philosophy

1. Not primarily epistemology: not philosophy of science

2. Not primarily ethics: not medical ethics, etc.

B. Modernity critique as main theme

1. modernity unique: central place of powerful techniques

2. breakdown of high/low culture division

3. technical mediation of social institutions

4. technical rationality as cultural system

C. Central problems

1. concretizations of traditional problems

2. the fate of individuality and freedom

3. rationality as both truth and power

4. my work: can democracy survive technology?

D. The chart as guide

II. Background: Instrumental Theory and the Humanities

A. A new field

1. Intro: Technology excluded from traditional philosophy

a. tradition of the humanities converged with

b. instrumentalist orthodoxy

2. humanities

a. antiquity: technical as beneath human dignity

b. modern times: technical, like economy, as natural

B. instrumentalism as spontaneous philosophy (in West)

1. means and ends are independent

2. technology is a neutral instrument, a pure means

3. based on universal knowledge, natural needs

4. hence it is apolitical, uncontroversial, generic in scope

5. subject to human control

6. social consequences as side effects

7. the generalization of this view as technocracy

III. Substantive theory

A. Intro: before 1960s humanists either

1. abstracted from this transparent background

2. or, rarely, attacked it in substantive theories

3. Heidegger, Ellul

4. cultural critique: modernity reveals limits of rationality

5. method: determinism, essentialism

B. Cultural critique

1. means and ends cannot be separated

a. our tools form our environment and way of life

b. we are inside the machine

c. how we do things determines who and what we are

d. technology has substantive value implications

2. social consequences as essential, not accidental

a. efficiency vs. tradition, human values, communication

b. example: family dinner: calories vs. ritual

C. Determinism

1. unilinear path of development (horizontal)

2. technology governing for social structure (vertical)

3. "imperatives" of technology

4. railroad and scheduling, factory and hierarchy

D. Essentialism

1. there is one and only one essence of technology

2. the truth of technology revealed by modernity

3. premodern accretions eliminated: ethics, aesthetics

4. rationalization: the drive for efficiency

5. this drive unfolds autonomously

6. from utopia to dystopia

7. transformation of man: "Only a God can save us now."

IV. New Critical Approaches

A. Left dystopian theories (1960s-1970s): Marcuse and Foucault

1. politicizing the cultural critique of modernity, technology

2. Heidegger’s influence: technology as substantive

3. new left vs. technocracy: technology as political

4. technology as ideology

5. but vague on alternatives

6. lack of agency in both

B. Constructivism (1980s-1990)

1. Latour, constructivists finally overcome positivism

2. analyze science, technology as social institutions

3. but: stick to empirical case studies for the most part

4. lack a theory of modernity

a. critique of positivism blocks access to idea of sociological rationalization

b. no dystopian sensibility

c. symmetries, relativism make it difficult to develop critique

C. Success of Critical Approaches

1. broad social acceptance due to political, technical change

2. new social movements and technology

a. environmentalism suggests alternative technologies

b. interactive model from computing changes man/machine paradigm

c. AIDS and networks

3. gradual penetration of humanities by technical issues

4. “cultural studies” of gender, race, technocracy problems

5. a new consensus (except in philosophy): technology is relevant, political

6. my work attempts to integrate these new factors to philosophy

D. Some implications

1. critique of the idea of a single technical rationality

2. break with essentialism and determinism

3. open a space for thinking about

a. alternative technology

b. democratic social control

4. redeeming modernity

E. Main aims of Questioning Technology

1. to explore the new situation of the question in politics and philosophy

2. the project: concretizing left dystopianism with constructivism

a. break with essentialism and determinism

b. critique of the idea of a single technical rationality

c. technology as ideology, as biased socially and tranformable as a system

d. reintroduce contingency into modernity

3. to argue for the possible democratization of technology

a. May Events: everything is possible, imagination in power

b. a reformist, gradualist version for this time: democratic interventions

2. Heidegger’s Essay on Technology

I. Introduction

A. The text

1. written in 1955

2. represents the later Heidegger

3. a philosophical critique of modernity

B. Difficulty of text

1. written very obscurely because:

2. presupposes other writings

3. complex use of German and Greek

4. subtle ideas, not very well connected

5. today: reading of the text

II. Technology as Revealing

A. The goal:

1. to prepare a free relationship to technology

2. by questioning technology’s essence

3. come back to free relationship at end

4. next step: what is essence?

5. preliminary provocation: the essence is not technological

6. this means: don’t look for it in instrumentality

B. The instrumental view of technology

1. a means and a human activity

2. leads to notion of mastery

3. distinguish correct from true

4. to get at the truth: what is the instrumental?

C. Nature of the instrumental

1. four causes explain it

2. causes as co-responsible, implicated

3. united by reflective gathering, the maker

4. no efficient cause appears here at all

D. How to understand the absence of efficient cause

1. techne as bringing something into appearance

2. Her-vor-bringen or coming into presence

3. this refers generally to a way of understanding being: aletheia

4. physis and poiesis: self-manifesting and manifesting through work

E. Revealing

1. such ways of understanding are revealings (Entbergen)

2. revealings as Heidegger’s substitute for consciousness

3. they are historical

F. Modes of Revealing

1. techne as a specific mode of revealing

2. an objective ideal of the thing pre-exists it

3. Greek way distorted in Roman understanding

4. not correctness, truth, not making, revealing

5. this prepares modernity

6. technology too as another mode of revealing

7. as such not a mere means

III. Modern Technology as Challenging-revealing

A. But does revealing apply to modern technology?

1. yes, but in a different way

2. nature challenged to supply energy for storage and use (Herausfordern)

3. challenging as ordering (stellen)

4. no prior ideal of thing but human plans

5. but plans must apply to a plannable reality

a. one can’t plan everything: a child’s future

b. what kind of reality can be planned?

B. Standing Reserve (Bestand)

1. the world revealed as object of technique

2. such a reality is raw materials or technical components (Bestand)

3. the system of technology

4. objectlessness

5. p. 16:

“The hydroelectric plant is not built into the Rhine River as was the old wooden bridge that joined bank with bank for hundreds of years. Rather the river is dammed up into the power plant. What the river is now, namely a water power supplier, derives out of the essence of the power station.”

6. man as part of the Bestand in two ways

a. as partially a thing within the system

b. and as called to challenge and order

c. this call places him beyond the system

7. as revealing, technology not a human activity

8. Enframing (Ge-stell) names this revealing insofar as it includes man as called

C. Conclusions:

1. Ge-stell and Her-vor-bringen as the two modes of revealing

2. instrumental view wrong because technology is neither a means nor a human activity

IV. Human Freedom and Destining

A. The problem:

1. to think man as essential to revealing

2. while understanding man as also revealed

3. and revealing as changing in history

4. this means no predefined human essence except as the site of revealing

5. but what is man’s fate as such a site?

6. this is the ultimate question of technology

B. The call as destining (Geschick)

1. word play on destiny and sending

2. the idea: historical dispensations

3. dispensations roughly modes of awareness

4. one does not choose the way one encounters the world

5. Heidegger’s ontological substitute for “culture”

C. Freedom

1. as such revealing presupposes human freedom

2. revealing presupposes “distance”

3. man “opens” a “space” for the world to appear

4. called clearing (Lichtung), transcendence

5. freedom as being beyond things, not just a thing

D. Two paths

1. man can be enslaved to the revealing

2. the real danger not machines but enslavement

a. man as pure orderer of Bestand

b. risks becoming Bestand

c. takes himself as lord of the earth

d. misunderstanding: man is called to Ge-stell

3. Concealment

a. all revealing also conceals in some way

b. enframing conceals by causing man to

b. lose sight of the call and his own nature

c. lose sight of poeisis, revealing, truth

4. or man can enter into a deeper relation to revealing

5. awareness of his dignity as the site of revealing

6. p. 26, 28

“...the other possibility...that man might be admitted more and sooner and ever more primally to the essence of that which is unconcealed and to its unconcealment, in order that he might experience as his essence his needed belonging to revealing.”

“The rule of enframing threatens man with the possibility that it could be denied him to enter into a more original revealing and hence to experience the call of a more primal truth.”

V. The Saving Power

A. supposedly it grows where there is danger

1. most obscure part of essay

2. more filling in of gaps needed: a hypothesis about finitude

B. technology opens a new thought of essence

1. essence as what endures, the eternal ideas

2. missing link here: enframing eliminates essence as enduring in the old sense

3. remember Descartes’ wax

4. the only enduring thing left is revealing itself
5. word play gets us from enduring to granting

6. essence as a granting qua revealing: es gibt

C. Technology and man

1. revealing as such revealed by enframing

2. this means: man as needed and used by being

3. even by the enframing

4. missing link again:

a. Greeks knew revealing but not man as needed

b. this realization blocked by ancient concept of essence

c. modern perspective rigorously finitistic, so could recognize the role of man

d. but enframing blocks the realization

5. awareness of this is freedom expressed in “little things”

6. p. 33.

“We look into the danger and see the growth of the saving power. Through this we are not yet saved. But we are thereupon summoned to hope in the growing light of the saving power. How can this happen? Here and now and in little things, that we may foster the saving power in its increase. This includes holding always before our eyes the extreme danger.”

7. this is the redemptive possibility of modernity

D. Technology and art

1. art possibly a more primal revealing

2. the saving power might be directly revealed in art

3. or perhaps generalization of technology will stimulate awareness of its limits

4. the question left in doubt

VI. Heidegger and Nihilism

A. The temptation

1. Heidegger was drawn to nihilism: Junger, Nietzsche

2. nihilism as the truly modern:

a. ending naive realism about nature, essence

b. God is dead: no place for the infinite

c. Heidegger shares this and so is modern

B. The refusal: presence and history

1. Heidegger rejects nihilism because:

2. the fact of presence means there is something that is not merely Bestand, man

3. man is historical, hence not absolute

4. beyond nihilism would lie a revealing of these ontological conditions as such

5. but Heidegger’s rejection of politics or any future oriented form of action blocks him

6. “Only a God can save us.”

3. Heidegger: Critique and Appreciation

I. Introduction to the five themes

A. Theme 1: rationalization and modernity

1. Heidegger’s theory a reinterpretation of the problematic of rationalization

2. familiar from sociology since Marx and Weber

B. Theme 2: ontic and ontological moments

1. distinction between ontic and ontological: facts vs. the structure that underlies them

2. Heidegger ontologizes the sociology

3. but there are peculiar relations between the two

C. Theme 3: the question concerning design

1. design irrelevant as merely ontic

2. but we can no longer believe this (environment)

D. Theme 4: the politics of technology

1. if design is significant and socially contingent

2. then politics plays a role in shaping modernity

E. Theme 5: recontextualization as gathering

1. enframing only half the story

2. design as a gathering that sets up worlds

II. The Themes

A. Theme 1: rationalization and modernity

1. in Weber

2. formal and substantive rationality

a. substantive: oriented toward a goal

b. formal: efficiency of means

3. the loss of ethical and aesthetic mediations

a. traditional craft combines efficiency with mediations

b. modern technology differentiated from them

4. reduction to primary qualities: Bestand

6. instrumentalization theory: decontextualization and systematization

B. Theme 2: ontic and ontological moments

1. the ontological difference: beings and being

2. technologies ontic, technology ontological

3. difference between design level and spirit

4. ontologizing rationalization

a. not just something humans do to a pre-existing reality

b. the revealing of the world

5. analytic dependencies:

a. extracting energy as ontic: a design

b. and ontological: paradigm of functionalization

c. the ontological as guide of ontic research

d. technology not a genus

e. technologies enact technology: power plant, computer

6. apriorism of the method: no theory of design

C. Theme 3: the question concerning design

1. Heidegger views technology as one

a. the two types of technique

b. essentialism: technologies predefined

c. contrasts with constructivist sociology

2. environmentalism, computers: the question of design

3. now we know: design opens different worlds

4. Heideggerians dismiss it as merely ontic

5. but this stance incredible today

6. a theory of the variety of technological worlds

D. Theme 4: the politics of technology

1. design is historically and socially contingent

2. it reflects culture and power relations

3. modernity not just enframing: reflexivity

4. bringing culture and power to consciousness

5. entry of technology into the public sphere

6. the question of a democratic politics of technology

E. Theme 5: recontextualization as gathering

1. borrowing from Heidegger

2. revealing as setting up of worlds

3. the role of the work of art

4. the thing and the region

5. recall gathering function of craftsman: dereification

6. gathering through technological design

7. this means: supplying contexts

a. systematization as a minimum context

b. ethical and aesthetic mediations as contexts

c. initiative: skill and democracy

d. internalization of constraints: regulation

8. ontological designing

III. Conclusion: After Heidegger

A. His contribution:

1. ontological conception of technology

a. a more fundamental analysis than means/ends

b. overcomes instrumentalism

c. points to the need for a systemic approach

d. technology as culture

2. a finitistic approach

a. we belong to any system on which we can act

b. hence no conquest of nature

c. technology as world revealing

B. His limitations:

1. critique too totalizing: dystopianism

2. blocks empirical study

3. disarms struggle for better technology, worlds

4. going beyond Heidegger.

4. Introduction to Marcuse

I. Critical Theory

A. Western Marxism

1. innovative German Marxists

2. tradition of Western Marxism: Lukács, Gramsci

a. revolutionary offensives

b. consciousness

c. Hegelianism

3. Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse, Habermas

4. Phenomenology, existentialism, Western Marxism dominate postwar European thought till ‘70s

B. Critical theory: basic positions

1. failure of classical revolutionary model

2. Russia backward

3. state capitalism integrates proletariat

4. rise of mass media

5. rationality deficit

6. fascism: authoritarian mass character structure

7. advanced industrial society and fascism

8. dystopian models: Brave New World and 1984

C. Significance of Frankfurt School

1. end of deterministic Marxism, economism

2. a Marxist philosophy at a high intellectual level

3. reconnecting Marxism to freedom, individuality

4. critique of triumphs of technological society

a. dialectic of Enlightenment

b. critique of technology

D. Marcuse’s situation

1. left Germany after Hitler and stayed in US

2. Horkheimer and Adorno returned to Germany and became defenders of culture

3. Marcuse was touched by the student movement

4. 1968-early seventies, world famous: Marx, Mao, Marcuse!

5. unjustly forgotten today

6. his critical theory offered hope: styles change

II. Marcuse’s Basic Ideas

A. Surplus repression

1. Freud, Diderot: Supplement to Bougainville’s Voyage

2. a certain degree of repression necessary

3. the amount is relative to scarcity

4. anything beyond the necessary is surplus

5. today the surplus grows with technology

6. the possible “pacification” of existence

7. the necessity of socialism

B. The integration of society

1. integration means system-like character

2. no longer split by necessary class struggle

3. the system “delivers the goods”

4. the incorporation of sex and leisure

5. the colonization of consciousness by the media

6. preservation of domination, competition

7. class rule, based on scarcity, continues with artificial motives

8. the system self-reproducing, self-expanding

9. emergence of total civilization of technique

10. recall Marx's original concept of alienation

C. Dystopia: Immanent and Transcending Demands

1. immanent: under horizon of established order

2. transcending means going beyond that horizon

3. transcending demands commonplace in past

4. rooted in particular unsatisfiable interests

5. "peace, bread, land"

6. particular interests "occasions" of total change