Abstract
From a historico-philosophical perspective, this study traces à rebours Marcuse’s Philosophy of Technology through Feenberg’s reading. It focuses on three notions – historicity, life, and technicity – in Marcuse’s early writings that enable a genealogy of his thinking about technology. Historicity (Geschichtlichkeit) represents the attempt to make compatible historical materialism and existential phenomenology. Life is a pivotal concept for a dialectical thinking which evolves from a dialectics of life of the so-called Marcuse’s Heideggerian Marxism to a dialectics of technology in his mature production. Finally, technicity seems to be the key notion of the technological shift by the quitting of the Heideggerian legacy alongside the joining of Frankfurt School. The representation of technology in One-dimensional man rearticulates these notions of historicity, life and technicity and shapes a particular kind of objectivity that makes technology a multilayered and ambivalent field of human historical action. Thus, Marcuse’s account of technology can be integrated with Simondon’s conception of concretization towards a redefinition of reification that allows for an open – although critical – idea of progress, as Feenberg assumes.
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Notes
- 1.
The writings between 1928 and 1932 refer to the period called Heideggerian Marxism and are collected in Marcuse’s early writings Heideggerian Marxism, edited by R. Wolin and J. Abromeit (2005). In this study we will focus mainly on Beiträge zu einer Phänomenologie des Historischen Materialismus (1928. Contributions to a Phenomenology of Historical Materialism, pp. 1–33); Über konkrete Philosophie (1929. On Concrete Philosophy, pp. 34–52); Neue Quellen zur Grundlegung des Historischen Materialismus (1932. New Sources ion the Foundation of Historical Materialism, pp. 86–121).
- 2.
Marcuse employs the term Geschichtlichkeit (“happeningness”) deriving from geschehen (“to happen”) as the term History (Geschichte) derives from it as well (and in opposition to Historie). This use reveals Marcuse’s Heideggerian influence but also the necessity to historicize Heidegger’s Dasein in the form of human and historical happening, i.e. in a materialistic perspective. See also the glossary of Heideggerian Marxism edited by J. Abromeit (Marcuse, 2005, pp. 183–184).
- 3.
See Schmidt (1968).
- 4.
This unified society seems to represent a sort-of state of nature incompatible with the historical progress. Thus, in Marcuse’s early writings we can recognize the germinal idea expressed through the twofold thesis of One-Dimensional Man according to which human progress makes possible the improvement of the conditions of existence but does not produce the historical subject of societal transformation. This twofold thesis is based on the fact that society becomes more and more complex, crossed by conflict and differences, where not only needs but also desires influence and are influenced by the mode of production.
- 5.
For the notion of motility (Bewegtheit) see the glossary in Heideggerian Marxism (Marcuse, 2005, pp. 177–178). As the notion of Geschichtlichkeit, it represents Marcuse’s appropriation of Heidegger’s terminology. For the relation between motility and historicity see also Pippin’s “Marcuse on Hegel and historicity” (Pippin, 1988, p. 73).
- 6.
“The choice of life as a fundamental ontological theme makes sense of the emphasis on interconnectedness and process in the dialectics of development. The life process has a direction: life seeks to preserve and further itself. Yet it is not confined by a predetermined end but invents its future as it moves. This is of course eminently true of modern human beings and their society. There is no longer a prior essence that defines what it is to be human. Human beings now must make themselves. In Marcuse’s reading, Hegelian life, like Heideggerian Dasein, discovers its meaning ahead of itself as a conditioned choice, an appropriation, not behind as a determining cause. It is negative, not positive” (Feenberg, 2005, p. 19).
- 7.
Between 1958 and 1959 Marcuse gave six lectures at EPHE (École Pratiques des Hautes Études). Only the second lecture has been published, in 1960, as “De l’ontologie à la technologie” in Arguments – a review directed at that time by Kostas Axelos (see Marcuse, 1960). The English translation – “From Ontology to Technology” – appeared in H. Marcuse. Critical Theory and Society: A Reader (1989). It can also be found also in H. Marcuse. Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and Emancipation, Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, Volume Five (2011). The full text of the six lectures has been published by R. Laudani and is available in Italian (see Marcuse, 2008).
- 8.
See “From Negative to Positive Thinking: Technological Rationality and the Logic of Domination” (Marcuse, 2002, pp. 147–173.)
- 9.
Gilbert Simondon published the complementary thesis of his Ph.D. dissertation in 1958 as Du mode d’existence des objets techniques (2017. On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects. Translated by C. Malaspina and J. Rogove. Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing) and Marcuse was one of his first readers outside of the French context.
- 10.
As Feenberg argues, “Life resembles Heidegger’s Dasein in seeking its unity and wholeness through a future-oriented construction of its own potentialities. It does not have a prior essence but must create itself under the given conditions. In this sense it is “historical,” a being that relates its past and future. Yet Marcuse’s concept of life differs from Heidegger’s Dasein in that the master–slave dialectic introduces social division and labor into its motility. The expression of its “care” in work and world leads to objectification and mutual recognition, themes entirely absent from Heidegger’s existential analytic. Marcuse conceives the notion of the human “essence” in Hegelian–Marxist terms, as self-conscious unity of self, community, and world, and on this basis he argues that it can only be realized through overcoming the alienation of the worker under capitalism” (Feenberg, 2005, p. 92).
- 11.
See Simondon (2014).
- 12.
See Feenberg (2017).
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Picchi, T. (2022). Geschichtlichkeit, Life, and Technicity: From Heideggerian Marxism to the Critical Theory of Technology. In: Cressman, D. (eds) The Necessity of Critique. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 41. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07877-4_14
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