Abstract
I present four visions of technology that prevail in contemporary philosophical discussions: the instrumental, the metaphysical, the systemic and the socio-critical. In previous studies, I outlined four paradigms for describing and evaluating them, focusing on the impact of technologies on the human world: Prometheus, Daedalus, Faust and Cyborg. In this chapter these visions will be examined in light of their main representatives, namely (i) Bacon, Descartes and Marx (instrumental, which is the most popular and whose roots go back to Aristotle); (ii) Heidegger, Plato, and Aristotle, opening up two ways of introducing the metaphysical approach: focusing on the ontological structure of technical objects, e.g. Aristotle and Scholastics; focusing on our attitude to them, e.g. Plato and Heidegger, an attitude of dependence, with Heidegger taking modern technique as a Gestell (device) and a kind of prison; (iii) Jacques Ellul, Max Weber, Arnold Gehlen, Simondon, McLuhan and more recently Langdon Winner and Don Ihde, on the trail of Husserl’s Lebenswelt (technique = way of life) – all of them with their different systemic vision, in today’s main rival to the instrumental view and characterized by three variants, linked to anthropological, cybernetics and genetic engineering approaches: extensionist (McLuhan), fusionist (Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour) and eugenics or perfectionist (human enhancement: Harris and Savulescu); (iv) Feenberg, the heir to Marcuse, who argues for a critical vision of technique, alongside Michel Foucault and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. My intention is to extend these paradigms and visions of technology to new research on ethical, epistemic and ontological aspects of biotechnology as applied to human beings.
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Notes
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This work was re-edited several times, with a special highlight to PUF in 1968 that presents an important study by Lévi-Strauss, entitled “L’introduction à l’oeuvre de Marcel Mauss”; for the techniques, see especially sections 2 and 3 in Mauss’ work.
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The context is the technologies of acquisition, but the formulation is broader and includes the others, followed by the additional information that it is a conventional scheme that satisfies the logics or the need for thought, not corresponding to any historical reality, past or present: a mental scheme, in short, that “assure une prise progressive sur les faits”, unauthorizing any deductions of the linearity or historical progression of one technology concerning all the others, e.g. in the relationship between hunting and rearing (Leroi-Gourhan, 1973: 13).
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On facilitation techniques, there is the following note from the translator of the book: “We translate the German Entlastung as “facilitation”. Entlastung is a key term in Gehlen’s philosophical anthropology. It characterizes the human being, as compared to other animals, the “burdened” (belasten) with the necessity of making arrangements for their own survival, due to the insufficiently tight fit between human physical equipment and the environment. It is “thus the task of those arrangements to embody or facilitate (entlasten) man’s existence” (Gehlen, 1980: 88).
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In fact, the association of Hephaestus with metallurgy is a classic topos of Hellenistic culture, found for example in Homer, Iliad, 18. 136; 18. 368–19. 23, when referring to the shield of Achilles, manufactured by the astute God.
- 7.
For the complete quotation, see Heidegger’s famous essay “The question concerning technology” (1958a: 21–22).
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Heidegger maintained an ambiguous relationship with metaphysics throughout his career, leading him to refer to its new beginning, as Being History, founded on the ontological difference between Being and beings (entities), as in Dépassement de la Métaphysique (Heidegger, 1958b: 82, 84, 90). However, in other passages of this essay he gives the impression that metaphysical time is over, referring to Nietzsche as the last metaphysician and saying technology is just the last manifestation of metaphysics, the time of its full realization (Heidegger, 1958b: 114–115). For essence, i.e. technical essence, it is crucial to distinguish the quid, common gender and essentia of ancient metaphysics, understood as thing and hypokeimenon, in the sense of substrate, from permanence or duration over time adopted by Being History (see Heidegger, 1958a: 40–42).
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In speaking of essence and metaphysics, Heidegger gives the impression, as several scholars have noticed, that he sponsors a fatalistic and dystopian view of technique. The proof is found in his statements on planetary technique, transforming technological domination into destiny, and establishing, at its ontic level, that the greatest danger of technique comes not from weapons, not even from nuclear weapons, but from the facilities and utensils to which we are accustomed and which we do not want to give up. Moreover, Heidegger contends that technique is not diabolical, given that the destiny of its planetary realizations goes together with freedom, depending on our choices, and its nature is therefore ambivalent. Furthermore, not only is it ambivalent, but it is also founded on the ‘Being and beings’ dyad, on the lines of the forgetfulness of Being and the empire of the ontic or beings that filled the void. Finally, in the famous interview he gave to Der Spiegel in 1976, he conveys a negative message, stating that Man cannot control the technical empire and “Only God can save us”. Previously salvation was to be found in art and non-conceptual and non-representational thought, but this is no longer so, with Philosophy depreciated and vanquished by Science, as the philosopher argues (Heidegger, 1981: 209). To complete the framework, it is necessary to recall that Heidegger was always against the instrumental view of technology and the perspectives of philosophical anthropology, the ontological ground of which is the rational animal and its partner homo faber. Heidegger’s point of departure is the relationship between our Being (Dasein) and the Essence (Wesen) of Technique, in fact a triangulation of Man, Technique and World, thought of in terms of objectification (beings) and hiding (Being) (see Heidegger, 1958a: 9, 10–12).
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Hans Jonas was classified among those who favoured the systemic vision, because he thinks about planetary technique, but his philosophical views enable us to place him among the metaphysicians, with an ambitious plan to establish an Ethics of technology on the foundation of Philosophical Biology, and by extension on the Philosophy of Nature. See Jonas’s books published in 1984 (chap. 2 and 3) and 1966 (chap. 9, focusing on Homo Pictor), and the articles published in 1982 and 1998.
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For Simondon, see Du Mode d’Existence des Objets Techniques, in its origin the minor thesis of his PhD, defended at Sorbonne in 1958, which rapidly became a classic (Simondon, 2001); see also L’Invention dans les Techniques (Simondon, 2005), essential to clarify the notion of invention before, during and after industrial revolution, as well as for the analysis of various technical devices as tools, instruments and machines. On this, it is essential to remember that Simondon had a Technical Lab at the Sorbonne, today Paris V, full of pieces and devices and that, at the same time, it was common to mount and dismount some of them in his classes, such as motorbike engines, causing discomfort in his students in the Humanities.
- 12.
For the systemic view as a whole, see Winner (1979); concerning the anthropological implications, see Winner (2005). For biotechnologies and their modalities, see Domingues (2012), where I quote Gray, Mentor and Figueroa-Sarriera (1995), who cites four types: restorative (prosthetic), normalizing (pacemakers), reconfiguring (drugs) and improvers (supermouse) [the last two being my examples]. I add that in this set there is, strictly speaking, only a better biotechnology, namely eugenic, now sponsored by genetic engineering, and deserving of the accusation by its critics that geneticists are playing God.
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For Minitel, see Feenberg’s analysis (2006 [1999]: 125–129).
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Domingues, I. (2023). Four Visions of Technology. In: Jerónimo, H.M. (eds) Portuguese Philosophy of Technology. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 43. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14630-5_9
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