Philosophies of Technologies E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

In the space of a century, technologies have acquired unprecedented power. The result of these developments is a new form of the world. These transformations test our capacities and generate new crises with multiple issues at stake.

Drawing on the lessons of a long history, Philosophies of Technologies examines the continuities and disruptions brought about by the power of contemporary technical systems, without reducing them to the digital age. It draws together 13 authors from different schools of thought and proposes tools that combine productive technology with sustainability, innovation and responsibility.

This book wagers that, in the face of the sprawling and ever-changing deployment of technologies, philosophy is able to respond to the changes that offer so many opportunities to shape our future. Today, technologies need a philosophical moment.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Author Presentation

Acknowledgments

Introduction

PART 1: Continuities and Disruptions in the Practices of Philosophies of Technologies

Introduction to Part 1

1 The Question of Technology and Ecological Constraints

1.1. What is the appropriate metaphysics for ecology?

1.2. Technology and limits

1.3. For transcendental poetics: technology at the service of our relationship with space and time

1.4. References

2 From Power to Care: For an Object-Oriented Philosophy of Technology

2.1. Empirical and “thingly” turn in the philosophy of technology

2.2. From technology as power to technology as care

2.3. Places and connections

2.4. References

3 Thinking in the Anthropocene Era with Henri Bergson

3.1.

Homo faber

3.2. Intelligence as an instinct

3.3. Life as an organization

3.4. Conclusion: the power and limits of general organology

3.5. References

PART 2: Epistemological Challenges of Modern Technologies

Introduction to Part 2

4 The Code Paradigm: Trace Amnesia and Arbitrary Interpretation

4.1. Introduction

4.2. The ages of knowledge

4.3. Digital technology and coding

4.4. Interpreting coded content

4.5. Conclusion

4.6. References

5 “Motion” Machines and “Token” Machines: Milestones in the History of the Alphabet

5.1. Introduction

5.2. Two comments on technology from François Sigaut

5.3. Renewal of the technology–language relationship based on François Sigaut

5.4. Writing as a tool

5.5. Conclusion

5.6. References

6 “Digital Technology”, Revealing Intersections between Epistemology, Political Philosophy and Philosophy of Technology

6.1. Introduction

6.2. Our thought is essentially technical

6.3. Writing is a technology

6.4. Internet as writing

6.5. The robbing of writing and our free will

6.6. Should political philosophy be renewed?

6.7. Conclusion

6.8. References

PART 3: The Subject in the Era of Digital Metamorphosis

Introduction to Part 3

7 Taking Care of Digital Technologies with Bernard Stiegler

7.1. Memories and writings, retention and protention: constructing the organology of the spirit

7.2. Reflexivity for transindividuation

7.3. Taking care of intermittence

7.4. Toward a benevolent disposition

7.5. The practice of knowledge and the contribution economy

7.6. References

8 Predictive Machines and Overcoming Metaphysics

8.1. Cybernetic machines and intelligent machines

8.2. The overcoming of metaphysics and the automation of knowledge production

8.3. References

9 Artificial Intelligence’s New Clothes

9.1. The automation of the other

9.2. (Un)controlled intelligence

9.3. An endgame

9.4. References

PART 4: Politics and Technology

Introduction to Part 4

10 Controlling Digital Technologies: Between Democratic Issues and Social Demand

10.1. Introduction

10.2. Dematerialization leads to an inability to act

10.3. Technologies and their social practices

10.4. Deconstructing techno-discourses for a better life with technology

10.5. Digital micropolitics

10.6. Promoting pluralism

10.7. Conclusion

10.8. References

11 Responsibilities System: Ethics of Civic Technology

11.1. Introduction

11.2. Improvisations on Jonasian responsibility

11.3. Civic technologies

11.4. The limited promise of remote participation

11.5. Contributions of the philosophy of technology

11.6. Conclusion

11.7. References

12 From the Infinite Universe to the Reflexive System: Uses of Technology, States of Emergency and Decidability

12.1. Introduction

12.2. Deployment of technology and exceptional events

12.3. From the infinite universe to the reflexive system or the end of naturality

12.4. The unsuitability of the Enlightenment framework

12.5. A place for politics and the decidable

12.6. Conclusion

12.7. References

Conclusion: Marcuse’s Critique of Technology Today

C.1. Introduction

C.2. The role of capitalism in the social construction of technology

C.3. A “successor science” and “successor technical disciplines”

C.4. References

List of Authors

Index

Other titles from iSTE in Interdisciplinarity, Science and Humanities

End User License Agreement

List of Tables

Chapter 4

Table 4.1.

Knowledge paradigms and epistemic operations

List of Illustrations

Chapter 7

Figure 7.1.

Brochure for the Mémoires du future exhibition, Centre Pompidou, D

...

Figure 7.2. Écoutes signées

(signed listening) – IRCAM

Figure 7.3. Regards signés

(Marked Looks) built with

Lignes de temps

– IRI, Ce

...

Figure 7.4.

Idiotext and spirals of individuation – Bernard Stiegler

Figure 7.5.

Four meta-categories in Polemictweet – IRI.

Figure 7.6.

Pharmakon course – vertical reading of areas of disruption (in red

...

Figure 7.7. Lignes de temps

for

Penser-improviser

– IRI (video)

Guide

Cover Page

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Author Presentation

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Begin Reading

Conclusion: Marcuse’s Critique of Technology Today

List of Authors

Index

Other titles from iSTE in Interdisciplinarity, Science and Humanities

WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT

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Innovation and Responsibility Set

coordinated byBernard Reber and Robert Gianni

Volume 11

Philosophies of Technologies

Theory as Practice

Edited by

Valérie Charolles

Élise Lamy-Rested

First published 2024 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:

ISTE Ltd27-37 St George’s RoadLondon SW19 4EUUK

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John Wiley & Sons, Inc.111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030USA

www.wiley.com

© ISTE Ltd 2024The rights of Valérie Charolles and Élise Lamy-Rested to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s), contributor(s) or editor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of ISTE Group.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023947688

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA CIP record for this book is available from the British LibraryISBN 978-1-78630-870-2

Author Presentation

Bruno Bachimont – Professor at the Université de Technologie de Compiègne (Compiègne University of Technology), attached to the CosTech research unit. He is interested in the changes brought about by digital technology in knowledge and approaches this matter from a knowledge engineering (ontologies and Web of data), documentary engineering (archives and heritage) and digital philosophy (epistemology, memory and technology) perspective. He has been a Research Director and Scientific Advisor at the Institut national de l’audiovisuel (INA) and a Research Director at UTC and Sorbonne University (Faculty of Science and Engineering).

Pierre Caye – As Research Director at the CNRS, he devotes his research to artistic theories from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, with a particular focus on architecture. In 2012, he founded the Groupement de recherche international sur “les savoirs artistiques et les traités d’art de la Renaissance aux Lumières” (International Research Group on “Artistic Knowledge and Art Treatises from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment”). In collaboration with Françoise Choay, he translated and commented on Alberti’s L’Art d’édifier (Le Seuil, 2004). More recently, he has also published two works on sustainable development: Critique de la destruction créatrice. Production et humanisme (Les Belles Lettres, 2015) and Durer. Éléments pour la transformation du système productif (Les Belles Lettres, 2020).

Pierre-Antoine Chardel – Senior researcher at the Laboratoire d’anthropologie politique (UMR 8177, CNRS/EHESS) and professor of social sciences and ethics at Institut Mines-Télécom Business School (IMT-BS). His work focuses on the ethical and socio-philosophical issues of the hypermodern era. He has recently been a visiting researcher at the MediaLab of Sciences Po Paris. His recent publications include L’Empire du signal. De l’écrit aux écrans (CNRS Éditions, 2020) and Socio-philosophie des technologies numériques. Éthique, société, organisations (Presses des Mines, 2022).

Valérie Charolles – Senior researcher at the Laboratoire d’anthropologie politique (UMR 8177, CNRS/EHESS); her work focuses on the role of economy, quantification and technology in the contemporary constitution of the subject and the world. She holds a PhD in philosophy and is a qualified lead researcher (HDR). She has published five books, including Philosophie de l’écran (Fayard, 2013) and Se libérer de la domination des chiffres (Fayard, 2022).

Andrew Feenberg – Philosopher and past holder of the Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Technology at Simon Fraser University. He was Program Director at the Collège international de philosophie from 2013 to 2019. His research focuses on the philosophy of technology, the Internet and the Frankfurt School. He has written numerous articles and books on the philosophy of technology. His recent books include The Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing: Nature and Revolution in Marcuse’s Philosophy of Praxis, (Verso, 2023) and Technosystem: The Social Life of Reason (Harvard University Press, 2017)1.

Xavier Guchet – Professor at the Université de Technologie de Compiègne, Director of the Knowledge, Organizations and Technical Systems Laboratory (CosTech UR 2223). His work focuses on the philosophy of technology as a specific field of philosophy, as well as on the epistemological, ethical and political issues of recent technological developments: nanotechnologies, personalized medicine and tissue engineering. He has published five books, including Care in Technology (ISTE Ltd and Wiley, 2021).

Éric Guichard – At the Triangle Laboratory (CNRS/ENS Lyon) and IXXI (Institut des systèmes complexes de Rhône-Alpes), Éric Guichard is developing a digital philosophy based on writing and materiality. He teaches at ENSSIB and was Program Director at the Collège international de philosophie2.

Élise Lamy-Rested – Holds a PhD in philosophy from Paris-Sorbonne University and is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie researcher (MSC Cofund H2020, SASPRO2) at the Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, following a first Marie Sklodowska-Curie postdoctorate (MSC Cofund H2020) at the Université libre de Bruxelles (2019–2022). She was also formerly Program Director at the Collège international de philosophie (2016–2022). Her current research focuses on “technical life”. She has published two books, including Derrida. Excès de vie (Kimé, 2017), as well as numerous articles.

Jean Lassègue – Philosopher, senior research scientist at the CNRS and a member of the Centre Georg Simmel – Recherches franco-allemandes en sciences sociales (EHESS – CNRS UMR 8131). Connecting epistemology, anthropology and history, his research focuses on symbolic mediations, particularly language and number writing systems that enable the collective elaboration of knowledge, from the natural to the legal sciences.

Anna Longo – Holds a doctorate in aesthetics and is a program director at the Collège international de philosophie. Her research focuses on the history and limits of the current system of automated information production. She is the author of Le jeu de l’induction. Automatisation de la connaissance et réflexion philosophique (Mimesis, 2022).

Vincent Puig – Director of the Institut de recherche et d’innovation at the Centre Pompidou, which he founded in 2006 with philosopher Bernard Stiegler. As a digital theorist and practitioner, he has led a number of research projects at IRCAM, the Centre Pompidou and the IRI, notably on indexing, annotation, categorization and editorialization technologies. Today, he coordinates contributory research projects, mainly in Seine-Saint-Denis, with a focus on the contribution economy.

Bernard Reber – Research Director at the CNRS, as well as a moral and political philosopher. He is a member of the Centre de recherches politiques de Sciences Po (Paris) and the Centre des politiques de la terre (Paris Cité University). His work combines moral and political philosophy, as well as sociology, applied ethics and political theory, to address concepts such as deliberation, argumentation, pluralism, responsibility and the precautionary principle. For over 20 years, he has analyzed experiments in participatory technology assessment and, more recently, citizens’ climate assemblies.

Tyler Reigeluth – Holds a doctorate in philosophy from the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB). He is Associate Professor at the Université Catholique de Lille’s ETHICS Laboratory, within the “Ethics, Technologies and Humanities” chair. His research lies between philosophy of technology and critical social theory, and particularly focuses on the normative relationship between machine and human learning in the era of artificial intelligence. With Thomas Berns, he has co-authored Éthique de la communication et de l’information (2021). He will soon be publishing L’intelligence des villes. Critique d’une transparence sans fin (2023).

Notes

1

For more information, visit his website:

www.sfu.ca/~andrewf

.

2

His work is available at the following website:

http://barthes.enssib.fr

.

Acknowledgments

First of all, we would like to thank the Collège international de philosophie (CIPh; International College of Philosophy) for providing us with the funding for the “Pratiques et usages contemporains des philosophies des techniques” (“Contemporary Practices and Uses of Philosophies of Technology”) conference, which took place in Paris in June 2021 and laid the foundations for this book.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 945478.

Our thanks also go to the Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, where Élise Lamy-Rested is carrying out her research project co-financed by the European Union.

Lastly, we would like to thank the Laboratoire d’anthropologie politique (UMR 8177 CNRS and EHESS), of which Valérie Charolles is a member, for its support of this long-term project.

Note

Acknowledgments written by Valérie CHAROLLES and Élise LAMY-RESTED.

Introduction

It is typical to assert that our contemporary societies are structured by what we call “digital technologies” as a result of the way they operate through computer codes and the discourses they initiate among the actors that are incorporated into their networks. The growing role played by these new technologies, the profound disruptions they are introducing and our inability to fully understand how they work give rise to increasing concern.

Added to this are the ecological anxieties of our time. The technologies that populate our homes and the technical processes used to extract resources are to be blamed for the ecological emergency we are facing today. Technologies defined in this way only serve a world whose objective is infinite growth at an ever-increasing pace, with total disregard for the Earth’s limits, the fragility of living organisms and the poorest countries.

This book takes these two common-sense observations as its starting point, treating them as an undeniable reality. The aim is not only to provide a philosophical understanding of this new situation, but also, and above all, to offer tools for action.

However, what can the philosophies of technologies, with their Greek origins, do in the face of such changes? Are they not too “ancient” to be able to deal with these issues? We have taken a gamble and assumed that they are not, because of the ability of philosophy to reformulate problems, put them into context and reveal what is at stake. This book is the result of a joint discussion held in June 2021, under the aegis of the Collège international de philosophie at a conference entitled “Pratiques et usages contemporains des philosophies des techniques” (“Contemporary Practices and Uses of Philosophies of Technology”). The aim was to show that philosophies of technologies are not simply conceptual instruments for making our societies intelligible, but that they are veritable critical weapons with the power to transform the social world.

Why talk about “philosophies of technologies” and why specify “new technologies”? Derived from the Greek word techné, meaning “know-how”, technologies are originally the arts of making material objects for the craftsman or artist, making speeches for the rhetorician or poet, acting for the comedian or healing for the physician. The Greek techné thus refers to the manner of production, in other words, the means the subject uses to achieve an end. Such a definition is based on the idea that only human beings with the capacity for representation are capable of producing “technological” or “artificial” objects, not created by nature. This division between technology and nature structured a large part of Western philosophy right up to Descartes, who understood technologies as instruments that enabled human beings to design and build machines to “render themselves as masters and possessors of nature”, as he wrote in his Discourse on Method. Our entry into the modern era thus coincides with the technological project to dominate nature through the art of making mechanically operated tools and the power to control its forces.

This is undoubtedly the definition we refer to today when we distinguish technologies from new technologies, which appear more fluid, more abstract and more incomprehensible because their mechanisms remain hidden to those who are not computer experts. Therefore, not only are new technologies perceived as immaterial, they are also shrouded in a kind of mystery, the secret of which is known only to a select few. For all these reasons, they no longer have anything to do with the “good old” materiality of the locomotive or even the pendulum.

However, it is precisely because we want to underline the materiality of new technologies that we have included them in the term “technologies”. A computer does not work without electricity; it is made up of materials that we take from resources in the Earth, and its software is the result of the labor of engineers. The Internet is not simply a network of dematerialized information connecting all parts of the world at the speed of light. In order to function, it consumes electricity and batteries are made from rare and expensive metals. As for the data collected, most of which has been naively entrusted to the networks, it is kept in huge physical storage spaces that are expensive to maintain. In other words, the cloud is an illusion; the “Internet cloud” could, ironically, instead be the result of the CO2 emissions generated by its operation.

Regardless of what is assumed, all so-called immaterial inventions, from Pascal’s calculator to supposed “artificial intelligence”, remain technologies invented by an irreducibly mortal organism. The abstractive capacities of computing machines entirely depend on the production of a destructible object. Even though technologies are diverse and their foundations can be considered in equally diverse ways, they nonetheless involve objects made up of materials that will be extracted from planet Earth until they are completely exhausted. Having reached this stage, perhaps we will seek out these materials in space, a hypothesis that is attracting the attention of Google (Alphabet), Apple, Facebook (Meta), Amazon and Microsoft (GAFAM). At a metaphysical level, we cannot ignore this reality, nor can we assert that the supposedly infinite power of technologies would be an ontological fact that cannot be disputed.

From this perspective, new technologies are just one form of technology, the latter being understood, through its Greek meaning, as ways of producing tools that enable living organisms to adapt to or modify their environment. This book thus adopts a broad definition of technologies as tools invented and developed by human societies to interact in a singular way with their environment. This environment is therefore also technological, and we can even hypothesize that the practices of technologies are not reserved for humans in the living world. There is no intention for this book to fall into a “technophobia”, promoting an unrealistic return to a nature that is, by definition, non-technological (Lamy-Rested 2022)1.

Our book is rooted in a shared concern: how can the philosophies of technologies make contemporary times intelligible, and give us new means for action? To answer this question, which involves the future of our societies, we have chosen to interweave the voices of philosophers from different backgrounds. Based on the idea that the philosophies of techné, which were invented in ancient Greece, have more to say than ever about the Internet, “artificial intelligence” or the problems generated by the over-intensive use of technologies, we have chosen not to ignore any philosophical tradition, and instead bring them into the conversation.

This polyphonic work is an unprecedented attempt to disconnect technologies from the logics of power that endanger life. Its 13 contributors address themes that are particularly critical today:

Continuities and disruptions in the practices of philosophies of technologies

: What philosophical legacies can we draw on? Is the reflection on technologies that has been going on since Antiquity still relevant today in a context where the technical fact has become so massive?

The epistemological issues of contemporary technology

: What scientific models should be put forward? In particular, how can we analyze the strength and fragility of tools forged using technologies? How can we deal with the misunderstandings and misconceptions surrounding the use of code-based tools?

The subject in the era of digital metamorphosis

: In what ways do technologies currently affect the constitution of the individual, creating new capacities and alienations? Can thought be reduced to computer calculating power? If not, what is the link between the machine and the subject?

Testing politics through technologies

: What is the role of politics in the face of new surveillance tools and the limitations on democratic capacities that originate from a poor understanding of technologies? How can we unleash the collective capacity to act that technologies give us and the power we have over them? What is the significance of democratic decision-making when it comes to technologies?

Throughout this book, the aim is to take a serious look at a movement taking place in the contemporary world. The level of development of our technologies, and their dissemination across the whole range of our activities, marks a turning point. In less than a century, technologies have acquired unprecedented power in all fields, from the economy and knowledge production to decision-making and interpersonal relations. The result is a world with a new form: the “infinite universe” of classical science, to which humans and their free will were opposed, has given way to a “reflexive system”. Like social networks and financial markets, this new paradigm operates through echoing and mirroring mechanisms and bears the mark of interdependence between humans, technologies and ecosystems. It signals the end of naturality, in the sense that there is no longer any place on Earth, including the seabed, that has not been transformed by the products of our technologies (Charolles 2013)2. This mutation is not only challenging our forms of life – intimate, economic, social and political – but also our frames of thought. This book draws the consequences.

In order to make our way through this kaleidoscopic system, and to distinguish what is a crisis and what is not, we need suitable conceptual frameworks. Faced with technologies that are increasingly difficult to understand in their modes of operation, and that evolve very rapidly and intertwine with one another, our capacities for understanding and orientation are indeed being tested. They are tested first and foremost by the language of computer code, a language that has become inescapable, but in which very few people are literate, rendering all others in a position of illiteracy. This is the breeding ground for many misunderstandings, and we risk deluding ourselves on themes such as “artificial intelligence”, the possibility of objectivity or a sense of time that is inextricably linked to progress. Through its diverse themes, this book aims to help everyone understand the technical facts at work today.

It also aims to provide guidelines on the conceptual frameworks that can enable us to grasp reality, where the partition between that which is natural and that which is artificial no longer makes sense, if it ever did. In such a context, it is no longer possible to rely on the conceptual framework of the Enlightenment based on the opposition between man and nature or between morality and calculation. We need different categories to orientate ourselves effectively in the contemporary world. Indeed, our technical capabilities are reshaping the way we inhabit space (which is no longer merely a physical distance, but also a capacity for connection) and time (the regularity of movement in Newtonian mechanics is giving way to far more random and extreme modes of operation). This new paradigm brings to light new forms of relationships that are far more refined than the determinism of an outdated vision of physical science, which does not allow for individual or collective decisions. This book provides a set of keys in this regard.

By reminding us that technologies have always been part of human life and that, however sophisticated, they are the result of human labor, philosophy ultimately allows us to mourn the loss of technical determinism and realize that there is no need for our tools to be deployed in one direction and not another. This is a common point throughout the whole book: assuming a shared contingency in the deployment of technologies creates spaces in which politics, as the voice of citizens, can intervene with legitimacy and success. As the chapters unfold, we see the extent to which technologies are embedded in social and political aspects. They are conceived with a view to certain social forms and are not immune to power relations, which are particularly powerful in the economic sphere today. In a democracy that respects the expressed will of enlightened citizens, the question of how technical deployments are conceived deserves to be taken seriously, as do the responses of the population. There is nothing inevitable about technologies’ reliance on power at an “ever increasing” pace that is unsustainable for living organisms and ecosystems. In fact, it goes against the grain of what the ancient nations intended for techné and could rightly give way to other prospects that are more respectful of people’s diversity and free will.

This book speculates that philosophies are capable of responding to technical changes that can also be seen as opportunities to shape our future differently. Philosophies’ diverse practices and uses converge to demonstrate the power that technologies offer us, as well as the power we have over them.

Faced with the sprawling, metamorphic deployment of digital technologies and the resulting loss of points of reference, we need a philosophical moment.

Notes

Introduction written by Valérie CHAROLLES and Élise LAMY-RESTED.

1

Lamy-Rested, É. (2022). The technical object at its limits: Derrida reader of Husserl.

Philosophy and Technology

[Online]. Available at:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13347-022-00513-7

.

2

Charolles, V. (2013).

Philosophie de l’écran

. Fayard, Paris.

PART 1Continuities and Disruptions in the Practices of Philosophies of Technologies

Introduction to Part 1

After ancient history, when the term techné had a place in thought, the latter made a comeback with Marx, who was undoubtedly the first philosopher to question the metaphysical foundations of technical production, not just to reveal them, but to denounce their possible disruptive drifts. It was not until the 1930s that philosophy – or psychoanalysis – began to sense technology’s role in the possible destruction of the world. Husserl’s Krisis, Bergson’s The Two Sources of Morality and Religion and Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents are highly representative in this respect. Written at a time when the First World War, which was also the first technological war, was still fresh in people’s minds and when the Nazis’ accession to power raised the possibility of another massively destructive war, these three books examine the meaning and role of technology, which is identified through mechanical processes that serve the desire – the drive, as Freud would say – for omnipotence.

Today, we face an unprecedented issue. The multi-dimensional ecological crisis we are experiencing is forcing philosophy to revisit the metaphysical foundations of technical production in an unprecedented way. It is now only based on the limited finite Earth, whose resources are progressively being depleted, endangering all living things, that the philosophies of technology, from their Greek origins onwards, must be reread, questioned and practiced. As Marx already pointed out in more specifically economic terms, we can no longer read philosophy as a mere instrument for understanding and contemplating the world, but must practice it in such a way that it also allows us to grasp it. The first three chapters of this book – Pierre Caye’s “The Question of Technology and Ecological Constraints”, Xavier Guchet’s “From Power to Care: For an Object-Oriented Philosophy of Technology” and Élise Lamy-Rested’s “Thinking in the Anthropocene Era with Henri Bergson” – show how philosophies of technology, regardless of their era, can become critical weapons of our modern day, helping us to completely change our relationship with technology.

The first chapter, by Pierre Caye, takes a new look at the metaphysical foundation of technology “in the face of ecological constraint”, which is first and foremost a thought about limits, and proposes an ecological metaphysics. While philosophy may appear to link technology to power and set aside the question of limits, Pierre Caye reverses this vision, starting again with Proclus’ philosophy. Together with Heidegger, the author rereads Proclus’ commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, and sees it as an invitation to think of technology in terms of the limitation of space and time, rather than in terms of the hubris of omnipotence.

By re-reading the various interpretations of the Prometheus myth, Xavier Guchet echoes this reflection, then shows how techné, in its Greek origins, is not connected to power and hubris but to care. He encourages us to reorient it in a pragmatic and practical way. Far from the expertise that produces fixed objects that have a predetermined place and role in the world (e.g. the shoemaker’s sole function is to make shoes), technology actually invents malleable objects. Technology is part of a set of references that embrace the change and movement characteristic of living beings, from which technical objects are not, ultimately, so distinct. The purpose of these objects is not to increase our power, but above all to help those that are alive to be better off.

Note

Introduction written by Élise LAMY-RESTED.