Technocriticism: modernity and progress Flashcards
Modernity: A system of domination & exploitation
A. 19th century: the proliferation of authors who see the modernization/industrialization of society as linked to the development of inequality in society and the destruction of nature
1. Marx, Weber, Blumenberg (secularization that goes with the development of capitalism)
a) All three are very different but all see a problem with the way that capitalist societies operate → vector of exploitation, inequalities, and struggles
b) Capitalism is a symptom of modernity more broadly
B. Frankfurt School: a school of thought created in the 20s in Frankfurt, Germany by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer
1. Marxists who followed Weber’s work on capitalism
2. The goal was to identify the link between capitalism and domination → published the Dialectic of Enlightenment
a) Capitalism and capitalist societies bring new rationality to the world → economic rationality (instrumental rationality to the world): within capitalism and modernity, there is an idea that anything can be sacrificed to the development of modernity and progress, value system in capitalist societies is to provide resources to improve the economic system and ensure that it brings goods and progress
3. Cult of reason: replaced religion as dominant during the Englightenment in Europe
a) Reason and its corollaries were the core of the industrial revolution → seminal for liberal economics
b) Rationality is the main element of capital societies and the justification of capitalism in itself
4. Totalitarianism is also a continuation of the cult of reason and of instrumental rationality
Progress
D. Jaspers: economic progress is a threat to freedom
1. Progress justifies itself so there is no global reflection on what we want to achieve through progress → you can justify progress just by the fact that it is progress
2. The concept of modernity is a capitalist logic: modernity is intrinsic to capitalist thought
3. Is there room for consciousness? Individual freedom? Individual thought? When thinking about progress
a) As an existentialist: progress can crush our individual experiences/existence
Martin Heidegger & Technology
E. Martin Heidegger: ontologist
1. Technology presents a new reality where the individual is not connected to where he is anymore → we are dependent on technology and we move away from what we are
a) Technology causes the individual to lose all of their roots
Walter Benjamin and the loss of meaninig
II. The loss of meaning of technical progress
A. The 20s and 30s: post-WWI and pre-WWII → Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin
B. Walter Benjamin: German philosopher, Romantic thinker, and early thinker of the Frankfurt School (intensive correspondence with the two I wrote about earlier)
1. Provides a critique of modernity by going into cities where modernity won (special interest in Paris → describes Paris as urbanization leading to the destruction of what it means to be human and what it means to feel) → shows that this is a consequence and designed by the elites to provide a modern city, but the modern city crushes the indal
a) Moerncity, transportation, architecture crushes the individual and goes against what it means to be a man → the modern city moves you away from creation and your ability to create and feel things
b) Modern city is a place without freedom or individuality
2. After his book on Paris, he writes a book on art: refers to modern art as something that’s reproducible, which causes it to lose its singularity, “it loses its aura”
a) Feels the same way about modernity as a global phenomenon → modernity crushes the individual which causes you to lose your singularity
Hannah Arendt and Human condition
C. Hannah Arendt: literally tight with everyone who I’ve mentioned earlier in teh notes, wrote The Human Condition (most Marxist work)
1. Tries to debute a new philosophy after the totalitarian regimes that existed in Europe, published in 1958
a) Proposes that after totalitarianism its important to value one thing in human life: our action → our commitment/action in the world is what makes us humans → the vita active vs the vita contemplitiva
b) In modern times, it’s very difficult to find time for action and develop the vita active → you’re trapped in a perpetual struggle for subsistance (animal laborans) and can’t find time for action when you’re fighting to survive
c) We need to create space for the people in our modern societies so that they have the opportunity to engage in political action → the vita activa allows you to talk about what is wrong in your society and fina alternative solutions to what’s going → alternatives for economic situations that are unfair and destructive
2. Only thinks that we could find places/forums to talk about the future and find ways to incorporate technology into the future in positive ways → believes taht technology destroys the ability to talk about politics
Hans Jonas
D. Hans Jonas: The Imperative of Responsibility → opposition to Block that progress is a good thing that expands the horizon and presents new possibilities
1. THe Hope Principle:Modernity comes with a lot of problems, such as the destruction caused by technology
2. WE need a new ethics and we can find this new ethics by finding a new way to think about human action in the world → main concept is the concept of resonsibility
3. Ethics should be used to limt this new technological power
a) The principle of responsibility is the best way that we have to control technological power → responsibility is part of our being; as human beings we have a responsibility to protect each other, children, future generations → we have an inclination to the protection of the future
4. Responsibility principle: act in such a way that the effects of your actions are compatible with the permanence of authentically human life on earth
a) This should be the main principle of any ethical thinking on technology
5. Also views fear as a positive feeling for ethics → can help us build a new ethics around technology
a) We need to consider the fact that technology will have an impacton the world and we need to fear the consequences of technology in order to find the solutions to control it and sometimes in order to apply the ethical principles
6. He believes that hope is at the center of progress but fear is a driving factor as it keeps us from doing stupid shit with tech → precaution
a) Impacted policies → the precautionary principle:
Hans Jonas: progress is a good thing
D. Hans Jonas: The Imperative of Responsibility → opposition to Block that progress is a good thing that expands the horizon and presents new possibilities
1. THe Hope Principle:Modernity comes with a lot of problems, such as the destruction caused by technology
2. WE need a new ethics and we can find this new ethics by finding a new way to think about human action in the world → main concept is the concept of resonsibility
3. Ethics should be used to limt this new technological power
a) The principle of responsibility is the best way that we have to control technological power → responsibility is part of our being; as human beings we have a responsibility to protect each other, children, future generations → we have an inclination to the protection of the future
4. Responsibility principle: act in such a way that the effects of your actions are compatible with the permanence of authentically human life on earth
a) This should be the main principle of any ethical thinking on technology
5. Also views fear as a positive feeling for ethics → can help us build a new ethics around technology
a) We need to consider the fact that technology will have an impacton the world and we need to fear the consequences of technology in order to find the solutions to control it and sometimes in order to apply the ethical principles
6. He believes that hope is at the center of progress but fear is a driving factor as it keeps us from doing stupid shit with tech → precaution
a) Impacted policies → the precautionary principle:
The empire of technology
III. The empire of technology
A. Evgeny Morozov: has the concept of socialism in the sense that with any given problem in our societies today, we tend to offer a technological solution to it
1. Technology is a solution for everything today, including environmental problems (geoengineering)
B. There is a huge intrinsic problem with technology in our world that should be addressed by ethics today → technocriticism
C. Personnalisme: born in the 1930s by Emmanuel Mounier
1. Main idea: ther is a vertain value to human existence, there is a human experience of the world that is worth protecting, there is a necessity to protect what we are as humans
2. Modernity and progress lead to the destrution of individual freedom and personality
3. Bernard Charbonneau: main thing he criticizes is productivism → productivism is the root problem that we have today in our societies (written in 1950s, when productivism was the prominent idea in economics)
a) Productivism destroys nature to a large extent → proof is the destruction of forests and large natural spaces to make room for crops or cities
b) Nature is a slave to human progress, we see a global artificialization of space → modernity deprives you of the freedom that you have to experience nature
c) Modernity and urbanization lead to the disappearance of any sort of personal experience with nature all over the world
4. Jacques Ellul: close friend oof Charbonneau, empire of technique, wrote The Technological Society in 1954 where he tries to measure the transformations caused by the technicization of our societies
a) identifies several features of the modern technological phenomenon: artificiality (the environment becomes increasingly exploited for technological purposes), rationality (technology replaces personality with mechanism), automatism (rational efficiency is the main thing that you’re going to follow when you’re in a technoogical world and free choice disappears from the picture), self expansion (progress justifies the extension of technology!!!,
5. The empire of technology: All those features are the features of a system where technology becomes a main force of modernity and teh human experience is not valued anymore → only technological solutions are valued here and technological thinking will replace human though in this world → wants to have more human and political control over technology
a) There is also a huge ideological dimension with technology
D. The technological illusion: There is an illusion of technology being more efficient,useful, rational, and a tool that makes our lives better
1. Barthes: focuses on mythologies, technologies have a certain mythological dimension, analyzes a series of technologies in his book Mythologies and shows that those technologies align with a certain set of ideals in our brains
a) Discusses that cars are presented as new objects of perfection/rationality/beauty → they become some kind of art and are marketed as ideal objects
2. Baudrillard: marketing uses modernity as a tool and technology as a tool to promote certain objects
a) Technology appears as a new transcendence in our society and replaces traditional forms of transcendence, like religion.
(1) Technology brings a new aura, something that goes beyond us and is bigger than us
b) From the artificiality of technology comes a new form of transcendence
c) Criticism of consumerism: one of the early critics of abundance → technology presents the world and goods as abundant and encourages the destruction of the world in order to produce those goods
IV. The exploitation of nature: the Malthusian paradigm
IV. The exploitation of nature: the Malthusian paradigm
A. Modernity and technology destroyed the planet → Malthus is a BIG thinker in this
B. Malthus: worked at the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century → privatization of communal lands/enclosure movement during this time impacted him/his thinking
1. Private lands weren’t present in middle ages in europe → crops and open spaces were shared by farmers and herders (common lands) → development of capitalism and the idea that trade would bring wealth to nations led to the strong privatization of these lands, where farmers closed their lands for personal profits
a) This was encouraged by governments as they wnated teh rational management of space and agriculture → disappearance of natural spaces shared by all of the community
2. Shows that commons are probably going to disappear under capitalism → capitalism is all about personal profit and encourages demographics as this brings new workers and new forces for production
3. Malthus things this is wrong because at some point capitalism won’t be able to provide the resources to feed and take care of this growing population → we’ll have too many on earth and won’t be able to take care of everyone, capitalism is unsustainable from an ecological perspective because there is no abundance of resources on earth
4. Malthusian trap: we’ll have perpetual growth of the population until we won’t have the resource to provide for everyone and we’ll have to make choices
a) advocates for centralized birth control from the government where we’ll have strong control from the government, and that the poor populations should be most impacted by this → eugenics → believes that because poor people wont be able to reproduce, it’ll be a good thing for the earth because only the rich/bourgeoisie will be able to reproduce
b) Impossible to maintain common goods
