Jacques Ellul : nécessaire et exigeante liberté

Classic European philosophy of technology is the original effort to think critically rather than promotionally about the historically unique mutation that is anchored in the Industrial Revolution and has since progressively transformed the world and itself. Three representative contributions to this pivotal philosophical project can be found in texts by Alan Turing, Jacques Ellul, and Martin Heidegger. Despite having initiated analytic, sociological, and phenomenological approaches to philosophy of technology, respectively, all three are often treated today in a somewhat patronizing manner. The present chapter seeks to revisit and reconsider their contributions, arguing that, especially in the case of Ellul and Heidegger, what is commonly dismissed as their overgeneralizations about modern technology as a whole might reasonably be of continuing relevance to contemporary students in the philosophy of technology.

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THE TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY. By Jacques Ellul. Translated from the French by John Wilkinson. With an Introduction by Robert K. Merton. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964. 449 pp. $10.95

Social Forces ◽

10.2307/2574900 ◽

1968 ◽

Vol 46 (3) ◽

pp. 416-417 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

R. B. Vance

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Technological Society ◽

Jacques Ellul

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The Technology of Confinement

Metamorphosis ◽

10.12987/yale/9780300230833.003.0007 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Robert A. Ferguson

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

The United States ◽

Human Dimensions ◽

The Self ◽

Technical Mastery ◽

Total Institutions ◽

Jacques Ellul

This chapter considers how prison technology is especially one-sided and imposed because it is not shared. Philosopher Jacques Ellul has argued that technical mastery (technopoly) can narrow thought and make it less sensitive to human dimensions and needs. Criminologists call this level of total technological imposition “a habitus of subjection.” In “total institutions,” prison theorists agree that current modes of technical use have led to “mortification of the self.” The bad aspects of prison technology are indeed bad. The United States has so many people in prison and jail and many more under legal surveillance because technology has made it possible.

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