Facing Janus: Reframing the Question Concerning Technology – Part 3 of 3

Bernard Stiegler: What Will We Become

Bernard Stiegler has reframed the question concerning technology around the concept of human becoming. Stiegler sees an intrinsic relationship between the evolution of human beings (anthropogenesis) and technology (technogenesis). Stiegler makes two central claims: (1) that human beings are inherently technological and (2) that they develop through the evolution of technology. For Stiegler, the question concerning technology is not “How shall we act?” or even “How shall we live?” but rather “What shall we become?”

Stielger claims that human beings are intrinsically technological. His claim rests on the connection between technics and time as he explains:

There is today a conjunction between the question of technics and the question of time, one made evident by the speed of technical evolution, by the ruptures in temporalization (event-ization) that this evolution provokes, and by the processes of deterritorialization accompanying it. It is a conjunction that calls for a new consideration of technicity. The following work aims to establish that organized inorganic beings are originarily and as marks of the de-fault of origin out of which there is [es gibt] time—constitutive (in the strict phenomenological sense) of temporality as well as spatiality, in quest of a speed “older” than time and space, which are the derivative decompositions of speed. Life is the conquest of mobility. As a “process of exteriorization,” technics is the pursuit of life by means other than life (Stiegler, Bernard, Technics and Time, I: The Fault of Epimetheus, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998, Originally published as La Technique et le temps, 1: La faute d’Epiméthée, Galilée: Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, 1994, 17.)

While Stiegler agrees with Heidegger’s claim that Dasein is a temporal being, who is thrown into existence and stretched along between birth and death which constitutes the historical temporality of Dasein (Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1962. Originally published as Sein und Zeit. Tubingen: Neomarius Verlag, 1926. Ibid., 174, 425, 427.) he questions whether this temporality is a intratemporality and criticizes Heidegger for overlooking the fact that human temporality is externalized in technics. As such, Dasein is essentially “prosthetic,” that is, Dasein is always seeking to temporalize itself externally through artefacts (Gaston, Sean, “Technics of Decision: An Interview,” Journal of Theoretical Humanities, Vol. 8, no. 2 (August 2003): 156.) Stiegler explains:

Mortals are prosthetic, that is to say they are endowed with artefacts and are capable of altering the artefacts which they adopt. In this sense, they are not doomed to a predestination, they “have to be” what they are, they are destined to decision, that is, to time understood in this sense, which is not that of life (Ibid., 156.)

Additionally, Dasein temporlizes itself technically as Stiegler points out.

Dasein is outside itself, in ec-stasis, temporal: its past lies outside it, yet it is nothing but this past, in the form of not yet. By being actually its past, it can do nothing but put itself outside itself, “ek-sist.” But how does Dasein eksist in this  way? Prosthetically, through pro-posing and pro-jecting itself outside itself, in front of itself. And this means that it can only test its improbability programmatically (Stiegler, Technics and Time, 234.)

The temporality of Dasein is constituted prosthetically which also means that time is constituted through technology or what Stiegler prefers to call “technics”. Time is therefore inscribed in technics which leads Stiegler to conclude that human becoming, that is its temporality, is through technology. He calls the mode of human becoming “epiphylogenesis” which involves “the evolution of the living by other means than life (Ibid., 135.)” Whereas, Heidegger saw being and time as constitutive of Dasein’s facticity, Stiegler argues that it is constituted in an “epigenetic layer of life” which is an “epigenetic sedimentation, a memorization of what has come to pass, is what is called the past, what we shall name the epiphylogenesis of man, meaning the conservation, accumulation, and sedimentation of successive epigeneses, mutually articulated (Ibid., 140.)” At a very primitive and basic level, language can be seen as an epigenetic layer and therefore a technic through which human beings temporalize themselves. If we now return to Heidegger’s notion of technology as a mode of disclosure we can see the implications of Stiegler’s claim.  If Dasein is temporal, and time is constituted through technics as Stiegler claims, then technology becomes the mode of human becoming.

The contrast between Heidegger and Stiegler could not be more stark. Whereas Heidegger sees an ontological distinction between Dasein and the tools it takes up, Stiegler sees both as intertwined. This intertwining is a process of externalization which he refers to as instrumental maieutics. Instrumental maieutics is the process whereby human temporality is externalized through the use of instruments and simultaneously given back to the human being. Stiegler puts it this way, “the cortex is determined by the tool just as much as that of the tool by the cortex: a mirror effect whereby one, looking at itself in the other, is both deformed and formed in the process (Ibid., 158.)” This claim is similar to Marx’s claim that “man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and his social life (Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, trans. Stanley Moore (New York: Penguin Books, 2002), 241.)” Human becoming is intrinsically linked with technological development.

Stiegler’s anthropology gets its metaphysical bearings by returning to the myth of Prometheus retold by Plato in the Protagoras (Plato, “Protagoras,” in Plato: Complete Works, eds. John M. Cooper and D.S. Hutchison (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), 320d-322d.) In Plato’s retelling of this myth the gods assigned Prometheus (forethought) and his brother Epimetheus (afterthought) the task of assigning powers and abilities to mortals. Epimetheus begged Prometheus to let him have the exclusive responsibility of assigning powers and abilities to the mortals. Prometheus agreed, and Epimetheus began assigning powers and abilities in such a way as to bring harmony and balance to the natural world. But, by the time Epimetheus came to the human being he was out of powers and abilities and Prometheus had to steal the art of fire (empuron technen) (Plato, “Protagoras,” 321e.) from Hephaestus in order for the human being to have a power and ability. Stiegler sees this myth as pointing to a fundamental “lack”  or “de-fault” (défaut ) in the metaphysical origins of the human being which is overcome through technics; that is to say the art of fire compensates for the human beings lack of power and ability. Human beings are metaphysically undetermined and contingent; that is, human beings are finite. This leads Stiegler to claim that “discovery, insight, invention, imagination are all, according to the narrative of the myth, characteristic of a default.” The origins of human technology are therefore bound up with the origins and finitude of humanity. Thus, for Stiegler, the question concerning technology is not “How shall we act?” or “How shall we live?” but rather “What shall we become?” As Sean Gaston, has put it:

For Stiegler, the technical is more than the tool, more than the machine: it involves the invention of the human. Life is already reliant on technics. Technics makes the transmission of the past and the anticipation of the future possible.     Without technics there can be no memory, no heritage, no adoption, no invention.  Technics give us time (Gaston, Sean, “Technics of Decision: An Interview,” Journal of Theoretical Humanities, Vol. 8, no. 2 (August 2003): 151.)”

Stiegler views technics as “the horizon of all possibility to come and of all possibility of a future” which philosophy has “repressed as an object of thought (Stiegler, Technics and Time, ix.)” In response to this repressive approach Stiegler has argued that “the modern age is essentially that of modern technics (Ibid., 7.)”

Conclusion

In this article, I have attempted to present three ways the question concerning technology has been re-framed in order to bring into relief what is really at stake in the question. I began with Hannah Arendt’s reframing of the question around human activity. Arendt’s analysis of the question concerning technology pointed to a Janus-faced problem. On the one hand technology makes us masters of our world through machinery. On the other hand, it also puts the capability of destroying the world in our hands. Next, I presented Martin Heidegger’s reframing of the question around the human being. Heidegger recognized both the danger and the possibilities for human life in its relationship with technology and highlighted art is a way of coming closer to the dangerous power of modern technology so that its saving power may shine forth. Finally, I presented the view of the contemporary French philosopher Bernard Stiegler who reframes the question around human becoming. Stiegler’s insight into the interrelationship between technics and time and his conclusion that human temporality is constituted technologically helped to bring into relief what is really at stake in the question concerning technology, namely, that the future of humanity will be determined through technology.

Technology has been part of human life since the dawn of consciousness and it will not fade from the mortal horizon. Human beings are inherently technological, in fact we are human because we are technological, and therefore our destiny is bound up with a Janus-faced system full of threats and promises. To face Janus we must learn to act and live in a free and reflective relationship with technology, mindful of the dangers and hopeful of the promises so that who we become will remain human and not monstrous.

Facing Janus: Reframing the Question Concerning Technology – Part 2 of 3

Martin Heidegger: How Shall We Live?

Martin Heidegger reframed the question concerning technology around the concept of human being. Heidegger’s 1953 essay “The Question Concerning Technology” approaches the question of modern technology as a pervasive and Janus-faced fact of modern human life. Drawing on Rousseau he captures the problem in his opening statement: “everywhere we remain free and chained to technology (Heidegger, Martin, “The Question Concerning Technology,” in Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, ed. David Ferrell Krell, 1977, repr. New York: Harper Collins Publisher, 1993, 311.)” Technology cannot be approached uncritically, according to Heidegger. Instead, it must be approached freely and reflectively because the essence of technology, as a way of revealing the totality of being, is enframing which both endangers and saves being.

Heidegger argues that “technology is a way of revealing (Ibid., 318.)” To ground this claim he recovers the Greek understanding of technology (techne) as revelatory (aletheia) and suggests the natural triadic process of physis-poesis-aletheia for understanding how technology can be revelatory (Ibid., 317-319.) Heidegger points out that for the Greeks; physis (Nature) was the “arising of something out of itself,” as such it was a disclosure or unconcealment (aletheia) of being (Ibid., 317.) This process of this unconcealment was understood as a “bringing-forth (poesis)” of being. The same was true for crafts or works of art (techne). The craftsman or artist brings forth or reveals what is concealed in nature (Ibid., 318.) Thus, Heidegger concludes, technology is a way of revealing, a way of bringing forth the totality of being. The problem, of course, is that not all revealing is poetic. Heidegger claims that the essence of modern technology is enframing (Gestell) (Ibid., 325.) As such, modern technology is a type of revealing that orders and determines. As Heidegger puts it, “enframing means the gathering together of the setting upon that sets upon man, i.e., challenges him forth, to reveal the actual, in the mode of ordering, as standing reserve (Ibid., 325.)” Heidegger contrasts this type of revealing with the Greek notion of techne as a poesis of aletheia. Although both the Greek understanding of techne and modern technology are both forms of aletheia, they reveal the totality of being in vastly different ways (Ibid., 326.) Techne as poesis allows nature to “come forth in unconcealment,” whereas modern technology as Gestell, challenges nature to come forth as a “standing reserve.” Nature is therefore set upon, ordered and determined in a way that leads to a concealment of its truth instead of a revealing of it. Modern technology in this mode of revealing is therefore dangerous (Gefahr) both to Nature and to humanity (Ibid., 331.)

In order to illustrate the distinction between poesis and Gestell Heidegger offers the example of a hydroelectric power plant that sets upon the Rhine River as a source of power (standing reserve) and an old wooden bridge “joined bank with bank for hundreds of years (Ibid., 321.)” The power plant enframes the river in such a way that it can no longer be a river but must be a power source. The bridge on the other hand, while equally technological, allows the river to be what it is: a river. But Heidegger does not leave the issue separated into categories of “acceptable” and “unacceptable” technology. Instead he turns to face the Janus-faced question concerning technology and reframes it.

Heidegger recognizes that technology is ambiguous (Ibid., 338.) Given that the essence of modern technology is enframing, it “blocks every view into the propriative event of revealing” and therefore endangers the truth of being (Ibid., 338.) But enframing also “lets man endure… that he may be the one who is needed and used for the safekeeping of the essence of truth (Ibid., 338.)” Thus, the essence of modern technology as enframing both conceals and reveals the truth of being and therefore contains both a danger and a saving power (Ibid., 338.) But, as Heidegger points out, while “we can look into the danger and see the growth of the saving power” we are nevertheless “not yet saved (Ibid., 338.)” We must find a way of living in a “free relationship” with technology (Ibid., 311.) The question is not “Do we accept or reject technology?” but rather “How do we live with it?” Heidegger’s answer to the question concerning technology reframed in this way is: art. Art is essentially poetical and therefore contains the potential for “the bringing forth of the true into the beautiful (Ibid., 339.)” Heidegger does not say that art will poetically reveal the truth of being; only that it is possible (Ibid., 340.) But art is a way of coming closer to the dangerous power of modern technology so that its saving power may shine forth.

But have Arendt and Heidegger missed something in their analysis of modern technology? Is it possible that Arendt in her ardent concern for the human condition has missed a vital aspect of it that changes our understanding of the relationship between humanity and technology? Is it possible that in Heidegger’s characterization of technology as separate from nature he has missed a common foundation for both? Bernard Stiegler thinks this is the case.

Facing Janus: Reframing the Question Concerning Technology: Part 1 of 3

Introduction

The question concerning technology is a perpetually human question that arises from a Janus-faced technology that holds within it both threats and promises. The technological progress of human history is a testament to this fact with its advances in science and medicine that gave birth to both cures and curses, like polio vaccines and the atom bomb. It is therefore necessary to continually reframe the question concerning technology in order remain in a free and reflective relationship with it. In this article, I will attempt to present three ways the question has been re-framed in order to bring into relief what is really at stake in the question. I will begin with the approach of Hannah Arendt in her book The Human Condition where she reframed the question around human activity.  Next, I will present the approach of Martin Heidegger who reframed the question around the concept of human being in his essay “The Question Concerning Technology.” Although Arendt’s work appeared after Heidegger’s essay it provides an effective historical framework within which to situate Heidegger’s approach . Finally, I will present the view of the contemporary French philosopher Bernard Stiegler who reframes the question around human becoming. Each of these attempts to reframe the question concerning technology will point us in the direction of what is at stake in our relationship to technology and allow us to face Janus in a free and reflective way.

Hannah Arendt: How Shall We Act?

Hannah Arendt has reframed the question concerning technology around human activity. More specifically, she has distinguished between three types of human activity; namely, labor, work and action. For Arendt, labor “corresponds to the biological process of the human body,” work is “the unnaturalness of human activity… that provides an ‘artificial’ world of things,” and action is “the only activity that goes on directly between men without the intermediary of things or matter (Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1958), 7.)” Labor assures the survival of both the individual and the species (Ibid., 8.) Work assures the permanence and durability of our fragile human existence through the manufacture of artifacts (techne)(Ibid., 8.) Action creates history through founding and preserving political bodies (Ibid., 9.) For Arendt the realm of human activity is constitutive of the human condition. What is interesting about Arendt’s account of human activity is the conclusion she draws about the human condition. She writes:

The human condition comprehends more than the conditions under which life has been given to man. Men are conditioned beings because everything they come in contact with turns immediately into a condition of their existence. The world in which the vita activa spends itself consists of things produced by human activities; but the things that owe their existence exclusively to men nevertheless constantly condition their human makers (Ibid., 9.)

The “things produced by human activities” conditions their producers. The made becomes the maker. This is the problem of technology which leads Arendt to ask “How shall we then act?”

For Arendt, the modern advent of automated technology begins with a transition from tools to machinery which ceases to involve an adjustment of the tool to the man and instead requires the adjustment of the man to the machine (Ibid., 147.) She sees it developing in two distinct stages. She marks the first stage with the invention of the steam engine which led to the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century (Ibid., 148.) Arendt characterizes this stage as relatively banal in that it “was still characterized by an imitation of natural processes and the use of natural forces for human purposes (Ibid., 148.)” However, in the next stage Nature was no longer imitated, it was “denaturalized” and separated from the artificial world of human fabrication (Ibid., 148.) This stage arose through the use of electricity and came to condition the use of all future technology(Ibid., 148.) It is during this stage that the Arendt sees the loss of the categories of homo faber (the tool maker) for whom ends were achieved through the use of instruments. The end result is the assembly line of manufacturing (Ibid., 149.) Arendt calls this stage: automation. It involves “channeling natural forces into the human world” so that they become mechanized and artificial(Ibid., 149, n.12.) One obvious example of this type of “channeling of natural forces” is atomic energy which brought with it the threat of global annihilation. As Ann Chapman has pointed out, the stability of the earth is threatened by automation because the new elements, chemicals and organisms that develop as a result of automation are incorporated into the “processes of the earth [and] are in effect the starting of new natural processes. These new processes mean that nature can no longer be relied upon to behave in the same way as it did in the past (Chapman, Ann, “Technology as World Building,” Ethics, Place and Environment, Vol. 7, no. 1-2 (March/June 2004), 68.)” The consequences of this transition raise the question of technology. If our actions, namely automated manufacturing through machines, are changing the earth so that life itself is transformed and even jeopardized, how should we act? Arendt concludes by saying:

….. homo faber, the toolmaker, invented tools and implements in order to erect a world, not—at least, not primarily—to help the human life process. The question therefore is not so much whether we are the masters or the      slaves of our machines, but whether machines still serve the world and its things,  or if, on the contrary, they and the automatic motion of their processes have begun to rule and even destroy world and things (Arendt, The Human Condition 151.)

Arendt’s analysis of the question concerning technology points to a Janus-faced problem. On the one hand technology makes us masters of our world through machinery. On the other hand, it puts the capability of destroying the world in our hands also. No philosopher has reframed this aspect of the question more cogently than Arendt’s former teacher Martin Heidegger.