Human Constitutive Technicity: The Evolutionary Turn in the Philosophy of Technology

Abstract

In this research, I aim to enquire into the human relation to technology from an evolutionary perspective. To that end, I will elaborate on insights by two major contemporary thinkers, the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk and the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler. I will argue that both develop a fully-fledged philosophy of technology—although they are usually not recognized as philosophers of technology proper—and I will show the convergence and mutual complementarity of their respective approaches. I will highlight how Sloterdijk’s and Stiegler’s stances critically diverge from contemporary philosophy of technology—the so-called empirical turn—and corroborate their claims through recourse to insights coming from twentieth-century philosophical anthropology, Science and Technology Studies (STS) and contemporary evolutionary biology, especially the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES). Starting from this conceptual framework, I will submit the idea of human constitutive technicity, i.e., technology belongs to what Jacques Derrida would call the conditions of possibility and impossibility of our lifeform. According to this perspective, human technicity is constitutive, insofar as, first, we could neither survive nor have evolved as we are now without our relation to artefacts. Secondly, technology can also deprive us of our humanity, by altering our lifeform to the point that it could not be considered human anymore or by provoking the actual extinction of the lifeform it has, in turn, contributed to producing. Thirdly, we can develop self-representations, i.e., accounts of what we think it means to be humans, including through scientific practice, only thanks to and based on specific technologies. Fourthly, developments in our technical system may also inhibit our capability to think and, therefore, reflectively think about ourselves. Hence, with this research I set out to underscore the importance of a critical reflection about technology in order to understand the human condition.