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Papers by Daniel cerezuelle

Érès eBooks, Nov 17, 2022

In this presentation I shall try to clarify the common existential and spiritual background of El... more In this presentation I shall try to clarify the common existential and spiritual background of Ellul’s and Charbonneau’s critique of technological society. They met very young, became friends in their twenties, and their intellectual companionship lasted throughout their life. Ellul, as most of you already know, kept saying that he had an important intellectual debt towards Charbonneau. Although he was not a Christian, I think it is useful to take into account Charbonneau’s thought, because it sheds some light on the orientations of Ellul’s thought. The agnostic Charbonneau and the Christian Ellul had in common a same understanding of human freedom as incarnation. Ellul wrote for example that already in the thirties they “insisted on the unity of the human being, on the incarnation, on one’s commitment according to a personal decision2”. Their common dissent with the evolution of modern society is rooted in this common spiritual experience. When they were young they had long discuss...

It is why man exists as flesh and body that the rising power of technique may subject man's daily... more It is why man exists as flesh and body that the rising power of technique may subject man's daily life to given depersonalising constraints. Such an intuition is at the heart of some contemporary critiques of technological society. Since the end of the Thirties, indeed, the concepts of flesh and incarnation, as the very heritage of Judeo-Christian spirituality, represented the fulcrum for a stream of technocritical thought. Accordingly, authors like Bernard Charbonneau, Ivan Illich and Jacque Ellul, challenge the depersonalisation of technique by claiming both the exigency of incarnation and the attention to the very flesh dimension of human existence.

Technology and Contemporary Life, 1988

From the modern Western perspective, technical action promotes freedom because it allows for the ... more From the modern Western perspective, technical action promotes freedom because it allows for the satisfaction of human needs while favoring human initiative and guaranteeing human mastery. It thus also reinforces the moral status of human subjects. In fact, technology is usually conceived as instrumental and transitive action upon things. Through its functional, social, and existential neutrality, it opens the way for a human existence compatible with all the requirements of ethics-as Karl Marx presupposes when he predicts that once the industrial forces of production are provided with adequate relationships of production, "humanity will emerge from its pre-historical period." In the age of industrial abundance, the domination of one person over another will have no more reason to continue. Optimism regarding technology presupposes belief in its instrumental or transitive character, in technology as involving action which emanates from a subject to be exercised on an object. In principle, such action leaves the actor untouched. But often this action is presented as mediated by the tool which guarantees, beside extra efficiency, the permanence and integrity of the human actor. By contrast, political power exercised by one human being on another can debase the one and corrupt the other. According to the classical scheme, political domination always runs the risk of transforming the person into a thing by denying moral initiative and integrity. In the process of mastering nature technologically, however, the person ought to remain intact in his conscience (with a sense of justice), preserving and even developing his status as autonomous will and end in itself. The implication of such an idea is that technology is in itself neither good nor bad. Purely instrumental, impersonal, totally subordinated to the will of which it is the mediator or the physical amplifier, it is the bearer of no ethical quality. Without any positive character of its own it can be used for good as well as for evil and it leaves the human being wholly free in relation to things, society, and everyone else. Such is a brief characterization of the conception of technology which has been at the basis of the Promethean optimism of the West for a number of centuries. Although questionable, this traditional theory has

Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, 2013

In the twentieth century, a number of French Christian philosophers have described technology as ... more In the twentieth century, a number of French Christian philosophers have described technology as a civilization process, each one in his own way. A short survey of Jacques Ellul’s, Dominique Chenu’s, Emmanuel Mounier’s and Jean Brun’s major works, shows that their diverging views were rooted in contrasting understandings of the Christian concept of incarnation. The dilemma spiritualization vs incarnation which underpinned their view of technology may still be relevant to understand the uncritical sanctification of technology in this century.

Revue du MAUSS, 2019

Dans un contexte de desarroi face a la montee des problemes environnementaux et des risques techn... more Dans un contexte de desarroi face a la montee des problemes environnementaux et des risques technologiques, Bruno Latour invite ses lecteurs a penser leur rapport au progres technique a travers la grille de lecture de l’Anthropologie symetrique et de la Theorie de l’Acteur Reseau. Presentees comme scientifiques, les constructions theoriques de Latour reactualisent un courant de pensee qui est celui du modernisme catholique inspire par la metaphysique progressiste et technophile du pere jesuite Teilhard de Chardin. Convaincu de la continuite entre le naturel et l’artificiel et que l’action technicienne continue la creation divine, Latour nous propose une approche myope et fragmentaire de la dynamique technicienne et entretient un optimisme ireniste face au deferlement technologique contemporain.

Futuribles, 2019

Alors que le progres technique a connu, au cours des dernieres decennies, une acceleration incroy... more Alors que le progres technique a connu, au cours des dernieres decennies, une acceleration incroyable, en particulier dans le domaine de l’information, avec des consequences determinantes pour les societes contemporaines, beaucoup d’observateurs s’interrogent regulierement sur les risques et avantages inherents a ces avancees techniques. Et bien evidemment, rien n’est definitivement blanc ou noir dans le progres technique ; mais si l’on souhaite regarder les choses d’un peu plus haut, relire les analyses du penseur francais Jacques Ellul sur la technique et la mise en place de ce qu’il appelle un « systeme technicien » parait indispensable.Des les annees 1950, Jacques Ellul pressent l’importance que prend la technique dans le fonctionnement et l’organisation (y compris politique) de nos societes, et les risques d’alienation qui en decoulent. Sans condamner le progres technique, mais cherchant toujours a permettre a l’homme de rester libre dans ses choix, Jacques Ellul nous donne a travers son œuvre — comme le montre Daniel Cerezuelle dans ce futur d’antan qui lui est consacre — de nombreux elements permettant de comprendre la technique et de l’apprehender avec le recul necessaire. Des elements que l’on retrouve chez les pionniers de l’ecologie politique et qui conservent une grande actualite (notamment dans les reflexions relatives aux transitions aujourd’hui necessaires a la preservation de notre civilisation). Il etait important que Futuribles s’en fasse l’echo. S.D.

Sociologie Economique, Apr 1, 2010