TECHNOLOGICAL pushes Virilio's phenomenology of the "accident" of technology, and comes in DRIVE, THE SELF AND the phenomenological/pragmatic tradi• THE ETHICAL tion of Hans Jonas' imperative of re• sponsibility and Don Ihde's phenomeno• Michael Kelly1 logical investigation of the dimensions of technology that amplify and reduce Abstract natural human capacities. Introduction: Technology and I want in this essay to change the way we approach the promise of technology. Lived-Experience In bringing out the philosophical sub• stance packed into the highly critical It is difficult, I think, to align oneself in diagnostic portion of Virilio's work, I the debate concerning the liberating or focus on Virilio's observations concern• coercive aspects of contemporary infor• ing the human psychological relation to mation technologies. I work in a com• technology. I argue that a form of re• puter lab to subsidize the finances of my sentment similar to that found in academic life-style, and each day I see Nietzsche's genealogy of morals pro• young people sitting next to one another vides the motivating factor in the push in a silence broken only by the clicks for continual and increasingly rapid resonating from a keyboard. He sends technological innovation: technological messages from a terminal in Manhattan drive follows from fallen man's desire to a web-pal in Miami, Florida; she mes• to reconcile his mortality. Understand• sages her cousin staying up late in the ing this drive brings home the direness Philippines; another writes a friend va• of the human condition that makes tech• cationing in Scotland. Their interaction nological promise so attractive and tech• takes place beyond their lived space and nological resistance so difficult. Given time in a disembodied, virtual realm of this conundrum, we must articulate an global time, and at the sacrifice of a ethic of technological modesty. An ethic more proximal, physical communica• oftechnolo gical modesty encourages (1) tion. The lure of"instantaneous" com• the resistance of capricious urges for munication across previously unthink• technological satisfaction and (2) the able pHysical distances and time zones subjection of technologies to a rigorous results in a privileging of the far and a phenomenological investigation that devaluation of the near.2 Outside of the weighs their potential benefits and re• North Americas and Europe, the fear ductions, as well as the conditions that might precipitate and exacerbate these benefits or reductions. This ethical plan 2 Cf., Hector Jose Hyuke, "Technology and the Devaluation of the Near," presented at the 12th biennial meeting of the Society for 1 Fordham University, Bronx, New York, Philosophy and Technology, July 7-9, 2001, USA. Aberdeen, Scotland.
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looms that the global-time of American tioned criticism of the technological techno-capitalism will increasingly sub• domination of culture, space and time vert the time of their culture. Non-west• overlooks the liberating capacities that ern countries worry that the global information technologies offer to both economy that commodifies their collec• western and non-western users. Despite tive cultural consciousness will eventu• technology's allegedly manipulative as• ally trample their traditions and values, pects, satellite television and the fiber• and replace them with the ideals of optic transmissions governing the infor• American techno-capitalist culture that mation superhighway deliver immedi• govern our information age.3 ate notice of crucial events. For ex• ample, I can get information concern• Yet I do not want to make the hasty claim ing a possible political uprising in North• that all computer-mediated interaction ern Ireland that challenges the local po• takes place in global time at the expense litical structure's oppressive policies, or of the local (both spatial and temporal). I might receive an email-letter that re• Such a claim would be naively one-sided quests my support for women's rights and experientially unverifiable. Indeed, in Afghanistan or India. These transmis• these students sitting side by side will sions often awaken us in the west to a often chat with one another (or ·another more sympathetic, better-informed view local friend or colleague) via the direct of the tribulations or advances of other transmissions of instant-messenger. cultures. More importantly, they make These students share the same physical available information that we otherwise space. Their interaction, though medi• might never have known. Such interac• ated, takes place within the same tem• tion fosters the possibility for new forms poral and geographical boundaries as of community, a global citizenship, if interaction that is experientially lived you will, for through such interactions, and commonly conceived. Instances of one becomes more appreciative of cul• users sharing the same lived-space and tural differences, as well as racial or -time while favoring technologically sexual differences within one's local mediated, disembodied interaction, culture and community. Hence, it seems bring into question the pessimistic con• the information age boasts a certain hu• clusion that technology has triumphed mamsm. over the lived dimension of experience. The kinds of cross-cultural communi• Certainly, more even-headed theories of cation discussed thus far seem promis• technology remind us that the aforemen- ing because, as critical theorist Douglas Kellner argues, they "open ... new pub• lic spheres and the possibility of politi• 3 For an Eastern perspective on this matter, cal intervention by groups and individu• see Soraj Hongladarom's "Time, Nature, als excluded from political dialogue Technology and Globalization." Presented during the era of Big Media, controlled at the 12th biennial meeting of the Society by the state and giant corporations. "4 for Philosophy and Technology, July 7-9, 200 l, Aberdeen, Scotland. 4 Kellner (2000: I 07).
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With the information age still at a rel• Let us take an example dealing with the evantly inchoate stage of development, former hypothetical scenario. Imagine Kellner continues, it seems imprudent a homosexual male marginalized by the to risk either a technophobic critique or narrow-minded society in which he a technophilic affirmation of the infor• lives. Now suppose that he not only has mation age. Yet our engagements with kept secret his sexual orientation (as is technology compel us beyond a neutral often how we hear such cases conveyed stance regarding the promise oftechnol • to us), but also has found a surrogate ogy, and citizens of the modern, global family on-line. With this family, he feels world seem sharply divided in their re• comfortable to be himself and voice his lation to it: those dismissive of technol• fears. Perhaps he experiments with tac• ogy and those wildly optimistic about tics for how best to reveal his sexual technology. identity to the members of his commu• nity, and receives helpful advice for how Regarding these factions debating the to manage their responses. One rightly promise oftechnology, I believe that the finds it hard to argue against the ben• force of experiential evidence to date efits of such a cyber-scenario that cre• concerning information technologies ates a new community on-line, a com• justifies a call for caution. This call for munity where the marginalized finds a caution might easily be misunderstood voice, and friends over distances lend as a technophobic appraisal .Qf our in• an understanding ear, helpful guidance, formation superhighway. Even the and reassurance.6 The case of our ho• above cases illu~trating the mosexual living out his secret sexual e111ancipatory dimensions of informa• identity in his on-line community seems tion technology, I would argue (but will like an attractive alternative; but it might not in this essay), contain some perni• also entail the following potentially di• cious private or public interest lurking sastrous consequences, according to behind the dissemination of information French culture cntlque and received by users. Ignoring the more phenomenologist Paul Yirilio: suspicious rhetoric, consider what hap• pens when a user sacrifices the local The paradoxes of[the information community, the nuclear family, or the age with its new telecommunica• atomic family- that is, the temporally tions equipment] are indeed numer• and geographically proximal-to the ous and disconcerting, in particu• comforts, satisfactions and caprices of lar the foremost among them: get• ting closer to the 'distant' takes you the global. Worse, consider what hap• proportionally from the 'near' ... pens when the techno-capitalist struc• the friend, the relative, the neigh- ture imposes itself on a culture and bor-thus making strangers ... of forces its members to sacrifice the local those who are close at hand ....7 to the global. 5
6 Cf., Turkle (1995: 177-206). 5 Cf., Hongladarom (200 l ). 7 Virilio ( 1997: 20), my bracketing.
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In addition to the dissolution of the far as, after Descartes, what was "ob• proximal community and a sense of ac• jective" conformed to the conditions of ceptance not physically realizable, such the subject and the subject's demands recourse to the comforts of an on-line for clarity and distinctness. This form community perpetuates the prejudices of idealism, wherein the cognitive struc• and stereotypes ofthe mind that remains tures of the human mind determined comfortably unchallenged. Only under how objects in reality appeared, privi• the strongest utopian conditions, I think, leged the human subject as the center will the liberating forces of the infor• ofthe world. It was but a short step from mation age prove to facilitate commu• here to humankind's decentering of it• nication and promote a truly democratic self through technological innovations community of global citizens. that privileged the abstract, virtual representation of objects over the expe• In this essay, how~ver, I do not want to rience lived through our natural human argue against the potentially democratic capacities. Since modem epistemology's and liberating power of information method of inquiry requires that all things technologies-Kellner makes a valid receive their being through conformity point that it seems too soon to pass judg• to consciousness' demands, then when ment on these tools. I want to argue for the subject attempts to think itself, it a change in the way we passively ap• must represent itself as an object present proach technology with a blind faith in to self-consciousness; the self never its promise. And to do this_we must be• appears as "self," it appears only in a gin with an inquiry into the origin and "represented" form as an object re• perpetuation of our (often times) unre• flected-on. Given the absence of the self flective optimism. in modem epistemology, it is not sur• prising that a form of technological ide• As citizens of this global information alism replaces the idealism of classical world continually become more ame• epistemology, for its dematerialized ver• nable to representing themselves over sion of the real provides a clarity and telecommunications mediums such as distinctness to which the lived-experi• the internet, no longer does only the ence pales in comparison. object of perception, but also human life itself- the two together comprising con• Technological idealism not only domi• crete, lived-reality-now gets substi• nates the objects of the world, altering tuted for a virtual one. Concrete reality our perception of the world and other does not disappear, but undergoes a con• human selves, but it also turns back upon tinual and increasing deprivileging.8 itself and usurps its creator. Virilio ar• ticulates a reduction of the individual The age of classical epistemology cen• to fractured, immaterial representations tered the subject and initiated the dis• that parallels the dissolution of the city, appearance of the concrete object in so- urban-center. When the self too becomes an appearance registered on the web, its concrete reality nestled behind a virtual 8 Kellner (2000: 110). version, the question of alterity, other-
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ness, ethics and in tum democracy, be• lows from fallen man's desire to recon• comes problematic, for the notion of a cile his mortality. community of selves, whose characters we now identify according to the images Understanding this drive opens our eyes to which fragmentary and discontinuous to the direness of the human condition links direct us, makes difficult the ques• that makes technological promise so at• tion of the identity of the self who calls tractive and technological resistance so me to ethical responsibility.9 As Virilio difficult. Given this conundrum, we writes, must articulate an ethic of technologi• cal modesty. An ethic of technological The specific negative aspect of modesty encourages ( 1) the resistance these infonnation superhighways is of capricious urges for technological precisely this loss of orientation satisfaction and (2) the subjection of regarding altertity (the other), this technologies to a rigorous phenomeno• disturbance in the relationship with logical investigation that weighs their the other and ... the world. 10 potential benefits and reductions, as well as the conditions that might precipitate I want to claim that liabilities built into and exacerbate these benefits or reduc• technology, such as virtuality's threat to tions. This ethical plan comes in the cha~acter identification-ultimately a phenomenological/pragm~tic tradition threat to ethics and democracy- are of Hans Jonas' imperative of responsi• cause enough to issue an imperative to bility and Don Ihde's phenomenologi• examine with great care the potential cal investigation of the dimensions of benefits and costs of implementing or technology that amplify and reduce encouraging the use of new technolo• natural human capacities. Virilio shares gies. First, and mainly through an elu• the sentiments of these latter two think• cidation of the work of Paul Virilio, I ers, both that an imperative is needed to suggest that such an investigation must quell the technological push and the begin with an understanding of awareness that since technology can humanity's technological drive. In neither be stopped nor turned back we bringing out the philosophical substance need a method according to which we packed into the highly critical diagnos• may evaluate its impact on human life. tic portion of Virilio 's work, I focus on Virilio's observations concerning the human psychological relation to tech• Philosophical Influences on nology. I argue that a form of resentment Virilio's Philosophy similar to that thought in Nietzsche's On th.e Genealogy of Morals provides the Born of Italian descent in Paris, France motivating factor in the push for con• in 1932, Paul Virilio is an urban plan• tinual and increasingly rapid technologi• ner, philosopher, and military historian cal innovation: technological drive fol- and since the early nineteen-seventies ' has been one of the world's leading crit• 9 Cf., Ibid., 102; (see also der Derian, 1998: ics of industrial and post-industrial 2). 10 Virilio (1995: 4).
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11 technology. Through literary and film interaction that displaces the place of criticism, military histories and, today, . meeting, the 'here,' in favor of its in• reflections on the telecommunications stantaneous character, the 'now,' has boom in what he calls the transmission become increasingly common-place.13 revolution (following the industrial and And the totalizing effects of tete-tech• transportation revolutions), Paul Virilio nology do not stop at conquering space; .-- relentlessly interrogates modern techno• they seek to triumph over time as well. logical culture. Virilio's most original A victim of the technological accelera• and provocative polemic against the in• tion of the world, the local time tied to formation age concerns the effects ofthe the 'here' becomes homogenized: "that continuous acceleration of culture. is to say, a worldwide time ... devalues Virilio conceives a new course of study the local time of immediate activity 14 to investigate this phenomenon: ••• ". Having conquered the lived-ex• dromology. He coins the neologism out perience of both space and time, speed ofthe Latin word dromos meaning a race produces a virtual experience riddled or running. 12 Dromology, then, denotes with paradoxes: concerning space, the the study of the prevalence of speed in far now becomes the near; concerning the age of information and the effects time, duration is reduced to inertia (as of acceleration on the human body, instantaneous transmissions eradicate space and time. the time it takes to undertake an activ• ity). As mentioned in the introduction, Virilio's dromological analysis takes the moreover, these paradoxes of speed en• form ofwhat might be termed something tail serious social, ethical and political like a common-sense phenomenology, consequences. that is, a reading of the effects of accel• eration on the things themselves and the Though always advancing trenchant cri• spatia-temporal conditions in relation to tiques of the instrumentality of technol• which all things inescapably exist. To ogy, Virilio's writing-style reveals little contextualize Virilio's reflections on focus. 15 Rather than develop a sustained, technology, we must understand that his linear polemic against technology, he fundamental observation consists in his speeds through reflection after reflection belief that the age of instantaneous tele• on technology's impact on human life, presencing already appears to be corrod• piling seemingly disparate observations ing the natural order of existence inso• on top of one another. Given the appar• far as the temporal receives an uneven ent lack of focus in Virilio's work, some privileging over the spatial. Concrete, have charged that its frenetic character lived-experience interaction, exhibits two fundamental characters, the 'here' and the 'now.' Thanks to our tete-exist• 13 Ibid., 37. ence today, however, a new mode of 14 Ibid., 83. 15 I do intend to imply that Virilio's body of work lacks focus; Virilio's many books and 11 Cf., Virilio (1998: 1-3). articles exhibit a consistent polemic that 12 Virilio (1997: 20). might even be thought repetitive.
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reflects rather than corrects the symp• pathetic to the Christian conception of toms of the information age with which human nature that technology continues he takes issue. One such critic, theorist to blur and threatens to erase. Yet, as Douglas Kellner, claims that Virilio has readers of Virilio can attest, his combi• a flawed conception of technology that nation of a sophisticated philosophical offers no systematic theoretical position stance and a rhetorical style that resists and lacks a social analysis that could the linear results in a dense text that pre• define a course of political action. In supposes equally dense debates concern• fact, Kellner concludes that Virilio ing technology. "misses the emancipatory and democ• ratizing aspects of new computer and Virilio's Christian Phenom• 16 media technologies." enology of Technology Yet in fairness to Virilio, I believe he intentionally avoids articulating a sys• Virilio 's thought begins from the tematic, linear theoretical position. conservative line that each human Virilio's aversion to a systematic philo• creature has, by design, an inherent sophical discourse follows from his in• dignity and freedom, as well as the sight that our age is the age of capacity for reason, natural self• "dromology." Accordingly, Virilio ar• movement and moral decision-mak• gues that dromological culture eludes• ing. As the speed ofour dromological or speeds past-any attempt at a system• world intensifies- particularly given atic analysis; hence his proto-aphoris• speed's marriage to economic inter• tic writing style offers short, pithy ob• est-the compulsion to maintain pace servations and suggestions, sometimes imposes new restrictions on our free• profound, sometimes obscure, but never . followed by a linear, systemic discus• dom and renders obsolete the natu• sion. Virilio's disjointed writing style, I ral capacities of reason from which would argue further, retains the rhetori• moral-decision making issues forth. cal force of decelerating the reader. What is worse, remaining on pace Virilio encourages his reader to resist with the speed of information be• the passivity of the dromos and think comes possible only after we resign through the commentary offered. Once our natural human capacities to the the reader makes this effort, it becomes technological prostheses that enable evident that Virilio 's work lacks neither interaction at the rate demanded by a notion ofagency nor politics as Kellner the instantaneous transmissions that charges. Instead, Virilio's reflections on characterize our dromological age. the effects of acceleration on nature and the human species within it contain a Virilio's writings seem to imply that subtle and sophisticated awareness of technology contains something like Western philosophy, particularly sym- a hypothetical imperative: if one wants to maintain pace, then one must conform one's natural faculties 16 Kellner (2000: 103) . to the technologies that enhance
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them. 17 lution that attacks the liveliness of the subject ... " 19 Virilio warns that such surrender to technology blinds us to the erosion As vision technologies continue to of our natural human capacities. replace our natural perceptual capaci• Technological prostheses that facili• ties and transplant technologies con• tate our movement around our envi• tinue to colonize the body, the hu• ronment-from sofa to television, man species abandons itself to auto• from home to office, from our office mation and forfeits its natural privi• in New York to our affiliate office in leges: Tokyo-18 disable the able and replace the natural design of the human per• If, according to Kafka, cinema ceptual and cognitive apparatus with means pulling a uniform over your faster, more reliable technological eyes, television means pulling on a straigh~acket, stepping up an eye versions. The sheer speed of the in• training regime that leads to eye formation age produces an increased disease, just as the acoustic inten• reliance on technological surrogates sity of the walkman ends in irre• for perception and memory, which, versible lesions in the inner ear.20 Virilio argues, dull our natural human capacities for rational, moral deci• Virilio seems keenly aware of the con• sequences that follow from the human sion-making. Virilio conclude, then, being's compulsion to submit to the hy• that "dromospheric pollution is pol- pothetical imperative of technology. Technology's hypothetical imperative 17 Babich ( 1999: 112). She writes of the hy• entails our acceptance of two pothetical imperative of technology: "This ineliminable features of technology: ( 1) is not an onto logically clouded variation on that successful engagement with a tool a Luddite theme but a phenomenologically follows from the user's conformity to articulated, existentially and pragmatically its guidelines for use, and (2) that the confirmable commonplace. To use any tech• nological item, even simple machines like a user agrees to the risks- immediate or lever or a wedge, the user must conform, i.e., long-range-involved in its use. the user must attune him or herself to the Virilio's observation articulates not a tool as such in order to use the tool as such• one-sided Luddism for the information and not the other way around. This is the age. Instead, he highlights what Babette hypothetical imperative of technology. If you Babich describes as the pragmatically want to surf the Internet (if you want to ride and experientially confirmable fact amotorbike), you must do so within the lim• about technology, whether artefactual or its of the Internet including your particular informational, whether a hammer or a provider/browser (motorbike) you happen to web-page. Not only does the speed of be using." 18 For Virilio's discussion of these kinds of shifts in human experience, see Virilio ( 1997: 19 "Continental Drift"). Virilio ( 1997: 33). 20 Ibid., 97; (see also Kellner, 1998: 8).
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the technology limit our reaction time [as objects to be analyzed]. Instead, and/or ability to process information when one becomes comfortable and ef• regarding cases that require moral rea• ficient with a particular technological soning, but as technologies become in• mediator, the tool in question enters the creasingly sophisticated, their efficiency user's realm of passive habitual activ• requires our increased conformity, ity. As Merleau-Ponty writes, "To get thereby decreasing our range of freedom used to a hat, a car, or a stick is to be with the tool. The benefits of such in• transplanted in them, or conversely, to teractive equipment come at the sacri• incorporate them into the bulk of our fice of the efficacy of our natural hu• own body."21 man faculties for movement, our free• dom to creatively undertake a project, Virilio takes very seriously Merleau• and, as mentioned in the introduction, Ponty's phenomenology of the body's the threat of the dissolution of the fam• relation to tools and technologies, fo• ily and .political structures. cusing precisely on that which did not immediately concern Merleau-Ponty. Virilio's lamentation on the displace• While he warns of a techno-coloniza• ment ofnatural human capacities reveals tion of our bodies soon to constitute the a phenomenological complement to his "transplant revolution,"22 Virilio finds theologically motivated critique. particularly threatening the impercep• Though never addressing his philosophi• tible dimensions of these bodily exten• cal influences explicitly, Merleau• sions that continually efface our natural Ponty's existential phenomenology• human capacities rather than merely which Virilio is quite fond of quoting enhance them. Giving particular atten• throughout his corpus- fills out Virilio 's tion to instances where technology has Christian contention that the human clandestinely crept into our habit-use, body is endowed with certain .natural Virilio employs his common-sense phe• capacities. nomenological method to uncover and make clear the loss of the lived-experi• The natural spatio-temporal character of ence of the everyday, whether it be in the human body occupies a preeminent perception transformed by technologi- place in Merleau-Ponty's existential phenomenology. For him, the body 21 Merleau-Ponty (1962: !53); (see also, serves as the seat of intentional behav• Merleau-Ponty 1962: 143 ff.); (Ihde, 1991: ior as humans encounter their environ• 14 ff). Of course, Merleau-Ponty himself ment. What most likely attracts Virilio has built this insight upon Heidegger's dis• cussion in Being and Time of practical en• to Merleau-Ponty's philosophy is the gagement with the ready-to-hand. latter's penetrating reflections on the 22 "Having nowhere left to go by way of ex• body's relation to instrumental media• tension, and no time by which to get there in tion of the world. In particular, the duration, we find suddenly an inversion of former takes over the latter's insight that the technological trajectory. Reductionism when employed in the service of an ac• and miniaturization taking over where net• tivity, the technologies we use to navi• working and urbanization left off." Yirlio gate the world no longer are perceived (1997: 49-55).
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cal mediation or the dulling of our mo• strumentalism and calculative rational• tor-skills and bodily motility thanks to ity.25 Virilio's affinity for Heidegger's interactive prostheses. 23 critique of technology comes as no sur• prise given that Virilio condemns the We cannot think the Christian element same mode of enframing thought for of Virilio's work without thinking his transforming natural human capacities affinity for phenomenology, and vice that Heidegger earlier declared respon• versa, for, taken together, they comprise sible for the domination ofboth man and his philosophical method for question• nature. ing technology. As I read Virilio, his espousal of the Christian view of the On Heidegger & Modern human species becomes visible through Technology: Ego Cogito and his phenomenological method, but his Christian faith and respect for the body the Ge-Stell initially draw him to phenomenology and its ability to assess the extent to In Heidegger's reading of the history of which the natural comes to be replaced western philosophy, the demands of by either virtual or transplant technolo• classical epistemology in the modern gies. His phenomenological reflections age precipitate a hegemonic, totalizing on the loss of our god-given capabili• technological vision of the world that ties lead him to ask: "[W]hat doth it obliges all nature to conform to human profit a man if he can gain the whole knowledge (i.e., be rendered clear and world but lose his soul? ... Losing one's distinct according to the conditions of soul, anima, means losing the very be• the subject), and sacrifices it to the stipu• ing ofmovement."24 And it is no doubt lations of human comfort and security. that Virilio intends the broader mean• Heidegger reads the German concept of ing of soul entailed in the medieval re-presentation ( Vor-stellen) back into Christian understanding, where the soul classical epistemology's claim-spear• denotes both the source of movement headed by Descartes' ego cogito - that as self-propulsion or local-motion, and perception by a subject reveals an ob• also movement in thought, the seat of ject only if the perception meets the cri• reason and moral decision-making. terion of clarity and distinctness. The German Stellen translates as setting or Virilio's theologically informed phe• setting up, and Vor translates as "be• nomenological investigations evidence fore": hence, the setting up [of an ob• a stronger, more pessimistic inquisition ject] for a subject. Given this modern of technology alongside his Christian• understanding of perception, Heidegger phenomenology. Clearly, the most so• concludes that Descartes' quest forcer• phisticated philosophical roots inform• tainty constitutes nothing more than a ing Virilio's critique of technology are question of securing an object under a found in Heidegger's reflections on in- 25 23 Virilio (1991: Ill). Virilio and Lotringer (1983: 28-29). 24 Virilio (1997: 25).
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subject's clear and distinct perception.26 the point where he himself will have to be taken as standing-reserve."27 Heidegger calls this mode of perceiv• ing the world the Ge-stell (en-framing), The Nietzschean Element of and this enframing presents a pre• Virilio's Thought scribed world picture that takes all of nature as standing-reserve, or stock to As I read Virilio 's work, his diagnosis be used as to meet human demands. The ofour technological world marks a con• Ge-stell, Heidegger argues, operates temporary example ofNietzsche's most with an instrumental form of reason. It daunting prophesies concerning the con• is oriented towards only prediction and sequences of the nihilistic attitude control that seeks scientific, technologi• Nietzsche termed ressentiment. In gen• cal and political domination ofthe world eral, Virilio repudiates the nihilistic as• and its resources. Such a world picture, pects ofNietzsche's anti-Christian writ• paradoxically, constitutes an inauthen• ings and in doing so rejects Nietzsche's tic vision of the world insofar as the notion of the will as nihilistic as well. 28 modem subject's re-presentations entail But this rejection of the Nietzschean an occlusion of any form of appearance notion of will follows from Heidegger's outside the one demanded in the service mistaken reading of Nietzsche on the of human ends and universal calculation. will that Virilio appropriates. What falls outside the world picture, that is what cannot be rendered clear and For Nietzsche, as we know, everything di,stinct through calculation or techno• is will to power. But if everything is will logical manipulation, becomes invis• to power, then surely we must draw dis• ible- not in the sense that the back of a tinctions in kinds of wills, for Nietzsche house hides itself from one who stands is certainly no reductionist. Nietzsche viewing its front, but in the sense that it distinguishes two kinds of will broadly: becomes no-thing, a thing for which we a will to power that affirms life and a tack a conception. And it is Heidegger's will to power informed by resentment insight into the one-dimensionality of and rancor that rejects life. According the Ge-stell that Virilio shares with the to Nietzsche, we find nihilism proper former and builds upon, for humanity only in the latter mode of the will to too becomes an object for control. In• power. If I am correct and Virilio 's ru• deed, Heidegger anticipates Virilio 's minations continue Heidegger's ques• Christian concerns about the fate of tion concerning technology-and man; he notes that as a consequence of Virilio has admitted this much himself• this mode of Ge-stell, man "comes to then clarifying the grounds supporting Heidegger's philosophy of technology 26 Carr ( 1999: 19-20). Carr provides a con• cise summary of Heidegger's critique of should establish Nietzsche's influence modem metaphysics and its relation to tech• on Heidegger's, and thereby Virilio's, nology, discussing in greater detail the ety• critique of technology. mological significance of Vorstellen and Descartes' relation to Hegel, Nietzsche and 27 Heidegger (1977a: 27). technological rationality. 2s Armitrage (2000a).
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Rethinking Heidegger's "The On Nietzsche's Two Notions of Word of Nietzsche" Will: Affirmative and Nihilistic
In his essay "The Word of Nietzsche," The first book of On the Genealogy of Heidegger presents a monolithic read• Morals explains Hegel's unhappy con• ing of the history of western metaphys• sciousness under the alias of the priest, ics, wherein he reduces Nietzsche's no• and discusses the problem of the tion of the will to the company of idealist's conceptualization of nature as Descartes' or Hegel's "commanding" a result of a priestly sleight of hand. 33 ego cogito, which orders the world into Rather than reckoning with his natural an object of assault.29 Contrary to capabilities and place in the world, the Heidegger's misreading of Nietzsche, oppressed priest lusts after control and the latter's notion of the will desires not recognition, a lust that stems from a a pre-scribed organization that consti• deep-seated ressentiment over his lack tutes the world according to its repre• of power in the social sphere. Despite sentations. Instead of a form of reason his political impotence, the resentful that coerces objects to fit its methods, man preserves his desire for recognition criteria and cognitive framework, within the realm of life he finds valu• Nietzsche understands will as a force able. Being too weak to secure the rul• ing power he desires and values he en- that desires only to affirm and enjoy its ' own difference: "The pleasure of know• deavors to change the conditions demar- ing oneself different ... ".30 Indeed, cating weak and strong, good and evil. Heidegger's sweeping account of the Left without physical recourse to attain history of modern philosophy egre• the power he desires, the priest decides giously misses Nietzsche's antipathy upon articulating an alternative re-pre• towards the resentment that riddles sentation of good and evil, thus retard• Hegel's unhappy consciousness- that ing the natural order of the noble and is, self-consciousness' reckoning with the plebian, in favor of the abstract or• the Cartesian requirements for clarity der of the good and the eviJ.3• and distinction- born out of a desire to hav~ its power recognizedY For the The use of abstract reason, concepts, reader familiar with Nietzsche's logic and syllogisms, Nietzsche argues, thought, Heidegger's misreading comes takes nature's forces, conceptualizes as no surprise, since Heidegger reduces them, and renders them controllable desire and reason to the same constitut• variables in the service of unveiling 35 ing ego initiated by Descartes.32 A closer life's deepest secrets. Nietzsche terms look at Nietzsche's On the Genealogy n N' of Morals will, I hope, correct 1etzsche ( 1989b. Essay l, sections I- ll). Heidegger's misunderstanding. 34 Reginster ( 1997: 285 ff.). 35 This is the major polemic defining both 29 Heidegger ( 1977b). Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy and his 30 Nietzsche ( 1989a: section 260). essay "On the Uses and Abuses of History," 31 Deleu ze ( 1993: 8 ff. ). in Untimely Meditations. Cf., Nietzsche 32 Carr (1999: 21). (1997: 62 ff.), and Nietzsche (1956).
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this use of reason to make intelligible sophi cal. and bearable life's concrete dimensions, nihilism. Nietzsche's genealogy further Regarding the former, if the Christian uncovers a corresponding moral phe• movement has succeeded in reversing nomenon, asceticism. Asceticism de• the values of good and bad-and notes, for Nietzsche, the practice of Nietzsche thinks it certainly has, for this abandoning the chaotic, often times inversion, he believes, makes human painful, concrete world oflived-experi• history interesting- then those in posi• ences for the orderly, benign world of tions of power follow in the lineage, abstract re-presentations. Ascetic culture genealogically, from the originally re• bears the psychological marks of its sentful "priests." That being said (and founder's ressentiment, for it arises out here the historical converges with the of a nihilistic reproach of concrete life. philosophical), the fundamental techno• logical drive remains nihilistic, a way That the impetus for technological in• of life upheld by the kin of the priest. novation follows from ressentiment The technological impulse to correct might seem a questionable claim. If life's hardships and pains preserves the Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Mor• original "Christian" sentiment ofresent• als suggests that the character of resent• ment. Hence, I suggest that technologi• ment evolves from the powerless, does cal innovation, the drive to correct life, not my suggestion that technological is borne out of resentment, the drive to innovation evolves from and perpetuates overcome life's transience and mortal• the spirit of resentment seem inconsis• ity. 36 Indeed, the multinational tent? To ask the question differently, are company's leader- the contemporary not those behind technological innova• clergy- so intent on preserving his ill• tion and policy-making typically the gotten wealth and power, creates an al• economically and politically powerful luring system with promises (much like rather than the powerless? This objec• the priest's promise of life after death) tion rightly notes that the first essay of that enslave its followers (the consum• the Genealogy proclaims that resent• ers and marginalized). ment arises from those (particularly Christians) who begrudge the powerful Heidegger's critique notwithstanding, it and seek a way to reverse the existing should be clear that Nietzsche under• power structure. Indeed, those who to• stands two senses of will: the affirma• day occupy the position of decision tive and the nihilistic. The former de• making regarding technological innova• notes a will that seeks to react to life on tion may be the powerful. But, if life's own temporal, concrete and enig- Nietzsche sees correctly humankind's relation to its impotence and the history 36 Cf., Babich (1994). Babich argues that it of social power structures and hierar• is the ascetic dimension of the priest psy• chies, then we must consider two points chology that we see in our contemporary when establishing this connection be• technological drive. I differ from Babich tween resentment and technological only in emphasizing more the element of drive, one historical, the other philo- resentment.
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matic conditions. The latter denotes a death itself.37 misplaced will to power that seeks to overcome, or reject life's temporal, con• Virilio 's disenchantment with contem• crete and enigmatic conditions, a will porary humanity's tendency for aban• to power manifested by the psychologi• doning its physical capacities for the cal condition of ressentiment and per• sake oftechnological prostheses smacks petuated by its moral counterpart, asceti• ofNietzsche's rejection of the nihilistic cism. It is the latter form of will, which ambitions of the religious, scientific and seeks control over life by conceptualiz• technological variations of resentrnent.38 ing nature in an attempt to force it to Indeed, for Virilio, the totalizing effects answer to the subject's demands, that ofspeed on space and time, and the para• Heidegger narrowly and mistakenly un• doxical consequences such technologi• derstands as Nietzsche's notion of will. cal tyranny entails, evidences the nihil• Correctly understood, Nietzsche's no• istic flight from life Nietzsche first de• tion of will opposes the truly nihilistic, tected in Socratic reason and later in life-degrading motives of reason char• religion, which science and technology acteristic of western metaphysics. Inso• have supplanted. Before the technologi• far as Nietzsche's critique of cal boom of the information age, ressentiment and the ascetic ideal Nietzsche rejected those forms of theo• amounts to a critique of idealism's to• retical idealism- religion, science and talizing thought that seeks to secure the classical epistemology-that privileged object under the demands of a subject the abstract or conceptual over life. To• seeking answers to life's riddles, his in• day, Virilio voices with equal disdain his fluence on Heidegger-and thereby challenge to technological idealism, Virilio-should now be clear. wherein the virtual, the abstract, con• tinually substitutes the real. Indeed, On the Riddle of Life: Virilio's Virilio has written with Nietzschean Relation to Nietzsche candor, "what will prevail is this will to reduce the world to a point where we can possess it."39 While in interviews As Nietzsche understood it, the riddle Virilio has taken issue with Nietzsche's of life that idealism yearned to correct wont to reduce Christianity to the total• was the condition of existence marked izing modes ofscience and technology,40 by transience and an unavoidable mor• both thinkers share in common this fun• tality. Today, as Virilio understands it, damental intuition concerning the nihil• the riddle oflife-having been remedied ism oftechnological idealism. technologically with idealistic forms of perception giving way to virtual repre• sentations, etc.-becomes the riddle of 37 Virilio (1997: 81). technology- and Nietzsche would not 38 Babich (1994: 137). disagree, since for both thinkers, "it has 39 Virilio ( 1998: 11 ). always been a matter of clearing the 40 Armitrage 2000b: 34). surface of anything in the way," even
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Virilio's phenomenology pushes forced the creation of another "dimen• Nietzsche's prescient observation that sion" of reality.43 the resentful will behind the ascetic ideal levels, weakens, and infects humanity. Reading a Phenomenological Noting that technology socially, psycho• Ethic in Virilio's Critique of logically and physiologically exiles hu• manity from its natural conditions, Technology Virilio concludes that the citizen of the technological world, with everything Virilio takes the notion of the accident instantaneously available on the spot, quite seriously. Prior to the displacement produces the latest version of human• of local time and local space by today's ity, the "terminal citizen." Virilio's con• world oftele-communicative, non-local cept of the terminal citizen puns on the · interaction, accidents occurred in, and word 'terminal,' and produces images their effects were confined to, the local. of the over-equipped able-bodied per• In our world where interaction occurs son who, having transferred his "natu• in the virtual realm of 'real-time' elec• ral capacities for movement and dis• tronic market trading, accidents now placement to probes and scanners which threaten the socio- politico- economic instantaneously inform him about a re• stability of all countries. Technology de• mote reality," now possesses less mo• localizes the accident, leading to the bility than the disabled citizen, and is threat of a generalized accident (e.g., a doomed to inertia, to a terminal, or to stock-market crash or nuclear holo• undermine his very life.41 caust).44 Perhaps surprisingly, Virilio does not allow his alarm concerning the The accident of acceleration and non• de-localization of the accident to result local activity, i.e., its unintended conse• in an impulsive, exhaustive disavowal quence, is inertia. Confining ourselves of technology. Instead, he calls for an to our immediate physical space, hav• investigation into the accident: ing atrophied our natural capacities, Virilio postulates that the terminal citi• the question, 'Can we do without zen precipitates "the sudden mobiliza• technology?' cannot be asked as such. We are forced to expand the tion of the illusion of the world ..." 42 question of technology not only to Terminal citizen, then, demands and cre• the substance produced, but also to ates the most life-disdaining technology the accident produced ... Every to date, virtual reality, wherein every• technology, every science should thing occurs in the abstraction that choose its specific accident, and Nietzsche so detested. One good tech• reveal it as a product-not in a nological turn deserves another and so moralistic, protectionist way to "correct" this unsatisfactory, cosmeti• (safety first), but rather as a prod- cally perfect reality that we have fabri• 43 cated, the religion of technology has For an interesting discussion ofVirilio on tele-presence and the motivation for inventing virtual reality, see I. R. Douglas 41 Virilio (1997: 16). (1998). 42 Ibid., 11. 44 Virilio ( 1998: 20).
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uct to be 'epistemo-technically' Indeed, Virilio's concept ofthe accident questioned.45 resembles a position articulated in the work of American phenomenologist, Citing Heraclitus, Virilio believes we Don Ihde, who also attempts to straddle must put out the excess, not the fire. 46 the line between technophobic and technophilic appraisals oftechnology.47 Virilio's phenomenology of technology Rather than moralistically approach maintains that ( 1) technology cannot be technology and condemn it in advance thought of purely as a neutral mediator as a protectionist would, Virilio advo• improving the world with each new in• cates an epistemo-technical questioning, novation, and (2) every technology con• in other words, a phenomenological in• tains benefits and reduction, improve• vestigation. ments and accidents by design, which substantiates his first point in the debate Hence, abandoning technology is an against technological optimists. Virilio untenable option, according to Virilio. maintains that each technological inno• Even if humanity some day could mus• vation entails a correlative danger: the ter the abundance of strength necessary airplane entails the danger of the plane to give away our technological control, crash; the television entails the danger we could not justify the millions who of eye damage and the breakdown of would die as a result of giving up these familial interaction, etc. technological means that now function as the world's life-support system. The However skewed his diagnosis of the tension, not easily resolvable, is an ex• technological age may appear, we must istential and pragmatic one. On the one not dismiss as one-sidedly pessimistic hand, Virilio understands the need to Virilio's claim that an accident inheres resist reveling in the infantile pleasures by design in every technological inven• of technology. On the other hand, the tion. Instead, Virilio's notion of the ac• pragmatic consequences of a blind re• cident denotes a pragmatically confirm• sistance to technology seem disastrous. able account of any invention insofar as that invention necessarily contains un• We already have suggested that the ni• intended uses and consequences. hilistic character ofresentment fuels the Virilio's relation to technology, then, fire that renders technology dangerous must be viewed as an ambivalent one, rather than a purely neutral, purely ad• which realizes that a blanket critique of vantageous entity. And through his re• technology will not unlock its riddles. flections on technology and the accident, Virilio exposes this nihilistic drive as · 45 Virilio and Lotringer (1983: 31-32). We that which turns back upon itself and will have to return to this matter of threatens the ruin of all the advantages "epistemo-technical" questioning, for it en• for which it may take responsibility. tails the possibility of operating within an Virilio's ethical call in the face of the instrumental mode of reason much like we accident displays similarities to Han found in the Ge-stell. 46 Virilio (1997: 84). 4 7 Ihde(l991: 75 ff).
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Jonas' imperative of responsibility.48 like Jonas' ethical thought as a propaedeutic, and could augment the On Virilio's Heuristic of Fear latter's insight by offering a phenomeno• & a Correlative Phenomeno• logically substantial model of inquiry by means of which we may apply this heu• logical Ethic ristic of fear.
Hans Jonas contends that our powers for What I am calling Virilio 's ethic oftech• technological manufacturing and inno• nology couples the phenomenological vating have outstripped our powers of conclusion for the inevitability of the prediction, precluding the possibility of accident with a heuristic of fear to knowing with certainty the long-range prophesize a potentially severe gener• effects of our new technologies. Our alized accident in the hope of promot• resentful desire for incessant technologi• ing a modest, more ethically sensitive cal advance ironically presents an un• use oftechnologies. Unlike Jonas' ethi• known in the face of which we must cally paralyzed vision, Virilio does not exhibit a new humility, or caution. Jonas believe that the impossibility of making suggests, then, that we must exercise a "certain" predictions concerning "heuristics of fear" to temper our exces• technology's consequences need entail sive ability to create and act through the impossibility for postulating reason• technological means, the consequences ably foreseeable assessments of a of which can be known only in retro• technology's impact. Virilio's phenom• spect. Whereas Jonas and Virilio seem• enological method allows him the op• ingly espouse a similar heuristic offear, portunity to weigh with more than less the tenets of Jonas' own theory render accuracy the benefits and reductions of it ethically paralyzed, for Jonas rules out any technologically mediated situation from the start the possibility of know• in lived-experience- on either the glo• ing long-range effects of technological bal or local level. applications. Virilio's reflections on the accident, I suggest, employ something Taking an example that Ihde uses well, the telephone presents the benefit of 48 For a discussion of Jonas not specifically communication over a distance, and couched in the language of resentment as we amplifies the distance over which we have adopted it here, see Mitcham (1994: 104-1 05). Mitcham also draws a fine paral• might interact with another. At the same lel between Jonas' secular, deontological time, however, the telephone eliminates ethic and Ellul's theological ethic of non• the face-to-face interaction of lived power. I choose Jonas here over Ellul (de• space and reduces the human partici• spite the obvious theological connection pants to a voice. With Virilio, we might between the latter and Virilio) because take this further and phenomenologi• Virilio, as I read him, would be more sym• cally evaluate the students in my com• pathetic to Jonas' ethic that seems to advo• puter lab. The distance over which they cate a use of technology, but a humble one, communicate via instant-messenger re• rather than solely a resistance, which Ellul mains the same, but the benefits now are sometimes appears to espouse. a faster connection and a form of com-
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munication more affordable than tele• sions, one might suggest that one rea• phoning, which in turn offers the possi• sonably can foresee the process of de• bility of prolonged interaction. At the sensitization precipitating a very pub• same time, however, instant-messenger lic, non-virtual movement for gay rights further disembodies the human partici• in this prejudiced community. Once pants, stripping them ofeven their voice, comfortable in a virtual realm, a leader and further reduces them, condemning may emerge as the catalyst of social them to self-presentation through a uni• change, bringing with him or her the form type-script that will deliver their lessons learned in an arena where his or messages. Gone is the emphasis and af• her voice was left uninhibited by social fection brought by tonal inflection. In dictates. Such a political advance would its place we find emoticons, type-scripts evidence, no doubt, the potentially lib• symbolizing anything from smiles to erating forces ofthe internet. One might frowns, winks to tears.49 Taking our phe• object that the liberal's presumption that nomenological investigations further a leader will emerge, or the again, this time to a social level, these psychologist's hypothesis that desensi• communication mediums bring the far tization will transfer from the virtual• to presence, but at the expense of ren• society to the natural-society, amounts dering distant the near. only to speculation. Yet such skepticism cannot justify harnessing the potential Let us recall our case of the homosexual powers ofthi s medium to save the proxi• who finds solace in an on-line commu• mal social structures of family and so• nity and apply this phenomenological ciety, which presumably require rethink• ethic of modesty. The obvious ben• ing, since they initially triggered the efits--comfort, an efficacious space for user's flight from reality and society. It the marginalized, psychological well• appears that we must evaluate each in• being, desensitization into the commu• stance individually, taking into account nity--extend only to personal interests the myriad of variables that make its within a private realm, with peripheral situation unique. public interest. The obvious reduc• tions- further fracturing of familial and But one presumption permeates all communal intimacy, false sense of se• hopes for a democratic advance through curity, users in bad faith possibly ma• on-line communities and tele-interac• nipulating private information, and, per• tion: the realization oft he emancipatory haps undermining the efforts for estab• capacity of new technologies requires a lishing an on-line community, hierar• limited restriction from the public, non• chies forming within the on-line com• virtual voice of normativity, i.e., they munity itself- impact precisely in the must be freed from the powers that origi• public realm insofar as the on-line com• nally limited the voice of the munity serves only as a flight from re• marginalized. A paradox emerges, how• ality and responsibility. ever, for when on-line communities loosen the hold of normative values, this Challenging the notion that an on-line potentially creates a space for anarchis• community entails certain social regres- tic and tyrannical users within this "free"
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realm, which threatens to stifle the Although philosophers of technology growth necessary to tum virtual realiza• have labeled Heidegger a technological tions into naturally, socially realized pessimist offering a wholesale critique events. The precondition for emancipa• of rationality, we challenge this critique tion and democratic advance, then, and understand Heidegger's polemic seems to require the purest form of de• against technology following from mocracy, which, however, could under• Nietzsche, and alter it accordingly. The mine itself. Hence, our brief phenom• dismissal of rationality is not of ratio• enological exercise suggests that it ap• nality broadly conceived, but of a cer• pears (and the short history of the tain kind of rationality, instrumental ra• internet confirms that it is) valuable to tionality. Rationality in the pejorative ill)plement some form of structure in sense susceptible to the critique of tech• order to maximize the information age's nology cannot be equated with rational• liberating capacities, sacrificing neither ity considered broadly, which examines the self nor the ethical/social. From this and seeks to make reasonable sugges• point, the ethicist should join forces with tions concerning a benefit or reduction the group attempting to organize and of technology. While calculative ratio• select a mediator, or some other appro• nality has received the most criticism pr}ate course of action. among theorists concerned with technol• ogy, we must not let drop from our mind After our brief experimental example of that rationality as calculative becomes how a community might employ this pernicious only to the extent that it phenomenological ethic of technologi• serves technological man's resentful cal modesty, one might object further desire to 'correct' life. Neither that the very method of a phenomeno• Nietzsche (the neo-Kantian logical ethics oftechnology undermines perspectivalist), nor Heidegger (the ex• itself insofar as it operates from the same istential phenomenologist), nor Virilio method ofcalculative , evaluative reason (the Christian phenomenologist of tech• characterized by the Ge-stell and criti• nology) wishes to throw away reason; cized by Heidegger and Virilio as instru• they only wish to throw away the total• mental. On the surface of it, this objec• izing model of reason in the service of tion appears substantial, but everything what Nietzsche first identified as nihil• remains 'in the details as unpacked istic resentment. The notions of the ac• through the course ofthis essay, and the cident and the heuristic of fear challenge Nietzschean element in Virilio now as• this resentful form of reason that deploys sumes a crucial role in what we propose technology unreflectively and exces• Virilio's ethics oftechnology might look sively, bringing it to its pragmatic ex• like. treme where the drive for progress ends in inertia or other forms of termination. The heuristic of fear nevertheless re• 49 An emotlcon might look like this: smile mains an empty theory unless given : ) or frown : ( . some phenomenological substance, as Virilio's work seems to do. And more than just offering precautionary flags
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Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2021 12:49:49AM via free access MANUSYA: Journal ofHumanities 5.1, 2002 notifying users of potential proximal and References long-range consequences, our phenom• enological investigation also can alert Armitrage, J. 2000a. "Beyond Postmo• us to the possibly emancipatory and de• dernism? Part 2: Paul Vi rilio's mocratizing potential of a new technol• Hypermodern Cu Itural Theory." ogy.so Ctheory, 23, 3.
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