Critical Theory and the Thought of Andrew Feenberg Darrell P. Arnold · Andreas Michel Editors Critical Theory and the Thought of Andrew Feenberg Editors Darrell P. Arnold Andreas Michel Biscayne College Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology St. Thomas University Terre Haute, IN, USA Miami Gardens, FL, USA

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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Contents

1 Introduction 1 Darrell P. Arnold and Andreas Michel

Part I Reverberations of Marx and Lukács

2 What is the “Philosophy of Praxis”? 17 Steven Vogel

3 Philosophy of Praxis or Philosophical Anthropology? Andrew Feenberg and Axel Honneth on Lukács’s Theory of Reifcation 47 Konstantinos Kavoulakos

4 Gegenständlichkeit—From Marx to Lukács and Back Again 71 Christian Lotz

5 Feenberg, Rationality and Isolation 91 Clive Lawson

v vi Contents

Part II Between Democracy and a Politics of Resistance

6 Transforming Dystopia with Democracy: The Technical Code and the Critical Theory of Technology 117 Graeme Kirkpatrick

7 Andrew Feenberg’s Ecological Modernism 139 Darrell P. Arnold

8 Between Instrumentalism and Determinism: Western Marxism and Feenberg’s Critical Theory of Technology 163 Matthew Greaves

Part III From Heidegger Through Postmodernism: The Ongoing Role of the Critical Theory of Technology

9 The Question Concerning a Vital Technology: Heideggerian Infuences on the Philosophy of Andrew Feenberg 193 Dana S. Belu

10 Future Questions: Democracy and the New Converging Technologies 217 Andreas Michel

11 Revisiting Critical Theory in the Twenty-First Century 241 Raphael Sassower

12 Andrew Feenberg, Critical Theory, and the Critique of Technology 263 Douglas Kellner

Part IV A Critical Response

13 Replies to Critics: Epistemology, Ontology, Methodology 285 Andrew Feenberg Contents vii

14 Appendix: Interview with Bruna Della Torre de Carvalho Lima and Eduardo Altheman Camargo Santos 319 Bruna Della Torre de Carvalho Lima and Eduardo Altheman Camargo Santos

Index 327 Editors and Contributors

About the Editors

Darrell P. Arnold is Editor of Traditions of Systems Theory (Taylor & Francis) and translator of many works from German, including Matthias Vogel’s Media of Reason (Columbia UP) and Chrys Mantzavinos’ Naturalistic Hermeneutics (Cambridge UP). He works on issues in critical theory and systems theory, especially as relevant to globaliza- tion, environmental philosophy, and . Darrell is Professor of Philosophy and Coordinator of the Liberal Studies and Philosophy programs at St. Thomas University. He is also the President of the Humanities and Technology Association (HTA), a national inter- disciplinary society focusing on the study of technology and society. From 2012 through 2014 Darrell was editor of the Humanities and Technology Review, the journal of the HTA. Andreas Michel is Professor of German at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Indiana. His main interests are intellectual history, theories of modernity, and the philosophy of technology. He has recently published Historiografe der Moderne: Carl Einstein, Paul Klee, Robert Walser (eds. Michael Baumgartner, Andreas Michel, Reto Sorg) Fink Verlag, 2016. He has published essays on Carl Einstein, Gianni Vattimo, German romanticism, modernity and postmodernity, and the philosophy of technology. He has served as President of the Humanities and Technology Association (HTA) (2006–2012) and of the Carl Einstein-Society (2010–2017). ix x Editors and Contributors

Contributors

Dana S. Belu is Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Philosophy Department at California State University, Dominguez Hills. She works at the intersection of , philosophy of technology and feminist philosophy. Her book Heidegger, Reproductive Technology & The Motherless Age was published with Palgrave Macmillan in 2016. Andrew Feenberg is Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Technology in the School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, where he directs the Applied Communication and Technology Lab. He also serves as Directeur de Progamme at the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris. His books include Questioning Technology, Transforming Technology, Heidegger and Marcuse, Between Reason and Experience, and The Philosophy of Praxis: Marx, Lukács and the Frankfurt School. A book on Feenberg’s philosophy of technology entitled Democratizing Technology, appeared in 2006. His book Technosystem: The Social Life of Reason was published in 2017. Matthew Greaves is a doctoral candidate, instructor, and union activist at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. His research appears in journals such as Rethinking Marxism, The International Journal of Technology, Knowledge and Society, New Proposals, and the Canadian Journal of Communication. Konstantinos Kavoulakos (born in Athens, Greece, in 1967) is Associate Professor of Social and at the University of Crete (Greece). He is the author or editor of 12 books. His research focuses on an investigation of the twentieth century tradition of criti- cal social thought. His most recent books include Ästhetizistische Kulturkritik und ethische Utopie. Georg Lukács’s neukantianisches Frühwerk, (Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2014), and Tragedy and History. The Critique of Modern Culture in the Early Work of Georg Lukács 1902– 1918 (Athens: Alexandria, 2012, in Greek). Douglas Kellner is George Kneller Chair in the Philosophy of Education at UCLA and is author of many books on social theory, poli- tics, history, and culture, including and the Crisis of Marxism, Camera Politica; Critical Theory, Marxism, and Modernity; Jean Baudrillard: From Marxism to Postmodernism and Beyond; works in social theory and cultural studies such as Media Culture; a trilogy of Editors and Contributors xi books on postmodern theory with Steve Best; a trilogy of books on the media and the Bush administration; his most recent books are Media Spectacle and Insurrection, 2011: From the Arab Uprisings to Occupy Everywhere and American Nightmare: Donald Trump, Media Spectacle, and Authoritarian Populism. His website is http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/ faculty/kellner/kellner.html. Graeme Kirkpatrick is senior lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester. He is author of several monographs on critical theory, aes- thetics and technology, including Aesthetic Theory and the Video Game (MUP 2011) and Computer Games and the Social Imaginary (Polity 2013). Clive Lawson is the Director of Studies in Economics at Girton College, Cambridge, UK. His central interest is in social ontology, but he has written recently in environmental economics, the philosophy of technology and the history of economic thought. He is an editor of the Cambridge Journal of Economics and founder member of the Cambridge Social Ontology Group. His book Technology and Isolation was published with Cambridge University Press in 2017. Christian Lotz is Professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University. His most recent book publications are The Art of Gerhard Richter. Hermeneutics, Images, Meaning (Bloomsbury Press, 2015, pbk 2017); The Capitalist Schema. Time, Money, and the Culture of Abstraction (Lexington Books, 2014; pbk. 2016); Christian Lotz zu Marx, Das Maschinenfragment (Laika Verlag, 2014); Ding und Verdinglichung. Technik- und Sozialphilosophie nach Heidegger und der kritischen Theorie (ed., Fink Verlag, 2012). His current research interests are in classical German phenomenology, critical theory, Marx, Marxism, , and contemporary European political philosophy. Raphael Sassower is Professor and occasional Chair of Philosophy, and Director of the Center for Legal Studies at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. Concerned with postmodern technoscience, the range of topics he writes about include technoscience, political economy, aes- thetics, and education. In addition to writing journalistic pieces, his latest books include: Democratic Problem-Solving: Dialogues in Social Epistemology with Justin Cruickshank (2016), Compromising the Ideals of Science (2015), and The Price of Public Intellectuals (2014). xii Editors and Contributors

Steven Vogel is John and Christine Warner Professor of Philosophy at Denison University. He is the author of Thinking like a Mall: Environmental Philosophy after the End of Nature (MIT Press, 2015) and Against Nature: The Concept of Nature in Critical Theory (SUNY Press, 1996), as well as of many articles in journals such as Environmental Ethics, Environmental Values, and others. He is also the Co-Director of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy.