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A Reevaluation of Marcuse's Philosophy of Technology A Reevaluation of Marcuse's Philosophy of Technology Michael Kidd Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. University of Tasmania, July, 2013. 1 A Reevaluation of Marcuse's Philosophy of Technology Michael Kidd 2 Declaration of Originality This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for a degree or diploma by the University or any other institution, except by way of background information and duly acknowledged in the thesis, and to the best of my knowledge and belief no material previously published or written by another person except where due acknowledgement is made in the text of the thesis, nor does the thesis contain any material which infringes copyright. This thesis may be made available for loan and limited copying and communication in accordance with the Copyright Act 1968. 3 Abstract This thesis provides a reevaluation of Herbert Marcuse's philosophy of technology. It argues that rather than offering an abstract utopian or dystopian account of technology, Marcuse's philosophy of technology can be read as a cautionary approach developed by a concrete philosophical utopian. The strategy of this thesis is to reread Marcuse's key texts in order to challenge the view that his philosophy of technology is abstractly utopian. Marcuse is no longer a fashionable figure and there has been little substantive literature devoted to the problem of the utopian character of his philosophy of technology since the works of Douglas Kellner and Andrew Feenberg. This thesis seeks to reposition Marcuse as a concrete philosophical utopian. It then reevaluates his philosophy of technology from this standpoint and suggests that it may have relevance to some contemporary debates. Marcuse's writings on technology are the primary focus of this thesis, together with a range of major secondary sources. My discussion is accordingly narrow, although its implications are sometimes extensive. Chapter one introduces the problem to be addressed and locates it in the relevant secondary literature. It explains the strategy and the structure of the thesis as well as the limits of the enquiry. Chapter two reevaluates the influence of Marxian theory on Marcuse's philosophy of technology and shows he appropriated it as a critical-analytical approach to modern society. Chapter three emphasises how Marcuse's critique of the decline of the 'second dimension' of critical reason gives a specific cast to his thought whilst drawing out the implications of his distinction between technics and technology. This chapter also acknowledges the early influence of Marcuse's Heideggerian formation. Chapter four shows that Marcuse's philosophy of technology may have more relevance to contemporary debates about the philosophy of technology than might be expected. It does so by giving a critique of the current emphasis on perpetual economic growth from the perspective of the kind attributed to Marcuse. Chapter five defends Marcuse's concept of nature from a number of prominent contemporary criticisms and suggests that, despite its apparent concerns, it remains relevant to the determination of issues common to philosophers of technology and the environment. Chapter six defends Marcuse’s philosophy of technology from contemporary ‘instrumental’ accounts, and chapter seven undertakes the same task in relation to autonomous accounts of technology. 4 The thesis concludes that dismissals of Marcuse’s philosophy of technology as abstractly utopian and pessimistic are one sided and in some respects precipitate. Moreover, there may be something still to be learnt from his approach to this area of research. His philosophy of technology is arguably more valuable than the existing literature suggests because it has concrete philosophical features that can then be applied to developments since his death. This is not to suggest that Marcuse’s claims can be made out or that his theorising is free from serious problems, it is to correct the record in certain limited respects. 5 Contents Chapter 1: Utopia and the Problem of Method General Introduction Literature Review Chapter 2: The Marxian Foundations of Marcusean Philosophy of Technology Labour and Nature: Marxian Philosophical Anthropology Alienation Chapter 3: One and Two-Dimensional Thought From Liberation to Control Marcusean Philosophy of Technology Technological Rationality and the End of Technology Chapter 4: Marcuse on the Contradictions of Perpetual Growth Chapter 5: The New Technology? New Science, New Technology Misapprehending Nature Nature as Social Construction Chapter 6: A Critique of Instrumental Theories of Technology Organisms and Artifacts The "Designer Fallacy" and the Creative Reappropriation of Artifacts Disanalogies Between Art, Text, and Technics 6 Chapter 7: A Critique of Autonomous Theories of Technology A Confusion of Theories: Autonomous Technology and Technological Determinism Evolutionary Theories of Technology Combining Evolution and Determinism: The Singularity Hypothesis A Critique of the Singularity Hypothesis Chapter 8: Conclusion 7 Ὁ τῆς φύσεως πλοῦτος καὶ ὥρισται καὶ εὐπόριστός ἐστιν· ὁ δέ τῶν κενῶν δοξῶν εἰς ἄπειρον ἐκπίπτει. Nature's wealth is restricted and easily won, whilst that of empty convention runs on to infinity.1 1 Epicurus, 'Leading Doctrines', 15, The Philosophy of Epicurus, translated by G.K. Strodach, (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press), p.54. 8 General Introduction This thesis will offer a new interpretation of Herbert Marcuse's philosophy of technology. As the treatment of Marcuse's work in the decades since his death have been scant as well as sometimes one-sided, this thesis will argue that Marcuse still has much to offer in regard to the shared grounds of philosophy of technology and philosophy of the environment. It will be the aim to argue that Marcuse offers a cautionary approach to modern technology from which risks facing the human future can be seen to be the result of the edifice of technoscientific production being increasingly motivated and directed toward monetary, rather than strictly technical incentives. As such, problems of crucial, practical exigency – specifically those of an environmental nature – tend to become ever- more contingent upon the a priori convention of profit-motives and economic growth. As it will be the aim to argue, the extent of biospheric destabilisation already unleashed as a consequence of this historically unprecedented arrangement comes at a most inopportune time for civilisation; modern technologically-augmented humanity may be far less stable than is commonly considered, and therefore technology requires radical caution. History arguably shows the essential ambiguity of technology – since the industrial revolution, technoscientific development had allowed for dramatic rises in living conditions, education, health, life-expectancy and affluence. Yet, Marcuse was intimately aware of its destructive powers and the consequences – both intended and unintended – that could be unleashed with recourse to modern technoscience. However, although he addressed environmental problems late in his career, Marcuse would likely not have predicted the extent to which civilisation under the sway of the "technological mode of production" could come to be endangered by its own success. As a result of technological and industrial proliferation and increased numbers of humans, species diversity has dwindled, crucial resources are being speedily depleted, various forms of pollution have contaminated the waters and atmosphere, rates of salination and desertification grow, and various biospheric cycles are now considered to have been destabilised. Furthermore, technoscientific advance itself has yielded certain novel, historically unprecedented threats; as advancement grows, so too it seems does the capacity for very few to cause great harms. However, despite this situation, governments, industry representatives, the large majority of 9 economists and a good deal of the public remains faithful to the cure-all of improvements in efficiency, logistics, distribution and of course, economic growth. This is hardly surprising and betrays an understanding of technology that reflects historical convention: technological and scientific development play an integral role in social development, in extending and augmenting human capacities, in creating opportunity. Yet, as Marcuse continually argued, technoscience is not isolated from the socio-economic mode of production – in this case – capitalism. For Marcuse, it is both technological rationality and capitalist relations of production which constitute advanced capitalist societies, and his analysis implies that capitalist imperatives structure technological rationality while technological rationality in turn helps structure advanced capitalism.1 If not completely dependent upon an imperative of perpetual growth, virtually all forms of this mode have been accompanied by it, and its modern defenders claim with clockwork regularity that its direction of the means and relations of production provides the solution to virtually all social and now environmental ills. Yet this is based on a misnomer – the material resources technology ultimately relies upon on are finite – but the growth imperative is theoretically infinite. In order to address this contention, this thesis will therefore aim to expand upon Marcuse's argument that it is not technics or technology per se that has led to the current environmental predicament, but the incentives that tend to prevail
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