In these troubled times, we urgently need to understand the reasons for the moral disarmament of Europe and the paralysis that undermines it. We have shifted insidiously, say over the last thirty years, from a “modern” mode of thought, inspired by the Enlightenment, towards a conception that I call, with others, “postmodern”. Our critical gaze focused, legitimately, on the tragedies of the 20th century (world wars, totalitarianism), which the Enlightenment did not prevent, has led us to the opposite excess: we Europeans should now be in a state of permanent repentance and renounce any potentially warlike power, by making a few great principles the only sacred texts we have left (democracy, rule of law, human rights, etc.). Moreover, our once mostly enthusiastic appreciation of technology has also changed profoundly. Here too, we think we can master them through great principles…
A little-read author, but who illustrates this critical view based on the dramas of the last century, is Günther Anders (1902-1992), a philosopher of technology. For him, “Hiroshima is everywhere” and is inseparably linked to “Auschwitz”. For Anders, following these technologically enabled events, the “religious and philosophical ethics that were in force until now have all, without exception, become obsolete.” One of the less often discussed roots of postmodern ideology is precisely its perception of technology, as Anders expresses it.
In fact, social or anthropological critiques of technology have always existed, before our postmodern era. I cite the main ones in my latest work (From deconstruction to wokism. Science under threat). For example Henri Bergson in The two sources of morality and religion in 1932, where he criticized machinery which reduced “the worker to the state of a machine”. His criticism, however, is anchored in modernity: the technique can be used well or badly. Bergson writes: mechanics “will only provide services proportionate to its power if humanity, which it has bent even more towards the earth, manages through it to straighten itself up and look at the sky.” Among these “modern” authors, technology is seen as the objectification, mainly neutral, of the human will (“a means implemented with a view to an end”).
On the contrary, for postmodern “technocritical” authors, often influenced by Martin Heidegger for whom science is at the service of technology and not the other way around, and who had rejected the idea of the neutrality of technology, it is not no longer a question of considering technology as a set of means that man can use well or badly depending on his intentions. The technical takeover of nature would take over man himself. This concept is found in various ideologies, such as ecologism, the “return to the earth”, etc. It would be impossible to renounce the course of technology, as if it were in a historical process, initiated by Man, but beyond the control of his will.
“Domination”
It also seemed important to me to quote in my book Herbert Marcuse, for whom technique is not neutral and imposes finalities: “It is not only after the fact, and from the outside, that are imposed on the technique certain purposes and certain interests belonging specifically to domination. These purposes and these interests already enter into the constitution of the technical apparatus itself.
The concept that appears here is that of “domination”: is “domination” over nature and men not simply the use of the technique, but the technique itself. This idea of domination is of course inspired by Marxism: capitalism can only be “exploitation of workers”. Today, “workers” and their social condition are no longer of much interest to the postmodern left and its wokist avatar: the domination to be denounced is that which would be exercised over minorities, women and nature. It is no longer a question of advocating the “collective appropriation of the means of production” (Marxist), but of destroying these means and, beyond that, all of Western civilization must be “deconstructed”.
Postmodern thought has also imposed an erroneous reading of Descartes’ famous phrase in the Discourse on Methodwhich recommended that men become “as masters and possessors of nature”, omitting the finality: “but mainly also for the preservation of health”.
Political ecologists are not postmodern by chance: their intellectual references are found in “technocritical” authors. This naturally leads them, if I dare say, to the most fanatical wokism (the environmentalist mayors and the indescribable Sandrine Rousseau bear witness to this…). In fact, environmentalism is one of the inseparable (pseudo-scientific) constituents of this postmodern ideology. We can even wonder if the latter could have taken on such proportions among the “elites” and a large part of the political spectrum in Europe without environmentalism.
I propose to date the origin of postmodern ideology in 1962, the year of the publication of the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (a few years before the publication of the major works of Günther Anders). This work initiated the fight against pesticides and more broadly against chemistry. The idea of progress is therefore called into question, and little by little, “ecology” has won the battle of ideas, leading to cultural hegemony (according to the precepts of Antonio Gramsci). Man is guilty of destroying nature through technology. He then became guilty of everything (if he is a white male…).
Sans-tragic
Obviously not everything is wrong in the criticisms of the use of techniques, far from it. The problem is that reasoned and reasonable use of a technology is no longer possible when it has been indicted by political ecology and its franchised organizations. Nor any case-by-case assessment. The files on civil nuclear power, GMOs and even glyphosate bear witness to this. Except of course in the event of a return to reality, as recently for nuclear power. Environmentalism, however, remains a formidable machine against technologies and the companies that put them on the market. The latter, if they do not submit, must be destroyed.
If this “ecological” ideology has taken on such proportions, it is because it has resonated with an aspiration for the non-tragic, following the wars and totalitarianism of the 20th century, and with our Western guilt. Political ecology has extended this aspiration for the tragic-free to technological risks. Technologies, at least those targeted by political ecology, have become like new potential oppressors for the environment and health. New major principles have been invented, including the precautionary principle, to remedy this.
The problems that we now have to resolve are the paralyzing, not to say suicidal, excesses of our main principles: including the precautionary principle which has become “precautionism” or the principle of inaction, which prevents a reasoned approach to certain technologies. A product of the same ideology, the sacralization of the “rule of law” very often seems to restrict the action of governments and parliaments (even though it is their role to develop the law in a reasoned manner, when the interest of the country requests it).
* Marcel Kuntz is director of research at the CNRS and author of “From deconstruction to wokism. Science threatened” (VA Editions).