Abstract

This study provides the first systematic philosophical examination of Jacques Ellul's theory of modern society. ;Chapter One discusses Ellul's critics, showing them to be unaware of the dialectical nature of Ellul's work, and unaware that, in Ellul's view, technique is the form of modern consciousness itself. Of particular importance to Ellul's dialectic are the notions of the symbol and memory. Literary symbols are dialectical in that they point beyond themselves and depend upon meanings held in individual and cultural memory; they exhibit a structure of consciousness which has no distance from the world. The creations of technology become the world. Technical consciousness lives in the present of its creations and eliminates memory. ;Chapter Two discusses Ellul's life, his historical milieu, and his intellectual development, showing that his notions of technique grew out of the interactions between the domains of symbol, memory, and the technical. ;Chapter Three discusses the logic of technique, the structure of the "technical phenomenon," and the idea of the "technical system," showing that the logic of technique leads to a system, having the following characteristics: rationality , artificiality , automatism , self augmentation , universalism , monism , autonomy . When technique becomes a system, it becomes the sacred, and the dialectic collapses. ;Chapter Four shows how technique may be understood as a discourse and how technical mentality is revealed in the cliche. The critics in Chapter One may appear in a new light, revealing from another side, the paucity of technical discourse. The cliche is more than trivial language; it is bad thought. ;Ellul's sociological works comprise a philosophy of technology based on the notion that reality as lived is dialectical and that the symbol is the exercise of dialectic and an expression of human freedom. Technique, as a form of consciousness, is inimical to that freedom