Rousseau, critical philosopher of technology

The first part of this article consists of excerpts from the book Technocriticisms (2014) by François Jarrige. The second comes directly from the Discourse on science and the arts (1750) by Rousseau.

Rousseau the Technocritic by François Jarrige

In the Age of Enlightenment, Rousseau embodied better than anyone the criticism of this new intellectual trajectory and the questioning of the ambivalence of techniques and their outpouring. While the liberal thought of the 18th century interpreted the development of commerce, science, and the arts as the condition for the progress of peace and freedom, Rousseau spoke out against this “progressive” and “optimistic” reading of the modern world.^[1]. Philosopher of nature and of the social contract, he was also, according to Anne Deneys-Tunney, a great theorist of technology.^[2]. The latter would have even been a central, although overlooked, element of his thought, all of his work could be read and interpreted as an attempt to answer this still current question: how can man remain free and independent in a world populated by artifacts? Indeed, Rousseau considered the sciences and the “arts” to be sources of corruption. Like luxury, they were the fruit of vanity. Rousseau would thus have been one of the first to understand the “decisive and irreversible nature of technology for man and modern societies”, to fully appreciate its “consequences in all areas where it is imposed on the individual, in moral life as well as in politics.^[3] ”. The author of Discourse on science and the arts (1750), ofemile (1762) and Social contract (1762) would thus have proposed a philosophy of reconciling man with his techniques. According to Rousseau, the technique is obviously not unilaterally bad. There is a natural technique that allows man to maintain his independence and happiness against the artificial and adulterated technique produced by the luxury and artificial needs of modern society. It was by accelerating that technical change would have produced a rupture that led to both the destruction of its natural environment and the strengthening of inequalities. By profoundly altering the dynamics of human needs and desires, technology would have created an irreversible breach that would distance us ever further from the original state of nature.^[4].

Rousseau's work is studded with descriptions of the ravages of emerging industrial techniques. According to him, it is appropriate to “carefully proscribe any machine and any invention that can shorten the work, save the workforce, and produce the same effect with less effort.^[5] ”. These remarks, present in some passages that were not preserved in the final version of Social contract, bear witness to the Rousseauist search for the independence of social man against enslavement to machines and the constraints of industry. In a famous passage from Reveries of the solitary walker (1778), he evokes the ravages of industrialization through the figure of the miner and the blacksmith: the first “excavates the bowels of the earth, he will look in its center, at the risk of his life and at the expense of his health, for imaginary goods in place of the real goods that she offered him of herself when he knew how to enjoy them.^[6] ”. In emile, Rousseau is looking for ways to build an autonomous and free relationship between the individual and his technical achievements. Thus, learning must keep the body in motion because “the more ingenious our tools are, the more gross and clumsy our organs become.” Technology is both what causes inequality and what endangers nature, as the problem of deforestation already showed at the time.^[7].

François Jarrige

Excerpt from Speech

In ancient Greek, the word” Technè ” does not differentiate industrial production from symbolic art, and has long been rendered in French as “art”. The word “art” in the old French language must therefore be understood in the sense of “technique.” For example, Montaigne in Les Essais who states: “The sciences treat things too finely, from a fashion that is too artificial and different from the common and natural. [...] If I were in the profession, I would naturalize art as much as they artificialize nature.” If I were in the profession, I would naturalize technique as they technicize nature, that's what Montaigne is telling us here. The same remark applies to the famous Discourse on science and the arts, by J-J. Rousseau, which should be understood as a Discourse on Science and Technology. The following passage is taken from Part 1 of Speech.

R.F.

The mind has its needs, as does the body. These are the foundations of society, the others are its pleasures. While the government and the laws provide for the safety and well-being of assembled men, the sciences, letters and the arts, less despotic and perhaps more powerful, spread garlands of flowers on the iron chains with which they are loaded, stifle in them the feeling of that original freedom for which they seemed to have been born, make them love their slavery and form what are called civilized peoples. Need elevated thrones; science and the arts strengthened them. Powers of the earth, love talents, and protect those who cultivate them. Civilized peoples, cultivate them: happy slaves, you owe them this delicate and fine taste that you value; this softness of character and this urbanity of manners that make trade among you so binding and so easy; in short, the appearances of all the virtues without having any.

It is by this kind of politeness, all the more amiable as it affects less showing oneself, that Athens and Rome once distinguished themselves in the days so vaunted for their magnificence and brilliance: it is through it, undoubtedly, that our century and our nation will prevail over all times and over all peoples. A philosophical tone without pedantry, natural and yet thoughtful ways, also far removed from Tudesque rusticity and ultramontane pantomime: these are the fruits of taste acquired through good studies and perfected in world trade.

How sweet it would be to live among us, if the external capacity was always the image of the disposition of the heart; if decency was virtue; if our maxims served us as rules; if true philosophy were inseparable from the title of philosopher! But so many qualities too seldom go together, and virtue hardly works with such pomp and circumstance. The richness of the ornament can herald an opulent man, and his elegance a man of taste; the healthy and robust man can be recognized by other brands: it is under the rustic habit of a ploughman, and not under the gilding of a courtesan, that we will find the strength and vigor of the body. Adornment is no less foreign to virtue, which is the strength and vigor of the soul. The good man is an athlete who enjoys fighting naked: he despises all those vile ornaments that would hinder the use of his strengths, and most of which were invented only to hide some deformity.

Before art shaped our manners and taught our passions to speak a ready language, our manners were rustic, but natural; and unlike processes, at first glance, announced that of characters. Human nature, in fact, was no better; but men found their security in the ease of penetrating each other, and this advantage, whose value we no longer feel, spared them many faults.

Today, when more subtle research and finer taste have reduced the art of pleasing to principles, there is a vile and deceptive uniformity in our mores, and all minds seem to have been cast into the same mold: always politeness requires, decorum orders: always we follow customs, never our own genius. We no longer dare to appear what we are; and in this perpetual compulsion, the men who form this herd that we call society, placed in the same circumstances, will do all the same things if more powerful motives do not distract them from it. You will therefore never know who you are dealing with: in order to know your friend, you will therefore have to wait for big occasions, that is to say, wait until there is no more time, since it is for these very occasions that it would have been essential to know him.

What series of faults will not accompany this uncertainty? No more genuine friendships; no more genuine esteem; no more well-founded trust. Suspicions, shadows, fears, coldness, reserve, reserve, hate, betrayal will constantly hide under this uniform and treacherous veil of politeness, under this urbanity so vaunted that we owe to the lights of our century. We will no longer profane the name of the master of the universe by swearing, but we will insult him with blasphemies, without offending our scrupulous ears. One will not extol one's own merit, but one will belittle the merit of others. One will not crudely insult one's enemy, but one will deftly slander him. National hatreds will end, but it will be with love for the country. For despised ignorance, dangerous pyrrhonism will be replaced. There will be proscribed excesses, dishonored vices, but others will be decorated with the name of virtues; you must either have them or affect them. To praise anyone who wants the sobriety of the wise men of the time, I see in it, for me, only a refinement of intemperance as much unworthy of my praise as their artificial simplicity.

Such is the purity that our morals have acquired. That's how we became good people. It is up to the letters, sciences and the arts to claim what is theirs in such a beneficial work. I will only add one thought; it is that an inhabitant of some remote country who would seek to form an idea of European morals on the state of science among us, on the perfection of our arts, on the propriety of our shows, on the politeness of our manners, on the affability of our manners, on the affability of our speeches, on our perpetual demonstrations of benevolence, and on this tumultuous competition of men of all ages and all states who seem eager from sunrise to sunset to obliging each other; it is that this stranger, I say, I would guess exactly the opposite of our morals.

Where there is no effect, there is no cause to look for: but here the effect is certain, real depravity, and our souls have been corrupted as our sciences and arts have advanced to perfection. Will we say that it is a particular misfortune at our age? No, gentlemen; the ills caused by our vain curiosity are as old as the world. The daily rise and fall of the waters of the ocean have not been more regularly subject to the course of the star that enlightens us during the night than the fate of morals and probity to the progress of science and the arts. We saw virtue flee as their light rose on our horizon, and the same phenomenon was observed in all times and in all places.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau