Christine Blaettler University of Kiel Philosophical Institute
Culture and Technology
My contribution deals with the topic of cultural criticism via the critique of technology. For this, I will elaborate on the philosophy of technology as a kind of cultural philosophy, as well as, with a slight shift of emphasis, on cultural philosophy as a kind of philosophy of technology. I will proceed as follows: My paper will start out from the judgemental guiding differences which have been popular with philosophy since the 20th century, such as the difference between culture and technology, but also technology and nature, regularly resulting in a critique of technology. I identify this critique of technology as a hostility towards technology and analyse it by the presuppositions they are based on. Furthermore, I will explain how, after all, this critique of technology is articulated as cultural criticism and then as a criticism of modernity. In the context of this debate I will sketch possibilities to grasp technology in terms of cultural philosophy and, thus based, to discuss it instead of sweepingly condemning it. A longer, still existing and also philosophical tradition, formulates its way of understanding technology as being in opposition to its followers understanding of culture. One explanation is provided by Norbert Elias’s distinction of civilisation and culture: in the German language, civilisation refers to something which is definitely useful but is, after all, considered secondary, as it concerns only the surface of human existence.1 The term by which, according to Elias, Germans like to refer to themselves and which they say expresses most significantly their way of understanding themselves, is on the other hand culture. N. Elias, The Civilizing Proces: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations (The History of Manners, 1939), transl. by E. Jephcott with some notes and corrections by the author, ed. by E. Dunning, J. Goudsblum and S. Mennell, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2011. 1