The second course I taught for undergraduates at Tsinghua, “Introduction to Philosophy of Technology,” has now come to a fairly successful close. I had already posted a summary of comments on the assignments for “Introduction to Philosophy of Technology”. Now let me give a proper summary.
Overall Design
This course, together with the earlier General History of Technology, is one of the two general-education courses I have been “scheming” to build. Once I have taught these two courses well, I may also try offering courses such as “General History of Science,” or “History of the Industrial Revolution,” “Introduction to Philosophy of Science,” and “History of Science and Philosophy,” but for the past couple of years, these two courses will probably just alternate.
These two courses can be said to be sister courses: they echo one another in theme, but their positioning is different. “General History of Technology” is aimed at the general public, while “Introduction to Philosophy of Technology” is aimed at the elite.
What does “aimed at the elite” mean? In fact, the students who can get into Tsinghua all count as elite, and their learning ability should not be a problem. The difference lies mainly in their attitude toward learning—whether they merely want to hear some fresh knowledge, or whether they are proactively taking on difficult problems.
In the “General History of Technology” course, I do not place much demand on students’ independent study (though being more proactive is always better), but “Introduction to Philosophy of Technology” does require some initiative from students. If students merely listen to the class as if they were hearing a storyteller tell a tale—of course I did indeed provide quite a few new things—then their gains from this course will be extremely limited.
What, then, do I hope students will gain from this introduction to philosophy? Certainly not a top-down indoctrination of some “cosmic truth,” but neither is it merely a collection of fresh yet rigid pieces of knowledge—for example, what Heidegger said, what Marcuse said, or a pile of abstruse philosophical terms. Apart from occasionally showing off one’s learning, these things do not mean all that much.
The point of a philosophy course, or indeed the basic mission of this kind of general-education course whose primary aim is to stimulate thought, is “to liberate the mind”: to help students break free of prejudice and fixed patterns of thinking, and to think independently. In a recent article I mentioned the so-called “liberal education”; philosophy courses are an important part of that.
Therefore, I changed my original text-centered course design and instead made “problems” the center. Each class was organized around philosophical questions (such as what technology is, the relation between humans and technology, the similarities and differences between modern and ancient technology, whether technology has autonomy, and so on), while philosophers and their classic texts were digested by me and woven into the course content.
The teaching consultants who sat in on the class offered me some suggestions, such as adopting a step-by-step heuristic approach that moves “from the known to the unknown.” This of course makes sense, but the consultant teacher thought that what students already knew was Marxist philosophy, and that I could begin with philosophical discourse familiar to them. I did not agree. In fact, many students only treat Marxist philosophy as a political compulsory course to get through; in substance, they have not deeply studied or understood Marx’s philosophical insights. If I were to begin with Marx’s philosophy of technology, it might instead provoke resistance or misunderstanding. But “from the known to the unknown” still has value, and what I understand the students’ “known” part to be is actually their plain, everyday understanding of technical activity—things like the mineral-water bottle in front of them, desks and chairs, projectors, and so on. Thus, during class I often returned to familiar things right before our eyes as examples: the bottle of water at hand, advertisements everyone knows by heart, and so on. These commonplace things contain many implicit assumptions, but how exactly those assumptions become possible is a rich subject indeed.
The reason why philosophical classics from decades or even centuries ago remain worth reading is not only that they have value for textual scholarship, but also that the distinctive perspectives and ways of thinking they offer can still enlighten us today. So while teaching philosophers’ ideas, I often returned to the familiar everyday world before us and started again from there. Thus, the “from the known to the unknown” that I interpret is “from the world of everyday life to the world of classic texts.”
Moreover, “from the known to the unknown” does not necessarily mean “from shallow to deep.” On the contrary, it is often harder to re-understand what is already “known.” Something you have never known before, the first time you hear it, will at least yield some gain; but with things you have long since known, to discover new knowledge within what has become habitual is not easy at all.
As for the order of content, I did not follow the usual method of “from shallow to deep.” First, I arranged the course along two intersecting threads, “problems” and “history” (for example, first discussing the origins of technology and humankind, and then the transition from ancient to modern technology). Second, to some extent I adopted a design of “from deep to shallow”: I first explained the most difficult parts, and told students not to expect to understand every single word and sentence right away, but rather to keep them in mind, so that in later classes, through one concrete and vivid case after another, they could repeatedly recall the difficult theories they had first learned. In this way, the two could confirm one another, and we could keep circling back to deepen our understanding. Thus, in the first half of the semester I first taught the most difficult thinker, Stiegler, and then the relatively easier McLuhan and Mumford; in the second half of the semester I first taught the most difficult Heidegger, and then Marx, Marcuse, and others. In my post-class communications with students, I found that this design was indeed effective: for instance, after studying Marcuse, some students happily said that they now had a new understanding of the Heidegger they had read earlier.
In each class I tried not to use up all the time, leaving about 15 minutes at the end for students to ask questions or discuss freely. From the questions students raised, I could gauge how much they had absorbed from the course material. Judging from their in-class responses and their final papers, this group of students’ comprehension exceeded my optimistic expectations, which made me very happy~ The final enrollment in this course settled at 23 students; until the end of the semester, attendance was basically around 20 students every class. In a course without roll call, that attendance rate can prove that the students were indeed sincerely eager to learn, and that my class truly had a certain appeal.
Of course, for a first-time offering, there were also many shortcomings. The most crucial one is that although I had already formed some broad ideas in advance, I had almost no predesigned structure for the specific process. Each week I prepared on the fly and taught immediately, and at times it felt somewhat rushed. Next year, when I teach it again, it should be much better.
Below I will briefly review the course in sequence:
1. History of Technology as Transcendental Philosophy
In the first two weeks, the first thing was naturally to introduce the course requirements; the second thing was this “discouragement” segment. I organized the content of “Media History as Transcendental Philosophy” into a handout and taught it in the first two classes. Plato’s Meno paradox, Kant’s transcendental philosophy, Husserl’s retention, and Stiegler’s tertiary memory were all thrown onto the table. But in fact there was not much content; if I had focused only on this section, it would have taken just a little over an hour, while the two weeks of class amounted to a total of three hours. I repeated some of the opening content twice, and there was also quite a bit of time for free questions. There were indeed quite a few students who were “discouraged” by this, and in particular, it seemed that not a single international student remained. But from the questions asked in class, the abstruse opening content still aroused many students’ interest. This made me remember that during my trial lecture for the job interview, Teacher Song Jijie told me: don’t underestimate Tsinghua students’ ability to take things in. Give them something profound—so long as it is good stuff, the students will still accept it.
2. The Extension of Human Beings
The second chapter was about “the extension of human beings.” The first class discussed “technology as an extension of human beings,” based mainly on McLuhan; the second class discussed “human beings as extension,” drawing more on the ontology of ready-to-hand equipment in Heidegger’s Being and Time.
I began with the explication of technology, discussing how in the modern sense the word “technology” increasingly leans toward images of externalization and objectification, yet the inward image of technology as “human ability” has never disappeared either. This duality of “inner–outer” suggests the existence of a medium that communicates and transforms between inside and outside: that is technology as medium.
I then pointed out that “medium” is not a pipeline laid between the so-called inside (subject) and outside (object), two ready-made and determinate things, but rather something more originary and more active as a constitutor. “Human beings,” rather than being the endpoint on the inner side, are better understood as the medium itself, shifting in between.
3. The Origins of Technology and Human Nature
The first two chapters (four weeks) were the most difficult part; after that, the content became much easier. In the first two chapters, we tried to break the traditional view that “human beings” are some completely inward, self-sufficient pure soul unrelated to technology and external things. We came to see that the self-construction of “human beings” cannot do without external technology. So we then turned to the history of technology or human history to explore the origins of the construction of “human beings.” We still first borrowed Stiegler’s line of thought, refuting the essentialist anthropology that presupposes a human “state of nature,” discussing concepts such as “the fault of Epimetheus,” defect as essence, and the invention of human beings, and arriving at the conclusion that technology and human beings mutually construct one another.
Further, since technology and human beings mutually construct one another, what kind of technology and what kind of human nature are mutually constructing one another? Some people say that Stiegler ties human nature and technology together—doesn’t that still amount to an essentialist view? The answer is simple, because technology really does play a certain role as “human nature,” but “technology” is plural, diversified, and historical, rather than some fixed foundation set up by traditional essentialism. Noting the multiple aspects of technology or the different developmental tendencies of human nature, we then reintroduced Mumford. He opposed the traditional overemphasis on aggressive tool technology, revealing the multiple dimensions of technology such as container technology, body technology, and social technology, and discussed the opposition between organic technology and the megamachine.
4. The Separation and Union of Nature and Artifice
My course implicitly followed a timeline from ancient times to the present. After finishing the “origin” stage of technology and human beings, the next stage I was preparing to teach was the separation of technology and science. This chapter was to a large extent a piece of history of technology/history of science content, and it overlapped considerably with my General History of Technology course. But here I focused more on speculative questions than on historical stories.
I began by discussing the contemporary concept of “nature.” I listed a few advertising slogans—natural rice, natural wooden doors, natural cosmetics, natural therapies, and so on. In these, the concept of “natural” is very subtle: it seems to be directly hostile to technology or science and technology, yet on closer examination there are also certain contradictions.
The concepts of nature and technology have from the very beginning existed in this relation of opposition and entanglement. I began with the “discovery of nature” by ancient Greek philosophers, and then discussed the all-around “rupture” between nature and artifice in classical philosophy. Natural objects stand opposed to artificial objects, natural philosophy (physics) stands opposed to mechanics, free men stand opposed to slaves, philosophers stand opposed to craftsmen, and so on. These oppositions helped form the unique Greek scientific tradition, but the rise of modern science was accompanied by a rejoining of these oppositions.
The alchemical tradition was the first current to bridge the artificial and the natural. Building on my previous history of science and history of technology courses, this time I also, as it were, learned and immediately applied, citing Jin Shixiang’s newly written paper “The Medieval Origins of Modern Experimental Science—The Concept of Techne in Western Alchemy.”
The following class mainly reconnected Newtonian mechanics—if one may say so, confused again—the inward and the outward, integrating nature and artifice.
5. An Interpretation of “The Question Concerning Technology”
In the fifth chapter I changed the teaching format. I required students to read at least the full text of Heidegger’s “The Question Concerning Technology,” and then I explained it paragraph by paragraph in class.
Although my previous courses had also been based on philosophers’ texts, with the views of Heidegger, Stiegler, Mumford, McLuhan, and others interwoven throughout the classroom, fundamentally speaking, what I taught was actually my own line of thought—things I had digested and integrated myself. So I reminded students not to simply take the views I presented in class and assume they were directly Heidegger’s or Stiegler’s views, because I was always narrating them according to the logic I had chewed through myself.
This made me feel a little insecure, because philosophy, on the one hand, must begin from oneself in thinking, but on the other hand it must still open one’s heart to reading the classic texts of great philosophers. After some consideration, I decided to insert a reading session like this. Of course, this was also because “The Question Concerning Technology” is far too important a text in the field of philosophy of technology, and it is a pivotal link that connects past and future, so it deserves to be read carefully on its own.
In next year’s course, I may try a different way of teaching and also use my digested version to explain “The Question Concerning Technology.”
6. Marx and His Critical Tradition
Heidegger’s “The Question Concerning Technology” moves from the essence of technology to the similarities and differences between modern and ancient technology, which perfectly connects the past and the future. In the classes that followed, we moved from the question of “essence” to a more concrete focus on reflection upon modern technology. Marx is the most important critic of modernity, so we began with Marx’s historical materialism and his theory of alienated labor.
When I taught Marx, I did not go very deep. First, I hoped to dispel the misunderstandings students had accumulated over many years about Marx’s philosophy for obvious reasons. I emphasized understanding Marx’s philosophical background from the perspective of German classical philosophy, with special attention to his concern with “alienation.”
In the following class we focused specifically on Marcuse and the Frankfurt School tradition of “critique of instrumental rationality” that he represents. I felt this section was moderately difficult: it contains profound philosophical reflection, yet it is also very approachable in delivery, and it can fairly well provoke students’ self-reflection. Rational thinking of the sort that seems self-evident—“be pragmatic,” “analyze specific problems specifically,” and so on—under Marcuse’s line of thought all carry a certain danger (one-dimensionality).
Inserted discussion class: the gene-editing incident
Between Marx and Marcuse, we also inserted an impromptu discussion class, because the He Jiankui incident had just broken then, and this was a vivid real-life case of philosophy of technology.
For the discussion class I sat at the back, basically letting the students give free rein to themselves, and then I offered a brief summary at the end. The students’ performance was relatively satisfying, but what was somewhat disappointing was that almost no one consciously used many of the ideas we had learned in previous classes.
For example, when we first discussed Stiegler, he mentioned the dual line of human evolution: besides phylogenetic and genetic evolution, there is also the line of “grammatization,” and gene-editing technology can actually be seen as a new stage of so-called “grammatization,” with the interaction between biological evolution and technological evolution entering a new level.
We had also discussed the mutual construction of human beings and technology. “Humanity” is not a concept that has already been fixed and made ready in advance. What counts as a human being, what counts as a child, what counts as offspring, and so on—all of these concepts change with the development of technology, and gene-editing technology is another sign of that.
Then there is the relation between technology and nature, which is also reflected in genetic technology: we denounce technology as “anti-natural,” but what, exactly, is nature? Our reproductive activity has already become highly technologized.
Marx’s theory of alienation can also be brought into relation, and Marx’s critique of capitalism (which we did not discuss much in class) can likewise be brought into relation.
Heidegger’s connections are even more direct; I used them in my own commentary essay.
In my concluding comments I mentioned these points of connection, and some students showed expressions of sudden realization. What I hope students learn from this course is not a string of philosophical terms, nor specific conclusions, but various vivid perspectives and lines of thought. In short, we can imagine: if Heidegger were still alive, how would he evaluate He Jiankui? If Marx were still alive, how would he evaluate He Jiankui? To be able to step outside one’s own prejudices and think from multiple angles, even to fight back and forth within oneself, letting philosophers battle in one’s own mind—that is the greatest gain from reading philosophy, and also the greatest pleasure.
7. The Autonomy of Technology
After Marx and Marcuse, we moved on to a newer topic: the autonomy of technology. The seventh chapter, which also comprised the final two classes, first focused specifically on “the theory of technological autonomy,” and then specifically examined technologies that seem truly autonomous: questions related to artificial intelligence.
On the issue of “the theory of technological autonomy,” I analyzed the fact that its rise in the twentieth century was no accident; contributing factors included the influence of evolutionary thought, automated production, and world wars, among others. I then introduced Ellul’s view of the technical system.
But Ellul, like the earlier figures in philosophy of technology, still tended to consider modern technology as a totality when thinking about the issue, believing that modern technology as a whole had broken free from human control and acquired a certain autonomy. I then introduced Winner (and in the last class Feenberg), attempting to loosen this totalizing view of technology. Interestingly, Winner does this precisely by emphasizing the autonomy of “specific technologies” in order to loosen the autonomy of “technology as a whole.”
As for the final class on computers and artificial intelligence, I still did not handle it very well, though it should have been somewhat better than last semester.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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