Stiegler, Habermas and the Techno-logical Condition of Man

摘要

In his multi-volume work Technics and Time Bernard Stiegler forges a new and highly original understanding of the relation between the human and technics. By thinking of technics as organized inorganic matter endowed with a proper dynamic and constitutive of temporality, Stiegler considers the evolution of technics as mutually constitutive with the evolution of the human. Moreover, Stiegler claims that this notion of “originary technicity” has been systematically disavowed by the philosophical tradition as a result of which it has always tended to oppose technics to the human. Starting from a discussion of Stiegler's critical engagement with the paleontologist Andr Leroi-Gourhan, this article aims at expanding its bearing to Jrgen Habermas's theory of technics, a possibility at which Stiegler himself hints but which he does not pursue. It will be argued that the opposition Leroi-Gourhan draws between technical consciousness and symbolic consciousness reappears in Habermas's writings as that between “work” and “interaction” or “purposive-rational action” and “communicative action”.