The Question Concerning Technology in China. An Essay in Cosmotechnics

bookcover

In this remarkable book, Yuk Hui draws on the major thinkers of both the West and the East to elaborate an original reflection on the nature of technology. He has enlarged the philosophical horizon for the Anthropocene age.”

Andrew Feenberg

“There is no more challenging work for anyone interested in trying to understand both the manifold philosophical challenges of Western scientific technology and the contemporary rise of China on the world-historical scene.”

Carl Mitcham, Issues in Science and Technology

“uma das visões mais originais e poderosas sobre como pensar a tecnologia a partir de uma perspectiva filosófica” (one of the most original and powerful views on how to think technology from a philosophical perspective)

Ronaldo Lemos, Folha de S. Paulo

Yuk Hui’s essay on cosmotechnics is a commendable effort, an inspiring and informative alternative history of Chinese philosophical thought on technology and a provocative speculative fugue.

Gabriele de Seta, Asiascape: Digital Asia

ハイデガーを換骨奪胎し、東洋における哲学的思考の条件を問う、許の論点自体もむろん興味深いが、そのような論点が洗練された図式に落とし込まれて提示される仕方、さらにそこで引かれる固有名の配置のされ方も、私たち日本の読者、とりわけポストモダン以降の批評的な知の可能性を探ろうとする本誌読者の好奇心を満たすものとなりうる。

仲山ひふみ, Genron

Вместо отрица- ния техники и традиции наша программа должна быть открыта плюрализму космотехник и многообразию ритмов посредством трансформации того, что уже есть (Instead of denying technology and tradition, our program should be open to cosmotechnical pluralism and diversity of rhythms through the transformation of what is already there)

Eugene Kuchinov, Журнал DOXA

Heidegger’s critique of modern technology and its relation to metaphysics has been widely accepted in the East. Yet the conception that there is only one—originally Greek—type of technics has been an obstacle to any original critical thinking of technology in modern Chinese thought.

Yuk Hui argues for the urgency of imagining a specifically Chinese philosophy of technology capable of responding to Heidegger’s challenge, while problematizing the affirmation of technics and technologies as anthropologically universal.

This investigation of the historical-metaphysical question of technology, drawing on Lyotard, Simondon, and Stiegler, and introducing a history of modern Chinese philsophical thinking largely unknown to Western thinkers, sheds new light on the obscurity of the question of technology in China. Why was technics never thematized in Chinese thought? Why has time never been a real question for Chinese philosophy? How was the traditional concept of Qi transformed in its relation to Dao as China welcomed technological modernity and westernization?

In The Question Concerning Technology in China, a systematic historical survey of the major concepts of traditional Chinese thinking is followed by a startlingly original investigation of these questions, in order to ask how Chinese thought might today contribute to a renewed, cosmotechnical questioning of globalized technics.

  • Preface
  • Introduction
  • Part 1. In Search of Technological Thought in China
  • Part 2. Modernity and Technological Consciousness

Latest from Blog

Chinese translation of ChatGPT, or the Eschatology of Machines (Voices of Photography, issue 35)

ChatGPT自2022年11月推出以來,便引發了狂熱與恐懼。它對不同語言的語義及語法的嫻熟掌握(但尚未精通內容),令只是期待普通聊天機器人的使用者感到驚訝。有些大學院校立即禁止學生使用ChatGPT來寫論文,因為它的表現優於多數人類學生。報紙上的專欄文章則宣布了教育的終結──不僅因為學生可以用它來做作業,還因為ChatGPT比很多老師能提供更多的資訊。人工智慧似乎已征服了另一個根據古典哲學來定義人性的領域:邏各斯(logos)。恐慌隨著存在領域(existential territory)1的進一步喪失而加劇。當氣候的崩壞和機器人的反叛召喚出了末世,人類歷史的世界末日想像變得更加強烈。 末日對於現代人來說從來都不陌生。事實上,哲學家卡爾.洛維特(Karl Löwith)在1949年出版的《歷史的意義》(Meaning in History)一書即指出,現代歷史哲學──從黑格爾(Hegel)到布克哈特(Burckhardt)──就是末世論的世俗化2。歷史的終極目標便是使超越的變成內在(makes the transcendent immanent),不論是耶穌基督的第二次降臨或只是成為神人(Homo deus)。更廣泛地說,這種對歷史時期的聖經式或亞伯拉罕式想像,為人類的存在提供了許多深刻反思,卻也阻礙了對於我們的未來之理解。 more