“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

Der Philosoph Yuk Hui entwicket in seinem Buch über chinesiches und westliches Technikverständnis das Modell einer ökologischen Alternative (Philosopher Yuk Hui develops in his book on Chinese and Western understanding of technology the model of an ecological alternative).

—Cord Riechelman, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung

“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

Il libro di Hui va anche oltre questa intenzione [della filosofia postcoloniale], alza l’asticella e si impone come un vero e proprio rompicapo, certamente molto stimolante e necessario.

— Francesca De Simone, Scienza e Filosofia

Im Erstaunen bzw. Erschauern beim Beobachten des gegenwärtigen, teils gigantomanischen Umgang Chinas mit moderner Technik (mit ihren Erfolgen wie Miss- erfolgen), könnten auch, so läßt Hui u.a. verstehen, sich manche aus dem Blick geratene Elemente der europäischen Geschichte wiedererkennen lassen – was auch zu Einsichten in deren bisherige Ansprüche und Effekte sowie in die Notwendigkeit ihrer Veränderung verhelfen könnte.

— Rainer Becker,Jahrbuch Technikphilosophie

本書は、もうひとつの『世界史』の構想に資するものと認め得るが、加えて中国の今日を見る上でも実にタイムリーな本である。(This book can be recognized as contributing to the conception of another "world history", and in addition, it is a very timely book in terms of looking at China today.)

— 丸川哲史, 週刊読書人 (Tetsushi Marukawa, Dokushojin)

un tentativo di riunificare le divaricazioni prodotte dal dualismo ontologico tra natura e tecnicache...riproponendo una riflessione sui concetti di cosmo e biodiversità in senso più ampio, tra etica e tecnoculture per poter ripensare in modo inedito i rapporti tra l'uomo e il suo universo. (an attempt to reunify the divergences produced by the ontological dualism between nature and technology … proposing a reflection on the concepts of cosmos and biodiversity in a broader sense, between ethics and technoculture in order to rethink the relationship between man and his universe in an unprecedented way.)

— Riccardo Cangialosi, Giornale di metafisica

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.