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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Philosophy and the Machine
T2 - Slavery in French Philosophy of Technology 1897-1948
AU - Bradley, Arthur
PY - 2024/7/31
Y1 - 2024/7/31
N2 - This essay reconstructs a now largely obscure fifty year debate within French philosophy of technology from Alfred Espinas to Alexandre Kojève about slavery in the ancient world. To summarize, I argue that early twentieth century French philosophy of technology’s hypothesis that Greek and Roman slavery caused a blocage – a block, delay or stagnation – in the development of technology in antiquity may well seem little more than a historical curiosity today, but that its hypothesis of a constitutive relation between slave labour and technological innovation has recently re-emerged in biopolitical form in such texts as Giorgio Agamben’s The Use of Bodies (2015). In the confrontation between what Alexandre Koyré famously calls the ‘philosophers’ and the ‘machine’, I argue that we not only enter a largely forgotten conceptual archive for modern French philosophy of technology (Gilbert Simondon, André Leroi-Gouhran, Bernard Stiegler) but for contemporary biopolitical theory (Giorgio Agamben).
AB - This essay reconstructs a now largely obscure fifty year debate within French philosophy of technology from Alfred Espinas to Alexandre Kojève about slavery in the ancient world. To summarize, I argue that early twentieth century French philosophy of technology’s hypothesis that Greek and Roman slavery caused a blocage – a block, delay or stagnation – in the development of technology in antiquity may well seem little more than a historical curiosity today, but that its hypothesis of a constitutive relation between slave labour and technological innovation has recently re-emerged in biopolitical form in such texts as Giorgio Agamben’s The Use of Bodies (2015). In the confrontation between what Alexandre Koyré famously calls the ‘philosophers’ and the ‘machine’, I argue that we not only enter a largely forgotten conceptual archive for modern French philosophy of technology (Gilbert Simondon, André Leroi-Gouhran, Bernard Stiegler) but for contemporary biopolitical theory (Giorgio Agamben).
U2 - 10.3366/ppc.2024.0044
DO - 10.3366/ppc.2024.0044
M3 - Journal article
VL - 1
SP - 219
EP - 236
JO - Politics, Philosophy and Critique
JF - Politics, Philosophy and Critique
IS - 2
ER -