Jacques Ellul

1
Jacques Ellul

• Examines the essential tragedy of a civilization
  that is increasingly dominated by technique.
• Emphasizes the erosion of moral values as a
  direct consequence of technique.
• Gives a system of thought to answer forces behind
  technical civilizations.
• Consciously identifies the material
  infrastructure upon which the social
  superstructure is raised with technology.

2
Technique

• Any complex of standardized means for attaining a
  predetermined results.
• It is spontaneous and unreflective in its
  behavior.
• It becomes deliberate and rationalized.
• Its essence is to compel the qualitative to
  become quantitative.
• A group of movements, of actions generally and
  mostly manual, organized and traditional, all of
  which united to a known end.
• The ensemble of practices by which one uses
  available resources in order to achieve certain
  valued ends.

3
Progress of Technique

• The machine is historically the first technique.
• However, not technique is completely independent
  of the machine.
• The machine represents the technique ideal but
  not necessarily its practice.
• The machine was not able to integrate with the
  20th century but technique has.

4
Technique and Science

• Technique is the point of contact between the
  material reality and the scientific formula.
• It is also the practical product and application
  of the formulas to practical life.
• Technique posed problems but had to wait for
  science as the solution.
• Without technique, science cannot exist.
• Technique becomes the immediate usage while
  science waits for the application.

5
Technique and Civilization

• A progressively technical civilization is the
  ever-expanding and irreversible rule of technique
  that is extended to all areas of life.
• The most vital influence of technique is the
  economy. The intellectual discipline of economics
  itself becomes technizied.
• Political doctrine revolves around what is useful
  and not what is good.

6
Technique and Progress

• Technological society requires men to be content
  with what they are required to like.
• Progress then consists of progressive
  dehumanization.
• Technique produces all dehumanization without a
  plan.
• Problems created by technique are yet
  incalculable.
• Technique will assimilate everything into
  machinery.

7
Technique and the Laborer

• Technique leads to the standardization and
  rationalization of economic and administrative
  life.
• Technique dependent on organization and
  mechanization arrangements.
• Labor becomes arbitrary is it is defined
  economically and through the exclusive
  characteristics of the product.
• Technical operations only become as skilled as
  the work is skilled.
• The fixed end of technique becomes efficiency.
• Growth in volume of technique through production.
• Yield in kind with a predetermined product.
• Financial yield increases in production through
  capital investment.
• Yield of human labor increases the quantity, not
  the quality, of the work.