ЖИЛЬБЕР СИМОНДОН И ЭВАЛЬД ИЛЬЕНКОВ О ГУМАНИЗМЕ И ТЕХНОКРАТИИ

Abstract

G.Simondon (1924–1989) and E.V.Ilyenkov (1924–1979) are outstanding philosophers of the second half of the 20th century, who searched for answers to the questions that the development of modern tech-nology posed to the mankind. These thinkers belonged to different philosophical traditions, but their ap-proaches converge in a number of significant points. They brought to the fore the sociocultural aspects of the integration of technology at the time when cybernetics attracted general attention as a methodology and was assigned a significant role in the progress of science and technology, both in France and in the USSR. This article aims to identify the common and the different in the criticism by Simondon and Ilyen-kov of some essential aspects of technical civilization and in their proposed solutions to a number of problems that arise in the course of its development at the present stage. An analysis and comparison of texts written by the philosophers in the 1950s–1960s showed that both of them state the presenceof dis-harmony in the relationship between culture and technology, the emergence of which they associate with the spread of the technocratic approach to technology and man and the mythology associated with it. Both authors stand on humanistic positions andconsider it necessary to eliminate the myths of technocracy in order to prevent the transformation of technology into a tool for the enslavement of man. However, their approaches differ significantly in their attitude to technology: Simondon fundamentallyrefuses to consid-er technology only as a means and endows it with certain autonomy, while Ilyenkov considers it primarily a means of achieving goals that a society formulates for itself as an ideal. For this reason, the Soviet phi-losopher insists on the need to eliminate all social, economic, and political obstacles to the creation of conditions for the complete liberation and comprehensive development of man, while Simondon high-lights the task of integrating technology into culture through cognizing it and identifying its immanent laws of development.