Technosystem: The Social Life of Reason by Andrew Feenberg

Abstract

Reviewed by: Technosystem: The Social Life of Reason by Andrew Feenberg Don Ihde (bio) Technosystem: The Social Life of Reason. By Andrew Feenberg. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017. Pp. 256. Hardcover $35. Many experts would rank Andrew Feenberg as the best contemporary philosopher of technology coming from the critical theory tradition. After this book, the number of readers so ranking him is bound to increase. Feenberg is a widely read, astute, and technology-sensitive writer. In Technosystem, he reviews critical theory from its Marxian beginnings, through the early Frankfort School, into today's technological scene. He redesigns critical theory, shifting it from its deterministic, revolutionary, and totalistic beginnings, adapting it to today's more pervasive but also more flexible technologies. In a move to fallibilism, he sees openings for reforms, resistances, and gestalt changes in technologies. If one looks at his author index, one will recognize his usual list of favored thinkers—Arendt, Foucault, Habermas, Hegel, Heidegger, Horkheimer, [End Page 506] Marcuse, Marx, and now Simondon—all with multiple citations. The "empirical turn" generation (including Feenberg) highlighted in Achterhuis's American Philosophy of Technology—Borgmann, Dreyfus, Ihde, Winner—all get a single citation. But a closer read shows a much deeper sophistication and sensitive re-reading, particularly of Heidegger, Lukacs, and Marcuse. He adds nuanced points from Foucault, Latour, and others. He sees that much in the critical theory tradition is now outdated regarding the shape of capitalism and the hopes for a socialist revolution, and he digs deeply into the new technologies which now dominate our world. He adds from his own experience, especially with regard to the Internet, and situates those experiences nicely in today's multicultural world. His insights into Japanese culture and his takes on today's social media mark high points in Technosystem. Although implicitly, Feenberg recognizes the dominance of the praxis philosophical systems in philosophy of technology (Marxism and critical theory, phenomenology from Husserl and Heidegger, pragmatism), he also deals with aspects of the analytic tradition. Technosystem primarily focuses upon the evolution of critical theory, though it also deals with the emergence of still-growing STS (science-technology studies) approaches, which has taken up its own critique of science and technology through the new sociologies, anthropologies, and philosophies of science and technology in the massive shift to praxis orientations in case studies, laboratory studies, and the newer feminist critiques. Were a criticism to be raised, I would point out that Feenberg underestimates the growing influences of STS alternatives to actor network theory, the presence of critical theory approaches such as both postphenomenology, with its multiple research panels, and an even newer neo-Heideggerian revival around "Anthropocene" rubrics. Those who read in the philosophy of technology are quite aware that the two extremes of utopianism (technology will solve all the problems) and dystopianism (technology will do us all in) have plagued its history. Feenberg wants to preserve progressivism, whereas Heidegger is now often seen as deeply dystopian. Feenberg's modification of critical theory, which includes saving a social rationality, is more modest than its revolutionary past—he sees in the social reason made possible by the technosystem, openings for reform, maintaining progressivism—as in the emergence of environmental, feminist, and egalitarian movements in contemporary times. Feenberg is often at his best when he states his insights in pithy form. For example in his conclusion, he locates where critical theory fits amongst the varied praxis philosophies of technology: "Critical Theory has always been based on utopian hopes. … This implies an understanding of history as progressive" (p. 187). Only Dewey and classical pragmatism would match such a tone. But Feenberg, too, sees that much critical theory has outlived its classical Marxian past, or for that matter, the dystopian totalization [End Page 507] of early philosophy of technology. In his chapter on the Internet, he observes, "Neither telephone companies nor social networking sites control users' conversations as labor is controlled by factory owners" (p. 92). Thus, supporting his stance for resistance as reforms, he opts for fallibilism: "Today we face processes of social change that are partial rather than total" (p. 116). [End Page 508] Don Ihde Don Ihde is distinguished professor of philosophy, emeritus at Stony...