Xavier Guchet 
Care in Technology [PDF ebook] 

Acknowledgments ix
Foreword xi
Bernard REBER
Introduction xvii
Chapter 1. Care and Technology: An Anthropological Question 1
1.1. From mastery to care 1
1.1.1. Making good use of technology, anticipating its potential risks: two possible examples of care in technology? 1
1.1.2. Do we need to learn to master our technological mastery? 11
1.1.3. The limits of the externalist approach to technological regulation 22
1.2. In what sense can technologies be ‘inherently’ caregiving? 27
1.2.1. Can there be an intrinsic morality of technology? 27
1.2.2. Technology and care: a difficult articulation 35
1.3. Taking care of living beings 49
1.3.1. Care and technology: from ethics to anthropology 49
1.3.2. Caring about valuating living beings 56
1.3.3. The difficulty of thinking technology from life 72
1.4. Transition 87
Chapter 2. Technology and Life: Analysis of a Divorce 89
2.1. Body, gestures, technology, production 89
2.1.1. Work without skill 89
2.1.2. Control and discipline of technology 99
2.1.3. A rupture in the conception of technology: the divorce of technology and life 106
2.2. The intellectualist conception of technology: the Kantian turning point 123
2.2.1. Difficulty in thinking of the artisan’s activity 123
2.2.2. Technology excluded from the field of aesthetics 130
2.2.3. Technology, a synthetic activity without representation and without rule 134
2.3. Transition 150
Chapter 3. The Conditions of Care in Technology 151
3.1. Vitalist approaches to technology 151
3.1.1. The concept of technological evolution: contributions and limits with regard to care 151
3.1.2. Technology as an ‘organ projection’: contributions and limits with regard to care 156
3.1.3. The utopia of Erewhon: analysis of an aporia. First condition of care in technology 159
3.2. Philosophical anthropology, a promising way to articulate care and technology? 175
3.2.1. Plessner’s biological anthropology: redefining the concepts of organ and organism 175
3.2.2. Industrialization, work, and life. Critique of modernity in Gehlen 183
3.3. The organ-instrument. Second condition of care in technology 188
3.3.1. From the organ as part of the organism to the organ as an instrument with use-value 188
3.3.2. Putting the individual point of view first in the ethical evaluation of technology 193
3.4. From anthropology to aesthetics 213
3.4.1. Is it enough to recognize that humans ‘belong to nature’ to orient technology towards care for nature? 213
3.4.2. Creating a new perception. Fourth condition of care in technology 220
3.5. Transition 224
Chapter 4. Design, Technology and Life 227
4.1. At the sources of design for life 227
4.1.1. The premises of design 227
4.1.2. Overcoming the conflict of arts and industry: the rational aesthetics of Paul Souriau 235
4.1.3. Industry and the fragmentation of experience: anthropology and instrumentality in Dewey’s work 241
4.1.4. Life as judge of technology. Lewis Mumford 246
4.1.5. Towards a design for life: László Moholy-Nagy 257
4.1.6. Opening 262
4.2. Towards responsible and caring innovation 264
4.2.1. Technical activities and care: practical lessons from ancient China and Greece 264
4.2.2. The square of care in technological design 272
Conclusion 287
References 293
Index 311

Xavier Guchet is Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Technology of Compiegne, France. His research focuses on the
epistemological and ethical challenges of new technologies. He is
also an expert on the thinking of Gilbert Simondon and the author
of several books.