Ethics of Technology in France

Abstract

French ethics of technology has followed a most peculiar path. Generally speaking, French philosophers of technology have dismissed the methodology of Applied Ethics as widely practiced. As a result, the most notorious thinkers have been those who have expressed the most considerable reservations about the “technical phenomenon.” I here attempt to establish that the most promising attempts to overcome this situation do not rise from social philosophy, but from a long-standing French tradition in the field of philosophy of life, supported by an overriding project of integration of technology into culture.