Is Critical Constructivism Critical Enough? Towards an Agonistic Philosophy of Technology

Abstract

In this chapter, we discuss the value of Feenberg’s critical constructivism for overcoming the limitations of the dominant empirical and ethical approaches in the field of philosophy of technology. In the first section, we show the advantages of critical constructivism. From an ontological point of view, it suggests that technologies are always more than the sum of their material parts. In fact, technologies are entangled with specific forms of life and worldviews. From an ethical-political perspective, critical constructivism suggests that these forms of life or worldviews are often crystallizations of forms of domination. In the second section, we discuss the limitations of critical constructivism, which lie not so much in its theoretical elements as in its practical propositions. In particular, we discuss the residue of Habermasian rationalism in the way Feenberg proposes to implement technological democracy. In the third section, we proposed two “exit strategies,” namely, Bourdieu’s sociology and Mouffe’s agonistic approach. The first has the merit of renouncing any form of rationality in the behaviors of social groups; however, he recovers it, in a scientist and elitist manner, from the side of the social scientist. The second has the merit of making the struggle between social groups and classes a real resource for democracy. It is precisely this resource that we propose to apply to the field of the philosophy of technology.