Engineer-philosophers: thinkers of the future and men of action

The twen­ti­eth cen­tury has seen a con­sid­er­able change, with an unpre­ced­en­ted expan­sion of sci­entif­ic and tech­nic­al know­ledge, which lim­its the claims of tra­di­tion­al philo­sophy to look at all know­ledge, as Bergson still did. The sci­ences are becom­ing autonom­ous, and philo­soph­ic­al spec­u­la­tion is strug­gling to find its place.

But, in con­trast, a new fig­ure is emer­ging: the engin­eer-philo­soph­er. These indi­vidu­als do not per­son­i­fy a spe­cif­ic of school of thought as such, even if many of them come from the same alma mater – namely Ecole Poly­tech­nique. What they have in com­mon, and which is not unre­lated to the ser­vice of the State asso­ci­ated with this school, is an acute con­cern for the com­mon good, based on the aware­ness of a respons­ib­il­ity. As mem­bers of an elite called upon to lead the nation (or, at the very least, large organ­isa­tions), they feel account­able. They are also gen­er­al engin­eers, who embrace a vast field of prac­tic­al and the­or­et­ic­al know­ledge, and who closely observe the tech­no­lo­gic­al devel­op­ments that are trans­form­ing our world: it is their duty to enlight­en themselves.

The engin­eer-philo­soph­er is a man of action: far from the fig­ure of the cab­in­et man, the dream­er, or the academic.

In this respect, a per­son­al­ity like Thi­erry Gaud­in is exem­plary. Born in 1940, he is an observ­er and a key play­er in the com­puter revolu­tion that took off with his gen­er­a­tion. His start­ing point is a close ana­lys­is of the trans­form­a­tions of the tech­nic­al sys­tem and of the inter­ac­tions between tech­no­logy and soci­ety, to think about con­tem­por­ary changes. In his view, these changes are not simply a res­ult of the indus­tri­al revolu­tion, but rather it must be under­stood as a real civil­isa­tion­al change. His grasp of this rup­ture led him to draw up per­spect­ives in works such as 2100, Récit du prochain siècle (1990) or L’Avenir de l’E­sprit (2021).

They live in an age haunted by crises, and which has been taken over by the ancient ima­gin­ary of catastrophe:that our future is slip­ping away. This pre­vents them from build new sys­tems as closed, sol­id, pre-veri­fied intel­lec­tu­al worlds. They are faced with a prob­lem­at­ic future, which they seek to con­cep­tu­al­ise without lim­it­ing it.

An emblem­at­ic fig­ure here would be Jean-Pierre Dupuy. A thinker of cata­strophe, he does not allow him­self to be fas­cin­ated by it, and does not play the mys­tic or the “col­lapso­lo­gists”, but rather devel­ops an “enlightened cata­stroph­ism”. Announ­cing the inev­it­ab­il­ity of the worst is a way of pre­vent­ing it from hap­pen­ing. Here we find an eth­ic of respons­ib­il­ity (not evad­ing a pos­sib­il­ity, even a fright­en­ing one), and that very spe­cial ges­ture of the engin­eer who seeks not so much to cap­ture real­ity as to mod­el it, to under­stand and influ­ence it. The chal­lenge is not to flood today’s real­ity with cata­stroph­ic ideas, but rather to keep a hold on it.

Such an approach is far from the great sys­tems developed by the philo­sophies of his­tory which, think of Hegel or Marx, thought of the future from a rup­ture. The engin­eer-philo­soph­ers are thinkers of the future, but they insist on con­tinu­ity. This does not exclude, on the con­trary, think­ing about renew­al, but they do not draw up the eschat­o­lo­gic­al fig­ure of an ideal world. Rather, they con­sider the betrayed prom­ises of the past and apply them­selves to enlight­en and accom­pany the trans­form­a­tion of our world.

These engin­eer-philo­soph­ers are men of action: far from the fig­ure of the cab­in­et man, the dream­er, or the aca­dem­ic. They tear them­selves away from the moment, from their careers too, to think. But their think­ing is nour­ished by the test of reality.

It is true that this phase of mod­ern­ity, with its vis­ion of Man “as mas­ter and pos­sessor of nature”, seems to be behind us. Human­ity is doubly reminded of its nat­ur­al con­di­tion. Firstly, through the renewed link with anim­al­ity, from Dar­win to con­tem­por­ary prim­ato­logy, and secondly, through the notion of the envir­on­ment, which is catch­ing up with us at great speed. Mod­ern philo­sophy did not ask the ques­tion of the envir­on­ment; on the con­trary, it developed by evad­ing it. But the engin­eer-philo­soph­ers are in no way stuck in this impasse.

I will take as an example Olivi­er Rey, who belongs to the next gen­er­a­tion, born in the 1960s. His work is char­ac­ter­ist­ic of a cri­tique of mod­ern­ity, which points out the embed­ding of num­bers and raises the ques­tion of human scale; the lim­its and dis­pro­por­tions between the products of tech­no­logy (cit­ies, com­pan­ies, sys­tems) and our abil­ity to live in soci­ety. Finally, he tackles transhuman­ism, the ulti­mate form of this mod­ern claim to dom­in­ate nature. 

Innov­a­tion thrives today in the ruins of pro­gress: it has come to terms with nature, instead of seek­ing to dom­in­ate it.

In an essay such as Repair­ing the Water, he explains that mod­ern sci­ence was built by repu­di­at­ing sen­sa­tions, imme­di­ate impres­sions, in favour of reas­on and meas­ure­ment. Our rela­tion­ship with the world has been turned upside down: it has been “cla­ri­fied in many respects, impov­er­ished in oth­ers”. This for­mula pre­cisely cap­tures the think­ing of the philo­soph­er-engin­eer, who does not repu­di­ate sci­ence or tech­no­logy, but ques­tions its impasses, what is lost in what is gained. Such think­ing is in line with Gün­ther Anders’ reflec­tions on the “Pro­methean shift”, insep­ar­able from the advent of the atom­ic age and its massive means of destruction.

No, it is not so much a renun­ci­ation as an attempt to explore oth­er paths, without abandon­ing the ambi­tion to act, to have a hold on the world. In two ways, as mod­el­lers and as philo­soph­ers, engin­eer-philo­soph­ers are marked by the ima­gin­ary of the ideal city – a ges­ture that has inhab­ited European thought since the Greeks. But this mod­el­ling is impossible today, because in order to mod­el, one must isol­ate. But in the glob­al­ised world, where everything is inter­con­nec­ted, noth­ing can be isol­ated. Not to men­tion the fact that there is little faith in the future. 

In the eyes of this new gen­er­a­tion of engin­eer-philo­soph­ers, action changes in mean­ing: it is no longer a ques­tion of act­ing on, exer­cising sov­er­eign power over nature or things. Rather, it is a mat­ter of crack­ing the exist­ing, in order to reopen up pos­sib­il­it­ies – here I am using the words of François Jul­li­en. Crack­ing is a more mod­est ges­ture than trans­form­ing. Innov­a­tion thrives today in the ruins of pro­gress: it comes to terms with nature, instead of seek­ing to dom­in­ate it.

This vis­ion, which insists on the inser­tion of human action into an envir­on­ment, is, in the true sense of the word, eco­lo­gic­al. But to the two poles of rad­ic­al eco­logy – one that con­siders Man as an invas­ive spe­cies that nature could do without, the oth­er re-enact­ing the tra­gic farce of total­it­ari­an­ism, intrus­ive and full of pro­hib­i­tions – engin­eer-philo­soph­ers oppose a vis­ion of human action marked by both lim­its and respons­ib­il­ity. A cau­tious, respect­ful vis­ion that val­ues tech­nic­al com­pet­ence without ever isol­at­ing it from its effects.

Richard Robert