Toward a More Expansive Political Philosophy of Technology

Leo Strauss’s writings on political philosophy and on technology serve as a gadfly, prompting a fundamental reconsideration of various veins of contemporary discourse. His assessment of political philosophy, what should be the “all-embracing study of human affairs” now “cut into pieces that behave as if they were parts of worm” by the forces of History and Science ([1], p. 17), is dreary: whatever the virtues of such studies, they only offer methodical responses to questions regarding the nature of the good society. A parallel process exists in philosophy of technology. In classical form it aimed to draw attention to how technology alters understandings, values, and action. But especially since the “empirical turn,” philosophical research in philosophy and technology has increasingly limited itself to descriptive analyses of the design, development, and uses of technology, investigated in specific contexts, at the expense of expansive engagement with philosophical concepts and theories, especially those with normative content. Strauss spurs us to rethink this fragmented inquiry and expand it: we must recapture the originary character of “classical” political philosophy, which dealt with concrete relationships and concerns lost by later political philosophers who traffic largely in abstractions, while, at the same time, realize that a study of the “good” requires knowledge of the nature of the polis and its technologies.

An adequate political philosophy of technology must be able to integrate two veins of “political thoughts,” one domestic and the other geopolitical, that are often expressed separately.Footnote 1 The internal or domestic vein tends to focus on the accumulation and exercise of power, its differentials, and exploitation between individuals and groups within a political entity, assessed according to the prevailing political norms of place and time. In the West at present, standards are usually drawn from some version of political liberalism with its economic and political commitments. Many geopolitical or international discussions focus on exchange, competitive advantage, and conflict; another cluster compare values and sociotechnical trajectories observed in different political entities. As Carl Mitcham points out in his article to which I am responding here [3], politicians in a modern Western nation-state, having elevated physical and material concerns (especially safety, security, and conveniently available goods) for the masses above others, tend to think of modern technology and engineering in terms of how they can achieve these ends. Strauss’s corpus asks us to reflect more on how to synthesize these strands of thought, to develop a richer understanding of the implications of the technologies that we develop within and between societies.

Thinking anew about current technopolitical states of affairs leads to a reconsideration of the concept of sovereignty. Historically, it has been somewhat plastic, understood in different ways, with different emphases: as what arises when an association of households agrees to act together; as the ultimate and absolute authority, obtained voluntarily or through force; or as the expression of general will [4]. Similarly, how formal democratic processes legitimately confer sovereignty to select individuals has been theorized and operationalized differently over time. These variations have taken place even as many conditions have been reasonably stable: it has nearly always arisen among people who live in the same area who share at least some interests and concerns, and whose activities take place in a technological environment that is roughly the same.

The past decades have seen ever increasing development and adoption of technological innovations. These innovations have weakened social bonds among those residing in the same place and led to the formation of networks that bridge distance and cultures; these expansive networks have also led to a multitude of ‘publics’ motivated by different ‘problems’ [5]. While geopolitical realities seem to demand some form of sovereignty as ultimate and absolute authority, this authority seems to be necessarily weakened, and its legitimacy more so than ever depends on its exercise being rare and prudent, when a “general will” can be clearly distinguished; to the extent possible, decision-making should be decentralized, as should the consequences of these decisions, and perhaps take new forms that are not geographically based. Yet the political philosopher (and enlightened statesmen) must at the same time respond to the realization that a flourishing polis depends on a flourishing cosmos as systems and problems are now global and often interrelated. These challenges are exacerbated by the acceleration of technological development and adoption that makes cultural lag more likely and more severe [6].

The relationship between the polis and the cosmos can be seen as a parallel between the relationship of the individual to the polis. As Strauss put it, “The theme of political philosophy is mankind’s great objectives, freedom and government or empire—objectives which are capable of lifting all men beyond their poor selves” ([1], p. 10). While technologies should satisfy material needs efficiently without causing harm or imperiling the future, it is a mistake to only think of them in this way. Technology shapes and is shaped by our ideas of freedom, whether understood in the negative (freedom-from, e.g., compulsion and surveillance) or in the positive (freedom-to, e.g., imagine and realize one’s life project). Informal democratic deliberations and many government functions now depend almost entirely on technological means; one such expression is concern over misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, spread by domestic and foreign agents, in the political realm. Dreams of utilizing technology to obtain empire seem especially seductive to political leaders today, whether the empire is military, political, or economic, or some combination thereof, even when it appears in conflict with the interests and concerns of those who would be affected by its formation. Such efforts seem likely to be futile: in a knowledge- and information-based socioeconomic period, empires formed by force or compulsion lack the commitment and coherence needed to sustain, much less thrive.

Of course, freedom, government, and empire are just three of a multitude of elements that can be developed by what could be called the technopolitical imagination. The technologies that we make, use, and maintain are expressions of our interests, values, and concerns. Working within the framework of political liberalism, decisions about widely accepted technologies slant certain domains toward or away from the benefit of those worst off economically, open up or close down access to meaningful political participation, and give precedence to either minority rights or majority consensus. Considered more broadly, modern technology and the engineering that brings it into existence are essential elements of the myths that provide unity to a political entity. In this sense, ‘myth’ does not refer to fantasy, but rather to the narratives that are formed and reformed to help people make sense of their place in the world, to make sense of the past and orient the future [7]. As an example, an understanding of NASA’s Apollo program as an impressive collection of technoscientific achievements ignores its geopolitical significance, in terms of predicting future military strength and as a proof of concept for the capabilities of decentralized economies, as well as its importance in the “civil religion” of the United States [8]. Political philosophy of technology must capture this aspirational nature.

Following Strauss’s criticism, political philosophy can position descriptive analysis of the historical trajectory and of the current state of affairs (military and political history, most of political science today, economics, etc., including their synthesis in science and technology studies) as important but not definitive. Similarly, inherited ideas and values in the technopolitical realm, to the extent that they are dogmatically (in the sense Kant used the term) accepted, should be seen as resources whose applicability, content, and relationships must be judged again through eyes also attuned to concrete relationships and forces that evolve along with technologies. Regardless of whether one agrees with the assessment that the modern person is a moral, social, and intellectual diminutive and that the rich, textured fabric of pre-modern life has been exchanged for solitary comfort, security, and leisure, resulting not only in the loss of virtue but also the conditions under which it tends to arise, it seems that Strauss is right when he says that political philosophy demands striving for “genuine knowledge” of “both the nature of political things and the right, or the good, political order” ([1], p. 12). The same is true of a political philosophy of technology so inspired.