The Negative Positation of the Transcendent
In this essay I will attempt to explain how it is that Ellul asserts that the only viable response to the technical milieu which constitutes the modern world is through the “negative” positation of the transcendent. To complete this task, it is necessary to understand Ellul’s three basic analyses of the world. The first of these is his conception of the Christian God and theology, which informs to a significant extent his fundamental beliefs about the purpose of life in this world and consequently the appropriate response to the technical milieu. The second is his secondary, secular metaphysical beliefs; in particular the theory of the dialectical quality of the evolution of history, political action and personal relation. The third is his sociological critique of the modern world as the age of Technique. Holding these beliefs in view, we will be able to discern his overall offering for a picture of the conditions of life in our age and for a prescribed course of action.
Christian Theology
With respect to his theological conclusions, Ellul is speaking out of a Christian paradigm. This has several implications. To begin with, God is fully “transcendent”. This means that there is a hard and fast division between the province of God’s being and that of the world’s. In other words, God exists completely outside of the mode of existence of the world; he is separate; he is different in kind. There is no ontological continuity between his realm and ours and therefore no ascension of man toward communion with or intellectual apprehension of God. Additionally, God is completely “unconditioned”. That is to say he is not bound by any kind of necessity in his actions or being; not subject to any laws conceivable by man. He is not a rational causal agent; he is the inexplicable origin of all this is, probable, possible, or otherwise; completely free. It may also be said that God is completely “other”, inasmuch as his nature is completely alien to man’s. The generation of a true idea of God from out of man is impossible because God is essentially different from man; man does not have the tools to furnish a God-concept; God is ineffable and unthinkable.
For these reasons, “revelation” plays an important role. God communicates himself to man even though he doesn’t make himself available to be understood through man’s extension of himself. He does this through revelation, which is the reaching down of God into the world to make himself evident, in whatever respect he chooses (e.g. his existence, his qualities, his expectations, etc). However, he indicates himself in the realm of concrete human possibilities rather than exposing himself directly in his God-ness. Hence revelation takes place in the form of the “Word” - human language - and also implicitly in the form of historical events. So for example, to those with eyes to see, God’s fulfillment of a promise can be seen in the timely appearance of a ram. (Perspectives On Our Age, pp.76-78)
In other words, the road descends. God descends to humanity and joins us where we are. This is the opposite of the religious movement, in which people would like to ascend to where God is. Hence we see a radical contradiction between all religions… and the fundamental path of revelation. (p.78)
Another integral christo-theological assertion Ellul makes is that man has a responsibility to bring about harmony in the world. This assertion must be broken down into two parts: 1) what harmony is, and 2) how we are responsible for it. Harmony is not the objective intelligible orderedness of the world, like music which, as such, we must restore amidst the prevailing chaos. And it cannot be a permanent installation, a finished accomplishment. Harmony is the spontaneous and fleeting correspondence between man and creation, between subject and object, wherein the joy of realizing that the world is as it should be, if only for a moment, is experienced. It exists only in the interface between man and nature, in the fitting-into-nature-of-man. With respect to man’s responsibility, Ellul believes that man has a biblical imperative to manifest harmony in the world. God has commanded that we “tend and keep the garden”, which after the break in the harmonious relationship - the loving correspondence - of man and God, has fallen into the chaos of, for example, ecocide and colonization. In fact, the world trends entropically toward chaos, toward death and domination. If harmony is to be found anywhere, it is in man’s ongoing antithetical positation of harmony over/against nature’s constant distortion and dissolution. It must be ongoing and renewed every at moment because nature is inherently ephemeral and harmony intrinsically fragile. This constant rebellion against the disastrous state of things is an imperative because, indeed, it is what gives life meaning, gives man a role to play.
If it is true – and we have shown that dialecticians believe it to be so – that historical life develops and evolves only by way of dialectical contradiction, the same applies to the Christian life. If everything is accomplished and we are content with that, then we have no useful or worthwhile life to live. All is in vain. If nothing is accomplished, then no life is possible. Yet we must not mix up the two things. Our job is not to accomplish what is not yet accomplished (a regression to moralism). An actual fullness of accomplishments goes hand in hand with an actual experience of total nonaccomplishment. This is the indissoluble relation that makes the Christian life possible and gives it meaning in its movement from crises to crises (as the historical life of the church shows). (What I Believe, p.39)
This is why, I repeat, we cannot talk about harmony of the laws of nature. We cannot talk about economic harmony, the free play of the laws of the marketplace. Harmony is to be found when certain events come together, but above all it is to be made, created, invented, and produced. Harmony is our affair. This is why is so important to destroy the idea of an independent, established harmony that goes with the package of the universe. This idea undermines human responsibility. I believe that our vocation on this earth is to establish harmony that includes all that we call justice, liberty, joy, peace, and truth. Our vocation is to set up harmony between people, between earthly things, between the elements that compose our universe. (p.51)
That is to say, situations are fluid. There have been breaks in the framework. Action has not yet begun. There are mass movements that have not been fabricated. Parties are in flux. Alliances have been broken up or are not yet made. Economic data are not yet in. These are moments when human decisions can really shape what will soon happen. There are what I would call the harmonious moments in politics in contrast to what people usually have in mind, that is, the vision of a perfect society in which there is no play and everything is regulated. That is destiny, not harmony. (p.56)
Secular Metaphysics (Dialectics)
The next essential component of Ellul’s worldview is the “metaphysical” concept of dialectics. This plays a dual role. In one sense the concrete reality of history manifests the structure of a dialectic; in other sense reasoning and understanding must also take the form of a dialectic. This latter is a necessity because, of course, there must a qualitative correspondence between reality and understanding. As per Hegel and Marx (and originally Heraclitus), the world is constantly in flux, constantly undergoing progressive (though, Ellul goes out of his way to qualify, not necessarily in the sense of positive “progress”) change. One implication of this is that simple logic, which proceeds linearly form terms to conclusions, is not quite adequate to describe reality. Indeed, in reality there are no truly fixed categories; it is a process of which temporality and therefore impermanence is an essential feature; truth and reality are dynamic, rather than static. Ellul believes that the modus operandi of this flux is dialectic, which is to say, it is the process of the constant negation of the status quo, the thesis, by an opposing force, which results in a qualitative transformation of both into a newly integrated whole, or synthesis, which in some sense changes, and in another leaves intact, the two opposing elements. For example, when negative and positive electrical charges combine, they form a flash of energy which encompasses both, yet is wholly new.
Reality includes not only contradictory elements but also a permanent process of change. If we relate two elements, it is easy to see that the negative element acts on the positive and that this action brings about a modification. In other words, contradictory factors do not relate to one another in a way that is inert or static. They are in interaction. The simple formula: thesis, antithesis, synthesis, implies already the trans formation of the first two factors into a third that neither suppresses one or the other of them, nor confuses them, nor adds to them. (p.31)
In order to intellectually grasp a reality that manifests in this way, dialectic must also be the modus operandi of human reasoning and understanding. This means that it must itself be dynamic rather than static; it must move through time and through categories along with the flux of history. In other words, it must be ready to integrate contradictory and logically insoluble, yet historically necessary, truth, into its current paradigm in order to bring about some transformative, yet still ongoing, understanding.
In other words, dialectic is not demonstrative reasoning or a system for the formal deployment of thought. It claims always to be dealing with reality, to be a means of taking account of reality. But reality includes positive and negative things. It includes contradictory things that do not exclude one another but coexist. Hence a system of vigorous thought ought to take account of both the yes and the no without ruling out either, without choosing between them, since every choice excludes one part of reality. (p.31)
The important point, however, is that the contradictory factors cannot exist without eliminating one another unless they are correlative in a temporal movement that leads to a new situation. On the one side, it is coexistence that in real history rules out any idea of an inert and immutable absolute, and hence that rules out metaphysical thinking. On the other side, the manner of knowing must also be in evolution if it is to keep up with the contradictions and evolution of reality, for even when I begin to think, reality is in a process of change. Thus there is no fixed state that I can impose on the object. The flux of time comes into knowledge itself. (p.32)
While this is essentially Socratic, Ellul believes it to originate implicitly in the faith of the ancient Jews and to be the key to understanding the biblical picture of reality. So, for example, the narrative of God - as that which is transcendent, unconditioned, and wholly other - humbling himself to manifest through the story of a people - limiting his own power, submitting to sin, changing his mind, etc - is the logically insoluble reality of a dialectic. The same may be said of the men being saved “by grace through faith”; or of the simultaneous contemporaneity and futurity of the “Kingdom of Heaven” and the kingship of Christ; or of the narrowing of the chosen people of God from the Jews, to the remnant, to Jesus, simultaneous with the broadening of the scope of salvation from the few to the recapitulation of all creation. Any true understanding of these biblical paradoxes must not relax the tension intrinsic in their incongruous realities; rather it must embrace their contradictions as complementary and seek to manifest their coexistence through living praxis.
Praxis, in the context of this metaphysical framework, takes the form of “negativity”. At any given time, the world-historical process exists (and can be understood) in a certain way, manifests as a certain cultural and economic milieu, posits a certain thesis. Because the modus operandi of change in the world is dialectic, human action, in order to effect any significant change, must catalyze the transformative recombination of two contradictory elements, through manifesting the element which confronts the status quo; he must posit the negation of the positive. Since the thesis of world-history is constantly in dialectical flux, mans response to must also be ever-renewed and reconsidered. Every age, every action, requires its unique dialectical counterpart in order to participate in the all-pervading consummation of dialectical tension.
This is how negativity induces and provokes innovation and the consequent history of the group or individual. One thus sees clearly that negativity has a positive aspect. Where there is transition from one state to another, we owe it to negativity. (p.33)
It is in this respect that negativity comes to the fore. In one of my books I thus adopted the well-known formula of Guehenno that our first task as human beings is to say no. (p.34)
Sociological Critique of Technique
The last essential aspect of Ellul’s worldview is his sociological critique of the modern world. While the essence of his thought in this area is almost deceptively simple, the body of work he has written to describe it is voluminous. This is because, while the idea of Technique (which is the central object of his critique) is a simple one, its consequences are tremendously wide ranging. At times, Ellul seems to have the capacity to discern them all to the last detail, and often does. So what is Technique?
First of all, what it is not: Technique is not mere techniques. Techniques are methods for accomplishing a given task i.e. procedures intended to produce a certain result. These procedures can range from rational to ritualistic and anywhere in between. They can be chosen to be used or discarded. They are always isolated procedures that occur once at the time they are employed. They are subordinate to and dependant on the human agent employing them. Techniques are merely servants put to the use of manifesting human values.
Technique, however, is the totalitarian consummation of the interrelation of isolated techniques at the scale of society. It is the ecosystem of the modern world, which has grown out of more primitive societies because of the teleologically determined destiny of an ecology of techniques like that in primitive society. The final outcome of an ecology of techniques is a Technical singularity (i.e. Technique), because the presence of efficiency in the dynamic interplay of techniques necessitates the escalation of the efficiency of technical means indefinitely. In order to expound on this definition, let us follow the narrative of the evolution from non-technical societies to Technological Society.
In previous epochs, prior to Technological Society (Technique), man inhabited a world wherein efficiency was only one consideration among many with respect to the choosing and implementing of techniques. The field of application was small; only rare occasions and specific activities warranted calculated technical application and for much of man’s life he was free to act spontaneously. Rather than acting merely at the behest of efficiency or technical necessity, his local culture, his religion, and his aesthetics all informed and justified his techniques. When confronted with alternative techniques for accomplishing the same task, no universal standard of good existed. He was free to insist on his own techniques or to convert based on a whole complex of contributing values. The caprice of human choice entered decisively into the methods of production he employed. (The Technological Society – Chap.2, The Characterology of Technique – Technique In Civilization)
The proliferation of society and culture occurred naturally given the natural resources at man’s disposal, and the proliferation of technology is a natural accompaniment to this. Man-made though it may be, pre-Technological technology (techniques) was a natural and healthy development of society, as long as it only served man’s ends. However it did not stay this way due to the concealed but inevitable factor of efficiency. This is because throughout this time period the rational that a reduction in input with respect to output (efficiency) is necessarily better was implicit, because techniques were primitive and efficiency was an unusual benefit. This allowed efficiency to pursue it natural course of ascendency unchecked by the exclusive prioritization of human values. This “natural course of ascendency” results from the reality of the fact that efficiency, and along with it efficient techniques, is intrinsically more effectual than inefficiency. So increasingly and inevitably the ecology of techniques comes to be dominated by those which are most efficient. This results in an exponential quantitative increase in the proliferation of efficiency, the sheer number of which at a certain point gives rise to a qualitative change. The proliferation of technology combined with the unchecked assumption that technical innovation, or increased efficiency, is of positive benefit, results in a cultural-technological-ecological situation wherein the values, or end goals, of the infrastructure of society are converted into efficiency itself. Therefore, Technique may be understood as the epoch in which efficiency is ubiquitously valued as a means unto itself, or as an end; wherein the very infrastructure of society is oriented around the production of technical innovation. It is the same absurd and unavoidably escalatory cycle that Marx spied in economics’ money-commodity-money cycle, only converted to the technical means-end-means.
The great difference between the two is in their respective characters. First of all, there is the participation of the rational. Until the eighteenth century, technique was, purely and simply, a practical matter. In the eighteenth century, people began to think about techniques: they compared them and tried to rationalize their application, which completely changed the perspective. A technique was no longer merely an operation. Now, technique passed through a rational intervention, and it had a completely different object; its object was efficiency. When studying the old techniques, one is extremely surprised to see how unimportant efficiency was as a decisive or determining notion. Techniques were used for religious reasons, for purely traditional reasons, and the like. If one technique was more efficient than another, that didn’t trouble the users very much. The technical phenomenon, however, is characterized by evaluation of techniques, and comparison in terms of this criterion of efficiency. (Perspectives On Our Age, pp.29-30)
The internal governing logic of Technique inherently secures it in its indefinite autonomous proliferation and eventual complete insubordination of human choice. Ellul assigns five characteristics to Technique, which I am calling its internal governing logic, that secure its dominance. They are as follows: automatism, self-augmentation, monism, the necessary linking together of all techniques, and monism. Respectively, these characteristics imply the following behavior. 1) The selection of the most efficient means possible happens automatically rather than contending with some alternative because the rational of Technique supposes that all operations have a “one best way” against which techniques can be measured in quantitative terms. The choice (of which technique to use) is made even before the option arises because there is always only one most technically streamlined operation and it must be selected. 2) Technique augments its own growth in two ways. First, every technical innovation makes possible technical advancement in an unpredictably multitudinous number of other fields. For example, technical innovation of the combustion engine implied the innovation of aeronautical, submarine, and automobile techniques. Second, every technical innovation creates unintended consequences which require resolution qua further application of techniques. So for example, monocultural agriculture implies the use of pesticides which implies the use of certain medications in the event of human illness. For both of these reasons, Technique augments its own growth at an exponential rate. 3) All operations ordered along the lines of technical rationalization come to the same essential end: efficiency. Therefore, all differences are accidental. It cannot be said that one the one hand, Technique may be put to the use of producing a good outcome, or one which manifests this or that value, or on the other hand that it may be put to some bad use. The outcome of all technical operations within Technique is the same holistic technical rationalization which can embody no other set of values. 4) All procedures operating along non-technically rationalized lines, i.e. with other values, are incapable of coping with Technique and cannot coexist with it. Any system contiguous to a technically structured one faces two options: rationalization or nullification. 5) Naturally, all systems integral to the ongoing proliferation and consummation of Technique will be rationalized and integrated, and those which are not will suffer extinction. (The Technological Society - Chap.2, The Characterology of Technique - The Characteristics of Modern Technique)
In brief this situation may be described as a complex system of positive feedback loops which force man - and everything else - to take part in the propagation of technical rationalization, even when it subverts more highly held values or the stability and health of the environment. This results in trenchant and sweeping absurdity. To illustrate I will only quote Ellul:
Man was made to do his daily work with his muscles, but see him now, like a fly on flypaper, seated for eight hours, motionless at a desk. Fifteen minutes of exercise cannot make up for 8 hours of absence. The human being was made to breathe the good air of nature, but what he breathes is an obscure compound of acids and coal tars. He was created for a living environment, but he dwells in a lunar world of stone, cement, asphalt, glass, cast iron, and steel. The trees wilt and blanch among sterile and blind stone facades. Cats and dogs disappear little by little from the city, going the way of the horse. Only rats and men remain to populate a dead world. Man was created to have room to move about in, to gaze into far distances, to live in rooms which, even when they were tiny, opened out onto fields. See him now, enclosed by the rules and architectural necessities imposed by overpopulation in a twelve by twelve closet opening out on an anonymous world of city streets. (The Technological Society, p.321)
Consider the average man as he comes home from his job. Very likely he has spent his day in a completely hygienic environment, and everything has been done to balance his environment and lessen his fatigue. However he has had to work without stopping and under constant pressure; nervous fatigue has replaced muscular fatigue. When he leaves his job, his joy in finishing his stint is mixed with dissatisfaction with work as fruitless as it is incomprehensible and as far from being really productive work as possible. At home he “finds himself” again. He finds a phantom. If he ever thinks, his reflections terrify him. Personal destiny is fulfilled only by death, but reflection tells him there has not been anything between his adolescent adventures and his death, no point at which at he himself ever initiated a decision or made a change. Changes are the exclusive prerogative of organized technical society, which one day may have decked him out in khaki to defend it, and on another in stripes because he has sabotaged or betrayed it. Yet life is serene, for newspapers and news reports beset him at the end of the day and force him on the image of an insecure world. If it is not hot or cold war, there are all sorts of accidents to drive home to him the precariousness of his life. Torn between his precariousness and the absolute, unalterable determinateness of work, he has no place, belongs nowhere. Whether something happens to him, or nothing, he is in neither case the author of his destiny.
The man of the technical society does not want to encounter his phantom. He resents being torn between the extremes of accident and technical absolutism. He dreads the knowledge that everything ends “six feet under”. He could accept it the six-feet-under if, and only if, he could choose to, say, die. But when nothing makes sense, when nothing is the result of free choice, the final six-feet-under is an abominable injustice. (p.376)
Prescription (Negative Positation of the Transcendent)
Ellul combines these four premises – the transcendence and revelation of God; the biblical imperative to promote harmony in a chaotic world; the dialectical quality of world history and personal relation; and the absurd and totalitarian trajectory of western society’s preoccupation with techniques – into a picture of prescribed action that takes the following form:
The prevailing order of the day in this world, Technique, ever more rapidly approaches its teleologically determined consummation in the conversion of all human values into technical values. It is inherently chaotic, absurd, wasteful, irresponsible, tyrannical, and otherwise destructive to the world. This situation may be understood as the positive side (thesis) of the dialectical opposition composing the modern age. If we have an imperative to promote harmony amidst this destruction, and if we must operate dialectically, then our action must take the form of a contradiction to the technical milieu. In other words, we must posit a negation of the Technical thesis; and not merely an a-Technical response (for this would be the dialectical situation prior to the positation of Technique) but a counter-Technique, a manifestation of that which Technique essentially lacks.
However, Technique is intrinsically more effectual than any countermanding force able to be brought against it at a parallel plain of existence i.e. in this world. Any merely political or technological action is destined to be less efficient and therefore less effectual in the production of its values than Technique is in its inevitable realization of total rationalization. Therefore, any negation of Technique must come from without of the Technical system and the realm in which it has preeminence, i.e. the world. The world’s salvation must come from and be the transcendent, which as an external referent, serves as a vantage from which to clearly observe and evaluate Technique. This is possible because God uniquely lies completely outside of the purview of technical application. (What I Believe, pp.45-46)
What does it mean to negate Technique with the positation of the transcendent? Fundamentally it means faith in the transcendent God of Christianity and his revelation, and acting in accordance with what this implies. It implies that this world is ephemeral and impermanent, and that it will be destroyed and recreated into the transcendent Kingdom of Heaven at the end of time. But this does not at all diminish its importance, for it is out of this world that the transcendent kingdom is created. Indeed, it implies our action within this world in order to bring it about. Therefore, Ellul understands the antithetical-transcendent to be properly concrete; we cannot escape into merely awaiting the afterlife. This logically insoluble double-imperative to both work within this world and to place our stake in the transcendent must be dealt with dialectically. And precisely because we have not yet manifested the synthesis – the Kingdom of Heaven – we do not have a clear idea of what to work for. This tension is not relaxed, but it can be lived through.
What does all this mean? First, there is always one history, not two (secular and sacred). In this one history we have the conjunction and opposition of independent human work and God’s “relational” work. Every actual event in history expresses this twofold force. It is a product of human activity… But all this moves not toward the kingdom of God, but toward the crises triggered by the absolute contradiction between vain human effort and God’s exclusive novelty. The crises or judgment, however, does not mean the annulment or insignificance of history. As in the dialectical crises, no factor suppressed. The two are integrated in a synthesis. All human history, then, will enter the new Jerusalem. The creation of the final city is the obvious consummation, not the result, of all that we attempt in history. Nothing in history (collective or individual) is lost, but everything is qualitatively transformed. (What I Believe, p.42)
From out of this tension, Ellul constructs three concrete responses to Technique correspondent with the imperative to posit the transcendent. The first is that we must not simply reject Technique outright, in favor of some utterly alternative paradigm, yet leaving Technique as it is. This course is not even tenable, as we have established that in the face of Technique the world and the individual faces either assimilation or destruction. However, given our understanding of God as God, we may revoke Technique’s status as an idol, as a value, and thereby revoke its power over us. In an act of the most subversive iconoclasm possible in our age, we must “destroy the religious deified character of technique” (POA, p.89) so that we may become “mutants… who can use techniques and at the same time not be used by them, assimilated by, or subordinated to them”. (p.66) Similarly, we must not hope for salvation in merely human enterprises, Technique or otherwise. The longer hope of this kind still exists, the longer and more precipitously we deliver ourselves over to that from which we need liberated. Instead, given our understanding of God as savior, we must take heart in light of knowing that he will ultimately bring about that which is good, in knowing that the world will resolve correctly and in accordance with his will. Finally, there is the imperative to liberate, and this constitutes the essence of Ellul’s praxis. As the world approaches absolutely determined constraint under the dominion of Technique, human choice and with it the essence of man’s relationship with God disappears. For, without freedom, man cannot choose to accept the truth of God’s revelation. Life cannot have meaning. The highest danger rests in our foolish belief that we are free, that we are the masters of Technique, of technical progress, and of our destiny. In reality we are radically determined to enact a history that is – internally – totally hopeless; and to fail to recognize his is to destine it of our own volition. (Technological Bluff, p.411)
Are we then shut up, blocked and chained by the inevitability of the technical system which is making us march like obedient automatons thanks to its bluff? Yes, we are radically determined. We are caught up continuously in the system if we think that even the least little bit that we can master the machinery, prepare for the year 2000, and plan everything. Yet not really, for the system does not stop growing, and thus far we have no examples of growth that does not reach the point of imbalance and rupture… Even without nuclear war or an exceptional crisis, we may thus expect enormous global disorder which will be the expression of all the contradictions and disarray. This must be made to cost as little as possible. (p.412)
Consequently, we must seek to exploit lapses in the structure of Technological Society. We must strive to act spontaneously, to introduce free play between the elements society, to move within the empty spaces. If within these strongholds we can foster the saving power of the open, spontaneous freedom to choose, we may secure the means which are “bearers of the presence of the kingdom of God” (POA, p.87) from out of the world.
We must be prepared to reveal the fracture lines and to discover that everything depends on the qualities of individuals. Finally, not really, if we know how little room there is to maneuver and therefore, not by ones high position or by power, but always after the model of development from a source and by the sole aptitude for astonishment, we profit from the existence of little cracks of freedom, and install in them a trembling freedom which is not attributed to or mediated by machines or politics, but which is truly effective, so that we may truly invent the thing for which humanity is waiting. (p.412)
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