Abstract
Two key themes structure the work of French philosopher of science Gilbert Simondon: the processes of individuation and the nature of technical objects. Moreover, these two themes are also at the heart of contemporary debates within Ethics and Bioethics. Indeed, the question of the individual is a key concern in both Virtue Ethics and Feminist Ethics of Care, while the hyper-technical reality of the present stage of medical technology is a key reason for both the urgency for and the success of the field of Bioethics. And yet, despite its potential for thinking about these issues, Simondon’s philosophy remains largely unknown. Rather than exploring Simondon’s complex ontology for itself, the aim of this paper is to establish what contribution his work can make in Ethics and Bioethics on two essential questions: the relational structure of the self and the nature of the human-technology relation. I argue that Simondon’s re-conceptualization of the individual harmonizes with perspectives in Feminist Bioethics (particularly the Ethics of Care) and points toward what I call an “open” Virtue Ethics that takes relations to be essential. In order to establish this connection, I explore at length the relational approach to Feminist Bioethics offered by Susan Sherwin’s work. I argue that a Simondonian account of technology and of the individual furthers the relational understanding of the self, offers a characterization of Virtue Ethics that is in harmony with the Ethics of Care, and clarifies a notion of responsibility that is implicated in the complex reality of the modern technological milieu.
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Notes
Nancy (2008, p. 162).
The question of individuation is developed in Simondon (2005). The question of technology is explored in Simondon (1989). All translations from these books are my own. In the case of Simondon (2005), an English translation of the introduction is available as Simondon (1992). Although I have often altered the English translation, when I am citing from the introduction I will also include the English pagination in square brackets.
Barthélémy (2005, p. 7). All translations from this book are my own.
Like Merleau-Ponty, Dufrenne and Canguilhem are also acknowledged in a dedication, this time to Simondon’s later work, Du mode d’existence des objets techniques. See Simondon (1989).
Simondon figures in two of Deleuze’s most well-known books: Deleuze (2004a); Deleuze and Guattari (1987). Simondon is also featured in a particularly interesting review written very early in Deleuze’s career. See Deleuze (2004b). However, I would tend to agree with other commentators (such as Barthélémy) that this association with Deleuze has in fact been detrimental to Simondon’s own reception, leading to Simondon being inappropriately associated with a certain “anti-realist” reading of Deleuze. See, for instance, Barthélémy (2005, p. 35).
See, for instance, Stiegler (1998).
The concept is often employed without explicit reference to Simondon. It has, however, become more explicit in recent work by Renaud Barbaras in French [see Barbaras (1998, pp. 220, 79)], and by Elizabeth Grosz in English, whose keynote address at the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP) 2010 meeting in Montréal, Québec, Canada, drew extensively on Simondon’s physical ontology. 2010 also saw, I believe, the first major conference on his work, Gilbert Simondon: transduction, translation, transformation, at the American University in Paris, May 27–28, 2010. Indeed, the very recent and first book in English dedicated to his work begins with an Editor’s Introduction aptly titled “Simondon, Finally.” See de Boever et al. (2012, p. vii).
Barthélémy (2008, p. 15). All translations from this text are my own.
For the purposes of this paper, I use Bioethics and Medical Ethics interchangeably.
Battin (2003).
Virginia Held argues that the Ethics of Care should be conceived of in opposition to traditional Virtue Ethics because Virtue Ethics focuses too much upon individual dispositions rather than on relations. See Held (2006). I believe that Simondon’s emphasis on the reality of relations (discussed below) offers an important way of bringing together the Ethics of Care with contemporary discourses in Virtue Ethics.
Simondon (2005, p. 335). It is worth noting the importance of the French term sens in this passage, which means alternatively “sense,” “meaning,” or “direction.” Much like the use of the term by Merleau-Ponty, Simondon’s arguments turn on a rich sense of the interplay among these various meanings. See Landes (2013b, pp. 205–206).
For instance, Simondon’s use of the physical notion of “potential energy” is not drawn from its usual use, but rather from its use by physicist Louis Broglie, and is an idiosyncratic use that needs to be carefully explored in Simondon’s subsequent development of the notion of a “metastable equilibrium” as discussed below. See Barthélémy (2008, pp. 23–25) for a discussion of Simondon and Broglie.
Barthélémy (2008).
Simondon (2005, p. 335).
Simondon (2005, p. 23 [1992, p. 297]).
Simondon (2005, p. 24 [1992, p. 299]). Simondon’s use of the term “individuation” refers to the complex process by which individual are formed and the important relations involved in this process. Simondon takes this process to be a constant reality, in that each “individual” is merely a temporary stage in a trajectory of individuations, and individuation does not merely express a pre-existing essence, but each individuation loops back to reshape the “essence” being expressed as a result of the complex influence of the milieu in which it is expressed.
Simondon (2005, p. 24 [1992, p. 300]).
Barthélémy (2008, p. 16).
The guiding image of crystallization captures this process in the sense that the form of the crystal is not predictable in a linear fashion, but rather merely in terms of probabilities depending on a highly complex set of intensive factors in the supersaturated solution.
Barthélémy (2008, p. 13).
Simondon (2005, p. 24–25 [1992, p. 300]).
For a more detailed discussion of the status of the logic of trajectory in Merleau-Ponty and in Simondon, see the introduction to my book: Landes (2013a).
Simondon (2005, p. 330).
Simondon (2005, p. 330).
Simondon (2005, p. 330).
Simondon (2005, p. 330).
Simondon (2005, p. 331).
Simondon (2005, p. 332).
Simondon (2005, p. 333).
I have begun to develop the notion of trajectory in Landes (2013a), and I am continuing to explore this concept in other papers that are in progress.
This interpretation is shaped by my reading of Merleau-Ponty’s account of the paradoxical logic of expression, where each human gesture is on a scale between pure repetition and pure creation, never reaching either extreme, and each gesture thus takes up the past toward a future by joining into the trajectories of sense. For more on this reading of Merleau-Ponty, see Landes (2013a).
Held (2006).
Simondon (2005, p. 335).
See in particular Landes (2013a, p. 27).
Combes (2013, p. 33).
In short, I am sympathetic with Combes’ critique of Stiegler’s appropriation of Simondon as overly focused on the technical in order to move too quickly to a critique of contemporary social, economic, and political structures. See Combes (2013, pp. 64–70).
See Combes (2013, pp. 33–38) for an argument against a simple identity between collective individuation and the transindividual. Also, it might be noted that Grosz (2012, p. 50) does identify these two concepts in her study of the potential for Simondon’s thought for feminist political thought. Although I agree with both the spirit and content of her paper, the position in this paper is that allowing for the transindividual to be understood in light of Merleau-Ponty’s paradoxical logic of expression leads to an important insight into Virtue Ethics beyond Grosz’s important contribution to feminist political thought. This position might also be understood as an argument that the ethical (and political) import of Simondon’s thought can be found in the work on individuation without necessarily resolving the relation between Simondon’s work on individuation and on technics, a focus that Combes (2013, pp. 64–70) argues leads to Stiegler’s incomplete account.
As Tom L. Beauchamp notes, classical normative theories exerted a heavy influence on the development of Bioethics in the 1970s and 1980s, but they tend to play a diminished role in today’s debates. This is surely because the concrete nature of applied ethics has shown – as Simondon would agree – the inadequacy of the attempt to find eternal and universal principles. See Beauchamp (2003, pp. 16–17). The turn away from theory, however, has resulted in what Sherwin identifies as the unreflective application of principles, which I will discuss below. See Sherwin (1996, p. 188). Moreover, it seems to me that a robust theory would be required to justify the turn to supplemental ethical theories and to determine how these should be approached and situated. Indeed, as Norman Daniels writes, “we need a much more sophisticated view of the relationship between general principles and particular cases.” Daniels (1996, p. 107). I believe the richness of Simondon’s thought offers precisely this sophistication.
Harvey et al. (2008) offer a commentary on how certain aspects of Simondon’s thought might serve to further a feminist critique of classical humanist approaches to ethics. Although most of their paper is an introduction to Simondon’s system, ultimately they offer a critique of Simondon’s ontology as having drawn an opposition between physical and living individuations, and so as being best understood as a provocation for rethinking individuation beyond product-based accounts of identity. I would agree with Elizabeth Grosz’s assessment of this paper as having not fully grasped the power and scope of Simondon’s thinking. See Grosz (2012, p. 56, n. 12). Although Grosz makes significant steps toward revealing the normative potential in Simondon, she is mostly focused on his potential in radical and feminist political thought: “a new way of understanding a world that is not ultimately controlled or ordered through a central apparatus or system … a way of understanding subjectivity or personal identity … [as] a new order of object that is now able to take its own operations, its own forms of inner resonance as its object and mode of addressing problems” (p. 53). The further step to the ethical suggested in this paper involves returning to the subjective experience of being within the metastable trajectories, resulting in the suggested placement of Simondon within a Virtue Ethics tradition.
Beauchamp (2003, p. 17).
See Held (2006).
It is precisely a rejection of an understanding of a group as a “sum of separate individuals” that leads Alasdair MacIntyre to his notion of practices and shared goods. This connection to contemporary Virtues Ethics is, I believe, a rich and fruitful direction opened up here for Simondon’s work, so long as Virtue Ethic’s “functional” account of humans is recast into the structures of virtuous and open trajectories of psychic and collective individuation in relation. See MacIntyre (1984, chapters 14 and 15).
Rawls (1999).
Rawls (1999, p. 3).
As Sherwin argues, “Rawls envisioned a process of reflective equilibrium that seems to be aimed at producing timeless, static, universal rules for ethics.” Sherwin (1996, p. 193). Sherwin rightly notes that Rawls himself addresses the question of situatedness in his later work. Sherwin argues that his notion of “political consensus” there does not provide any protection against a consensus achieved through oppressive means. See Rawls (2005).
In addition to Sherwin’s voice, many of the members of her group Feminist Health Care Ethics Research Network write on similar concerns and approaches to these very issues. See for instance, Morgan (1998). For other Ethics of Care approaches to the relational self that I believe share this resonance, see Held (2006) and Friedman (2000). Indeed, as Friedman writes (cited by Held): “According to the relational approach, persons are fundamentally social beings who develop the competency of autonomy … in a context of values, meanings, and modes of self‐reflection that cannot exist except as constituted by social practices. … It is now well recognized that our reflective capacities and our very identities are always partly constituted by communal traditions and norms that we cannot put entirely into question without at the same time voiding our very capacities to reflect.” Friedman (2000, p. 40–41). For Held’s discussion of this and related theories of self in Ethics of Care, see Held (2006, chapter 3).
The article in question is Sherwin (1996, p. 187).
Sherwin (1996, p. 188).
The “Georgetown Mantra” is the name given to the popular system of “mid-level” principles drawn from normative ethics for use in applied ethics by Tom Beauchamp and James Childress. For a discussion of the Georgetown Mantra, see Battin (2003, p. 298). Sherwin is critical of the consequence of this systematization, at Sherwin (1996, p. 188).
Sherwin (1996, p. 189).
Sherwin (1996, p. 190).
Sherwin (1996, p. 191).
Sherwin (1996, p. 192).
Sherwin (1996, p. 192).
For a writer who is not convinced by Sherwin’s call, see Arras (2003, pp. 347–348).
The term “critical-ethical vision” is employed by Alia Al-Saji (2009) in an important article rethinking of how racism or sexism can become sedimented into the invisible structures of vision. Indeed, the notion of virtue I am drawing out of Simondon might productively be thought of in terms of vision, despite Simondon’s own apprehension about the phenomenological tradition. For Simondon’s concerns about the phenomenological tradition, see, for instance, Barbaras (2006) and Guchet (2001a).
Sherwin (2000, p. 76).
See Al-Saji (2009, p. 379). Al-Saji rightly notes that vision involves at least two layers of invisibilities: its own historical and material genesis and the “invisibles of the visible” such as color, line, depth, and as she would add, social structures of power.
MacIntyre (1984, pp. 56–59).
As Paul Dumouchel writes: “Is there an essence of technical objects? Do they form a natural kind? Does our classification of certain things as technical objects carve nature at the joints or is it purely nominal?” Dumouchel (1992, p. 407).
Stiegler (1998). This story is nowhere better presented than in Stiegler’s chapter on the deepening understanding of technics from André Leroi-Gourhan to Simondon.
“The Invention of the Human” is the title of Part I of Stiegler (1998).
Recognizing this is not straightforward. As Gail Weiss writes: “The durée of the techno-body, whether this body be that of a newly cloned sheep, a “test-tube” baby, or a woman hooked up to technological devices that records fetal movement, fetal heartbeat… (etc.), arises out of a violent effort and requires a violent effort in order to see the interconnections that link this durée with our own.” Weiss (1999, p. 112). An obvious reference is here included by Weiss to Donna Haraway, who writes that the “machine is us, our processes, an aspect of our embodiment.” Haraway (1991, p. 180). Simondon’s approach, however, suggests a different starting point by focusing on the role of the internal dynamic of the technical system, again resulting from his attempt to move away from a naïve phenomenological approach toward a “general phenomenology of machines.” Cf. Parrochia (2009).
Simondon (1989, p. 9).
Dumouchel (1992, p. 408).
Simondon (1989, pp. 10–11). Simondon does not explicitly name the opposite of what he calls a “facile humanism,” but the implications are clear, and so too is the necessity that a Simondonian “humanism” would not be an essentializing one, but rather something of the “open” humanism we might expect to see in Merleau-Ponty’s political writings. For example, see Merleau-Ponty (1964). Regarding this aspect in Simondon see, Barthélémy (2008, p. 4) and Guchet (2001b).
Perhaps this notion of “robots” is dated, but it seems to me that technological advances can still be seen in this general scheme, although we now speak more readily of artificial intelligence and of cyborgs (see earlier note).
This discussion is a paraphrase of Dumouchel (1992, pp. 409–410).
Dumouchel (1992, p. 412).
Simondon (1989, p. 11).
Simondon (1989, p. 12).
This progress is from a more “abstract” arrangement to a more “concrete” one. As Dumouchel explains, “abstract” describes a situation in which the functions are independent. Consider the evolution from a “water-cooled engine” to an “air-cooled” engine. In the case of water-cooling, the cooling system is independent from the function of the engine itself, triggered by some connecting mechanism. In an air-cooled engine, the design exploits the convection motion created by the external parts of the engine itself as it heats up. It is thus internally related in that the very functioning of the engine creates the cooling required. This is a concretization of a technological essence, begun abstractly through the initial invention of the water-cooled engine. For this and other examples, see Dumouchel (1992, pp. 412–414).
Simondon (1989, p. 13).
Stiegler (1998, p. 67).
Here one might think of the development of information systems from looms and early calculators to contemporary technological systems, such as the Internet.
Stiegler (1998, p. 71).
Stiegler (1998, p. 72).
Stiegler (1998, p. 81).
Dumouchel (1992, p. 409).
Sherwin (1989, p. 65).
Sherwin (1989, p. 65).
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer of this paper for comments that helped to improve it, particularly in relation to Sect. 1.3 on the transindividual.
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Landes, D.A. Individuals and technology: Gilbert Simondon, from Ontology to Ethics to Feminist Bioethics. Cont Philos Rev 47, 153–176 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-014-9292-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-014-9292-2