Conclusion

Abstract

In this study, I have shown that Derrida’s thinking in all its different phases has returned to the question of technology and the technological as fundamental philosophical questions. His various treatments of them collectively form a coherent reflection that I have sought to reassemble and highlight. Taken together, these reflections constitute an appropriate framework for a philosophy of technology, a phenomenology of technology, that is neither transcendental or empirical, but quasi-transcendental. His thinking has a great deal in common with postphenomenology, not least its resistance to the notion of a radical essence. Notwithstanding these similarities, they differ on several key points. Derrida engages not only with the technological apparatuses themselves and their practical applications but also, and above all, with the accelerating developments within various fields of technology and their respective ethical, political, and religious consequences. The unique feature of Derrida’s alternative phenomenology of technology would be its radical extension of the concept of technology to encompass the entire phenomenological field: there is no possibility of shielding our thinking from empirical technology. Technology is not a polar opposition to the human world but a close relation to humans and thus to life, politics, and religion. Without this relation, we would be unable to take responsibility for technological development and globalization. Without it, we will be unable to remain open to the wholly other, to the future with all its threats and opportunities.