I miss the Cosmotechnics threads we used to have here a few years ago.

>That is why the "humanist" problems are false problems. How could this human being, who is the real one and not the one imagined by Sartre or Heidegger—how could he sovereignly perform what is expected of him: i.e., make choices, judgments, rejections in regard to technology as a whole or individual technologies? How and in terms of what could he give a different direction to technology than the one that technology gives itself in its self-augmentation? What initiative could he take that would not be primarily technological?

You missed the point. He's referencing the debate in the text and saying that Sartre and Heidegger ignore the real and actual living man of the 20th century in favour of philosophical and grammatical squabble between humanism and existentialism (itself a result of technique).

Maybe I confused you by using the English translation, as "technology" is meant in French as technique, which is the metaphysical concept Ellul describes. As far as I know Heidegger equated techne with episteme, but Ellul's technique is not related to knowledge in the same way. And from his essays, my understanding is that technology creates and maintains its own framework (Gestell) and absorbs all other frames under it, correct? This is one aspect of technique Ellul discusses most directly in The Technological System, but my problem with Heidegger is that he only engages with these ideas in the most abstract way and cannot fully grasp the idea of the modern technical phenomenon, while Ellul performs actual sociological analysis and clearly describes.
>Van Vleet offers a brief comparison of Ellul to two other philosophers of technology, Marcuse and Heidegger, and notes in particular how Ellul's dialectic informs his thought. Whereas Heidegger believes humans can remain "free" over against the rise of new technologies, Ellul warns of an illusion that technology does not dominate us. As interesting as Heidegger's reflections on technology are (and they really are!), they are weak precisely because they lack dialectical tension.

Ellul describes technique is the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency in every field of human activity.
>It is just using technology to learn about technology
But this is precisely the point that differs Ellul from other sociologists. His analysis of technique exists in a dialectic with the idea of God, with the natural world as God's creation and the technical world as the creation of man. There is nothing wrong with using technology at all, it is the relationship between man and his things that is at the heart of the issue.
>Heidegger clearly does not think technology has no harm to humans
Yes, but wasn't his idea that people should simply let the world be, no matter what uncertainties they have about it (Gelassenheit)? Is this not the context of his Letter to Humanism, which in some way was a justification for his passivity against the Nazi government, the most technical state of its era?

You CANNOT separate Heidegger from his fascism and his experience as a loyal subject in Nazi Germany. Heidegger began good but he ended up doing internalized fash apologia in his moral system

Ellul describes technique is the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency in every field of human activity.
>It is just using technology to learn about technology
But this is precisely the point that differs Ellul from other sociologists. His analysis of technique exists in a dialectic with the idea of God, with the natural world as God's creation and the technical world as the creation of man. There is nothing wrong with using technology at all, it is the relationship between man and his things that is at the heart of the issue.
>Heidegger clearly does not think technology has no harm to humans
Yes, but wasn't his idea that people should simply let the world be, no matter what uncertainties they have about it (Gelassenheit)? Is this not the context of his Letter to Humanism, which in some way was a justification for his passivity against the Nazi government, the most technical state of its era?

>metaphysical concept
in what sense does Ellul understand it as a metaphysical concept?
>creates and maintains its own framework (Gestell) and absorbs all other frames under it, correct?
not exactly. Gestell is specifically a phenomenon of modern technology which turns everything into something for its usefulness. In this sense technology can also turn people into 'standing reserve'.
>performs actual sociological analysis
This is something any modern scholar can do but it cannot reveal anything fundamental. It is just using technology to learn about technology which means that if Ellul uses such an analysis he is missing the essence of technology. Heidegger's goal is to understand technology's essence.
>Whereas Heidegger believes humans can remain "free" over against the rise of new technologies
I dont know what Vleet means by 'free' here but Heidegger clearly does not think technology has no harm to humans. In fact he saw it as the greatest question facing us today and that its danger meant that it could annihilate the essence of the Human.

They completely missed the central idea of technology in favour of process philosophy jargon and some bastardized idea of "Space Taoism". Read Ellul instead.

read this life-affirming refinement of both Heidegger and Ellul:

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