Liberalism, Aristotelianism, and the History of Tech-Skeptical Thought

Abstract

With liberalism declining and anti-technological thought ascendant, our culture is entering a new phase of disillusionment with modernity. When that has happened in the past, pre-modern — which is to say largely Aristotelian — ideas have flooded into the breach of our failing world-models. I argue that the current phase of disillusionment is on the verge “mainstreaming” Aristotelian thought in a domain that has until now strongly resisted it: technology. Aristotle’s teaching about causation has long offered ways of understanding technology that transcend the strict consequentialism and Bayesianism which dominate most technologists’ thinking. These ideas, which have been marginal until recently, now demand a fuller introduction.