Springer Derrida and Technology: Life, Politics, and Religion

This book is the first monograph that takes a comprehensive approach to Jacques Derrida as a philosopher of technology. It refines and complements his mainstream image as a philosopher of language and deconstructionist of classical literary and philosophical texts. This volume outlines the key features of Derrida’s alternative philosophy of technology, a philosophy which Sjöstrand argues, avoids the problems associated with, on the one hand, a Heideggerian orientation, which completely separates thinking and technology and, on the other, an empirically oriented ”post-phenomenology” that can be said to be hegemonic within the field today. Based on a sustained interpretation of Derrida, and a robust, coherent philosophy of technology, a  phenomenology of technology is developed that, in a radical way, extends the concept of technology to cover the entire field of phenomenology. This places  the technological not in opposition to humanity, but rather always already in close proximity to man and, consequently, to life, ethics, politics, democracy and religion. Strikingly, this important aspect of Derrida’s thinking is only rarely analyzed or discussed by his many exegetes. This text appeals to graduates and researchers working on Derrida, phenomenology, and the philosophy of technology. From the Back Cover This book is the first monograph that takes a comprehensive approach to Jacques Derrida as a philosopher of technology. It refines and complements his mainstream image as a philosopher of language and deconstructionist of classical literary and philosophical texts. This volume outlines the key features of Derrida’s alternative philosophy of technology, a philosophy which Sjöstrand argues, avoids the problems associated with, on the one hand, a Heideggerian orientation, which completely separates thinking and technology and, on the other, an empirically oriented ”post-phenomenology” that can be said to be hegemonic within the field today. Based on a sustained interpretation of Derrida, and a robust, coherent philosophy of technology, a  phenomenology of technology is developed that, in a radical way, extends the concept of technology to cover the entire field of phenomenology. This places  the technological not in opposition to humanity, but rather always already in close proximity to man and, consequently, to life, ethics, politics, democracy and religion. Strikingly, this important aspect of Derrida’s thinking is only rarely analyzed or discussed by his many exegetes. This text appeals to graduates and researchers working on Derrida, phenomenology, and the philosophy of technology. About the Author Björn Sjöstrand studied philosophy at Södertörn University, Stockholm, from 2002 and obtained his PhD at Uppsala University in 2016. In his early career, he studied electronics at Chalmers Technical University in Gothenburg and obtained his MSc in Electrical Engineering. He has a solid technical background with more than 30 years of experience in various leading positions within the telecommunications and information industry in Sweden. As a phenomenologist, he is presently interested in the question of technology and its relation to the human and to society. He has previously published Ethics and Politics in Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida (2008), “Derrida and the Phenomenology of Technology” in Fenomenologi, Teknik och Medialitet (2011) and “The Phenomenology of Technology: The Technology that Saves” in Modern Filosofi (2016). Since 2009 he is a member of The Society for Philosophy and Technology (SPT) and The Nordic Society for Phenomenology (NoSP).