OTTO SANCHEZ-CRESPO DA ROSA

This master's thesis analyzes Jacques Ellul's philosophy of technique, based on his trilogy La
technique ou l'enjeu du siècle (1954), Le système technicien (1977), and Le bluff
technologique (1988). At the heart of his trilogy is the thesis of the autonomy of technique,
the idea that technical progress has become, in contemporary times, an end in itself, towards
which social, economic or political interests converge. The research argues that this thesis
undergoes a reformulation in the trilogy. The formulation of La technique presents the
complete autonomy of technique, resulting in a fatalistic technical determinism, the idea that
technical progress is irreversibly imposed on all fields of human activity. The formulation of
Le système and Le Bluff relativizes the autonomy of technique, to the extent that technique
comes to be understood as an open system that tends to replace and submit the other systems
(natural, political, economic and ideological) with which it has to enter into a relationship but without complete success, due to the limitations resulting from its "dysfunctions" and
"irrationalities", such as the economic crisis and the environmental crisis.