Albert Borgmann

The Moral Complexion of Consumption

Vigorous consumption is the sign of a prosperous and confident society. Some critics, however, find a high level of consumption morally objectionable. To see what is valid in these objections, one needs to understand the connection between consumption and the characteristic pattern of technology that is highlighted by the device paradigm and gives rise to paradigmatic consumption. Such consumption induces disengagement from reality and a decline of excellence. The response to these debilities is to accept paradigmatic consumption in some areas of life and to make room for focal things and practices in others. Research is needed to determine the social reality, and to probe the common awareness, of paradigmatic consumption and focal practices. Copyright 2000 by the University of Chicago.

The moral significance of the material culture

Ethics as a philosophical discipline has always been preoccupied with theory to the detriment of practice and the exclusion of material culture. Lately, practice has been rehabilitated, but material culture continues to be ignored. Cultural critics and sociologists have attended to it but have also refrained from a moral assessment of it. The findings of Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg‐Halton, however, reflect two kinds of cultural realities that sponsor two kinds of conduct. The first kind, represented by musical instruments, I call commanding reality. It invites social and physical engagement and provides orientation within the world. The second kind, exemplified by stereos, consists of consumable commodities and conduces to a life of distraction and disorientation. I conclude that ethics is not just a matter of conduct within whatever reality but of deciding which kind of reality we favor over the other. My plea is on behalf of commanding reality. Modern philosophy has been at two removes from the real w...

Does philosophy matter

Abstract By most any measure of social or cultural prominence, academic philosophy does not matter in contemporary life. The influence of philosophy began to wane as the professionalization of philosophy began to gather steam around the turn of the century. Taking basic science as their model, philosophers hoped to better the human condition through fundamental research rather than participation in the public conversation. This project has failed, but institutional inertia keeps driving philosophy along the established lines. Philosophers contribute to the moral and cultural maintenance of society and are free, as they should be, to engage in unfettered intellectual exploration. Yet they leave unattended a largely neglected task that they are particularly equipped to undertake, the radical and normative examination of the material culture that has been shaped by modern technology and is about to be transformed once again by the vigor and ingenuity of recent technological developments.

The Moral Assessment of Technology

Modern technology is the unacknowledged ruler of the advanced industrial democracies. Its rule is not absolute. It rests on the complicity of its subjects, the citizens of the democracies. Emancipation from this complicity requires first of all an explicit and shared consideration of the rule of technology.

So who am I really? Personal identity in the age of the Internet

The Internet has become a field of dragon teeth for a person’s identity. It has made it possible for your identity to be mistaken by a credit agency, spied on by the government, foolishly exposed by yourself, pilloried by an enemy, pounded by a bully, or stolen by a criminal. These harms to one’s integrity could be inflicted in the past, but information technology has multiplied and aggravated such injuries. They have not gone unnoticed and are widely bemoaned and discussed. The government and private watchdogs are working to protect the identity of citizens though at least in the United States both the government and individuals all too often side with prosperity when it conflicts with privacy. Still, these information-technological threats to identity have been recognized and can be reasonably met through legislation, regulation, and discretion. There is another kind of danger to our identity that is more difficult to define and to meet, for it has no familiar predecessors, has no criminal aspects, and exhibits no sharp moral or cultural contours. Still that threat to our identity haunts us constantly and surfaces occasionally in conversations and the media. It makes us feel displaced, distracted, and fragmented at the very times when to all appearances we seem to be connected, busy, and energetic. At the same time, the culture of technology, and of information technology particularly, has opened up fields of diversity and contingency that invite us to comprehend our identities in newly responsible, intricate, and open-minded ways.

Society in the postmodern era

Technology in the postmodern era has expedited and revolutionized the business world while also altering patterns of social interaction. Although such sophisticated systems have made a positive impact on the United States, they have also negatively affected the livelihood of Americans inside and outside of the workplace.

PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTIONS ON THE MICROELECTRONIC REVOLUTION

Microelectronic technology maintains a modern split between revolutionary machinery and conventional commodity. This is mirrored in the division between labor devoted to the construction and maintenance of technological artifacts and leisure devoted to the consumption of commodies. On the labor side, microelectronics by way of automation will eliminate much degrading work and increase affluence. On the leisure side, the distraction and passivity of typical technological pastimes will be aggravated. In the longer historical perspective, the microelectronic revolution is not revolutionary at all, but only intensifies tendencies which have been at work for two centuries.

Knowledge and Conversation

Good conversations open up a common world. The boundaries of that world are defined by shared knowledge. The normative content of knowledge is the concern of general education, and its force comes to life as background knowledge in conversations and in the way we experience the world. Background knowledge is present in memory. Information technology tends to make memory dispensable and ignorance normal—it is no longer the absence of knowledge, but rather the ability to know, the availability of information, accessed when needed. The result is an attenuation of our being in the world.

Contingency and Grace in an Age of Science and Technology

We need to respond reflectively to the indifference that contemporary culture exhibits toward religion and theology. The realm of contingency offers common ground with atheists and agnostics and constitutes the habitual precinct of grace. Contingency, however, is questioned by scientists and reduced by technology. Thus, contingency must be clarified and defended vis-à-vis scientists (and philosophers), and its reduction by technology needs to be understood and reversed.

The force of wilderness within the ubiquity of cyberspace

Wilderness and cyberspace are opposites and yet are poorly defined and set off against each other. Wilderness, in fact, is enveloped by cyberspace and so seems to have become disposable and replaceable. The legal delimitation of wilderness requires us, however, to stop and consider how to cross over into it, and if entered thoughtfully, the wilderness can teach us to recognize how, within cyberspace, it has attained a new kind of sacred force.