Gilbert Simondon Quotes
Gilbert Simondon was a French philosopher whose work on technical objects and individuation has become a touchstone for contemporary philosophy of technology and metaphysics. His doctoral thesis, published as L'Individu et sa genese physico-biologique, replaced the classical question of being with the question of becoming, arguing that individuals do not preexist the operations through which they emerge. The quotes below are attributed to Gilbert Simondon, organized by topic.
Gilbert Simondon on Freedom
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“The machine is a slave which serves to make other slaves. Such a domineering and enslaving drive may go together with the quest for human freedom. But it is difficult to liberate oneself by transferring slavery to other beings, men, animals, or machines; to rule over a population of machines subjecting the whole world means still to rule, and all rule implies acceptance of schemata of subjection.”
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Gilbert Simondon on Knowledge
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Attributed to Gilbert Simondon:
“To know technical objects is the precondition of every humanism that wishes to be more than rhetoric.”
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Attributed to Gilbert Simondon:
“The machine is the stranger in our culture; we have not yet learned to receive it.”
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Attributed to Gilbert Simondon:
“Information is not a transmitted message; it is the operation by which a system becomes individuated.”
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“p. 1 ( http://www.academia.edu/4184556 )”
Culture has become a system of defense against technics. This defense appears as a defense of man based on the assumption that technical objects contain no human reality. We should like to show that culture fails to take into account that there is a human reality in technical reality and that, if it is to fully play its role, culture must come to incorporate technical entities into its body of kno -
“Instead of starting from the individuality of the technical object, or even from its specificity, which is very unstable, try to define the laws of its genesis in the framework of this individuality or specificity, it is better to invert the problem: it is from the criterion of the genesis that we can define the individuality and the specificity of the technical object: the technical object is not this or that thing, given hic et nunc but that which is generated.”
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Gilbert Simondon on Nature
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Attributed to Gilbert Simondon:
“The individual is not given; it is the result of an operation of individuation.”
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Attributed to Gilbert Simondon:
“Becoming is more fundamental than being; the stable individual is only a phase.”