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Abstract

Is there such a thing as a French philosophy of technology? What drew Bernard Stiegler’s attention to the question of technics, viz., its constitutive role to human beings? What prompted him, in the first volume of Technics and Time, to engage a domain that had long remained repressed, unexplored, or even unthinkable in the history of philosophy? In this presentation, I will trace the concept of technics as memory in Stiegler’s thought through his appropriation of German philosophy, especially Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, in dialogue with Plato and the French archaeologist and paleoanthropologist André Leroi-Gourhan. From there, I analyze how the technical aporia provides a dual foundation for Stiegler’s philosophical architecture. Finally, this presentation considers how, and to what extent, philosophy and art, in Stiegler’s view, can respond to the disproportion between technics and organs.

Bio

Renjie Li is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Macau (advised by Qingjie James Wang). His research interests focus on Franco-German philosophy (esp., Gilbert Simondon, Bernard Stiegler, and Martin Heidegger), philosophy of technology, and digital art. Li has published in Leonardo, Philosophy East & West, and Balkan Journal of Philosophy. He is the Chinese translator of《機器與愛欲：許煜北藝大演講集》[Machine and Eros] (Taipei National University of the Arts Press, 2026, co-translated),《後歐洲》[Post-Europe] (Guangxi Normal University Press, 2026), and《在機器的邊界思考》[Thinking at the Boundaries of Machines] (Guangxi Normal University Press, 2025, co-translated).