Ellul and the Autonomy of Technique

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994), a French historian of law, sociologist, and lay Protestant theologian at the University of Bordeaux, published his best-known work, La Technique ou l'enjeu du siècle, in 1954; John Wilkinson's English translation appeared a decade later as The Technological Society (1964). Ellul's central term, "la technique," is deliberately broader than machinery or hardware: he defines it as "the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity," a category encompassing not only industrial and mechanical technique but also economic, administrative, and even psychological techniques — the last of which he examined at length in Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (French original 1962, English translation 1965).