The dissertation considers the influence of Jacques Ellul, Martin Heidegger, and Simone Weil on Grant's understanding of technology. Chapters One and Two analyze Ellul's influence on Grant, while Chapter Three examines Heidegger's influence on Grant's understanding of technology. Chapter Four examines the consequences of Grant's ambiguous evaluation of Ellul and Heidegger. Grant's unwillingness to entirely accept either account of technology leads to a tension in which aspects of Ellul 's account of technology are held simultaneously with elements of Heidegger's account. As a way to overcome the tension between these explanations, Grant becomes open to gnostic elements in Weil's theology, which manifest themselves in radical dualism and esoteric wisdom. The purpose of the dissertation is to clarify the significance of Ellul for Grant's thought. Scholars often overlook the extent of Ellul's contribution for Grant's account of technology, particularly in Grant's refinement of concepts such as technological necessity and his critique of liberal ideology. Furthermore, the dissertation seeks to reveal the pliability of Grant's account of technology, which is closely linked to Grant's theological, philosophical, and political judgments. The dissertation suggests that Grant's understanding of technology leads Grant to espouse gnostic elements from Weil's theology (such as radical dualism and esoteric wisdom) as a palliative to the arid technological necessity and moral inarticulacy of technological civilization. The dissertation challenges the scholarly orthodoxy that exists in the interpretation of Grant's work. Through a fresh reading of primary and secondary sources, the dissertation advocates an alternative approach to understanding Grant's thought. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This paper examines the ‘robotic moment’, as defined by Sherry Turkle (2011), in the light of general theories of human-technology relations, notably the theoretical framework founded by Jacques Ellul (1954). Potential psychological, cultural, and technical consequences of human-technology interaction, especially human interaction with so-called ‘social-robots’, are explored. It is demonstrated that the ‘robotic moment’ may reasonably be understood as a result of the formation of pseudo-social anthropo-technological circuits, and as a result of cultural disintegration and an increasingly prevalent societal impulse to incorporate everything that is commonly not understood to be technological (i.e. even the biological, the social, and the spiritual) into the technological order. It is demonstrated that the category ‘social robot’ may reasonably be understood, depending on how the robot is used, as a technique humaine, as a magical practice, or as a complex hybrid practice. Assumptions concerning the nature of technologies, the extent to which technologies are useful, and the impact of technologies on society are questioned. The extent to which a society’s worldview may determine or influence how its inhabitants relate to technologies is explored. It is suggested that, as societies demystify the universe and develop mature techno-secular worldviews, means-to-ends (i.e. technologies) are being mystified; the ensuing quasi-religious techno-secular worldviews, which fail to recognise the limitations of technologies, may in turn be responsible for much of the irrational use of technologies in technological societies. The essay suggests that the ‘robotic moment’ can be explained not only in terms of vulnerabilities inherent in human nature and in terms of properties inherent in technological society, but also in terms of the notions of the sacred that prevail in technically advanced societies and a society’s practice of science, engineering, magic, and faith.