Gilbert Simondon and Evald Ilyenkov on humanism and technocracy

G. Simondon (1924-1989) and E.V. Ilyenkov (1924-1979) are outstanding philosophers of the second half of the 20th century, who searched for answers to the questions that the development of modern technology posed to the mankind. These thinkers belonged to different philosophical traditions, but their approaches converge in a number of significant points. They brought to the fore the sociocultural aspects of the integration of technology at the time when cybernetics attracted general attention as a methodology and was assigned a significant role in the progress of science and technology, both in France and in the USSR. This article aims to identify the common and the different in the criticism by Simondon and Ilyenkov of some essential aspects of technical civilization and in their proposed solutions to a number of problems that arise in the course of its development at the present stage. An analysis and comparison of texts written by the philosophers in the 1950s-1960s showed that both of them state the presence of disharmony in the relationship between culture and technology, the emergence of which they associate with the spread of the technocratic approach to technology and man and the mythology associated with it. Both authors stand on humanistic positions and consider it necessary to eliminate the myths of technocracy in order to prevent the transformation of technology into a tool for the enslavement of man. However, their approaches differ significantly in their attitude to technology: Simondon fundamentally refuses to consider technology only as a means and endows it with certain autonomy, while Ilyenkov considers it primarily a means of achieving goals that a society formulates for itself as an ideal. For this reason, the Soviet philosopher insists on the need to eliminate all social, economic, and political obstacles to the creation of conditions for the complete liberation and comprehensive development of man, while Simondon highlights the task of integrating technology into culture through cognizing it and identifying its immanent laws of development.