Abstract

Grant’s critical definitions of technology as issuing forth in the mastery of human and non-human nature and as the co-penetration of knowing and making are illuminating for understanding the unholy union of technology and authoritarianism that is evident in abundance. This essay will take note of the arc of Grant’s political philosophy, beginning with an early admiration for the noble moral register of Kantian ethics, through to Grant’s repudiation of the idea that all that is good without qualification is the good will, seeing this focus on the free will as being core to the modern project, and ultimately commensurable with the patterns of domination that are increasingly fixtures of technological integration, whether manifest as creeping surveillance and emergency powers in democratic states, or as outright authoritarian regimes perfecting systematic control of the masses.