Key Principle
Ellul's characterology is not a list but an interlocking system. Each characteristic enables and deepens the others, forming a closed analytical architecture:
- Rationality reduces every operation to quantifiable, logical terms -- the precondition for all that follows.
- Artificiality displaces the natural milieu with a constructed environment governed by technical imperatives, eliminating external reference points.
- Automatism of technical choice follows from rationality: once methods are fully quantified, the superior method selects itself without genuine human decision. "There is no personal choice, in respect to magnitude, between, say, 3 and 4... Similarly, there is no choice between two technical methods" (Ch. 2, p. 80).
- Self-augmentation means technique generates its own growth -- through anonymous accretion, combinatorial branching, and the problem cascade (each technical solution spawns new technical problems). Governed by two laws: irreversibility within a civilization, and geometric progression as techniques combine.
- Monism establishes that all techniques share the same self-augmenting logic and constitute a single indivisible phenomenon. "The technical phenomenon cannot be broken down in such a way as to retain the good and reject the bad. It has a 'mass' which renders it monistic" (Ch. 2, p. 111).
- Universalism operates in two dimensions: geographically (technique spreads across all civilizations, abolishing cultural difference) and qualitatively (technique colonizes every domain of human activity, leaving nothing untouched).
- Autonomy is the culmination. Technique becomes "a reality in itself, self-sufficient, with its special laws and its own determinations" (Ch. 2, p. 134). It generates its own morality, selects its own ends, and subordinates all external criteria -- including human freedom -- to its internal logic.
The system is circular: rationality enables automatism, automatism feeds self-augmentation, self-augmentation produces monism, monism drives universalism, and universalism seals autonomy -- which in turn reinforces rationality as the only legitimate mode of evaluation.
Why This Matters
The characterology is the analytical backbone of the entire book. Every subsequent argument -- about human techniques, the state, the economy, propaganda -- is an application of these seven traits to a specific domain. Without this framework, Ellul's claims about technique appear as polemical assertions. With it, they follow as deductions from a structural analysis.
The characterology also forecloses the most common objections. The instrumentalist claim ("technique is neutral; only uses are good or bad") fails against monism and autonomy: "There is no difference at all between technique and its use" (Ch. 2, p. 98). The selectivist claim ("we can adopt the good parts and reject the bad") fails against monism's indivisibility. The humanist claim ("moral conversion of technicians will redirect technique") fails against autonomy's self-legislation: "Not even the moral conversion of the technicians could make a difference" (Ch. 2, p. 97).
Good Examples
The flying-shuttle cascade (monism and self-augmentation). The flying shuttle (1733) created yarn shortage, which demanded the spinning jenny, which created yarn surplus, which demanded the power loom, which demanded factory organization, commercial technique, financial systems, transport, urbanization, city planning, and finally amusement techniques to manage the human consequences (Ch. 2, pp. 111-113). Each link is not accidental but structurally necessary -- the equilibrium disrupted by one technique can only be restored by another.
Police technique as self-completing system (automatism and autonomy). Suspect files that track any citizen who ever contacted police are "only a point of departure" because the logic of the file demands its own completion (Ch. 2, p. 101). To apprehend all criminals requires supervising all citizens. The endpoint -- preventive detention plus re-education -- is the concentration camp as administrative institution. "This is no perverse decision on the part of some party or government" (Ch. 2, p. 100); it follows from technique's internal logic.
The bread problem (autonomy's means-ends inversion). When bread could not be mechanized without degrading quality, the response was not to abandon mechanization but to transform human taste to accept the machine's product (Ch. 2, pp. 134-135, via Giedion). The consumer is reshaped before the machine is questioned. Technique carries intrinsic finality: "It refracts in its own specific sense the wills which make use of it and the ends proposed for it" (Ch. 2, p. 141).
Counterpoints
Historicity vs. inevitability. The characterology describes what technique becomes once the five convergent factors produce it. But Ellul insists this convergence was historically contingent, not inevitable. The fifteenth century deliberately subordinated its technical inventions to an imaginative vision (Ch. 2, p. 70, via Francastel). This opens a tension: if technique's autonomy is structurally produced, not essential, is the characterology a diagnosis of a reversible condition or an irreversible transformation?
The quantitative-qualitative threshold. Ellul borrows Engels' principle: quantitative accumulation crosses a threshold into qualitative transformation (Ch. 2, p. 63). But this means the characteristics describe not technique as such but technique past a certain density. Below that density, the same operations yield different relational properties. The characterology is therefore historically bounded -- it applies to the modern situation, not to technique in general.
Monism vs. lived experience. The claim that all techniques form a single indivisible phenomenon conflicts with the ordinary experience of adopting some technologies and rejecting others. Ellul's response -- that selective adoption is competitive suicide and piecemeal rejection is structurally foreclosed -- is powerful but depends on the completeness of the system, which is an empirical question, not a logical necessity.
Key Quotes
"It is not, then, the intrinsic characteristics of techniques which reveal whether there have been real changes, but the characteristics of the relation between the technical phenomenon and society." (Ch. 2, p. 63)
"What can be produced must be produced... it is considered criminal and antisocial not to do so." (Ch. 2, p. 81)
"Technique engenders itself. When a new technical form appears, it makes possible and conditions a number of others." (Ch. 2, p. 87)
"Technique worships nothing, respects nothing. It has a single role: to strip off externals, to bring everything to light, and by rational use to transform everything into means." (Ch. 2, p. 142)
"Man cannot live without the sacred. He therefore transfers his sense of the sacred to the very thing which has destroyed its former object: to technique itself." (Ch. 2, p. 143)
The Twin Dynamics: Desacralization and Resacralization
Technique desacralizes not through argument but through use -- "by evidence and not by reason, through use and not through books" (Ch. 2, p. 142). Everything mysterious is redefined as merely "that which has not yet been technicized" (Ch. 2, p. 142). But because the human psyche structurally requires the sacred (drawing on Jung), the vacuum created by desacralization is filled by technique itself. The worshipper believes they are being rational precisely when they are being devout. This cycle -- desacralization, psychic vacuum, resacralization of technique -- completes the colonization of interiority and renders technique uniquely critique-proof.
Rules of Thumb
The ratchet test. If abandoning a technique requires adopting a different technique to manage the consequences, you are inside the self-augmentation loop. There is no exit through further optimization.
The one-best-way signal. When a domain that previously admitted multiple legitimate approaches narrows to a single "obviously correct" method, automatism has arrived. The disappearance of alternatives is the characteristic, not the imposition of a rule.
The monism detector. If someone proposes keeping the beneficial aspects of a technical system while discarding the harmful ones, check whether the beneficial and harmful aspects are structurally linked. In Ellul's framework, they almost always are.
The means-ends inversion. When the human being is being adapted to fit a tool rather than the tool being adapted to fit the human, autonomy is operating. Watch for the moment when human variability is redefined as error.
The sacred transfer. When criticism of a particular technology provokes emotional defensiveness disproportionate to the practical stakes, the sacred has likely been transferred. The technical object is functioning not as instrument but as idol.
Related References
- Desacralization and Resacralization -- extended treatment of the sacred transfer cycle
- five factor convergence -- the historical preconditions that produced the modern technical phenomenon
- technique vs machine -- the distinction between technique (method) and machine (artifact) that the characterology depends on
- autonomy of technique -- the culminating characteristic expanded into its full argument