Jacques Ellul<\/strong> (1912-1994)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I first came across the name of Jacques Ellul while reading Philip Marchand\u2019s McLuhan biography (1989) and stumbled across his work in the Librairie Mollat<\/em> during a trip to Bordeaux in the spring of 2024. In the course of his life, Ellul developed a twofold oeuvre openly contrasting theology and technology, as two opposed ways of life. He believed that technological tyranny represented by the increasing encroachment of modern technology into our private lives, posed a threat to both human freedom and faith, which in his view are inseparable. Only a transcendent position outside the logic of technology will provide the means for a radical revision of the present situation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Michel Serres<\/strong> (1930-2019)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00abIn Le Syst\u00e8me de Leibniz<\/em> Serres condemns what he calls \u2018umbilical disciplines\u2019 or \u2018queen disciplines\u2019 that claim to speak the zero-degree truth of all other discourses. If a discourse or way of thinking is umbilical it claims to be the single, privileged access to plain, unvarnished truth, which all other discourses distort or falsify to one degree or another.\u00bb Christopher Watkin<\/p>\n\n\n\n I discovered the work of Michel Serres in connection with my book on clouds<\/a>. My interest in his philosophy has been growing over the last few years. This has led to a convergence with Vil\u00e9m Flusser. My first attempt to create a dialogue between the two philosophers is the essay “Thinking Plurality. Vil\u00e9m Flusser and Michel Serres: A philosophical convergence<\/a>” (2022) that compares Vil\u00e9m Flusser\u2019s and Michel Serres\u2019s notion of plurality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Flusser\u2019s and Serres\u2019s writing and thinking are strikingly similar even if they radically diverge on some points. For both philosophers, thinking is not a linear progression that moves straight ahead along a simple line, but a journey full of meandering and surprising twists and turns, which can lead back on its tracks. To describe this complex contradictory movement, Flusser uses the spatial metaphors of the circle and the spiral. This is best exemplified in his practice of multiple translations and retranslations, and the Jewish method of Pilpul. Serres, on the other hand, uses the metaphors of the randonn\u00e9e<\/em> \u2013 a random stroll across a landscape \u2013, the wild flight of a wasp and the unfolding and refolding of a plane of dough. Both authors reject a view of reality based on a single centralized point of view, an umbilical vision of the world, as Serres called it. They both question systematic thinking and favor theoretical plurality and openness. In Flusser\u2019s view, synthesis brings points of view together that often radically differ from each other. For Serres synthesis is a cluster of differentiated but organized relations. Flusser\u2019s and Serres\u00b4s thinking is non-linear, non-hierarchical and always open-ended, a proliferation of fixed points to infinity. For both thinkers these different points of view are equally valid. The essay is based on a prerecorded online speech<\/a> I held at the international conference VII CoMcult Flusser 101 (September 13 to 17, 2021). <\/p>\n\n\n\n The relationship between Serres and Flusser also played a central role in Philosophie des Windes. Versuch \u00fcber das Unberechenbare<\/a><\/em>. Both philosophers have used the cloud and the wind as epistemological metaphors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/rainer-guldin.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Ellul-2.png\")
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