Jacques Ellul frasi celebri
“Ogni errore nella storia della Chiesa è una verità allo stesso tempo appropriata e distorta.”
La sovversione del Cristianesimo
La sovversione del Cristianesimo
La sovversione del Cristianesimo
Jacques Ellul: Frasi in inglese
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1965)
Contesto: In the midst of increasing mechanization and technological organization, propaganda is simply the means used to prevent these things from being felt as too oppressive and to persuade man to submit with good grace. When man will be fully adapted to this technological society, when he will end by obeying with enthusiasm, convinced of the excellence of what he is forced to do, the constraint of the organization will no longer be felt by him; the truth is, it will no longer be a constraint, and the police will have nothing to do. The civic and technological good will and the enthusiasm for the right social myths — both created by propaganda — will finally have solved the problem of man.
Vintage, p. xviii
Origine: The Presence of the Kingdom (1948), p. 37
Contesto: People think that they have no right to judge a fact — all they have to do is to accept it. Thus from the moment that technics, the State, or production, are facts, we must worship them as facts, and we must try to adapt ourselves to them. This is the very heart of modern religion, the religion of the established fact, the religion on which depend the lesser religions of the dollar, race, or the proletariat, which are only expressions of the great modern divinity, the Moloch of fact.
“In a society such as ours, it is almost impossible for a person to be responsible.”
The Betrayal by Technology (1993 film)
Contesto: In a society such as ours, it is almost impossible for a person to be responsible. A simple example: a dam has been built somewhere, and it bursts. Who is responsible for that? Geologists worked out. They examined the terrain. Engineers drew up the construction plans. Workmen constructed it. And the politicians decided that the dam had to be in that spot. Who is responsible? No one. There is never anyone responsible. Anywhere. In the whole of our technological society the work is so fragmented and broken up into small pieces that no one is responsible. But no one is free either. Everyone has his own, specific task. And that's all he has to do.
Just consider, for example, that atrocious excuse… It was one of the most horrible things I have ever heard. The director of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was asked at the Nuremburg trials, “But didn’t you find it horrible? All those corpses?” He replied, “What could I do? I couldn’t process all those corpses. The capacity of the ovens was too small. It caused me many problems. I had no time to think about these people. I was too busy with the technical problem of my ovens.” That is the classic example of an irresponsible person. He carries out his technical task and isn’t interested in anything else.
“People think that they have no right to judge a fact — all they have to do is to accept it.”
Origine: The Presence of the Kingdom (1948), p. 37
Contesto: People think that they have no right to judge a fact — all they have to do is to accept it. Thus from the moment that technics, the State, or production, are facts, we must worship them as facts, and we must try to adapt ourselves to them. This is the very heart of modern religion, the religion of the established fact, the religion on which depend the lesser religions of the dollar, race, or the proletariat, which are only expressions of the great modern divinity, the Moloch of fact.
Vintage, p. xviii
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1965)
Contesto: In the midst of increasing mechanization and technological organization, propaganda is simply the means used to prevent these things from being felt as too oppressive and to persuade man to submit with good grace. When man will be fully adapted to this technological society, when he will end by obeying with enthusiasm, convinced of the excellence of what he is forced to do, the constraint of the organization will no longer be felt by him; the truth is, it will no longer be a constraint, and the police will have nothing to do. The civic and technological good will and the enthusiasm for the right social myths — both created by propaganda — will finally have solved the problem of man.
“Technique is totally irrelevant to this notion and pursues no end, professed or unprofessed.”
Origine: The Technological Society (1954), p. 97
Contesto: A principal characteristic of technique … is its refusal to tolerate moral judgments. It is absolutely independent of them and eliminates them from its domain. Technique never observes the distinction between moral and immoral use. It tends on the contrary, to create a completely independent technical morality.
Here, then, is one of the elements of weakness of this point of view. It does not perceive technique's rigorous autonomy with respect to morals; it does not see that the infusion of some more or less vague sentiment of human welfare cannot alter it. Not even the moral conversion of the technicians could make a difference. At best, they would cease to be good technicians. This attitude supposes further that technique evolves with some end in view, and that this end is human good. Technique is totally irrelevant to this notion and pursues no end, professed or unprofessed.
"The Characteristics of Propaganda" in Readings in Propaganda and Persuasion : New and Classic Essays (2006) edited by Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell, p. 48, note 47
Origine: The Subversion of Christianity (1984), pp. 33-34
Origine: The Subversion of Christianity (1984), pp. 35-36
Origine: The Subversion of Christianity (1984), p. 115
Vintage, p. 9
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1965)
“Propaganda does not aim to elevate man, but to make him serve.”
Vintage, p. 38
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1965)
J. Hanks, trans. (1985), p. 214
The Humiliation of the Word (1981)
Origine: The Subversion of Christianity (1984), p. 125
Origine: The Presence of the Kingdom (1948), p. 28
Origine: The Subversion of Christianity (1984), p. 33
Origine: The Subversion of Christianity (1984), p. 134
Origine: The Ethics of Freedom (1973 - 1974), p. 254
“The first builder of a city was Cain.”
Origine: The Meaning of the City (1951), p. 1
Origine: The Subversion of Christianity (1984), p. 30
J. Hanks, trans. (1985), p. 210
The Humiliation of the Word (1981)
L'espérance oubliée (1972) [Hope in Time of Abandonment] translated by C. Edward Hopkin (1973)
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