What is the “Philosophy of Praxis”?

Andrew Feenberg is one of the most significant contemporary social philosophers. His work and its influence in the philosophy of technology are well-known; he has developed a set of ideas about technology and its relationship to society that go importantly beyond standard debates about the “neutrality” or “complicity” of modern technology with respect to its social consequences, emphasizing the social complexity of technological developments both in terms of their sources and of the surprising ways in which they themselves transform the social environment in which they operate. Nothing like a Luddite, he has provided careful analyses of contemporary technologies that are remarkably sensitive to both their liberatory and their dangerous aspects. His interest in and connections with the worlds of French and Japanese philosophy, in addition, have provided English-speaking readers access to ideas from those worlds and have enriched his work with intriguing cross-cultural investigations of various technologies. Feenberg was a student of Herbert Marcuse and is perhaps the leading proponent of the continued importance of the latter’s work; in that sense, he is also one of the few figures in the contemporary philosophical