Datum narození: 6. leden 1912
Datum úmrtí: 19. květen 1994
Další jména: ז'ק אלול, 雅克·埃呂爾
Jacques Ellul byl francouzský sociolog, historik, filozof, spisovatel, právní teoretik a protestantský teolog, který sám sebe řadil ke křesťanskému anarchismu.
Byl profesorem na univerzitě v Bordeaux. Silně ho ovlivnilo dílo Sorena Kierkegaarda a Karla Bartha, ovšem i Karla Marxe, jehož dílo vykládal z křesťanských pozic. Už od 30. let 20. století ovšem patřil k ostrým kritikům sovětského komunismu. K jeho velkým tématům patřil technologický pokrok , propaganda a vztah křesťanství a politiky. Byl přesvědčen, že moderní technologie ubíjejí humanitu. Je mu připisováno autorství hesla „mysli globálně, jednej lokálně“, které si osvojilo zejména protiglobalizační hnutí. Za druhé světové války bojoval v hnutí odporu a zachránil přitom také mnoho Židů, proto roku 2001 získal ocenění Spravedlivý mezi národy od organizace Jad Vašem. Sám silně podporoval stát Izrael.
— Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes
Source: ELLUL, Jacques. Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes. New York: Vintage Books. 1973
— Jacques Ellul
The Ethics of Freedom (1973 - 1974), Context: No society can last in conditions of anarchy. This is self-evident and I am in full agreement. But my aim is not the establishment of an anarchist society or the total destruction of the state. Here I differ from anarchists. I do not believe that it is possible to destroy the modern state. It is pure imagination to think that some day this power will be overthrown. From a pragmatic standpoint there is no chance of success. Furthermore, I do not believe that anarchist doctrine is the solution to the problem of organization in society and government. I do not think that if anarchism were to succeed we should have a better or more livable society. Hence I am not fighting for the triumph of this doctrine.
On the other hand, it seems to me that an anarchist attitude is the only one that is sufficiently radical in the face of a general statist system.
p. 396
— Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1965), Context: Propaganda tries to surround man by all possible routes in the realm of feelings as well as ideas, by playing on his will or on his needs, through his conscious and his unconscious, assailing him in both his private and his public life. It furnishes him with a complete system for explaining the world, and provides immediate incentives to action. We are here in the presence of an organized myth that tries to take hold of the entire person. Through the myth it creates, propaganda imposes a complete range of intuitive knowledge, susceptible of only one interpretation, unique and one-sided, and precluding any divergence. This myth becomes so powerful that it invades every arena of consciousness, leaving no faculty or motivation intact. It stimulates in the individual a feeling of exclusiveness, and produces a biased attitude.
— Jacques Ellul
The Subversion of Christianity (1984), Context: Revelation … unavoidably challenges the institution and established power, no matter what form this may take. But the adulteration by political power has changed all this. Christianity has become a religion of conformity, of integration into the social body. It has come to be regarded as useful for social cohesion (the exact opposite of what it is in its source and truth). Alternatively, it has become a flight from political or concrete reality, a flight into the spiritual world, into the cultivation of the inner life, into mysticism, and hence an evasion of the present world.
p. 133
— Jacques Ellul, book The Technological Society
The Technological Society (1954), Context: 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.
p. 97
— Jacques Ellul
The Ethics of Freedom (1973 - 1974), Context: It seems to me that the free man, i. e., the man freed in Christ, ought to take parts in all movements that aim at human freedom. He obviously ought to oppose all dictatorship and oppression and all the fatalities which crush man. The Christian cannot bear it that others should be slaves. His great passion in the world ought to be a passion for the liberation of men.
p. 398
— Jacques Ellul
Context: This is why there is such an incredible stress on information in our schools.
The important thing is to prepare young people to enter the world of information, able to handle computers, but knowing only the reasoning, the language, the combinations, and the connections between computers.
This movement is invading the whole intellectual domain and also that of conscience. … What is at issue here is evaluating the danger of what might happen to our humanity in the present half-century, and distinguishing between what we want to keep and what we are ready to lose, between what we can welcome as legitimate human development and what we should reject with our last ounce of strength as dehumanization. I cannot think that choices of this kind are unimportant.
Ce que je crois (1987) [What I Believe] translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (1989), p. 140
— Jacques Ellul
The Ethics of Freedom (1973 - 1974), Context: Every modern state is totalitarian. It recognizes no limit either factual or legal. This is why I maintain that no state in the modern world is legitimate. No present-day authority can claim to be instructed by God, for all authority is set in the framework of a totalitarian state. This is why I decide for anarchy.
p. 396
— Jacques Ellul
Context: This is why there is such an incredible stress on information in our schools.
The important thing is to prepare young people to enter the world of information, able to handle computers, but knowing only the reasoning, the language, the combinations, and the connections between computers.
This movement is invading the whole intellectual domain and also that of conscience. … What is at issue here is evaluating the danger of what might happen to our humanity in the present half-century, and distinguishing between what we want to keep and what we are ready to lose, between what we can welcome as legitimate human development and what we should reject with our last ounce of strength as dehumanization. I cannot think that choices of this kind are unimportant.
Ce que je crois (1987) [What I Believe] translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (1989), p. 140
— Jacques Ellul
The Ethics of Freedom (1973 - 1974), Context: No society can last in conditions of anarchy. This is self-evident and I am in full agreement. But my aim is not the establishment of an anarchist society or the total destruction of the state. Here I differ from anarchists. I do not believe that it is possible to destroy the modern state. It is pure imagination to think that some day this power will be overthrown. From a pragmatic standpoint there is no chance of success. Furthermore, I do not believe that anarchist doctrine is the solution to the problem of organization in society and government. I do not think that if anarchism were to succeed we should have a better or more livable society. Hence I am not fighting for the triumph of this doctrine.
On the other hand, it seems to me that an anarchist attitude is the only one that is sufficiently radical in the face of a general statist system.
p. 396
— Jacques Ellul
Context: There are different forms of anarchy and different currents in it. I must, first say very simply what anarchy I have in view. By anarchy I mean first an absolute rejection of violence. Hence I cannot accept either nihilists or anarchists who choose violence as a means of action.
Anarchy and Christianity [Anarchie et Christianisme] (1988) as translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (1991), p. 11
— Jacques Ellul
The Ethics of Freedom (1973 - 1974), Context: Every modern state is totalitarian. It recognizes no limit either factual or legal. This is why I maintain that no state in the modern world is legitimate. No present-day authority can claim to be instructed by God, for all authority is set in the framework of a totalitarian state. This is why I decide for anarchy.
p. 396
— Jacques Ellul
Context: Anarchism can teach Christian thinkers to see the realities of our societies from a different standpoint than the dominant one of the state. What seems to be one of the disasters of our time is that we all appear to agree that the nation-state is the norm. … Whether the state be Marxist or capitalist, it makes no difference. The dominant ideology is that of sovereignty.
Anarchy and Christianity [Anarchie et Christianisme] (1988) as translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (1991), pp.104–5
— Jacques Ellul
Context: There are different forms of anarchy and different currents in it. I must, first say very simply what anarchy I have in view. By anarchy I mean first an absolute rejection of violence. Hence I cannot accept either nihilists or anarchists who choose violence as a means of action.
Anarchy and Christianity [Anarchie et Christianisme] (1988) as translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (1991), p. 11
— Jacques Ellul
The Subversion of Christianity (1984), Context: I believe that the biblical teaching is clear. It always contests political power. It incites to "counterpower," to "positive" criticism, to an irreducible dialogue (like that between king and prophet in Israel), to antistatism, to a decentralizing of the relation, to an extreme relativizing of everything political, to an anti-ideology, to a questioning of all that claims either power or dominion (in other words, of all things political), and finally, if we may use a modern term, to a kind of "anarchism" (so long as we do not relate the term to the anarchist teaching of the nineteenth century).
p. 116
— Jacques Ellul
The Ethics of Freedom (1973 - 1974), Context: It seems to me that the free man, i. e., the man freed in Christ, ought to take parts in all movements that aim at human freedom. He obviously ought to oppose all dictatorship and oppression and all the fatalities which crush man. The Christian cannot bear it that others should be slaves. His great passion in the world ought to be a passion for the liberation of men.
p. 398
