The problem that runs through the thesis is: what is the political meaning of the unstoppable advance of technology in the present time? More specifically, we ask about the relationship between technique and politics in the present, how does modern technification affect the unfolding of the political, taking into account the vision that Oswald Spengler, Ernst Jünger and Carl Schmitt developed during the European interwar period? How do these visions connect with the question of the intelegibility of history? In order to account for these questions, the present thesis recovers and examines the relevance of reflections on technification in the work of the three chosen authors during the European interwar period.

The hypothesis underlying our research, in relation to these questions is, mainly, that the chosen authors enable open visions to think about the relationship between technique and politics, overcoming the mere apology or demonization, thus favoring the political reflection on technification. As a subsidiary hypothesis to the main, we will maintain that the three authors, in a shared manner, corroborate the existence of a religious link and substratum of faith and belief, which operates in the background of the process of modern technification. In such a way that this cultic substratum results in a technological determinism that aspires towards an impossible self-equilibrium free of conflicts, alien to the inherent dynamics of the political, and therefore to the human nature of its affairs, thus jeopardising life in common. A substratum which, we provisionally maintain, still persists in contemporary technification and which is therefore of the utmost relevance for continuing to think the political. On the other hand, and simultaneously, we take up again from the chosen authors the intention of reading the historical moment precisely in the light of technification, as a conditioning variable for this deployment in current life.

The general aim of this examination is threefold: firstly, to understand and analyse the link that each of the authors chosen establishes between technique and the deployment of the political since modernity, especially in the light of the problem of the latter’s demarcation and autonomy. As a consequence of the above, the aim is to highlight the distinctive face that the relationship between technique and politics acquires in the specific historical period of Modernity, evidencing that in all three authors there is a certain way of reading history, Modernity and an attempt to both envision and delineate a future. Thirdly, by reconstructing these three visions, we seek, within the framework of a fully contemporary debate on the role of technification in today’s societies, to avoid any unproductive dilemma between demonisation or apology of technology.

Thus, our specific objectives are threefold: to account for a) the role that technification plays in the vital decadence of Western civilization and its political challenges in the work of Oswald Spengler; b) the impact of technical progress on social heterogeneity, taking into account the new forms of representation and social aggregation in the work of Ernst Jünger; and c) the depoliticizing neutralization dimension of the religion of technicity, which attacks the autonomy of the political, impacts on the validity of the political form of the State and opens the way to the political form of the State, and opens the way to the political form of the State; and c) the depoliticizing neutralizing dimension of the religion of technicity, which attacks the autonomy of the political, impacts on the validity of the political form State and opens questions about the legal order in Modernity in the work of Carl Schmitt.

Based on those objectives, we structured the research in three chapters, dedicating a moment to the vision of each of the three authors on the problem and trying to establish, both within and between the chapters, a dialogue between the authors but also with our present, gathering connections and successive findings throughout the research, which will allow us to extend our work in the framework of the future doctoral thesis, oriented precisely to the problem of the legitimacy of the political decision based on the technique for democracies today.

The sense of a thesis structured in this way is that allows us to observe the distinctive contributions of each of the authors to inquire into the spiritual content of modern technification and its political impact, as well as to point out the problematic articulation that is woven between technique and politics, the intrigues that current technification reserves for a political direction or domain, its substance and its effectiveness, as well as the role of human agency.

The order of the chapters aims to highlight the successive increase in the political interest at the analysis of the question, an order that at the same time coincides with a chronological sequence, insofar as Spengler began the debate with his writings from 1917, trying to glimpse the cultural and political correlates implied by modern technification. Jünger took up the question again in 1920, reflecting on the technification of the world since the Great War and highlighting the social transformations it implied, opening up a new planetary order. Schmitt recognized in a certain way the contributions of Spengler and Jünger and openly declared in 1929 that we live in the era of the religion of technicity, reflecting on the challenge that this imposes for the deployment of the political, the common order, the political form, the State and the decision.