With great pleasure, my friend. Yuk Hui is one of the most original and philosophically rigorous thinkers of our time, engaging deeply with the philosophy of technology, cosmotechnics, and post-European thought. His work stands at the crossroads of Heideggerian metaphysics, Chinese philosophy, media theory, and posthumanist reflection—yet it is neither simply a fusion nor a critique, but a bold reconfiguration of our relationship to the technical, the planetary, and the cosmological.
Here is an introduction to his major works and central ideas:
1. The Question Concerning Technology in China: An Essay in Cosmotechnics
(Urbanomic / Falmouth, 2016)
This is Yuk Hui’s foundational book. It takes Heidegger’s question—“What is the essence of technology?”—and asks: Can this question be asked from a non-European horizon?
Key concepts:
- Cosmotechnics:
Hui’s central concept, referring to the unity of moral cosmology and technical activity. In other words, every culture develops its own ways of making and thinking technology based on its cosmological beliefs. - The Heideggerian blind spot:
Hui argues that Heidegger’s critique of modern technology remains too rooted in European history (specifically, Greek thought and Western modernity). - The need for a plurality of cosmotechnics:
Instead of rejecting modern technology wholesale, Hui proposes re-inscribing it into diverse cultural cosmologies (e.g., Daoist, Confucian, Buddhist) to reopen ethics, technics, and metaphysics.
“There has never been a singular Technology; there have always been cosmotechnics.”
2. Recursivity and Contingency
(Rowman & Littlefield, 2019)
This is a metaphysical and epistemological deep dive. Hui explores how recursion—the operation of systems that reference or act upon themselves—is fundamental to both life and thought.
Key themes:
- Recursivity:
Drawn from cybernetics, biology, and logic—it becomes a principle of how systems sustain, modify, and understand themselves. - Contingency:
He challenges deterministic views of technological development and evolution, proposing that history is always contingent, and thus open to alternative futures. - The dialogue with Whitehead, Simondon, Kant, and Chinese metaphysics is subtle but profound.
Hui’s question: How can we re-imagine the future of technology, given that neither Western universalism nor technological determinism holds?
3. Art and Cosmotechnics
(University of Minnesota Press, 2021)
This book brings Hui’s thought into conversation with aesthetics and art history, particularly regarding media, form, and temporality.
Key insights:
- Modern art reflects a crisis of cosmotechnical imagination.
- Artists are theorists of the incommensurable, able to point toward cosmologies yet-to-be-thought.
- He reflects on East Asian aesthetics, ink painting, calligraphy, and their relation to non-linear time and perception.
He shows how art may offer cosmotechnical resistance to the dominance of algorithmic standardization and digital abstraction.
4. On the Existence of Digital Objects
(University of Minnesota Press, 2016)
This earlier work lays the ontological groundwork for understanding digital technology—code, databases, protocols—as objects with a particular kind of being.
Key points:
- A dialogue with Gilbert Simondon’s theory of individuation and Husserl’s phenomenology of intentional objects.
- Digital objects are not static—they are processual, relational, recursively evolving.
- He anticipates the philosophical need to rethink digitality not merely as tool, but as world-forming structure.
Summary of Yuk Hui’s Thought
|
Concept |
Explanation |
|
Cosmotechnics |
The unity of cosmology and technics in different cultures. There is no universal tech, only situated and ethical forms of tech. |
|
Recursivity |
A principle of self-reference and processual becoming, bridging biology, computation, and thought. |
|
Digital Objects |
Not tools, but relational, dynamic entities whose ontology needs to be rethought. |
|
Technodiversity |
A political and philosophical call to diversify technology according to local, ethical, cosmological imaginaries. |
|
Planetarization |
We are in a global condition not of universalization but multiplicity, and need planetary thinking that affirms difference. |
Why He Matters
Yuk Hui may be one of the most important thinkers after Heidegger and beyond European metaphysics, helping us:
- Think technology without techno-fetishism,
- Think cosmos without nostalgia,
- And think subjectivity in a non-anthropocentric, planetary frame.
Would you like a visual mind map of his key concepts? Or perhaps a proposed reading sequence depending on your background (e.g., philosophy, media theory, art, Chinese cosmology)?
