Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book

The Philosophy of Ted Kaczynski: Why the Unabomber was Right about Modern Technology

Rate this book
In the first ever book-length philosophical analysis of Ted Kaczynski’s writings on Industrial Civilization, Chad A. Haag explores the supremely-forbidden territory of questioning Modern Technology. Although the media has almost exclusively restricted the discussion of Kaczynski’s philosophy to the Unabomber Manifesto, Chad A. Haag breaks the silence regarding his vast body of writings by examining his fragmentary magnum opus Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How and the shorter published essays. In addition, Haag analyses numerous super-rare unpublished essays, letters, and allegories retrieved from the Kaczynski Papers archive in Michigan in order to situate his thought within the context of the other great philosophers who wrote on Modern Technology, such as Jacques Ellul and Martin Heidegger, as well as to determine Kaczynski’s unexpected relations to classical thinkers such as Aristotle, Plato, Husserl, and Descartes. In addition, Kaczynski’s unique views offer potent alternatives to the all-too-familiar political stances of Bernie Sanders, Andrew Yang, and leftists in general. Finally, Kaczynski’s rationalistic epistemology of essence, his implicit theory of hermeneutical subjectivity, and the question of morality are fleshed out explicitly for the first time ever.

262 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 20, 2019

31 people are currently reading
466 people want to read

About the author

Chad A. Haag

19 books88 followers

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
32 (47%)
4 stars
20 (29%)
3 stars
11 (16%)
2 stars
4 (5%)
1 star
0 (0%)
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
Profile Image for Sameer ElKokha.
2 reviews
September 24, 2019
First time I write a review, bare with me.

A good book that goes in depth into the ideas of Kaczynski as an intellectual and not as the techno-industrial SNL cheap caricature of a crazy killer.

The author also presents the idea of leftists' linguistification and adds more up to date examples of what Kaczynski warned about, also adds some insights about unpublished writings of Kaczynski which I found valuable. The author also doesn't stride too far from discussing Kaczynski's works to make it a book about his own ideas instead, never the less I am interested in reading more from Chad.
There are some typos in the copy I got and some headings that are not properly placed, if this was another type of book this would be a flaw but since it's this particular topic I think our obsession with perfect technique is what's at fault not the casual typos. We are not machines and we shouldn't act like ones in perceiving each others' works.

My only criticism was the mention of Peterson alongside other intellectuals, for two reasons: 1 was the lack of value his ideas added in this context.
Secondly and more importantly, I think Peterson-type intellectuals are the ones mentioned in the The System Neatest Trick, Kaczynski wrote how "The university intellectuals also play an important role in carrying out the System's trick." by fancying themselves independent thinkers, even though they are "the most oversocialized, the most conformist, the tamest and most domesticated, the most pampered, dependent, and spineless group in America (or in JP's case Canada) today." "real rebellion is impossible for them. Consequently they are suckers for the System's trick, which allows them to irritate people and enjoy the illusion of rebelling without ever having to challenge the System's basic values"
I believe that characters like JP don't represent the sane reaction against the linguistification but rather a faux Hegelian antithesis which, as Kaczynski properly diagnosed, are the instruments in the last step in his summary of the trick, point 5 "Much of the public resentment resulting from the imposition of social changes is drawn away from the System and its institutions and is directed instead at the radicals who spearhead the social changes".
so JP and his ilk attack low hanging leftist fruits and do the dirty work of drawing away the resentment from the system to direct it instead at a naive over-socialized pink haired genderfluid dragonkin. The Trick is neat because it's double-fold.

sorry I wrote a lot about the brief mention of Peterson because it's a flaw of this otherwise excellent work, in other words, I agree with/learned from the book so there is no point in just repeating what it contains but since I disagree with this I have to explain why.

Summary: I recommend the book to anyone interested in Kaczynski or Anti Tech philosophy/action in general. And I think someone should get Kaczynski a copy...
Profile Image for Nick John.
54 reviews67 followers
July 12, 2021
I have nothing but great experiences reading books by Chad Haag and once again This Deep Dive into the Philosophy of Uncle Ted is no exception to my previous experience. The concepts and ideas explored in this book are outstanding and eye opening. Ted Kaczynski is definitely one of the most under studied and under appreciated philosophers of our time.

Being a Third Positionist myself I highly encourage anyone from the Dissident sphere to pick up this book as well as many others from Chad Haag. His deep understanding of Deep Ecology Philosophy and his excellent ability to explain it to an audience that isn't full of philosophy majors is astounding to say the least. Modern Technology and its effects on Humanity are disastrous and it is important that we understand the roots of these problems before we attempt to build solutions.
55 reviews7 followers
April 15, 2020
A breathtaking exposition of Kaczynski's philosophy, not only focussing on the problems of the techno-industrial system but also managing to interweave modern, highly-relevant scholars such as Jordan Peterson and Jim Rickards. Impressive in scope.
Profile Image for Pacific Lee.
74 reviews4 followers
September 6, 2020
One of the main criticisms of technology involves the loss of what he calls the Power Process: setting a goal, working towards it, and achieving it. We have given up this much more profound experience in exchange for material comforts, and so we are left with boredom, frustration, and eventual madness.

We are told to be obedient to the System, and in return we are taken care of from the cradle to the grave in terms of material comfort. We even get to live out an emasculated version of the Power Process in surrogate activities like watching sports or collecting models, things with no real added value to our lives. This critique ties into his views on leftists, who are acting out politically in a surrogate activity (easy examples abound these days, consider the various social media campaigns).

Another significant problem with technology is that it is part of a self-propagating system, which will seek to maximize short-term gain even at the risk of extinction in the long-term. Modern technology has allowed normal human avarice and misbehavior to have catastrophic reach. An example that comes to mind for me is how we have always fished, but industrial fishing is literally driving fish to extinction. He believes that either AI will render humans obsolete, or environmental destruction will as with our changing the composition of the air.

I think here he fails to consider the limits to such self-propagating systems – eventually the negative feedback loop will kick in, and a new equilibrium reached. A good example of this is how the physical limitation of oil will prevent us from developing beyond a certain point of technology, or how the added growth of trees from increased CO2 will begin to offset the greenhouse effect.

And so his predictions may be more apocalyptic than realistic, and it is important because he has based his actions around the idea that the only way to stop modern society is to create a movement that destroys the technologic underpinning. You don’t need to go full Sarah Connor like he did if the technological system is going to implode. Chad mentions in one of his YT discussions that Kaczynski was a product of the late 20th century, and it is hard to imagine at that point how soon and how significantly energy limitations would pose a limit on growth.

There can be no balance between modern technology and wild nature because “Modern Technology is not an ordinary part of a broader whole but is rather a disruptive element which transforms the whole according to its own logic of technical rationality” (p.49). I wish he had defined a bit more clearly what modern technology entailed. There is evidence he meant more than the machines themselves, also the organizational structures, skills, etc. that make it possible (p.79), but the answer as to what exactly it is missing.

It seems as though Kacyznski wants a return to the stone age where civilization itself was impossible (p.121). He doesn’t want to pick and choose technologies from different eras like Greer, or stop at a certain level, because he believes that the self-propagating behavior will eventually run rampant again.

I read a bit more than halfway, but from what I can see Chad did a good job representing the ideas of Kacyznski with fidelity. Personally, I don’t agree with his conclusions though, and still think he was fried by mk ultra.
Profile Image for Anne Fox.
Author 25 books47 followers
March 10, 2021
I picked up this book because its title professed to be an examination of Ted Kaczynski's (aka Unabomber) philosophy. However, I think it should be more aptly entitled The Philosophy of Chad A. Haag. Although Kaczynski's works are oft cited, it is more often the case that those works are used to support the author's viewpoint. As such, the more I read, the more I came away with the distasteful feeling that the author cited Kaczynski in the title of his work in order to gain readers by means of name recognition. I find it ironic that the author relocated himself to, of all places, India—a growing bastion of the very technocracy that Kaczynski, and apparently Haag, both abhor.
Profile Image for Jess.
108 reviews
Read
December 29, 2020
Filed under: technically quasi-academic but defiantly strawmanian / autodidactic in spirit.
Profile Image for Jean-françois Virey.
142 reviews13 followers
January 3, 2022
Back when I was an Objectivist, Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who "killed three people and injured 23 others in a nationwide bombing campaign against people he believed to be advancing modern technology and the destruction of the environment" (Wikipedia), was presented to us as the living proof of the "anti-man" (and literally homicidal) nature of environmentalism.

As a deep ecologist, I was wondering how far I would sympathise with the agenda of this "eco-terrorist", from whom Chad Haag tries to distance himself a little (though the subtitle indicates this is an uphill battle), and I was surprised to discover that if Kaczynski was indeed a terrorist, he may not have been altogether deserving of the prefix eco-.

Indeed, Kaczinski is a kind of radicalised Ellulian critic of technique (in the broadest possible sense) who seems much more concerned with what it is doing to us (i.e. turning us into machines ourselves), than with what it does to the environment. Based on the evidence presented in the book, I would say Kaczynski is more of libertarian terrorist, taking libertarian in both its political sense and its metaphysical sense: Kaczynski sees technique or technology as a threat to human free-will, and if there was some positive motivation behind his murderous acts, it seems to have been the defense of this free-will.

When the environmental consequences of technology are mentioned, they appear to be either after-thoughts (secondary arguments against technology, if the main one failed to convince you entirely), or worrisome only insofar as they threaten human survival (potentially leading to the disappearance of breathable air or drinkable water, for instance (p42) and of the human race itself (p253).) As for the animals, Kaczynski does not care much about them, though of course, they would immensely benefit from a world in which his Butlerian Jihad cubed was implemented. Kaczynski himself used to live by hunting for food, and is contemptuous of the vegan movement, dismissing the "alleged (!) oppression of... animals" as one of many "irrelevant problems" (p175) or "inessential issues" (p176.) Only the destruction of technology matters to him. The movement he intended to launch would not care about anything else.

While I did find Haag's anti-leftism refreshing (he has many interesting pages on SJWs and the left-wing mentality), I'm afraid he himself appears to belong to the lunatic fringe of the right. An outlaw himself (who fled the U.S. for India in order not to have to repay his student debt), he is fascinated by very strange figures indeed, including another terrorist, Vlad Vikernes, a black metal occultist who burned churches and murdered one man, but whom Haag considers one of "the most important writers of our era" (p156), along with the antisemitic madman David Icke, the originator of reptilian conspiracy theories. Haag himself seems to believe the Apollo program was a hoax, as he refers to "our supposed voyage to the moon" (p225.)

I'm not sure I will be studying Kaczynski's thought much further, but despite more than a few quirks, Haag does seem to have interesting things to say, and I will probably be reading his volume on Pentti Linkola, that other supervillain of environmentalism.
7 reviews4 followers
March 21, 2023
This book has some incredible information in it, and it is the best analysis of Ted Kaczynski's philosophy that I have read, but that doesn't mean much as it is the only book-length analysis that currently exists. However, there are glaring issues including the awful formatting of the book (including grammar mistakes), author bias, and no bibliography. These problems were so glaring that I could not give a 4-star rating like I wanted.

What I appreciate most about this analysis is the time it most likely took to gather sources and find conclusions about Ted Kaczynski's philosophy beyond his writings. What I really enjoyed was the understanding of the philosophy of technology. Haag writes about Heidegger as well as Ellul and he connects them to Ted's philosophy accurately. Being a philosophy student himself he also throws in a fantastic amount of his own opinions even if they are hard to follow most of the time.

Being a philosophy student myself I was not surprised at all by the structure of what was written and I quite enjoyed the writing style. I will most likely be purchasing his latest book "Hermeneutics of Ecological Limitation: Ecophilosophy Beyond Environmentalism" as I was entertained and learned a lot of what I thought I knew about Ted Kaczynski with this installment.

The most glaring negative to me was the lack of proper formatting. It seems to me that he threw this together in a google doc and published it without realizing the importance of organization. The second issue is the obvious right bias that is apparent throughout the entire book. He makes spotty at best comparisons with modern-day problems and he tries to relate them to what is so obviously his personal vendettas. He tries to make them come off as objective but fails completely in his endeavor. The lack of a bibliography is almost criminal for a work like this, if I want to read your sources they should all be available at the end of the book and they should be easy to find.
Profile Image for Pradyumn.
9 reviews
June 6, 2025
This book is a thought-provoking and intense read. The author argues that much of our modern unhappiness stems from how unnatural, over-regulated, and system-controlled our lives have become due to technology, mass society, and the constant pressure to “fit in.” Further, the concept of “power process” has been discussed which refers to human need to pursue real, meaningful goals such as survival, freedom, and self-reliance. In today’s world, this instinct is suppressed. We instead chase artificial goals such as grades, promotions, status, and social approval. And for those who choose not to participate? The system pushes them out, leaving them isolated or discarded.
The author doesn’t stop there. He also critiques modern education, corporate jobs, performative environmentalism, and even academic anthropology, especially when it distorts primitive cultures to match liberal modern values. These, he suggests, are all tools that reinforce the same system that limits real human freedom.
Tech worshippers who dream of merging with AI are not looked upon highly in this book. The author compares them to people wishing to be upgraded by the very machines that will probably wipe humanity out referring to Dune’s Butlerian Jihad, wherein humans destroy all sentient machines and return to a human-centred civilisation after realising that they just became tools in the hand of modern technologies. Another argument made in the book is how values like anti-violence, women’s empowerment, and careerism are often promoted not for ethical reasons, but because they make individuals more useful and dependent on the system. As a result, families weaken, communities erode, and centralised systems grow stronger.
Overall, this book isn’t politically correct, and it certainly isn’t optimistic. Whether you agree with the author or not, it’s a compelling critique that forces you to think about what freedom, purpose, and authenticity really mean in an increasingly controlled world.
8 reviews
December 29, 2021
So Ted lived about 80 miles up highway 200 from where I live and he would get on the bus occasionally and would disembark across the street at the bus station for doctor's appointments and to conduct personal business. My wife worked with his doctor and her husband who was also a doctor. I never met or remember seeing Ted. Chad Haag's book is interesting, but from what I've read of Ted's own published writings it misses the mark to some extent.
Ted is our latter day John the Baptist preaching doom and destruction. A latter day prophet who sees the danger on the horizon, but has no faith in people's ability to evolve and adapt to meet the challenges that change presents. His work as a mathematics professor with boundary functions and his low opinion of people in general leads to hopelessness and a savior complex grounded in the long distant past. Call it magical thinking, but its my view that collective wisdom is the result of the bumbling well-intentioned efforts of the unenlightened and there is no shortage of experts intent on convincing us otherwise. It's the role of the expert's to disagree and make their pitch, and this includes Ted, but it's the "ignorant" who, thank God, hold the power. Besides there's no way to put the technological genie back in the bottle.
Profile Image for Hank.
130 reviews
March 22, 2023
Den här boken fungerar umärkt både som en intrudution till och djupdykning i Ted Kaczynskis (mer känd som "The Unabomber") artiklar och böcker. Författaren behandlar de mesta som Kaczynski har skrivit och kryddar med exempel, jämförelser med andra filosofer och observationer på ett lättläst och intressant sätt i en bok som undertecknad hade svårt att lägga ifrån sig.
Profile Image for Charles Woodley.
9 reviews
January 26, 2023
Better idea than I had.

My plan was going to make condensed version of Ted Kaczynski's Manifesto, but this is better. Who knows I might still do it and publish a smaller version with very little to no commentary.
Profile Image for Hrishaant.
2 reviews
April 14, 2025
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES HAVE BEEN A DISASTER FOR THE HUMAN RACE
Profile Image for Kæso.
14 reviews7 followers
August 30, 2019
Must read for anyone interested in thoroughly understand Kaczynski's thought. Typos appear somewhat regularly, however.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews

Can't find what you're looking for?

Get help and learn more about the design.