Course description
The nineteen seventies saw the beginnings of a discussion about a changing ethical horizon, the result of uncontrolled development in the technological world. This was one aspect of a new general interest in ethics after more than 150 years of preferring violence to morals (Hegel, Marx, Carl Schmitt). On the one side, ideologies could no longer hide their inadequacies; on the other, a lot of problems of the technological world seemed to require ethical and moral answers. For example, for a lot of thinkers the ecological crisis could not be solved by purely technological means but needed an ethical answer, embracing natural and environmental problems. Among them, Hans Jonas penned a first formulation of ecological ethics (Das Prinzip Verantwortung) in 1979. The ‘imperative of responsibility’ – a new kind of ethics elaborated by Max Weber – has since then dominated ethical discussions about the technological society. Since debate began to focus on climate change, Bruno Latour in particular has been urgently pressing for an ecological understanding of democracy, while his Ulrich Beck was contemporaneously developing the concept of a world risk society. It is also the case that the technological world of computing and internet has completely changed daily life and is introducing a good deal of new – especially political – risk, as the Brexit vote and the US presidential election 2016 perhaps showed. These developments demand ethical responses both from individuals and from the political sphere.

The seminar will provide information about the technological challenge and offer an introduction to ecological ethics and the ethics of the technological world. Naturally, it will also be necessary to have a look on the history of ethics and the philosophy of technology.

Teaching and Evaluation Methods
Lectures, discussion, student presentations, reading and analysing texts together in the seminars

Presentations, written exams, each 50 %

Bibliography
ULRICH BECK, (1998), World Risk Society, Cambridge Polity Press.
HANS JONAS, (1984), The Imperative of Responsibility - In Search of Ethics for the Technological Age, University of Chicago Press.
BRUNO LATOUR, (2017), Down to Earth - Politics in the New Climatic Regime, Polity Press.
JEAN-FRANCOIS LYOTARD, (1984), The Postmodern Condition, University of Minnesota Press.
MICHEL SERRES, (1995), The Natural Contract, University of Michigan Press.
GIANNI VATTIMO, (1994), The Transparent Society, Johns Hopkins University Press.