Philosophies of Life Technologies
Instructor: Dr Torgeir Fjeld
Prerecorded module
Ver. 1.2 (9 July 2022)
This module is available to members. Join to gain access.
By purchasing you agree to our terms.
This course seeks to
- Present a distinct view of technology and technological change;
- Situate technology within various philosophies of the event;
- Suggest a series of life techniques for ethical — good — living in the event of technology.
Students who register for this course get:
- 12 video-taped lectures, with a total running time of 210 minutes;
- An indicative reading list;
- A set of optional tasks to check your learning;
- Course diploma (beta version).
- Interest in philosophy, ethics, or cultural analysis.
- Anyone interested in ethics, philosophy of technology, contemporary psychoanalysis, or cultural analysis;
- Some previous knowledge of European philosophy an advantage, but not required.
In the first section we become familiar with some key contemporary approaches to technology, as well as becoming acquainted with the course as a whole. The purpose is to get a rough idea of some quite distinct philosophies of technology and to equip ourselves with the apparatus necessary to understand what we mean by life techniques and to make them our own.
- Lecture 1: Introduction: The event of the good life (18 min.)
- Lecture 2: Geert Lovink (13 min.)
- Lecture 3: Martin Heidegger (14 min.)
- Lecture 4: Wolfgang Schirmacher (17 min.)
What does the concept of event mean? The second section presents three philosophical perspectives on this notion, and shows how they make different kinds of sense in the context of technology.
- Lecture 5: The event in Heidegger (12 min.)
- Lecture 6: The event in Schirmacher (8 min.)
- Lecture 7: The event in Badiou (21 min.)
The third section explains a set of specific life techniques, all with reference to the philosophies of technology and our different approaches to events in the previous lectures. The purpose here is to gain a more profound understanding of how distinct philosophies of technology can serve to ground concrete and affirmative techniques that enable us to live a good life.
- Lecture 8: Life techniques: Naturalisation (14 min.)
- Lecture 9: Life techniques: Homo Generator (12 min.)
- Lecture 10: Life techniques: Concealment (11 min.)
- Lecture 11: Life techniques: Praising and the affirmative (12 min.)
- Lecture 12: Summary: The inhabitable event of technology (16 min.)