Lecture: (5 August 2022): Bernard Stiegler Memorial Lecture 2022

July 5, 2022

Bernard Stiegler Memorial Lecture 2022
Carl Mitcham
Political Philosophy of Technology: After Leo Strauss

Opening by Gao Shiming, President of the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou
Moderator and respondent: Yuk Hui

Fri, 5 August 2022
8pm-10pm HKT / 6am-8am MST
Online Event: Register to join via Zoom
Facebook event

As the philosophy of engineering and technology emerged since the mid-20th century it has increasingly focused on ethics and social issues, with healthy doses of conceptual, epistemological, and ontological analyses. Less prominent in both analytic and phenomenological schools are questions of political philosophy. This talk will query possibilities for political philosophy of technology of a distinctive sort, drawing on the thought of Leo Strauss, one of the more consequential if controversial political philosophers of the 20th century. The aim is not so much to expand the extensive body of literature explicating, interpreting, and debating Strauss’s subtly seductive corpus as to be stimulated by selective aspects, without too many worries about whether my readings are completely faithful to his intentions. The hypothesis is that Strauss can help us catch sight of something otherwise missing in philosophical discourse on engineering and technology.

Carl Mitcham is a philosopher of engineering and technology, Professor Emeritus of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the Colorado School of Mines and Visiting International Professor of Philosophy of Technology at Renmin University of China. Mitcham’s work focuses on the philosophy and ethics of science, technology, and engineering.

Mitcham’s publications include Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity (with Robert Frodeman and Julie Thompson Klein, 2010), Ethics and Science: An Introduction (with Adam Briggle, 2012), and Steps Toward a Philosophy of Engineering: Historico-Philosophical and Critical Essays (2020). He was a founding member of the Society for Philosophy and Technology (1976), and served as a member of the Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1994-2000). Awards include the Abbot Payson Usher Prize of the Society for the History of Technology (1973), International World Technology Network (WTN) award for Ethics (2006), and a Doctorate Honoris Causa from the Universitat Internacional Valenciana, Spain (2010).

Mitcham is also a member of the advisory board of the Research Network for Philosophy and Technology.

About the event

The Bernard Stiegler Memorial Lecture was initiated in 2021 by the Research Network for Philosophy and Technology, exactly one year following the passing of the renowned French philosopher. Organised annually in collaboration with the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, where Stiegler was a visiting professor from 2015 to 2019, the event aims to invite a different scholar each year to present a lecture commemorating his work and legacy.

Subscribe to our newsletter


Previous Story

Dialogues in Philosophy and Technology Research Seminar VIII (27 April 2022) Luciana Parisi: Instrumentality and Possibility

Next Story

Call for Papers: Entropies – special issue of Technophany, Edited by Joel White and Gerald Moore

Latest from Events

Lectures (5th-7th Dec 2022): Incompatible Thought: Legacy and its Recursivity

北藝大博班實驗室2022系列演講II 【不相容的思想:遺產及其遞歸】 許煜訪台系列講座 〖Incompatible Thought: Legacy and its Recursivity〗 時間:2022年12月5日、6日、7日,14:00-17:00 地點:國立臺北藝術大學 基進講堂(圖書館3F,入口位於圖書館正門前石階左側) 講題:〈斯蒂格勒與後歐洲哲學〉、〈何謂亞洲?一個提問〉、〈機器與戰爭〉 報名連結:https://forms.gle/hqojhwcUHYd1HRGV6 (由於場地座位有限,煩請填寫) 「我不會說新的技術思想必然出自亞洲,而非歐洲,但我相信這類新思想只會出現在思想體系之間的不相容,因為兩者間的不相容造就出思想自身的個體化,同時避開從屬與支配關係。然而歐洲是否對此做好了準備?對我來說,再次闡明今天哲學、技術和地緣政治學之間的關係極為重要,然而今天我們仍然缺乏思考。」(21世紀的控制論 –—《遞歸與偶然》 洛文克訪談許煜) “One does not inherit a

Slide Slide Slide Slide Slide Slide Slide
Go toTop