Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Sjöstrand, Bjö

Titel

Ethics and Technology

Ist Teil von

• Derrida and Technology: Life, Politics, and Religion, 2021, p.107-135

Ort / Verlag

Switzerland: Springer International Publishing AG

Erscheinungsjahr

2021

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Derrida’s philosophical orientation is ethical in the special sense that he gives to this term. For him, ethics is not about a set of ethical rules or prescriptions, a normative ethic or a theory of ethics, but an ethics of ethics, the very condition of possibility for all ethics. In this deeper sense, ethics involves a command, an imperative, a challenge to be open to the entirely other. This ethical dimension in his thinking is closely associated with technology, particularly with the kinds of technological events that suddenly come to us from the future. But Derrida claims that not only technological events but practically all events are technologically mediated. To illustrate the connection between ethics and technology, I devote the bulk of the chapter to three events of world-historical importance. The first event—the electronic revolution—involves a transition from a centuries-old paper culture to a global electronic culture. The second event, which is hypothetical, is total nuclear war. If and when such a terrifying event takes place, it will be for the first and last time. The third event is the terrorist attacks on the United States of 11 September 2001. It conjures up the prospect of a future global terrorism that is every bit as terrifying as the prospect of total nuclear war.