LFU:online

The students will develop a basic understanding of the anthropological challenge of the digital transformation of the 21.st century, understand the practical implications of contemporary scientific and technological developmens, and learn why the disciplinary compartilisation of the contemporary academia and the modern split between humanities and sciences has become problematic. 

The lectures will first deal with the phenomenon of transhumanism as symptom of a

spiritual crisis of our western civilizations. In doing so, it will particularly focus on the

transhumanist concept of scientific knowledge, which builds on scientific revolutions of the

17. Century, such as Descartes and Hobbes. The problematic features of this concept of

science will be traced back to spiritual and scientific upheavels of the late Middle Ages.

Against this background, the second part of the lecture will elaborate the basic lines of an

anthropology that is prepared to cope with the challenges of the digital transformation.

 In addition to the philosophical, anthropological and neuroscientific debates on

technology, particular attention will be paid to the connection between spiritual practices

and scientific practices of knowledge-generation, following Meister Eckhart

and Michel Foucault's concept of transformative 'technologies of the self'.

Lecture and discussion

oral examination

Johannes Hoff, "Verteidigung des Heiligen. Anthropologie der digitalen Transformation des dritten Jahrtausends" (Herder, im Druck).

Johannes Hoff, "Rückkehr zur Wirklichkeit. Wissenschaft und Spiritualität nach der Wiederentdeckung unserer leiblichen Existenz". In: Reiner Frey; Gerd Doeben-Henisch (Ed.), Meditation und die Zukunft der Bildung 2019: Spiritualität und Wissenschaft (Weinheim - München: Beltz-Juventa 2020)

Sarah Spiekermann, Mark Coeckelberg, Johannes Hoff, et al., "Die gefährliche Utopie der Selbstoptimierung: Wider den Transhumanismus." In: Neue Züricher Zeitung (19.06.2017), https://www.nzz.ch/meinung/kommentare/die-gefaehrliche-utopie-der-selbstoptimierung-wider-den-transhumanismus-ld.1301315

Sarah Spiekermann, Digitale Ethik. Ein Wertesystem für das 21. Jahrhundert (München: Droemer 2019)

Bernard Stiegler, The Neganthropocene. Transl, by Daniel Ross (London: Open Humanities Press 2018)

Tamar Sharon, Human Nature in an Age of Biotechnology. The Case for Mediated

Posthumanism (Dordrecht: Springer 2014)

Bruno Latour, Pandora's Hope. Essays on the Reality of Science Studies (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP 1999)