New ethics of technology. A discourse in Germany in the 1990s

Abstract

Paper presented during the Annual Conference of the Philosophical Society of Southern Africa, 16 - 18 January 2008. Hosted by the Department of Philosophy, University of Pretoria. ABSTRACT: The mid-1990s in Germany had seen a climax in a long lasting discourse about the so-called New Ethics, especially with regard to the domain of technology. This paper provides an interpretation of some of the German sources to the South African reader of today, such that he may be enabled to compare South-Africa’s present discource with the German discourse of about a decade ago. Such a comparison (which is, however, not attempted in this paper) would not only be of philosophical but also of socio-political interest, given the fact that South-Africa is still a technologically semi-developed society with widespread techno-optimism whereas Germany is a highly developed society with widespread techno-skepticism. The purpose of this paper is thus knowledge-transfer (for the sake of discourse), whereby I do not claim originality as far as my reports and interpretations of the German sources are concerned.