[Mo, 9:00–11:00] The Past of the Future and the Scope of the New: On the Actuality of the Future in the Light of Economic Philosophy
Panel of the DGPhil-AG Economic Philosophy and Ethics
Livestream am Montag, 23. September 2024, 9:00–11:00 Uhr MESZ
Chair: Ingrid Becker (St. Gallen) / Michaela Haase (Berlin) / Verena Rauen (St. Gallen)
Panel members:
- Frank den Hond
Ehrnrooth Professor for Management und Organisation, Hanken School of Economics, Finnland, and affiliated with Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Daryl Koehn
Wicklander Chair in Professional Ethics und Professor of Philosophy at the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois, USA
- Ralf Lüfter
Professor of Moral Philosophy, Freie Universität Bozen, Italy
- Akos Rona-Tas
Professor of Sociology, University of California, San Diego, USA
Economic philosophy and ethics share a fascination for new beginnings and transformations with other disciplines or subject areas. Within economic philosophy, or Wirtschaftsphilosophie, it is emphasized that the expectation of the future is subject to the paradox that the future is hardly possible without recourse to the past. Thus, any expectation is generated by a projection of past experience and consequently always refers back to what is already known.
Against this background, how can we imagine a radically open future and, moreover, do we even need such ideas in order to bring about transformations or innovations? In philosophy and related disciplines, there have been various approaches to dealing with this “paradox of the future” and the resulting challenges for the new, especially in the form of transformations and innovations. We want to discuss these approaches with regard to a number of questions. Using the example of digitalization, we will address the paradox of the future, its contextualization as well as its critical reflection.
The panelists will be invited to comment on the following and related questions:
1. How can we grasp the “paradox of the future” philosophically?
2. What social realities can the projection of the future produce in the form of economic, digital and other practices and theories? What does innovation and transformation make possible against the backdrop of the past influencing the future? How are digitalization or artificial intelligence involved in dealing with the “paradox of the future”?
3. What can be said about the ethical or political desirability of possible futures?