It is said about Socrates that he is the father of Western philosophy because he focused his love of wisdom on ethics. Socrates seemed to have already realized that regardless of scientific or technological developments, there are basic questions that human beings will always continue to ask.
And indeed, not only have ethical questions continued to be the focus of philosophical practice, they - more importantly - accompany us daily in our lives. Ethical views are reflected in what we choose to eat, in what we decide to purchase, in what we demonstrate for, in what we pray for, in what we find appropriate to strive for etc.
Life in the digital age, in which we are just beginning to learn to live, poses a wide range of new and fascinating ethical questions about our conduct on the web, the possibility of artificial consciousness, privacy, freedom of choice and more. In this lecture we will reflect about the meaning of the Socratic heritage with regards the ethical questions that human beings ask and will ask themselves in the digital age.
Jeremy Fogel teaches at Tel Aviv University's department of Jewish philosophy, as well as at its school of education. He is the academic director of Alma, teaches at the Kibbutzim College of Education, Technology and the Arts, and lectures publicly on philosophy in various forums.
Jeremy holds a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the University of Cambridge and a master's degree and doctorate in philosophy from Tel Aviv University. His doctoral research explored the tension between universalism and particularism in modern Jewish philosophy, focusing on the Jewish-German philosophers Moses Mendelssohn and Hermann Cohen, and he continued exploring these issues as a post-doctoral fellow at Hamburg University. Jeremy is involved with several independent artistic and literary ventures. His first book, Tel Aviv is Water and Other Seasidian Thoughts, was published by Hava Lehaba in 2019.