Dr. Philipp Höfele

Project: livMatS as part of and reaction to the Anthropocene: Ethical and philosophical implications of living materials systems

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Lore Hühn

My philosophical-ethical project has two main objectives: Firstly, I aim to provide a conceptual framework for systematically evaluating livMatS. For this purpose, I analyze and critically discuss the semantics of basic concepts in the natural sciences and in philosophy, esp. in the philosophy of biology, such as: “life/life-like”, “animate/inanimate”, “(imitation of) nature”, “holism”, “system” and “autonomy”. I do this with historical reference to the philosophy of nature around 1800, since historical semantics can be a particularly rich source of ideas. Secondly, I establish a link between livMatS and the current multi- and transdisciplinary discourse on the “Anthropocene”. I seek to show that livMatS can contribute to solutions for (environmental) ethical problems that arise from societal developments in the Anthropocene.