“Justice Theories” [in German], ETH Zurich, Seminar for BA and MA students, Spring Term 2025
We all have intuitions about whether something is just or unjust, and why it is just or not. In this philosophical seminar, we will discuss, analyze and respectfully critique these intuitions.
Philosophy offers a wide range of analytic tools that can serve us in articulating, analysing, justifying and critiquing intuitions about justice. We will explore justice theories in virtue ethics, utilitarianism, deontology, fairness, critical, and feminist theories.
We will turn to examples relevant to STEM students, such as AI and climate justice, as well as justice towards other species. We will also explore the initially somewhat far-fetched question of whether it is possible to be unjust towards machines, as well. Students are also very welcome to bring in other examples of interest to them.
“Ethics of Building” [in German], ETH Zurich, Seminar for BA and MA students, Autumn Term 2024
Throughout history, there have always been utopian visions and promises tied to construction, be it of individual objects, such as towers, or of entire cities. For example, thanks to their geometric shapes, modern cities are supposed to enable more equality among people, even the equal distribution of sunshine, as Le Corbusier once dreamed. But to what extent is it even possible to create more equality by designing living spaces? A wall automatically excludes by protecting the interior. Building cities always means defining the far and the near, the center and the periphery, the upper and the lower. These orientations translate into social relations for example of those who have to commute far and those who are at the center of the action. Who determines how and what is built and whose perspective is not taken into account? To whom does a built landscape afford agency and to whom not? Mathematical models can predict the probabilities of encounters in space, which also can have an impact on social relationships. What is the relevance of such models as well as the more recent data analyses in questions of distributive justice? Is it possible to distribute social participation in the city? Does construction always have to destroy and replace the underlying nature? How do our building practices affect coexistence with other species?
We will not be able to solve these problems in one semester, but we will intensively grapple with the overarching question implied in all of them. The question is on the extent to which the built environment takes on ethical significance for human (and other) forms of life, and how are we to understand ethics in general if it is to respond to such questions.
“Epistemic Injustice” [in German], ETH Zurich, Seminar for BA and MA students, Spring Term 2024
Not everyone is treated equally in their status as knowers. Some are granted less credibility than others because of their lower social status. This happens for example when a person’s testimony is treated as less credible based solely on their skin color. Others are dismissed as stupid because they are less articulate when the reason for their articulation difficulties is not an individual inability but a gap in our collective self-understanding practices. For example, before the concept of sexual harassment was introduced, a woman had no conceptual resources to name the specific harms she was experiencing. These are two examples of what Miranda Fricker identifies as epistemic injustice in her 2007 book, Epistemic Injustice: Power & the Ethics of Knowing. Fricker calls the form of injustice in the first example a testimonial injustice and in the second a hermeneutical injustice.
Fricker’s influential book has been discussed for two decades, also critically. The concept of epistemic injustice is also broadly applicable across sciences and scientific practices. In the seminar we will ask for example: To what extent is the status of people as knowers affected when using AI and algorithms? How does one do epistemic justice to testimonies of people diagnosed with delusions? How does one enable self-determination for groups whose views are considered unscientific and thus do not fit dominant collective world- and self-interpreting practices?
“Philosophie der Stadt” [Philosophy of the City], ETH Zurich, Seminar for BA and MA students. Spring 2023.
The course provides an overview on the city in the history of philosophy. We reflect on the city’s role as a political achievement, as a technological artefact (e.g. as the product of cartographic representation, Big Data or biomimetic construction), and as an ecosystem. Subsequently, we will discuss challenges around the compatibility of these differing aspects of the city. The students get to know the most significant texts in the philosophy of the city from the antiquity and up to current debates. They will practice closely reading complex philosophical texts, reflecting the arguments presented, as well as discussing them in a nuanced manner.
The seminar includes an expedition to the main train station in Zurich, where we explore the three above mentioned aspects of the place: we consider it as an eco-system, as a highly complex technical artefact and as a stage of negotiations for everyday politics. It is an example of human niche construction, both in the top-down sense, constructed by institutions for a precise purpose, and bottom-up, as place where spaces can be appropriated for example by demonstrators, homeless, and refugees. As an eco-system it is also teeming with non-human life-forms, such as the fish from the river Sihl that flows under the station, pigeons in the dovecot in the attic, rare lizards and grasshoppers on the tracks and so forth. We discuss in how far do political questions of justice apply to artefacts and eco-systems.
“Ethics, Science and Scientific Integrity“, ETH Zurich, tutorial for doctoral students in the sciences and architecture. Lecture series taught by Prof. Nadia Mazouz and Prof. Michael Hampe. Spring 2023.
In this course, doctoral students are introduced to ethical issues in the sciences. First, a general introduction to ethics as well as to ethics in the sciences will be given in a lecture and discussion format. Second, selected topics of scientific integrity will be dealt with in an exemplary way in a mixed format, consisting of lectures and discussions as well as workshops. Thirdly, specific problems of ethics and scientific integrity in certain disciplines will be addresses in group work in a workshop format. Doctoral students are supported in identifying, analyzing and dealing with ethical problems in their own scientific research. Furthermore, they can reflect on their professional role as scientific researchers.
„Stadt als Lebensform” [“City as a Form of Life”], University of Lucerne, guest lecture within the philosophy seminar on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, taught by Dr. Arvi Särkelä. Autumn 2022.
„Dostojewski und die Religion. Ein paradoxes Verhältnis“ [“Dostoevsky and Religion: A Paradoxal Relationship”], University of Fribourg, guest lecture within the lecture course „Literatur und Religion” taught by Dr. habil. Christian Zehnder. Autumn 2018.
„Die Postmoderne und ihre Kritiker“ [“Postmodernity and its Critics”], University of Fribourg, proseminar for BA students, co-taught with Dr. Oliver Nievergelt. Spring 2015.
We can describe our culture as postmodern. But what does that mean? Does the label even fit anymore? The students will gain an overview over various philosophical cultural diagnoses of our times. Developments in philosophy and the sciences are foregrounded, but the arts, politics and the economy also play a role in the assigned texts. We read and discuss: Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Jürgen Habermas, Robert Spaemann, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Richard Rorty, Bruno Latour und Bernard Williams.
“Tutoriat Theoretische Philosophie” [Tutorial Introduction to Theoretical Philosophy], University of Basel, for BA students, within the lecture taught with Prof. Sebastian Rödl. Spring 2012 and 2010.
The tutorials accompany the introductory lecture in theoretical philosophy. We discuss Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations.
Tea Lobo 