Spring 2026
Meeting:
Th 1:30pm - 4:20pm
SLN:
21111
Section Type:
Seminar
Joint Sections:
GERMAN 493 A
Syllabus Description (from Canvas):
Machines, Algorithms, and the Human:
Technology from Aristotle to AI
(GLITS 450, German 493 / 590)
5 credits (A&H)
Th 1:30-4:20
Denny 359
(Visiting Professor from the University of Amsterdam)
This course investigates two questions that, in the age of AI, seem more urgent than ever: How do we think, and how do we perceive technology?
– The digital era comes with unique and often unprecedented challenges in defining the limits between both technology and the human. Nevertheless, our contemporary moment in history echoes many of the perceptions, hopes, and fears about technological disruption from the past. In order to both trace continuities and understand the specificities of each of these moments of disruption, Aristotle’s ideas about techné are as much of interest as the phantasies about the human as a machine during the age of enlightenment or, of course, the reactions to the rise of industry and mechanization during the 19th and 20th century. The course offers a reflection on technology from authors like Aristotle, Plato, J.O. de la Mettrie, J.W. Goethe, K. Marx, J. Verne, J. Schumpeter, F. Kafka, E. Jünger, W. Benjamin, M. Heidegger, D. Harraway, A. Daub, S. Zuboff, E. Yudkowsky and others. We also address the role of technology in more than a century of cinema (Metropolis, Matrix, Blade Runner).
Catalog Description:
Seminar on rotating special topics dealing with the impact of particular thinkers, movements, or philosophical problems in German culture.
Credits:
5.0
Status:
Active
Last updated:
February 9, 2026 - 8:45 pm