Die solutionistische Ethik und der neue Geist des digitalen Kapitalismus

Nachtwey, Oliver (2020)

Lecture to be given 19 March 2020 at Collegium Helveticum, Zurich, Switzerland.

“From the beginning, capitalism needed a non-economic idealistic driving force. In his study The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, the sociologist Max Weber attributed its spread to an elective affinity of religious ethics and the associated professional view and lifestyle. This perspective was taken up again a century later by Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello. In the digital age – according to the main thesis of the lecture – a new, polytheistic spirit of capitalism has now emerged, born in Silicon Valley. This spirit is a transnational phenomenon that drives the digital transformation of economy and lifestyle and has a local impact. The digital spirit is based on an ethic of solution that claims to improve the world and underpins a metric lifestyle.”

Location/time: Collegium Helveticum, Schmelzbergstrasse 25, 8006 Zürich, 18:15-20:00.

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