New Challenges to the Enlightenment: How 21st-Century Socio-technological Systems Facilitate Organized Immaturity – and How to Counteract It
In his current lecture as part of the International Business Seminar Series, Prof. Andreas Scherer deals with forms of digital immaturity and shows ways to live up to the Enlightenment's demand for self-responsible action despite digital transformation.
Forms of immaturity have long been a concern of philosophers and social theorists such as Kant, Arendt, Fromm, Marcuse and Foucault. The use of socio-technological systems is an obstacle to achieving enlightenment. There is a setback that can be described as organised immaturity. This phenomenon is brought about by the reduction of the individual capacity for the public use of reason, as can be discovered in digital technology. This is because socio-technological systems, which were developed to satisfy human needs, have recently degenerated into hurdle towards enlightenment.
To counteract these tendencies, we propose two mechanisms: the disorganisation of immaturity as a means of protecting the negative freedoms of individuals and collectives ("freedom from") and the organisation of maturity as a means of strengthening positive freedoms ("freedom to"). Finally, we give an outlook on the five further articles that make up the BEQ special issue "Sociology".
Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Andreas Georg Scherer is a Chaired Professor of Business Administration at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. He does research in business ethics, CSR, international management, and organization theory. He has published over twenty books, monographs, and special issues. In addition, his work has been published in research outlets such as the Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Business Ethics Quarterly, Journal of Management Studies, Organization Science, and Organization Studies.