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Fellow during the summer term 2019
Project: Big "Histories" and "Distant" Ethics
This project explores the challenge that large-scale histories pose to understandings of ethics. This challenge is not simply due to the inclusion of phenomena prior to or external to humans, but rather, the interest of macro historians in either re-scaling or reforming understandings of the very nature and purpose of ethics. I am very interested in whether the calls of various macro historians for the relocation of history within a new super bundle of 'historical' sciences, or as needing computational or distant analysis do indeed deliver new visions of ethics. My approach will be to bring philosophical analysis to bear on a range of big, world-systems, distant and anthropocenic histories, and to show that these provide-at minimum-an opportunity to extend contemporary professional historical codes of conduct and codes for the conduct of responsible historical research. In this way, global history may be seen as providing a form of enrichment for the wider discipline of history. Indeed, it may even provide insights that are relevant for those working on environmental management, and the regulation of artificial intelligence. Computer science, for example, works with algorithms that are essentially historical in nature. There is emerging awareness of this historical dependency-as with algorithms that discriminate against historically marginalised people-but there is still more opportunity for historians to contribute to approaches to the ethical management of information.