The sessions and courses presented below have been developed and delivered in a range of academic, cultural, and public contexts. They can be offered as individual sessions or as part of a structured series, and are adaptable to different target audiences and formats, including on-site and online settings.
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Each session combines analysis with discussion, and can be delivered in English, Dutch, or French. Click on title for a description.
Klik hier voor de Nederlandse beschrijvingen.
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Individual or two part sessions
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The Power of the ​Algorithm – Autonomy in the Age of Persuasive Technologies​
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Artificial Intelligence - Alignment, responsibility and Consciousness​
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I is Another - The Paradoxes of Online Identity​
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When Better Becomes More – From Self-Cultivation to Self-Optimization​
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Truth Adrift – Platforms, Misinformation and the Future of Knowledge​
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Polarization as Starting Point – Wokeness, Identity Politics and the New Reaction​
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Fascism Reinvented? The Philosophical Foundations of the New Right​
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Justice in Motion – Law and technology in the 21st Century​
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No Alternative - Morality and Responsibility Without Free Will
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Courses
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Living Without Absolutes – Existential Philosophy and the Search for Authenticity​
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The Future of Human Nature – Post Humanism and the Limits of Technological Enhancement
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Individual or two part sessions
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​The Algorithmic Condition – Autonomy in the Age of Persuasive Technologies​
This session examines how algorithmic systems increasingly reorganize the lifeworld by structuring attention, perception, and decision-making. It challenges the idea of technological neutrality, showing how these systems embed values and actively steer human action through processes of optimization and persuasion, particularly within an attention economy that continuously captures and exploits attention. What once appeared as a set of external tools now operates as an environment that anticipates, filters, and shapes the conditions under which action takes place. The session explores how this transformation affects autonomy and self-regulation, asking whether meaningful choice remains possible when its conditions are pre-structured by opaque predictive systems, and invites participants to critically examine how these infrastructures shape their own patterns of attention and action and what forms of resistance remain possible.
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Artificial Intelligence - Alignment, Knowledge and Consciousness​
This session examines why artificial intelligence has rapidly become an existential question rather than merely a technological development. It situates current AI within a longer intellectual history while clarifying, in non-technical terms, how systems such as large language models actually function. The session distinguishes carefully between intelligence, understanding, and consciousness, and explores how confusion between these notions shapes contemporary debates. It then analyzes the control and alignment problems, focusing on the difficulty of embedding human values in increasingly autonomous systems. Finally, it reflects on the broader implications for knowledge, responsibility, and the future of human agency in a world where cognitive processes are increasingly externalized.​
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I is Another - The Paradoxes of Online Identity​
This session examines how online self-presentation reshapes offline identity and self-understanding. Drawing on thinkers such as Sartre, Debord, and Baudrillard, alongside empirical research, it explores how social media environments structure processes of self-representation, comparison, and validation. Particular attention is given to the effects of quantification—likes, followers, metrics—and the extent to which they reconfigure self-worth and perception. Central is the question whether authenticity remains possible under conditions of constant visibility and performativity. The session invites participants to critically reflect on how digital environments shape the relation between the self as lived and the self as presented.
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When Better Becomes More – From Self-Cultivation to Self-Optimization​
This session examines the historical transformation of self-improvement from a philosophical and ethical practice into a contemporary imperative of self-optimization. It traces a trajectory from classical notions of self-mastery and virtue in thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle, through modern ideals of autonomy and authenticity, to current forms of quantified, technologized self-management. Particular attention is given to how digital platforms, data tracking, and AI reshape the way individuals understand and govern themselves, turning the self into a measurable and continuously adjustable object. The session also analyzes the entanglement of these practices with broader economic and political structures, from neoliberal responsibility to biopolitical regulation. Central is the question whether contemporary forms of self-improvement still allow for genuine self-formation, or rather reinforce new modes of control and normalization.​
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Truth Adrift – Platforms, Misinformation and the Future of Knowledge​
This session examines the contemporary destabilization of truth in an increasingly mediated and technologized world. It argues that the current “crisis of truth” does not merely concern misinformation or disagreement, but reflects a deeper transformation in how truth is produced, filtered, and anticipated. Particular attention is given to the shift from truth as correspondence to truth as a function of visibility, engagement, and strategic self-presentation within digital environments. The session explores how individuals internalize these conditions, leading to forms of anticipatory self-censorship and pre-structured expression. Central is the question whether truth can still function as a normative horizon under such conditions, and what forms of critical resistance or reorientation remain possible.​
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Polarization as Starting Point – Wokeness, Identity Politics and the New Reaction​
This session examines the contemporary dynamics of political and cultural polarization, with particular attention to the role of identity-based frameworks in reshaping public debate. It argues that polarization today is not only driven by opposing ideologies, but by deeper transformations in how individuals understand themselves and others through categories such as race, gender, and culture. Drawing on thinkers such as Foucault, Said, and Crenshaw, the session traces how critiques of power and universalism have evolved into a fragmented landscape of competing perspectives and truth claims. Particular attention is given to the role of digital media and institutions in amplifying extreme positions and normalizing them as dominant viewpoints. Central is the question how societies can sustain shared norms and democratic dialogue under conditions of increasing moral and epistemic division.​
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Fascism Reinvented? The Philosophical Foundations of the New Right​
This session examines the contemporary resurgence of fascist and reactionary thought in the context of democratic fatigue and digital transformation. It argues that today’s authoritarian tendencies do not simply repeat historical fascism, but emerge from structural shifts in attention, cognition, and political experience. Drawing on thinkers such as Schmitt, Gentile, and Evola, as well as contemporary figures like Yarvin and Land, the session analyzes how anti-democratic ideas are reformulated in technological and cultural terms. Particular attention is given to the role of digital media, where aesthetics, memes, and affective intensities replace argument and deliberation. Central is the question how democratic societies can recognize and respond to these transformations without reducing them to historical analogies or moral simplifications.
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Justice in Motion – Law and Technology in the 21st Century​
This session examines how concepts of justice are being reshaped in a world marked by cultural diversity and digital disruption. Drawing on thinkers such as Kant, Rawls, Habermas, Nussbaum, and Schmitt, it explores the tension between universal principles and context-dependent interpretations of justice. Contemporary issues—including algorithmic governance, digital surveillance, and ecological justice—serve as case studies for understanding how technology and globalization transform legal systems. The session invites participants to critically reflect on whether law can ever be morally neutral, or whether it inevitably reflects underlying power structures.
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No Alternative - Morality and Responsibility Without Free Will
This session examines the consequences of denying the possibility of alternative thought. It starts from the idea that, at any given moment, we could not have thought differently, and explores how this challenges traditional notions of responsibility based on free choice. Rather than abandoning responsibility, the session considers how it can be redefined in more practical terms, as part of how we evaluate, respond to, and guide one another. Responsibility is approached not as something grounded in metaphysical freedom, but as a feature of social and moral life. Particular attention is given to how practices such as blame and accountability function when actions are understood as shaped by prior conditions. The lecture invites a reconsideration of moral life when human action is no longer tied to alternative possibilities, but to forms of awareness and interaction within a causal order.
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Courses
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Living Without Absolutes – Existential Philosophy and the Search for Authenticity​
This five-part series offers a concise exploration of existential philosophy, from its early roots to contemporary thought. It addresses fundamental questions of freedom, anxiety, meaning, and authenticity, and connects them to present-day issues such as digital alienation, fragmented identity, and capitalist nihilism. Through a combination of philosophical and literary texts, the series examines how existential concerns continue to shape human experience in a rapidly changing world. Each session focuses on key thinkers—from Socrates and Kierkegaard to Sartre, Camus, and contemporary authors—tracing how the problem of authenticity evolves in the absence of absolute values. The series invites participants to critically reflect on their own position within these conditions and to engage with existential philosophy as a living practice rather than a historical doctrine.​
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The Future of Human Nature – Technological Enhancement and the Limits of Transformation
This four-part series examines how emerging technologies—AI, biotechnology, and human–machine integration—are transforming the boundaries of the human. Drawing on thinkers such as Donna Haraway, Rosi Braidotti, N. Katherine Hayles, and Nick Bostrom, it explores how identity is reconfigured as fluid, hybrid, and increasingly detached from biological constraints. Particular attention is given to the ethical and existential implications of enhancement, superintelligence, and technological integration, as well as their impact on autonomy and agency. By bringing philosophical analysis into dialogue with contemporary developments, the series considers how concepts such as identity, agency, and human value are being redefined. It invites critical reflection on what, if anything, should remain of the human under posthuman conditions.
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Critical Philosophy Today​
This six-part series introduces critical philosophy as a tradition that interrogates the conditions and power structures shaping thought, experience, and social life. Beginning with Kant and Hegel, it explores critique as a form of reflexivity in which freedom is linked to the limits of reason. It then turns to Marx and the Frankfurt School, who reveal how rationality, knowledge, and culture are entangled with ideology and power. The focus then shifts to contemporary analyses of subject formation and technological mediation, drawing on thinkers such as Foucault, Butler, and Zuboff to examine how norms, institutions, and digital infrastructures shape identity, attention, and agency. The series concludes with reflections on ecology and planetary responsibility, engaging figures such as Fraser, Latour, and Haraway. It invites participants to approach critical philosophy as a practice of attention, clarifying how meaning, power, and freedom are configured today.
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An introduction to AI ethics
This four-part series provides an introduction to the ethical challenges raised by artificial intelligence, focusing on the assumption that technology is never neutral but always embeds values and shapes human behavior. It outlines key problem domains, including the control and alignment problems, the societal impact of AI, and the question of moral status. Drawing on major ethical frameworks—virtue ethics, deontology, and consequentialism—the session examines how different approaches can be translated into computational systems, and where their limits emerge. Particular attention is given to the difficulties of implementing moral reasoning in machines, from incomplete information to conflicting values and unpredictable consequences. The lecture concludes by addressing questions of responsibility, accountability, and transparency in AI systems, and asks what it would mean to develop forms of artificial agency that remain ethically aligned with human societies.
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