Nolen Gertz, University of Twente, NL

In part one of this paper I turn to Don Ihde to show how a technological object can occupy the role that “the other” plays for Hegel in his phenomenology as the structural features of Hegel’s analyses of self-other relations can be found in Ihde’s analyses of human-technology relations. I then turn to Singer’s Wired for War and Gertz’s Philosophy of War and Exile. These texts show how the way soldiers treat robots by naming them, protecting them, and by even risking their lives to save them, illustrates Hegel’s central claim: ethical life develops based on the process of discovering that to recognize others (whether human or technological) is to recognize ourselves and that to misrecognize others is to misrecognize ourselves. I conclude by offering suggestions as to how this understanding of ethical life as based on recognition and misrecognition can be applied to design ethics.