“What is it between us?” Relational ethics for the study of Human–AI interaction

What is meant by relational ethics is of particular interest to practicing ethnographers (even for those of us who are not concentrated in the field of anthropology of morality and ethics). Zigon aims at surpassing long-lasting traditions in philosophy and anthropology with his hermeneutic work. The project is clearly ambitious. For the former, he intends to offer us an alternative to the dominant macroethical frameworks of virtue ethics, deontology, and utilitarianism in the Western tradition. For the latter, the critique is primarily directed at what the author identifies as a neo-Kantian foundation of anthropological theory of the past century. In both domains, he offers a relational alternative to address contemporary problems of high complexity that challenge the modern subject and his (and always “his” in this context) political ontology to understand, attune, and respond to our technical, political, and ecological condition.