May 2022
Jean-Baptiste Ghins studied philosophy at UCLouvain (Belgium), and specialized in contemporary philosophy during a master's degree at ENS Paris, concluding in 2021.
His research quickly focused on the integration of technology into our daily lives, and the impact such a process could have on our imaginations. His final year thesis dealt with the relationship between technical modernization and fascism. It was this interest in technology as a social, political and cultural phenomenon that led him to question the current preponderance of digital technology.
Jean-Baptiste Ghins began a PhD thesis in November 2021, funded as part of the VP-IP Chair, under the supervision of Professor Mark Hunyadi. His aim is to study the user experience of connected tools from an aesthetic angle, i.e. to question the sensitive dimension of our interactions with devices, particularly through human-machine interfaces. The challenge is to understand the extent to which the promise of aesthetic pleasure - i.e., a sensitive pleasure aroused by the beautiful, the harmonious, the sublime, etc. - by companies such as Apple, Meta or Netflix, encourages our trust in digital technology, and our often-naive use of it. In this, this research overlaps with theories of the culture industry and design, as well as contemporary work on the attention economy.
From a methodological point of view, Jean-Baptiste Ghins draws mainly on the approaches and concepts developed by the Frankfurt School, a philosophical tradition in the wake of which many thinkers have theorized about the over-solicitation of our affects within consumer societies. His thesis will be submitted for assessment in autumn 2025.
Mark Hunyadi, Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy at the UCLouvain (Belgium), member of the VP-IP Chair.
Jean-Baptiste Ghins, PhD student in philosophy at the UCLouvain (Belgium), member of the VP-IP Chair.