Digital ethical Bildung as a proactive educational approach against cyberbullying, with Aristotle, Løgstrup and Barad as sources for a philosophical framework

Abstract

This article discusses three different theoretical approaches to deal with cyberbullying in education in ethics. The first approach is Tom Harrison’s fostering of “cyber-phronesis”, based on Aristotelian virtue ethics. The second one is K. E. Løgstrup’s ontological ethics which focuses on self-evident ethical demands emerging when people get entangled with each other. The third is Karen Barad’s agential realism, which also focuses on entanglements but includes more than humans in what matters as entangled agents. This opens for the inclusion of cyberspace in both technical, material and social manners as ethical agents. The author finds all three approaches viable and believes that they can be combined. Digital ethical Bildung (close to ‘cyber-phronesis’) of children is important in order to refrain from bullying others and to sustain bullying. Face-to-face entanglements is a better environment to become ethically addressed than online in order to enhance one’s phronesis. Considering non-human ethical agents is viable in order to be aware of and enhance one’s digital ethical Bildung further.