The Ethics of Resistance : Tyranny of the Absolute

"Opening a new debate on ethical reasoning after Kant, Drew Dalton addresses the problem of the absolute in ethical and political thought. Attacking the foundation of European philosophical morality, he critiques the idea that in order for ethical judgement to have any real power, it must attempt to discover and affirm some conception of the absolute good. Without rejecting the essential role the absolute plays within ethical reasoning, Dalton interrogates the assumed value of the absolute. Dalton brings some of the most influential contemporary philosophical traditions into dialogue with each other: speculative realists like Badiou and Meillassoux; phenomenologists, including Husserl, Heidegger, and Levinas; German Idealists, especially Kant and Schelling; psychoanalysts Freud and Lacan; and finally, post-structuralists, specifically Foucault, Deleuze, and Ranciere. The relevance of these thinkers to concrete socio-political problems is shown through reflections on the Holocaust, suicide bombings, the rise of neo-liberalism and neo-nationalism, as well as rampant consumerism and racism. This book re-defines ethical reasoning as that which refuses absolutes and resists what Milton's devil in Paradise Lost called the "tyranny of heaven." Against traditional ethical reasoning, Dalton sees evil not as a moral failure, but as the result of an all too easy assent to the absolute; an assent which can only be countered through active resistance. For Dalton, resistance to the absolute is the sole channel through which the good can be defined. Thanks."--Bloomsbury Publishing Title Page Copyright Page Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: The failure of ethics in the West A history of collaboration Ethics reenvisioned Part 1: The tyranny of the absolute Chapter 1: The trouble with post-Kantian ethics:Alain Badiou and Quentin Meillassoux on the vicissitudes of ethical absolutes The ironic antinomies of post-Kantian ethical and political thought The limits of liberalism The dogmatic structure of nationalism Alain Badiou and the “smug nihilism” of post-Kantian ethics The ethics of fidelity Quentin Meillassoux on the rise of post-critical fanaticism Factial speculation and radical contingency The fragility of Meillassoux’s hope The trouble with speculative ethics Chapter 2: Phenomenology, ethics, and the Other: Rediscovering the possibility of ethical absolutes with Husserl, Heidegger, and Levinas Phenomenology’s problem Edmund Husserl’s reduction The radical foundations of the phenomenological revolution Emmanuel Levinas and the possibility of phenomenological ethics Martin Heidegger and primal ontology Levinas and the ethical primacy of the Other Shame and the Other Responsibility and ethical subjectivity Phenomenology and the absolute Chapter 3: The problem of the Other: Levinas and Schelling on the reversibility of ethical demand The face of the Other as absolute phenomena The absolute and the infinite Levinas’s God? The ethical value of Levinas’s absolute The ambiguity of the infinite Schelling and the absolute reality of good and evil The reversibility of good and evil in the absolute The Other as absolute ground for good and evil Interlude: Sympathy for the devil: The tyranny of heaven The evil of acquiescence Kierkegaard’s apologetics for murder A report on the banality of evil revisited The tyranny of heaven Part 2: The ethics of resistance Chapter 4: Don’t give up, don’t give in! Jacques Lacan and the ethics of psychoanalysis The radical power of Lacan’s thought Unconsciousness unsettled The alterity of the Other Desire for the Other The subversion of the subject The Other/Thing The ethics of psychoanalysis Chapter 5: Carving a space of freedom: Michel Foucault and the ethics of resistance Michel Foucault and the exigency of ethical resistance The uses of genealogy The modern subject—Governmentality, normalization, and bio-power The trouble with modern subjectivity and the ethics of resistance Ethics as care for the self Technologies of care Care for the self in relation to the absolute Other Conclusion: The ethics of resistance: A backward-turning relation Ethics and the absolute A backward-turning relation Politics as first philosophy The political ends of anarchy The ethics of ab-archy Notes Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Interlude Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Conclusion Bibliography Index L'éditeur indique : "Opening a new debate on ethical reasoning after Kant, Drew Dalton addresses the problem of the absolute in ethical and political thought. Attacking the foundation of European philosophical morality, he critiques the idea that in order for ethical judgement to have any real power, it must attempt to discover and affirm some conception of the absolute good. Without rejecting the essential role the absolute plays within ethical reasoning, Dalton interrogates the assumed value of the absolute. Dalton brings some of the most influential contemporary philosophical traditions into dialogue with each other: speculative realists like Badiou and Meillassoux; phenomenologists, including Husserl, Heidegger, and Levinas; German Idealists, especially Kant and Schelling; psychoanalysts Freud and Lacan; and finally, post-structuralists, specifically Foucault, Ranciere, and Zizek. The relevance of these thinkers to concrete socio-political problems is shown through reflections on the Holocaust, suicide bombings, the rise of neo-liberalism and neo-nationalism, as well as rampant consumerism and racism. This book re-defines ethical reasoning as that which refuses absolutes and resists what Milton's devil in Paradise Lost called the "tyranny of heaven." Against traditional ethical reasoning, Dalton sees evil not as a moral failure, but as the result of an all too easy assent to the absolute; an assent which can only be countered through active resistance. For Dalton, resistance to the absolute is the sole channel through which the good can be defined."