Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, Page 2"Ethical questions dominate today's political and academic agendas. While government think-tanks ponder the dilemmas of bio-ethics, medical ethics and professional ethics, respect for human rights and reverence for the Other have become matters of virtually instinctive consensus." "Alain Badiou, one of the most powerful and unusual voices in contemporary French philosophy, explodes the facile assumptions behind this recent ethical turn. He shows how our prevailing ethical principles serve to reinforce an ideology of the status quo and demonstrates that an ethics conceived in terms of negative human rights or tolerance of difference cannot sustain decisive and precisely situated interventions any more than they can underpin a coherent concept of evil. Our consensual ethical norms amount to nothing more than a jumbled confusion of legalistic formalism, scandalised opinion, and theological mystification."--Jacket. |
Contents
Translators Introduction | vii |
Notes on the Translation | xlix |
Introduction | 1 |
Does the Other Exist? | 18 |
Ethics as a Figure of Nihilism | 30 |
The Ethic of Truths | 40 |
The Problem of Evil | 58 |
Conclusion | 90 |
| 145 | |
| 163 | |
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Common terms and phrases
accept according Alain Badiou animal appearing Badiou become belong break capital collective conceived conception concerns consensus consistency continue counted course cultural death decision Derrida desire differences distinguish effect element engagement entirely essential established ethics event Evil example existence experience fact fidelity figure follows force French going happens human human animal human rights idea identify identity ideology Immortal infinite interest internal Irigaray Kant kind knowledge Lacan language less Lévinas living logic mathematical matter means multiple natural never objective ontology opinions organized Paris particular philosophy political position possible precisely presented Press principle problem pure question radical reality recognize reference regarding relation remains respect responsibility sense simply simulacrum singular situation social some-one theory things thought tion Translated true truth truth-process understand universal void whole workers