Table Of ContentObligation and the Fact
of Sense
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Contemporary Continental Ethics
Series editors: Bryan Lueck, Southern Illinois University
Edwardsville and Lucian Stone, University of North Dakota
Editorial Advisory Board
Andrew Benjamin, Alphonso Lingis, Ladelle McWhorter, Eduardo
Mendieta, Ann V. Murphy, Kelly Oliver, Danielle Petherbridge,
Anthony Steinbock
Normative Ethics from a Continental Perspective
The books in this series address pressing and diffi cult ethical questions
from the perspective of Continental philosophy. They offer new ways
of thinking about moral phenomena and raise challenging questions
that have not been considered before. The series includes work in the
fi eld of normative ethics, both theoretical and applied. Space is also
given to treatments of social, political and aesthetic questions that
intersect with ethical considerations.
Books available
Obligation and the Fact of Sense
Bryan Lueck
edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/epcce
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Obligation and the Fact
of Sense
Bryan Lueck
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Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK.
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© Bryan Lueck, 2019
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The right of Bryan Lueck to be identifi ed as the author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and
the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction: Ethics in the Sheep’s Shop 1
Philosophical Refl ection on Obligation 2
Elements of a General Conception of Obligation 8
1. Four Early Modern Accounts of Obligation 16
Voluntarism 17
Rationalism 23
Egoism 29
Sentimentalism 34
2. The Copernican Revolution in Ethics 40
Refl ection as the Source of the Problem of Normativity 40
Kant and the Copernican Revolution in Ethics 42
The Argument of the Collins Lectures 47
The Argument of the Groundwork 50
The Fact of Reason 60
3. Perceptual and Expressive Sense 64
Normativity in Perceptual Experience 65
Two Objections to the Perception-Based Account 75
Saussurian Linguistics 77
Merleau-Ponty’s Reinterpretation of Saussure 81
The Dynamic of Communication 84
Obligation and the Claim of the Other 88
4. Noise 93
Noise as Originary 93
Noise and Moral Sense 100
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vi Contents
Exposure to Noise as the Fact of Sense 109
Harlequin Emperor of the Moon 114
The Devil or the Good Lord? 117
5. Abandonment and the Moral Law 125
Sense as Shared 129
Abandonment and Obligation 138
Dignity 144
6. Indifference 153
Obligation as Overriding 153
The Givenness of Facts 161
Subjunctive Indeterminacy 166
The Law of Expansion 173
7. Conclusion 179
Is This Still Obligation? 179
A Defl ationary Account 185
Notes 191
Bibliography 209
Index 219
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Acknowledgements
During the writing of this book I have benefi ted from the intel-
lectual inspiration and encouragement of many people. I cannot
even imagine having written this book without the help of Al Lingis
and Charles Scott, both of whom, in their very different ways,
forced me to rethink everything I thought I knew about ethics. My
good friend Michael Deere helped to sharpen my understanding of
the work of Jean-Luc Nancy over the course of years of conversa-
tions. My colleagues and friends in the wonderfully diverse Phi-
losophy Department at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
have broadened my philosophical horizons, and I am certain that
this book is better for it. Carol Macdonald at Edinburgh Univer-
sity Press provided me with so much helpful advice as she guided
this project to completion. And Lucian Stone’s support has been
indispensable; it was he more than anyone else who convinced
me that my approach to the question of obligation was important
and that it deserved a book-length treatment. I also benefi ted from
the constant encouragement of my brother Ryan Lueck and my
mother Mary Lueck, both of whom inquired into the status of my
book nearly every time we spoke. And of course I cannot neglect
to mention the contributions of Wheatie, Geneviève, Diderik and
João-Estêvão (my cats) and Oskar (my dog), all of whom gave me
much to smile about as I struggled to give expression to the ideas in
this book. Finally, I am grateful beyond words to my partner Jessa
Farquhar, who has made my life better in every way.
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Dedicated to the memory of Juliana Eimer
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Introduction: Ethics in the
Sheep’s Shop
‘“What is it you want to buy?” the Sheep said at last, looking up for a
moment from her knitting.’ Needless to say, Alice had not expected
this question: only a few moments earlier, she had been in the wood
helping the White Queen straighten her shawl. All of a sudden a
gust of wind blew the shawl across a little brook. As soon as they
retrieved it on the other side, the White Queen began bleating, and
before Alice knew what had happened, she found herself in a shop
responding to the sheep’s question. ‘I don’t quite know yet,’ Alice
replied. She decided to have a look around the shop to see if there
was anything she might want to buy. But this task turned out to
be much more diffi cult than she had imagined, for ‘whenever she
looked hard at any shelf, to make out exactly what it had on it, that
particular shelf was always quite empty, though the others round
it were crowded as full as they could hold’. There was one thing in
particular that had caught Alice’s attention and that she wanted to
get a better look at. She could not make out exactly what the thing
was, though, as it seemed always to be changing its form, looking at
one point like a doll and at another like a workbox. Whenever she
tried to get a closer look, the ‘large bright thing’ always appeared on
the shelf above the one she was looking at. ‘Things fl ow about here
so!’ Alice exclaimed.1 The thing she wanted to grasp was always out-
side its place, no matter what place that was. And the place where
the thing was supposed to be was always empty.2 Undeterred, Alice
formulated what seemed to her a foolproof plan:
‘I’ll follow it up to the very top shelf of all. It’ll puzzle it to go through the
ceiling, I expect!’
But even this plan failed: the ‘thing’ went through the ceiling as quietly
as possible, as if it were quite used to it.3
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