The Ethics of Resistance: Tyranny of the Absolute

181 Pages·2018·1.86 MB·English

by  Drew M. Dalton

The Ethics of Resistance
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM BLOOMSBURY
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On Resistance, Howard Caygill
Resistance, Revolution and Fascism: Zapatismo and Assemblage Politics,
Anthony Faramelli Hegel and Resistance, edited by Rebecca Comay and Bart
Zantvoort Errant Affirmations, David J. Kangas Apocalyptic Political Theology,
Thomas Lynch After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency,
Quentin Meillassoux
For Rudi
The Ethics of Resistance: Tyranny of the
Absolute
DREW M. DALTON
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Introduction The failure of ethics in the West
A history of collaboration
Ethics reenvisioned
PART ONE The tyranny of the absolute
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
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
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 TWO The ethics of resistance
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
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
Bibliography
Index
If someone here told me to write a book on morality, it would have a hundred
pages and ninety-nine would be blank. On the last page I should write: “I
recognize only one duty, and that is to love.” And, as far as everything else is
concerned, I say, no. I say no with all my strength.
ALBERT CAMUS, NOTEBOOKS: 1935–42