Virtue in being: towards an ethics of the unconditioned

222 Pages·2016·2.682 MB·English

by  Benjamin, Andrew E

VIRTUE IN BEING
SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy
Dennis J. Schmidt, editor
V I RT U E I N BEI NG
Towards an Ethics of the Unconditioned
ANDREW BENJAMIN
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2016 State University of New York
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Benjamin, Andrew E.
Title: Virtue in being : towards an ethics of the unconditioned / Andrew
Benjamin.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2016. | Series:
SUNY series in contemporary Continental philosophy | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015036642| ISBN 9781438461618 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781438461632 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Ethics. | Philosophical anthropology.
Classification: LCC BJ41 .B46 2016 | DDC 170--dc23 LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2015036642
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
Chapter 1. Toward the Unconditioned:
Kant, Epicurus and Glückseligkeit 15
Chapter 2. Arendt and the Time of the Pardon 51
Chapter 3. Kant, Evil, and the Unconditioned 87
Chapter 4. Judgment after Derrida 125
Notes 169
Bibliography 199
Index 207
v

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The chapters of this book were first delivered as lectures at
the Collegium Phenomenologicun held at Citta di Castello,
Italy, in July 2014. I wish to thank María del Rosario Acosta
López for the kind invitation to give a weeklong course. I
have allowed the book as it now stands to retain the overall
structure of the lectures. During the writings of the lectures
and during the preparatory study conversations and critical
exchanges with friends and colleagues were fundamental. Let
me thank Kristie Sweet, Ted George, Peg Birmingham, Claire
Katz, Rick Lee, Simon Morgan Wortham, Howard Caygill,
Elina Steikou, Dimitris Vardoulakis, Dennis Schmidt, and
Miguel de Beistegui. I also want to thank James Kent for his
help in the preparation of the manuscript.
vii

INTRODUCTION
The address of this book is straightforward. It involves the
argument that a philosophical thinking of life, and thus
the development of a philosophical anthropology in which
human being is present as an entity within a generalized rela-
tional ontology, should be premised on the identification of
an already present and thus original relationship between
the ontological and the ethical. The uncovering of the rela-
tionship, a relationship that has an existent reality, would
be the identification of its effective presence. In other words,
the identification of a relationship that has an already pres-
ent structuring force within philosophy. There are therefore
two opening claims. The first affirms the presence of this for-
mulation of the relationship between the ethical and the onto-
logical. The second is that the possibility of the relationship’s
recovery indicates that it has always been at work within the
history of philosophy, even if it awaited recognition rather
than its exercise being an automatic and, as a consequence,
its results already determined. Allowing for its presence
gives rise to a different approach to the ethical. Rather than
uncovering ways of connecting the ontological and the ethi-
cal, what their already existent relation identifies is the pres-
ence of what will henceforth be described as virtue in being.
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