Virtue in Being , livre ebook

State University of New York Press - Andrew Benjamin

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

107 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

In his last book, Towards a Relational Ontology, Andrew Benjamin provided a philosophical account of what he terms anoriginal relationality, demonstrating how this concept can be seen to be at work throughout the history of philosophy. In Virtue in Being, he builds on that project to argue for a new way of understanding the relationship between ontology and ethics through insightful readings of texts by Immanuel Kant, Hannah Arendt, and Jacques Derrida. Structuring the book around the themes of violence, evil, and pardon, Benjamin builds a convincing case for the connections he draws between thinkers not commonly associated with one another.
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. Toward the Unconditioned: Kant, Epicurus and Glückseligkeit

2. Arendt and the Time of the Pardon

3. Kant, Evil, and the Unconditioned

4. Judgment after Derrida

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

Philosophie

Épistémologie

Philosophie de l'esprit

Éthique et morale

Esthétique et philosophie de l'art

Ethique et morale

History of philosophy

Epistémologie

Informations

Publié par	State University of New York Press
Date de parution	12 septembre 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781438461632
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1598€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

VIRTUE IN BEING
SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy
Dennis J. Schmidt, editor
VIRTUE IN BEING
Towards an Ethics of the Unconditioned
ANDREW BENJAMIN
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2016 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Diane Ganeles
Marketing, Michael Campochiaro
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
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Toward the Unconditioned: Kant, Epicurus and Glückseligkeit
Chapter 2. Arendt and the Time of the Pardon
Chapter 3. Kant, Evil, and the Unconditioned
Chapter 4. Judgment after Derrida
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T he 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.
INTRODUCTION
T he 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 relational 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 relationship, 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 present structuring force within philosophy. There are therefore two opening claims. The first affirms the presence of this formulation of the relationship between the ethical and the ontological. 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 ethical, what their already existent relation identifies is the presence of what will henceforth be described as virtue in being . Staged by this formulation is the anoriginal inscription of the ethical within the ontological. While this is a position that will continue to be made, the argument is that the ethical is not a contingent addition to the ontological. Rather the ontological is already the site of the ethical. That already present status is identified by the claim of an already present, hence anoriginal , inscription.
The term anoriginal is fundamental to this project. It has two interrelated determinations that are at work here. First, it bears an important connection to Derrida’s term différance . 1 An affinity arises as both terms— anoriginal and différance —bring into play a conception of original irreducibility that is thought in terms of space and time. However, in contradistinction to Derrida the term anoriginal allows for a reworking of the ontological. The anoriginal stages that reworking in terms of the development of a relational ontology. Hence, the anoriginal as a term within the philosophical, is intended to be part of what can best be described as a reappropriation and therefore a repositioning of the ontological itself. The anoriginal is difference at the origin. It pertains to what is. As such, it locates and names a sense of irreducibility that is ontological in nature. When Kant argues, in a passage that will be central to the project of this book that the “I” belongs both to the sensible and the intelligible worlds, not only is there the undoing of the opposition between the sensible and the intelligible, were that opposition to be equated with an either/or, what is also occurring is a repositioning of the subject such that it becomes the site of this founding irreducibility. Irreducibility inscribes spacing within the subject such that the subject is the locus of anoriginal irreducibility. This is the subject’s constitution. It is also the case that what holds the irreducible elements both “apart” and as “a part” of the subject is a form of temporal simultaneity. These elements pertain at the same time. It is this conception of time that will be developed here in terms of at-the-same-timeness . Equally, if more abstractly, the self/other relation once take as primary, and thus as an original setup, identifies the presence of anoriginal relationality as another instance of a founding irreducibility. The claim is straightforward. There is not self or other prior to the relation. Any singularity therefore would be an after effect of the relation. Irreducibility is original. Anoriginal difference names this irreducibility. The occurrence of any one instance is the event of plurality. The plural event names therefore a setup in which any one singularity is marked by its being the aftereffect of an original relation. (Hence anoriginal relationality.)
The second determination of the term anoriginal concerns origins. It signals a way of denoting the presence, and thus the being, of that which is always already at work (where work involves the distinction between potentiality and actuality). Again, the affinity with Derrida is clear. To argue for the anoriginality of a relation is therefore to assume both irreducibility and the already present status of that relation. Equally, it is possible to deploy the term anoriginal to identify the already present. Again this underscores that what is at stake in every instance is an account of existence, of what exists and thus the ontological. Accepting anoriginality as a point of departure—and therefore as its own an-origin—means that the philosophical task entails accounting for the work of the anoriginal rather than offering an account of its origin. Centrality is to be attributed therefore to the effect of anoriginal presence: a presence that defines the origin in terms of an already present effecting relation.
Relationality is an already present force; a force that continues to take on different forms. Note the following two moments both of which need to be understood as an affirmation of the being of being human as being-in-relation . 2 The first is Hegel’s dramatic opening to the section titled, “Independence and the Dependence of Self-Consciousness” (§178) in the Phenomenology of Spirit . The second occurs in chapter XII—the chapter concerned with education—in Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women . As is well known, Hegel writes that: “Self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it exists for another: that is, it exists only in being acknowledged.” 3 Mary Wollstonecraft’s evocation of relationality, while just as insistent, takes on a different form. She argues that it is, “… only by the jostlings of equality can we form a just opinion of ourselves.” 4 Both passages have elicited sustained critical commentary. Here all that will be noted are three elements. The first is that what the “dialectic of recognition” identifies is, inter alia, that were self-consciousness to be posited as a singularity then such a position would be an aftereffect of an original relation. Consistent with the position noted above, implicit in the formulation of this position is that relationality precedes singularity. The second is that “being acknowledged” and the “jostlings of equality” are activities. Relationality therefore is —that is, is what it is—in its being acted out. In being acted out, an acting out that is marked by an inevitable contingency as to content, the relationship between potentiality and actuality is brought into play. Third, what are described as “just” opinions, understood as both accurate opinions and an opinion of human being as bound up with both a sense of propriety and thus a sense of justice, occur as a result of activity and are given within reflection. Life and the just life delimited by an original sense of propriety have a possible and thus potential coincidence. A coincidence the setting of which has to be this life and which underscores the presence of what has already been identified as virtue in being . The coincidence is not a fait accompli. It actualization continues to meet sites of resistance. Resistance