Shaping a modern ethics : the humanist legacy from Nietzsche to feminism / Benjamin Bennett.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bennett, Benjamin, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Humanistic ethics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (217 pages) : illustrations

Distribution:

[London, England] : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020

Place of Publication:

[London, England] : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020.

Summary:

"Is there any such thing as a single ethical system to which all human beings could conceivably subscribe? The short answer is no; and most people, being tolerant, would probably agree with this answer. Yet most people, precisely in being tolerant, also subscribe to an idea of "human rights" which presupposes just such a universal ethics. This basic question of ethics is similarly treacherous when approached on a higher technical level. Specialists have long recognized that Kant's categorical imperative is neither theoretically nor practically tenable. But efforts to revive and repair the Kantian project-including especially the monumental work of Jürgen Habermas-have all themselves been theoretically questionable, while developing a complexity that makes them impractical. Must we then simply do without ethics in the sense of a universal ethical method? By way of a close study of literary and philosophical texts, from Freud to Machiavelli, Benjamin Bennett shows why the failure of a universal or propositional ethics is indeed unavoidable. He uncovers a modern non-propositional ethics that cannot be grasped in a single theoretical move but can only be approached as a collection of instances of a modern ethical "we', three key examples of which Bennett explores in this book: - The "we" of irony, whose speakers share a strictly preter-verbal knowledge which is concealed in their actual utterances - The insistent exclusive "we" of a group that has neither its own physical locality nor even a clear intellectual identity, comparable to the "we' of Jews in the diaspora - The "we' of feminism, a separate "we' from that embracing people who happen to have been born women."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Preliminary Remarks:

Wittgenstein and Strawson

Chapter One: Introduction:

Ethics, "Literature,' and Irony

Chapter Two: Nietzsche and

Rorty: The Ethics of Irony

Chapter Three: Kant and

Leibniz

Chapter Four: Lessing: History,

Irony, and Diaspora

Chapter Five: Lessing and

Freud: Theory, Wisdom, and the Scope of Ethics

Chapter Six: Habermas, Rorty,

and Machiavelli

Chapter Seven: Woolf,

Bachmann, Wittig: Toward a Feminist Ethics

Conclusion, or Not.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781350122888

1350122882

9781350122864

1350122866

OCLC:

1139731408