December 15, 2004

Across the Australian grain

Given my interest in ethics, I thought that I'd throw this paragraph into the mix, stir it with a few comments, and finish with a question.


'Conventional wisdom either indicts poststructuralism and its forebears (Sade, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Bataille, Blanchot) on the grounds that they are devoid of ethical potential, or else it ignores them altogether. Reading and actually attempting to follow an astounding array of poststructuralists (a task all too many of those who declare themselves their enemies are loathe to undertake), Jay examines what he quickly allows is their "intense and abiding fascination with moral issues" which in turn demands that serious thought be given to the ethical questions they raise (39). Examining several ruminations on ethics contained in texts by Foucault, Lyotard, Emmanuel Lévinas (obliquely), Lacan, and others, Jay reiterates their common resistance to normative moral systems -- something he believes makes it nearly impossible for them to envision egalitarianism, mutuality, and reciprocity. Their ... ethics -- a sort of aesthetics of self -- opens upon somewhat stark sociological whimsy which nevertheless jibes paradoxically with recent Anglo-American moral meditations by Alasdair MacIntyre and Bernard Williams. Convinced as poststructuralists are that humanism led to the several coercive political systems of the twentieth century, they remain doggedly antihumanistic. But Jay's predilection for ideological dialogue and even accommodation of tenets belonging to the most inimical philosophies can be credited in his refusal to dismiss poststructuralist ethical skepticism most in evidence when collectivities are characterized as "unrepresentable" (Lyotard), "unworkable" (Nancy), "unavowable" (Blanchot). One can feel Jay pushing and pulling, trying to adapt these conceptualizations to Habermasian communicative discourse in order to prevent their stagnating as mere "evocative rhetoric"'.

The quote is from this review of Martin Jay's 1993 book, 'Force Fields: Between Intellectual History and Cultural Critique.' I have not read the Jay text, nor am I likely to, even though I respect Jay's commitment to engaging in debate with diverse cultural and philosophical traditions through critical practice.

What can we make of the paragraph? Analytic ethics has been very fairly impoverished given the postivist legacy of emotivism, the formalism of Kantian ethics and the technicalism of utilitarianism. Is the indictment, that poststructuralism and its forebears (Sade, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Bataille, Blanchot) is devoid of ethical potential, on target?

I reckon that (Anglo-American) conventional wisdom is quite wrong on the devoid of ethical potential. An ethical current runs through poststructuralism and its forebears. What we see here is the poverty of Anglo-American discourse, which has been habitually hostile to poststructuralism. That ethical current is deeper than ethical scepticsm towards humanism or convcentional moralities.

The aesthetics of self is a reference to Foucault but it is too narrow to capture the ethical concerns of Nietzsche about nihilism and the revaluation of values; or Heidegger's turn towards an ecological ethics of letting be in response to a technological mode of being. This implies a particular reception of Nietzsche that should be spelt out.

I've suggested that if we adopt the perspective of classical Stoic ethics, then we usefully read the ethical currents of poststructuralism and its forebears in terms of the a medical conception of philosophy that diagnoses our sickness, the disintegration of a moral community, the breakdown of moral language, the blighting of character or personality from a damaged life, and the need to revalue our values in a nihilistic world to live a more flourishing life.

What this ethical strand implies is a reevaluation of the modern (utilitarian) Australian Enlightenment, in which the liberal subject seamlessly enframes the world as an object of reflexive knowledge. Adorno's pessimistic vision of an increasingly instrumentalized modernity is well taken by this ethical strand in an Australian context. That strand then becomes environmental in orientation, as it interprets modernity as overstressing the tendency to commodify nature and, to degrade the earth as a source of life. This ethical strand would then go through and beyond Heidegger.

A question can be posed. Can those who who are hospitable to postmodern currents of thought nonetheless seek to recover something of value from the dark ruins of the once-heavenly city of Enlightenment discourse?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at December 15, 2004 06:29 AM | TrackBack
Comments

It's a reasonable enough paragraph. Although I'm not sure the phrase, "somewhat stark sociological whimsy which nevertheless jibes paradoxically with recent Anglo-American moral meditations by Alasdair MacIntyre and Bernard Williams" doesn't betray a real ignorance of the stakes involved, namely a philosophy of language.

Posted by: Matt on December 15, 2004 02:18 PM

No I'm not sure what that paragraph means either.

"Sociological whimsy"? Does that express the analytic philosophers contempt for sociology?

I sort of glossed the sentence as gesturing to positivism's impoverished ethical language, and as us not having a moral language to express our deep moral concerns.

That's Macintyre whom I interpret in terms of expressing the effects of nihilism in the 20th century.

Dunno about Williams.I've forgotten what he was arguing. I'll have to go and have a quick scan.

Posted by: Gary Sauer-Thompson on December 16, 2004 06:30 AM
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