Projects / Programmes
Philosophical Problems of Ethics
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 6.10.00 |
Humanities |
Philosophy |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| H001 |
Humanities |
Philosophy |
| H120 |
Humanities |
Systematic philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, epistemology, ideology |
Ethics, subject, excess, law, infinity, contingency, memory, universality, singularity, enjoyment, will, desire
Researchers (10)
Organisations (1)
Abstract
The project will focus on the investigation of the conceptual and philosophical problems of the ethical, and on the possibilities of ethical thought in the era of globalisation. The investigation will be conducted following three major guidelines. The first takes its starting point in the conceptual history of ethical reflection, from Aristotle onwards. However, rather than to provide a historical overview of various conceptions of ethics, the aim of this starting point is to detect and to analyse key paradigmatic shifts in the history of ethical thought. Crucial in this respect will be an inquiry into Kant's practical philosophy considered as the basis for modern ethical thought. By focusing on Nietzsche's frontal attack on the eminency of ethical problematic, we propose to circumscribe the place of the so-called "anti-ethics" within the history of philosophy. In the context of ethical changes in the era of globalisation we will try also to elucidate the nature and the function of testimony and of memory of those traumatic events characterised by the elimination of witness, by drawing on the theorisation of testimony developed by contemporary philosophy, psychoanalysis, literary theory, history, philosophy of law, philosophy of language, aesthetics, etc. The first and the most extensive part of the project will thus be a conceptual intervention into contemporary domination of postmodern ethical minimalism. The second guideline of inquiry will be centred around the issues of finitude and infinitude. In dealing with it, we will depart from the perspective of the excess (or a "too-muchness") that persists despite our finite condition and despite the recognition of our limits. What is that persists as an immanent excess on account of which human existence, as well as society, never exactly equal the sum total of their parts, The confrontation of philosophy and psychoanalysis will be of key importance for the elucidation of ethics through the perspective of infinity. Some other questions connected with the question of infinity will also be elaborated in this thematic block, above all the questions of the relationship between necessity and contingency and between immanence and transcendence. The third thematic block of the project concerns the question what such new departing point of ethics implies for particular human practices. In this perspective, especially the intertwining of ethics and aesthetics (in other words: of art, question of art as an act) will be investigated in its different forms and propositions, together with the break between "modern" and "post-modern" art. The relationship between ethics and politics will also be considered.
