"What strikes me is that in Greek ethics people were concerned with their
moral conduct, their ethics, their relations to themselves and to others
much more than with religious problems. For instance, what happens to us
after death? What are the gods? Do they intervene or not?--these are very,
very unimportant problems for them, and they are not directly related to
ethics, to conduct. The second thing is that ethics was not related to any
social--or at least to any legal--institutional system. For instance, the
laws against sexual misbehavior were very few and not very compelling. The
third thing is that what they were worried about, their theme, was
to constitute a kind of ethics which was an aesthetics of existence.
"Well, I wonder if our problem nowadays is not, in a way, similar
to this one, since most of us no longer believe that ethics is founded in
religion, nor do we want a legal system to intervene in our moral,
personal, private life. Recent liberation movements suffer from the fact
that they cannot find any principle on which to base the elaboration of a
new ethics. They need an ethics, but they cannot find any other ethics
than an ethics founded on so-called scientific knowledge of what the self
is, what desire is, what the unconscious is, and so on. I am struck by
this similarity of problems."
"On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress," _Foucault
Reader_, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1984), p. 343.
On Thu, 7 May 1998, M.A. King wrote:
> I've been going nuts trying to track this down: "The newer liberation
> movements suffer from their inability to find a principle on the basis of
> which they can work out a new ethics." Many thanks in advance to anyone
> who can give me a reference.
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Matthew A. King ---- Department of Philosophy ---- McMaster University
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> "The border is often narrow between a permanent temptation to commit
> suicide and the birth of a certain form of political consciousness."
> (Michel Foucault)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
^><<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>><><<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>><><
< John S. Ransom, Political Science; Denny 107; 245-1716 <
< Prelaw Adviser; Bologna Coordinator >
< Office Hours: Monday 11am-Noon, Tuesday, 10-11am, >
< Thursday, 2-3pm >
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
moral conduct, their ethics, their relations to themselves and to others
much more than with religious problems. For instance, what happens to us
after death? What are the gods? Do they intervene or not?--these are very,
very unimportant problems for them, and they are not directly related to
ethics, to conduct. The second thing is that ethics was not related to any
social--or at least to any legal--institutional system. For instance, the
laws against sexual misbehavior were very few and not very compelling. The
third thing is that what they were worried about, their theme, was
to constitute a kind of ethics which was an aesthetics of existence.
"Well, I wonder if our problem nowadays is not, in a way, similar
to this one, since most of us no longer believe that ethics is founded in
religion, nor do we want a legal system to intervene in our moral,
personal, private life. Recent liberation movements suffer from the fact
that they cannot find any principle on which to base the elaboration of a
new ethics. They need an ethics, but they cannot find any other ethics
than an ethics founded on so-called scientific knowledge of what the self
is, what desire is, what the unconscious is, and so on. I am struck by
this similarity of problems."
"On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress," _Foucault
Reader_, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1984), p. 343.
On Thu, 7 May 1998, M.A. King wrote:
> I've been going nuts trying to track this down: "The newer liberation
> movements suffer from their inability to find a principle on the basis of
> which they can work out a new ethics." Many thanks in advance to anyone
> who can give me a reference.
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Matthew A. King ---- Department of Philosophy ---- McMaster University
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> "The border is often narrow between a permanent temptation to commit
> suicide and the birth of a certain form of political consciousness."
> (Michel Foucault)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
^><<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>><><<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>><><
< John S. Ransom, Political Science; Denny 107; 245-1716 <
< Prelaw Adviser; Bologna Coordinator >
< Office Hours: Monday 11am-Noon, Tuesday, 10-11am, >
< Thursday, 2-3pm >
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^