Donna Orange: Sistemas intersubjetivos, Filosofía y Ética

Abstract

In this paper we examine Donna Orange's contribution to ethics within the psychoanalytic clinic, from the perspective of the theory of intersubjective systems and the critique of the Cartesian isolated mind. Above all, she says we must place a radically asymmetrical relationship, of infinite responsibility to the other person. The ethical approach proposed by Orange derives from the ideas of Emmanuel Levinas, regarding the curvature of the intersubjective space and the total asymmetry before the face of the other, which we cannot take as an object of knowledge, and, later, that of the Danish philosopher, Knud Ejler Løgstrup, also a huge defender of that asymmetry: a person is a debtor because he or she exists and has received his life as a gift. We criticize this absolutism of moral obligation that is based on “debt”, concept very close to “guilt”, and not from “joy”. We criticize this proposed absolutism of the moral obligation that is based on "debt", close to "fault", and not from joy, and which poses what we consider a moral egocentrism. Ultimately, who is the subject of the moral mandate?