ETHIEK EN SUBJECTIVITES

Abstract

Summary The position of subjectivity in ethics is controversial. In classic rationalistic ethics it is mostly identified with arbitrariness, being elevated by a universal order. In post-ethics it is put on a par with the modern autonomous consciousness, abstracting from the concrete ethos. In this paper I plead for a third way. The starting point is the idea that the arbitrary self only can be dethroned by a reversal in the subject itself. This radical change makes the subject into a universal one. Only being a concrete self, it finds a universality which binds it together with the community, the cosmos, the ground of every reality. So my pleading doesn't aim at a synthesis, but at a reversal of perspective: neither objectivity nor universality are to be found beyond the singular subject, but only in the concrete particularity of the ethical self.