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The Question of Ethics: Nietzsche, Foucault, Heidegger
"... stimulating and insightful... a thoroughly researched and timely contribution to the secondary literature of ethics... " â Library Journal"His important new work establishes Scott... as one of the foremost interpreters of the Continental philosophical tradition of the US.... Necessary for anyone working in ethics or the Continental tradition." â Choice"... a provocative discourse on the consequences of the ethical in the thought of Nietzsche, Foucault, and Heidegger." â The Journal of ReligionCharles E. Scott's challenging book advances the broad claim that ethics as a way of judging and thinking has come into question as philosophers have confronted suffering and conflicts that arise from our traditional systems of value.
- GenresPhilosophy
238 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 1990
About the author
Charles E. Scott
38 booksLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See:
Charles E. Scott
Charles E. Scott
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 25, 2020
Closely argued text proceeding from the position of “how questioning can occur in a manner that puts in question the body of values that led to the questioning” (1), which sounds a bit like derridean solicitation. Section on Nietzsche’s “ascetic ideal” and on Foucault’s critique of the subject, and then a bunch of stuff on Heidegger.
Principal mechanism of the interrogation is the grammatical ‘middle voice,’ not a grammatical verb gender in English, but semantically residual in intransitive and self-reflexive verbs. Text defines as “The middle voice is used when the subject is in some way specifically implicated in the result of the action but is neither the active subject nor the passive object of the action” (19). Author here wants to “emphasize the middle voice because the movement of self-overcoming and its recoils, which take place in Nietzsche’s thought, cannot be thought well in the active and passive voices” (18). Active voice is no good for self-overcoming because it “appears to be a kind of force that is to be understood by its effects, by what it does,” which is “vaguely nihilistic” as the “primary voice of our philosophical tradition,” lacking “a telos or a self-realizing nature,” “a chaotic subject” (id.). By contrast, the passive voice is not workable either, as “self-overcoming is an object of thought that can be grasped by a movement other than its own” therein, “to be defined, broken apart, put back together” (id.). The intransitive verb form is important as “one that plays a significant role in contemporary efforts to think outside the domain of subjectivity” (19).
Text proceeds through a number of cool observations thereafter, some quoted in the update, infra.
Recommended for those who internally divided and strange to themselves, readers who experience unreason as the caesura of reason, and persons who associate the nomos with nomads.
Principal mechanism of the interrogation is the grammatical ‘middle voice,’ not a grammatical verb gender in English, but semantically residual in intransitive and self-reflexive verbs. Text defines as “The middle voice is used when the subject is in some way specifically implicated in the result of the action but is neither the active subject nor the passive object of the action” (19). Author here wants to “emphasize the middle voice because the movement of self-overcoming and its recoils, which take place in Nietzsche’s thought, cannot be thought well in the active and passive voices” (18). Active voice is no good for self-overcoming because it “appears to be a kind of force that is to be understood by its effects, by what it does,” which is “vaguely nihilistic” as the “primary voice of our philosophical tradition,” lacking “a telos or a self-realizing nature,” “a chaotic subject” (id.). By contrast, the passive voice is not workable either, as “self-overcoming is an object of thought that can be grasped by a movement other than its own” therein, “to be defined, broken apart, put back together” (id.). The intransitive verb form is important as “one that plays a significant role in contemporary efforts to think outside the domain of subjectivity” (19).
Text proceeds through a number of cool observations thereafter, some quoted in the update, infra.
Recommended for those who internally divided and strange to themselves, readers who experience unreason as the caesura of reason, and persons who associate the nomos with nomads.
Displaying 1 of 1 review