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Document Details :

Title: Ethics and Subjectivity
Subtitle: A Reversal of Perspective
Author(s): TAELS, Johan
Journal: Ethical Perspectives
Volume: 2    Issue: 4   Date: December 1995   
Pages: 165-179
DOI: 10.2143/EP.2.4.563051

Abstract :
Isolated subjectivity is something of a controversial guest in the world of ethics, one which has not infrequently been shown the door as unwelcome visitor. How might we accomodate its chaotic attitudes and perceptions under the same roof with the demands of universal ethics? So runs the obligatory question, frequently to be answered by a firm denial of the possibility of combination: two into one won't go! Either the subject, as a being fascinatedwith the singular, will simply stand there staring into the radiant glow of the here and now, or as an ethical being, it will go out in search of an objective, extratemporal authority which will transcend the instability of its subjectivity. Good reasons lie behind the alleged irreconcilability between ethics and subjectivity, two of which, one from classical ethics and another from contemporary ethics, are not only good, but in fact very good.

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