Ethics: an essays on the understanding of evil

R$ 110,90

Sinopse

Ethical questions dominate current political and academic agendas. While government think-tanks ponder the dilemmas of bio-ethics, medical ethics and professional ethics, respect for human rights and reverence for the Other have become matters of broad consensus. Alain Badiou, one of the most powerful voices in contemporary French philosophy, explodes the facile assumptions behind this recent ethical turn. He shows how our prevailing ethical principles serve ultimately to reinforce an ideology of the status quo, and fail to provide a framework for an effective understanding of the concept of evil. Our consensual ethical norms amount to nothing more than a jumbled confusion of legalistic formalism, scandalised opinion, and theological mystification. By contrast, Badiou summons up an "ethic of truths" which is designed both to sustain and inspire a disciplined, subjective adherence to a militant cause (be it political or scientific, artistic or romantic), and to discern a finely demarcated zone of application for the concept of evil.He defends an effectively super-human integrity over the respect for merely human rights, asserts a partisan universality over the negotiation of merely particular interests, and appeals to an "immortal" value beyond the protection of mortal privileges.

Participantes

Autor: Alain Badiou

Tradutor: Peter Hallward

Autor

ALAIN BADIOU

Alain Badiou , filósofo, dramaturgo e romancista, leciona filosofia na Universidade de Paris-VII Vincennes e no Collège International de Philosophie. Publicou, entre outros, os ensaios Le nombre et les nombres (Seuil, 1990), Conditions (Seuil, 1992), Abrégé de métapolitique (Seuil, 1998), o romance Calme Bloc ici-bas (P.O.L, 1997) e a comédia Les Citrouilles (Actes Sud, 1996).

No Brasil, foram editados Manifesto pela filosofia (Aoutra, 1991), Para uma nova teoria do sujeito (Relume-Dumará, 1994), Ética: um ensaio sobre a consciência do mal (Relume-Dumará, 1995), O ser e o evento (Jorge Zahar, 1996) e Deleuze: o clamor do ser (Jorge Zahar, 1997).