Self and Other: On the Basic Structure of Ethics

Catalog description

Do you have any reason for caring about anyone else? Is it rational to do so? Is it nice to do so? Is it irresponsible not to do so? If we ask—“What is ethics?”—one of the most basic answers is that it seems predicated on, and concerned with, the distinction between oneself and others. This course will investigate this basic distinction. Questions of focus will include: How are we to understand the concept of otherness? Where does it originate? Does a sense of responsibility follow from a recognition of the other? While, at the most fundamental level, otherness may be understood as simply what is not me, it comes to be conceived in more determinate terms, such as nationality, ethnicity, gender, race, religion, sexuality, political affiliation, and various other categories. We will also examine encounters with nonhuman forms of otherness as they come to bear in nature, as well as in art. The course will begin by considering how the Enlightenment’s theory of individualism grants us a new perspective on what it means to be a self and then how this allows us to envision another’s perspective. To build our views as we proceed, we will draw insights from Hegelian ethics of recognition, feminist ethics of care, and Levinasian ethics of responsibility. Authors studied will include, among others, Hegel, Freud, Beauvoir, Sartre, Fanon, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Glissant, and Plumwood. Modern Political Philosophy