Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 22:46:18 -0600
Subject: ethics 


steve.devos wrote:
 I was surprised but interested for it
> suggests that a postmodern cyborg position can never be ethical...
> unless it works from a  situational perspective. Do you mean to
> suggest that an ethical position must return to a pre-cultural state?
> (Perhaps there is hope for my volcanic rock after all).

Steve,

Just a quick note here. It seems to me that even though Badiou critiques
ethics in his book, he also develops an ethics of his own.  He does not
merely subsume it under the regime of politics.

It also strikes me that the kind of ethics Badiou proscribes is
fundamentally Kantian and autonomist.  What is the "ethics of truth" if
not a kind of catergorical imperative.  We become "Immortal" insofar as
we autonomously do our duty to truth and thereby overcome the animality
of mere interest.  

For Badiou, truth is truth. He doesn't distinguish between pure and
practical reason.  Aside from this, however, he is very Kantian.  

With his emphasis upon the situation, he veers this sense of obligation
in the direction of pragmatism and existentialism (I detect Sartre might
be here somewhere), but fundamentally he remains a Kantian, much more
than he does a Hegelian.  

Do you agree?

eric