Hobbes, Kant, and Nietzsche on Feelings and Foundations

University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-2002 Toward a critical ethic : Hobbes, Kant, and Nietzsche on feelings and foundations. William W. Sokoloff University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Sokoloff, William W., "Toward a critical ethic : Hobbes, Kant, and Nietzsche on feelings and foundations." (2002). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 1995. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/1995 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. min mu iiiii iiiii iiiii uni mu mu mu urn mu mil mu mu mil mi mi 3120bb 02 AA 137T 4 TOWARD A CRITICAL ETHIC: HOBBES, KANT, AND NIETZSCHE1 Ht ON«N FEELINGS AND FOUNDATIONS A Dissertation Presented By WILLIAM W. SOKOLOFF Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2002 Department of Political Science © Copyright by William W. Sokoloff 2002 All Rights Reserved TOWARD A CRITICAL ETHIC: HOBBES, KANT, AND NIETZSCHE FEELINGS AND FOUNDATIONS A Dissertation Presented by WILLIAM W. SOKOLOFF Approve^ as to ^tyl^and content by: Nicholas Xenos, Chair Jaynes Dpr Derian, Member Andrew Parker, Member Jerome M. Mileur, Department Head Department of Political Science dedication To my parents William J. and Nadja P. Sokoloff. ABSTRACT TOWARD A CRITICAL ETHIC: HOBBES, KANT, AND NIETZSCHE ON FEELINGS AND FOUNDATIONS MAY 2002 WILLIAM W. SOKOLOFF, B.A., CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY LONG BEACH M.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Ph D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Nicholas Xenos The texts that play a major role in my dissertation include Hobbes's Leviathan , Kant's Groundwork ofthe Metaphysics Morals and of Critique ofPractical Reason, and Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil and Toward a Genealogy ofMorals. My research is situated on the border between ethics and politics because I challenge the belief that ethical conduct always requires universal laws. The articulation of an ethical sensibility that is not grounded on a universal law has been one of the thorniest issues in political theory. Ethical reflection has been unnecessarily trapped between the poles of moral universalism and/or relativism. Through readings of Hobbes, Kant, and Nietzsche in reference to foundations and specific human feelings, I demonstrate that the absence of moral universal does not put an end to ethics but is the condition for a new ethical sensibility that overcomes the this opposition. A critical ethic confronts the difficulty of articulating the relationship between ethics and politics in an age of disenchantment. v CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT.. ....v CHAPTER E TOWARD A CRITICAL ETHIC: HOBBES, KANT AND NIETZSCHE ON FEELINGS AND FOUNDATIONS... 1 A. The Necessity and Difficulty of Ethics B. Strategies of Negotiation ..1 C. Ethics “Without” Foundations 8 D. “Feeling” ....15 ....18 E. A Brief History of Feeling ....19 2 . POLITICS AND ANXIETY IN THOMAS HOBBES’S LEVIATHAN. A. Passion and Politics B. Fear ..31 ..34 C. Panique Terror D. Anxiety ..38 ..40 E. Politics ..50 F. Beyond Hobbes ..54 3. KANT AND THE PARADOX OF RESPECT A. Back to Kant ..55 B. Paradox ..58 C. Respect ..60 D. Ground ..71 E. Freedom ..75 F. Ethical Paradox ..81 G. Beyond Kant .... ..85 4. NIETZSCHE’S ETHIC OF SINGULARITY A. Back to Nietzsche ..86 B. Feeling ..92 C. Toward a Genealogy> ofMorals ..94 D. Ressentiment ..97 E. Priests 105 vi F. Pathos of Distance .. G. Law of Life... H. Letting Go .. I. Ethical Singularity ... J. Justice, not Convictions.. K. Beyond Nietzsche .. 5 . THE CHALLENGE OF CITIZENSHIP A. The Necessity and Difficulty of Ethics B. Birth of the Subject; Death of the Citizen C. Death of the Subject; Birth of the Citizen D. Shifting Ground... E. Critical Ethic as Risk... BIBLIOGRAPHY ..143 CHAPTER 1 TOWARD A CRITICAL ETHIC: HOBBES, KANT, AND NIETZSCHE ON FEELINGS AND FOUNDATIONS A. The Necessity and Difficulty of Ethics Theorizing (he relationship between ethics and politics today, as well arguing for their interconnection, is difficult. No, only did modern political though, announce the separation of the spheres of politics and morality bu, countless philosophers declared war on foundationahsm, universalism, essentialism, humanism, and rationalism. The writings of Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, Weber, Adorno, Derrida, Irigaray, and Foucault (to name only a few) have so thoroughly interrogated the philosophical tradition that some commentators have concluded that the Western philosophical is exhausted.' Recent thinking in the field of political theory has also attacked transcendental foundations and the tradition of Enlightenment universalism. 2 The targets of this attack include the For Lacoue-Labarthes, ethics suffers from the "exhaustion of philosophical possibilities. '' Lacoue-Labarthes, Philippe, Heidegger, Art and Politics: The Fiction ofthe / olitical, trans. by Chris Turner, (Cambrigde, Massachusetts: Basil Blackwell 1990) 31 for Alasdair MacIntyre, "the language of morality is in a state of grave disorder." Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, (Notre Dame, Indiana: University3 of Notre Dame Press), 2. Un the words of Judith Butler, foundations have become "a site of permanent political contest." "Contingent Foundations: Feminism and "' the Question of 'Postmodernism in Feminists Theorize the Political, edited by Butler Scott, & (New York: Routledge, 1992) 8. Contingent foundations" can be read as the ethical impasse that is apparent in her essay | "Ethical Ambivalence" in The Turn to Ethics, edited by Garber et. al., (New York: Routledge, 2000). Butler views the turn to ethics as an escape from politics. Butler has accepted the colonization of ethics by those who conceive it in depoliticizing ways as opposed to contesting the domination of ethics and conceiving of it in political terms. For William E. Connolly, "nothing is fundamental." William E. Connolly, The Ethos of disembodied subject, self-grounding reason, the possibility of a perspectiveless standpoint, and universality untainted by power. The loss of these previous mechanisms of unification has contributed to the disintegration of bonds of solidarity, insecurity and disorientation, and moral confusion. In addition, the end of the bi-polar international order; the collapse of both Marxism and the Soviet Union; the increasing fluidity of borders as a result of globalization; the decline of the nation-state as the dominant actor in the international arena; the erosion of the legitimacy of political institutions; the ambiguous status of the United Nations; the collapse of the distinctions between peace and war, soldier and civilian; the proliferation of nuclear armaments; the equivocal character of "humanitarian intervention;" media disinformation campaigns; struggles for the recognition of new identities; the impact of the internet on social, political, and economic structures; the proliferation of computer, animal, and human viruses; and cloning has inaugurated an era marked by the feeling of vulnerability and the phantomalization of everyday life. To say that we are in an era of "posts" only captures part of the picture. These mutations in our experience of reality place us between epochs. As we lose sight of the world we have lost the one we are about to enter defies comprehension. are We "wandering between two worlds, one dead / Pluralization, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995) 1. Inspired by the work of Michel Foucault, Connolly has sought to develop ethics without foundations. An ironic conception of subjectivity and an appeal to ontology de-problematizes the ground that he renders contestable. Connolly has too quickly abandoned the Kantian imperative tradition. This issue is discussed in greater detail throughout this study. 2 The other powerless to be bom.- The re-emergence of aggressive modes of nationalism, fundamentalism, and political extremism can be viewed as reactions to the destruction of historical markers of stability and the loss of transcendental foundations. It is unclear how to respond to these new developments and old re-visitations. One strategy has been to deny moral insecurity and groundlessness. This is clear in the nostalgic reassertion of God. Tradition, Family, Country, or Nature that we have witnessed with the rise of the Right and Christian fundamentalism in American politics* Some strands of Leftist thinking have simply refused to reconstruct ethical foundations since they believe that they are inescapably implicated in ruses of power, discipline, or normalization. The retreat of the Left from the sphere of ethics has left us ill-equipped to respond to the contemporary ethical malaise and 5 moral monopoly of the Right. Although there has been growing interest in the intersection between ethics and politics, apparent in the recent publication The Turn to Ethics more , needs to be done to advance a viable Leftist ethico-pohtical agenda and to counter the caricature of it as relativistic. Arnold Matthew, "Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse," in The Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold, edited by Tinker & Lowry (London: Oxford University

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