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Giving an Account of Oneself (Paperback, New)
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Giving an Account of Oneself (Paperback, New)
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What does it mean to lead a moral life?In her first extended study
of moral philosophy, Judith Butler offers a provocative outline for
a new ethical practiceaone responsive to the need for critical
autonomy and grounded in a new sense of the human subject.Butler
takes as her starting point oneas ability to answer the questions
aWhat have I done?a and aWhat ought I to do?a She shows that these
question can be answered only by asking a prior question, aWho is
this aIa who is under an obligation to give an account of itself
and to act in certain ways?a Because I find that I cannot give an
account of myself without accounting for the social conditions
under which I emerge, ethical reflection requires a turn to social
theory.In three powerfully crafted and lucidly written chapters,
Butler demonstrates how difficult it is to give an account of
oneself, and how this lack of self-transparency and narratibility
is crucial to an ethical understanding of the human. In brilliant
dialogue with Adorno, Levinas, Foucault, and other thinkers, she
eloquently argues the limits, possibilities, and dangers of
contemporary ethical thought.Butler offers a critique of the moral
self, arguing that the transparent, rational, and continuous
ethical subject is an impossible construct that seeks to deny the
specificity of what it is to be human. We can know ourselves only
incompletely, and only in relation to a broader social world that
has always preceded us and already shaped us in ways we cannot
grasp. If inevitably we are partially opaque to ourselves, how can
giving an account of ourselves define the ethical act? And doesnat
an ethical system that holds us impossibly accountable for full
self-knowledge andself-consistency inflict a kind of psychic
violence, leading to a culture of self-beratement and cruelty? How
does the turn to social theory offer us a chance to understand the
specifically social character of our own unknowingness about
ourselves?In this invaluable book, by recasting ethics as a project
in which being ethical means becoming critical of norms under which
we are asked to act, but which we can never fully choose, Butler
illuminates what it means for us as afallible creaturesa to create
and share an ethics of vulnerability, humility, and ethical
responsiveness. Judtith Butler is the Maxine Elliot Professor of
Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of
California, Berkeley. The most recent of her books are Precarious
Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence and Undoing Gender.
General
Imprint: |
Fordham University Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
October 2005 |
First published: |
October 2005 |
Authors: |
Judith Butler
|
Dimensions: |
227 x 152 x 11mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback
|
Pages: |
149 |
Edition: |
New |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-8232-2504-0 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
0-8232-2504-6 |
Barcode: |
9780823225040 |
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