Hatab: Ethics and Subjectivity

Ethics should involve something of a “call,” something having a claim on us, something that draws us and motivates a commitment in the midst of counterimpulses. Such a call need not reflect the traditional force of a command, but since normative matters imply the human potential to alter one’s behavior in the face of other (likely more ready) inclinations, then some sense of a “self-transcendence” is needed to capture the tone of obligation that seems so indigenous to ethics. Here Heidegger’s ontological critique of subjectivity can bear fruit in moral philosophy. I have noted that many problems in ethical theory can be traced to the modern tendency to ground values in a subject, variously conceived in individual, collective, or cognitive terms. I have sketched how emotivism, egoism, and utilitarianism are liable to the charge that responsiveness to, and responsibility for, others might be unintelligible in their orientations. We also indicated how Kantian ethics purchases responsibility and obligation at the cost of an impartial universalism that may not be responsive enough to situated finitude. In different ways then, the orientation toward the subject in modern moral theory can be implicated in various problems that have continued to frustrate ethical discourse.

Without claiming that Heidegger’s thought can solve all these problems, I think his critique of subjectivity can give a good start in addressing the underlying assumptions that foster these difficulties. With Heidegger we can say that “grounding” ethics in the subject is as problematic as grounding any region of being. Rather than annulling ethics, this opens it into the overall configuration of finite being-in-the-world. As with other concerns of Dasein, values can be understood as uncovered in Dasein’s world, and not simply in some inner subjective zone. As part of the world, values can be seen to have as much a claim on Dasein’s understanding as other factical conditions into which it is thrown. Here there is some relief from individualistic and subjectivistic conceptions of values, as well as from a hyperbolic conception of existential freedom that in the end sees values as arbitrary choices or sheer creations. And regarding difficulties attaching to utilitarianism and Kantian theory, Dasein’s in/there/with structure overcomes the subject-object bifurcation and opens up the ekstatic situatedness of world involvement, which is richer than simply the rational calculation of human interests or the pure abstraction of universal consistency.

Since Dasein is at bottom an ekstatically thrown engagement with the world and other Daseins, then ethical concerns and involvements pertain to Dasein’s very being, and thus not to some extrinsic or rationalized sphere that somehow must be incorporated into an initially self-absorbed existence, with all the philosophical difficulties that go with advancing such a bifurcated scenario. In Heideggerian terms, Dasein always already is a responsive openness to the world, and so certain ethical relations and bearings are possibilities that are intrinsic to human existence. There is some relief here from a certain skepticism or cynicism about experiences of guilt, conscience, and responsibility that have been inspired by egocentric conceptions of human nature. We need not buy the notion that such experiences are simply an internalization of external conditioning regimes by force of social norms superimposed upon the self, or perhaps simply a slavish surrender of freedom owing to fear of social retribution.