Introduction
accounting for the other
pp. 1-20
in: Helen Fielding, Gabrielle Hiltmann, Dorothea Olkowski, Anne Reichold (eds), The other, Berlin, Springer, 2007Abstract
Approaching ethics through a reflection on the fundamental ethical concept of the other challenges traditional Western conceptions of modern ethics, since these either exclude, or have an exclusively negative conception, of the other. An ethics of value, for example, such as that developed by the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant, focuses on universal and eternal ethical values which are supposed to be the same for everyone. The subject — understood as a general and rational being — approaches the universal rationality of ethical values through reflection. In this conception the (implicitly white male) subject is a free and autonomous legislator of rational ethical laws and values which implies that the subject is supposed to be free from physical desires; thus rational values are not grounded in physical drives. This freedom from physical urges is understood to be the ground for the freedom for (a rational) morality. In this universalizing and unifying approach, the other is only taken into consideration in a negative way. Immanuel Kant states, in a version of the categorical imperative, that the subject should act in such a way that it does not abuse humans, in terms either of his [sic!] own person, or of any other person, by using them as a means. Instead, the others have to be considered as an end in themselves. Value ethics thus follow a monist and universal rationalist logic which excludes the positive recognition of the other's individuality.
