Title: Direct Ethics
Speaker: Anya Daly
Date, Time: 15/11/2011, 5:15pm
Location: Old Quad Common Room
Abstract: Direct Ethics argues for an ethics based on the idea that the most primary level of engagement with another is first and foremost internal, that “subjectivity is an intersubjectivity” (Husserl), and this engagement is pre-reflective; correlatively, current ethical accounts constitute a secondary reflective level which depends on the prereflective. I propose the elucidation of a Direct Ethics is able to reconfigure not only the philosophical landscape, but is also able to throw new light on the domain of ethical debates.
My presentation will give a brief survey of the key stages in establishing this position on the basis of Merleau Ponty’s phenomenology, beginning with his account of alterity, central to which is Merleau-Ponty’s notion of reversibility. The question at stake here is whether the reversibility thesis can guarantee a genuine other, affording both real communication and real difference. I will then go on to elaborate in detail the notion of prereflective percipience, the primary level of moral engagement with an Other, that whereby Direct Ethics becomes possible. It is important to distinguish this from UNrelfective engagement (of the type strongly critiqued by Singer) and also reflective engagement which is the mode of normative ethical accounts.