Interfacing ethics: The ethical relation from Kant to Derrida

My thesis is based on four propositions. The first is the most important. The other three issue from it. First, there is a fundamental process or movement of relating identity to difference and self to other that underlies ethicality as such. This relational movement, which undertakes a certain mediation between both terms in thought and material entities in the world, is neither the traditional relation of opposition that has dominated the Western tradition since Parmenides nor a process of dialectical mediation between identity and difference in which identity and difference are, in the end, reconciled by a relation of identity that has in fact underwritten the interplay between opposites from the beginning. My "object" then, is a different type of differing, a movement of relational mediation that resists absolutely any final objectification, stabilization, or identification, even as it functions as a condition of possibility for all processes of relative objectification, stabilization, and identification. I call this movement 'the ethical relation.' Second, different ethico-political systems orient themselves to the ethical relation in different ways. To demonstrate this and explore some of its causes and consequences, my argument tracks the ethical relation in various pseudonymous instantiations through Kant and Levinas; Hegel, Kojeve, and Deleuze; Deleuze, Guatarri, and feminism; and finally through Benjamin, Heidegger, and Derrida. Third, differences among ethico-political orientations toward the ethical relation are often correlated with vastly different substantive conceptions of otherness expressed in particular cases of ethical decision-making. My argument focuses on two types of otherness: gendered others, or the relationships between male and female, and speciated others, or the relationships between humans and animals. Fourth, by comparing ethico-political theories based on how they figure the ethical relation across the male/female and human/animal divides, we can make judgments about the relative "ethicality" of these theories. I conclude by focusing on the non-oppositional, non-dialectical mode of ethical relationality adduced, analyzed, and advocated by Jacques Derrida as a promising approach to rethinking how to better live our responsibility to singular gendered and speciated others, as well as otherness in general.;My thesis is based on four propositions. The first is the most important. The other three issue from it. First, there is a fundamental process or movement of relating identity to difference and self to other that underlies ethicality as such. This relational movement, which undertakes a certain mediation between both terms in thought and material entities in the world, is neither the traditional relation of opposition that has dominated the Western tradition since Parmenides nor a process of dialectical mediation between identity and difference in which identity and difference are, in the end, reconciled by a relation of identity that has in fact underwritten the interplay between opposites from the beginning. My "object" then, is a different type of differing, a movement of relational mediation that resists absolutely any final objectification, stabilization, or identification, even as it functions as a condition of possibility for all processes of relative objectification, stabilization, and identification. I call this movement 'the ethical relation.' Second, different ethico-political systems orient themselves to the ethical relation in different ways. To demonstrate this and explore some of its causes and consequences, my argument tracks the ethical relation in various pseudonymous instantiations through Kant and Levinas; Hegel, Kojeve, and Deleuze; Deleuze, Guatarri, and feminism; and finally through Benjamin, Heidegger, and Derrida. Third, differences among ethico-political orientations toward the ethical relation are often correlated with vastly different substantive conceptions of otherness expressed in particular cases of ethical decision-making. My argument focuses on two types of otherness: gendered others, or the relationships between male and female, and speciated others, or the relationships between humans and animals. Fourth, by comparing ethico-political theories based on how they figure the ethical relation across the male/female and human/animal divides, we can make judgments about the relative "ethicality" of these theories. I conclude by focusing on the non-oppositional, non-dialectical mode of ethical relationality adduced, analyzed, and advocated by Jacques Derrida as a promising approach to rethinking how to better live our responsibility to singular gendered and speciated others, as well as otherness in general.