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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter August 26, 2010

The ethical subject: Accountability, authorship, and practical reason

  • Svend Brinkmann
From the journal SATS

Abstract

Can human subjects be constructed and yet ethical? If it is language that speaks, rather than the author, how can we claim authorship over our utterances and actions? In this article, I struggle with these questions and try to develop a view of the ethical subject between an essentialist position that pictures the subject as unitary, and a postmodern position depicting the subject as fragmented. On this middle ground, I argue that a viable view of the ethical subject presents it as fundamentally an accountable reason giver, but I also point to some important limitations concerning accountability. Drawing in particular on the recent works of Sabina Lovibond and Judith Butler, I explore the resources for thinking of the subject within what has been called the practical reason approach to ethics, arguing that a subject should be thought of as existing in a normative space – a ‘space of reasons’.

Published Online: 2010-08-26
Published in Print: 2010-May

© Walter de Gruyter 2010

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