Avital Ronell, Meaning
Precisely where there’s the pretense or claim for ultimate meaning and transparency –precisely where transcendental guarantors are stamping everything as meaningful, when no one needs to do the anxious guesswork of how to behave or what to do– that’s when you are not called upon to be strenuously responsible, because the grammar of being, or the axiom of taking care of the Other, is spelled out for you. According to several registers of traditional ethics, things are pre-scripted, they’re prescribed. You know everything that you are supposed to do; it’s all more or less mapped out for you. What becomes difficult and terrifying, and what requires infinite translation of a situation or of the distress of the world, is when you don’t have those sure markers. You don’t have the guarantee of ultimate meaning or the final reward or the last judgment and must enter into unsolvable calculations, seating doubts. Anyone who’s sure of themselves, of their morals and intentions, is not truly ethical, is not struggling heroically with the mandate of genuine responsibility. It is impossible ever to be fully responsible because you are never done being responsible or never responsible enough –you’ve never given or offered or done enough for those suffering, for the poor, the hungry.
Precisely where there’s the pretense or claim for ultimate meaning and transparency –precisely where transcendental guarantors are stamping everything as meaningful, when no one needs to do the anxious guesswork of how to behave or what to do– that’s when you are not called upon to be strenuously responsible, because the grammar of being, or the axiom of taking care of the Other, is spelled out for you. According to several registers of traditional ethics, things are pre-scripted, they’re prescribed. You know everything that you are supposed to do; it’s all more or less mapped out for you. What becomes difficult and terrifying, and what requires infinite translation of a situation or of the distress of the world, is when you don’t have those sure markers. You don’t have the guarantee of ultimate meaning or the final reward or the last judgment and must enter into unsolvable calculations, seating doubts. Anyone who’s sure of themselves, of their morals and intentions, is not truly ethical, is not struggling heroically with the mandate of genuine responsibility. It is impossible ever to be fully responsible because you are never done being responsible or never responsible enough –you’ve never given or offered or done enough for those suffering, for the poor, the hungry.
Ronell, Avital. 2009. "Avital Ronell: Meaning". In Astra Taylor (ed.), Examined Life. Excursions with Contemporary Thinkers. Pp. 25-60. New York: The New York Press.
No comments:
Post a Comment