While we have defended aspects of interiority worth saving from control despite the post-structuralist critique of the subject, these aspects cannot be saved at the level of willed action by the subject. Control and the technologies that make it possible work on the level of individuation processes. This metaphysical fact makes several prominent ethical theories implausible for guiding us towards a good life. Deontology requires the fully formed, self-legislating, autonomous subject. This disregards how such features, insofar as they are desirable at all, are conditioned by a prior heteronomy that is under threat by control. Utilitarianism has a similar flaw but in regards to desires. It takes the subject to be an atomic collection of desires. Yet if our desires are shapeable, if we can lose or gain desires depending on what happens to us, often outside of our choices, utilitarian calculus breaks down. How could one calculate the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people when one accepts the mutability of desire, the possibility of radical transformation, and the good of the opacity of the other? Which desires should you embrace? In deciding what possible version of you, should your calculations privilege your current desires or future desires? Would it be better for you to acquire a sexual fetish you currently lack? These are all possible yet incalculable. More importantly, to attempt to model the opacity of the other is to attempt to undermine it.

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Subjectivation

  • Michael J. Ardoline

摘要

While we have defended aspects of interiority worth saving from control despite the post-structuralist critique of the subject, these aspects cannot be saved at the level of willed action by the subject. Control and the technologies that make it possible work on the level of individuation processes. This metaphysical fact makes several prominent ethical theories implausible for guiding us towards a good life. Deontology requires the fully formed, self-legislating, autonomous subject. This disregards how such features, insofar as they are desirable at all, are conditioned by a prior heteronomy that is under threat by control. Utilitarianism has a similar flaw but in regards to desires. It takes the subject to be an atomic collection of desires. Yet if our desires are shapeable, if we can lose or gain desires depending on what happens to us, often outside of our choices, utilitarian calculus breaks down. How could one calculate the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people when one accepts the mutability of desire, the possibility of radical transformation, and the good of the opacity of the other? Which desires should you embrace? In deciding what possible version of you, should your calculations privilege your current desires or future desires? Would it be better for you to acquire a sexual fetish you currently lack? These are all possible yet incalculable. More importantly, to attempt to model the opacity of the other is to attempt to undermine it.