PRINCIPLES FOR A GENERIC ETHICS

Abstract

This essay develops the concept of a “generic ethics” which engages with the Kantian conception of ethics developed between ends and means. This development takes place within a non-philosophical paradigm which brings science and philosophy together, attempting to move beyond the Kantian engagement with Newtonian physics to the contemporary quantum model. Ultimately the essay argues for a reconsideration of ethics such that the sufficiency of finality or ends is no longer taken as the standard of judgement and this leads to a reconsideration of the place of technology.

Keywords:

• ethics
• non-philosophy
• Kant
• technology

Notes

1 This essay was originally given as a lecture on 5 March 2010 at the University of Nottingham for a workshop on Laruelle's work entitled “François Laruelle's Non-Philosophy: Theology, Gnosticism, and Theory.” [Translator's note.]

2 Literally “smashing through an open door.” [Translator's note.]

3 The difference between vectoriel (what in English is translated as vectorial) and vectorial (which is a neologism of Laruelle's own creation) parrots the difference between Heidegger's terms (in translation) of existential and existentiell. Following discussions with the author, Drew S. Burke has translated the neologism as “onto-vectorial” in Photo-Fiction, a Non-Standard Aesthetics (Minneapolis: Univocal, 2012) to signify the constitutive and immanent character of the concept.