About this title: What does it mean to lead a moral life? In her first extended study of moral philosophy, Judith Butler offers a provocative outline for a new ethical practice - one responsive to the need for critical autonomy and grounded in a new sense of the human subject. Butler takes as her starting point one's ability to answer the questions "What have I ...
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Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Fordham Univ Pr
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780823225040ISBN:0823225046
Description: What does it mean to lead a moral life? In her first extended study of moral philosophy, Judith Butler offers a provocative outline for a new ethical practiceone responsive to the need for critical autonomy and grounded in a new sense of the human sub... read more
Binding: Hardback
Publisher: FORDHAM UNIV PR
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780823225033ISBN:0823225038
Description: What does it mean to lead a moral life? In her first extended study of moral philosophy, Judith Butler offers a provocative outline for a new ethical practiceone responsive to the need for critical autonomy and grounded in a new sense of the human sub... read more
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"I really love how Butler sees the world, or at least the snippets of how I think she sees the world. This is a wonderful read that offers a different interpretation of how we're ethically responsible in the world today, when we speak about our selves and when we are persecuting/persecuted. I especially concur that Levinas's claim of persecution (or rather the state of being persecuted) being the essence of Judaism is a preontological statement that licences an unacceptable irresponsibility to Jews. I do also understand that a self is discursively produced and that the failure to recognize an other within the normative horizon necessitates questioning the truth in power, but I really don't understand Butler's criticism of Foucault giving an account of himself, by which he puts forth his lifelong attempt at discussing how power and truth are produced, and the price one has to pay in the face of persecution. Butler argues that by making such a statement, Foucault produces himself and his line of thought at the time of speaking, which misconceptualizes a coherent self. This is in fact true when anybody speaks, but being aware of this does not necessarily point out a mistake: any form of speech comes out of the normative horizon within which it is situated, and it can indeed be misleading, but there is no other way to speak. Always becoming one's identity through the act/speech is certainly something we should always keep in mind, but that is not to say that there is no self to speak of. It's just that the self is not a fixed entity. I think the most interesting discussion this book contains is Butler's take on Jean Laplanche's conception of the enigmatic signifier, which is an approach that I had never heard of in psychoanalysis. Laplanche argues that the infant is bombarded with enigmatic sexual signifiers that drive it to trauma, which it manages to deal with through the constitution of the unconscious. Drives are therefore not innate in the infant but are produced by the enigmatic adult sexuality it is faced with. Definitely something to read more on..."
"J. Butler doesn't disappoint - in fact, this may be my favorite of her works. It's a brilliant analysis of what it means to be "responsible" and "accountable". Though it's tough to give an "in a nutshell" Judith Butler breakdown, I interpreted this book as explaining why it is imperative that everybody "know" the limits of our own knowledge (about ourselves and others). It has a great deal of political resonance and potency, even though it gets a little bit repetitive by the end."
"Butler attempts to create an interesting social ethic here. Her focus on the second-person pronoun in intersubjectivity and the social in identity construction is fascinating. Her assessment of Nietzsche's Zur Geneologie der Moral is odd, however. Although I don't believe Butler succeeds in actually creating a dialectic which avoids ethical violence, her flawed dialectic is still useful in the continuing discourse of the dialectical process."
"Written in 2005, this is Butler's answer to the criticism that poststructural identities are cryptonormative and do not lay bare their informing normative foundations. Interestingly, this book was published in 2005, the year prior to Amanda Anderson's "The Way We Argue Now" being released. Anderon's book levels the most pointed, sustained criticism to date of Butler's philosophical system of agency and identity. "Giving an Account" answers Anderson's criticisms and informs further her philosophical system. What I find especially useful in this newer work are Butler's questions of subjectivation and ideation under social and linguistic conditions which may not be fully available to a subject."
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