Obligation and the Fact of Sense

Bryan Lueck is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. His research focuses on topics in normative ethics including obligation, contempt, dignity and forgiveness, as well as on issues in 20th-century and contemporary Continental philosophy. He is the author of numerous articles on such figures as Immanuel Kant, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Serres, Jean-François Lyotard and Giorgio Agamben.

This book explains how the leading modern theories in ethics require but fail to account for obligation. Then through a study of our commitment to the world and to sense, in Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Serres, and Jean-Luc Nancy, the author offers a new way to argue for the reality of obligation.

• Introduction: Ethics in the Sheep’s ShopPhilosophical Reflection on ObligationElements of a General Conception of Obligation1. Four Early Modern Accounts of ObligationVoluntarismRationalismEgoismSentimentalism2. The Copernican Revolution in EthicsReflection as the Source of the Problem of NormativityKant and the Copernican Revolution in EthicsThe Argument of the Collins LecturesThe Argument of the GroundworkThe Fact of Reason3. Perceptual and Expressive SenseNormativity in Perceptual ExperienceTwo Objections to the Perception-Based AccountSaussurian LinguisticsMerleau-Ponty’s Reinterpretation of SaussureThe Dynamic of CommunicationObligation and the Claim of the Other4. NoiseNoise as OriginaryNoise and Moral SenseExposure to Noise as the Fact of SenseHarlequin Emperor of the MoonThe Devil or the Good Lord?5. Abandonment and the Moral LawSense as SharedAbandonment and ObligationDignity6. IndifferenceObligation as OverridingThe Givenness of FactsSubjunctive IndeterminacyThe Law of Expansion7. ConclusionIs This Still Obligation?A Deflationary AccountNotesBibliography