The Ethical

The Ethical is a collection of readings on ethics and the nature of morality by some of the most important contemporary philosophers in the continental tradition. Recent attention to ethics in continental thought often taken to be antithetical to Anglo-American moral philosophy demonstrates how much these two traditions have in common. The essays in this volume indicate the rich history and contemporary vitality of ethics in continental philosophy. They reflect a variety of currents in continental thought, including phenomenology, genealogy, deconstruction, and discourse ethics. Topics addressed include the status of the moral agent and its constitution or formation, the priority to be assigned to the other in relation to the self, the critique of rigid models of moral reasoning, and the limits of the moral. This is the first anthology of its kind devoted to emphasizing continental ethical philosophy as an important area of study in its own right.

Edith Wyschogrod is J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University. She is author of several books including An Ethics of Remembering: History, Heterology and the Nameless Others (1998), Saints and Postmodernism: Revisioning Moral Philosophy (1990), and Emmanuel Levinas: The Problem of Ethical Metaphysics (1974).

Gerald P. McKenny is Associate Professor of Ethics in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of To Relieve the Human Condition: Bioethics, Technology and the Body (1997).