Stumbled across this Juvenal quote in the introduction to Zupančič’s Ethics of the Real: Summum crede nefas animam praeferre pudori et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas. [(you should) Hold it top wickedness to prefer life to honor and for the sake of living lose reason for living]. I disagree. And I also disagree with the opposite. Holding on to this principle breeds fundamentalism, holding on to the opposite engenders unforgivable weakness.
The famous discussion between Constant and Kant in a hypothetical about a murderer asking you whether your friend is hiding in the house, where, according to Kant you cannot lie and cannot refuse to answer, you must tell the truth even if it means your friend would be killed illustrates how quickly universal ethics disintegrates into terrifying nonsense. What’s at stake in this example (mentioned in Zupančič’s amazing Ethics of the Real) is the very core of Kantian ethics: there cannot be any exceptions from the universal principles. If you must tell the truth – you must always tell the truth, no matter what particular circumstances may be.
As Lacan points out, this is precisely where Kant leaves a hole for Sade to crawl into. I can cover the most nefarious actions with universal principles: I know the truth I just told my friend about his cheating lover has destroyed him. But what could I do?! It’s not my enjoyment of my friend’s suffering that caused me to do it. It is the categorical imperative of always telling the truth!
The true Universal, as Zupančič explains, is not the categorical imperative used as a litmus test for an ethical action (categorical imperative is essentially a tautology, in Žižek’s interpretation: Do your duty because… it is your duty!), it is the subject himself abiding by what he understands to be his duty to perform the action. This does not mean that ethics is subjective. It is still universal, but it is Universality speaking through the Subject.
