The Deconstruction of Kantian Ethics and the Question of Pleasure

Authors

Henry J. Staten, University of Utah

Abstract

This Essay is primarily about the recent work of Bernard Williams, who is in my opinion the most radical thinker on the question of ethics in the analytic philosophy camp. In fact, Williams's work tests the limits of what we know as analytic philosophy. His project is rigorously deconstructive, yet it has been developed out of the materials of analytic philosophy itself quite independently of Derridean deconstruction. Thus, this project is extraordinarily rich in its resonance, and regardless of whether one comes at it from an analytic or deconstructive background, one is equally likely to find it surprising in its way of slicing through traditional philosophical formulations of the questions at issue. I will argue in the final third of this Essay, however, that in contradiction to the preponderantly deconstructive force of his work as a whole, Williams retains one central prejudice of the philosophical ideology he deconstructs: the "ascetic" prejudice (in Nietzsche's sense of "ascetic") that the ethical cannot be motivated by the aim at pleasure. Williams retains this prejudice despite the fact that two of his main influences, Aristotle and Nietzsche, broach a conception of pleasure that is powerfully antiascetic.

Keywords

Ethics, Jurisprudence, Philosophy, Law and Ethics, Professional Ethics in Law

Disciplines

Jurisprudence | Law | Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility

Recommended Citation

Henry J. Staten, The Deconstruction of Kantian Ethics and the Question of Pleasure, 16 Cardozo L. Rev. 1547 (1995).
Available at: https://larc.cardozo.yu.edu/clr/vol16/iss5/5