Moral imperatives for an immanent world: an investigation of the pragmatist, deconstructive and ante-philosophical positions

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that an implication of the so-called ‘death of metaphysics’ is the imbrication of the normative and descriptive understandings of morality. This imbrication gives rise to a paradox, which amounts to the desire to refute both a priori moral justifications, and ‘the tyranny of the real’ or the socialisation and relativisation of our moral assertions and positions. I investigate three responses to this paradox, namely the pragmatic response, Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive response, and (what I term) the ante-philosophical response, which is based on the work of Jean-Luc Nancy. The reason for focusing on these three philosophical positions is that they all espouse an immanent (as opposed to transcendental) view of morality. Through means of this analysis, I attempt to highlight the following implications of an immanently-defined moral position: (1) the constitutive, as opposed to the pedagogical or prescriptive, nature of philosophy; (2) the increasing focus on the performative force of doing philosophy and the importance of philosophical skill; (3) the problematic nature of the distinctions between philosophy, moral theory, and applied ethics, and therefore also between the nature and function of morality; and (4) the status of philosophy and moral theory as one type of praxis amongst many, rather than the definitive voice on praxis.

South African Journal of Philosophy 2013, 32(3): 275–284