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14:31

(In »Syntheist temples and monasteries in the global empire«)

Against Levinas’ transcendentalist ethics vis-à-vis the other we can posit Alain Badiou’s genericist ethics vis-à-vis the same. Badiou argues that what is constantly recurring is what characterises existence, and it is only in the recognition of the constantly recurring – the universal in the particular – that ethics is possible. The genericism of Badiou is pitted against the constructivism of Levinas. Badiou’s anarchist ethics is pitted against Levinas’ Abrahamic moralism. Badiou’s ethics is a duty based on chance – quite simply because chance takes us precisely where we end up – there is no external meaning attached to anything, but once we have arrived where chance has actually taken us, it is still our duty to live ethically. Why? Because ethics makes us what we are as contingent beings. It is our agential essence.