On the advantages and disadvantages of ethics and politics

In his challenging new book, Charles E. Scott examines the paradox that our ethical and political ideals may perpetuate the very evils they intend to prevent. He takes as his point of departure the question of ethics: that values and their pursuit in the West often perpetuate their own worst enemies. At issue are the dangers in the structures and movements of images, values, and ways of knowing that are most intimately a part of our lives. The ethical and political dimensions we live by are called into question by virtue of their belonging to something excessive to their own identities. When this excess is ignored, we will be inclined to eliminate or dominate those values and political structures that are significantly different from our own. In this encounter with excess, Scott engages the thought of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, and Levinas on questions of responsibility, transcendence, tragedy, and self-fragmentation. A way of thinking emerges that makes evident the advantages of the nonethical and the nonpolitical for ethical and political life.