Excessive Subjectivity: Kant, Hegel, Lacan and the Foundations of Ethics by Dominik Finkelde (review)

This book challenges many traditional philosophical concepts. Finkelde starts by accepting that the Western world has made progress in public ethics. He then points out that such progress includes individuals violating existing public ethics at the risk of their own punishment. Antigone is a well-known and much discussed case. Finkelde, in many places in his book, also uses the example of Rosa Parks. Finkelde is right in drawing attention to the fact that the private acts of both Antigone and Parks included an act of rebellion against the existing interpretation of public ethics. Their private moral commitments clashed with the demands of public ethics.

From Freud we learned that all social laws are, in some way, restrictive of individual desires. Hence, a certain degree of discomfort with legal restrictions might push individuals to try to avoid some of the laws imposed on them. In trying to avoid secretly public laws individuals try to have their cake and eat it as well. They violate the law, but in trying to hide their violation they try to avoid punishment. This was not the case for Antigone nor for Rosa Parks.

One further innovation by Finkelde is expressed in the subtitle of his book. For studying the foundations of ethics, the author refers to a classic figure in the history of ethics: Kant. Finkelde then adds, in my opinion rightly, a second author who is less officially recognized as being a crucial contributor to the Western history of ethical thinking: Hegel. However, by adding Lacan to the trio of thinkers he considers crucial for ethical thinking, Finkelde is revolutionary.

In his presentation of Kant's ethical theory Finkelde correctly stresses that for Kant the criterion that an act is moral is that the maxim at the basis of the act must be universalizable. Finkelde then makes his crucial distinction. He points out that this aspect of Kant's theory is only looking for a criterion to know whether an act is moral. This aspect of Kant's theory is not addressing what makes it that an act is moral. If, when deciding what to do, one asks which maxim is universalizable, then one is not acting morally according to Kant, so claims Finkelde. A moral act is a personal decision. It depends not on reason but on a moral disposition. It is true that such moral disposition can be the result of parental education. However, each person has the ability to radically change one's disposition as Antigone and Rosa Parks did. Finkelde refers to a quotation by Kant supporting his claim that excessive subjectivity is at the heart of even Kantian ethics. Here is the quotation: "Act as if everything depended on you, yet in the knowledge that in reality everything depends on God." This quotation also allows Finkelde to point out that for Kant, the moral subject is a split subject. To live with that split is the challenge of the moral subject.

In his analysis of Hegel, Finkelde points out that, for Hegel, the essence of a human being is defined by his actions. But Hegel explicitly defends the thesis that the meaning of one's actions is connected with the Spirit of the time. Hegel therefore accepts the idea that what was considered ethical at one time or one place can be considered unethical at another time or another place. Refusal of military service on moral grounds is considered morally acceptable in the United States and has even become legally accepted. It was not morally or legally acceptable in ancient Sparta. Hegel therefore needs to explain the change of public ethics over time, at least in the Western world. Hegel's broad explanation is that the sense of what is moral and ethical improved over time. Mankind did not at once, in the beginning of time, create a perfect public ethics. Mankind slowly, over time, perfected its public ethics...