Abstract
Transcultural theory needs to articulate its own ethics, which can be called an ethics of the imagination. Traditionally, imagination was considered to be the capacity least bound to ethical responsibility, incompatible with or even antagonistic to ethical imperatives. The long-standing debates between ethics and aesthetics targeted exactly this opposition between moral norms and free imagination, between duty and desire, between reason and fantasy.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Critical Theory Since Plato, ed. Hazard Adams (Fort Worth, Philadelphia: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, 1992): 519–520. From a different perspective, the connection between ethics and imagination was recently discussed in Mark Johnson’s book Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). The author of the influential books Metaphors We Live By and The Body in the Mind, Johnson extends his views on the cognitive role of metaphors and develops an alternative conception of moral reflection—one that is imaginative and constructive rather than rational and based on universal laws.
Jacques Derrida, Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation (Roundtable on 2 October 1994 at Villanova University) ed. with commentary by John D. Caputo (New York: Fordham University, 1997): 14.
Copyright information
© 1999 Ellen E. Berry, Mikhail N. Epstein
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Epstein, M. (1999). The Ethics Of Imagination. In: Transcultural Experiments. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780312299712_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780312299712_12
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-42157-2
Online ISBN: 978-0-312-29971-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)