Outside Ethics

by Raymond Geuss

Outside Ethics brings together some of the most important and provocative works by one of the most creative philosophers writing today. Seeking to expand the scope of contemporary moral and political philosophy, Raymond Geuss here presents essays bound by a shared skepticism about a particular way of thinking about what is important in human life--a way of thinking that, in his view, is characteristic of contemporary Western societies and isolates three broad categories of things as important: subjective individual preferences, knowledge, and restrictions on actions that affect other people (restrictions often construed as ahistorical laws). He sets these categories in a wider context and explores various human phenomena--including poetry, art, religion, and certain kinds of history and social criticism--that do not fit easily into these categories. As its title suggests, this book seeks a place outside conventional ethics.


Following a brief introduction, Geuss sets out his main concerns with a focus on ethics and politics. He then expands these themes by discussing freedom, virtue, the good life, and happiness. Next he examines Theodor Adorno's views on the relation between suffering and knowledge, the nature of religion, and the role of history in giving us critical distances from existing identities. From here he moves to aesthetic concerns. The volume closes by looking at what it is for a human life to have "gaps"--to be incomplete, radically unsatisfactory, or a failure.

Genres: Philosophy, Essays, Nonfiction, Politics

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Raymond Geuss, Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Cambridge, is a political philosopher and scholar of 19th and 20th century European philosophy.

Reviews

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's fine. It's fine. Geuss is good, he's good. Sometimes he's great. Some of the best moments are when he leaves his usual standard of rigor (which is sometimes TOO rigorous in that he takes lots of time to make distinctions and explains everything). For example, his great short essay on Rawls seems at once personal and philosophical. Geuss is very good, read some Geuss.

[Sachith · Rating 4 out of 5]

a breath of fresh air after having to read so much liberal theory for political phil class. While some of geuss’ points are unclear, or have the slight air of following some academic fads, his realist critique points out the flaws and ideological nature of liberalism really well, while consulting people like hegel, marx, nietszche, adorno, foucault in very profound ways. new favourite philosopher definitely. His essays on adorno and hegel got me very interested in both, definitely going to actually deep dive into those guys

[Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

In among the most quoted lines of political philosophy is Machiavelli's advice to the prince that he 'learn how to not be good'. Less a counsel to evil than an insistence on the need for a certain political pragmatism, it's to just this spirit that is appealed to here in Raymond Geuss's remarkable collection of essays on thinking 'Outside Ethics'. Pitching itself against a prevailing 'ethics-first' approach to political philosophy (in which politics is cast as nothing but a 'means' to achieve already-worked-out 'ethical' outcomes), Geuss argues for the specificity and autonomy of political action, one whose complexities have been only too easily papered over in the many contemporary approaches to the political.

Indeed, untethered from the ethical, politics, in Geuss's hands, becomes an adventure of almost untrammelled intellectual expansiveness: from poetry to suffering, art to happiness, freedom and religion, Geuss explores all these and more with an eye to what they can teach us 'outside (the constraining perspective of) ethics'. As it turns out, the lessons are almost universally ones of humility; at every point does Geuss seek to make complex our taken-for-granted terms of political discourse, laying bare their changing historical roles and ever evolving conceptual senses, disturbing and displacing the all-too-comfortable intellectual and political nooks into which they've settled.

So incessant is his questioning in fact, that the discussions within would border on pedantry if not for Geuss's almost unrivalled grasp of the Western Tradition (in all it's modes: philosophic, historical, poetic and artistic). When not clarifying and brilliantly parsing out the many complex touchstones of modern political philosophy (the question "in what sense is X to be understood?" marks almost every other page here, along with the accompanying "well, in all following, different senses..."), Geuss remains no less adept in his invocations of say, the art of Albrecht Dürer in discussing virtue, the poetry of Paul Celan in his paper on knowledge, or indeed, every other German philosopher you can think of in talking about, well, just about anything.

As long time readers of Geuss will know of course, it's just this mix of historical astuteness and conceptual perspicacity that has always marked his writing, and it's an art that's taken to a sublime extreme here in Outside Ethics. Although sometimes it might be easy to get a little frustrated at the 'point' of some of these essays - in the wake of all the distinctions, clarifications, asides, and qualifications which Geuss so effortlessly trades among - the book's true value lies in its getting one to recognise that the world of politics - if not the world tout court - just is like that: messy, complex, unyielding, and above all - fascinating. Not unlike a certain book of essays...

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Guess draws insights from The Frankfurt School and other contemporary European philosophers (Nietzsche, Heidegger) to offer a critique of academic moral and political theory in the essays collected in Outside Ethics. These thinkers often take up issues and forms of ethical reflection that are *outside* the main issues, problems and concerns of academic philosophy. Guess's ability to distill the difficult prose of European philosophers with clarity and accuracy while also engaging the key debates of academic philosophy (e.g. Rawls) is a rarity in contemporary academia. As such, the book will be of interest to anyone concerned with moral and political theory and state of these disciplines in contemporary academia.

[Sharad Pandian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is probably the best collection of philosophy essays I have read in a very long time. Drawing primarily from Nietzsche and Adorno (with generous amounts of Hegel and Freud sprinkled in), Geuss gives startlingly illuminating analyses on a variety of topics including the conventional demarcation of ethics, the varieties of freedom, poetic knowledge, religious illusion, and Rawl's Difference Principle. The book is an image of philosophy as still relevant, and excitingly so.

For a more comprehensive look at content, here's Alasdair MacIntyre's review: http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24977-outside...

[Benjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Double-sided clarity. Geuss offers clear arguments, but often grounded in faulty readings. Adorno was not interested in some 'roots-deep' critique of instrumental reason all the way back to the Homeric age, but attempted a critical theory of regressive capitalism -- our world.

[Ed Fernyhough · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good stuff. Skipped Adorno bits

[Shelby · Rating 4 out of 5]

favourite essay: "7. Suffering and Knowledge in Adorno"

[Mr T · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really nice collection of essays!