Vilniaus universiteto leidykla / Vilnius University Press
Doi
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to show how Jean-Luc Nancy’s philosophy continues Immanuel Kant’s analysis of radical evil by linking Kant’s notion of radical evil to a historical-theoretical reflection on evil. Reflecting on the contemporary situation as the end of the history of metaphysics, Nancy stresses the groundlessness of freedom and the resulting absolute or pure evil as “complete nihilism”. At the same time as stressing this condemnation or abandonment to freedom, Nancy does not cease to speak of an ontological categorical imperative that is inseparable from the very concept of the world itself, from the duty to create the world. However, in the case of the global contemporary world, Nancy claims that the world has lost the power to “form a world” and is merely self-destroying. It is noted that Nancy’s attempt to look into the abyss of freedom, into the source of annihilation in being, leads to a place where alternatives are hardly possible. The paper therefore asks whether, in the case of the global contemporary world, the ontological perspective developed by Nancy does not eliminate the ethical dimension
