The Radical Demand in Logstrup's Ethics
The Radical Demand in Logstrup's Ethics
philosopher and theologian K. E. Logstrup (1905-1981), and in particular his key text The Ethical Demand (1956). In The Radical Demand in Logstrup's Ethics, Robert Stern offers a full account of that text, and situates Logstrup's distinctive position in relation to Kant, Kierkegaard, Levinas,
Darwall and Luther. For Logstrup, the ethical situation is primarily one in which the fate of the other person is placed in your hands, where it is then your responsibility to do what is best for them. The demand therefore does not come from the other person as such, as what they ask you to do may be different from
what you should do. It is also not laid down by social rules, nor by God or by any formal principle of practical reason, such as Kant's principle of universalizability. Rather, it comes from what is required to care for the other, and the directive power of their needs in the situation. Logstrup
therefore rejects accounts of ethical obligation based on the commands of God, or on abstract principles governing practical reason, or on social norms; instead he develops a different picture, at the basis of which is our interdependence, which he argues gives his ethics a grounding in the nature
of life itself.
Author: Robert Stern
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 03/17/2019
Pages: 400
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.45lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.30w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9780198829027
About the Author
Robert Stern is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, where he has worked since 1989. He was previously a student and then Junior Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge. He has published extensively on Kant, Hegel, and transcendental arguments, as well as on accounts of moral obligation. He is currently engaged in a translation project on K. E. Logstrup's main works, to be published by Oxford University Press, which will include a re-translation of The Ethical Demand.