Balance has no meaning for a politics that is merely the continuation of war by other means. Both religious zealots and defenders of scientific fact declare a monopoly on truth and the moral law, while radicals are powerless to resist since they have lost faith that ethics can be anything but arbitrary. Meanwhile, insane bureaucracy devastates life while nations fall into dishonor as they abandon their promises of justice.
If the moral law cannot save us, perhaps it is time to try moral chaos.
Chaos Ethics collides philosophers such as Kant, Nietzsche, Levinas, Mary Midgley, Alasdair MacInytre, Alain Badiou, Isabelle Stengers, and Bruno Latour with everything from cyberpunk science fiction and the fantasy novels of Michael Moorcock to Google, gay marriage, drone assassinations, and the ethics of cats and dogs. A strange and wondrous journey through morality viewed as a facet of imagination that offers a new perspective in which the diversity of ethics is a strength not a weakness, hesitation is more noble than certainty, and virtue can be expressed in both law and chaos.
Out now from Zero Books.
Praise for Chaos Ethics
“A revelatory reading of both my own and other's work - a genuine philosophy for the 21st century.”
Michael Moorcock
Award-winning fantasy and literary author
“Provocative, lively, engaging and erudite.”
Allen W. Wood
Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor emeritus at Stanford University
“An elegant yet passionate defence of ethics, the book carefully considers various conflicting accounts of what it means to live a good life before settling on imagination and narrative as chaotic and transient foundations of ethical thinking. Ethics for Bateman is both necessary and necessarily tumultuous; it is also a story which we should try and tell as best we can. Thought-provoking, engaging even if at times controversial, Chaos Ethics is a pleasure to read - and to agree and disagree with.”
Joanna Zylinska
Professor of New Media and Communications, Goldsmiths, University of London, author of Bioethics in the Age of New Media and The Ethics of Cultural Studies
The Mythology of Evolution
"A book that’s badly needed and could be revolutionary.... This matters; read it!"
Mary Midgley
Philosopher and author of Beast and Man and The Myths We Live By
Imaginary Games
"Wonderfully refreshing and inventive... fascinating and fun!"
Kendall Walton
Professor of Philosophy, University of Michigan