On The Defensibility of Ethical Solipsism
This article explores the possible meanings of ethical solipsism and attempts to provide a foundation for how it might be defended. Ethical solipsism, when distinguished from its ontological and epistemological versions, can be defended in a positive way. The reason for the negative form of ethical solipsism developed by Zaluski is that he considers this version of solipsism as an extension of ontological and epistemological solipsism. In the form developed by Pihlström, when ethical solipsism is considered through the concept of guilt—as a constitutive element of ethical relation—a Kantian and Levinasian approach to solipsism becomes conceivable. On the other hand, differing from Pihlström, it is also arguable that another form of positive ethical solipsism could be developed through Levinas’s concept of love as agape, as well as through the notion of “goods of self-becoming,” which carries the potential to open a path for the individual’s own becoming.
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