The Ethics of Justice Without Illusions

Louis E. Wolcher is a Professor of Law at University of Washington, USA.

PART ONE: A FRAMEWORK FOR THINKING THE ETHICS OF THE REAL 1. Indicating the Pathway: Prologue: questioning the ethical sufficiency of unity and truth; the structure of the book; The fundamental question; The triune Politics/Law/Justice; "Attention must be paid" ; The continuum War—Peace. 2. The Journey to Disenchantment: Generality; Beyond Transcendence and the phenomenon of Logical Transcendence; Law’s Task and the legal division of human suffering. 3. The Rise of the Particular: The lost nimbus; The ghost of the particular; Ontological particularity. 4. On Speechlessness: The speechless particular; The signifying face versus the enigmatic particular; The speechlessness of nature; Discourse and its antithesis. PART TWO: SOME PARTICULAR PROBLEMS OF THE PARTICULAR 5. International Law: Universal Human Rights and Cultural Diversity: The origins of "diversity"; The dialectics of unity and diversity; The problem of linguistic diversity; The relativity of universality; The haunting; Xerxes whips the Hellespont. 6. Business: Asking the Right Question in Business Ethics: "Can we harmonize ethical questions?"; Standard of conduct versus standard of review; The business judgment rule as ethical cover; Corporate social responsibility versus individual ethical responsibility; Command-and-control ethics; The business ethics question par excellence: "Who am I?" 7. Social Science: Senseless Kindness and the Politics of Cost-Benefit Analysis: What and why; Why and how; The phenomenon of senseless kindness; The challenge to CBA posed by the phenomenon of senseless kindness; The "preference for altruism"; Economic rationality and the problem of selecting the right "ex ante"; The significance of market "facts": CBA’s inherent antipathy to democratic politics; The politics of CBA. 8. Postscript: The problem of the subject(s); The completely broken heart.