Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance

Overall a good book, but suffers from a lack of actual argument--too often Critchley seems to think he can persuade the reader and avoid an explicit argument simply by stating that "in my view" or "in my opinion..." etc.

And more to the point, if the purpose of the book is to help overcome the motivational deficit at the heart of democracy by, presumably, providing a compelling model of ethical subjectivity, I would venture that it doesn't really achieve its prime goal. For reasons that I think Isaiah Berlin made clear, there is no answer to the question "why be ethical?" That said, Critchley doesn't go far enough in advocating his preferred conception of ethical subjectivity, and I found myself too often resisting the characterization show more of ethics as the acknowledgement of the infinite demand of the other.

Despite these shortcomings, the book does a good job of bringing together a variety of threads in current left-wing political theory. show less

Kind of interesting and problematic. Žižek wrote this interesting and problematic response: "The lesson here is that the truly subversive thing is not to insist on ‘infinite’ demands we know those in power cannot fulfil. Since they know that we know it, such an ‘infinitely demanding’ attitude presents no problem for those in power: ‘So wonderful that, with your critical demands, you remind us what kind of world we would all like to live in. Unfortunately, we live in the real world, where we have to make do with what is possible.’ The thing to do is, on the contrary, to bombard those in power with strategically well-selected, precise, finite demands, which can’t be met with the same excuse."

Two short passages from Infinitely Demanding:

We approach ethical issues in a spirit of Diogenean cynicism rather than free commitment, a spirit in which, as Yeats writes, the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. The question, then, is how might we fill the best with passionate intensity?

As such, my approach might appear to be too much of an overtly philosophical, quasi-idealist construction. This is in part a problem of professional deformation and in part a promise to continue the work I have begun here in the future in a different register.