Care: Consensus or necessary conflict?

Discussion
By Christophe Pacific
English

By force of habit, the demand of consensus substitutes the remedy with poison. Consensus sounds the death knell for ethics. Pursuing unity, consensus demonizes conflict and explicitly seeks a way to eliminate it due to its visible chaos. On the other hand, dissensus assures an ethics of “living together.” Duality is the natural key that rationalizes the sociability of opposites. In this way, a “double me” appears, able to say “here I am” to the other, whoever it is, looming or vulnerable. Dissensus signals emancipation, the unfolding of the subject. The displaying process goes through a reasoning of ipseity, which emerges from otherness, freeing itself from the latter, to finally return to it in terms of solicitude: living with, against, and for the other. This work tries to show dissensus as a sound and required conflict, which guarantees an opening onto ethics, a path of excellence for those who are concerned by the best thing a human being can offer: care.

Keywords

  • consensus
  • dissensus
  • ipseity
  • least evil
  • best possible
  • professionnal posture
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