Poetics of Intimacy (Of Ethics and Anthropology)

In this essay, a possible ''platform'' is suggested for ethics: Anthropology. In front of attempts to base regulated ethics on a ''metaphysical absolute'' (regardless of its type), the author claims that something like this lies beyond human possibilities and only ''finiteness''-(that is: situations and contexts, wishes and shortages, memories and forgetfulness, relationships and absences.)-is unavoidable in factual life. This is the anthropological place where ethical experience is born, an experience that happens in a situation of radical exceptionality with an answer that implies a transgression to the grammar of moral, legal, or political regulations being requested. In this essay, some decisive characteristics of this experience are considered, such as the difference between ethics and morality, the intimate dimension (neither public nor private) of ethics, and finally the priority of listening versus looking or seeing.