In previous work on an ethics of life continuance, I represent it as both deon-
tological and consequentialist, and as simultaneously both objectivist and subjec-
tivist. It is objectivist in terms of ethics in that some things are clearly better or
worse, right or wrong in terms of the values of what best continues life irrespective
of time or place and for all life forms. It is also subjectivist in that in a world of
infinite options and choices, each individual is also faced with innumerable per-
sonal ethical choices, conflicts and conundrums which they much resolve within the
contingent circumstances of the present. Although Anglo-American philosophy has
traditionally represented the objectivist and subjectivist approaches in ethics as two
mutually incompatible approaches, my suggestion here is that within a complexivist
understanding certain senses of both approaches can potentially cohere.
To reconcile deontology and consequentialism is far more difficult and must
necessarily await some later study. Indeed, despite its importance for teachers, it can
only be alluded to here in the most general of senses. We would start with the
proposition that life in a complex world is both gratuitous and contingent; that it has
no essentialraison d’etre, a fact which a priori gives no moral justification for
privilege or hierarchy of value or precedence. We might acknowledge also that
complexity provides a cruel mathematics of existence and yet despite this life has
value to all beings that live, at least as judged by virtue of the fact that all forms of life
strive to survive and continue. This then can constitute a foundation for both an
individual and collective ethic of humanity. According to Doubrovsky ( 1960 , p. 75),
this deontological view is essentially the message of Camus, inL’Etranger, where
“[t]hreatened with annilalation, life gathers and concentrates its force, becomes
conscious of itself and proclaims that it is the only value”. This immanent value that
life affirms is the source of moral sentiment. It motivates for Camus the ethics of
rebellion. As Camus states,“il...fait intervener un judgement de valeur, si peu
gratuity, qu’il le maintient au milieu des périls”(Camus 1951 , p. 28).^15 Bataille
makes a similar argument in arguing that moral sense arises from the
self-consciousness of life in a system of parts and whole where the‘sovereignty of
each individual’needs protection in order to survive. Morality is the protest of
fairness in a limited and dangerous world. It therefore constitutes as it were a
sentiment common to all men, which constitutes their humanity, a view also
admirably stated by David Hume. There is therefore a deontological dimension of
value adhering to life itself that propels ethics, establishes right, resists perfectibility
and rational becoming should they conflict with right, and yet acts for and simul-
taneously with the actions of life to survive in a view of becoming as the continuance
of life itself. Life therefore has value which it constructs and interpolates in the
course of it monitoring and critically evaluating the future horizon that both enables
it and threatens it. In a complex world human history can have no overall‘inner
logic’or‘overall design’or‘direction’in Hegel’s sense which morally justifies them
(i.e., the end cannot justify the means), yet, nevertheless, the value of life requires a
context, a system, and a goal for life operates in time. Consequences and goals are
(^15) He brings in a moral judgement, so un-gratuitous, that he maintains throughout his perils.
518 M. Olssen