Judith Butler and her methodical precariousness

Abstract

This paper provides a methodical perspective of Judith Butler's recent work where, as she herself has expressed, she seeks to redefine ethics. Given the precarious (open and unfinished) condition of this female author's speech, which she herself accepts and explains from the beginning of her career, this article argues that any approach to her cannot be in a "well-configured" or "coherent finishing" way that is safe from precariousness. This does not mean that the door will be opened to unbridled arbitrariness, but it does mean that a certain methodical framework will be outlined in the following pages to approach its ethics of nonviolence, which, as applied ethics, is dependent on theoretical ethics. The "disciplinary matrix of ethics" is thus called upon, the elements of which are: judgment, action, subject and ethical and metaethical moral criteria. All of them constitute a "system" that persists beyond time and provides ethics with an exclusive and differentiated disciplinary identity. Finally, it will be explained how these elements are reached by precariousness, the most immediate consequence of which is "deconstructive metaethics" and "precarious ethics".