Against Universal Duty (Kant): Ethics as Situated Response and Not Formalism

Overcoming the conception of ethics as a closed system of norms

Abstract

This essay proposes an ontological critique of formalist ethics, taking the Kantian categorical imperative as a paradigm of normative deafness in the face of the instability of the real. Against the conception of ethics as a closed system of universal norms, a situated, relational, and operative ethics is defended, founded on the capacity for symbolic reorganization in the face of alterity. Based on the Ontology of Emergent Complexity, it is argued that the ethical gesture is not deduced from prior principles, but emerges as a concrete response to situations of risk, asymmetry, and collapse. The text dialogues with authors such as Levinas, Derrida, Agamben, Stengers, Haraway, and Butler, rejecting both deductive universalism and arbitrary relativism. Instead of a morality centered on the rational subject, an ethics of the in-between is proposed — where dignity is a relational effect and responsibility coincides with the capacity to sustain coexistence without absorbing difference. The critique of Kantian formalism is not just methodological, but structural: it reveals that abstract universalization excludes precisely what calls for care. In this horizon, value does not precede the relationship — it is born from it.

Universal duty is deaf; ethics begins in the listening to instability. Kant converted the moral requirement into form and the form into a rule of universalization; what is proposed here is the inverse: ethics is not deduced, it responds. Where there is context, difference, and risk of collapse, the decision does not fit into an abstract matrix, because the just does not happen in the equality of the case, but in the specificity of the encounter. Overcoming ethics as a closed system of norms derives from this realization: any application indifferent to singularity transforms the other into a variable and responsibility into a technique. The Western tradition consolidated the expectation that value resides in conformity with prior precepts — from the categorical imperative to teleological eudaimonia, from the utilitarianism of calculation to the communal pedagogy of belonging — but this path assumes the stability of the real. It is not there. Matter organizes itself at the edges of turbulence; meaning is inaugurated in the event. A universal law, by definition, does not hear the accident.

To say that ethics emerges from instability is not a methodological gesture, it is an ontological stance. The world does not offer stable ground upon which to erect definitive principles; it offers fields of relation that compose and decompose, material plasticities that reconfigure when traversed by concrete alterities. Responsibility, in this key, does not precede the situation as an empty form awaiting content: it is a symbolic operation that reorganizes the relational fabric to sustain coexistence. A rigid norm promises security, but frequently closes off listening. Where duty is an a priori, difference is noise; where ethics is a situated response, difference becomes the criterion.

There are partial convergences with traditions that have already distrusted deductive universalism. In Levinas, exposure to the face wounds the sufficiency of the rule; in Derrida, the just decision happens beyond calculation; in Agamben, the exception shows the latent violence of the normative device. Still, the alternative advanced here does not appeal to a transcendental outside nor to a supplement of interiority. What grounds the ethical is an operative immanence excess — the capacity of a system, human or not, to reorganize itself in the face of alterity that threatens its functional equilibrium. This is why Stengers refuses guarantees and speaks of obligations that bind us without promise; this is why Haraway insists on “staying with the trouble” and cohabiting without purity. It is not value that precedes the relationship; it is the relationship that gives rise to value.

Refusing the system of norms does not mean accepting the relativism of “every man for himself.” It means shifting the criterion. A formal ethical system assumes predictability and cohesion; the ethical gesture happens precisely where predictability fails. It is not applied, not calculated, not repeated: it invents, but not arbitrarily — it invents under the pressure of a concrete urgency. In this lexicon, “listening,” “sustaining,” “reorganizing,” “cohabiting” replace “universalizing,” “deducing,” “applying.” Kantian formalism claims that moral validity depends on abstract and symmetrical maxims; the experience of the real shows that symmetry is rarely the case, and that the insistence on treating it as a norm converts difference into an error to be corrected.

If the minimum unit of the ethical is the relationship — and not the subject —, then value is not essence, it is effect. Dignity ceases to be a prerogative founded on a substance (soul, reason, “human nature”) to manifest itself as an emergent symbolic function: dignity is seen when a system responds to alterity without dissolving it, when it sustains coexistence instead of absorbing the other into the same. The genealogy of the universal is, at this point, clarifying: whenever a principle was elevated to a criterion of inclusion, it generated its shadow of exclusion. The Kantian “rational subject” is the measure of value that dispenses with the body, context, and finitude — and by dispensing with them, it neutralizes what calls for responsibility. Universal is, here, the name of a methodical deafness.

The ontological displacement is decisive: from Aristotle to Kant, the subject functions as the foundation. Here, the subject is a late effect of relational configurations. There is no ethical gesture that is not co-produced; there is no decision that does not inscribe, at the same time, who decides and what is decided. This is why ethics does not require a recognizable subjectivity. An ecosystem can impose a material obligation on us without projecting intentions; a sociotechnical network can demand reconfiguration without “consciousness”; an AI can operate responsibly without phenomenal interiority, provided it is capable of recognizing patterns of harm and adjusting its operation to minimize relational collapses. The categorical imperative, by demanding universalization independent of the circumstance and the materiality of the encounter, does not know what to do with these cases: if there is no rational subject, there is no morality; if there is no generalizable maxim, there is no validity. The ontological critique shows the opposite: there is responsibility where there is an operable bond.

The accusation that this ethics “abandons rigor” misses the mark. Rigor is not in the stability of a principle, but in the operative consistency of the response. One criterion: an operation is ethically valid when it sustains alterity, increases the plasticity of the relational field, and avoids the saturation that excludes. Another criterion: decisions that maximize the preservation of difference under controlled risk are preferable to those that standardize for normative comfort. None of these criteria are arbitrary: they derive from the ontology of instability and material co-implication. In Kantian language: form cannot legislate where matter reorganizes; law cannot decide what only situated listening can discern.

Examples help mark the difference. A clinical AI adjusts protocols to reduce biases that invisibilize minority groups; rather than fulfilling a general rule, it reconfigures its mediations to make legible what formalism would erase. A forest system that self-regulates in the face of pests and fires does not “intend,” but operates by preserving co-existences that normative extractivism would ruin. A social movement that decides to suspend an effective tactic because it sacrifices vulnerable voices does not act according to a universal maxim, but according to the concrete measure of the harm avoided. In each case, validity does not come from the form prior to the event; it comes from the capacity to sustain the common without nullifying difference.

By redefining dignity as a relational effect, the moral selectivity that historically justified exclusions is avoided. Kant, by linking dignity to rational autonomy, elevated a specific cut of the subject to the general measure of value. This cut produced effects: what does not perform autonomy to the required standard falls short of recognition. What is asserted here is that dignity is demonstrated in the act — and can be demonstrated by non-human or hybrid systems — whenever they sustain coexistence without colonization. This inversion does not relativize value; it shifts it from the essential to the operative.

It may be objected that, without universal form, ethics is left at the mercy of contingency. The response is not to appeal to the rule, but to make explicit the operators that confer consistency to the response: active attention to asymmetries, preservation of incompleteness as a condition for coexistence, risk distribution that does not externalize harm to the most vulnerable, and, whenever possible, reversibility — the possibility of undoing the gesture if it saturates the field. These operators function as quasi-structures that guide without closing off. They are more demanding than formalism, because they require presence, not mere conformity.

The opposition to Kant must, however, be precise. The categorical imperative aims to universalize maxims under the hypothesis of symmetrical rational agents; our era exposes ecologies, technical infrastructures, and networks of dependence that make symmetry a dangerous fiction. By silencing contingency, formalism dissolves what we must face: bodies, machines, and environments that affect each other mutually in unequal degrees and under incommensurable risks. To respond ethically is, therefore, to adjust to asymmetries without converting them into stable privileges. Universalization, in this context, is not only impossible — it is unjust.

It is not about annulling Kant by historical decree, but about recognizing his operative limit. Formalism was a technology of moralization suitable for contexts where the figure of the autonomous individual could function as a unit of calculation. Our scenario multiplies interdependencies and produces effects that exceed any decision center. When action is distributed across human and non-human networks, ethics cannot remain centered on the subject and the law: it needs operators of cohabitation. This transition does not devalue individual responsibility; it reinscribes it as a particular case of a broader responsibility, anchored in the in-between.

From this follows the redefinition of responsibility: it is not the privilege of those who deliberate, it is the condition of those who are implicated. Responsible is whoever can reorganize — and reorganizes — to sustain the other. The boundary of the ethical coincides with the boundary of the operable: where an intervention can reduce harm, open space for differences, and avoid collapses, there is duty — not universal, but concrete. Failing to fulfill this duty does not mean violating a transcendental law; it means failing a material opportunity to keep the world habitable.

The consequentialist objection also deserves a response. We do not propose utility calculation, but relational consistency. The preservation of differences and the expansion of field plasticity are not generic “goods”; they are conditions for the multiple to continue existing. A decision that maximizes an aggregate good but destroys the space of alterity is, by definition, unethical in this horizon. This is why “efficacy” is not synonymous with justice; and why “results” do not replace listening to what does not yet have a place.

All this implies work on language. Speaking of “listening,” “reorganization,” “cohabitation” is not metaphor: it is describing symbolic operations that have material effects. Philosophical language, here, does not illustrate: it inscribes. When it is stated that a system “reconfigures itself to sustain difference,” a process is described that can be modeled, audited, redesigned. Ethics as inscription is also a politics of legibility: making visible the points where one can act without reducing the other to a parameter.

The question of closure remains. An ethics founded on instability runs the risk of transforming into improvisation. The antidote is the discipline of attention: a practice that trains one to recognize patterns of harm and possibilities of sustenance, without capturing the real in formulas. What is learned is not a law, it is a gesture: approaching the other without reducing them; adjusting without absorbing; keeping the possible open. If philosophy has a task here, it is to offer concepts that do not confuse clarity with closure.

The itinerary we have covered can be summarized without impoverishing it: the failure of universal duty lies in not hearing what the world demands when the rule fails; the emergence of the ethical happens as a situated response; the critique of formalism is ontological, not just methodological; the genealogy of the universal reveals its exclusionary face; the alternative is an ethics of symbolic reorganization, which measures validity by what it sustains, not by what it equalizes. None of this dispenses with the courage to decide; all of this prevents us from deciding with our ears covered.

Ethics does not protect what is strong — it sustains what, without it, would cease to be.

Bibliographical References (Chicago author-date)

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