Beyond Compare

"(I) To live, (II) to live well, (III) to live better." A. N. Whitehead concisely sums up the question of ethics in this phrase. Less a conclusion, it is the opening of a problem. "Well," "better," by what yardstick? Can we think ethically without the imposition of a norm that prejudges value according to a preset mold? When a norm is imposed, is it not always limitative, channeling behavior, and segregative, drawing lines of exclusion and inclusion? In short, does this anodyne phrase camouflage a disciplinary power operation that molds and reduces life potential? Not if we envision a radically non-normative ethics.

In this book, Brian Massumi takes up the challenge of a non-normative ethics. It is necessary, Massumi argues, to fundamentally reforge value along different axes of thought and feeling. The compass needle of the ethical must swing to the aesthetic, toward the fulfilment of the ethico-aesthetic paradigm called for by Félix Guattari.

Beyond Compare is a magisterial reappraisal of value from one of the defining philosophers of the past quarter-century.