Michel Serres as Moral Philosopher

The aim of this thesis is to raise awareness of, and interest in, the importance of Michel Serres’ work for moral philosophy. Despite evidence of growing interest in Serres’ philosophy, there is a paucity of secondary literature among Serres scholars on his work in the field of ethics. Moreover, there is almost no engagement with Serres’ work by those specializing in moral theory or applied ethics. I argue that Serres is a moral philosopher worthy of sustained study because he makes distinctive and interesting contributions to contemporary debates in metaethics, normative ethical theory, and, perhaps most especially, in applied ethics. I further argue that other ethicists ought to consider adopting a Serresian approach to ethics, both because of his contributions and because his approach demands conscientiousness about its own ethical impact.
In making this case, I will unpack the figure of “contracts” in Serres’ philosophy and discuss its significance in metaethical debates connected to the fact/value distinction. I will also show that Serresian metaethics is an interesting intermediate variety of moral constructivism that decenters human subjects via the notion of quasiobjectivity and position him between robust realism and agent-dependent constructivism. As a philosopher of the intermediary spaces, Serres also shows how to navigate the challenges of moral absolutism and relativism; his normative ethics is connected to a variety of structuralism that allows for both moral sameness and difference. I argue that Serres recommends a new kind of democratic moral reasoning that transcends the traditional methods relying exclusively on “theory” or “practice,” and, finally, outline a set of criteria of adequacy for ethical theories. I argue that Serres meets these criteria, and that more ethicists should consider adopting a Serresian approach to ethics.