Abstract

Luc Anckaert deals with the question of the relationship between economic globalisation and ethics. Between the two walls of the double tower there is a strained relation. Is man as a person the measure of ‘economic matters’ or is man inserted into an economic network, the centre of which is left unoccupied? This double question could end in an anti-globalist critique in behalf of the personalistic dignity of man, including a plea for another economy on the one hand, or, on the other hand, in a legitimisation of the economic globalisation by correcting, mitigating or reorienting it with an eye to our concern with man. Either anti-globalisation or otherwise-globalisation, or an economic globalisation with a humane face. The critical question with regard to this binary approach is whether it does not smother the voice of ethics. Ethics has no well-fixed or determinable place within the logic of globalisation, and it can not be identified with the upright protest which arises from an experience of contrast either. The tragedy of ethics consists in its being situated in between the factuality of reality and the refusal of getting absorbed in it.