ABSTRACT
Speaking of monstrous ethics may seem like an oxymoron. As the monstrous is traditionally associated with the excessively horrifying, vicious and unruly, it is the immoral and the unethical incarnated: the monstrous disrupts moral boundaries of good and evil. However, the monstrous is also associated with the enormously large, the disgustingly ugly and the remarkably unusual. Hence, it provides a cunning entry to interrogate how moral judgement continues to be based on and confused with quantitative behaviour patterns and aesthetic preferences rather than ethical values. Complicating the relationship between the ethical and the monstrous further, Nietzsche (1886/1966: 146) warned in Beyond Good and Evil, that ‘[w]hoever fights monsters should see to it that, in the process, he does not become a monster’. The monstrous is therefore not given, and it is by no means in a straightforward opposition to the ethical. The Babylonians knew this, and perhaps we moderns are starting to recognize this, albeit in a different vein: for the Babylonians, a monstrously shaped offspring was not necessarily sign of God’s wrath against human sin, as certain monstrous births promised future glory (Thompson, 1930); for us moderns, animated films such as Monsters, Inc. remind us that monsters can be good and that humans may be evil.
