ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter I set out the ethical aim as the desire to live well, with and for others, in just institutions. I claimed that the unity of the ethical aim constituted the good life and was the underlying source of morality. I traced the basis of the ethical aim to the complexity of embodied and intersubjective selfhood and its realization in a unifi ed narrative identity. However, having a unifi ed self-conception does not remove the inherent tensions of the embodied perspective. Those tensions continue to animate the various spheres of moral obligation that attach to our personal, interpersonal, and third-personal relationships. In this chapter I argue that morality by its very nature gives rise to irreconcilable confl ict where every candidate course of action will violate some other signifi cant obligation. Such ‘tragic’ confl ict paralyses morality.
