Conclusion

Resilience as a form of governance cannot be grasped in the modernist binary understandings of politics, where there is a clear division between the private ethical sphere – the government of the self – and the public political sphere – the government of others. With regard to the ethics of complexity and resilience-thinking, the fact that there are no a priori or transcendental truths means that personal ethics must be considered as an ongoing process of self-reflexivity. As Paul Cilliers noted, the rejection of transcendental modernist rule-based ethics ‘sets us free, not to do as we like, but to behave ethically’. ¹ To fall back on universal principles would be to deny the complexity of the social system we live in, but to allow everything would be to evade our responsibility. The ethical problematic is therefore how to ‘take responsibility for the future effects of our decisions’ despite not knowing these effects or being able to wait to see what these effects are. ² Behaving ethically in a complex world is to live one's life as a resilient subject, understanding ethical self-reflection as an ongoing process of work on the self. However, what sets apart this process of the government of the self from the classical assumptions of the inner philosophical will as a path to truth ³ is the fact that this process is externalised. While the Socratic injunction to ‘know thyself’ was orientated towards a contemplative existence, the ethical injunction of resilience is externally orientated towards others and the consideration of the multiple consequences of our actions which guide and enable the process of revising our judgements in line with our self-reflection on these outcomes which can never be known fully in advance.