Minimal Ethics and the New Configuration of the Public Space

Abstract

Contemporary thinkers have not been hesitant to talk about the end of religion, the end of philosophy, or the end of morality. In such a context, our society is based on what Lipovetsky calls a minimal ethics. We live at the crossroads of two types of discourses: one proclaiming moral decadence, and another that speaks about the revival of morality. The fact that ethical maximalism quits the contemporary scene does not necessarily mean that it leaves a complete vacuum. The emptiness opens towards the manifestation of ethical creativity in the space of minimal ethics. In public space, and in administrative ethics, the secularization of ethics offers the possibility of feeling comfortable with promoting a form of moral relativism that does not alienate people from the sensation of ethical certainty that offers existential comfort through its firm values.