THE STORIES OF ETHICS: ETHICAL COMPORTMENT AND THE STORIES WE TELL

In this paper, I argue that second-order cybernetics offers a perspective through which we can examine how ethical personhood arises. Specifically, I highlight how experience receives narrative determination through the mediation of affective involvement and linguistic appropriation. These considerations, in turn, raise the question of the relation between narrative determination and ethics. The epistemic process of self-authorization, developed through the thinking of Mikhail Bakhtin and Emmanuel Levinas, is offered in response to this question.