ETHICAL DELEGATES OF THE NEW CAPITALIST EPOCH: THE APOLOGY OF PROFESSIONAL ETHICS

Abstract

The mail goal of the article is to analyze the role of professional ethical institutions as key elements of the modern sociality. Professional ethics is elaborated with the help of the theory created by Anthony Giddens. Parsing the relations between such concepts as generalized trust, reflexivity and risk gives an opportunity to make a conclusion that ethical institution is a mechanism for the redistribution of subject responsibilities. The substance of every ethical code is similar to the essence of the «non-human», described by Bruno Latour as a mechanical delegate which is able to carry out a number of human responsibilities. These delegates maintain the unity of communication space, but at the same time they provide social system with some sort of symbolic backlash. Strengthening the role of ethical delegates — «non-humans» or ethical institutions — has been a defensive reaction to the threat of capitalism's own destruction. New capitalism that emerged in the second half of the XIX century declared as its aim the transition from the liberation politics to the politics of life and returning the morality to the side of the human subject. However, this return has been reduced to the expansion of ethical delegate’s responsibility.