ethics of discomfort

is to be mindful that everything one perceives is evident only against a familiar and little-known horizon, that every certainty is sure only through the support of a ground that is always unexplored.

To be very mindful that everything one perceives is evident only against a familiar and little-known horizon, that every certainty is sure only through the support of a ground that is always unexplored. . . . In that lesson, there is a whole ethics of sleepless evidence. (Foucault 2000: 448, translation slightly modified)

is to never be completely comfortable with one's own presuppositions, nor with the idea that a new fact will suffice to overturn them.

never to consent to being completely comfortable with one's own presuppositions. Never to let them fall peacefully asleep, but also never to believe that a new fact will suffice to overturn them... never to imagine that one can change them like arbitrary axioms, remembering that in order to give them the necessary mobility one must have a distant view, but also look at what is nearby and all around oneself. (Foucault 2000: 448, translation slightly modified)

ethics of discomfort, n.All

ethics of discomfort