Erich Neumann "New Ethics", or a Psychological Approach to the Fundamental Ethical Challenge of Our Time

The paper discusses the concept of a "New Ethics" developed by psychologist Erich Neumann, one of Carl Gustav Jung's most famous students. According to Neumann, one of the most important problems facing modern man is the problem of evil. The mental situation corresponding to the "old ethics" is characterised by a clearly expressed asymmetrical structure. This asymmetry is the reason for the inability of the "old ethics" to stand up to the outbursts of evil in modern society. According to Neumann, the "old ethics" presupposes that the main moral task of man is to achieve the "overcoming of evil" through the negation of evil as negativity. The paper attempts to show that Neumann's paradigm of the "new ethics" can be identified no longer as the negation of negativity (evil), but as the negation of the negativity of negativity, where it is not the negative pole of the binary opposition of good vs. evil that is negated, but rather the asymmetry of the polarisation of the negative itself.