These remarks focus on what might be termed the transcendental but empirical conditions of ethics - ethics as indistinguishable and contrasting sets of presuppositions about what makes possible other than instrumental relations among human beings. The discussion is "transcendental" in a loose Kantian sense of asking how or why certain beliefs are possible, especially when this possibility is itself not directly addressed in the beliefs themselves. By "empirical" I mean concrete historical realities whose dark mysteries ethics are designed - consciously or unconsciously - to solve.