Deep Thoughts: why ethics?

From Continental Philosophy: Giorgio Agamben writes in The Coming Community:

"The fact that must constitute the point of departure for any discourse on ethics is that there is no essence, no historical or spiritual vocation, no biological destiny that human beings must enact or realize. This is the only reason why something like ethics can exist, because it is clear that if humans were or had to be this or that substance, this or that destiny, no ethical experience would be possible - there would be only tasks to be done."

This is the kind of thing that drives Anglophone philosophers crazy. Traditionally, ethics is thought to depend on some universal conception of human nature. It is on the basis of some such conception of human nature that happiness is understood as the telos of human existence, that the categorical imperative is generated, and that calculating how to maximize utility is possible. But, Agamben (like a host of other Continental philosophers) contends that ethics exists precisely because of the indeterminacy of human existence.

SO WHO is more realistic in this: Anglophones or Continentals? Is it possible that us pragmatic Anglos are actually romanticising human existence more than the French?