[B]asta la igual vivacidad de las imágenes y emociones del ensueño frente a las de la realidad para que nuestra vida pudiera, sin ceder en importancia y seriedad, ser toda hecha de ensueño.
Macedonio Fernández, ‘El mundo es un almismo’ (manuscrito de Macedonio Fernández que los ojos de Hobbes leyeron)
Thought experiments are not supposed to be realistic. They are supposed to clarify our thinking about reality.
Richard Dawkins, The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene , Oxford, 1982, p. 4
Reporting a moral intuition is not the same as giving a reason.
Don Herzog, Without Foundations: Justification in Political Theory, Ithaca, 1985, p. 122
[A]narchism can be regarded as the extreme expression of the modernizing ideals of the French Revolution—liberty, equality and fraternity carried to their logical conclusion.
David Miller, Anarchism, London, 1984, p. 175
Odonianism is anarchism. Not the bomb-in-the-pocket stuff, which is terrorism, whatever name it tries to dignify itself with; not the social-Darwinist economic ‘libertarianism’ of the far right; but anarchism, as pre-figured in early Taoist thought, and expounded by Shelley and Kropotkin, Goldman and Goodman. Anarchism’s principal target is the authoritarian State (capitalist or socialist); its principal moral-practical theme is cooperation (solidarity, mutual aid). It is the most idealistic, and to me the most interesting, of all political theories.
Ursula Le Guin, ‘The Day Before the Revolution’, Galaxy, vol. 8 (August, 1974)
Scholars in their traditional ivory towers have typically not worried much about their responsibility for the environmental impact of their work.
Daniel Dennett, Freedom Evolves, New York, 2003, p. 16
In The Law of Peoples, this circular knowledge resurfaces as the ‘political culture’ of a liberal society. But just because such a culture inevitably varies from nation to nation, the route to any simple universalization of the principles of justice is barred. States, not individuals, have to be contracting parties at a global level, since there is no commonality between the political cultures that inspire the citizens of each. More than this: it is precisely the differences between political cultures which explain the socio-economic inequality that divides them. “The causes of the wealth of a people and the forms it takes lie in their political culture and in the religious, philosophical and moral traditions that support the basic structure of their political institutions.” Prosperous nations owe their success to the diligence fostered by industrious traditions; lacking the same, laggards have only themselves to blame if they are less prosperous. Thus Rawls, while insisting that there is a right to emigration from ‘burdened’ societies, rejects any comparable right to immigration into liberal societies, since that would only reward the feckless, who cannot look after their own property. Such peoples ‘cannot make up for their irresponsibility in caring for their land and its natural resources’, he argues, ‘by migrating into other people’s territory without their consent’.
Decorating the cover of the work that contains these reflections is a blurred representation, swathed in a pale nimbus of gold, of a statue of Abraham Lincoln. The nationalist icon is appropriate. That the United States owes its own existence to the violent dispossession of native peoples on just the grounds—their inability to make ‘responsible’ use of its land or resources—alleged by Rawls for refusal of redistribution of opportunity or wealth beyond its borders today, never seems to have occurred to him. The Founders who presided over these clearances, and those who followed, are accorded a customary reverence in his late writings. Lincoln, however, held a special position in his pantheon, as The Law of Peoples—where he is hailed as an exemplar of the ‘wisdom, strength and courage’ of statesmen who, unlike Bismarck, ‘guide their people in turbulent and dangerous times’—makes clear, and colleagues have since testified. The abolition of slavery clearly loomed large in Rawls’s admiration for him. Maryland was one of the slave states that rallied to the North at the outbreak of the Civil War, and it would still have been highly segegrated in Rawls’s youth. But Lincoln, of course, did not fight the Civil War to free slaves, whose emancipation was an instrumental by-blow of the struggle. He waged it to preserve the Union, a standard nationalist objective. The cost in lives of securing the territorial integrity of the nation—600,000 dead—was far higher than all Bismarck’s wars combined. A generation later, emancipation was achieved in Brazil with scarcely any bloodshed. Official histories, rather than philosophers, exist to furnish mystiques of those who forged the nation. Rawls’s style of patriotism sets him apart from Kant. The Law of Peoples, as he explained, is not a cosmopolitan view.
Perry Anderson, ‘Arms and Rights’, New Left Review, no. 31 (January-February, 2005), pp. 13-14
[H]owever attractive, the relevance of the Lockean theory of property to contemporary discussions of distributive justice is as a form of egalitarianism. If this is correct, then defenders of inegalitarian distributions of property may draw support from the Lockean theory only to the extent that they follow Locke in failing to adhere to the logic of its argument.
Gopal Sreenivasan, The Limits of Lockean Rights in Property, Oxford, 1995, p. 7
No se podía hacer otra cosa que abandonarse a la marcha, adaptarse mecánicamente a la velocidad de los autos que lo rodeaban, no pensar. En el Volkswagen del soldado debía estar su chaqueta de cuero. Taunus tenía la novela que él había leído en posprimeros días. Un frasco de lavanda casi vacío en el 2HP de las monjas. Y él tenía ahí, tocándolo a veces con la mano derecha, el osito de felpa que Dauphine le había regalado como mascota. Absurdamente se aferró a la idea de que a las nueve y media se distribuirían los alimentos, habría que visitar a los enfermos, examinar la situación con Taunus y el campesino del Ariane; después sería la noche, sería Dauphine subiendo sigilosamente a su auto, las estrellas o las nubes, la vida. Sí, tenía que ser así, no era posible que eso hubiera terminado para siempre. Tal vez el soldado consiguiera una ración de agua, que había escaseado en las últimas horas; de todos modos se podía contar con Porsche, siempre que se le pagara el precio que pedía. Y en la antena de la radio flotaba locamente la bandera con la cruz roja, y se corría a ochenta kilómetros por hora hacia las luces que crecían poco a poco, sin que ya se supiera bien por qué tanto apuro, por qué esa carrera en la noche entre autos desconocidos donde nadie sabía nada de los otros, donde todo el mundo miraba fijamente hacia adelante, exclusivamente hacia adelante.
Julio Cortázar, ‘La autopista del sur’, in Todos los fuegos el fuego, Buenos Aires, 1966
[W]e foresee the history of life divided in three main phases. In the long preparatory phase it was the helpless creature of its environment, and natural selection gradually ground it into human shape. In the second—our own short transitional phase—it reaches out at the immediate environment, shaking, shaping and grinding to suit the form, the requirements, the wishes, and the whims of man. And in the long third phase, it will reach down into the secret places of the great universe of its own nature, and by aid of its ever growing intelligence and cooperation, shape itself into an increasingly sublime creation[.]
Hermann Joseph Muller, Out of the Night: A Biologist’s View of the Future, New York, 1935, p. 125
[I]t may not be amiss to observe from these definitions of natural and unnatural, that nothing can be more unphilosophical than those systems, which assert, that virtue is the same with what is natural, and vice with what is unnatural. For in the first sense of the word, Nature, as opposed to miracles, both vice and virtue are equally natural; and in the second sense, as oppos’d to what is unusual, perhaps virtue will be found to be the most unnatural. At least it must be own’d, that heroic virtue, being as unusual, is as little natural as the most brutal barbarity. As to the third sense of the word, ’tis certain, that both vice and virtue are equally artificial, and out of nature. For however it may be disputed, whether the notion of a merit or demerit in certain actions be natural or artificial, ’tis evident, that the actions themselves are artificial, and are perform’d with a certain design and intention; otherwise they cou’d never be rank’d under any of these denominations. ‘Tis impossible, therefore, that the character of natural and unnatural can ever, in any sense, mark the boundaries of vice and virtue.
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Edinburgh, 1739, bk. 3, pt. 1, sect. 2
and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
James Joyce, Ulysses, Paris, 1921, p. 767
One would have to do an experiment to prove it, but I would guess that if we took two children of today—let’s say two groups—and exposed one group to Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, and the other to Schoenberg, Webern and Berg, there would be a substantial difference in their capacity to comprehend and deal with such musical experience.
Noam Chomsky, ‘The Ideas of Chomsky’, in Bryan Magee (ed.), Men of Ideas: Some Creators of Contemporary Philosophy, London, 1978, p. 218
I also tried to condition Electra to dissonant music. Henry Cowell was especially fond of one anecdote, which he recounted in his lectures and seminars. The story went something like this: When Electra would scream for a bottle, I would sit down at the piano and play a Chopin nocturne, completely ignoring her request. I would allow for a pause, and then play Schoenberg’s Opus 33a, which opens with a dodecaphonic succession of three highly dissonant chords. I would then rush in to give Electra her bottle. Her features would relax, her crying would cease, and she would suck contentedly the nutritious formula. This was to establish a conditional reflex in favor of dissonant music.
Nicolas Slonimsky, Perfect Pitch: An Autobiography, New York, 2002, p. 132
Los psicoanalistas se han despreocupado por la verificación del número de curas de los psicoanalizados—ésa es su falencia epistemológica—, pero si se consideran, desde un punto de vista impresionista, los delirios colectivos en que incurrió la clase media argentina en la década del setenta, durante el auge del psicoanálisis, sería una prueba en su contra.
Juan José Sebreli, Buenos Aires, ciudad en crisis, Buenos Aires, 2003, p. 212
Too many people merely do what they are told to do.
Ansel Adams, The Camera, Boston, 1980, p. xiii
I will make you brooches and toys for your delight
Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night.
I will make a palace fit for you and me,
Of green days in forests and blue days at sea.I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room,
Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom,
And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white
In rainfall at morning and dewfall at night.And this shall be for music when no one else is near,
The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear!
That only I remember, that only you admire,
Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.
Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘Romance’, in Songs of Travel, London, 1895
It most certainly does not follow that to be persona non grata to some people on both sides of a conflict shows you are in the right. That is weak stuff. You need not go far to find counter-examples to the idea. You can, on occasions, infuriate both sides and be wrong. Still, to have some of both sides against you does establish something that is anathema to some on both those sides, which is independence of mind.
Ted Honderich, ‘On Being Persona Non Grata’, CounterPunch, February 19/20, 2005
To take Darwin seriously means, among other things, to place the study of human nature squarely within the context of evolutionary biology—which the social sciences have consistently failed to do.
Loyal Rue, ‘Sociobiology and Moral Discourse’, Zygon, vol. 33, no. 4 (December 1998), p. 526
As long as we continue to study and cite Hobbes, Rousseau, and Marx—none of whose views of human nature can today be ranked as scientific—it would be perversely backward-looking to refuse even to consider sociobiology and what follows from it.
Peter Singer, ‘Ethics and Sociobiology’, Philosophy & Public Affairs, vol. 11, no. 1 (Winter, 1982), pp. 40-64
Turing believes machines think.
Turing lies with men.
Therefore machines do not think.
Alan Turing, Letter to Norman Routledge, 1952
[E]verywhere what has been fatal to liberalism is its boundless but capricious moderation.
Michael Oakeshott, ‘John Locke’, The Cambridge Review, vol. 54 (November 4, 1932), p. 73
Anarchism, the great leaven of thought, is today permeating every phase of human endeavor. Science, art, literature, the drama, the effort for economic betterment, in fact every individual and social opposition to the existing disorder of things, is illumined by the spiritual light of Anarchism. It is the philosophy of the sovereignty of the individual. It is the theory of social harmony. It is the great, surging, living truth that is reconstructing the world, and that will usher in the Dawn.
Emma Goldman, ‘Anarchism’, in Anarchism and Other Essays, New York, 1917
[L]ong-term happiness, however appealing they may find it, is not really what [humans] are designed to maximize.
Robert Wright, The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology, New York, 1994, p. 191
Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicæan barks of yore,
That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs, have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!
Edgar Allan Poe, ‘Helen’, 1831
Three pigs were brought in to the town,
They all began to squeal;
A man with long and pointed knives
Their fate was set to seal.They kicked and pushed and shook in fer,
Yet could they know just why?
Perhaps it was a hidden sense
Told them they were to die.But just as they got to the place
Which was their journey’s end,
The pigs shoved hard with all their might
And posts began to bend.The fence fell down and off two went
As fast as they could go,
And that they swam from bank to bank
The world was soon to know.As word got out of their escape
Folk came to have some fun;
To catch a sight of two young pigs
Who now were on the run.The press came in from near and far,
The T.V. cameras too;
With ‘copters flying overhead,
What would our two pigs do?They hid and ate in field and copse,
Rejoicing to be free;
They led the press a merry dance,
What was their fate to be?“They’re for the chop, they will not live!”
Their owner said aloud;
‘Twas something that he said most clear,
Almost as if quite proud.Oh No! Oh No! They must not die!”
The cry was heard all round,
“They’ve won their right to live in peace,
A new home must be found.”So when they’re caught and that man says
They will not have to die,
The fact he got some fifteen grand
Could be the reason why.Of those two pigs we heard a lot,
But not so much their mate;
What was to be the end of him?
What was to be his fate?At five months old unlike his friends
His future was less sweet;
With fear and pain, then blood and guts,
He ended up as meat.No matter just how far it is
From abattoir to plate,
The suffering of those who die
Is always just as great.What right have we to take the lives
Of those who are so mild?
To sex, to fix, to cage, these ones,
When each is like a child?Our brains and might give us much power
O’er all that is around;
We must make sure we live our lives
On principles more sound.If who shall live and who shall die
Is based on power and taste,
‘Tis surely not their lives alone
That we do choose to waste;For when we hurt and maim and kill,
And then the victims eat,
Something inside each one of us
Will also face defeat.What would be lost, I ask you all,
But chains and ties that bind,
If we should choose a way of life
That is not cruel but kind?For health, for wealth, for man or beast,
Please contemplate the choice;
I write these lines as best I can
For those who have no voice.
Michael Pearce, ‘Three Little Pigs’
If I must be a fool, as all those who reason or believe anything certainly are, my follies shall at least be natural and agreable.
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, London, 1739, bk. 1, pt. 4, sct. 7
“Let the rules with greatest acceptance utility be followed, though the heavens fall!” is no more plausible than “Fiat justitia, ruat coelum!”—and a good bit less ringing.
Peter Railton, ‘Alientation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality’, Philosophy & Public Affairs, vol. 13, no. 2 (Spring, 1984)
The orthodox economists, as well as Marx, who in this respect agreed with them, were mistaken in supposing that economic self-interest could be taken as the fundamental motive in social sciences. The desire for commodities, when separated from power and glory, is finite, and can be fully satisfied by a moderate competence. The really expensive desires are not dictated by a love of material comfort. Such commodities as a legislature rendered subservient by corruption, or a private picture gallery of Old Masters selected by experts, are sought for the sake of power or glory, not as affording comfortable places in which to sit. When a moderate degree of comfort is assured, both individuals and communities will pursue power rather than wealth: they may seek wealth as a means to power, or the may forgo an increase of wealth in order to secure an increase of power, but in the former case as in the latter their fundamental motive is not economic.
This error in orthodox and Marxist economics is not merely theoretical, but is of the greatest practical importance, and has caused some of the principal events of recent times to be misunderstood. It is only by realising that love of power is the cause of the activities that are important in social affairs that history, whether ancient or modern, can be rightly interpreted.
Bertrand Russell, Power: A New Social Analysis, London, 1938, p. 9
El titulado “sentido común” es mucho menos común de lo que parece, en la medida en que no es común a todos los seres humanos en todas las épocas. La historia de la filosofía y de la ciencia ha mostrado que semejante supuesta “facultad” ha experimentado bastantes cambios en el curso de la historia.
José Ferrater Mora, El ser y la muerte: Bosquejo de filosofia integracionista, Madrid, 1988, pp. 27-28
Sometimes I feel that the moral life is so close now, I can almost touch it.
Zell Kravinsky, ‘I Feel Better for Giving Everything—Whether My Money or My Organs’, The Daily Telegraph, August 8, 2004
Thus it is in regard to every important partial truth; there are always two conflicting modes of thought, one tending to give to that truth too large, the other to give it too small, a place: and the history of opinion is generally an oscillation between these extremes. From the imperfection of the human faculties, it seldom happens that, even in the minds of eminent thinkers, each partial view of their subject passes for its worth, and none for more than its worth. But even if this just balance exist in the mind of the wiser teacher, it will not exist in his disciples, less in the general mind. He cannot prevent that which is new in his doctrine, and on which, being new, he is forced to insist the most strongly, from making a disproportionate impression. The impetus necessary to overcome the obstacles which resist all novelties of opinion, seldom fails to carry the public mind almost as far on the contrary side of the perpendicular. Thus every excess in either direction determines a corresponding reaction; improvement consisting only in this, that the oscillation, each time, departs rather less widely from the center, and an ever-increasing tendency is manifested to settle finally on it.
John Stuart Mill, ‘Coleridge’, London and Westminster Review, no. 65 (March, 1840)
Parecería que la vida de un pensador debiese ser la más rica de las vidas; pero la del pensador abstracto no lo es.
Vicente Fatone, Introducción al existencialismo, Buenos Aires, 1953, p. 12
[E]l humor es la única salida del artista: si no le daría tal horror la realidad y la vida de los seres humanos actuales, que es la vida de siempre, la vieja historia: los buenos corridos y asesinados por los malos que se convierten en buenos con el poder y son corridos por otros malos que con el poder, ya se sabe, se convierten en buenos y la gran masa mira el espectáculo mientras viven como ratas, en fin.
Enrique Villegas, in Germán Leopoldo García (ed.), Hablan de Macedonio Fernández, Buenos Aires, 1968, p. 53
En aquella Estancia donde nadie hacía nada hubo un día en que los habitantes se alegraron al divisar que iba llegando lenta, descansadamente, una persona que no conocían. Los que llamaremos estancistas, tenían por momentos la incomodidad de dudar de si no faltaría todavía algo que dejar de hacer, que a lo mejor habían descuidado de omitir; y este desconocido de tranquilo andar, por su desgarbo y modos reposados, expresión personal de descontento y despreocupación, parecióles que tenía todo el aire de ser un experto en el no-hacer y el no-suceder, que eran las cosas en que vivían colaborando los estancistas sin discrepancia, y también si jactancia, pues ya digo que no estaban satisfechos del todo, sospechosos de hallarse, sin darse cuenta, omitiendo todavía alguna omisión.
Macedonio Fernández, ‘El no-hacer’
Cho’ entón upasóltome del ástrito i sou sólo unu nugri fus’puntu, i subo pa otro noche solo do no sento ni caló nada: es mi propio peke nugro ke impídeme crusti.
Muy viol’puxo i alfin ne resálgome, ya sin ningún taro ni kembre ni gan’, i sou pur’blis, pues no eno forma ni limijte; ra’periexpándome nel cosminoche infinito do too es puedi, hi too yi chi’ pérdese, i nostro mundo es fen’ despuma i mi exvida sólo una bólhita pre crepi, muy yus’. Pero esa tum bolha mui atráigeme desdese mundo, i zás yi fulmicáigome, ra’ ensártinmen los varios mis cuerpos asta kes yus’este mundo, re.
Xul Solar, ‘Visión sobre el trilíneo’
[D]efense mechanisms are part of the Western intellectual’s standard equipment. Since I have frequently met with them here, I take the liberty of examining them more closely.
The first argument is really a matter of semantics. Our society has seen fit to be permissive about the old taboos of language. Nobody is shocked any more by the ancient and indispensable four-letter-words. At the same time, a new crop of words has been banished, by common consent, from polite society: words like exploitation and imperialism. The have acquired a touch of obscenity. Political scientists have taken to paraphrases and circumlocution which sound like the neurotic euphemisms of the Victorians. Some sociologists have gone so far as to deny the very existence of a ruling class. Obviously, it is easier to abolish the word exploitation than the thing it designates; but then, to do away with the term is not to do away with the problem.
A second defense device is using psychology as a shield. I have been told that it is sick and paranoid to conceive of a powerful set of people who are a danger to the rest of the world. This amounts to saying that instead of listening to his arguments it is better to watch the patient. Now it is not an easy thing to defend yourself against amateur psychiatrists. I shall limit myself to a few essential points. I do not imagine a conspiracy, since there is no need for such a thing. A social class, and especially a ruling class, is not held together by secret bonds, by common and glaringly evident self-interest. I do not fabricate monsters. Everybody knows that bank presidents, generals, and military industrialists do not look like comicstric demons: they are well-mannered, nice gentlemen, possibly lovers of chamber music with a philanthropic bent of mind. There was no lack of such kind people even in the Germany of the Thirties. Their moral insanity does not derive from their individual character, but from their social function.Finally, there is a political defense mechanism operating with the assertion that all of the things which I submit are just communist propaganda. I have no reason to fear this time-honored indictment. It is inaccurate, vague, and irrational. First of all, the word Communism, used as a singular, has become rather meaningless. It covers a wide variety of conflicting ideas; some of them are even mutually exclusive. Furthermore, my opinion of American foreign policy is shared by Greek liberals and Latin American archbishops, by Norwegian peasants and French industrialists: people who are not generally thought of as being in the vanguard of “Communism”.
Hans Magnus Enzensberger, ‘On Leaving America’, The New York Review of Books, vol. 10, no. 4 (February 29, 1968)
If we start with the idea of moral reciprocity in which all human beings are treated as equals, we cannot accept the relations that stand between North and South as something that has even the simulacrum of justice.
Kai Nielsen, ‘Global Justice, Capitalism and the Third World’, Journal of Applied Philosophy, vol. 1, no. 2 (1984), p. 182
En tiempos de auge la conjetura de que la existencia del hombre es una cantidad constante, invariable, puede entristecer o irritar: en tiempos que declinan (como éstos), es la promesa de que ningún oprobio, ninguna calamidad, ningún dictador podrá empobrecernos.
Jorge Luis Borges, ‘El tiempo circular’, in El Aleph, Buenos Aires, 1949
Alone in my tower at midnight, I remember the woods and downs, the sea and sky, that daylight showed. Now, as I look through each of the four windows, north, south, east and west, I see only myself dimly reflected, or shadowed in monstrous opacity upon the fog. What matter? To-morrow sunrise will give me back the beauty of the outer world as I wake from sleep.
But the mental night that has descended upon me is less brief, and promises no awakening after sleep. Formerly, the cruelty, the meanness, the dusty fretful passion of human life seemed to me a little thing, set, like some resolved discord in music, amid the splendour of the stars and the stately procession of geological ages. What if the universe was to end in universal death? It was none the less unruffled and magnificent. But now all this has shrunk to be no more than my own reflection in the windows of the soul through which I look out upon the night of nothingness. The revolutions of nebulae, the birth and death of stars, are no more than convenient fictions in the trivial work of linking together my own sensations, and perhaps those of other men not much better than myself. No dungeon was ever constructed so dark and narrow as that in which the shadow physics of our time imprisons us, for every prisoner has believed that outside his walls a free world existed; but now the prison has become the whole universe. There is darkness without, and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendour, no vastness, anywhere; only triviality for a moment, and then nothing.
Why live in such a world? Why even die?
Bertrand Russell, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell: 1914-1944, London, 1968, pp. 158-159