Author Archives: Pablo Stafforini

John Locke

That the aggressor, who puts himself into the state of war with another, and unjustly invades another man’s right, can, by such an unjust war, never come to have a right over the conquered, will be easily agreed by all men, who will not think, that robbers and pyrates have a right of empire over whomsoever they have force enough to master; or that men are bound by promises, which unlawful force extorts from them. Should a robber break into my house, and with a dagger at my throat make me seal deeds to convey my estate to him, would this give him any title? Just such a title, by his sword, has an unjust conqueror, who forces me into submission. The injury and the crime is equal, whether committed by the wearer of a crown, or some petty villain. The title of the offender, and the number of his followers, make no difference in the offence, unless it be to aggravate it. The only difference is, great robbers punish little ones, to keep them in their obedience; but the great ones are rewarded with laurels and triumphs, because they are too big for the weak hands of justice in this world, and have the power in their own possession, which should punish offenders. What is my remedy against a robber, that so broke into my house? Appeal to the law for justice. But perhaps justice is denied, or I am crippled and cannot stir, robbed and have not the means to do it. If God has taken away all means of seeking remedy, there is nothing left but patience. But my son, when able, may seek the relief of the law, which I am denied: he or his son may renew his appeal, till he recover his right. But the conquered, or their children, have no court, no arbitrator on earth to appeal to. Then they may appeal, as Jephtha did, and repeat their appeal till they have recovered the native right of their ancestors, which was, to have such a legislative over them, as the majority should approve, and freely acquiesce in. If it be objected, This would cause endless trouble; I answer, no more than justice does, where she lies open to all that appeal to her. He that troubles his neighbour without a cause, is punished for it by the justice of the court he appeals to: and he that appeals to heaven must be sure he has right on his side; and a right too that is worth the trouble and cost of the appeal, as he will answer at a tribunal that cannot be deceived, and will be sure to retribute to every one according to the mischiefs he hath created to his fellow subjects; that is, any part of mankind: from whence it is plain, that he that conquers in an unjust war can thereby have no title to the subjection and obedience of t he conquered.

John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, London, 1690, second treatise, sect. 176

Yehudi Menuhin

Why is compassion not part of our established curriculum, an inherent part of our education? Compassion, awe, wonder, curiosity, exaltation, humility–these are the very foundation of any real civilisation, no longer the prerogatives, the preserves of any one church, but belonging to everyone, every child in every home, in every school.

Yehudi Menuhin, ‘Just for Animals’, in Victoria Moran (ed.), Compassion: The Ultimate Ethic, New York, 1985, p. 200

Noam Chomsky

There are two ways for Washington to respond to the threats engendered by its actions and startling proclamations. One way is to try to alleviate the threats by paying some attention to legitimate grievances, and by agreeing to become a civilized member of a world community, with some respect for world order and its institutions. The other way is to construct even more awesome engines of destruction and domination, so that any perceived challenge, however remote, can be crushed–provoking new and greater challenges. That way poses serious dangers to the people of the US and the world, and may, very possibly, lead to extinction of the species–not an idle speculation.

Noam Chomsky, ‘Deep Concerns’, ZNet, March 20, 2003

Eugene Ehrlich

One of the happiest features of possessing a capacious vocabulary is the opportunity to insult your enemies with impunity. While the madding crowd gets mad with exhausted epithets such as “You rotten pig” and “you dirty bum”, you can acerbate, deprecate, derogate, and excoriate your nemesis with a battalion of laser-precise pejoratives. You can brand him or her a grandiloquent popinjay, venal pettifogger, nefarious miscreant, flagitious recidivist, sententious blatherskite, mawkish ditherer, arrant peculator, irascible misanthrope, hubristic narcissist, feckless sycophant, vituperative virago, vapid yahoo, eructative panjandrum, saturnine misanthrope, antediluvian troglodyte, maudlin poetaster, splenetic termagant, pernicious quidnunc, rancorous anchorite, perfidious mountebank, irascible curmudgeon.

Eugene Ehrlich, The Highly Selective Dictionary for the Extraordinarily Literate, New York, 1997, p. xxiii

Gore Vidal

To deny inconvenient opinions a hearing is one way the few have of controlling the many. But as Richard Nixon used to say, “That would be the easy way.” The slyer way is to bombard the public with misinformation. During more than half a century of corruption by the printed word in the form “news”—propaganda disguised as fact—I have yet to read a story favorable to another society’s social and political arrangements. Swedes have free health care, better schools than ours, child day-care center for working mothers… but the Swedes are all drunks who commit suicide (even blonde blue-eyed people must pay for such decadent amenities). Lesson? No national health care, no education, etc., because-as William Bennett will tell you as soon as a TV red light switches on-social democracy, much less socialism, is just plain morally evil. Far better to achieve the good things in life honestly, by inheriting money or winning a lottery. The American way.

Gore Vidal, ‘A Corrupt System’, in Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers (eds.), Money and Politics, Boston, 1999

David Hume

Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few, and the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of the rulers. When we inquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find out that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is, therefore, on opinion only that government is founded, and the maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments as well as the most free and popular.

David Hume, ‘On the Principles of Government’, in Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, Edinburgh, 1742

C. H. Herford

[William] Godwin saw in government, in law, even in property, and in marriage, only restraints upon liberty and obstacles to progress. Yet Godwin was not, strictly speaking, an anarchist. He transfered the seat of government from thrones and parliament to the reason in the breast of every man. On the power of reason, working freely, to convince all the armed unreason of the world and to subdue all its teeming passion, he rested his boundless confidence in the ‘perfectibility’ of man.

C. H. Herford, The Age of Wordsworth, London, 1916, pp. 7-8

Albert Einstein

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices, but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.

Albert Einstein, quoted in Paul Edwards (ed.), Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects, London, 1957

Juan José Sebreli

El desaprensivo apoyo de Sarmiento a la destrucción de las formas primitivas de comunidad no significaba, sin embargo, como sostienen sus enemigos, una concepción antidemocrática. Podía despreciar a las masas ignaras, pero dedicaba todos sus esfuerzos a educarlas. Su contrapartida era Rosas, quien adulaba a las masas pero cerraba escuelas para mantenerlas en su estado de ignorancia, sumisas y fáciles de manipular.

Juan José Sebreli, Crítica de las ideas políticas argentinas: los orígenes de la crisis, Buenos Aires, 2002, p. 25

John Stuart Mill

The very words necessary to express the task I have undertaken, show how arduous it is. But it would be a mistake to suppose that the difficulty of the case must lie in the insufficiency or obscurity of the grounds of reason on which my convictions. The difficulty is that which exists in all cases in which there is a mass of feeling to be contended against. So long as opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses instability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it. For if it were accepted as a result of argument, the refutation of the argument might shake the solidity of the conviction; but when it rests solely on feeling, the worse it fares in argumentative contest, the more persuaded adherents are that their feeling must have some deeper ground, which the arguments do not reach; and while the feeling remains, it is always throwing up fresh entrenchments of argument to repair any breach made in the old.

John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women, London, 1869, chap. 1

Tulio Halperín Donghi

El peronismo es un dilema que nunca ha dejado de intrigar a los observadores, investigadores, académicos extranjeros, por sus obvias, groseras incongruencias ideológicas y también por su habilidad para retener el apoyo de sucesivas coaliciones de sus no menos incongruentes socios o aliados.

Tulio Halperín Donghi, in Pablo E. Chacón (ed.), El misterio argentino, Buenos Aires, 2003, p. 69

Tulio Halperín Donghi

En 1995 una obra de ciencia política alcanzó un eco poco habitual entre las de esa disciplina gracias a un título afortunado—Jihad versus McWorld—que presentaba la resistencia del mundo islámico como la más sistemática e intransigente entre las afrontadas por una globalización que se encamina a reconfigurar el mundo sobre el modelo de los Estados Unidos; ocho años después, la desazón con que se vive el presente debe sin duda mucho al descubrimiento de que ni aun McWorld está inmune de la seducción que puede ejercer la guerra santa.

Tulio Halperín Donghi, ‘Mientras espero la guerra’, Clarín, February 19, 2003

Santos Cifuentes

Al comprenderse la condición genética en su formación y posibilidades, se debe evitar el entorpecimiento de un avance que se dirija a mejorar al hombre y a resolver sus problemas, y desatar las ataduras con visiones conceptuales que obstaculizan la evolución humana hacia lo mejor.

Santos Cifuentes, Elementos de derecho civil, Buenos Aires, 1995, pp. 105-106

Ricardo López Murphy

La política se hace a veces en la Argentina con fantasías. A veces se cree que los sueldos dependen de la voluntad del gobernante. Hay gente que me pregunta: “¿qué política de sueldos va a tener usted?” Ninguna. Si eso dependiera de una decisión gubernamental, ¿por qué no duplicarlos, por qué no decuplicarlos?

Ricardo López Murphy, La Nación, April 20, 2003, sect. 7, p. 8

Paul Feyerabend

The depression stayed with me for over a year; it was like an animal, a well-defined, spatially localizable thing. I would wake up, open my eyes, listen –Is it here or isn’t? No sign of it. Perhaps it’s asleep. Perhaps it will leave me alone today. Carefully, very carefully, I get out of bed. All is quiet. I go to the kitchen, start breakfast. Not a sound. TV -Good Morning America-, David What’s-his-name, a guy I can’t stand. I eat and watch the guests. Slowly the food fills my stomach and gives me strength. Now a quick excursion to the bathroom, and out for my morning walk -and here she is, my faithful depression: “Did you think you could leave without me?”

Paul Feyerabend, Killing Time: The Autobiography of Paul Feyerabend, Chicago, 1995, p. 147

Ronald Dworkin

If we are to be morally and ethically responsible, there can be no turning back once we find, as we have found, that some of the most basic presuppositions of these values are mistaken. Playing God is indeed playing with fire. But that is what we mortals have done since Prometheus, the patron saint of dangerous discoveries. We play with fire and take the consequences, because the alternative is cowardice in the face of the unknown.

Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2000, p. 446

James Watson

[N]o one has the guts to say it, [but] if we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn’t we? […] Evolution can be just damn cruel, and to say that we’ve got a perfect genome and there’s some sanctity [to it]? I’d like to know where that idea comes from, because it’s utter silliness.

James Watson, ‘The Road Ahead’, in Gregory Stock and John Campbell (eds.), Engineering the Human Germline: An Exploration of the Science and Ethics of Altering the Genes We Pass to Our Children, Oxford, 2000, pp. 77, 85

Julian Huxley

There have been all the applications of science, leading to a new and more comprehensive view of man’s possible control of nature. But then there was the rediscovery of the depths and horrors of human behaviour, as revealed by Nazi extermination camps, Communist purges, Japanese treatment of captives, leading to a sobering realization that man’s control over nature applies as yet only to external nature: the formidable conquest of his own nature remains to be achieved

Julian Huxley, New Bottles for New Wine, London, 1957, preface

Jeremy Bentham

It is wonderful how forward some have been to look upon it as a kind of presumption and ingratitude, and rebellion, and cruelty, and I know not what besides, not to allege only, nor to own, but to suffer any one so much as to imagine, than an old-established law could in any respect be a fit object of condemnation. Whether it has been a kind of personification that has been the cause of this, as if the Law were a living creature, or whether it has been the mechanical veneration of antiquity, or what other delusion of the fancy, I shall not here enquire. For my part, I know not for what good reason it is that the merit of justifying a law when right should have been thought greater, than that of censuring it when wrong.

Jeremy Bentham, A Fragment on Government, London, 1776, preface

Robert Craft

Composing a “tonal row” and accompanying words of dedication for the Berlins’ guestbook, I[gor] S[travinsky] asks for an English equivalent to the Rusian “kanitel”. Literally, the word means a silver or golden skein, Isaiah says, but, commonly, a long, entangled argument—whereupon someone quotes “or ever the silver cord be loosed.” Graves lobs his back—he’s faster with words than anyone I have ever encountered—with “The Yddish is ‘magillah’, and the Greek and Latin are…”.

Robert Craft, Stravinsky: Chronicle of a Friendship, Nashville, 1994, p. 254

Mario Bunge

Los lacanianos se interesan solamente por la práctica psicoanalítica: no les interesa saber si esa práctica es fundada o infundada, eficaz o ineficaz. Se ponen en la posición del terapeuta que vive de su trabajo, no del paciente que le paga la consulta. Al paciente, en cambio, debiera interesarle saber qué dicen las estadísticas acerca del poder curativo de las doscientas y pico de escuelas de terapia verbal. Al fin y al cabo, están en juego su salud mental y su billetera.

Mario Bunge, ‘El psicoanlálisis: ¿ciencia o macaneo?’, en Vistas y entrevistas, 2nd ed., Buenos Aires, 1997, pp. 235-236

Adolfo Bioy Casares

Una chica excepcional. Me atreví a preguntar:

—¿Y por qué usted la encontraba tan excepcional?

—Mire—me dijo—: a mí me gustaba mucho, en ese momento la prefería a cualquier otra cosa, lo que ya es encontrarla excepcional, aunque sea de acuerdo al criterio, menos arbitrario que misterioso, de nuestras preferencias.

Adolfo Bioy Casares, Descanso de caminantes: diarios íntimos, Buenos Aires, 2001, p. 25

Thomas Hobbes

Dicet fortasse aliquis, qui viderit praecedentia praecepta naturalia artificio quodam ab unico rationis, nos ad nostri conservationem & incolumitatem hortantis, dictamine derivata, adeo difficilem esse deductionem harum legum, ut exspectandum non sit, eas vulgo cognitas fore ; neque ideo obligare. Etenim leges nisi cognitae, non obligant, immo non sunt leges. Huic respondeo, verum esse, ipsem, metum, iram, ambitionem, avaritiam, gloriam, inanem, & caeteras perturbationes animi impedire, ne quis leges naturae pro eo tempore quo passiones istae prevalent, cognoscere possit. Caeterum nemo est, qui non aliquando sedato animo est. Eo igitur tempore nihil illi quamquam indocto & rudi, scitu est facilius ; unica scilicet hac regula, ut cum dubitet, id quod facturus in alterum sit, jure jacturus fit naturali, necne, putet se esse in illius alterius loco. Ibi statim perturbationes illae, quae institugabant ad faciendum, tanquam translatae in alteram trutinae lancem, a faciendo dehortabuntur. Atque haec regula non modo facilis, sed etiam dudum celebrata his verbis est, quod tibi fieri non vis, alteri ne feceris.

Thomas Hobbes, De cive, iii, § 26

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Dans un Etat bien gouverné il y a peu de punitions, non parce qu’on fait beaucoup de graces, mais parce qu’il y a peu de criminels : la multitude des crimes en assure l’impunité lorsque l’Etat dépérit. Sous la République Romaine jamais le Sénat ni les Consuls ne tenterent de faire grace ; le peuple même n’en faisoit pas, quoiqu’il révocât quelquefois son propre jugement. Les fréquentes graces annoncent que bientôt les forfaits n’en auront plus besoin, & chacun voit où cela mene. Mais je sens que mon cœur murmure & retient ma plume ; laissons discuter ces questions à l’homme juste qui n’a point failli, & qui jamais n’eût lui-même besoin de grace.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du contrat social; ou, Principes du droit politique, Amsterdam, 1762, bk. 2, chap. 5

José Ferrater Mora

A veces se topa uno con filósofos analíticos, o caen en manos de uno escritos de autores analíticos, que, por su rigidez e intolerancia, hacen pensar en lo que se ha llamado “terrorismo intelectual”—el tipo de terrorismo que suelen ejercer los “pequeños inquisidores” o los “burócratas intelectuales”—. Por fortuna, el terrorismo intelectual no puede gozar de larga vida dentro del pensamiento realmente analítico, porque termina por ser incompatible con el análisis, el cual se acaba cuando deja de ser crítico. Los posibles “excesos de análisis” no se curan con “menos análisis”, sino con más; aunque suene a paradoja, los “excesos del análisis” son opuestos a un “exceso de análisis”. El posible terrorismo intelectual antianalítico, en cambio, puede ser largo, y hasta crónico, porque las puertas de la crítica no prevalecen contra él.

José Ferrater Mora, Cambio de marcha en filosofía, Madrid, 1974, pp. 53-54