Quotes
One of my favorite demonstrations is to take a string of such generally true statements drawn from horoscope books and offer them to my students as “personalized feedback” following a little personality test: You have a strong need for other people to like and admire you. You have a tendency to be critical of yourself. You pride yourself on being an independent thinker and do not accept other opinions without satisfactory proof. You have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extraverted, affable, sociable; at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be pretty unrealistic.
David G. Myers, The pursuit of happiness: who is happy--and why, New York, 1992, pp. 93-94
There is a sense of ‘utilitarianism’, associated with architects and cabinet-makers, which equates it to the ‘functional’ and makes it the enemy of the excellent and the beautiful. Yet therein lies one of the great advantages of utilitarianism as a theory of the good: by running everything through people’s preferences and interests more generally, it is non-committal as between various more specific theories of the good that people might embrace, and it is equally open to all of them.
Peter Singer, A companion to ethics, Oxford, 1991, p. 242
Quizá las posiciones escépticas, relativistas y subjetivistas sobre la justicia están determinadas por la preocupación pre-teórica por la intolerancia, el fanatismo y el autoritarismo a los que suelen conducir posiciones éticas absolutistas. Como Trotsky le recordaba a Kautsky, “la aprehensión de verdades relativas nunca le da a uno el coraje de usar la fuerza y de derramar sangre”. Sin embargo, esta prevención quizá tenga su ámbito de satisfacción, no en el plano ontológico de constitución de principios de justicia (en el que se enfrenta con la posibilidad de que el relativismo se aplique al mismo ideal de tolerancia), sino en el plano espistémico, o sea, en el plano del conocimiento de los principios de justicia: lo que conduce a la tolerancia es una posición falibilista sobre si estamos acertados en nuestras creencias sobre lo que es justo, no nuestra supuesta certeza de que no hay nada que conocer. Ese falibilismo puede conducir a desconfiar de las intuiciones individuales sobre la justicia—dada la variedad de condicionamientos a que cada uno de nosotros se ve sometido—y a confiar más, en cambio, en el resultado del proceso colectivo de discusión como el que se organiza a través del procedimiento democrático.
Ernesto Garzón Valdés (ed.), El derecho y la justicia, Madrid, 1996, p. 471
If you’re the egalitarian who wrote ‘If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich?’, how come you’re so rich?
Guido Pincione, Horacio Spector, and Universidad Torcuato di Tella (eds.), Rights, equality, and liberty: Universidad Torcuato di Tella law and philosophy lectures, 1995-1997, Dordrecht ; Boston : Norwell, MA, 2000, p. 4
En [1935] el mundo industrializado contaba más de treinta millones de desocupados. Al perder el trabajo habían quedado prácticamente fuera de la economía de mercado, y muchos había perdido la confianza en el capitalismo. La solución, para un número creciente, era el socialismo, fuese rosado o rojo. Hoy día hay casi el mismo número de desocupados en la misma área geográfica, pero la clase trabajadora no se radicaliza ni moviliza, y los partidos socialistas pierden terreno a menos que se tornen conservadores. […]
Hoy todos los países industrializados tienen dos instituciones que explican la diferencia. Una es el régimen de seguridad social, la otra es la televisión masiva. La primera le ha robado el viento a las velas de la nave socialista. La segunda hace más llevadera la pobreza e invita a la inacción. Entre las dos han causado una de las revoluciones sociales más profundas de la historia, y la única que no ha derramado ni una gota de sangre.
Mario Bunge, Cápsulas, Barcelona, 2003, p. 206
Many religious persons think that the highest reason for doing anything is that it is God’s Will: while to others ‘Self-realisation’ or ‘Self-development’, and to others, again, ‘Life according to nature’ appear the really ultimate ends. And it is not hard to understand why conceptions such as these are regarded as supplying deeper and more completely satisfying answers to the fundamental question of Ethics, than those before named: since they do not merely represent ‘what ought to be’, as such; they represent it in an apparently simple relation to what actually is. God, Nature, Self, are the fundamental facts of existence; the knowledge of what will accomplish God’s Will, what is, ‘according to Nature’, what will realise the true Self in each of us, would seem to solve the deepest problems of Metaphysics as well as of Ethics. But […] [t]he introduction of these notions into Ethics is liable to bring with it a fundamental confusion between “what is” and “what ought to be”, destructive of all clearness in ethical reasoning: and if this confusion is avoided, the strictly ethical import of such notions, when made explicit, appears always to lead us to one or other of the methods previously distinguished.
Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, London, 1907, p. 6
The goal of ‘disappearing’ the indigenous Arab population points to a virtual truism buried beneath a mountain of apologetic Zionist literature: what spurred Palestinians’ opposition to Zionism was not anti-Semitism, in the sense of an irrational or abstract hatred of Jews, but rather the prospect—very real—of their own expulsion.
Norman G. Finkelstein, Image and reality of the Israel-Palestine conflict, London, 2001, pp. xii-xiii
Write about the things that truly inspire you, and do it for the benefit of others—to reduce their suffering and to increase their happiness. That’s my advice. If you do that you will achieve real ‘success’, real passion, enthusiasm and fulfilment, with or without money and status.
David Edwards, Outside the Machine: How to be an Ethical Writer, 2003
Only the willfully blind could miss noticing that Israel’s March-April invasion of the West Bank, ‘Operation Defensive Shield’, was largely a replay of the June invasion of Lebanon. To crush the Palestinians’ goal of an independent state alongside Israel—the PLO’s ‘peace offensive’—Israel laid plans in September 1981 to invade Lebanon. In order to launch the invasion, however, it needed the green light from the Reagan administration and a pretext. Much to its chagrin and despite multiple provocations, Israel was unable to elicit a Palestinian attack on its northern border. It accordingly escalated the air assaults on southern Lebanon and after a particularly murderous attack that left two hundred civilians dead (including sixty occupants of a Palestinian children’s hospital), the PLO finally retaliated, killing one Israeli. With this key pretext in hand and a green light now forthcoming from the Reagan administration, Israel invaded. Using the same slogan of ’tooting our Palestinian terror’, Israel proceeded to massacre a defenseless population, killing some 20,000 Palestinians and Lebanese between June and September 1982, almost all civilians. One might note by comparison that, as of May 2002, the official Israeli figure for Jews ‘who gave their lives for the creation and security of the Jewish State’—that is, the total number of Jews who perished in (mostly) wartime combat or in terrorist attacks from the dawn of the Zionist movement 120 years ago until the present day—comes to 21,182.
Norman G. Finkelstein, Image and reality of the Israel-Palestine conflict, London, 2001, p. xxiii
When you visited me in Laos in 1970, I was at a real low point, anguished by the bombing and feeling almost totally isolated. Your passion, commitment and shared pain about the need to stop the bombing, and warm, personal support and caring, meant more to me than you will ever know. It also meant alot to me for reasons I can’t quite explain that of the dozens and dozens of people I took out to the camps to interview the refugees from the bombing you were the only one, besides myself, to cry. Your subsequent article for the New York Review of Books and all the other writing and speaking you did on Laos, was also the only body of work that got it absolutely right. It has given me a little more faith in the species ever since to know that it has produced a Being of so much integrity, passion and intellect. I feel a lot of love for you on your birthday—and shake my head in amazement knowing that you’ll never stop.
Fred Branfman, Message for Noam Chomsky on his 70th birthday
“I believe in transhumanism”: once there are enough people who can truly say that, the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind o existence, as different from ours as ours is from that of Peking man. It will at last be consciously fulfilling its real destiny.
Julian (Julian Sorell) Huxley, New bottles for new wine, essays, London, 1957, p. 17
A morality is not incoherent simply because, in its own terms, it would be better not propagated.
Jonathan Glover, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1975, pp. vol
Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.
George Orwell, Nineteen eighty-four, London, 1949
We all know the impression of a very heavy flash of lightning in the night. Within a second’s time we see a brad landscape, not only in its general outlines but with every detail. Although we could never describe each single component of the picure, we feel that not even the smallest leaf of grass escapes our attention. We experience a view, immensely comprehensible and at the same time immensely detailed, that we never could have under normal daylight conditions, and perhaps not during the night either, if our senses and nerves were not strained by the extraordinary suddenness of the event.
Compositions must be conceived the same way. If we cannot, in the flash of a single moment, see a composition in its absolute entirety, with every pertinent detail in its proper place, we are not genuine creators.
Paul Hindemith, Composer's world, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1952, pp. 60-61
Des barbares saisissent ce chien, qui l’emporte si prodigieusement sur l’homme en amitié ; ils le clouent sur une table, et ils le dissèquent vivant pour te montrer les veines mésaraïques. Tu découvres dans lui tous les mêmes organes de sentiment qui sont dans toi. Réponds-moi, machiniste, la nature a-t-elle arrangé tous les ressorts du sentiment dans cet animal, afin qu’il ne sent pas ? a- t- il des nerfs pour être impassible ? Ne suppose point cette impertinente contradiction dans la nature.
Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique, Paris, 1764
[I]t is impossible to rationalise to oneself why you should have a meaningful and satisfying life, and these people have to endure a meaningless and horrifying life. It is impossible to rationalise, unless you consider yourself a superior human being and deserve better[.]
Counterpunch, 2001
Create all the happiness you are able to create; remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you,—will invite you to add something to the pleasure of others,—or to diminish something of their pains. And for every grain of enjoyment you sow in the bosom of another, you shall find a harvest in your own bosom,—while every sorrow which you pluck out from the thoughts and feelings of a fellow creature shall be replaced by beautiful flowers of peace and joy in the sanctuary of your soul.
Jeremy Bentham, Deontology: Together with a table of the springs of action and the article on utilitarianism, Oxford, 1983, p. xix
Identity does not emanate from consciousness but from structures of character that antedate and underpin our superficial, momentary thoughts, feelings, and volitions. Sylvia, Peter, Keith, Beverly, Aubrey, and Nicola will still be who they are no matter what they think or intend or attempt to do at any particular moment. When what one is is constituted by an entire body of lived experience, the relative importance of passing states of consciousness pales.
Raymond Carney and Leonard Quart, The films of Mike Leigh: embracing the world, Cambridge, UK ; New York, 2000, p. 18
[T]he addict himself has a special blind spot as far as the progress of his habit is concerned. He generally does not realize that he is getting a habit at all. He says there is no need to get a habit if you are careful and observe a few rules like shooting every other day. Actually, he does not observe these rules, but every extra shot is regarded as exceptional.
William S. Burroughs, Junky, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England ; New York, N.Y., U.S.A, 1977, p. 22
No puedo concebir ningún acuerdo o consentimiento a la pena. El funcionamiento selectivo y azaroso del sistema penal hace que el 95% de la población penal lo perciba como una ruleta y reflexione en la cárcel sobre la próxima oportunidad, que será la “buena”. Ignora que esa ruleta está cargada y que para él no habrá “buena”, porque no está entrenado para hacerlo “bien”. El poder selectivo punitivo le despierta y fomenta la vocación de jugador y el ladrón que puebla las “jaulas” es el eterno perdedor al que, al igual que los “fulleros”, alguna vez lo entusiasma con un “chance”.
No hay derecho, 1992, pp. 5-8