Juan Suriano

¿Dónde terminó el anarquismo? Refiriéndose al caso español un autor sostiene que “su movimiento se perdió en la evolución de los tiempos, pero sus problemas de libertad e igualdad quedaron incroporados a la cultura de la sociedad europea, y por tanto, factibles de extenderse al resto del mundo”. El anarquismo argentino también se extravió en el transcurso del siglo XX y, como su homónimo hispano, instaló en la sociedad local problemas de libertad e igualdad. Fue casi la única corriente contestataria que defendió la libertad individual y la igualdad de todos los hombres como valores supremos. Ni el Estado ni el interés partidario o doctrinario debían interponerse entre el individuo y su libertad, y, en este sentido, se diferenció de cualquier grupo o partido de izquierda. Estas ideas eran heredadas del liberalismo, pero a diferencia de aquél, el anarquismo las puso en práctica (o intentó hacerlo) entre los sectores más oprimidos de la sociedad. Tal vez los actuales movimientos de derechos humanos en su defensa de los derechos civiles y, consecuentemente, de las libertades individuales sean herederos del individualismo libertario.

Juan Suriano, Anarquistas: Cultura y política libertaria en Buenos Aires. 1890 – 1910, Buenos Aires, 2001, p. 342

Ursula Le Guin

A proper body’s not an object, not an implement, not a belonging to be admired, it’s just you, yourself. Only when it’s no longer you, but yours, a thing owned, do you worry about it –Is it in good shape? Will it do? Will it last?

Ursula Le Guin, ‘The Day before the Revolution’, Galaxy, vol. 8 (August, 1974)

Stephen Holmes and Cass Sunstein

The most ardent antigovernment libertarian tacitly accepts his own dependency on government, even while rhetorically denouncing signs of dependency in others. This double-think is the core of the American libertarian stance. Those who propagate a libertarian philosophy–such as Robert Nozick, Charles Murray, and Richard Epstein–speak fondly of the “minimal state.” But describing a political system that is genuinely capable of representing force and fraud as “minimal” is to suggest, against all historical evidence, that such a system is easy to achieve and maintain.

Stephen Holmes and Cass Sunstein, The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes, New York, 1999, p. 64

MTD de Solano y Colectivo Situaciones

Lo que estamos haciendo en el movimiento es una batalla muy grande contra el furor hegemónico de la mundialización, que se quiere apoderar de valores culturales, y así se quiere apoderar del mundo. Frente a eso nosotros nos hacemos una pregunta: ¿cuáles son los valores verdaderos de una civilización distinta? Y, por el contrario, ¿qué es lo que valora una sociedad globalizacda? Sabemos: el mercado, la rentabilidad, y la persona como un valor de compra y venta. Nosotros tratamos de recuperar y crear otros valores culturales, éticos, otra sabiduría, la creatividad.

MTD de Solano y Colectivo Situaciones, La hipótesis 891: más allá de los piquetes, Buenos Aires, 2002, p. 69

Carl Sagan

Unexpected discoveries are useful for calibrating pre-existing ideas. G. W. F. Hegel has had a very powerful imprint on professional philosophy of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and a profound influence on the future of the world because Karl Marx took him very seriously (although sympathetic critics have argued that Marx’s arguments would have been more compelling had he never heard of Hegel). In 1799 or 1800 Hegel confidently stated, using presumably the full armamentarium of philosophy available to him, that no new celestial objects could exist within the solar system. One year later, the asteroid Ceres was discovered. Hegel then seems to have returned to pursuits less amenable to disproof.

Carl Sagan, Broca’s Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science, New York, 1974, p. 235

Judith Jarvis Thomson

[O]ther things being equal it is worse to cause an animal pain than to cause an adult human being pain. An adult human being can, as it were, think his or her way around the pain to what lies beyond it in the future; an animal -like a human baby-cannot do this, so that there is nothing for the animal but the pain itself.

Judith Jarvis Thomson, The Realm of Rights, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1990, pp. 292-293

Peter Suber

If a simplification actually creates fewer problems that it prevents, and makes life better than a truer theory that is more respectful of complexity, subtlety, ambiguity, and indeterminacy, then courage requires that we be fictionalists and admit it.

Peter Suber, ‘Against the Sanctity of Life’

Bruce Charlton & Peter Andras

In a nutshell, hunter-gatherers require coercion or persuasion to join the modern world, while peasants typically require coercion to keep them as peasants. It is probable that hunting and gathering is more humanly satisfying that modern life, but since it is not a viable way of supporting the world’s population, the superiority of modern societies over traditional societies seems to be decisive. Given that the realistic choice lies between traditional and modernizing societies, modernization seems clearly the more desirable option.

Bruce Charlton & Peter Andras, The Modernization Imperative, Exeter, 2003, p. 19

Aldous Huxley

Open your eyes again and look at Nataraja up there on the altar. Look closely. In the upper right hand, as you’ve already seen, he holds the drum that calls the world into existence and in his upper left hand he carries the destroying fire. Life and death, order and disintegration, impartially. But now look at Shiva’s other pair of hands. The lower right hand is raised and the palm is turned outwards. What does that mean? It signifies, ‘Don’t be afraid: it’s All Right’. But how can anyone in his senses fail to be afraid, when it’s so obvious that they’re all wrong? Nataraja has the answer. Look now at his lower left hand. He’s using it to point down at his feet. And what are his feet doing? Look closely and you’ll see that the right foot is planted squarely on a horrible little subhuman creature—the demon, Muyalaka. A dwarf, but immensely powerful in his malignity, Muyalaka is the embodiment of ignorance, the manifestation of greedy, possessive selfhood. Stamp on him, break his back! And that’s precisely what Nataraja is doing. Trampling the little monster down under his right foot. But notice that it isn’t at his trampling right foot that he points his finger; it’s at the left foot, the foot that, as he dances, he’s in the act of rising from the ground. And why does he point at it? Why? That lifted foot, that dancing defiance of the force of gravity—it’s the symbol of release, of Moksha, of liberation. Nataraja dances in all the worlds at once—in the world of physics and chemistry, in the world of ordinary, all-too-human experience, in the world finally of Suchness, of Mind, of the Clear Light…

Aldous Huxley, Island, New York, 1962, pp. 206-207

John Harris

[S]omeone who does not see that the remediable suffering of others creates obligations is simply not a moral agent.

John Harris, ‘Organ Procurement: Dead Interests, Living Needs’, Journal of Medical Ethics, vol. 29, no. 3 (2003), p. 133

Ernesto Garzón Valdés

Como la realidad es siempre compleja, de vez en cuando Félix lee en los periódicos argentinos o españoles algunas crónicas de hechos que parecen destinados a compensar o corregir los errores ético-jurídicos de la Argentina moralizante y de los primeros años del gobierno de Menem. […]

“–¿Vos sos Astiz?
–Sí, ¿y vos quién sos?
–No importa. Vos sos un asesino hijo de puta.”

Como si se tratase de un silogismo práctico, un puñetazo en la cara del marino fue la acción con la que culminó la breve confirmación de identidad de este personaje condenado en ausencia a prisión perpetua en Francia por el asesinato de dos monjas francesas y miembro del Servicio de Inteligencia Naval argentino hasta junio de 1997.

Ernesto Garzón Valdés, El velo de la ilusión: apuntes sobre una vida argentina y su realidad política, Buenos Aires, 2000, p. 214

Fernando Tesón

Almost every argument for immigration controls is flawed. Take, for example, the argument that we need to ‘protect out jobs’. Well, why is someone who charges too much for his labour entitled to keep that job and not be out competed? The usual answer is that it is all right to be out competed by a compatriot but not by a foreigner. But this is simply xenophobic (‘communitarian’ would be a more charitable word)[.]

Fernando Tesón, ‘On Trade and Justice’, Theoria, vol. 51, no. 104 (August, 2004), p. 196

Robert Wright

It is surprising to see such a warm, mushy idea—brotherly love—grow out of a word as cold and clinical as “utilitarianism.” But it shouldn’t be. Brotherly love is implicit in the standard formulations of utilitarianism—maximum total happiness, the greatest good for the greatest number. In other words: everyone’s happiness counts equally; you are not priviledged, and you shouldn’t act as if you are.

Robert Wright, The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology, New York, 1994, p. 336

George Woodcock

The anarchists attack the principle of authority which is central to contemporary social forms, and in doing so they arouse a guilty kind of repugnance in ordinary people; they are rather like Ivan Karamazov crying out in the court-room, ‘Who does not desire his father’s death?’ The very ambivalence of the average man’s attitude to authority makes him distrust those who speak openly the resentments he feels in secret, and thus it is in the psychological condition which Erich Fromm has named ‘the fear of freedom’ that we may find the reason why—against the evidence of history—so many people still identify anarchism with unmitigated destruction and nihilism and political terror.

George Woodcock, Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Movements and Ideas, Harmondsworth, 1975, pp. 14

Ángel Cappelletti

Es frecuente entre los historiadores y sociólogos que se ocupan hoy del anarquismo afirmar que éste representa una ideología del pasado. Si con ello se quiere decir simplemente que tal ideología logró su máxima influencia en el pueblo y en el movimiento obrero a fines del siglo XIX y durante la primera década del XX, nada podemos objetar. Pero si ese juicio implica la idea de que el anarquismo es algo muerto y esencialmente inadecuado al mundo del presente, si pretende que él no puede interpretar ni cambiar la sociedad de hoy, creemos que constituye un notorio error. Frente a la grave crisis (teórica y práctica) del marxismo, que se debate entre un stalinismo más o menos vergonzante y una socialdemocracia que suele renegar de su pasado, el anarquismo representa, más bien, la ideología del futuro.

Ángel Cappelletti, La ideología anarquista, Buenos Aires, 1992, pp. 130-131

Rafael Barrett

Anarquista es el que cree posible vivir sin el principio de autoridad. Hay organismos esencialmente anarquistas, por ejemplo la ciencia moderna, cuyos progresos son enormes desde que se ha sustituido el criterio autoritario por el de la verificación experimental.

Rafael Barrett, Moralidades actuales, Montevideo, 1910

E. F. Schumacher

We produce in order to be able to afford certain amenities and comforts as “consumers”. If, however, somebody demanded these same amenities and comforts while he was engaged in “production”, he would be told that this would be uneconomic, that it would be inefficient, and that society could not afford such inefficiency.

E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, London, 1974, p. 87

Oscar Wilde

With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

Oscar Wilde, ‘The Soul of Man Under Socialism’, Fortnightly Review, vol. 291 (February, 1891)

Jon Elster

It would be good if we could somehow insulate our passions from our reasoning powers; and to some extent we can. Some people are quite good at compartmentalizing their emotions. Often, however, they don’t have very strong emotions in the first place. They may get what they want, but they do not want very much. Granting supreme importance to cognitive rationality is achieved at the cost of not having much they want to be rational about.

Jon Elster, Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences, Cambridge, 1989, p. 70

Shelly Kagan

Those readers troubled by the fact that millions of people will die this year, who could have been saved for a few dollars each, might want to consider making a contribution to Oxfam. In the United States, the address is: Oxfam America, P.O. Box 4215, Boston MA 02211-4215.

Shelly Kagan, Normative Ethics, Boulder, 1998, p. 316

Alan Carter

Red flags and red guards, professional vanguards,
Stalin and Lenin, and rule from the Kremlin,
The Central Committee has told me to sing:
‘These are a few of my favourite things.’

Strict iron discipline and militarization,
Subject the nation to centralization.
Deep in my conscience I hear someone say:
‘When will the state start to wither away?’

When the Tsar falls,
Commissar calls,
Or I’m feeling sad,
I simply remember from March to September
Freedom was to…
Be had.

Alan Carter, ‘My Favourite Things’, in Marx: A Radical Critique, Brighton, 1988, p. xiv

James Hillman & Michael Ventura

We’re working on our relationships constantly, and our feelings and reflections, but look what’s left out of that. What’s left out is a deteriorating world. So shy hasn’t therapy noticed that? Because psychotherapy is only working on that “inside” soul. By removing the soul from the world and not recognizing that the soul is also in the world, psychotherapy can’t do its job anymore. The buildings are sick, the institutions are sick, the baking system’s sick, the schools, the streets—the sickness is out there.

James Hillman & Michael Ventura, We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy–And the World’s Getting Worse, San Francisco, 1992, pp. 3-4

Liam Murphy

Deontology is individualistic: we are not in it together, but each on our own. To say that the compliance effects of a constraint against killing should be fairly distributed among all agents would be like saying that the children of two families that have no contact with each other should all be treated fairly by the four parents.

Liam Murphy, Moral Demands in Nonideal Theory, Oxford, 2000, p. 94

Gore Vidal

[E]very candidate of the party that votes is being forced this year to take a stand on abortion, and if the stand should be taken on law and not on the Good Book, the result can be very ugly indeed for the poor politician because abortion is against God’s law: “Thou shalt not kill.” Since this commandment is absolute any candidate who favors abortion must be defeated as a Satanist. On the other hand, any candidate who does not favor capital punishment must be defeated as permissive. In the land of the twice-born, the life of the fetus is sacred; the life of the adult is not.

Gore Vidal, ‘The Real Two-Party System’, in United States: Essays, 1952-1992, New York, 2001, p. 953

Thomas Schelling & Morton Halperin

Conflict of interest is a social phenomenon unlikely to disappear, and potential recourse to violence and damage will always suggest itself if the conflict gets out of hand Man’s capability for self-destruction cannot be eradicated–he knows too much! Keeping that capability under control–providing incentives to minimize recourse to violence–is the eternal challenge.

Thomas Schelling & Morton Halperin, Strategy and Arms Control, Washington, 1985, p. 5

James Griffin

The role that intuitions can play in moral philosophy is the role that we are content to let them play in other departments of thought (it is only in moral philosophy that they have risen so far above their epistemological station). In mathematics, the natural sciences, and other branches of philosophy, finding a conclusion intuitively repugnant does not close an argument; it is a reason to start looking for a good argument.

James Griffin, Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement, and Moral Importance, Oxford, 1986, p. 2