Monthly Archives: June 2004

John Broome

[W]e have no reason to trust anyone’s intuitions about very large numbers, however excellent their philosophy. Even the best philosophers cannot get an intuitive grasp of, say, tens of billions of people. That is no criticism; these numbers are beyond intuition. But these philosophers ought not to think their intuition can tell them the truth about such large numbers of people.

For very large numbers, we have to rely on theory, not intuition. When people first built bridges, they managed without much theory. They could judge a log by eye, relying on their intuition. Their intuitions were reliable, being built on long experience with handling wood and stone. But when people started spinning broad rivers with steel and concrete, their intuition failed them, and they had to resort to engineering theory and careful calculations. The cables that support suspension bridges are unintuitively slender.

Our moral intuitions are formed and polished in our homely interactions with the few people we have to deal with in ordinary life. But nowadays the scale of our societies and the power of our technologies raise moral problems that involve huge numbers of people. […] No doubt our homely intuitive morality gives us a starting point, but we have to project our morality beyond the homely to the vast new arenas. To do this properly, we have to engage all the care and accuracy we can, and develop a moral theory.

Indeed, we are more dependent on theory than engineers are, because moral conclusions cannot be tested in the way engineers’ conclusions are tested. If an engineer gets her calculations wrong, her mistake will be revealed when the bridge falls down. But a mistake in moral theory is never revealed like that. If we do something wrong, we do not later see the error made manifest; we can only know it is an error by means of theory too. Moreover, our mistakes can be far more damaging and kill far more people than the collapse of a bridge. Mistakes in allocating healthcare resources may do great harm to millions. So we have to be exceptionally careful in developing our moral theory.

John Broome, Weighing Lives, Oxford, 2004, pp. 56-57

Carlos Santiago Nino

We tell someone that such and such a thing is what morality requires, and he replies that he agrees with us but does not see why he should do what morality requires. What could we say in reply? The individual could have reasons of prudence to do the same thing that morality requires, but, if he asks that question, it is probable that he does not have those reasons or that they are not enough for him. But, if they are not reasons of prudence, what other kinds of reasons is he looking for? What is the meaning of ‘should’ in the question ‘why should I be moral?’ The only possible answer is that the reasons in question must be moral ones and that the duty alluded to by the expression ‘should’ must be amoral duty, since our practical reasoning does not admit reasons and duties of a higher order. But the person who asks these questions will not, of course, be satisfied with an answer which presupposes what he is doubting. What is he in fact asking? The very question seems to involve a contradiction, since once adequately articulated it reads: What moral reason do I have to do what morality prescribes, which is not a reason which is derived from morality itself? This is like asking who is the lucky woman who is the wife of the richest bachelor on earth, and being distressed that we do not get an answer.

Carlos Santiago Nino, The Ethics of Human Rights, Oxford, 1991, pp. 81-82

David Cronenberg

Roger, I had a very disturbing dream last night. In this dream I found myself making love to a strange man. Only I’m having trouble you see, because he’s old … and dying … and he smells bad, and I find him repulsive. But then he tells me that everything is erotic, that everything is sexual. You know what I mean? He tells me that even old flesh is erotic flesh. That disease is the love of two alien kinds of creatures for each other. That even dying is an act of eroticism. That talking is sexual. That breathing is sexual. That even to physically exist is sexual. And I believe him, and we make love beautifully.

David Cronenberg, Shivers, 1975

Francisco Luis Bernárdez

Macedonio era un hombre dispuesto a defender su singularidad de cualquier manera, un hombre que era una especie de isla en este país. Entonces el país no era la sociedad de masas que es ahora, era más fácil defender esta ínfima partícula que es un hombre. Hoy se le imponen a uno las películas, las novelas, la música: la coacción del medio es mucho más fuerte de lo que era antes.

Francisco Luis Bernárdez, in Germán Leopoldo García (ed.), Hablan de Macedonio Fernández, Buenos Aires, 1968

Isaac Levi

Agency is undoubtedly a morally relevant trait; but it is one among many.

Isaac Levi, ‘Conflict and Social Agency’, The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 79, no. 5 (May, 1982), p. 237

Liam Murphy & Thomas Nagel

Private property is a legal convention, defined in part by the tax system; therefore, the tax system cannot be evaluated by looking at its impact on private property, conceived as something that has independent existence and validity. Taxes must be evaluated as part of the overall system of property rights that they help to create. Justice or injustice in taxation can only mean justice or injustice in the system of property rights and entitlements that result from a particular tax regime.

Liam Murphy & Thomas Nagel, The Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice, New York, 2002, p. 8

G. A. Cohen

Before I first went to university I had a belief, which I still have, and which is probably shared by the great majority of you. I mean the belief that the way to decide whether a given economic period is good or bad economically is by considering the welfare of people in general at the relevant time. If people are on the whole well off, then on the whole the times are good, and if they are not, then the times are bad. Because I had this belief before I got to university, I was surprised by something I heard in one of the first lectures I attended, which was given by the late Frank Cyril James, who, as it happens, obtained his Bachelor of Commerce degree here at the London School of Economics in 1923. When I heard him he was Principal and Vice-Chancellor of McGill University, where, in addition to occupying the Principalship, he gave lectures every year on the economic history of the world, from its semiscrutable beginnings up to whatever year he was lecturing in. In my case the year was 1958, and in the lecture I want to tell you about James was describing a segment of modern history, some particular quarter-century or so: I am sorry to say I cannot remember which one. But I do remember something of what he said about it. ‘These’, he said, referring to the years in question, ‘were excellent times economically. Prices were high, wages were low . . .’ And he went on, but I did not hear the rest of his sentence.

I did not hear it because I was busy wondering whether he had meant what he said, or, perhaps, had put the words ‘high’ and ‘low’ in the wrong places. For though I had not studied economics, I was convinced that high prices and low wages made for hard times, not good ones. In due course I came to the conclusion that James was too careful to have transposed the two words. It followed that he meant what he said. And it also followed that what he meant when he said that times were good was that they were good for the employing classes, for the folk he was revealing himself to be a spokesman of, since when wages are low and prices are high you can make a lot of money out of wage workers. Such candour about the properly purely instrumental position of the mass of humankind was common in nineteenth century economic writing, and James was a throwback to, or a holdover from, that age. For reasons to be stated in a moment, frank discourse of the Cyril James sort is now pretty rare, at any rate in public. It is discourse which, rather shockingly, treats human labour the way the capitalist system treats it in reality: as a resource for the enhancement of the wealth and power of those who do not have to labour, because they have so much wealth and power.

G. A. Cohen, ‘Freedom, Justice and Capitalism’, New Left Review, no. 126 (March/April, 1981), pp. 3-4

Larry Temkin

[I]n 1997 Americans gave a total of 154 billion to philanthropic causes, either as individuals, or through foundations, corporations, or charitable bequests. But the vast majority of that went to religious institutions, alma maters, and so on, and only a small fraction of it, two billion, went to international aid. Still, two billion sure seems like a big number, so let me note a few other figures for comparison. […] Some years back, I read on the back of a Lays potato chip bag that Americans consumed 390,000,000 pounds of Lays potato chips per year. I found that a staggering number, as it did not include all of the other brands of chips and such that Americans consume: Fritos, Tostitos, Doritos, pretzels, Corn Curls, onion rings, popcorn, and so on. So I did a quick check on the Internet. In the year 2000, Americans spent approximately 190 billion dollars on soft drinks, candy, chips, and other snack foods.

Larry Temkin, ‘Thinking about the Needy, Justice and International Organizations’, The Journal of Ethics, vol. 8, no. 4 (December, 2004), pp. 362-363

Jean Bricmont

The importance of thought control of the general population suggests precisely that the role of the critical intellectual is crucial for any movement aiming at liberating social change. [T]he writings of Noam Chomsky offer an outstanding example of what a critical intellectual can do. Political activities of (leftist) intellectuals often oscillate between two extremes: either they absorb themselves entirely into militant work (usually when they are young) and do not really use their specific abilities as intellectuals; or they retreat from that kind of involvement, but then limit themselves to expressing moral indignation disconnected from genuine political analysis.

Jean Bricmont, ‘The Responsibility of the Intellectual’, in James McGilvray (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Chomsky, Cambridge, 2005, pp. 280-281

Horacio González

Demasiadas veces se escucha hablar de ‘postmoderno’ sólo para proponer un neoliberalismo despolitizador, que pretende superar ‘viejas izquierdas y derechas’ pero apenas hace del político una figura destinada a decir con énfasis que nadie debe hacerse ilusiones.

Horacio González, Unidos, no. 9

Pablo Giussani

Con [su] compañía y las conductas que de ella derivaban, el candidato peronista [adormeció] los reflejos antigolpistas de la población. El mayor de los cargos formulables hoy contra Menem es precisamente el de haber quebrado, por ambición de poder, aquella línea divisoria tan claramente trazada todavía en abril de 1987 entre una civilidad uniformemente democrática y el autoritarismo castrense.

Pablo Giussani, Menem, su lógica secreta, Buenos Aires, 1990, p. 85

John Dunn

To suppose that there are (positive) legal reasons why a formally valid law can be voided for moral impropriety is a logical error. To suppose that all formally valid laws are morally obligatory is a moral error.

John Dunn, ‘Consent in the Political Theory of John Locke’, The Historical Journal, vol. 10, no. 2 (1967), p. 153-182

Pablo Giussani

A los montoneros les tocó vivir una realmente dramática contradicción entre la mayor oportunidad jamás concedida a un grupo de izquierda en la Argentina para la construcción de un gran movimiento político y la cotidiana urgencia infantil por inmolar esa posibilidad al deleite de ofrecer un testimonio tremebundo de sí mismo.

Pablo Giussani, Montoneros, la soberbia armada, Buenos Aires, 1984, p. 40

Thomas Moro Simpson

¿Se acuerdan de aquel tiempo tan lejano,
de aquella luz que de Moscú venía,
cuando Stalin, que nunca se dormía,
cuidaba, humilde, el porvenir humano?

¿De tanta discusión árida y trunca,
pan venenoso de aquel tiempo ido,
puñal para el amigo más querido,
discordia cruel que no terminó nunca?

¿De aquel Stalin tan noble y tan heroico,
“padre de pueblos”, “luz del siglo XX”,
que al final resultó ser solamente
“un sádico vulgar y paranoico”?

¿De aquel hombre de “gran sabiduría,
manos de obrero y traje de soldado”
que en órdenes secretas prescribía
“la tortura de cada desdichado”?

¿Recuerdan los “engaños” tan arteros
de la prensa burguesa occidental,
mientras Stalin “cuidaba” a los obreros
con sus bellos “bigotes de cristal”?

Culpable para el hombre más honesto,
asesinado Bujarin moría,
pero mandó una carta que decía:
“José, José, ¿por qué me hiciste esto?”

Lo preguntó, pero de todos modos
lo daba Nicolás por descontado;
varios años atrás había gritado:
“¡Es Gengis Khan! ¡Nos va a matar a todos!”

Y en la Historia oficial, ya fusilado,
“Bujarin” se escribía con minúscula:
ningún traidor merece la mayúscula
con que se escribe todo nombre honrado.

Muchos, muchos compraron su boleto
para “el tren de la Historia”, hacia Utopía,
y llegaron a un topos donde había
sólo la muerte, en sórdido secreto.

Poetas y filósofos cantaban
al “hombre nuevo” del Jardín florido,
y ante un cambio en la línea del Partido
a otro sueño fugaz se abandonaban.

¿Se acuerdan del Zdanof el asesino,
inquisidor con un disfraz de artista,
a quien un hombre puro y cristalino
apodaba “brillante dogmatista”?

Y cuando con cincuenta megatones
la bomba en Rusia se mostró de veras,
escribió que “cincuenta primaveras
hizo estallar la URSS en sus regiones”.

Yo conocí a un poeta muy sensible
que se mudó a la calle Rokososky,
y ese hombre tan cálido y querible
cantó al asesinato de León Trotsky.

Y aquel francés, un pensador intenso,
que confesó en un texto muy prolijo:
“Si los rusos me tratan como a un hijo,
¿cómo quieren que diga lo que pienso?”

Mi amigo althusseriano era otra cosa:
vestía con dialéctica destreza
un traje Mao, confección francesa
con botoncitos chinos, negro y rosa.

¡Qué prisiones aquéllas! ¡Cuánta vida,
cuánta ilusión que terminó en escoria,
cuánta frivolidad sobre una herida
más honda que la noche y que la historia!

Thomas Moro Simpson, ‘Veinte años después: ¡qué tiempos aquellos!’ in Dios, el mamboretá y la mosca, Madrid, 1993, pp. 59-61

José Ferrater Mora

[E]n numerosos países aflora la tendencia a verlo todo, o casi, desde el punto de vista del entretenimiento. Lo que pueda entretener es bienvenido o bienquisto; lo que no, poco atractivo, mal visto y hasta sospechoso. Y esto ocurre no sólo en el mundo de “los espectáculos”—que, al fin y al cabo, suelen organizarse para mayor y mejor entretenimiento del público—, sino asimismo en casi todas las actividades, incluyendo las antaño juzgadas más graves, como la educación, la religión y la política.

José Ferrater Mora, ‘Un mundo feliz’, in Mariposas y supercuerdas: Diccionario para nuestro tiempo, Barcelona, 1993, p. 260

Macedonio Fernández

[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)

Ursula Le Guin

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)

Perry Anderson

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