TSN nº7, enero-junio 2019 ISSN: 2530-8521
PhD António
dos Santos Queirós
Centro de Filosofía de la
Universidad de Lisboa
CFUL
Abstract
This paper wants to discuss the political dimension of the human being,
and what means the good and the devil, for the XXI century polices of
communication.
From… the Aristotelian Man, that is not only a philosophical
abstraction, but also a citizen; Aristotle’s thought builds a bridge between
two dimensions of human being, the philosophy of existence and political
philosophy.
To… the utilitarian ethics of Jeremy Bentham and Stuart Mill, assumes
that "not only any action of a private individual, but all the Government
measures" must improve the well-being and reduce suffering. Far away the
primacy of duty (eudainomia) from
Aristotle, he based morality of action on benefits back to their subject and/or
in the principle of less suffering caused to the "other".
And crossing… the XIX century when Feuerbach and Marx focused the debate
about the concept of alienation on the religion issue.
To… Lukács understanding alienation as a historical loss of totality
that we can already find on the historical trajectory of institutions of social
life, creating a “second nature” were the individual person can´t find the
world meaning.
To…Marcuse: The possibility to recognize that utopia on a good sense,
the unity of the global representation of the word with the citizen
consciousness, postulates the opposed possibility, the full alienation of the
individual person, manipulated by a global power, economic, political and
ideological. The concept of double negation employed by Marcuse is a critical
response to negation of personal freedom by an oppressive/repressive
socio/economic system and to the development of individual-critical
consciousness.
When analyzes the concept of alienation we don’t want obliterate the
ontological issue and the philosophical contribution of existentialism, as a
plural literary-philosophical phenomenon crossing two centuries. The core of
this study is not the fundamental debate about the “meaning of being”_ the
paradoxical presence of God, from
Kieergard, the challenge of nihilism, “God is dead,” from Nietzsche, the
“Dasein,” (“being that we ourselves
are”), from Heidegger, “the
existentialism is a new humanism,” from Sartre…
This
paper wants focus the philosophical debate, about the question of political
alienation, in the XXI century philosophical practices and ethical practices, what
means discuss the key question:
Alienation and single thought. What are the hidden philosopheme of
single thought? Alienation on the discourse of social media, multimedia and
cybernetic communication, why and how are diffused?
Keywords
Alienation. Single thoughts. Media. Political
Philosophy. Ethics
Resumo
Este artículo quiere discutir la dimensión política del ser humano, y lo que significa el bien y el mal, para las políticas de comunicación del siglo XXI.
Realizaremos un recorrido que se inicia con el hombre aristotélico, que no es solo una abstracción filosófica, sino también un ciudadano. El pensamiento de Aristóteles construye un puente entre dos dimensiones
del ser humano: la filosofía de la existencia y la filosofía política.
Para llegar a la ética utilitaria de Jeremy Bentham y Stuart Mill, que postula que “no solo cualquier acción de un individuo privado, sino todas las medidas gubernamentales” deben mejorar el bienestar y reducir el sufrimiento. Lejos de la primacía del deber (eudaimonia) de Aristóteles, su ética asentó la moralidad de la acción en los beneficios de vuelta al sujeto o en el principio de causar el menor dolor al “otro”. Y pasaremos el siglo XIX hasta Feuerbach y Marx, quienes centraron el debate sobre el concepto de alienación en la cuestión de la religión.
Hasta llegar a Lukács, Marcuse, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre…
En suma, este ensayo quiere centrar el debate filosófico en el tema de la alienación política, la práctica filosófica y ética del siglo XXI, lo que significa discutir la cuestión clave: alienación y pensamiento único. Y sus corolarios: ¿cuáles son los filosofemas ocultos del pensamiento único? Alienación en el discurso de las redes sociales, multimedia y comunicación cibernética,
¿por qué y cómo se difunde?
PALABRAS CLAVE
Alienación, pensamiento único, medios, filosofía, política, ética
1. Introducción. Ethics and Moral
The Wittgenstein's distinction between ethics and moral are common to
most contemporary philosophical thought, moral is placed in the order of the
rules and social conventions and the ethics is situated in the field of
personal experience.
However, if ethics emerges of subjectivity of each individual person,
does not have universal value.
But why not inquire this
principle and, at the same time, in terms of morals and ethics, their common
nature of social product, how singular, autonomous and original it seems the
philosophical thought that supports them, without depreciate the specific
speech from philosophy? Why oppose so irreducibly subjectivity and universal value?
The question is: the existence of universal moral values may or may not be
recognized by the subjectivity of each and every human being, like happen with
the international law? The environmental values could create a new ethical
paradigm, with various ethical practices and new moral conventions subordinated
to a global bioethics?
Inquiring those aporias leads to revisit the history of philosophy, not
in a chronological logic but in dilemmatic logic.
The compromise "of practical wisdom" of Ricoeur is a real
possibility not just because it emanates from two models of action – the
theological Aristotelian and the deontological Kantian – only formally
separated, but because these models share a common culture and society.
Our perspective is not to replace the philosophical discourse by a
sociological analysis or an anthropology study. Philosophical discourse has a
specific identity that is distinct from the literary speech or the
psychological analysis. But, that don’t means philosophical discourse cannot
coexist or cross other speeches, as the arts and politics, and by this way we
arrive to the issue of political philosophy.
Ethics and city-state
In Aristotelian teleology, the symbiosis between the ontological,
anthropological and ethical levels outcome from human nature, which have in its
own nature the virtues of reason to proceed cautiously by the good and achieve
happiness (eudaimonia)?
The supreme virtue is wisdom (sóphos) which go ahead to
contemplation. Prudence raises the man on the condition of the city's ruler and
confers them moral superiority because it combines in itself the ethical and
political dimension; but contemplation already is from the domain of the divine
sphere.
The Aristotelian Man is not only a philosophical abstraction, but also
a citizen; Aristotle’s thought builds a bridge between two dimensions of human
being, the philosophy of existence and political philosophy.
Aristotle’s human beings are the only species that has not only
biological capacities but a “rational soul” as well.
Aristotle conceives of ethical theory in order to live in accordance
with virtue, one way in which such goods as friendship, pleasure, health…fit
together as a whole and in lifelong activities. The rational part of the soul
searches the highest good!
We become virtuous on the city community, sharing with parents,
citizens and friends the responsibility for acquiring and exercising the
virtues.
Aristotle identifies the nature of human being with its end or final
cause to the good, in the Physics and in the Eudemian Ethics. For
human beings the ultimate good or their natural function consists in walk way
to inaccessible perfection.
The Politics postulates the political nature of human beings for living
in the city-state.
Aristotle maintains that only on the city-state human beings attains
the limit of good life, which means accept the law and justice authority of the
community.
On the political context of Aristotle age, different forms of rule are
required for citizens and despotic rule for slaves. Disturb those balanced
system will results in disorder and injustice. In this political context the
main principle of the rule of reason also implies different constitutions for
different city-states, justifying tyranny or democracy.
Modernity broken human nature
When the philosophy of Descartes announces its vision of modernity of
human thought, that emerges from an autonomous subject who thinks and acts
using the reason, the division between the human being and nature does not
become inevitable, they are the result from the dilemmatic choice of the
philosopher (s).
If opened the way to study nature as object of science, to discover
mechanical laws designed by God in the cosmos, the raise of the man above
nature, reigning over all beings and things for the award of the Creator, came
from the domain of religion and politics and from the subordination of
philosophy to its dogmas and interests. It’s appears in the first flush of
mercantilism, as a social necessity.
The moral void, that the Cartesian philosophy does not occupied, it's
not inevitable consequence of the abandonment of divine conception of human
nature and their ontological, ethical and anthropological unity; even in
classical Western philosophy, in parallel with the Aristotelian thought, other
concepts of moral emerged without religious foundation, but never becoming
dominant.
Such was the case of Epicurus, which work we know only a few fragments,
that is singularly modern in its appeal to the altruism in relation to the
“other” and concerning the possession of material goods, the practice of gender
equality in the gardens of the philosophy and above recognition of the
intrinsic meaning of life liberated from the heuristics of fear ... of death.
Or, at the East and China, the morals rules of Confucian and Tao.
The doctrine founded by Confucius advocated the implementation of
ethical codes and rituals to guide the community in their conduct and persuade
its members to love and respect each other, and to restore the order on the
society and on the family, based on a solid hierarchy system. In this moral
system, Jen (Compassion) and Yi (compassion), prevail over the Li
(interest/benefit).
The philosophical Taoism, a philosophical school based on the texts Dao
De Jing (道德 经) attributed to Laozi and
Zhuangzi (庄子),
and their tian-dao or "nature's way", propose not a moral code but a
species of spiritual self-discipline that emphasizes the autonomy of being
conscious and its unity with the universal nature and leads the man to act
respecting the three Moral Treasures: compassion, moderation, and humility.
Backing to the advent of the modern age, the thought of Bento de
Espinosa surmount the dichotomy between the subjectivity and the nature,
without breaking that unity; the concept of extension of the categories of God
Substance and God Nature, unifies the being and the duty, without putting the
Man above nature and under their domain. However not denies the autonomy of
reason that Kant would elevate to a higher grade; furthermore, is that
potentiality to liberate the power of rationality and human autonomy, on the
unity of Substance and Nature, which not consents no one privileged status to
the man specie.
And if this singular vision of the human condition precipitated the
sectarian and fanatic odium of the Jewish Inquisition, also carried out the
thought of Espinosa to our modernity, what means replace the Man outside the
anthropocentric sphere, where Western philosophical and religions_ the Christian,
the Jewish and the Muslim, settle the human being.
We wrote earlier:
“Since the
publication of the pages of Spinoza's Ethics, there are two juxtaposed
conceptions of the world in philosophy: the Universe of Imagination, dominated
by an anthropomorphic conception of God, prolonged the Aristotelian and
scholastic world representation, and the Universe of Reason, which, according
to Bento de Espinosa, is the manifestation of another concept of God, God
Substance unique or God Nature, naturam naturantem and also the
intelligible reason of Nature natura naturata.
Spinoza’s God is
not the omniscient Being, omnipotent, creator and transcendent to the world,
all merciful, Lord of Heaven and of Hell and Supreme Doomsday Punisher.
Their conception of
the world is not based on the beliefs of any church and its dogmas. The meaning
of life is inherent to human nature and man's destiny is to adjust their
thoughts and action to the universal order that is inherent to the world. The
ontological existence of beings and the phenomenology of the universe are the
manifestation of a single being ontologically infinite, with infinity
attributes, from which, ourselves, humans beings, recognize essentially two:
thoughts, or reason for the intelligibility of the things and the extension or
material reality, the natura naturata.
This ontology and this
epistemology, this pantheism of reason not from the representation of nature,
that configures their conception of the universe, become inseparable from
ethical of life and cost to Espinosa the excommunication and the inquisitorial
epithet of "vomiting of hell". The "Hell are the others",
wrote Sartre in the 20th century. “The Hell, we are ourselves," replied
Lévi-Srauss. : "... we are the link between the animal and man truly
human", wrote Konrad Lorenz. And a common philosophical question: how to
live peacefully, until the end of life, and, probably, be happy? Espinosa
answer for more than three centuries: "must be taken by useless only what
contribute for the supreme perfection of the human being”.
The fundamental
intuition of Espinoza, according to which God is Nature developing itself in
accordance with the laws that are intrinsically necessary corresponds to the
last great discoveries in Astrophysics and Cosmology according to the modern
scientific reason. Hubert Reeves states that the universe, which is not eternal
and will be fifteen billion years old, is also not static and continues its
evolution from the primordial chaos, formless and without organization. The
history of the universe is the story of the growing complexity in the cosmic
scale, a progressive structuring of the cosmos, with its physical forces
governed by strict and universal laws. Such laws already had, since the
beginning, the ability to develop the complexity, life and consciousness.
According to
quantum physics, beyond a certain value, the concepts of temperature and
density of matter lose their conventional sense.
About the birth of
life, we have greater scientific certainty, which she appeared on Earth three
thousand and five hundred million years ago.
Therefore we return
to the "unknown land" and to the relativity of knowledge, but not
necessarily to a theological explanation of the origin of the Universe and
Life. ”
We can now conclude that one of the alternative routes of philosophy
and ethics evolution, which come from Epicurus and the Orient, and advocated by
Bento de Espinosa, not prevailed in the philosophical debate of the academies,
but was always present.
It would be appropriate here make a break to analyze the problem of
what is the "cause of the things" and its relationship with the
"being". The preconceived
notion that reserve to philosophy the question about "what it means to
be" and assigns to the domain of science to study of
"phenomenological causes”, can lead to the old Mechanicism and to a kind
of a new scholastic. Where that conception see only opposition, predetermined
by that prejudge, cannot have a dialectical relationship?
At least, we can re-thinking the
complex origin and nature of our common Western Culture.
The critical perspective of
anthropocentrism considers the culture Judeo-Christian as responsible from the
arrogant attitude of the human being against others species and nature. The concept of human being elected by God to
chair the divine creation induced the takeover of nature for their purposes, without
any limitation or restriction, and an amoral or utilitarian ethical
perspective.
The rationalist enlightenment, to
assign to the human condition to succeed not only about the obscurantism and
ecclesiastical and aristocratic society, but also to decipher and control the
forces of nature, open the way for unrestrained use of natural resources and to
the emergence of environmental crisis.
However, we think that this
relationship is not linear. The enlightenment of Christian orientation also
intended the existence and preservation of creatures as a continuity of the
creator act, a moral duty face to the creation of the Lord.
In spite of the struggle of same
philosophical currents that wanted to reconcile metaphysics with scientific
laws of the universe, we might be tempted to assign to positivism and scientism
the responsibility of the new regard against the holy vision of a natural word
that we must preserve. Again, we believe
that this relationship is not linear.
We think that the exploit of natural elements
as objects of commercial use is associated with the birth of a new ideology of
modern capitalism, which in the end of 19th century did advance to the latest
frontiers of market, shared in the Berlin Conference of 1885: the partition of
colonial spaces and virgin lands, accomplishing its integration in the sphere
of European and American metropolis. The
natural resources and the man, woman or child, elder, masterpiece of God's
creation, were transformed into a merchandise and the human condition reduced
to the status of mercantile "workforce".
And a new ethics (or non-ethics)
emerged slowly from the beginning of 16th rural capitalism to the 18th century
and 19th century industrialization: the denied of sacred nature of human
condition.
In the context of the capitalism
economy, stripped definitely from the stigma of medieval Christian censorship
against profit that was tolerate by the creation of purgatory, born in the beginning of primitive capitalism
to redeem them, a new “ideology of freedom” postulates now that everything is
permissible and legitimate to accumulate capital. And this procedure, to obtain more capital
gains through the increasing concentration of industrial and financial capital
it becomes “natural”, pervade the whole legal order of the State and the
spiritual and cultural environment of all nations, and proclaim the new
relations of production and exchange as the “end of History”, the pinnacle of
progress and civilization, to be eternally reproduced and expanded by the
future evolution of society.
Was this tremendous social change that generated the
modern culture and engendered the roots of different ideologies, philosophical
schools and aesthetic currents, not as a simple reflex of superstructures of
the new economic base of society, not mechanically but on a dialectical
process.
2.
The principles of "common home" and "community and planetary
solidarity"
From the first UN environmental
conferences, held in Stockholm in 1972, emerged the principle of a “common
house” "… man has two homelands, his own and planet Earth"; the
principle of a planetary community and solidarity, founders of a new
international order (political and ethical order) and the principle of
defending life on the planet and its biodiversity before humanism. (UNCHE 1972).
Those principles build a first frontier line with the cultural and
political perspective of ethnocentrism.
The critical perspective of environment philosophy toward the
ethnocentrism claims:
"Ethnocentrism is an
emotionally conditioned approach that considers and judges other societies by
their own culture’s criteria. It’s easy to see that this attitude leads to
contempt and hate of all ways of life that are different from that of the
observer. " (Dias, 1961)
The critique of ethnocentrism not only
justifies the respect for all national cultures and all forms of classical and
popular cultural expression, but also rejects any notion of superiority from a
certain model of society, race or ethnicity.
In convergence with this philosophical
view, philosophical critique against anthropocentrism inquiry the religious
vision that gives to man, elected creature by God to preside over the divine
creation, the absolute right to take ownership of nature for their purposes,
without any limit or restriction.
In the historical context of the
industrial revolution and contemporary technical and scientific revolution,
Christian and Judaic philosophy allows to accept without serious moral
restrictions the primacy of economic growth over sustainable development.
However scientific discoveries only
allow us to be sure that the balance of ecosystems favorable to life depends on
a multitude of physical, biological and geological factors and recognize that
the higher the position occupied by organisms in the food chain (remember the
biotic pyramid of Aldo Lepold), the more vulnerable they will be, as well as
some species, whose destruction would dramatically affect the entire system.
In coherence, we must also consider
that the multiple links between all forms of life (and even these with the
abiotic environment), require, in addition to the duty of preservation of our
species, to preserve the diversity of beings and their environmental niches,
from whose dynamic balance, all depends.
What today is dramatic, is the rhythm
at which biodiversity is being lost, the destruction of natural resources,
energy and the multiplication of polluting effects that reach not only the
whole lithosphere, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, the atmosphere and the
biosphere, but also, with unpredictable consequences, the fundamental genetic
material, the DNA, which conserves and reproduces the codes of life.
If we consider the emergence of our
ancestors of the human species from 4 to 5 million years ago, inside the
framework of the biological time, which is immense, nothing can assure that, as
happened to the dinosaurs in the past (sixty-five million years ago), the
kingdom of mammals won't come to an end one day and other forms of more adapted
life will continue to perpetuate the music of life in the sidereal spaces.
However, considering the Paleontology
lay which posits the "irreversibility of evolution” , imaging the
extinction of Homo sapiens sapiens
and species associated with our evolution, a world of plants, microbes and
insects, would unlikely give rise again to the human species or even to
mammals.
In this perspective, nobody can
imagine today what will be the link of the chain of life where the evolutionary
leap will occur, as nobody dreamed before that the grandfather of our human
condition was an insignificant rodent that survived the widespread extinction
of dominant species at the end of the Mesozoic Era (67 million years ago). But,
at the same time, the preservation of the human being returns to the centre of
environmental ethics, in a new ethical perspective, without unlimited domain
and privileges against “the other”
nature (critique of anthropocentrism).
So, unlike the common history of
philosophy, whose thought is focused on the Human Being, environmental
philosophy directs the human thinking to the “Raison d’ Être” (the sense of
existence) of the world and their Phenomenology, for the discovery of the
uniqueness of the “Substance” in all its manifestations or "modes",
in the vocabulary of our Bento de Espinosa, without becoming and anti-humanist
philosophy.
Now we can revisit our initial
postulate: If every systematic philosophical construction is built on an
intrinsic foundation, a fundamental intuition or the attraction to the
objective, the starting point of philosophical renewal in the 20th century was
the concept of environment. Their supreme desideratum is justify the moral
imperative, supported by the modern concept of reason, that environmental ethics must take precedence
over the more advanced achievements of blind science. And the environmental
ethics have to take precedence above the values of the most democratic XX
century socialist and liberal democracies, common responsible for generating
the environmental crisis. However this concept of reason is not the classic
concept of the reason of Kant. We talk about a new concept, the “environmental
reason”.
Concerning the capital questions that
Spinoza's (Bento de Espinosa) work placed on the advent of our modernity, how
to think about the rational explanation to the existence of man and the
universe, how to adapt the philosophical thinking to the raison d' être of
everything that exists and how to transform the spiritual life in full
understanding and peaceful enjoyment of life to its limit?
The Philosophy of Nature and then the
Environmental Philosophy allowed the building of a new ontology in critique of
anthropocentrism, a new epistemology, founded on critique of the ethnocentrism
and a new ethical theory, with a universal value and practical content
applicable to all the social fields. From those foundations the concept of
reason is enlarged and transformed in the concept of “environmental reason”.
The global concept of environmental
reason emerges from a World that is very different from the old Kantian world.
For the first time along the History, not only the Humanity, but Life and
Earth, can be deadly damaged by the nuclear war, the biological and chemical
weapons, the environmental crisis and the global crises of capital market: the
fall of the empires on the XXI century could call the true Apocalypse horses.
The imperative of perpetual peace assume a new moral and political
significance.
The ethical imperative of perpetual
peace, from Kant to Jorge de Sena and the imperative of dignity
Antero de Quental, in the end of XIX
century, claims for the advent of a new art, more universal, having the music
as a paradigm; It is therefore natural that the poetic literary nourish also
the new philosophy in the XX century, as in the work of Jorge de Sena. The
world of Kant is not our world. The philosophical and practice dimensions of
the problems of categorical imperatives assumed now a tragic magnitude. In our historical and environmental context,
humanity is confronted for the first time with the danger of its own
extinction, as a result of environmental disaster or as the tragic outcome of a
biological or nuclear war; and pandemics and major famines of medieval Europe
occur again but now on multiple continents. In this framework, the peaceful and
negotiated resolution of conflicts is the first political corollary of
Environmental Ethics, conduced to a new categorical imperative, the “imperative
of perpetual peace":
"In the strange fortune of doom,
[...] this strange fortune, from which light comes
oh just harmless powder, I pray
to myself not to lose the memory,
for you, for you should always remind
that everything is lost when we lose peace,
and first of all freedom is lost.
(Sena,1984 )
This “light” on the poem, was the
light of the nuclear bomb of Hiroxima.
The state of war, considering the
lessons of the History of liberal democracies and Socialist democracies, is
incompatible with the preservation and deepening of democracy and contributes
to creating the conditions for its limitation and degeneration.
If we refuse the ethical imperative of
destruction of the entire atomic arsenal and of biological and chemicals
arsenals and not create the sustainability of our economy and financial system,
modern war will came as a continuation of the economic dispute by other means,
and then, we will find “damn peace” in
the Holocaust of the children of our children. The perpetual peace is thus the
main political corollary of Environmental Ethics.
However, to the "categorical
imperative of perpetual peace", Jorge de Sena, engineer, poet and
philosopher, joins a new ethical imperative, “the imperative of dignity".
Another categorical imperative of Environmental Ethics trying to answer to the
global crisis that liberal democratic or socialist politics and their economies
and markets failed to overcome and the blind science also promoted.
“The imperative ethical of dignity”,
from Jorge de Sena, proclaims the moral rule and ethical principle that, we
(persons, nations, entrepreneurs, governments…) ought to live be sure that
nobody is less alive, or suffer or dies to benefice our quality of life and
life time.
The absolute value of life face the
absolute loss of the end of life, give to the (limited) time of life an ethical
dimension (the joy of life) that nothing and nobody can ignore and establish a gradualist
morality: Act so that you treat another person and humanity (and nations)
without no less life (the oppose of a full life), no suffer, not damages that
anticipate or bring the die. And if associated to the critique of
anthropocentrism, we can extend this categorical imperative to Life and Earth.
From the long poem Letter to my kids
about the shootings of Goya we chose the philosophical nucleus of verses:
“…/…
Believe me that no world, that anything or anyone
Is more important than a life, or the joy of life,
This is what is the most important - this joy.
Believe me that the dignity they will tell you so much about
is nothing more that joy that
comes
from being alive and knowing that anytime someone
is less alive or suffer or dies
for that one of you resist a little more
to the death that is of all and will come…”
(Sena, 1984)
After writing these thoughts, that put
in question the legitimacy of the war and the exploitation of man by man, a
hundred works of political philosophy, became as that unnecessary and
long-winded.
3.
Practical ethics and political alienation
In the XIX century Feuerbach and Marx
focused the debate about the concept of alienation on the religion issue.
Feuerbach’s analysis postulates that belief in religion was an intellectual
error that could be correct by education. Marx’s criticizes Feuerbach to fail
understanding why people fall into religious alienation. Marx’s thesis was that
religion is a response to alienation in material life; their main corollary was
the struggle for changing material life, the pathway to emancipate human
consciousness from all alienation.
Lukács' understanding alienation as a
historical loss of totality that we can already find on the historical
trajectory of institutions of social life, creating a “second nature” were the
individual person can´t find the world meaning. When Lukács applies this
concept to the history of intellectual representation, looking to the Grecian
movement from epic poetry to tragedy and then to philosophy, notes that the
source of significance became progressively more transcendent to immediate life
and individual consciousness. Considering the modernity, he proposes a renewed
relation between individual conscience and the knowledge of world where meaning
can again be found, rebuilding a new totality, new forms of art and
communication.
The possibility to recognize that
utopia on a good sense, the unity of the global representation of the word with
the citizen consciousness, postulates the opposed possibility, the full
alienation of the individual person, manipulated by a global power, economic,
political and ideological. The concept of double negation employed by Marcuse
is a critical response to negation of personal freedom by an
oppressive/repressive socio/economic system and to the development of
individual-critical consciousness.
When analyzes the concept of
alienation we don’t want obliterate the ontological issue and the philosophical
contribution of existentialism, as a plural literary-philosophical phenomenon
crossing two centuries. The core of this study is not the fundamental debate
about the “meaning of being”_ the paradoxical presence of God, from Kieergard, the challenge of nihilism, “God is
dead,” from Nietzsche, the “Dasein,” (“being that we ourselves are”), from Heidegger, “the existentialism is a new
humanism,” from Sartre…We wants to discuss the political dimension of the human
being, and what means the good and the devil, for the moral of XXI century polices.
Utilitarian ethics of Jeremy Bentham
and Stuart Mill, assumes that "not only any action of a private
individual, but all the Government measures” must improve the well-being and
reduce suffering. Far away the primacy of duty (eudainomia) from Aristotle, he based morality of action on benefits
back to their subject and/or in the principle of less suffering caused to the
"other".
The classic example of resolving an
ethical dilemma on the basis of the principle of utilitarianism, is the
political and moral justification of the launch of the first atomic bomb on
Hiroshima and, after the second over Nagasaki, comparing more than 200.000
confirmed dead with the estimated more than one million others casualties,
estimated by the military strategists, if the USA choose to invade and conquer
Japan with conventional weapons.
The most common moral objection
against the resolution of this ethical dilemma by nuclear holocaust of the
Japanese people, lies in the intrinsic value of human life, that in the Kantian
categorical imperative is an end in itself and cannot be used/annihilated as a
means to benefit others, even to get a higher benefit, in this case, reducing
casualties.
Placed the problem on that moral
equation, modern ethics and morality, in its practice, seems to become
inconsistent and in the theory as a real paradox.
But in the weeks leading up to
Hiroshima, most of the scientists who worked on the development of the atomic
bomb, the Manhattan project, tried to prevent his discharge directly over the Japanese cities, proposing a
strategy for the explosion in open space, in order to demonstrate its
destructive power. Confronted with that alternative and with hesitancy of the
leader's project, the military command resorted to the threat, blackmail and
manipulation of information. After the first discharge, imposed the second,
invoking the argument that the Japanese militarists didn't want to surrender.
The secret military documents of the
time, which were declassified, show that there was a deliberate intention to
try the pump effect against the humans
beings and a second purpose: putting in respect the URSS triumphant and
the new emerging socialist States in the East and Asia: she was started the
cold war!
Those scientists, conscious of the
dangers of the military use of nuclear energy, and the risks of new clashes
that could lead to the extinction of humanity, create a civic and political
movement called Movement of Scientists, who came to bring together 515
scientists from Harvard and MIT in 1945, on the basis of a program that would
be the support of all the speeches, books and articles and which wanted to lead
the USA Government to an international agreement with the URSS. Their final
propose was that nuclear weapons never more will be produced. Let's see their
arguments sent:
1- Other Nations would soon be able to
produce atomic bombs.
2- No effective defense was possible.
3- Mere numerical superiority in
atomic weaponry offered no security.
4- A future atomic war would destroy a
large fraction of civilization.
5- Therefore, “International cooperation
of an unprecedented kind is necessary for our survival”.
The heuristics of fear was his
strategy of propaganda, but the Government managed to dismantle it in 1947 and
adopted this speech exactly to the opposite end.
Let´s take two new issues: The Armed
Forces Museum of Paris, at the “Palais des Invalides”, in the section dedicated
to II World War, illustrate with a tragic dashboard the number and nationality
of his victims: at the top, the USSR, with 26 million people. China suffered
12.6 million dead. The Germany and Poland share the same number of 6 million
more 6 million dead. The Japan follows them with 2.6 million. Yugoslavia 1, 5
million. Philippines 1 million. France 580,000. Romania and Greece with 460,000
each one. Italy with 444,500. United Kingdom with 445,000. Czechoslovakia with
360,000. USA with 340,000. Netherlands with 240,000. Belgium with 100,000.
India with 50,000. Canada with 45,000. Australia with 21,000. Bulgaria with
20,000. New Zealand with 18,000 closes this fateful scale of 50 million deaths, from which more than 30
million were civilians.
This tragic balance concerning the
number and nationality of his victims is unknown for the common people. The
Nations and peoples of the world, but above all the peoples of the USSR and China,
gives those life’s for the cause of freedom and national sovereignty by the
ideal of liberal or socialist democracy and for a hopeful and more just and
peaceful world. And we speak about Nations winners and won, because the fortune
of war opened to all of them the right to choose the social and economic regime
and the kind of democracy where they would build a common future.
So was written and adopted the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, approved by the UN in December 10, 1948
(A/RES/217). Drafted primarily by J. P. Humphrey, of Canada, had Dr. P.C.
Chang, representative of the People’s Republic of China_ PRC and the positions
of the Asian countries, the main mediator of the consensus established around
its 30 articles.
We must emphasize that not one of the
articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights defends the supremacy of
the model of liberal democracy. And
Human Rights not can be reduced to the question of formal "political
freedoms". What the article 21, the core of political Human Rights
prescribes, is the path to citizenship and to the diversity of democratic
regimes.
“Article 21.
(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his
country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
(2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his
country.
(3) The will of the people should be the basis of the authority of
government; this should be expressed in periodic and genuine elections by
universal and equal suffrage and should be held by secret vote or by equivalent
free voting procedures.”
All other 29 articles which provide
the fundamental democratic rights, as the right to employment and social
protection, equality of gender and face the law, have the same political
dimension and are subordinate to two ethical imperatives that the Declaration
proclaims, the “imperative of the dignity” and “the imperative of peace”:
“Whereas recognition of the inherent
dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human
family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,”
This dignity will be protected…
“…if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to
rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected
by the rule of law,”
And will only be defended with
“…the development of friendly relations between
nations, “
However the political debate about
Universal Declaration of Human Rights is today reduced to the issue of formal
liberties.
Those are the problems of political
alienation and the absence of critical information in the mass media.
We could also refer to the ethical
dilemmas arising from the fact that, in times of crisis, as the current,
budgets for health be reduced, but the services of financial debt are met
strictly by Governments. And, in this context, recalling the recent (2014)
controversy between the Portuguese Minister of Health, which considered
“totally immoral” the price of a new drug for hepatitis C and the President of
the association SOS Hepatitis, who stated that ' immoral ' patients die without
new medicine. The case is that an American pharmaceutical enterprise wants to
sell a new drug in Portugal, with a high cure rate, by 48.000 Euros /patient.
The Portuguese Government, considering
the price established for the medication “sofosbuvir” in Egypt (around 700
euros) and the respective GDP (5.93 times lower than the euro zone’s GDP),
proposes the establishment of a joint alliance of European Member States for
the definition of a maximum price for treatment with this medication 5.93 times
higher than the price offered in the Egypt (around 4.100 €).
These five examples are useful as a demonstration that
the practical application of ethics, and ethics practices, such as bioethics,
need to be addressed in conjunction with the conceptualization of a new global
policy ethics, without which the discussion of ethical dilemmas risk to being predetermined by the hidden
power of political alienation.
4. Conclusions
A global policy ethics
rooted by the environmental philosophy
The ethical dimension of societies
and modern State and its Governments may
be evaluated by the respect for the principles of political ethics, universal
and permanent, which recognize all individuals as citizens with two homelands,
their own and the Earth (United Nations Conference on the Environment,
Stockholm, 1972), to all human cultures a status of equality (critique of
ethnocentrism) and re-introducing the human community on the pyramid of life
and biodiversity without any status of domain or privilege (critique of
anthropocentrism), evaluate especially in times of crisis.
The principles of citizenship or
dignity of its citizens and peaceful (political) solution of conflicts (Sena),
applied together with the subordination of the economy to the environmental
ethics policy, determines the State's duty to guarantee its citizens the right
to peace, the right to work, the right to education, the right to health and
assistance in old age, the right to access the justice, the right to the
conservation of biodiversity and the right to freedom, and yes, freedom is
placed in this order, because she disappears with the war and remains a
smaller value without job, homeless and other social
rights. And the consequences of destruction of life diversity would be that
human communities have no future.
Without peace, everything will be
lost, and firstly, freedom will be lost.
From the end (?) of cold war emerged “The
single thought”, characterized by:
The omission of History and the proclamation
of the end of History (liberal democracy would be the last political regime!?);
the end of national sovereign, the end of national welfare…
Amputation and manipulation of Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, that remain largely unknown and identified with
the neoliberal thesis;
The falsification and the manipulation
of the concept of State (the concept of communist State is a fabrication of the
“cold war”, completely strange to the communist ideology);
The lack of international law,
sovereign organs, modern State…United Nations, and the overcame of global
institutions note elected, Eurogroup and European Central Bank over
European Parliament, FMI, World Bank and NATO over United Nations
institutions, International Rating Agency over National Banks and National
States…
The deregulation of the market (labour
market deregulation, economic market deregulation, fiscal deregulation…),
fiscal paradises, restricted cartel of the giant banks, vulture funds;
The globalization of a hegemonic
economic model, private, served by automation and robotization without limits
and reparations;
The mass media concentration and
social networks in the hands of a restricted oligarchy, driven to political
manipulation and hidden business;
The vocational mission of the University to the
fundamental research and to developed several lines of thought, driven by the
economic utilitarianism and the neoliberal dogmas.
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