Eduardo, eu me preocupo sim. Pode acreditar nisso, e não vou querer simplesmente "passar" pelo CA de filosofia. D
------------------------------------------------------ Décio Krause Departamento de Filosofia Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina 88040-900 Florianópolis - SC - Brasil http://www.cfh.ufsc.br/~dkrause ------------------------------------------------------ > Em 31/01/2014, às 03:50, Eduardo Ochs <[email protected]> escreveu: > > Pra mim uma questão subjacente à de "mérito = produtividade" e à das > cotas é a seguinte: o quanto nós devemos deixar os losers se ferrarem > só por eles serem losers? > > Vou me dar a liberdade de fazer uma citação grande, abaixo, de um > livro absolutamente genial - "The Lives of Animals", do J.M. Coetzee; > não tenho a tradução dele para Português ("A vida dos animais" - > Companhia das Letras) online, mas tem um PDF do original aqui: > > http://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/c/Coetzee99.pdf > > Deixa eu dar uma explicação. Toda vez que a gente discute > meritocracia, critérios de mérito acadêmico, cotas, etc, a gente > indiretamente está discutindo também "esquerda", "direita", "política" > (tanto micro quanto macro), etc - que são coisas com uma carga > emocional fortíssima... espero que a gente desta vez tenha a > maturidade de usar a discussão mais pra cada um explicitar a sua > posição e entender a dos outros do que pra cair na histeria e nos > ataques ad-hominem... > > Por outro lado, eu SEI que nós - membros da lista, como um todo - não > temos maturidade pra isto; eu sei que apesar das minhas boas intenções > daqui a pouco este thread vai ter 200 mensagens, muitas super > agressivas, como o thread sobre homeopatia, várias pessoas vão estar > espumando de ódio de outras, vamos ter mais algumas mensagens pedindo > que o moderador da lista (!!!) tome providências, e meia dúzia de > pessoas vão se desinscrever da lista... mas uma coisa que eu aprendi > este ano é que isto é inevitável, e não é problema meu. > > Mas voltando à citação que eu vou pôr abaixo. Um dos grandes temas do > "A vida dos animais" é que não dá mais pra gente fingir que fechar os > olhos pro sofrimento dos losers é algo que só os monstros fazem - todo > mundo faz isto, em maior ou menor grau - e tá na hora da gente fazer > algo melhor com relação a genocídios do que ficar histéricos num > momento, e depois esquecer deles. > > (Lembrem que a minha motivação original pra postar isto era: o quanto > a gente deve pleitear para coleguinhas losers? E: se a gente estivesse > na posição do Décio, será que a gente conseguiria ter alguma empatia > pelos coleguinhas losers? Bom, lá vai...) > > > > "Between 1942 and 1945 several million people were put to death > in the concentration camps of the Third Reich: at Treblinka alone > more than a million and a half, perhaps as many as three million. > These are numbers that numb the mind. We have only one death of our > own: we can comprehend the deaths of others only one at a time: in > the abstract we may be able to count to a million, but we cannot > count to a million deaths. > > "The people who lived in the countryside around Treblinka -- > Poles, for the most part -- said that they did not know what was > going on in the camp; said that, while in a general way they might > have guessed what was going on, they did not know for sure; said > that, while in a sense they might have known, in another sense they > did not know, could not afford to know, for their own sake. > > "The people around Treblinka were not exceptional. There were > camps all over the Reich, nearly six thousand in Poland alone, > untold thousands in Germany proper. Few Germans lived more than a > few kilometres from a camp of some kind. Not every camp was a death > camp, a camp dedicated to the production of death, but horrors went > on in all of them, more horrors by far than one could afford to > know, for one's own sake. > > "It is not because they waged an expansionist war, and lost it, > that Germans of a particular generation are still regarded as > standing a little outside humanity, as having to do or be something > special before they can be readmitted to the human fold. They lost > their humanity, in our eyes, because of a certain willed ignorance > on their part. Under the circumstances of Hitler's kind of war, > ignorance may have been a useful survival mechanism, but that is an > excuse which, with admirable moral rigor, we refuse to accept. In > Germany, we say, a certain line was crossed which took people beyond > the ordinary murderousness and cruelty of warfare into a state that > we can only call sin. The signing of the articles of capitulation > and the payment of reparations did not put an end to that state of > sin. On the contrary, we said, a sickness of the soul continued to > mark that generation. It marked those citizens of the Reich who had > committed evil actions, but also those who, for whatever reason, > were in ignorance of those actions. It thus marked, for practical > purposes, every citizen of the Reich. Only those in the camps were > innocent. > > "`They went like sheep to the slaughter.' `They died like > animals.' `The Nazi butchers killed them.' Denunciation of the camps > reverberates so fully with the language of the stockyard and > slaughterhouse that it is barely necessary for me to prepare the > ground for the comparison I am about to make. The crime of the Third > Reich, says the voice of accusation, was to treat people like > animals. > > (...) > > "The question to ask should not be: Do we have something in > common -- reason, self-consciousness, a soul -- with other animals? > (With the corollary that, if we do not, then we are entitled to > treat them as we like, imprisoning them, killing them, dishonoring > their corpses.) I return to the death camps. The particular horror > of the camps, the horror that convinces us that what went on there > was a crime against humanity, is not that despite a humanity shared > with their victims, the killers treated them like lice. That is too > abstract. The horror is that the killers refused to think themselves > into the place of their victims, as did everyone else. They said, > `It is they in those cattle-cars rattling past.' They did not say, > `How would it be if it were I in that cattle-car?' They did not say, > `It is I who am in that cattle car.' They said, `It must be the dead > who are being burnt today, making the air stink and falling in ash > on my cabbages.' They did not say, `How would it be if I were > burning?' They did not say, `I am burning, I am falling in ash.' > > "In other words, they closed their hearts. The heart is the > seat of a faculty, sympathy. that allows us to share at times the > being of another. Sympathy has everything to do with the subject and > little to do with the object, the `another,' as we see at once when > we think of the object not as a bat (`Can I share the being of a > bat?') but as another human being. There are people who have the > capacity to imagine themselves as someone else, there are people who > have no such capacity (when the lack is extreme, we call them > psychopaths), and there are people who have the capacity but choose > not to exercise it. > > "Despite Thomas Nagel, who is probably a good man, despite > Thomas Aquinas and René Descartes, with whom I have more > difficulty in sympathizing, there is no limit to the extent to which > we can think ourselves into the being of another. There are no > bounds to the sympathetic imagination. If you want proof, consider > the following. Some years ago I wrote a book called The House on > Eccles Street. To write that book I had to think my way into the > existence of Marion Bloom. Either I succeeded or I did not. If I did > not, I cannot imagine why you invited me here today. In any event, > the point is, Marion Bloom never existed. Marion Bloom was a figment > of James Joyce's imagination. If I can think my way into the > existence of a being who has never existed, then I can think my way > into the existence of a bat or a chimpanzee or an oyster, any being > with whom I share the substrate of life. > > "I return one last time to the places of death all around us, > the places of slaughter to which, in a huge communal effort, we > close our hearts. Each day a fresh holocaust, yet as far as I can > see our moral being is untouched. We do not feel tainted. We can > do anything, it seems, and come away clean. > > "We point to the Germans and Poles and Ukrainians who did and > did not know of the atrocities around them. We like to think they > were inwardly marked by the aftereffects of that special form of > ignorance. We like to think that in their nightmares the ones whose > suffering they had refused to enter came back to haunt them. We like > to think they woke up haggard in the mornings, and died of gnawing > cancers. But probably it was not so. The evidence points in the > opposite direction: that we can do anything and get away with it; > that there is no punishment." > > [[]], > Eduardo Ochs > _______________________________________________ > Logica-l mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.dimap.ufrn.br/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/logica-l _______________________________________________ Logica-l mailing list [email protected] http://www.dimap.ufrn.br/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/logica-l
