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Института Гайдара мы публикуем
отрывок из книги «Национализм и
моральная психология
сообщества» профессора
департамента политики
Брандейского университета
Бернарда Яка, посвященной
моральным проблемам идеологии
национализма.
Рекомендуем по этой теме:
Космополитизм как
политическая философия
Если национализм является
про лемой, то ре ение, по о е,
надо искать в космополитизме,
ествовании о разно или
уквально понимаемо о
всемирно о ра данства. о
космополитизм, по крайней мере
в е о традиционной орме,
взимает за свои услу и в соку
цену: от у денность от о ромной
масс л дей, для котор и
пристрастн е связи все е е
о ле ен оль ой моральной
зна имость .
Перв е л ди, о ъявив ие се я
«космополитами», Дио ен и е о
последователи-стоики, с радость
заплатили эту цену. вой
истинн й дом они видели в
ве ном порядке природ ,
космосе, а не в неустой ив
соо ества , созданн
еловеком. аз вая се я
ра данами мира, стоики с
ордость провоз ла али сво
независимость от
иррациональн верований и
практик, на котор дер атся
о кновенн е елове еские
соо ества. се л ди явля тся
ленами космополиса, независимо
от слу айностей ро дения,
прикрепив и и к конкретной
нации, осударству или
социальному статусу. о мало кто
о ладает силой ду а и арактера,
нео одимой, то признать е о
правила и руководствоваться ими.
результате стои еское
прославление
космополити еско о ра данства
производит ирони еский э ект
разделения елове еско о рода
на два ла еря: несколько
мудрецов, соо ество
ла оразумн , котор е
действительно мо ут ить как
ра дане мира, и подавля ее
оль инство л дей, котор м это
не под силу[1 ].
Мало кто из космополитов на е о
времени отов платить таку
в соку цену за у ре дение
вселенско о соо ества. Как
пл ралистам им неловко вести
ре ь о естественном моральном
порядке. ка естве сторонников
равенства они не склонн
с рас вать со с етов то, как
проводят сво изнь
оль инство л дей. ка естве
е демократов они ораздо олее
оза о ен ор анизацией
действенн средств народно о
надзора и представительства.
Космополит на е о времени
стремятся к тому, то снизить
арьер , отделя ие нас дру от
дру а, а не арьер , ме а ие
лу им из нас занять на е о ее
место в естественном порядке
ве ей. Им мало польз от
космополити еско о соо ества,
разделя е о нас на активн и
пассивн ра дан мира.
Л ди во т по ти вс сво
социальну истори , и
неудивительно, то про лема
войн попала в предметное поле
илосо ии довольно давно, в
самом на але развития
илосо ии. Мо ем вспомнить
ераклитовские ра мент , де
он оворит о том, то война
о епринята, то война — это
о ий порядок ве ей, то война
— это всем царь. езусловно,
Гераклит здесь оворит о войне
скорее мета ори ески,
илосо ски, но у е у Платона и
ристотеля м встре аем
непосредственн е рассу дения о
те война , котор е вели реки.
М видим здесь заро дение
некотор о и традиций,
котор е мо ут ть просле ен в
о ем в современн
разм ления о войне. о-
перв , приме ательно, то
Платон на инает разделять все
войн , о котор он мо ет
подумать, котор м он является
свидетелем, на два вида. Одни из
ни ведут ме ду со ой реки, и
и Платон наз вает «распрями»,
«раздорами». Он с итает, то это
олезнь, которая поразила
ре еское соо ество (кстати,
олезнь — это довольно иву ая
мета ора, которая удет
постоянно использоваться в
дальней и илосо ски
под ода к осм слени войн ).
езусловно, Платон надеется, то
рано или поздно реки смо ут
из авиться от этой олезни и
такие войн прекратятся. Пока
они не прекратились, ну но
п таться действовать сдер анно
в тако о рода кон ликта . Есть
второй тип войн — это войн ,
котор е ведутся против все
остальн народов. Здесь Платон
не видит никаки про лем: и
мо но вести, и нет никаки
оснований для то о, то
придум вать специальн е
правила, по котор м дол на
вестись орь а тако о рода.
Рекомендуем по этой теме:
Eduard Limonov
—
Limonov fusese un scriitor cu
șanse de a fi novator la vremea lui,
cand se intorsese din exilul monden
și căuta să fie un Bukowski rus
combinat cu un soi de reîncarnare a
unui Troțki punk.
Cât despre strămoșul tuturor
acestora, prințul Trubetzkoy, el a
fost unul din cei mai mari novatori
in lingvistică. Cartea lui, Grundzüge
der Phonologie, a constituit o
ruptură in lingvistică, punând
bazele distincției fundamentale
dintre sunet acustic și fonem
perceput în vorbirea individuală.
571Tweet
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Which is a more useful paradigm:
processes or objects?
47Responses
Neither half-full nor half-
empty. Courtesy Wikipedia
Metaphysics is the attempt to
understand how existence works by
examining the building blocks of
reality, the distinctions between
mental and physical entities, and
the fundamental questions of being
and reality. But metaphysics is not
only an arcane branch of
philosophy: human beings use
metaphysical assumptions to
navigate the world. Assumptions
about what exists and what is
fundamental exert a powerful
influence on our lives. Indeed, the
less aware we are of our
metaphysical assumptions, the
more we are subject to them.
Western metaphysics tends to rely
on the paradigm of substances. We
often see the world as a world
of things, composed of atomic
molecules, natural kinds, galaxies.
Objects are the paradigmatic mode
of existence, the basic building
blocks of the Universe. What exists
exists as an object. That is to say,
things are of a certain kind, they
have some specific qualities and
well-defined spatial and temporal
limits. For instance: Fido is my dog,
he is grey, and was born one year
ago. (It’s worth noting that such a
simple statement will give rise to a
litany of metaphysical disputes
within substance metaphysics:
realists believe that universals,
such as the natural kind ‘dogs’,
exist while nominalists believe them
to be only intellectual abstractions.)
Though substance metaphysics
seems to undergird Western
‘common sense’, I think it is wrong.
To see this, consider the cliché
about the glass of water: is it half-
empty or half-full? The question
assumes a static arrangement of
things serving as a basis for either
an optimistic or a pessimistic
interpretation. One can engage in
interminable disputes about the
correct description of the physical
set-up, or about the legitimacy of
the psychological evaluations. But
what if the isolated frame ‘a glass
of water’ fails to give the relevant
information? Anyone would prefer
an emptier glass that is getting full
to a fuller one getting empty. Any
analysis lacking information
about change misses the point,
which is just what substance
metaphysics is missing. Process
philosophers, meanwhile, think we
should go beyond looking at the
world as a set of static unrelated
items, and instead examine
the processes that make up the
world. Processes, not objects, are
fundamental.
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1. Mikhail Bakhtin
2. Merab Mamardashvili
4. Abram Deborin
5. Vasily Rozanov
7. Elena Oznobkina
In addition to being a philosopher,
Elena Oznobkina (1959 – 2010)
was also a human rights activist,
avid critic of prisons and editor of
the Russian Index on Censorship.
She was interested in philosophical
anthropology, corporeality in the
philosophy of modernity, the
philosophy of punishment and
Kant’s anthropology. Oznobkina
opposed above mentioned
Mamardashvilli’s classic
interpretation of Kant and instead
saw Kant’s thought not as purely
intellectual but imbibed with intense
feeling and existential anxiety.
8. Aleksei Losev
9. Alexander Zinoviev
By Denise Cummins
In a previous article, I described
the disastrous outcomes of two
real-world attempts to implement
Ayn Rand’s principles. Among the
over 1,300 comments on the article
were complaints from Rand’s
followers that her views had been
misrepresented. These complaints
primarily objected to my assertion
that Rand celebrated unbridled self-
interest. As one reader wrote:
Rand’s good people do care about
others. They do not care to be
forced to give away the fruits of
their invested time to others, but
they are delighted to trade what
they produce to others and
delighted to see those trades
improve the lives of others.
Such objections are without merit.
Human beings are social beings
whose societies must depend on its
members to look beyond their own
immediate self-interest in order to
function, as Rand herself
acknowledged in “The Ayn Rand
Letter”:
Man gains enormous values from
dealing with other men; living in a
human society is his proper way of
life — but only on certain
conditions. Man is not a lone wolf
and he is not a social animal. He is
a contractual animal. He has to plan
his life long-range, make his own
choices, and deal with other men by
voluntary agreement (and he has to
be able to rely on their observance
of the agreements they entered).
The choice is not self-sacrifice or
domination.
Despite embracing sociality, Rand
saw more evil than good in this
kind of interdependence between
people. As she wrote in The
Fountainhead, “The choice is
independence or dependence. All
that which proceeds from man’s
independent ego is good. All that
which proceeds from man’s
dependence upon men is evil.”
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Perhaps the key to understanding
this contradiction lies in a journal
entry in which she writes,
“Selfishness does not mean only to
do things for one’s self. One may
do things, affecting others, for his
own pleasure and benefit. This is
not immoral, but the highest of
morality.”
Seen in this light, altruistic acts are
sanctioned insofar as they bring
pleasure or other benefit to the
giver, who has no moral obligation
to offer help to those who are
suffering. This sentiment is
expressed more fully in The Virtue
of Selfishness:
The moral purpose of a man’s life is
the achievement of his own
happiness. This does not mean that
he is indifferent to all men, that
human life is of no value to him and
that he has no reason to help
others in an emergency. But it does
mean that he does not subordinate
his life to the welfare of others, that
he does not sacrifice himself to
their needs, that the relief of their
suffering is not his primary concern,
that any help he gives is an
exception, not a rule, an act of
generosity, not of moral duty, that
it is marginal and incidental — as
disasters are marginal and
incidental in the course of human
existence — and that values, not
disasters, are the goal, the first
concern and the motive power of
his life.
In other words, me before you —
first and always.
Rand notoriously loathed and
demonized altruism. In her 1959
interview with Mike Wallace, she
claimed that altruism was not only
immoral, but impossible.
Rand’s distrust of altruism was
rooted in her early experience living
under Soviet rule. She was born as
Alysa Rosenbaum in 1905 in St.
Petersburg, Russia. Her father was
a pharmacist, and her family was
comfortably middle class. During
the Bolshevik revolution of 1917,
her father’s pharmacy was
confiscated by the Soviets. She
witnessed up close and personal the
subjugation of the Russian populace
to Soviet communism, which put
the rights of the state above the
rights of the individual. She was
appalled by the strong-arm tactics
used by the Soviet state to
suppress free speech, to terminate
property rights and to force other
countries to submit to Soviet rule.
In her understanding, the
justification for this kind of violent
suppression was a misguided belief
in altruism and the collectivist
forms of government that it
purportedly spawned. In her
writings, there is no appreciable
distinction between socialism and
Soviet communism. Her main
concern was the abolition of
property and production rights,
which she believed were the
hallmarks of any form of socialism.
In a column titled, “Fascist New
Frontier,” she wrote, “The main
characteristic of socialism (and of
communism) is public ownership of
the means of production, and,
therefore, the abolition of private
property.”
She felt that a free country should
be vigilant in monitoring the
introduction of social programs that
would lead to a welfare state.
In Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
, she claimed:
The basic and crucial political issue
of our age is: capitalism versus
socialism, or freedom versus
statism… The goal of the “liberals”
— as it emerges from the record of
the past decades — was to smuggle
this country into welfare statism by
means of single, concrete, specific
measures, enlarging the power of
the government a step at a time,
never permitting these steps to be
summed up into principles, never
permitting their direction to be
identified or the basic issue to be
named. Thus statism was to come,
not by vote or by violence, but by
slow rot — by a long process of
evasion and epistemological
corruption, leading to a fait
accompli. (The goal of the
“conservatives” was only to retard
that process.)
It should come as no surprise that
she was a member of the Motion
Picture Alliance for the Preservation
of American Ideals, which was
active in the blacklisting of actors
and screenwriters who were either
members of the American
Communist party or deemed to be
sympathetic to communism.
In Philosophy: Who Needs It she
particularly directly ties socialism of
any kind to altruism:
The socialists had a certain kind of
logic on their side: if the collective
sacrifice of all to all is the moral
ideal, then they wanted to establish
this ideal in practice, here and on
this earth. The arguments that
socialism would not and could not
work, did not stop them: neither
has altruism ever worked, but this
has not caused men to stop and
question it. Only reason can ask
such questions…
So let us ask the question: Has
socialism ever worked?
The Prosperity Indexmeasures over
100 countries on 89 economic
analysis variables. The top 10
countries on this index in 2015
were Norway, Switzerland,
Denmark, New Zealand, Sweden,
Canada, Australia, Netherlands,
Finland and Ireland. (The United
States ranked 11th). What do these
countries have in common? They all
incorporate generous social
programs with capitalist
democracies. They confer generous
welfare benefits through the
redistribution of wealth, yet civil
liberties are abundant, and there
are few restrictions on the flow of
capital or of labor. So it seems that
countries that incorporate social
programs into their socioeconomic
policies do in fact thrive.
So how did Rand go so badly
wrong? The answer, I believe, lies
in her belief that altruism of
necessity leads to exploitation and
ultimately the destruction of the
self:
As to altruism — it has never been
alive. It is the poison of death in
the blood of Western civilization,
and men survived it only to the
extent to which they neither
believed nor practiced it… Do not
confuse altruism with kindness,
good will or respect for the rights of
others. These are not primaries, but
consequences, which, in fact,
altruism makes impossible. The
irreducible primary of altruism, the
basic absolute, is self-sacrifice —
which means: self-immolation, self-
abnegation, self-denial, self-
destruction — which means: the
self as a standard of evil, the
selfless as the standard of the
good.
Rand was not alone in her concern
about the risk for
exploitation inherent in altruism.
Evolutionary biologists grappled
with the problem as well. Altruism
was problematic for evolutionary
biologists precisely because it
seems to hamper individual
survival. According to gene-centric
views of evolution, such as Richard
Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene, altruism
shouldn’t exist.
Altruism means benefiting the
survival and reproductive success of
another individual while imposing a
cost on your own. Altruism could
survive when conferred on genetic
relatives because your shared
genes would benefit from your
altruistic investment. But your
genes receive no benefit from
altruism invested in unrelated
individuals and may in fact hamper
your own survival.
Now, Rand is correct when she
describes how altruism can lead to
exploitation in “Moral Inflation”:
Even though altruism declares that
“it is more blessed to give than to
receive,” it does not work that way
in practice. The givers are never
blessed; the more they give, the
more is demanded of them;
complaints, reproaches and insults
are the only response they get for
practicing altruism’s virtues (or for
their actual virtues).
By Rand’s reasoning, because
altruism exposes the individual to
exploitation, selfishness is the best
protection. Evolutionary biologists,
on the other hand, carefully
investigated (and mathematically
modeled) the conditions under
which altruism works and when it
fails. For unrelated individuals, the
most influential theory is that of
reciprocal altruism, proposed by
influential evolutionary biologist
Robert Trivers in 1971. In simple
terms, the theory states “I will help
you if you agree to help me.” If the
recipient honors the contract by
reciprocating, the survival chances
of both parties increase. This is
virtually identical to Rand’s concept
of social contracts. In The Virtue of
Selfishness she writes, “In a free
society, men are not forced to deal
with one another. They do so only
by voluntary agreement and, when
a time element is involved, by
contract.”
The problem is that while a given
individual can benefit from
cooperating, he or she can usually
do better by reneging. In that case,
the recipient gets all the benefits,
while the altruist suffers all the
costs. The end result is that
altruists go extinct. But Trivers
showed that altruists can survive if
one simple condition is satisfied:
Those who fail to reciprocate must
be punished through exclusion from
subsequent cooperative ventures.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool
me twice, shame on me.
In contrast, Rand believed that the
primary role of government was to
arbitrate and enforce such
contracts. From the The Virtue of
Selfishness:
If a contract is broken by the
arbitrary decision of one man, it
may cause a disastrous financial
injury to the other… This leads to
one of the most important and
most complex functions of the
government: to the function of an
arbiter who settles disputes among
men according to objective laws.
In other words, Rand clearly
expected government to play a role
in maintaining fairness in market
transactions, a cornerstone of
laissez-faire capitalism:
When I say “capitalism,” I mean a
full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated
laissez-faire capitalism—with a
separation of state and economics,
in the same way and for the same
reasons as the separation of state
and church.
Does laissez-faire work? The
American and global economies are
still reeling from one of its greatest
failures: the 2008 economic
meltdown. Alan Greenspan, an
admirer of Objectivism and
contributor to the 1986 re-issue
of The Virtue of Selfishness, served
as Chairman of the Federal Reserve
from 1987 to 2006. His is disdain
for regulation is frequently cited
as one of the major causes of the
junk mortgage crisis, which in
2008, brought about the worst
economic meltdown since the Great
Depression. In a congressional
hearing, he admitted that he had
made a mistake in assuming that
financial firms could regulate
themselves.
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Отрешенность
Первое, то я мо у сказать своему
родному ороду, — это слова
признательности. ла одар
мо родину за все, то она дала
мне в дальний путь. то это за
приданое, я п тался о ъяснить на
страница статьи «Просело ная
доро а» в илейном с орнике,
появив емся к столети со дня
смерти Конрадина Крейцера.
ла одар осподина ур омистра
Ш ле за е о серде ное
приветствие и за ту есть,
котору мне оказали, пору ив
в ступить с памятной ре ь на
се одня нем тор естве.
Ува аемое со рание!
Доро ие сооте ественники!
М со рались здесь на тор естве,
посвя енном на ему земляку,
композитору Конрадину
Крейцеру. то ествовать
тако о еловека, твор еску
ли ность, ну но пре де все о
оценить по достоинству е о
произведения. зна ит, то
ествовать муз канта, надо
слу ать е о муз ку.
е одня м усл им
произведения Конрадина
Крейцера — е о песни и ор ,
камерну и оперну муз ку.
эти звука присутствует сам
композитор, так как по-
настоя ему мастер присутствует
ли ь в своей ра оте. И если это
действительно оль ой мастер, то
е о ли ность полность ис езнет
за е о ра отой.
Певц и муз кант , у аству ие
в се одня нем празднестве, удут
арантами то о, то произведения
Конрадина Крейцера прозву ат
се одня для нас.
о удет ли это тор ество в то е
время и памятн м? едь
тор ество в память ко о-ли о
озна ает, то м
думаем ⓘGedenkfeier — тор ество
в память ко о-ли о, о разовано
от ла ола gedenken — помнить,
вспоминать ко о-ли о, котор й
так е имеет зна ение — думать,
отс да — тре ование М.
Хайде ера думать на тор естве в
память К. Крейцера.. Так о ем е
м дол н думать и оворить на
ествовании памяти композитора?
Разве муз ка не отли ается тем,
то она мо ет « оворить» просто
зву анием свои звуков, и разве
ей ну ен о н й яз к — яз к
слов? едь так о но с ита т. И
все е остается вопрос: смо ут ли
муз ка и пение превратить
тор ество в памятное, в такое, на
котором м думаем? ероятно, не
смо ут. Поэтому памятная ре ь и
ла вкл ена в про рамму
праздника. Она специально
дол на помо ь нам думать о
ествуемом еловеке и е о
произведения . Такие
воспоминания о ива т, ко да
е е раз пересказ ва т истори
изни Конрадина Крейцера,
пере исля т и опис ва т е о
произведения. лу ая такое
повествование, м исп т ваем
радость и пе аль, узнаем мно о
поу ительно о и полезно о. о на
самом деле м ли ь
развлекаемся. лу ая такой
рассказ, вовсе и не о язательно
думать, не тре уется разм лять
о том, то относится к ка дому из
нас в отдельности
непосредственно и постоянно в
е о со ственном тии. Таким
о разом, да е памятная ре ь не
мо ет ть зало ом то о, то м
удем думать на памятном
тор естве.
е надо дура ить се я. се м ,
вкл ая и те , кто думает по
дол у слу , достато но асто
едн м сль , м сли ком ле ко
становимся ездумн ми.
ездумность — злове ий ость,
которо о встрети ь повс ду в
се одня нем мире, поскольку
се одня познание все о и вся
доступно так стро и де ево,
то в следу ее м новение
полу енное так е поспе но и
за вается. Таким о разом одно
со рание сменяется дру им.
Памятн е празднества становятся
все еднее и еднее м сль , так
то теперь памятн е со рания и
ездумность у е неразлу н .
о да е ко да м ездумн , м
не теряем на ей спосо ности
думать. М ее, езусловно
используем, но, коне но, осо м
о разом: в ездумности м
оставляем спосо ность м слить
невозделанной, под паром. о
только то мо ет ле ать под
паром, то спосо но стать по вой
для роста, например, па ня.
втострада, на которой ни е о не
растет, нико да не мо ет ле ать
под паром. Как о ло нуть м
мо ем только потому, то
о ладаем слу ом, а состариться —
только потому, то ли молод ,
то но так е м мо ем стать
едн ми м слями и да е
ездумн ми ли ь потому, то в
самой основе свое о тия
еловек о ладает спосо ность к
м лени , «ду у и разуму», и
м лени предназна ен и
у отован. М мо ем ли иться
или, как оворят, отделаться
только от то о, ем м о ладаем,
знаем ли м о о ладаемом или
нет.
Усилива аяся ездумность
проистекает из олезни,
подта ива ей саму
сердцевину современно о
еловека. е одня ний еловек
спасается е ством от м ления.
Это е ство от м ления и есть
основа для ездумности. Это
такое е ство, то еловек е о и
видеть не о ет и не признается в
нем се е самому. е одня ний
еловек удет напро ь отрицать
это е ство от м ления. Он
удет утвер дать о ратное. Он
ска ет — имея на это полное
право, то нико да е е не ло
таки далеко иду и планов,
тако о коли ества исследований в
сам разн о ластя ,
проводим так страстно, как
се одня. есомненно, так
тратиться на итроумие и
придум вание по-своему о ень
полезно и в одно. ез тако о
м ления не о ойтись. о при
этом остается так е верно и то,
то это ли ь астн й вид
м ления.
По теме: «Технологически
расширенное сознание»: как мы
срастили наш разум с девайсами
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Independent Voices
A cup
of tea won't solve this one - Tories
are determined to focus on more
mild mental health problems Getty
The worse your mental health
problems are, the more likely you
are to get help. Right?
Not necessarily in today’s mental
health services.
Laura is 46. She has a diagnosis of
paranoid schizophrenia. “My day
centre closed last year”, she said.
“We protested and lobbied the
locality, and they knew it was
keeping people like me alive, but
now there is nothing.” Laura has
been sectioned three times since
the day centre was closed, due to
the absence of day-to-day care and
contact with peers that was so vital
for her.
Laura’s situation is far from unique.
Mental health professionals, service
users, family and friends are
becoming increasingly desperate as
the infrastructure that supported
those with long-term needs is
decimated by an increasing focus
on those with mild mental health
problems. Community mental
health teams, short-staffed and
short-changed, are under huge
pressure to discharge people to
GPs. Day centres and so-called
therapeutic communities for those
with the most entrenched problems
are all but gone. Psychotherapy for
those with moderate to serious
difficulties is almost impossible to
access. Assertive outreach and
rehabilitation teams, developed to
engage and intensively support
those with the most complex needs,
have had their funding cut.
Treatment packages are sheared to
their bare bones.
0:00
/
0:52
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The recovery movement was
intended to give people hope they
can lead fulfilling lives. But it has
been co-opted by the neoliberal
agenda to support certain practices
that foreclose the reality of long-
term impairment and structural
disadvantage. For example,
community mental health teams
are under huge pressure to
discharge people to recovery
colleges, and then their GPs, with a
graduation certificate to sustain
society’s fantasy that they have
been provided with the means to
survive.
At the same time, alternatives to
state provision are under threat.
Many of the most innovative forms
of support have been developed by
people with complex mental health
problems in the community. With
infrastructure like community halls
and grants decimated by austerity
cuts, there is often now nowhere
left to go. Further, many people on
benefits are too scared to engage in
the voluntary work that sustained
these initiatives, for fear of having
their benefits cut. For people on
disability benefits are constantly
scrutinised by Department for Work
and Pensions assessors looking for
reasons to stop people’s benefits, a
common form of which is
misreading a capacity to function
sometimes with the capacity to
function all the time.
READ MORE
‘Thousands seeking mental
health help after Grenfell tower
disaster’
"Authenticity in love...involves
both parties recognizing that
their beloved is free, and
appreciating him- or her-self as
a subject – as a person in his or
her own right."
___
The problem with the dominant
paradigms of love was that they
were not reciprocal. Men expected
women to give themselves in love
in ways that were not mutual.
Consequently, love was dangerous
for women in ways that it was not
dangerous for men. She did not lay
the blame for this exclusively at the
feet of men. Women, too,
perpetuated the oppressive
structures of non-reciprocal love
through participating in it. But it
was hard not to, Beauvoir wrote,
because the world was structured in
a way that enticed them to consent
to their own oppression.
Beauvoir thought authenticity was
possible in relationships that
were reciprocal – and hoped it
would become more widespread.
‘The day when it will be possible for
the woman to love in her strength
and not in her weakness, not to
escape from herself but to find
herself, not out of resignation but
to affirm herself, love will become
for her as for man the source of life
and not a mortal danger.’ (SS 724–
5) Authenticity in love, in her view,
involves both parties recognizing
that their beloved is free, and
appreciating him- or her-self as a
subject – as a person in his or her
own right. When two free people
appreciate themselves
independently and agree about
what it means to love each other,
they love authentically: they can
create meaning together as a
couple in reciprocal love.
But until that time – as long as
women are encouraged to be
devoted to others at the expense of
their own persons – Beauvoir
predicted that ideals of love would
perpetuate injustice. Love promised
salvation, Beauvoir said, but all too
often what women got in the name
of love was a living hell.
Did Beauvoir practice what she
preached?
Beauvoir’s life itself raises
interesting questions about her
philosophy of love. Although
Beauvoir might have resisted the
term ‘polyamorous’ (since, for
existentialist philosophers, some
self-definitions of this kind
constituted bad faith), her
relationship with the philosopher
Jean-Paul Sartre is well known for
its non-exclusivity. As students they
pledged to each other that their
love was ‘necessary’ but that
having other ‘contingent’ loves did
not challenge their primacy in each
other’s lives. Respecting each
other’s freedom, for Beauvoir and
Sartre, involved the freedom to
pursue relationships with others.
One of Beauvoir’s better-known
affairs was with the American
novelist Nelson Algren, someone
whom she described with
appreciation as both friend and
lover. At first their relationship
seems to have embodied her ideal
of reciprocity: love was to be about
sharing individual lives, rather than
one person being all-consuming and
another all-consumed. But in the
end they disagreed about what love
required and ceased to be able to
envision a joint future.
To clarify, for Beauvoir, sharing the
same definition of love was a
requirement to meet her criterion of
reciprocal love. So she doesn’t
object to non-polyamorous love as
less authentic in itself. What
matters, whether you’re a single-
lover person or a multiple-lover
person, is that your love is
reciprocal.
As an existentialist, Beauvoir was
committed to the view that human
beings’ ‘existence precedes
essence’ (to borrow Sartre’s
words). As free subjects, we decide
what to make of our lives and who
we are is defined by our actions. In
reciprocal love our projects for the
future can become joint projects.
But this is precisely why authentic
love is so hard to achieve: because
in addition to the challenge of
finding it, love can easily cease to
be reciprocal. Authenticity is not a
status to be achieved, but a project
– a joint project – to be pursued.
Cum am devenit idiot
_____
Mă invită un amic să vorbesc
tineretului social-democrat despre
valorile stîngii. Curios de felul meu
zic: merg să văd cum e. Poate,
poate: noua generaţie, le mai
deschidem ochii asupra valorilor şi
principiilor.
Vorbesc. Şeful lor se uită la mine,
se uită la ceasul lui scump cît două
maşini de-ale mele şi-mi zice:
- Vasea, tu eşti idiot? Lasa-le naibii
de valori şi principii. Tu spune-ne
cum să luăm puterea, ce şmecherii
de comunicare să folosim ca să
ajungem sus, că nu e timp de
prostii...
Zic: gata, nu se mai poate cu ăştea
din politică corupţi şi lipsiţi de
pricipii şi valori. Merg la „lumea
bună”.
Mă bag în ceva ONG pe „proiecte
europene”. Auuu ce lume: îngeri
fîlfîind în zbor, nu alta. Democraţie,
transparenţă, integrare, implicare
socială, urbanism, integrarea
rromilor, recalificarea săracilor. În
timpul liber citeau doar DoR
înlăcrimaţi. Aproape că am crezut
că am ajuns în raiul social-politic.
Ce mai: ziua în rai şi seara la
Control... şi #rezist.
Şi dracu` m-a pus să mă uit peste
buget? 80% la experţi &
consumabile & papa, iar pentru
„grupul ţintă” mai rămînea ceva
firimituri. Başca diferența imensă
de salarii dintre „experţi” şi „negri”.
Îi spun coordonatorului de proiect:
- Ştii, nu mi se pare chiar corect
aşa! Povestea asta nu prea
corespunde cu principiile mele.
Coordonatorul, ditamai expert de
talie europeană, persoană publică
importantă şi respectată, se uită la
mine şi zice:
- Vasea, tu chiar eşti idiot? Ia banu’
şi las-o moartă. Ne vedem diseară
la un concert cool că am bilete sau
mîine la proteste. Hai că nu
schimbăm noi lumea, ci să dăm
doar „ciuma asta roşie” odatată jos.
Aşa e viaţa ce să-i faci: nu ne
naştem egali! Tu nu fi idiot, clar?
Merg pe stradă şi mă întîlnesc cu un
cunoscut critic, şef la USR (Uniunea
Scriitorilor din România):
- Vasea tu de ce nu intri în USR? Ai
toate premiile posibile, ai traduceri
o grămadă. E o formalitate! Nici nu
ai nevoie de recomandări, la ce CV
ai. Nu fi idiot: la pensie se mai
adaugă încă 50% cînd vine şi
imediat pui mîna şi pe o
indemnizaţie de merit. Ce-ţi strică o
indemnizaţie de 600 de Euro aşa pe
lună? Uite cîţi avem pe listă cu
indemnizaţii de merit!!!
Mă uit. Văd o listă frumoasă: toată
lumea bună care înjură statul,
pensiile politicienilor şi corupţia.
Pînă şi cei cu papion care predică
statul minimal stau frumos pe
indemnizaţii speciale. Să mă
crucesc, nu alta! Se pare că ce e
rau pentru alţii e bun pentru „elitele
bune”.
- Ştiţi, povestea asta nu prea intră
în acord cu principiile mele care
spun că toţi, indiferent de ce
provenienţă avem şi ce munci
prestăm, trebuie să fim trataţi după
aceleaşi legi politice, sociale şi
fiscale. De ce un scriitor ar fi
remunerat după criterii diferitie faţă
de un ţăran, muncitor, inginer sau
medic?
- Vasea, tu chiar eşti idiot! îmi zice
criticul respectabil şi mă lasă în
nedumerirea mea...
Merg pe drum abătut. Zic: poate
chiar sînt idiot şi nu mă pot adapta
vremurilor acestea mai speciale: cu
ceasuri scumpe la politicieni, cu legi
speciale, cu impozite speciale, cu
salarii speciale, cu plată babană la
experţi, cu pensii mărite la „elite”,
cu indemnizaţii speciale. Poate ei
chiar sînt speciali şi eu sînt idiot şi
nu pricep?
Între timp mă sună mama, ca de
obicei, în momente de derută:
- Mamii, pîine ai? Zicea ea
îngrijorată. La 85 de ani e o femeie
care a prins un mare război şi o
mare foamete.
- Am mamă pîine, cum să nu am
pîine! Tot ok.
- Ei, dacă ai pîine atununci totul e
bine!
Am închis. Parcă m-am mai liniştit.
Hai că nu-s chiar idiot! Am pîine.