Categoria: English

The current demise of ethics

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

Between July 10 and 13, 2018, an international congress organized by the Society of Theology and Sciences of Religion, (Sociedad de Teología y Ciencias de la Religión, SOTER) on the subjects, Religion, Ethics and Politics was celebrated in Belo Horizonte, Brazil,. The expositions were very timely, and of superior quality. I will only deal with the debate on the Demise of Ethics, that I introduced.
In my understanding two factors have touched the heart of ethics: the process of globalization and the commercialiization of society.
Globalization has revealed the different types of ethics, based on cultural differences. Western ethics, one of many, has been relativized. The great Oriental cultures and the cultures of the original Nations have shown that we can be ethical in very different forms.
For example, the Maya culture centers everything in the heart, because everything was born from the love of the two great hearts: those of the Heavens and of the Earth. The ethical ideal is to create in all persons hearts that are sensible, just, transparent and true: the ethics of “good living and coexisting” of the nations of the Andes, centered in the equilibrium of all things, among human beings, with Nature and with the Universe.
A consequence of this variety of ethical paths has been generalized relativity. We know that law and order, values of basic practical ethics, are prerequisites for any civilization anywhere in the world. The ethical disaster that we now foresee is because humanity is yielding ground to barbarity, towards a true worldwide age of darkness.
Shortly before his death in 2017, thinker Sigmund Bauman warned: “either humanity joins hands to save all of us together; or together we will swell the funeral procession of those who walk towards the abyss”. What kind of ethics could guide us as humanity living in the same Common Home? The second great obstacle to ethics is the commercialization of society, that already in 1944, Karl Polanyi called “The Great Transformation”. That is the phenomenon of transitioning from a market economy to a society of pure commerce. Everything is transformed into merchandise, which Karl Marx already foresaw in his 1848 text The Poverty of Philosophy, where he noted that the most sacred things, such as truth and consciousness, would be commercialized; and this would be the “time of great corruption and universal venality”. We are now living in that time. The economy, especially the speculative sector, dictates the path of politics and of society as a whole. Competition is its trademark and solidarity has practically disappeared.
Which is the ideal ethics of this type of society? The capacity for unlimited accumulation and limitless consumption, that creates a great gap between a very small group that controls most of the world economy and the great majorities, who are excluded and drowning in hunger and misery. Here are revealed traits of barbarity and cruelty as rarely have been seen in history.
We must go back to create an ethics rooted in that which is specifically ours as human beings and which, for that reason, is universal and can be adopted by all.
I believe that in the very first place, is the ethics of caring. According to the fable 220 of the slave Higinio, well interpreted by Martin Heidegger in Being and Time, it consists of the ontological substratum of the human being, that group of factors without which the human being and other living beings never could have arisen. Because caring pertains to the human essence, we all can live and give in concrete ways, according to our cultures. Caring presupposes a friendly and loving relationship with reality, an extended hand for solidarity and not a clenched fist for domination. Life is at the center of caring. The civilization must be bio-centered.
Another part of our human essence is solidarity and the ethics that derives from solidarity. We now know from bio-anthropology that it was solidarity among our anthropoid ancestors that allowed them to hone their animal state into humanity. They searched for food and consumed it together, in solidarity. We all live because there existed, and still exists, a minimum of solidarity, starting with the family. What was foundational yesterday, continues to be so today..
Another aspect closely tied to our humanity is the ethics of universal responsibility. Either we together undertake responsibility for the destiny of our Common Home, or together we will walk a path of no return. We are responsible for the sustainability of Gaia and the ability of her ecosystems to flourish within the whole community of life.
Philosopher Hans Jonas, who first elaborated “The Principle of Responsibility”, added the importance of collective fear. When collective fear arises and humans start to realize that they may come to a tragic end and even disappear as a species, a primordial fear erupts that puts them into survival mode ethics. The unconscious presupposition is that the value of life is greater than any other value: cultural, religious or economic.
Finally, it is important to resurrect the ethics of justice for all. Justice is the minimum right that we must guarantee the other to be able to continue coexisting and receiving what we as people deserve. In particular, the institutions must be just and equitable, to avoid class privilege and the social exclusions that produce so many victims, particularly in our country, which is one of the most unequal and most unjust in the world. This explains the hatred and discrimination that tear society apart. They come not from the people but from the moneyed elites that have always lived a privileged life, and who do not allow the poor to move even one rung up on the social ladder. We presently live under an exceptional regime in, where the Constitution and the laws of the country are trampled by the Lawfare (the distorted interpretation of the law practiced by a judge, so as to hurt the accused).
Justice has value not only among humans but also with nature and the Earth, which are.the carriers of rights and for that reason they must be included in our concept of socio-ecological democracy.
These are some minimum parameters for an ethics to be valid for each individual, and for all of humanity, gathered in our Common Home. We must incorporate an ethics of a shared sobriety to accomplish what Xi Jinping, supreme leader of China, used to call “a moderately supplied society”. This is a minimum and reachable ideal. Otherwise, we may experience a socio-ecological Armagedon.

Leonardo Boff Eco-Theologian-Philosopher, Earthcharter Commission

The Brazilian crisis: part of the global crisis

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

Brazil can not be analyzed by thinking only about Brazil. No country, not even the isolated North Korea, is excluded from the international connections unavoidably created by globalization. Moreover, Brazil is the sixth largest economy in the world, which arouses the greed of the large corporations that want to come to Brazil, not to help with our inclusive development, but to accumulate more and more, given the size of our domestic market and the super abundance of our commodities, natural goods and services, which are ever more necessary to sustain the consumerism of the opulent countries.

Three names must be remembered, because they have shaped the present ecomonic framework and the politics of the world. The first name is without doubt Karl Polanyi, who back in 1944 observed “The Great Transformation” that was taking place in the world. From a market economy we were transitioning to a market society. That is, everything is for sale, even the most sacred things. Money is made from everything, which in his The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx called the great corruption and general venality. Even human organs, truth, conscience, and knowledge have been transformed into sources of profit. Everything follows the logic of capitalism: of competition, rather than solidarity, which causes societies to tear themselves apart in ferocious fights among industries.

Two other names must be mentioned: Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Due to the erosion of true socialism, capitalism emerged victorious, without the restrictions imposed by the restraints exerted by the socialist mode of production. Capitalism could now freely follow its individualistic logic of accumulation and consumerism. Thatcher firmly asserted that society does not exist: only individuals struggling against each other. Reagan advocated total market freedom, the reduction of the State privatization of national goods. It was the triumph of neoliberalism. Previously, with liberalism, using a metaphor, the table was set. The wealthy occupied it first and satiated themselves. The others found places somewhere in a corner of the table. But they were at the table. With neoliberalism, the table is set, but only those who can pay can participate. The others fight the dogs for a place under the table for the crumbs.

Neoliberal politics, established all over the world, gave free rein to the great corporations to accumulate all they could. Wall Street’s motto was and still is: greed is good. The drive to accumulate has resulted in a few persons controlling a great part of the wealth of the world, creating an ocean of poor, miserable and starving people. Since the capitalist culture knows neither compassion nor solidarity, but only competition and the supremacy of the strongest, the world has developed a level of barbarity rarely seen in history.

From my point of view, capitalism as a mode of production and its political ideology, neoliberalism, have reached their end, in two senses. They have accomplished their end, that is, their objective-end: supreme accumulation. And they approach their end, as finality and extinction. Not because we want it, but because the Earth, with her limited goods and services, largely non-renewable, cannot support such unlimited usage indefinitely. The Earth herself will make it impossible. Either the mode of production and consumption will change, or it will be condemned to disappear. Since it lacks a sense of belonging, and treats nature as a mere thing to be uncontrollably exploited, it will continue on a path of no return, endangering the life-system and our very Common Home, that could become inhabitable.

In the theoretical basis of the Brazilian neoliberals, those who accomplished the coup and developed “The Bridge to the Future” (A Bridge to Failure), are possessed, without a trace of conscience or critique, by that bad neoliberal dream. They want a Brazil only for themselves, as a degraded province, attached to and dependent on the great Capitalist empire. That is our ruin and our disgrace. It prolongs dependency and the colonial logic.

The path of a country that had begun to take the first steps towards her re-founding, on other bases, values and principles, with her eyes wide open and her hands engaged in the politics of human development with social inclusion, has been shamelessly aborted. Here rests our true crisis, that involves all the particulars.

But what must be has strength. Therefore we hope and believe that we will overcome this painful journey on behalf of the vast majority, actually, of everyone. We will shine. In dark times such as ours, the poet sang: “It is dark; but I sing!”. Imitating him, I say: “in the midst of uncertainty we still dream, and it is a good dream, that foretells a beneficial reality for all”.

Leonardo Boff Eco-Theologian-Philosopher and of theEarthcharter Commission

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

Neo-fascism: a world-wide wave

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

Fascism is an extreme derivative of fundamentalism, with a long tradition in almost every culture. In his 1996 controversial work, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order, Samuel P. Huntington denounces the West as home to the most virulent fundamentalists. They imagine that their culture is the best in the world, that their religion is the best, the one and only true religion, that theirs is the best form of government, democracy, with the best techno-science, that has changed the face of the planet, and with its lethal weapons, it has given humans the ability to destroy humanity and much of the biosphere.
We know of Islamic and other forms of fundamentalism; also of the fundamentalism of sectors of the official Roman Catholic Church that still believe that she is the one and only and exclusive Church of Jesus Christ, outside of which there is no salvation. This erroneous vision allows for the satanizing and even the persecution of other Christian and non-Christian denominations. Thank God for the present Pope, a man of rationality and common sense that invalidates such distortions.

Those who pretend to be the exclusive carrier of truth are condemned to be fundamentalists and to close in on themselves without dialogue with the other.

Here we remember the words of the great Spanish poet Antonio Machado, who wrote: “The truth. Not your truth. Come with me to search for the truth. Your truth? Keep it to yourself. ” If together we search for the truth, it will be the full truth.

Fascism was born, and is born, within the context of the breakdown of social norms, social disorder and generalized crisis. Security disappears and the established orders are weakened. Society and individuals have difficulty living in such a situation. Social scientists and historians, such as Eric Vögelin (Order and History, 1956), L. Götz, (Entstehung der Ordnung, 1954), Peter Berger,(A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural, 1973), have shown that humans possess a natural tendency towards order.

Wherever they arrive, they soon create an order and their habitat. When order disappears, violence is commonly used to impose a kind of order which does not lead to the social cohesion of coexistence.

Fascism’s niche finds its origin in this disorder. Thus, at the end of the First World War, social chaos ensued, especially in Germany and Italy. The way out was to establish an authoritarian system of domination that monopolized political representation, through a single, hierarchically organized political party of the masses, forcing everything; politics, economy and culture in a single direction. This was only possible through a chief (Fürher in Germany and the Duce, in Italy) who organized an authoritarian corporate State of terror.

National myths were created for symbolic legitimacy, the heroes of the past and old traditions, usually in a framework of great political liturgies inculcating the idea of a national regeneration. Especially in Germany, Hitler’s followers were filled with the conviction that the white German race was “superior” to the others, and had the right to subjugate and even to exterminate inferior races.

The word fascism was used for the first time by Benito Mussolini in 1915 when the group “Fasci d’Azione Revolucionaria” was created. Fascism derives from the term “fasci,” a bundle of leafless branches, strongly fastened, with an ax on one side. A single branch can be broken, breaking a bundle is much more difficult. In 1922-23, Mussolini founded the National Fascist Party (Partito Nacionale Fascista) that lasted until his overthrow in 1945. In Germany, it was established in 1933 by Adolf Hitler, who upon being appointed Chancellor created National Socialism, the Nazi party, that imposed on the country a hard discipline, total vigilance, and a state of terror.

Fascism was sold as anti-communist, anti-capitalist, as a corporation that is above class, and creates a socially closed unity. Vigilance, direct violence, terror and the extermination of the opposition are characteristics of the historic fascism of Mussolini and Hitler. Violence is also present in neo-fascism.

Fascism has never totally disappeared, because there always are groups that, moved by a fundamentalist archetype, seek order at any price. This is what the present neo-fascism is about. There is in Brazil today a figure more hilarious than ideological, that proposes fascism, in whose name violence is justified, and which defends torture and torturers, homophobia and other social deviations. It is always in the name of an order to be forged, using violence against the current disorder.

Fascism has always been criminal. It created the shoa (the Holocaust, which eliminated millions of Jews). It used violence as a way of relating to society, which is why it never could and never will be consolidated for long periods of time. It is the greatest perversion of human sociability. It will not be different in Brazil, where this perversion has no possibility of success.

Leonardo Boff  Eco-Theologian-Philosophe and of theEarthcharter Commission

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

The current demise of ethics

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

Between July 10 and 13, 2018, an international congress organized by the Society of Theology and Sciences of Religion, (Sociedad de Teología y Ciencias de la Religión, SOTER) on the subjects, Religion, Ethics and Politics was celebrated in Belo Horizonte, Brazil,. The expositions were very timely, and of superior quality. I will only deal with the debate on the Demise of Ethics, that I introduced.

In my understanding two factors have touched the heart of ethics: the process of globalization and the commercialiization of society.

Globalization has revealed the different types of ethics, based on cultural differences. Western ethics, one of many, has been relativized. The great Oriental cultures and the cultures of the original Nations have shown that we can be ethical in very different forms.

For example, the Maya culture centers everything in the heart, because everything was born from the love of the two great hearts: those of the Heavens and of the Earth. The ethical ideal is to create in all persons hearts that are sensible, just, transparent and true: the ethics of “good living and coexisting” of the nations of the Andes, centered in the equilibrium of all things, among human beings, with Nature and with the Universe.
A consequence of this variety of ethical paths has been generalized relativity. We know that law and order, values of basic practical ethics, are prerequisites for any civilization anywhere in the world. The ethical disaster that we now foresee is because humanity is yielding ground to barbarity, towards a true worldwide age of darkness.

Shortly before his death in 2017, thinker Sigmund Bauman warned: “either humanity joins hands to save all of us together; or together we will swell the funeral procession of those who walk towards the abyss”. What kind of ethics could guide us as humanity living in the same

Common Home? The second great obstacle to ethics is the commercialization of society, that already in 1944, Karl Polanyi called “The Great Transformation”. That is the phenomenon of transitioning from a market economy to a society of pure commerce. Everything is transformed into merchandise, which Karl Marx already foresaw in his 1848 text The Poverty of Philosophy, where he noted that the most sacred things, such as truth and consciousness, would be commercialized; and this would be the “time of great corruption and universal venality”. We are now living in that time. The economy, especially the speculative sector, dictates the path of politics and of society as a whole. Competition is its trademark and solidarity has practically disappeared.

Which is the ideal ethics of this type of society? The capacity for unlimited accumulation and limitless consumption, that creates a great gap between a very small group that controls most of the world economy and the great majorities, who are excluded and drowning in hunger and misery. Here are revealed traits of barbarity and cruelty as rarely have been seen in history.
We must go back to create an ethics rooted in that which is specifically ours as human beings and which, for that reason, is universal and can be adopted by all.

I believe that in the very first place, is the ethics of caring. According to the fable 220 of the slave Higinio, well interpreted by Martin Heidegger in Being and Time, it consists of the ontological substratum of the human being, that group of factors without which the human being and other living beings never could have arisen. Because caring pertains to the human essence, we all can live and give in concrete ways, according to our cultures. Caring presupposes a friendly and loving relationship with reality, an extended hand for solidarity and not a clenched fist for domination. Life is at the center of caring. The civilization must be bio-centered.

Another part of our human essence is solidarity and the ethics that derives from solidarity. We now know from bio-anthropology that it was solidarity among our anthropoid ancestors that allowed them to hone their animal state into humanity. They searched for food and consumed it together, in solidarity. We all live because there existed, and still exists, a minimum of solidarity, starting with the family. What was foundational yesterday, continues to be so today..
Another aspect closely tied to our humanity is the ethics of universal responsibility. Either we together undertake responsibility for the destiny of our Common Home, or together we will walk a path of no return. We are responsible for the sustainability of Gaia and the ability of her ecosystems to flourish within the whole community of life.

Philosopher Hans Jonas, who first elaborated “The Principle of Responsibility”, added the importance of collective fear. When collective fear arises and humans start to realize that they may come to a tragic end and even disappear as a species, a primordial fear erupts that puts them into survival mode ethics. The unconscious presupposition is that the value of life is greater than any other value: cultural, religious or economic.

Finally, it is important to resurrect the ethics of justice for all. Justice is the minimum right that we must guarantee the other to be able to continue coexisting and receiving what we as people deserve. In particular, the institutions must be just and equitable, to avoid class privilege and the social exclusions that produce so many victims, particularly in our country, which is one of the most unequal and most unjust in the world. This explains the hatred and discrimination that tear society apart. They come not from the people but from the moneyed elites that have always lived a privileged life, and who do not allow the poor to move even one rung up on the social ladder.

We presently live under an exceptional regime in, where the Constitution and the laws of the country are trampled by the Lawfare (the distorted interpretation of the law practiced by a judge, so as to hurt the accused).

Justice has value not only among humans but also with nature and the Earth, which are.the carriers of rights and for that reason they must be included in our concept of socio-ecological democracy.

These are some minimum parameters for an ethics to be valid for each individual, and for all of humanity, gathered in our Common Home. We must incorporate an ethics of a shared sobriety to accomplish what Xi Jinping, supreme leader of China, used to call “a moderately supplied society”. This is a minimum and reachable ideal. Otherwise, we may experience a socio-ecological Armagedon.

Leonardo Boff Eco-Theologian-Philosopher and of  TheEarthcharter Commission

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.