PyramidHead
Contributor
Julio Cabrera's book A Critique of Affirmative Morality has finally been translated into English, albeit with some awkwardness. The entire text can be found here. I recommend it in its entirety, but there are sections that deviate from the main theme to discuss the work of other philosophers such as Heidegger, Husserl, etc. and these parts can be mostly skipped without detracting from the overall impact of the text. Also, there are two handy sections that summarize the foregoing chapters, the first located on p. 129, and the second on p. 235. Skip to there for a high-level overview of his thesis.
For now, I want to focus on what he has to say about affirmative societies, or societies organized around affirmative morality. In brief, affirmative morality is any system of ethics that deals with how to live in the world, while taking the existence of the world and the structure of living itself as "given" and exempting them from consideration. One analogy that Cabrera uses to make this distinction is the rules of war, which provide guidance to combatants and states about how to do battle or take prisoners, but say nothing about the issue of war itself. Or, how there are complicated regulations concerning how to humanely execute someone, but they do not include the question of whether execution can itself be considered humane. In this sense, affirmative ethical systems are "second-degree" systems, situated in the context of an encompassing structure that itself is never evaluated ethically. By this definition, nearly all moral theories are affirmative ones. To Cabrera, the affirmative mind is one that not only says 'yes' to the ontological form of being-in-the-world (postponing or concealing a critical examination of its nature), but provides a 'firming' or 'firmament' upon which to anchor psychological security. He then goes on to describe this mindset at a societal level (bolding mine):
To make sense of this, it helps to keep in mind that Cabrera's preceding investigation of ontology concludes with the claim that death (or non-existence), rather than being a punctual event that interrupts life, is a constitutive part of life from the very beginning. We are all born dying, and this terminality is a basic feature of life, coming into play the moment it starts, not an incidental occurrence. This is what he means by the "non-being of being", and what he contends is deliberately or unconsciously hidden by affirmative thought, which must simultaneously hold that being is good and that non-being, something inexorably tied to being in its very fabric, is bad.
The other aspect of life's structure that is systematically downplayed in affirmative ethics is the inevitability of conflict. Although a fundamental principle common to almost every kind of morality is to respect the interests of others, it is never investigated whether simply existing alongside others in a world where resources (space, time, energy) are limited is an activity conducive to fulfilling this principle. If we acknowledge that every person's life contains the violation of other people's autonomy and interference with their goals, not out of intentional malice but just due to the chaos of our interactions, then we are already "morally disqualified" according to Cabrera. The denial of this fact manifests itself socially as well:
Furthermore, affirmative ethics, founded on a primacy of being over non-being rather than a conception of equality among all beings, is prone to assign people value based on group membership, an easy behavior that we evolved to do almost reflexively.
There is so much more to say, but this post is getting long and I think I've conveyed his general idea. Cabrera is an Argentine philosopher living in Brazil and writing in Spanish; as such, his contributions are scarcely noticed by European and American philosophers. I think his analysis of the "affirmative" is unique in a way that separates it from the ordinary pessimism of people like Schopenhauer. He isn't gloomy, in other words, but neutral and uncompromising. In the domain of non-analytic philosophy there is so much fluff that it's refreshing to find someone willing to give existential concerns a properly rigorous treatment. Or maybe I'm just biased, and he's full of shit. What do you think?
For now, I want to focus on what he has to say about affirmative societies, or societies organized around affirmative morality. In brief, affirmative morality is any system of ethics that deals with how to live in the world, while taking the existence of the world and the structure of living itself as "given" and exempting them from consideration. One analogy that Cabrera uses to make this distinction is the rules of war, which provide guidance to combatants and states about how to do battle or take prisoners, but say nothing about the issue of war itself. Or, how there are complicated regulations concerning how to humanely execute someone, but they do not include the question of whether execution can itself be considered humane. In this sense, affirmative ethical systems are "second-degree" systems, situated in the context of an encompassing structure that itself is never evaluated ethically. By this definition, nearly all moral theories are affirmative ones. To Cabrera, the affirmative mind is one that not only says 'yes' to the ontological form of being-in-the-world (postponing or concealing a critical examination of its nature), but provides a 'firming' or 'firmament' upon which to anchor psychological security. He then goes on to describe this mindset at a societal level (bolding mine):
p. 28 said:The negative interpretation of non-being (of dying, killing, letting-someone-die, abstaining-from-letting-another-live, letting-another-die, letting-someone-live, and so on) is a crucial component and a key for understanding oblivion and concealment. Societies organized around diverse policies of beings are noteworthy “affirmative” societies where suicide and abstention from procreating are ethically condemned. Every attempt of ethical defense of these forms of non-being is stigmatized as pathological, irrational, subjective or socially disturbing. The incessant battle against the supposed “nihilism” of these attitudes, from the part of medical, religious, juridical and philosophical flanks, can be seen as an attempt to transform the non-being of being into an external “danger” that can be avoided through procedures, an incessant movement that transforms the non-being of being into something that “comes after” the being, as something that could have been avoided some way.
Affirmative societies interpret as “nihilist” any attempt to give the non-being a positive interpretation. It prefers to give it a moral sense that currently determines non-being as being some kind of “evil”. The “presence of evil in the world”, one of the premises of theodicy, is supported on a purely negative interpretation of non-being, in contrast with the being, seen as non-problematically affirmative, where non-being seems indefinitely “postponed”. Affirmative ethics lives under the expenses of the presence of “evil” in the world, and prefers not taking notice of the non-being of being (or maybe the policy of beings prepares a polite pretending “not taking notice”) even when this attitude leads to extreme points as of the Kantian ethics affirming there has never been in the world one single moral action, or as of the Christian ethics in general, declaring every man is a sinner. Not even when “evil” fills the world and occupies the totality of spaces, affirmative conceptual organization of society accepts thinking about the possibility that non-being admits a positive interpretation, as a structural part of being, instead of considering it as a foreign negativity or a passing anomaly.
To that, affirmative ethics corresponds, by force, an affirmative ontology. The basic postulates of this ontology are assertions such as: “being is better than not-being”, “being more is better than being less”, and so on. Usual completely basic ethical assertions can be derived from this, such as: “the being is good; the non-being is bad”; “being bad is better than not being anything at all”, and so on. There is, within this affirmative ontology, a systematic favoring of being against non-being, and also a kind of ontological-ethical “maximalism” (“The more being, the better”). The incongruence of affirmative societies seems to consist of the simultaneity of the basic belief in the goodness of being (and in the “evilness” of non-being) with the regular mechanisms of concealment of this being. How is it understood that something basically “good” must stay hidden and forgotten?
To make sense of this, it helps to keep in mind that Cabrera's preceding investigation of ontology concludes with the claim that death (or non-existence), rather than being a punctual event that interrupts life, is a constitutive part of life from the very beginning. We are all born dying, and this terminality is a basic feature of life, coming into play the moment it starts, not an incidental occurrence. This is what he means by the "non-being of being", and what he contends is deliberately or unconsciously hidden by affirmative thought, which must simultaneously hold that being is good and that non-being, something inexorably tied to being in its very fabric, is bad.
The other aspect of life's structure that is systematically downplayed in affirmative ethics is the inevitability of conflict. Although a fundamental principle common to almost every kind of morality is to respect the interests of others, it is never investigated whether simply existing alongside others in a world where resources (space, time, energy) are limited is an activity conducive to fulfilling this principle. If we acknowledge that every person's life contains the violation of other people's autonomy and interference with their goals, not out of intentional malice but just due to the chaos of our interactions, then we are already "morally disqualified" according to Cabrera. The denial of this fact manifests itself socially as well:
p. 138 said:The affirmative concern on how-to-live (or the overwhelming concern of living, of finding, in any way and against any one, a way to be, to plant your own “right to live” in the middle of the world) drastically assumes that, in order to say yes to life, it is necessary not to consider the other's life as absolutely inviolable. Considering the other's life as inviolable is something that, given the conflictive structure of the world – as elucidated by naturalized ontology - can only be done if we are willing to put our own lives at disposal, an attitude strongly contested in current affirmative thinking based on pride and hetero-aggressiveness. At most, affirmative ethics encourages dying in the full exercise of killing (in war, for example). This way, the how-to-live assumes total primacy over the what-to-live, and the how-to-live can only develop at the expenses of breaking the principle of inviolability of the other's life, to the extent that the ethics of how-to-live only conceives the respect for the other through strict qualifications [...]
From there on, aggressiveness is admitted and administrated intra-worldly by the organized affirmative societies, creating a “politicized ethics”, in the sense of a fair distribution of violence, a typical piece of secondary morality since violence has been accepted in the radical level. Affirmative societies accept as morally correct, for example, the implantation of capital punishment and, in general, the extermination of people who are considered pernicious to society, struggling against all forms of what is narrow-mindedly seen as “self-destructive” (suicide, drinking, drugs and excessive exuberant hedonist forms of life in general), admitting the existence of “fair wars” undertaken by nations against “dangerous enemies”, and accepting competence and struggle as forms of social interactions par excellence, propitiating the struggle for “gaining favors”, where the less malicious are massacred by the more “intelligent”, quick and opportunist in a commerce where one should not allow oneself “to be taken as a fool”. Institutionalized violence is, at the same time, concealed in legislation, public morality, institutions and public freedoms, apparently “at everyone's reach.” [...]
Furthermore, affirmative ethics, founded on a primacy of being over non-being rather than a conception of equality among all beings, is prone to assign people value based on group membership, an easy behavior that we evolved to do almost reflexively.
p. 166 said:From the disregard of human life for not being Athenian to the disregard of human life for not being pro-democracy, there are certainly differences, however not in the radical level of respect for human life simply for being human: from this point of view, Greeks, as much as Moderns, got out of the scope of a first degree morality; because, in spite of expressive changes from ancient to modern ethics, the affirmative characteristic of these theories has always been maintained. The justification of “self-defense” is fragile in the radical level: the “barbarians” threatened the Athenians as the Muslims threaten Western world nowadays. In both cases, we grant the right of killing “those who threaten us” (free citizens or occidentals). Modern affirmative societies, that allege to have overcome the partial (not universal) morality of the Greeks, are the same that totally agree with bombing the military bases of Saddam Hussein where many people die. There may be, I do not deny it, rational arguments to make important differences between ancient and modern ethics in this problematic context, but one cannot say we have overcome the Greeks by introducing the requirement of universality regarding the issue of respect for human life simply for being human. This is basically impossible for an affirmative ethics. [...]
The problem, when getting out of the calm and simplicity of first degree morality, is that, suddenly, humans are in the possession of mortal weapons of difficult handling: the possibility of determining that certain humans have stopped being humans and are, therefore, eliminable, and also the always open possibility of killing in “legitimate self-defense”. Both things are diffuse, even though Hitler and other treacherous homicides are easy and rhetorical examples always at hand. The majority of cases, the common aggressions of everyday life, are not as easy to decide as the so-called “great crimes of humanity”. What should we do in order “to stop being human” and become, therefore, “eliminable”? Kill? Which way? How many? How often? Which attitude? And, on the other hand, what does “self-defense” really mean? What are the limits between self-defense and aggression (and, therefore, between “expansive wars” and “merely defensive wars”)? When they are asked about, all nations at war declare they are only “defending themselves” (not too different from the men involved in a bar quarrel). Is there not the saying, in war and in joke, “the best defense is attack”? Offensive and defensive actions are intermixed in an inseparable way. In referring to “being Athenian”, there is indeed a rational difference in favor of “being for the democratic forces”, but the qualification of some human beings as “enemies” and, therefore, eliminable, is identical in the Peloponnesian war and in the Gulf War. Affirmative societies, in a clear way, rationally justify the qualification of certain humans as being “eliminable”, and this should be fully assumed. Human life as such is not inviolable in affirmative societies, and this must be systematically remembered in the context of moral condemnations of suicide and other human attitudes, as one of the greatest evaluative inconsistencies of affirmativeness.
There is so much more to say, but this post is getting long and I think I've conveyed his general idea. Cabrera is an Argentine philosopher living in Brazil and writing in Spanish; as such, his contributions are scarcely noticed by European and American philosophers. I think his analysis of the "affirmative" is unique in a way that separates it from the ordinary pessimism of people like Schopenhauer. He isn't gloomy, in other words, but neutral and uncompromising. In the domain of non-analytic philosophy there is so much fluff that it's refreshing to find someone willing to give existential concerns a properly rigorous treatment. Or maybe I'm just biased, and he's full of shit. What do you think?