This chapter contains sections titled: To Shop or Not to Shop? That is The Question Do Prestigious, Ivy League, Male Philosophers Ever Think About Clothes? Yes! (Well, Sort Of) Individual Responsibility Only Seems to Fit In Extra Small Are Americans Boorish Butterflies? Am I Responsible for The Suffering of The World's Poor?

INTRODUCTION BY NANCY FUMERO What is a translation that stalls comprehension? That, when read, parsed, obfuscates comprehension through any language – English, Portuguese. It is inevitable that readers expect fidelity from translations. That language mirror with a sort of precision that enables the reader to become of another location, condition, to grasp in English in a similar vein as readers of Portuguese might from João Guimarães Rosa’s GRANDE SERTÃO: VEREDAS. There is the expectation that (...) translations enable mobility. That what was written in one language be accessible in another. And that a translator is to serve as a mediator, acting ultimately in service to ideas within the source text. To disperse them. However, this notion of translation is partly antithetical to the ideas in Rosa’s work. Or, alternately, to convey the despair of terrain slipping beneath one’s feet, and to encounter the heightened suspense of magic, the translation, as part of its strategy, cannot devotedly rely on its original language, not as its source text. The work undertaken by Felipe W.Martinez is a new form of translation that risks everything in order to encounter the same treacherous knowing Rosa had traversed. And it takes its risks by not taking risks: by being, almost word for word, a literal translation. This is an approach that reductively converts, as opposed to translates. The idiomatic differences between English and Portuguese are not accented. The syntax is not finessed. Liberties are not assumed on account of improving readability. What stands, resoundingly amid such absences, is the awakened challenge of reading. The genuine peril of not knowing. That is, this translation, one that purports to know nothing, creates access into the guileful world Rosa had created in Portuguese. But not by translating. If anything, GRANDE SERTÃO: VEREDAS is speaking a cosmic language through a linguistic one. And W.Martinez does us the service of recognizing this, as what configures the shapes of words and sentences is not as simple as neologisms, portmanteaus, and digressions, but as terrifying as the path the fool traverses: all paths. As such, this translation doesn’t speak English, just as the original does not speak Portuguese. It is the assemblage of paradox as a new logic that can be navigated, if only one could suspend the comfort of readability, of expectation. If one could descend a mountain in the pitch dark of night, each step shocking the body, unable to acclimate to the unleveled heights. Without a doubt, the translation is incongruous to the Portuguese. Taking a small excerpt to compare: Eh, well, thereafter, the rest the Sir provide: comes the bread, comes the hand, comes the god, comes the dog. What is striking is the interplay between “god” and “dog”. To most English speakers, this anagram is a familiar one. But in Portuguese the words god (“deus”) and dog (“cão”) are not so closely linked. In fact, there is no direct mention of “deus” in Rosa’s text: Eh, pois, empós, o resto o senhor prove: vem o pão, vem a mão, vem o são, vem o cão. Both are fascinating. In Rosa’s excerpt, the rhythm is unmistakable and precise, despite, of course, the indices of hesitation: the commas, the Eh, the uncomfortable way of searching through prolongation and wait. This is the sort of paradox Rosa can engage within a sentence. W.Martinez’s does this as well, at a scale that reverberates beyond the sentence, and with one noticeable addition: deus. What may appear to be an overstep, to add such a weighted word that draws out wordplay but is, nevertheless, not in the source text, is exemplary of risk. The translation buzzes because of it. This is because throughout the text we encounter dogs frequently, as some primal beast on par with humans. The dog is one that masters and can be mastered. A creature that is at times its face, and at others a mask. It is a powerful presence. For the translator to be attuned to the reverent undercurrent attributed to this animal, and create within the translation such charged play in English from what was only an implication in Portuguese, is in tribute to the grand beauty within dissonance. What aberrant modes of writing and translation can teach us most assuredly, is that things, words, are not in states of rightness or wrongness, but of oscillation. This isn’t so different from what Rosa says himself: The Sir look…see: the most important and beautiful, of the world, is this: that the people are not always same, still were not completed — but that they go always shifting. They tune or detune. We find this so readily in W.Martinez’s translation, this tuning and detuning. Nancy Fumero Los Angeles GRAND SERTÃO: VEREDAS BY JOÃO GUIMARÃES ROSA TRANSLATED FROM THE PORTUGUESE BY FELIPE W.MARTINEZ Nonothing. Shots that the Sir heard were man brawling not, God be. Bleach white sights on the tree in the backyard, down in the river. By my right. I do this every day, I like; from the bad of boyhood. Thereof they came to call on me. Case of a calf: a white calf, errorful, eyes of to not be—saw selves—; and with a mask of a dog! They told me; I didn’t want to catch a sight. Same that, by the defects of birth, upturned lips, looked to be a laughing man. Folkface, dogface: they determined—it was the devil. Bananas. Killed it. Do not know who owned it. They came to borrow my guns. I caved. I’ve no power to impose. Oh, sir, you laugh certain laughs…Look: when it’s a true shot, first the dogs begin to bark, instantly—after, then, you see who’s handed death. Sir, endure, this is the Sertão. Some want that it is not: that situated Sertão is in and out of those general fields, they say, end of the road, highlands, the other Urucuia. Toleima. For those of Cortino and of Curvelo, then, isn’t here said Sertão? Ah! That there’s more! To place the Sertão it’s told: it’s where the pastures lack latches; where one can tear off ten, fifteen leagues without running into a houseinhabitant; where criminalousness lives out its christ jesus. Sifted out from the tightening grip of the law. The Urcuia comes from the western mountains. But today, its banks, give all—farmlands of farms, pastures of meadows of good yield, low tides, cultures that go kill for kill, until these virgins there are. The general fields run round. These general fields are without size. Ultimately, whichever one one approves, the Sir knows: bread or breads, it’s a question of heads…the Sertão is everywhere. Of the devi? No comment. Sir ask the dwellers. Falsely I fear they unspeak that name of his—only say: whatsitcalled. Volt! no… Whosoever over avoids it, lives with it. In the sentence of one Aristides—who exists in the first palm grove on the right hand side, called Vereda-of-Cow-Calm-of-Saint-Rita—everyone believes: he can't pass in three designated places: then can be heard the tiny cry, behind, a little voice warning:— "Here I come! Here I come!... "— that is the Capirote, the whatsitcalled... And one Jise Simplicio—who anyone from here will swear he keeps an imp in house, a little satanite, imprisoned and obliged to help in all greedful deeds; reason that Simplicio emprises en route to complete riches. As such, for this they say too that his beast bristles and refuses, denying his banner, unyielding, when he wishes to mount... Superstition. Jise Simplicio and Aristides, continue getting fatter, thence unheard or heard. Still the Sir study: right now, in these days of time, you have people purporting that the devil proper stopped, mid-passage, in Andrequice. A boy out of there, to whom'd appeared, and there lauded that, to get here—normally, by horse, a day-n-half—he was capable of such with only some twenty minutes enough... by coasting the River of Chico by the headwaters! Or, too, who knows—sans offense—will not have been, for example, even yourself the Sir who announced such, when you passed by there, for fun run funny? Thereof, not my given crime, I know that wasn't. And evil I wanted not. Only that one question, in hours, at times, brightens peaceful reason. But, the Sir understand: if such a boy, there was, he wanted to dupe. Because, hey, that, to cut the river off by the springs, would be the same thing as one redoubling in the internals of this our state of ours, costant of a journey of some three months... Then? Whatsitcalled? Dodo. The fantastication. And, the respect of giving him such these names of delicacy, is what it is for one to want to invoke that he form of form, with his presence! Not that is. I, personally, almost that have lost in him the creed, deserving to Deus; is the that to the Sir I say, to pure-secret. I know that it is well established, that it greases our Saintly-Gospels. On occasion, I conversed with a young seminarian, super suitable, conferring in the book of prayers and coated in vestments, with a stick of black-sage in hand—prosed that he went auxilitator to the father, to extract the Cujo, from the body living of an oldwoman, in Waterfalls-of-Bulls, he went with the vicar of Field-Round... I conceive. The Sir not is as I? I didn't believe a single thing. Compadre mine Quelemem describes that that which reveals effect are the low spirits meager, of third, adoing in the worst darkness and with anxieties of connecting selves with the livers—they give support. Compadre mine Quelemem is who much me consoles—Quelemem of Goias. But he has to live far from here, in Jijuja, Vereda of Buriti Dark... Ahrr, I leave myself there, that in enevildemonment or with support—the Sir too must have had known diverse, men, women. As not yes? For me, umpteen I've seen, that I've learned. Ma-Neigh, Blood-o'Other, or Legion-Lips, or Tear-em-Down, Cold-Cutter, or Sissy-Goat, one Treciziano, or Verdigris... or Hermogenes... o'them, pileload. If I could forget so many names... I'm not a man for calming horses! And, same, whom of yes of to be jagunço self enters, yea is for some competence entrant of demonion. Will it not? Will it? From first, I made and mixed, and to think not I thought. I didn't have the deadlines. I lived pulling difficult from difficult, fish alive on griddle: who lives asp'rously, no fantasies. But, now, fete of fate to me comes, and sans little disquietudes, I'm from creaky net. And myself invented in this like, of to speculate ideas. The devil exists and nonexists? I say the saying. Opennouncement. These melancholies. The Sir sees: exists waterfall; and since? But waterfall is gulch of ground, and water so pouring from it, retumbling; the Sir consume that water, or undo that bankment, remainder waterfall any? To live is negotiation much perilous. I explain to the Sir: the devil vigors inside of human, the wrinkles of human— or is the human ruin, or the human of adversess. I free, per se, citizen, is that not has devil notone. Notone!— is the that I say. The Sir approve? Me declares total, frank— is high merit that me make: and to beg might, increased. This case— by rashtravagance that me they see— is of mine certain importance. God grant not was... But, not say that the Sir, awised and instructed, that agrees in people of them?! Not? You I appreciate! Your high opinion composes my value. Yea I knew, waited for it— yea the field! Ah, a we, in oldness, we lack of to have plowing of rest. You I appreciate. Is devil notone. Nor esprit. Never I've seen. Someone ought to see, then was I myself, this your servant. Was I you to tell... Well, the devil regulate his state black, ins creatures, ins womens, ins humans. E'en: ins childrens— I declaim. Since not is said: "boy—trainee of the devil"? And ins thes uses, ins plants, ins waters, in terra, in wind... Manures. …The devil in the street, in the middle of the vortex... Hey? Hey? Ah. Figuration mine, of worse by back, the certain memories. Mal-make me! I suffer pain of to tell not…Meliorate, if chillingly: well, in a ground and with equal format of branches and leaves, not give to cassava-calm, that is eaten common, and the cassava-mad that kills? Now, the Sir yea saw a strangeness? A cassava-sweet can rapidly to turn agonizing— motives not I know, at times is said that is for replanted in the terrain always, with mutations then, of caules—go embittering, of s’much in s’much, of its self takes poisons. And, well look: the other, the cassava-mad, too is that at times can fix calm, the estimate, of is to eat sans notone mal. And what this is? Eh, the Sir yea saw, for to see, the ugliness of hate pleated, facetorqued, on the faces of one cobrarattlesnake? Observed the porker fat, capita day more felicity brute, capable of, could, snort and engulf for its own dirty coziness the world total? And sparrowhawk, blackbird, some, the features of they yea represent the need of cleave for before, rend and shred by beak, appears a knife much fine for ruin I desire. Total. Has even twisted races of stone, horrorous, venomous— that spoil mortal the aquas, if they are buried beneath of well; the devil inside of them sleeps: they are the devil. Is known? And the demon— that is only thus the significance of one mercury malign— have order of to follow the path of him, have license to brag?! Arr, he is variegated in all! What the what wastes, goes spending the devil of inside of the people, by itttybits, is the reasonable to suffer. And the delight of love—compadre mine Quelemem says. Family. Really? Is, and not is. The Sir think and not think. Total is and not is… Almost all more grave criminous ferocity, always is much good husband, good son, good father, and is good-friend-of-your-friends! I know of those. Solo that have the afters— and Deus, joined. I spy many nimbi. But, in veracity, son, too, softens. Look: one called Aleixo, resident a league from Step-of-Sour, in Of-Sand, was the man of major badness calm that yea you saw. Me agreed that near the house of his had a weir, amidst the palms, with traíras, for souls of enormous, desenormous, to the real, that received fame; the Aleixo gave of to eat to them, in hours just, they self accustomed to if assuch of lunacies, in order to gobble, seemed to be fishes instructed. One day, solo for grace rustic, he killed an oldman who by there passed, destitute begging alms. The Sir not doubt—have people, in this bored world, that kill solo in order to see someone make grimace… Eh, well, thereafter, the rest the Sir provide: comes the bread, comes the hand, comes the god, comes the dog. This Aleixo was man afamilied, had children small; they were the love of his, total, absurdity. Gave good, that not even a year there passed, of to killed the oldman poor, and the children of Aleixo there they asickened. Smallepidemic of measles, they said, but complex; they never heal. When, then, they healed. But the eyes of theirs vermillionized high in an inflame of spraining to rebellion; and nexthing— the that not I know is if they went of at once, or one later and later other and other— they remained blind. Blind, sans remission of one sweet of light of this Ours! The Sir imagine: stairset— three boys and one girl— all blind. Sans remediable. The Aleixo not lost the judgment, but he changed; ah, mutated complete— now lives of band of Deus, sweating to be good and charitous in all his hours of night and of day. Appears even that he fixed the felicity, that before not was. He himself says he was a man of luck, because Deus wanted to have pity of him, to transform for there the route of his soul. That I heard, and me it gave rage. Reason of the children. If being castigated, what culpa of the let-there-bes of Aleixo those little children had?! Compadre mine Quelemem reproved my uncertainties. That, for certain, inother life returnaound, the children too had been the most wicked, of the mass and part of the father, demons of the same kettle of place. Sir the what thinks? And the oldman, assassinated? — I know the Sir goes to discuss. Well, too. In order that he had a sin of crime, in the body, by to pay. If the people— conforming compadre mine Quelemem is who says— if the people turn to to incarnate renovated, I contemplate even that enemy of death can come as son of the enemy. Look see: if to myself I say, has a subject Pedro Pindo, neighbor of here more six leagues, man of good for all in all, he and the woman of his, always been good, of goodness. They have a son of some ten years called Valtei—name modern, is the that the population of here now appreciates, the Sir knows. Well this-little-thing, thislet, since that some understanding illuminated in him, deed demonstrated the that is: petition stepfather, acid burner, likeful of ruin of inside of the profundity of the species of its nature. In which that torments, to the slowly, of all beasts or raisinglings little that quarrel; one time he found a creole woman hooched foolish sleeping, he arranged a shard of bottle, lashed at three points on the stern of the legs of hers. The what this boy drooled seeing, is bleeding hen or to knife pig.— “I enjoy of to kill…”— one occasion he teeny me told. He opened in me a fright; because: birdy that self leans over— the flight yea is ready! Well the Sir oversee: the pa, Pedro Pindo, mode of to correct this, and the ma, they give in him, misery and mast—they cast the boy sans to eat, they tied to trees in the yard, he nude, unplumed, even in June cold, they tilled the bittybody of his with the trammel and with the goblet, after they cleansed the skin of the sanguine, with bottle gourd brine. The people know, spy, fix wasted. The boy yea relowered of thinness, the eyes entering, caress of bones, enskulled, and tuberculated, the time total hacking, coughness of the that draw parched pectorals. Arr, that now, visible, the Pindo and the woman self habituated of on him hit, of little bit in little they were creating in this a pleasure ugly of diversion— as they regulate the canings in hours certain comfortable, until they call people to see the example good. I think that boy not endure, yea there is in the ta-da, not arrive for the lent to come… Ooee-ooee, then?! Not being as compadre mine Quelemem to want, that explication is that the Sir bestowed? That boy had to be a man. He should, in swing, terrible perversities. Soul of his was in the pitch. Demonstrated. And, now, paid. Ah, but, happens, when he’s crying and paining, he suffers equal that as was as a boy good… Bird, I saw all, in this world! Yea I saw even horse with hiccups… —the that the thing most costous that is. Good, but the Sir may say, should of: and in the start— for offenses and arts, the people— as for that was that s’much amended was started? Ey, ey, ey all collided. Compadre mine Quelemem, too. Am solo a sertanite, in these high ideas I navigate mal. Am much poor poor-thing. Envy my pedigree and of ones conform the Sir, with total reading and doctoration. Not is that I be illiterate. I spelt, years and middle, midly speller, memory and palmer. I had master, Master Lucas, in the Curralinho, he memorized grammar, the operations, rule-of-three, even geography and study patria. On leaves great of paper, with caprice I traced handsome maps. Ah, not is for to speak: but, since of the start, me they thought sophisticated of side. And that I merited of to go to course latin, in Lesson Waterlily—that too they said. Time nostalgic! Going today, I appreciate a good book, despaced. On the farm The Lilittlelemon, of one mine friend Vito Soziano, so sign of this almanac thick, of logoglyphs and conundrums and other divided matters, all year come. In s’much, I place primacy is in the reading advantageous, life of saints, virtues and examples— missionary astute engambling the Indians, or Saint Francis of Assis, Saint Anthony, Saint Gerald… I like much of moral. To ratiocinate, exhort the others for the good way, to acounsel to just. Mine woman, that the Sir knows, vigils for me: much prayer. She is a blessable. Compadre mine Quelemem always says that I may to aquiet my fears on conscience, that being well-attended, terrible good-esprits me protect. Eep! With like… As is of saint effect, I help with mine to want to accredit. But not even always can I. The Sir knew: I total the mine life I thought for me, lining, I am born different. I am and I same. I divert of total the world… I almost that nothing not I know. But I disconfide of many things. The Sir, conceding, I say: in order to think long, I am dog master— the Sir loose in mine front an idea ease and I research that by profundity of total the backwoods, amen! Look: the should of to have, was of so reunited-selves the wise, politicos, constitutions graded, closed the definitive the notion— to proclaim for one time, art assemblies, that not have devil notone, not exists, not possible. Valor of law! Solo assuch, they gave tranquility good to the people. Because the government not cares?! Ah, I know that not is possible. Not me settled the Sir for philistine. One this is to place ideas arranged, other is to deal with country of people, of flesh and sanguine, of thousand-and-many miseries… S’many people—gives scare of to know—and notone so calms: All nascenting, crescendoing, so wedding, wanting collocation of employment, consumables, health, abundance, to be important, wanting rain and affairs good… Of luck that lacks of so to choose: or we t’weave of to live in the salacious common, or care solo of religion solo. I could to be: father clergyman, if not chief of jagunços; for other things not was I birthed. But mine oldness yea principaled I erred of total account. And the rheumatism… There as whom says: in the primers. Ahem. Hey? Hey? The that more I think, I testify and explain: all-the-world is mad. The Sir, I, we, the people all. For this is that so lacks principally of religion: in order to desendodorize, to disdodoate. Pray is that heals of lunacy. In the general. This is that is the salvation-of-the-soul…Much religion your servant! I here, not I lose occasion of religion. I profit of all. I drink water of all rivers… One solo, for me is little, maybe not me arrives. I pray christian, catholic, I burrow the certain; and I accept the prayers of compadre mine Quelemem, doctrine of he, of Kardec. But, when I can, I go in the Mindubim, where one Matias is believer, methodist: the people so accuse of sinner, reads high the bible, and why, singing hymns beautiful of his. Total me quiets, me suspends. Whatever small shade me refreshes. But is solo much provisory. I wanted to pray— the time total. Many people not me approve, they think that law of Deus is privileges, invariable. And I! Doof! I Detest! The what I am? — the what I do, that want, much curia. And in face of total I face, executed. I? —not I trammel. Look: I have a black girl, Maria Leoncia, long from here not she lives, the prayers of her afame much virtue of power. Well to her I pay, every month— ordering of to pray for me one third, every saint day, and, on the Sundays, a rosary. Value, so values. Mine woman not sees mal in this. And I am, yea mandated word for an other, of the voyage-voyage, a Izina Calanga, in order to come here, I heard of that prayer too with grand mermermerits, I go to effect with she treatment equal. I want handful of those, me defending in Deus, reunited of me in volta… Cuts of Christ! To live is much perilous… To want the good with too much force, of incertain way, can yea to be being so wanting the mal, per to initiate. These humans! All they pull the world for itself, for the to concert amended. But capita one solo sees and understands the things of one his world. Amountain, the most supro, most serious was Mediero Vaz. That one man ancient… his Joaozy Ben-Ben, the most brave of all, no-one never can decipher how he by inside consisted. Joca Ramiro— grand man prince!— was politico. Zé Bebelo wanted to be politico, but had and not had luck: fox that lingered. So Candelario so demonized, by to think that was with illness mal. Titao Passos was the by the appreciation of friends: solo per via of them, of his same amities, were that such high so ajagunçoed. Antonio Do— severe bandit. But by half, grand majority half that be. Andalecio, in the profound, a good man-of-good, being raving in his total justice. Ricardao, same, wanted was to be rich in peace: for this he warred. Solo the Hermogenes was that born formed tiger, and assassinite. And the “Ofidios White”? Ah, not me speak. Ah this… joyless mischeivious, that was— that was a poor boy of the destiny… So good, congruous. The Sir heard, I you told: the ruin with the ruin, they terminate by the spine-bushes so to crack— Deus awaits that spendance. Boy!: Deus is patience. The contrary, is the devil. So consumes. The Sir file knife on knife— and file— that so they scrape. Even the rocks of the profound, one of in the other, they go-so aroundabounding even, that the rivulet rolls. Per enquantity, that I think, total as hath, in this world, is because so merits and lacks. Afterly precise. Deus not so reports with rifle, not garrotes the regulation. For what? Quit: goof with goof—one day, some illumination and learn: smart. Solo that, at times, for most auxiliar, Deus begets, in the middle, a pinch of pepper… Therebe? Well, for example: some time, I went of train, there in Seven-Lagoons, for parts of to consult a medical, of name me indicated. He went vested well, and in car of first, by via of the doubts, not me they shadowed for jagunço ancient. It goes and happens, that, close same of me, enfront, he took aseat, returning from the wild North, a mac Jazevedao, delegate professionale. Came with a capanga of his, an undercover, and I well knew the two, of that s’much a was ruin, as the other ruin was. The veracity to say, first I had the strict of me to surpasss for one lonng, to mutate of my place. Judgement me told, meliorate stay. Well, looking, I looked. And— you I tell: never I saw face of man furnished of brutez or malady more, of the them in that. As that was ogre, trussed of thickset, relustered of crude in the eyes small, and armed a chin of stone, toweringbrow; not of mid nor forehead. Not laughed, not so laughed not even one time; but, speaking or silent, the people appeared always to him some teeth, prey pointed of canids. Arr, and blustered, an ittybit. Solo growled curt, low, the mid-words grizzled. He came relooking, historicizing the documents— one by one the leaves with portraits and with the blacks of the digits of jagunços, lifters of horses and criminouses of death. That application of work, in one thing of those, generated the ire in the people. The undercover, busybodyguard, total close, seated joined, attending, excelling of to be dog. Me made a dread, but solo in the goof of the corpus, not in the intern of the courages. One hour, one of those reports fell— and I bent quickly, I knew there precisely by why, not I wanted, not I thought— even today I raise shame of this— I picked the paper of the ground, and delivered to him. Thereof, I say: I had more rage, because I did that; but there yea it was done. The man not even me looked, not even said notone thankfulment. Event he soles of the shoes of his— solo looking— that soles rough thick, bent of enormous, appearing iron bronzed. Because I knew: This Jazevedao, when he apprehended someone, the primary quiet thing that proceeded was that he came entering, sans to have to to say, feigning some hurry, and go stepping on the top of the feet of the poorthings. And that on these occasions he gave laughters, gave… Well, geck! I delivered to him the leaf of paper, and went leaving of there, by to have hand on me of not to destroy by shots that subject. Meat that much they weigh… And umbilicated beginning of belly pot bellied, that me created will… With my lightness, joyful that I’d kill. But, the barbarities that this delegate made and happened, the Sir not even has callus in heart to be able me to hear. He achieved of many men and women to cry blood, for the simple universolo ours here. Sertão. The Sir knows: sertão is where mandates who is strong, with the guile. And bullet is a tidbit of metal… S’much, I say: Jazevedao— one assuch, should of to have, needed? Ah, need. Leather ruined is that calls goad of point. That there be that, after— business particular of he— in the life or in the other, each Jazevedao, accomplished the that he has, desclimbs in his time of pain, too, until to pay the that he gave— compadre mine Quelemem is there, in order to fiscalize. The Sir knows: the peril that is to live… But solo of the mode, of these, by ugly instrument, was that the jagunsaga so finished. Sir thinks that Antonio Do or Olivino Oliviano were going to fix goodies by pure spelling of itself, or by begging of the infelicitous, or by always to hear sermon of father? You I think! In the aims… Of jagunço comported active in order so to repent in the middle of his jagunsagas, solo I lay of one: called Joe Cazuzo— was in smashing of one shotshow, for on the summit of the place Sierra New, district of river rusted, on the stream Traçadal. We made mal minority small, and they closed in order summit of us the personnel of one Coronel Adalvino, forted politico, with many soldiers uniformed in the center, commanding of the Lieutenant Epiphany Helm, that after fixed captain. We lasted hour more hour, and yea gave almost of encircled. There, of misslip, that Joe Cazuzo— man much valiant— so kneeled turned on the ground of the thick, lifted the arms that not even shoots of Jatoba dry, and solo yell, howl clear and howl deaf:— “I saw the Virgin Ours, in the resplendor of the Heavens, with her children of angels!... ” He screamed not touched. — “I saw the Virgin!... ” He ensouled? We desequaled. Bolt for my horse—that I thought— I leaped in mal seat, noteven I knew in which rupture-time I unfastened the halter, of tied up it foot of timber. I flew, arrived. Bullet come. The pasture roared. In the brush, the fear of the people so goes to the whole, one fear intentional. I could to lash out, fated burro brute, giv-that, giv-that. Some two or three bullets so drovein the pad of the mine saddle, they perforated of to tear away almost much the kapok of the filling. Horse trembled in pro, in middle of gallop, I know: thinks in the owner. I not fit of to be more well shrunken. Bulleted came to the sack that I had on the back, with few mine things. And other, of fusil, in ricochet decreed, heated my thigh, sans me wound, the Sir see: bullet does the what to want—so pierced impressed, between in me and the harness! Times crazy… Burumbum!: the horse so kneeled in the fall, dead perhaps, and I yea falling for front, embraced in foliage full, branched and linias, that me swayed and skewered, done I was pendulating in web of spider… Whither? I traversed that life total… Of fear of anxiety, I ruptured to read with mine corpus that forest, I know there — and me fell world below, rolled for the hollow of a grotto closed of shrubs, always me grasped— rolled same assuch: after: after, when I saw mine hands, total on they that not was withdrawn sanguine, was smeared green, on the digits, of leaves living that I pulled and mashed… I landed on the sedge of the profound— and a beast dark gave a releap, with a sneeze, too mad of fright: that was a papa-mel, that I descried; in order to flee, this is solely. Bigger being I, me doused mine overcoat; I spigotted total. And of one bit of thought: if that beast irara lying there then there not had cobra. I took the place of his. Existed cobra notone. I could me to lose. I was solo spineless, softness, but that not deadened, inside, the collisions of the heart. I gasped. I conceived that they came, me kill. Not even did mal, me mattered not. Assuch, some moments, at least I guarded the license of term in order me to rest. Conforming I thought in Diadorim. Solo I thought was in he. One joão-congo sang. I wanted to die thinking in my friend Diadorim, hand-o-bro, who was on the Sierra of WoodO’Bow, almost on the border baiana, with our other half of the so-candelarios… With my friend Diadorim me embraced, sentiment my went-flew right for he… Ay, arr, but: that this mine mouth not has order notone. I am accounting outside, things divagated. In the Sir me confide? Til-that, til-that. Say the angel-of-the-guard… But, conforming I came: after so knew, that same the soldiers of the Lieutenant and the goats of Coronel Adalvino remitted of to respect the blast of that Joe Cazuzo. And that this ended being the man most pacificious of the world, fabricator of oil and sacristan, in the Saint Sundays White. Times! For total, cleaned revelation, I fix thinking. I like. Meliorate, for the idea if well to open, is travelling in train-of-iron. Could, lived to top and to bottom, inside of it. Information that I ask: same in the Heavens, end of end, how is that the soul wins so to forget s’much sufferments and maladies, in the received and in the given? The how? The Sir knows: are things of hideous ofmuch, have. Pain of corpus and pain of idea mark forted, that forted as the total love and rage of hate. Goes, sea… Of luck that, then, the Firmiano, by appellationed Louse-of-Snake, so leoprosized with the leg disconformed, thickening, of that disease that not so cures; and not discern almost more, constant the branchials in the eyes, of the cataracts. Of before, years, had to of so disarray of the jagunsaga. Well, one occasion, some was on the ranch of his, on the High Jeuitai, after accounted—that, turns time, comes subject, he would say: “Me give yearning is of to seize a soldier, and such, for one good flay, with knife blind… But, first, to castrate…” The Sir conceive? Who has more dose of demon in self is Indian, any race of brusque. Folk see nation ofthese, for there profound of the generals of Goias, theofwhere has vagarous grand rivers, of aquas always so clear pleasantly, running of down crystal rosed… Louse-of-Snake gave of sanguine of heathen. Sir me will say: but that he pronounced that out of mouth, manner of to represent that yet not was old decadent. Opus of to oppose, for fear of to be tame, and cause in order so to see respected. Total listened for such rule: palavered of ruins, for more so valued, because we to the environs is hard durability. The worst, but, is that they finish, through the same ford, given of one day to execute the declared, in the real. I saw s’much crudity! Pain not pays to account; if I go, I collide. And me dedrip, three that me sicken, this total. Me convokes that the personnel, today in day, is good of heart. This is, good in the trivial. Malices wildwants, and perversities, always have some, but scarcities. Generation mine, true, was not assuch. Ah, goes to turn a time, in which not is used more to kill people… I yea am old. Good, I was saying: question, this that me excavates… Ah, I formed that question, for compadre mine Quelemem. That me responded: that, for close to heaven, we so amplified so, that total the uglies past so exhaled of not to be—fated sans-modus from time of youngster, mal-arts. As we not lack of to have remorse of the which divulged in the pulsation of his nightmares of one night. Assuch that: fleeced-so, flourished-so! Ahem. For this said, is that the journey to the Heavens is delayed. I confide with compadre mine Quelemem, the Sir knows: reason of creed same that has—that, for total the mal, that so does, one day so repays, the exact. Subject assuch rises three times, in ante of to want to facilitate in any minutia reprehensible… Compadre mine Quelemem never speaks vacant, not subtreats. Solo that this to he not I go to expose. We never should have to declare that accept entire the alien—that is what is the rule of the king! The Sir look…see: the most important and beautiful, of the world, is this: that the people are not always same, still were not completed — but that they go always shifting. They tune or detune. Truth major. Is the that the life me taught. This that me animates, mound. And, other thing: the devil and the brutes; but Deus is treacherous! Ah, a beauty of treacherous— gives like! The force of his, when he wants— boy!— me gives the fear dread! Deus comes coming: no one not sees. He does in the law of gentle— assuch is the miracle. And Deus attacks beautiful, so amusing, so economizes. The well: one day in a tannery, the little knife mine I had dropped inside of a tank, solo soup of bark of tan, stryphnodendron adstringens, angico, there I know. —“Tomorrow I try…”— I said, withmyself. Because it was of night, light notone I not disputed. Ah, then, I found: on the other day, early, the knife, the iron of it, had been gnawed, almost by half, by that aqua dark, total quiet. I left, for more to see. Crack, fuse! Know the what was? Well, in that same of afternoon, there: of the little knife solo so found the handle… The handle, for not to be of cold metal, but of horn of deer. There is: Deus… Good, the Sir heard knows, the that knows me understands… We sum, not think that religion fractures. Sir think the contrary. Visible that, those other times, I painted—belief that the neoglaziovia variegata lifts the flower. Ah, good my joy… Boyhood. But boyhood is task for more later so to deny. Too, I of that of to think in vague in s’much, lost mine hand-of-man for the management hot, in the middle of all. But, today, that I ratiocinated, and think the endeavor, not nor for this not I give for low my competence, in a fire-and-iron. The to see. Would approach would come here with war on me, with bad parts, with other laws, or with excessive looks, and I even draw to ignite this zone, ay, if, if! Is in the mouth of the blunderbuss: is in the rete-te-tem… And lonelyonly not I am, there-of-the. For not this, I was I placed encircle my mine people. Look the Sir: here, close, vereda below, the Paspe — cropper my — is mine. More league, if that, have the Herpetotheres, and have the compadre Ciril, him and three children, I know that they serve. Band of that hand, the Alaripe: knew the Sir the that is that so boasts, in rifleation and by the knife, one cearense did this! After more: the João Innatal, the Quipes, Lophiosilurus-of-claws. And the Fafafa— this gave fights high, all side with me, in the combat old of the Anteater-such: we cleaned the wind of whom not had order of to respirate, and ante these we desencompassed… The Fafafa has a mass of mares. He raises horses good. Even a little more distant, on the ped-of-sierra, of band mine was the Sesfred, Jesualdo, the Nelson, and João Concliz. Some others. The Triol… And not I go valuing? I leave terra with them, of theirs the what is mine is, we close that we not even brothers. For what I want to gather richness? They are there, of arms aireated. Enemy to come, we cross called, gathering: is hour of one good shotshowerment in peace, they exp’riment to see. I say this to the Sir, of confidence. Too, not go to think in double. We want is to work, propose tranquility. Of me, person, I live for mine woman, that total mode-meliorate merits, and for the devotion. Well-to want of mine woman was that me assisted, prayers of hers, graces. Love comes of love. I say. In Diadorim, I think too— but Diadorim is the mine nebulina… Now, well: not I wanted to touch on this more— of the Tineaous; arrive. But has a nevertheless: I ask: the Sir believe, think trust of truth in that parlance, of with the demon so to able to deal with pact? No, no is no? I knew that not there. I spoke of favas. But I like of total good confirmation. To vend you proper soul… Inventionate false! And, soul, the what is? Soul of has to be thing internal supremed, much more of the of inside, and is solo, of the that one if thought: ah, soul sheer! Decision of to vend soul is fearless moll, fantasied of moment, has not the obedience legal. Can I to vend those good terras, thereof of between the Veredas-Four— that are of one Mr. Admiral, who resides in the capital federal? Can I some? Then, if one boy boy is, and for this not so authorizes of to negotiate… And we, this I know, at times is solo fated boy. Mal that in mine life I prepared, I was in a certain infancy in dreams — total runs and arrives so swift —; will be that if hath flame of responsibilities? If dream; yea so did… I gave rapadura to the chump! Ahem. Well. If his soul, and has, it is of Deus established, not even that the person want or not want. Not is vendible. The Sir not thinks? Me declare, frank, I beg. Ah, you I appreciate. You so see that the Sir knows much, in idea firm, beyond of to have letter of doctor. You I appreciate, for much. Your company me gives high pleasures. In terms, I liked that I would live here, or close, was a help. Here not so has conviviation that to instruct. Sertão. Knows the Sir: sertão is where the thought of the people so forms more forted of the than power of the place. To live is much perilous… Eh, that you so go? Yeayea? Is that not. Today, no. Tomorrow, no. Not I consense. The Sir me forgive, but in endeavor of mine friendship accept: the Sir stay. After fifth of-morning-early, the Sir wanting to go, then goes, same me leaves feeling your absence. But, today or tomorrow, no. Visit, here in house, with me, is for three days! But, the Sir really intends to trespass the field this sea of territotires, for sortment of to confer the what exists? You have your motives. Now— I say for me — the Sir comes, came late, Times were, the customs mutate. Almost that, of legitimate loyal, little surplus, not even no excess more nothing. The bands good of valientoughs they reparted their end; many who were jagunço, by ouch pain, beg alms. Same as the herdsmen they doubt of to come in the commerce vested of clothes entire of leather, they think that garb of jerkin is ugly and boor. And even the herd in the shrubbed pasture goes waning less mad, more educated: casted of zebu, dissee with the rest of corralers and captiveborns. Always, in the generals is to the poverty, to the sadness. A sadness that even gladdens. But, then, for a crop reasonable of bizzarancies, I recounsel of the Sir to entest journey more dilated. Not were my desmight, by acids and rheumatism, there I went. I guided the Sir till total. March 2013 San Diego, CA ORIGINAL TEXT NONADA. TIROS QUE O SENHOR ouviu foram de briga de homem não, Deus esteja. Alvejei mira em árvores no quintal, no baixo do córrego. Por meu acerto. Todo dia isso faço, gosto; desde mal em minha mocidade. Daí, vieram me chamar. Causa dumbezerro: um bezerro branco, erroso, os olhos de nem ser – se viu –; e com máscara de cachorro. Me disseram; eu não quis avistar. Mesmo que, por defeito como nasceu, arrebitado de beiços, esse figurava rindo feito pessoa. Cara de gente, cara de cão: determinaram – era o demo. Povo prascóvio. Mataram. Dono dele nem sei quem for. Vieram emprestar minhas armas, cedi. Não tenho abusões. O senhor ri certas risadas... Olhe: quando é tiro de verdade, primeiro a cachorrada pega a latir, instantaneamente – depois, então, se vai ver se deu mortos. O senhor tolere, isto é o sertão. Uns querem que não seja: que situado sertão é por os campos-gerais a fora a dentro, eles dizem, fim de rumo, terras altas, demais do Urucuia. Toleima. Para os de Corinto e do Curvelo, então, o aqui não é dito sertão? Ah, que tem maior! Lugar sertão se divulga: é onde os pastos carecem de fechos; onde um pode torar dez, quinze léguas, sem topar com casa de morador; e onde criminoso vive seu cristo-jesus, arredado do arrocho de autoridade. O Urucuia vem dos montões oestes. Mas, hoje, que na beira dele, tudo dá – fazendões de fazendas, almargem de vargens de bom render, as vazantes; culturas que vão de mata em mata, madeiras de grossura, até ainda virgens dessas lá há. O gerais corre em volta. Esses gerais são sem tamanho. Enfim, cada um o que quer aprova, o senhor sabe: pão ou pães, é questão de opiniães... O sertão está em toda a parte. Do demo? Não gloso. Senhor pergunte aos moradores. Em falso receio, desfalam no nome dele – dizem só: o Que-Diga. Vote! não... Quem muito se evita, se convive. Sentença num Aristides – o que existe no buritizal primeiro desta minha mão direita, chamado a Vereda-da-Vaca-Mansa-deSanta-Rita – todo o mundo crê: ele não pode passar em três lugares, designados: porque então a gente escuta um chorinho, atrás, e uma vozinha que avisando: – “Eu já vou! Eu já vou!...” – que é o capiroto, o que-diga... E um José Simpilício – quem qualquer daqui jura ele tem um capeta em casa, miúdo satanazim, preso obrigado a ajudar em toda ganância que executa; razão que o Simpilício se empresa em vias de completar de rico. Apre, por isso dizem também que a besta pra ele rupeia, nega de banda, não deixando, quando ele quer amontar... Superstição. José Simpilício e Aristides, mesmo estão se engordando, de assim nãoouvir ou ouvir. Ainda o senhor estude: agora mesmo, nestes dias de época, tem gente porfalando que o Diabo próprio parou, de passagem, no Andrequicé. Um Moço de fora, teria aparecido, e lá se louvou que, para aqui vir – normal, a cavalo, dum dia-e-meio – ele era capaz que só com uns vinte minutos bastava... porque costeava o Rio do Chico pelas cabeceiras! Ou, também, quem sabe – sem ofensas – não terá sido, por um exemplo, até mesmo o senhor quem se anunciou assim, quando passou por lá, por prazido divertimento engraçado? Há-de, não me dê crime, sei que não foi. E mal eu não quis. Só que uma pergunta, em hora, às vezes, clareia razão de paz. Mas, o senhor entenda: o tal moço, se há, quis mangar. Pois, hem, que, despontar o Rio pelas nascentes, será a mesma coisa que um se redobrar nos internos deste nosso Estado nosso, custante viagem de uns três meses... Então? Que-Diga? Doideira. A fantasiação. E, o respeito de dar a ele assim esses nomes de rebuço, é que é mesmo um querer invocar que ele forme forma, com as presenças! Não seja. Eu, pessoalmente, quase que já perdi nele a crença, mercês a Deus; é o que ao senhor lhe digo, à puridade. Sei que é bem estabelecido, que grassa nos Santos- Evangelhos. Em ocasião, conversei com um rapaz seminarista, muito condizente, conferindo no livro de rezas e revestido de paramenta, com uma vara de maria-preta na mão – proseou que ia adjutorar o padre, para extraírem o Cujo, do corpo vivo de uma velha, na Cachoeira-dos-Bois, ele ia com o vigário do Campo-Redondo... Me concebo. O senhor não é como eu? Não acreditei patavim. Compadre meu Quelemém descreve que o que revela efeito são os baixos espíritos descarnados, de terceira, fuzuando nas piores trevas e com ânsias de se travarem com os viventes – dão encosto. Compadre meu Quelemém é quem muito me consola – Quelemém de Góis. Mas ele tem de morar longe daqui, na Jijujã, Vereda do Buriti Pardo... Arres, me deixe lá, que – em endemoninhamento ou com encosto – o senhor mesmo deverá de ter conhecido diversos, homens, mulheres. Pois não sim? Por mim, tantos vi, que aprendi. Rincha- Mãe, Sangued’Outro, o Muitos-Beiços, o Rasgaem-Baixo, Faca-Fria, o Fancho-Bode, um Treciziano, o Azinhavre... o Hermógenes... Deles, punhadão. Se eu pudesse esquecer tantos nomes... Não sou amansador de cavalos! E, mesmo, quem de si de ser jagunço se entrete, já é por alguma competência entrante do demônio. Será não? Será? De primeiro, eu fazia e mexia, e pensar não pensava. Não possuía os prazos. Vivi puxando difícil de dificel, peixe vivo no moquém: quem mói no asp’ro, não fantaseia. Mas, agora, feita a folga que me vem, e sem pequenos dessossegos, estou de range rede. E me inventei neste gosto, de especular idéia. O diabo existe e não existe? Dou o dito. Abrenúncio. Essas melancolias. O senhor vê: existe cachoeira; e pois? Mas cachoeira é barranco de chão, e água se caindo por ele, retombando; o senhor consome essa água, ou desfaz o barranco, sobra cachoeira alguma? Viver é negócio muito perigoso... Explico ao senhor: o diabo vige dentro do homem, os crespos do homem – ou é o homem arruinado, ou o homem dos avessos. Solto, por si, cidadão, é que não tem diabo nenhum. Nenhum! – é o que digo. O senhor aprova? Me declare tudo, franco – é alta mercê que me faz: e pedir posso, encarecido. Este caso – por estúrdio que me vejam – é de minha certa importância. Tomara não fosse... Mas, não diga que o senhor, assisado e instruído, que acredita na pessoa dele?! Não? Lhe agradeço! Sua alta opinião compõe minha valia. Já sabia, esperava por ela-já o campo! Ah, a gente, na velhice, carece de ter sua aragem de descanso. Lhe agradeço. Tem diabo nenhum. Nem espírito. Nunca vi. Alguém devia de ver, então era eu mesmo, este vosso servidor. Fosse lhe contar... Bem, o diabo regula seu estado preto, nas criaturas, nas mulheres, nos homens. Até: nas crianças – eu digo. Pois não é ditado: “menino – trem do diabo”? E nos usos, nas plantas, nas águas, na terra, no vento... Estrumes. ... O diabo na rua, no meio do redemunho... Hem? Hem? Ah. Figuração minha, de pior pra trás, as certas lembranças. Mal hajame! Sofro pena de contar não... Melhor, se arrepare: pois, num chão, e com igual formato de ramos e folhas, não dá a mandioca mansa, que se come comum, e a mandioca-brava, que mata? Agora, o senhor já viu uma estranhez? A mandioca-doce pode de repente virar azangada – motivos não sei; às vezes se diz que é por replantada no terreno sempre, com mudas seguidas, de manaíbas – vai em amargando, de tanto em tanto, de si mesma toma peçonhas. E, ora veja: a outra, a mandiocabrava, também é que às vezes pode ficar mansa, a esmo, de se comer sem nenhum mal. E que isso é? Eh, o senhor já viu, por ver, a feiúra de ódio franzido, carantonho, nas faces duma cobra cascavel? Observou o porco gordo, cada dia mais feliz bruto, capaz de, pudesse, roncar e engolir por sua suja comodidade o mundo todo? E gavião, corvo, alguns, as feições deles já representam a precisão de talhar para adiante, rasgar e estraçalhar a bico, parece uma quicé muito afiada por ruim desejo. Tudo. Tem até tortas raças de pedras, horrorosas, venenosas – que estragam mortal a água, se estão jazendo em fundo de poço; o diabo dentro delas dorme: são o demo. Se sabe? E o demo – que é só assim o significado dum azougue maligno – tem ordem de seguir o caminho dele, tem licença para campear?! Arre, ele está misturado em tudo. Que o que gasta, vai gastando o diabo de dentro da gente, aos pouquinhos, é o razoável sofrer. E a alegria de amor – compadre meu Quelemém, diz. Família. Deveras? É, e não é. O senhor ache e não ache. Tudo é e não é... Quase todo mais grave criminoso feroz, sempre é muito bom marido, bom filho, bom pai, e é bom amigo-de-seus-amigos! Sei desses. Só que tem os depois – e Deus, junto. Vi muitas nuvens. Mas, em verdade, filho, também, abranda. Olhe: um chamado Aleixo, residente a légua do Passo do Pubo, no da-Areia, era o homem de maiores ruindades calmas que já se viu. Me agradou que perto da casa dele tinha um açudinho, entre as palmeiras, com traíras, pra-almas de enormes, desenormes, ao real, que receberam fama; o Aleixo dava de comer a elas, em horas justas, elas se acostumaram a se assim das locas, para papar, semelhavam ser peixes ensinados. Um dia, só por graça rústica, ele matou um velhinho que por lá passou, desvalido rogando esmola. O senhor não duvide – tem gente, neste aborrecido mundo, que matam só para ver alguém fazer careta... Eh, pois, empós, o resto o senhor prove: vem o pão, vem a mão, vem o são, vem o cão. Esse Aleixo era homem afamilhado, tinha filhos pequenos; aqueles eram o amor dele, todo, despropósito. Dê bem, que não nem um ano estava passado, de se matar o velhinho pobre, e os meninos do Aleixo aí adoeceram. Andaço de sarampão, se disse, mas complicado; eles nunca saravam. Quando, então, sararam. Mas os olhos deles vermelhavam altos, numa inflama de sapiranga à rebelde; e susseguinte – o que não sei é se foram todos duma vez, ou um logo e logo outro e outro – eles restaram cegos. Cegos, sem remissão dum favinho de luz dessa nossa! O senhor imagine: uma escadinha – três meninos e uma menina – todos cegados. Sem remediável. O Aleixo não perdeu o juizo; mas mudou: ah, demudou completo – agora vive da banda de Deus, suando para ser bom e caridoso em todas suas horas da noite e do dia. Parece até que ficou o feliz, que antes não era. Ele mesmo diz que foi um homem de sorte, porque Deus quis ter pena dele, transformar para lá o rumo de sua alma. Isso eu ouvi, e me deu raiva. Razão das crianças. Se sendo castigo, que culpa das hajas do Aleixo aqueles meninozinhos tinham?! Compadre meu Quelemém reprovou minhas incertezas. Que, por certo, noutra vida revirada, os meninos também tinham sido os mais malvados, da massa e peça do pai, demônios do mesmo caldeirão de lugar. Senhor o que acha? E o velhinho assassinado? – eu sei que o senhor vai discutir. Pois, também. Em ordem que ele tinha um pecado de crime, no corpo, por pagar. Se a gente – conforme compadre meu Quelemém é quem diz – se a gente torna a encarnar renovado, eu cismo até que inimigo de morte pode vir como filho do inimigo. Mire veja: se me digo, tem um sujeito Pedro Pindó, vizinho daqui mais seis léguas, homem de bem por tudo em tudo, ele e a mulher dele, sempre sidos bons, de bem. Eles têm um filho duns dez anos, chamado Valtei – nome moderno, é o que o povo daqui agora apreceia, o senhor sabe. Pois essezinho, essezim, desde que algum entendimento alumiou nele, feito mostrou o que é: pedido madrasto, azedo queimador, gostoso de ruim de dentro do fundo das espécies de sua natureza. Em qual que judia, ao devagar, de todo bicho ou criaçãozinha pequena que pega; uma vez, encontrou uma crioula bentabêbada dormindo, arranjou um caco de garrafa, lanhou em três pontos a popa da perna dela. O que esse menino babeja vendo, é sangrarem galinha ou esfaquear porco. – “Eu gosto de matar...” – uma ocasião ele pequenino me disse. Abriu em mim um susto; porque: passarinho que se debruça – o vôo já está pronto! Pois, o senhor vigie: o pai, Pedro Pindó, modo de corrigir isso, e a mãe, dão nele, de miséria e mastro – botam o menino sem comer, amarram em árvores no terreiro, ele nu nuelo, mesmo em junho frio, lavram o corpinho dele na peia e na taca, depois limpam a pele do sangue, com cuia de salmoura. A gente sabe, espia, fica gasturado. O menino já rebaixou de magreza, os olhos entrando, carinha de ossos, encaveirada, e entisicou, o tempo todo tosse, tossura da que puxa secos peitos. Arre, que agora, visível, o Pindó e a mulher se habituaram de nele bater, de pouquinho em pouquim foram criando nisso um prazer feio de diversão – como regulam as sovas em horas certas confortáveis, até chamam gente para ver o exemplo bom. Acho que esse menino não dura, já está no blimbilim, não chega para a quaresma que vem... Uê-uê, então?!Não sendo como compadre meu Quelemém quer, que explicação é que o senhor dava? Aquele menino tinha sido homem. Devia, em balanço, terríveis perversidades. Alma dele estava no breu. Mostrava. E, agora, pagava. Ah, mas, acontece, quando está chorando e penando, ele sofre igual que se fosse um menino bonzinho... Ave, vi de tudo, neste mundo! lá vi até cavalo com soluço... – o que é a coisa mais custosa que há. Bem, mas o senhor dirá, deve de: e no começo – para pecados e artes, as pessoas – como por que foi que tanto emendado se começou? Ei, ei, aí todos esbarram. Compadre meu Quelemém, também. Sou só um sertanejo, nessas altas idéias navego mal. Sou muito pobre coitado. Inveja minha pura é de uns conforme o senhor, com toda leitura e suma doutoração. Não é que eu esteja analfabeto. Soletrei, anos e meio, meante cartilha, memória e palmatória. Tive mestre, Mestre Lucas, no Curralinho, decorei gramática, as operações, regra-de-três, até geografia e estudo pátrio. Em folhas grandes de papel, com capricho tracei bonitos mapas. Ah, não é por falar: mas, desde o começo, me achavam sofismado de ladino. E que eu merecia de ir para cursar latim, em Aula Régia – que também diziam. Tempo saudoso! Inda hoje, apreceio um bom livro, despaçado. Na fazenda O Limãozinho, de um meu amigo Vito Soziano, se assina desse almanaque grosso, de logogrifos e charadas e outras divididas matérias, todo ano vem. Em tanto, ponho primazia é na leitura proveitosa, vida de santo, virtudes e exemplos – missionário esperto engambelando os índios, ou São Francisco de Assis, Santo Antônio, São Geraldo... Eu gosto muito de moral. Raciocinar, exortar os outros para o bom caminho, aconselhar a justo. Minha mulher, que o senhor sabe, zela por mim: muito reza. Ela é uma abençoável. Compadre meu Quelemém sempre diz que eu posso aquietar meu temer de consciência, que sendo bem-assistido, terríveis bons-espíritos me protegem. Ipe! Com gosto... Como é de são efeito, ajudo com meu querer acreditar. Mas nem sempre posso. O senhor saiba: eu toda a minha vida pensei por mim, forro, sou nascido diferente. Eu sou é eu mesmo. Diverjo de todo o mundo... Eu quase que nada não sei. Mas desconfio de muita coisa. O senhor concedendo, eu digo: para pensar longe, sou cão mestre – o senhor solte em minha frente uma idéia ligeira, e eu rastreio essa por fundo de todos os matos, amém! Olhe: o que devia de haver, era de se reunirem-se os sábios, políticos, constituições gradas, fecharem o definitivo a noção – proclamar por uma vez, artes assembléias, que não tem diabo nenhum, não existe, não pode. Valor de lei! Só assim, davam tranqüilidade boa à gente. Por que o Governo não cuida?! Ah, eu sei que não é possível. Não me assente o senhor por beócio. Uma coisa é pôr idéias arranjadas, outra é lidar com país de pessoas, de carne e sangue, de mil-e-tantas misérias... Tanta gente – dá susto de saber – e nenhum se sossega: todos nascendo, crescendo, se casando, querendo colocação de emprego, comida, saúde, riqueza, ser importante, querendo chuva e negócios bons... De sorte que carece de se escolher: ou a gente se tece de viver no safado comum, ou cuida só de religião só. Eu podia ser: padre sacerdote, se não chefe de jagunços; para outras coisas não fui parido. Mas minha velhice já principiou, errei de toda conta. E o reumatismo... Lá como quem diz: nas escorvas. Ahã. Hem? Hem? O que mais penso, testo e explico: todo-omundo é louco. O senhor, eu, nós, as pessoas todas. Por isso é que se carece principalmente de religião: para se desendoidecer, desdoidar. Reza é que sara da loucura. No geral. Isso é que é a salvaçãoda- alma... Muita religião, seu moço! Eu cá, não perco ocasião de religião. Aproveito de todas. Bebo água de todo rio... Uma só, para mim é pouca, talvez não me chegue. Rezo cristão, católico, embrenho a certo; e aceito as preces de compadre meu Quelemém, doutrina dele, de Cardéque. Mas, quando posso, vou no Mindubim, onde um Matias é crente, metodista: a gente se acusa de pecador, lê alto a Bíblia, e ora, cantando hinos belos deles. Tudo me quieta, me suspende. Qualquer sombrinha me refresca. Mas é só muito provisório. Eu queria rezar – o tempo todo. Muita gente não me aprova, acham que lei de Deus é privilégios, invariável. E eu! Bofe! Detesto! O que sou? – o que faço, que quero, muito curial. E em cara de todos faço, executado. Eu não tresmalho! Olhe: tem uma preta, Maria Leôncia, longe daqui não mora, as rezas dela afamam muita virtude de poder. Pois a ela pago, todo mês – encomenda de rezar por mim um terço, todo santo dia, e, nos domingos, um rosário. Vale, se vale. Minha mulher não vê mal nisso. E estou, já mandei recado para uma outra, do Vau-Vau, uma Izina Calanga, para vir aqui, ouvi de que reza também com grandes meremerências, vou efetuar com ela trato igual. Quero punhado dessas, me defendendo em Deus, reunidas de mim em volta... Chagas de Cristo! Viver é muito perigoso... Querer o bem com demais força, de incerto jeito, pode já estar sendo se querendo o mal, por principiar. Esses homens! Todos puxavam o mundo para si, para o concertar consertado. Mas cada um só vê e entende as coisas dum seu modo. Montante, o mais supro, mais sério – foi Medeiro Vaz. Que um homem antigo... Seu Joãozinho Bem-Bem, o mais bravo de todos, ninguém nunca pôde decifrar como ele por dentro consistia. Joca Ramiro – grande homem príncipe! – era político. Zé- Bebelo quis ser político. (shrink)

In the Brazilian film "Central Station," Dora is a retired schoolteacher who makes ends meet by sitting at the station writing letters for illiterate people. Suddenly she has an opportunity to pocket $1,000. All she has to do is persuade a homeless 9-year-old boy to follow her to an address she has been given. (She is told he will be adopted by wealthy foreigners.) She delivers the boy, gets the money, spends some of it on a television set and settles (...) down to enjoy her new acquisition. Her neighbor spoils the fun, however, by telling her that the boy was too old to be adopted —he will be killed and his organs sold for transplantation. Perhaps Dora knew this all along, but after her neighbor's plain speaking, she spends a troubled night. In the morning Dora resolves to take the boy back. (shrink)

Gregory Pappas faced a difficult task in offering a critical response to this book, as he is not only the current philosopher who is most cited in the book, but the book frequently acknowledges his work as being the single greatest intellectual bridge between the various filosofías vivas (living philosophies) of the Americas. I am humbled by Goyo's (Pappas's) kind words and thankful for his critiques.Pappas's most significant critique concerns Part II of the book, the part that investigates the (...) danger that inter-American philosophy might function, intentionally or not, as a form of US propaganda. Pappas suggests that this section descends into an oversimplified kind of cultural Manichaeanism, where all of Latin America's problems are explained as being due to yanqui colonialism and the peoples of Latin American countries are all virtuous, long-suffering victims with no agency or accountability themselves. Worse yet, Pappas raises the possibility that I have foolishly set out on a Quest for Purity (fighting words to be sure since he knows how much I dig Dewey's Quest for Certainty!) where I make it my mission to imagine an American philosophical discourse disinfected of all North American colonialism. Pappas's critique is fair and insightful. I am most concerned that in my effort to take seriously the linkages between American pragmatism and American colonialism that Rodó, Vasconcelos, and others allege exist, I have painted an oversimplified and crude picture that, most troublingly, elides the moral agency of the peoples of the Caribbean and Latin America. Please let me offer a few responses to his critique that the book lacked subtlety in its analysis of colonialism as it relates to inter-American philosophy and North American Pragmatism.First, Pappas is undoubtedly correct that the United States is not to blame for all the problems that beset the peoples of Latin America, and that every country has its own, homegrown problems of corruption and vice. However, a philosophy centered on the problems of life recognizes our contexts and various situated positions. Therefore, as a gringo (even a gringo Boricua who was raised in Puerto Rico), I contend it is not my place to remove the mote of moral failures from those living within a colonial system while the beam of white colonialism still blinds most white Americans (including me) from properly seeing ourselves in this system. Pappas is, of course, correct when he says that the “other side also needs some correction.” However, as a white US citizen who has benefitted from these colonial systems, I think it is most productive and appropriate for me, for reasons of pragmatist fallibilism if nothing else, to attend to my side in the problem, which is the history and present of US colonialism in the Americas. While I accept that my analysis lacked balance and subtlety, as Pappas rightly notes, the reason was that I was trying to write consistently from my position as a yanqui who wanted to thematize the role of US colonialism within Latin America, not to strive for purity, but instead a full reckoning of a system that my privilege encourages me to ignore.This leads to a second valence of my response to Dr. Pappas's critique, one that regards how my affinities impact my epistemology. If some readers find the critique of American Pragmatism in Part II to be too vociferous (though, I am sure many others will find the critiques too tame), it was because I was intentionally trying to write with my off-hand, as it were. The chapters of Part II strive to charitably consider and make room for the charge that was suggested by Frondizi and strenuously argued by Vasconcelos, Rodó, and Albizu, that philosophies of the Global North, including Pragmatism, facilitate systems of oppression in the Global South. I did so to try to correct for the fact that my starting point is one of great admiration and even love for American Philosophy, including many English-language North American pragmatists like Dewey, James, and Addams. One of the premises of this book is that the academic discourse of inter-American philosophy is ready to grow past the initial stage of development, which has heretofore focused on delineating points of affinity between the intellectual traditions of the Americas, and to start to contend with points of discord and contention. So while I was (and truthfully still am not) convinced by José Vasconcelos's depiction of John Dewey as the High Priest of the American Empire, I also know that since Dewey is one of my greatest influences, my personal affinity might lead me to exculpate him even if a critique is valid. Therefore, I argue that it is appropriate and necessary to offer a charitable summary of these critiques so that other scholars with different perspectives and starting points might weigh in on these and other critiques. The purpose of this book was less to argue a position about many of these issues, than it was to invite and foster a broader, truly inter-American community of inquiry to engage with these questions to have a full and complex assessment of the questions. Somewhat ironically, I dedicated a third of this book to making charitable room for critiques of North American Pragmatism for good pragmatist reasons. One of the most significant values of philosophical Pragmatism is its prioritization of a particular method of inquiry that is democratic and sincere above any particular claim. In this case, that means it is more important to have an inter-American philosophical dialogue that makes room for and charitably considers all claims (including claims that are profoundly distrustful of Pragmatism by thinkers like Rodó and Vasconcelos) than it is for me, as one voice speaking at what I think is still an early stage of the conversation, to defend or refute particular claims about philosophers. A full scholarly discourse developed by an inter-American community of philosophical inquiry will yield the sort of subtle and nuanced historical understanding Pappas calls for. The intent was to move this discourse toward the more contentious points of inter-American philosophical exchange and precisely because I believe that fostering a broader, truly American philosophical discourse is a legitimate aspiration. The Deweyan in me believes that this kind of community of engaged inquirers is the best group to encourage the sort of ground-up change that Alexis Massol and others call us to make.Finally, the most personally authentic response to Pappas's critique is that the parts of the book that sought parallels between the horrific crimes and injustices of American imperialism and American Pragmatism were my attempt to heed Anzaldúa's imperative from Borderlands/La Frontera to accept the doppelganger in our psyches, to acknowledge and correct the “negative” parts of ourselves that we have pushed onto mexicanos and other latine peoples for centuries (Anzaldúa 86). Since I take to heart her claim that the tendency of white Americans is to displace our problems onto others, it is essential for me to fully know myself and my cultures in the context of colonialism. While Pappas is, of course, right to say the problems are not entirely due to yanqui colonialism, it is also certainly the case that white Americans are still casting their faults onto people they frame as Others and scapegoating Latin American immigrants as the source of their woes. So, as with the responses above, it felt right to me to air out these more critical perspectives on not just US foreign policy but also the philosophies of the United States, in order to work against the tendency that Anzaldúa sees in white folk to let ourselves off the hook and the push our faults onto others.As with Pappas above, I am greatly honored that Alexander Stehn would write such a thoughtful and nuanced critique that demonstrates such a careful reading of the book. I am heartened that a scholar as well versed as Alex would say that he learned from the book. If that is so, I am sure that it is because this book's primary value is ostensive: it hopefully functions as a signpost directing the reader to dig deeply into the works of thinkers like Pedro Albizu Campos, Fernando Zalamea, and Henríquez Ureña, who are still little-read in English-language settings. I am excited for Stehn's students to get to read Albizu's political philosophy alongside works by Socrates, King, and Zea! Still, Stehn is too gracious by directing the first part of his comments to developing insights that are largely praiseworthy of the book.However, I have long noticed that whenever a philosopher starts a critique with kind and thoughtful comments of praise, they will follow with a shot to the heart. Stehn's third point, which is well-warranted and framed very gently, is that I fail to give the reader enough access to my inner life. Stehn is correct to note that this is a significant failing on my part since I specifically frame the book in part as my effort at an Anzaldúan autohistoria that strives to draw insights by blending personal introspection with traditional approaches to history and theoretical analysis. My friend and colleague Alex is correct that the moments of self-reflection are too few and certainly less brave and self-revelatory than those of first-order writers in this genre, like Anzaldúa, Lugones, and Mariana Alessandri.1Therefore, my first response to Stehn's critique is to simply cop to the fact that I am less skilled and less brave than these and other authors that I emulate and hold up as guides. For what it's worth, that was me, as someone from an Irish-Italian Catholic family who learned to repress and conceal all problems at an early age, trying to be self-revelatory! However, Stehn is correct that the book certainly would have been stronger had I delved more deeply into the truths of my life being brought up as a gringo in Puerto Rico. A more authentic autohistoria would have done a more thorough job of reclaiming my own doppelganger and illustrating what it might mean to be a white, straight guy who sincerely strives to adopt his version of the mestiza consciousness that Anzaldúa argued we all need to develop. In particular, I should have connected the dots more explicitly between the colonial laws and policies that enabled my parents and me to move to Puerto Rico in the 1970s and the colonial and white supremacist ideas and habits that I learned from my family and perpetuated myself that often put me out-of-sorts with the people I was lucky to be raised with.Stehn asks what experiences still haunt me about my childhood that I did not address in the book. There are lots and too many to talk about today, but I will say the most difficult ones center around my mom, Joan, who passed away a few weeks before our panel in Boston. She was born into crushing poverty in New York City during the Great Depression and learned early-on to be ashamed of her poverty as well as her Italian heritage, which she learned to associate with poverty. She spent most of her life working hard to care for her five kids and to make sure we were well-prepared to “succeed in life,” which to her meant to make the most of white privilege by doing well financially and getting as far as possible from the rough Bronx upbringing she had. She therefore found it a cruel and mirthless joke to have worked her way all the way to the comfort and status of the white-flight New Jersey suburbs only to find herself back in an apartment in a crowded city. She also manifested and conveyed to me the logic of a white supremacist ideology that sorted people according to the same racial taxonomy that she learned as a kid, the one that made her suspicious to my dad's Irish father, but nonetheless just barely inside the lines of whiteness. If I were a braver writer, I would have perhaps written about the wounds within mi propia alma (my own soul) born of being taught by the person who loved me best in the world that I should be terrified of “the Puerto Ricans” and then to have to go make friends and live in Puerto Rico.There is, perhaps, a mitigating factor to Stehn's critique that I do not bring myself sufficiently to account in my work, and I offer this not by way of self-defense, but to hopefully illuminate a significant point. As with my response to Pappas's critique above, I strove through this work to eschew any pretense of a view sub specie aeternitatis in favor of a work that was mindful of my context and situatedness. So while Stehn is right that the work would have been more valuable were I braver in my self-analysis, I think that, as a person situated in a context of great lived privilege, it is proper for me to balance out a tendency toward taking up more space than is fair. To make the point simply, I did not want the work to be about me, but instead about how I might open an important discussion on how to develop an inter-American philosophical community capable of addressing the legacy of US colonialism across the Americas. Therefore, perhaps autohistoria should look different for me than it did for Anzaldúa. If I am lucky enough to have my gig as a professor long enough to write another book (my university just announced we were moving to a “polytechnic” model that emphasizes STEM and professional fields even more than they already are, so perhaps I will yet become another over-educated Irish-American bartender after all!), I will continue to find the right balance between being forthright about my own efforts to reclaim my doppelganger and heal the splits in my heart and being humble and quiet in the self-awareness that people like me have spoken too much already, and that sometimes the wisest thing for me to do is to stop talking. (shrink)

In the Brazilian film "Central Station," Dora is a retired schoolteacher who makes ends meet by sitting at the station writing letters for illiterate people. Suddenly she has an opportunity to pocket $1,000. All she has to do is persuade a homeless 9-year-old boy to follow her to an address she has been given. (She is told he will be adopted by wealthy foreigners.) She delivers the boy, gets the money, spends some of it on a television set and settles (...) down to enjoy her new acquisition. Her neighbor spoils the fun, however, by telling her that the boy was too old to be adopted —he will be killed and his organs sold for transplantation. Perhaps Dora knew this all along, but after her neighbor's plain speaking, she spends a troubled night. In the morning Dora resolves to take the boy back. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:130 Feminist Studies 46, no. 1. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Laura Bisaillon, Alana Cattapan, Annelieke Driessen, Esther van Duin, Shannon Spruit, Lorena Anton, and Nancy S. Jecker Doing Academia Differently: “I Needed Self-Help Less Than I Needed a Fair Society” A great deal of harm is being done by belief in the virtuousness of work. — Bertrand Russell, “In Praise of Idleness” We are committed to doing (...) academia in particular ways, and not in others. — Brocher Foundation Feminist Collective I had decided that becoming a university professor might be a good fit; friends and colleagues had suggested that I would be valuable to a university, so I prepared for a restructuring of my family life.1 I read Tokarczyk and Fay’s Working-Class Women in the Academy and Babcock and Laschever’s Women Don’t Ask to gather understandings of the milieu I was entering. I now see that my preparations had not shined sufficient light on the social and structural factors that organize the contemporary university.... As it turns out, the restructuring of our lives within the working conditions, priorities, and rationalities of this professional milieu triggered unanticipated and painful effects.... Had Mountz published her article “Women on the Edge” before I decided on a career migration into the university system and, had I been fortunate enough to discover it, I would have made other career choices.2 1. The authors, who describe themselves as the Brocher Foundation Feminist Collective, indicate their personal narratives in this text using italics. 2. Michelle M. Tokarczyk and Elizabeth A. Fay, eds., Working-Class Women in the Academy: Laborers in the Knowledge Factory (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993); Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever, Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Bisaillon et al. 131 Introduction: Personal, Professional, and Political We are seven women who met at the Brocher Foundation in Hermance, Switzerland, in July 2017, where we had been selected to spend a few months as research fellows. This competitively awarded opportunity is open to persons fluent in English, from graduate students to senior scholars, with or without academic appointment, whose scholarship advances knowledge about the ethical, legal, and social implications of health and biotechnologies.3 When we found ourselves on the shores of Lake Leman with the gift of time, we began opening up to each other in unexpected, compelling ways. Whatever our vantage point in the hierarchy of the university system, we discovered that there was remarkable overlap in our experiences as women in academia. When we began writing, our authoring team was composed of two graduate students, four faculty members at the assistant professor rank, and one full professor, residing in Canada, the Netherlands, Romania, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Our plural subject position led us to underexplored and imaginative responses to broader social issues, which we share in this article as the “Brocher Foundation Feminist Collective.” We analyze our experiences from our standpoint as women health researchers laboring in the academy. Our similarities and differences were exciting entry points for discussion and analysis: we are all of eastern or western European descent. We have different countries of birth, mother tongues, ages, disciplinary training and career trajectories, relationships to chronic illness and disability, marital status, and experiences with parenthood. We bring the troubles and contradictions we experience as academics into conversation with each other. We seek to productively illustrate and emphasize that the tensions we see around us, and also feel within us, arise as a result of how the academic system is organized, produced, and sustained across time, place, and space. Press, 2003); Alison Mountz, “Women on the Edge: Workplace Stress at Universities in North America,” The Canadian Geographer 60, no. 2 (2016): 205–18. 3. We experienced this fellowship as a valuable opportunity. But we also recognized that our access to it was mediated by social, economic, or other obligations. As countries in the global north continue to tighten their national border regimes, marginalized academics, especially those from the global South, were less likely to succeed in getting a Swiss visa or securing relevant temporal and economic resources. 132 Bisaillon et al. The promise here, we posit... (shrink)

Sustainable development is the global agenda designed to ensure that the world’s climate is not irretrievably damaged and future generations have equal access to the world’s resources for their own development. The institutionalisation of measures to promote sustainable development has however not had unanimous cooperation. This study therefore investigated the attitude of officials at the local government level to topical issues in the sustainable development agenda in Ondo State, Nigeria, as a pointer to entrenched attitudes in (...) the Third World. Prioritisation of issues varied between localities but premium was placed on poverty alleviation more than on climate change or power generation. People were more concerned with the improvement of their general well-being including health. Respondents indicated that most of the topical issues on the sustainable development agenda could be addressed at the local level thereby lending support for the notion that local action can contribute to global action. However, inclusive measures to promote positive action need to be institutionalised. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"To make a difference...":Narrative Desire in Global MedicineByron J. Good and Mary-Jo DelVecchio GoodIf, as Arthur Frank (2002) writes, "moral life, for better and worse, takes place in storytelling," this collection of narratives written by physicians working in field settings in global medicine gives us a glimpse of some aspects of moral experience, practice, and dilemmas in settings of poverty and low health care resources. These (...) essays are written from the midst of practice, in diverse settings in Africa, South Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States. The majority of the writers are practitioners of contemporary 'global medicine'—physicians from North America or Europe who spend part of their lives flying into settings of poverty or special need to practice medicine and work with on-going collaborative clinical and public health systems—while a smaller number are working in the societies in which they were born. Although a few work for classic humanitarian organizations or have developed their own local NGO's, the great majority are engaged in the 'hybrid life' described by Robert Riviello and noted by Renée Fox, moving between academic medical centers and distant health care systems that are supported by local governments, major international organizations and funding agencies, and international NGO's like Partners in Health. These diverse forms of practice have become a common model for contemporary clinicians engaged in what has emerged as a new discipline of global health or global medicine, and these narratives give us a glimpse of some of the enduring, as well as newly emerging, forms of moral practice and ethical dilemmas characteristic of today's global medicine.Many of these stories are filled with the tension and pathos that makes clinical narratives powerful to read. Physicians are forced to make unfathomable decisions about whether to resuscitate and keep a baby alive, using all means available, or to let the infant die, whether to carry out a procedure that will save an infant in birth but would put the mother at risk, about how to deal with a cancer found in a very advanced state. However, virtually all of the stories transcend these classical stories of the decisions physicians are forced to make by being placed in settings of great scarcity of resources, which stand in particular contrast to the academic medical settings in North America or Europe where many of these global medicine specialists have trained and many continue to practice. The unspeakable inequality of resources emerges throughout these narratives as a kind of master theme, as the underlying moral, as opposed to plot, which gives meaning and sense to the stories. For those who practice medicine in such settings, global inequalities and scarcity of medical resources are deeply felt. They produce the rage that Jeffrey Deal describes. ("I learned to despise American churches during that time, a time when my world encompassed a dying newborn in Sudan, as well as the air conditioned padded seats [End Page 121] of our affluent suburban church.") They produce the distinctive experiences of helplessness and pain felt by clinicians who cannot separate how they would be able to treat such a patient at home from how they have to practice in these settings. For those clinicians working in their own societies, scarcity of resources often produces deep anger at the corrupt governments that fail to support basic human services for the great majority of their population. ("We were temporary actors performing in the cynical play of scarcity on permanent display in Port-au-Prince," writes Haitian physician Paul Pierre about his experience prior to joining Partners in Health.)But for those who regularly travel back and forth across the divide between rich and poor, whether across national boundaries or within their own society, the challenge to live a moral life is unendingly complicated. While becoming a part of a struggle for global justice with colleagues and advocates from both sides of the divide, few of the narrators can avoid personal feelings of ambivalence and guilt at being able to easily move from one side of that divide to the other back home. Many fantasize about giving up their lives in the north to devote themselves... (shrink)

It has been 46 years since the publication of “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” by Peter Singer. In the paper Singer famously challenges readers to radically change their lives to save the lives of others, often in distant lands. With this paper, Peter Singer, perhaps the most famous living philosopher today, made his name and spawned the field of global justice. Although there have been improvements and successes, easily preventable deaths from poverty still occur in large numbers today. Philosophically (...) the paper has been very influential and continues to generate considerable debate. We return to Singer’s argument in “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” and make the case that the argument is incomplete in that while Singer’s position that we are morally obliged to help relieve famine, hunger, and so on is supported by his argument, his position that we act all things considered is not. (shrink)

We live in the era of Facebook, Fitbit, and Skype. As such, it would be unreasonable to expect that the healthcare industry would not see the same kind of globalization as do our social spheres and consumer activities. Indeed, the explosion of information technology, the ease of transcontinental travel, and the emergence of a more globally aware citizenry allows for scientific collaboration that has had many positive effects on global health. However, the economic and structural disparities (...) between systems of healthcare delivery in the industrialized world and parts of the developing world have created a monster in the form of an international medical tourism industry that endangers the health and safety of citizens of the host country as well as visiting patients. Not only does the practice of medical tourism pose a practical danger to those in direct contact with the industry, but it brings up troubling philosophical problems centering on national responsibility and the commodification of healthcare, among other important issues. In the United States, the driving force behind international medical tourism is the exorbitant cost of healthcare, particularly for the uninsured but also for the underinsured and those who experience catastrophic medical expenses from chronic illness or sudden health crises. Not only have individuals begun to look outside the U.S. for surgical procedures and other expensive therapies, but employers have begun to toy with the idea of outsourcing the medical care of the employees they insure in order to cut costs. In other industrialized nations, the issues that underpin international medical tourism are related to healthcare rationing and reflect different shortcomings in the delivery of healthcare in those nations, such as the United Kingdom and Canada, that have single-payer systems. Yet the regulatory and philosophical implications for both patients and hosts of international healthcare are largely the same. The challenge of regulating international trade in medical care is obvious and becomes particularly acute when there are insurers and employers involved. Complicating matters further, medical care that takes place outside the country of origin of the patient is often brokered by “medical concierge services,” which, though quick to claim indemnity from any harm arising from substandard or inappropriate medical care, cannot be divorced from responsibility for the health outcomes of their clients. Agreements hashed out between concierge services and patients specify that any remedy for harm stemming from their medical care must be pursued within the confines of the law of the host country, but the practical implications of this are troublesome. How can a foreign patient—often without either linguistic or cultural competency in the host country—be expected to navigate the complexity of a foreign legal system, particularly one that may be far less developed than his home country? Furthermore, if insurance companies and employers are involved with such care, who pays for an adverse result or determines responsibility for harm that may befall the patient? Under which countries’ laws? If a patient travels to Singapore for sexual reassignment surgery or a cardiac valve repair, returns to the States and suffers complications, who pays for the restoration of her health? Beyond legal standards and judicial remedies for harm to patients seeking care on the international market, there is the question of what ethical standards and norms apply to such patients. What effect does it have on American patients, for example, to receive care within a system that does not emphasize autonomy and informed consent the way they are used to? Why should foreign physicians care about the cultural mores of their patients’ country of origin? Can they be expected to grasp cultural differences between American, Canadian, and British patients? The medical concierge might respond, “Well, buyer beware!” This is unreasonable: It is nearly impossible for any patient to accurately assess the various options, risks and benefits that go with a particular medical treatment, much less the patient who is attempting to do so on the international market. And the crass invocation of the doctrine of caveat emptor betrays a view of healthcare as a commodity that is naive and inappropriate. Paramount in my mind, however, are the practical implications for the care of the citizens of developing nations that host international patients and the broader philosophical issue of what the goals of the medical profession as a whole and each country’s individual healthcare system should be. While I understand the argument that international medical tourism creates great economic gains for developing nations, which can then be channeled toward the care of their citizenry as a whole, there is much reason to doubt that this “trickle-down” model of economics provides real benefits for underserved, whether in healthcare or other arenas. What is more likely is that, while lucrative international “medi-cities” may keep bright doctors in their home countries, it is also likely to lure them away from the institutions that serve the lion’s share of their countrymen. With the concentration of talented native doctors in private hospitals that serve citizens of the developed world, the population at large is left to obtain care at institutions that suffer “brain drain” from the flight of talented local staff to more prestigious, often “brand name,” institutions that give them more Western-like salaries while allowing them to practice in their countries of origin. The very fact that citizens of the wealthiest nations in the world are forced to go abroad for life-saving care speaks to an abdication of national responsibility on the part of their home countries. The provision of health care is one of the principal responsibilities of any nation and it is unacceptable that a nation with the strength and wealth of the United States would take advantage of the weaker political and economic situations of developing nations in order to shirk its responsibility to its fellow citizens. If we take care of our countrymen and take pride in an equitable system of healthcare delivery, there will be no need to shrug our shoulders and say “Buyer beware” to the patient who heads to the Philippines for heart surgery. (shrink)

A commonly held view is that giving to the poor is superogatory i.e., that while it is a good thing to do, it is not morally wrong for us not to do so. This essay sets out to show that for the affluent in the world giving to the poor is not superogatory but is rather a moral obligation. The paper critiques Singer's famous argument in ‘Famine, Affluence and Morality’ and finds that although the (...) argument is a cogent and powerful one, Singer, when trying to apply the argument to how we should act, somewhat skews the argument's real implications. Furthermore, it is argued that a cosmopolitan concern for the global poor is the morally correct response to have, and the author defends this view by examining the proper effect that aspects like geographical distance, nationality, reciprocity, and the nature of the global economic system should have on our moral considerations. In conclusion, it is argued that since the way that each person utilises his/her resources is a reflection of what he/she values, then for many of us in positions of affluence, in order to be moral, much more should be done in order to help those experiencing dire, life-threatening poverty across the globe.1. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present and evaluate a specific critical discussion of Peter Singer's view on philanthropy. This critique of Singer's position takes several forms, and here we focus on only two of these. First of all, it is claimed that philanthropy (based upon the giving up of luxury goods) should be avoided, because it harms the poor. As we shall see this is a view defended by Andrew Kuper. However, philanthropy is also accused (...) of harming the poor by being sub-optimal and standing in the way of the more effective and lasting poverty relief brought about by changes in the political and economic system. This second complaint is defended by, among others, Paul Gomberg, Anthony Langlois and David Schweickart, as well as Kuper. To our knowledge, little systematic work has been done on the presentation and evaluation of theses objections to philanthropy. In what follows, the objections are dealt with in connection with private donations made by individuals, as this is the focus, and target, of the philosophers/scientists we wish to discuss. (shrink)

continent. 2.1 (2012): 22–28. Jeroen Mettes burst onto the Dutch poetry scene twice. First, in 2005, when he became a strong presence on the nascent Dutch poetry blogosphere overnight as he embarked on his critical project Dichtersalfabet (Poet’s Alphabet). And again in 2011, when to great critical acclaim (and some bafflement) his complete writings were published – almost five years after his far too early death. 2005 was the year in which Dutch poetry blogging exploded. That year saw the (...) foundation of the influential, polemical, and populistically inclined weblog De Contrabas (The Double Bass), which became a strong force for internet poetry in Dutch in the years to follow. In the summer of that year, a lively debate raged in the aftermath of Bas Belleman’s article “ Doet poëzie er nu eindelijk toe ?” (“Does poetry finally matter now?”), on a blog specifically devoted to this question. Up to that point, the poetical debate in the Netherlands had largely been confined to literary reviews (which were often subsidized), having become mostly marginalized in more mainstream media, where poetry could be covered by only a small number of so-called authorities. As a result, literary debate had acquired a rather placid quality. Though a variety of camps with different aesthetics could be discerned, most poetical positions shared a general acceptance of poetry as a form of art somewhat apart from fundamental political concerns. Late modernists would pursue subtlety and density of reference. Others would insist poetry was best understood as a form of entertainment that should ideally be accessible and work well on the stage. Still others would insist that poetry is mostly a play with forms. Linguistically disruptive strategies were valued highly by some, but mostly for their aesthetic effect. Values of disinterested playfulness reigned supreme everywhere. Any idea that poetry could be a field in which one confronts politics and the world was decidedly marginal. This led to a climate in which most attempts at polemics were DOA, often based on far too superficial positioning and analysis. The greatest polemical debates were revolving around the question of whether poetry should be difficult or easy, with both camps defining their ideas of difficulty and accessibility in ways that were so utterly shallow as to make the entire point moot. Debates were performed, rather than engaged with. It was a postmodern hell of underarticulated poetics. Half-consciously, people were yearning for new forms of criticism that could put the oomph back into poetry. Weblogs provided for ways to explore debate directly outside of the clotted older channels of the reviews and the newspapers. Belleman’s essay and the resulting online activity had shown that there was a widespread eagerness to take poetry more seriously as a social art form. It was in this environment that Mettes started his remarkable project Dichtersalfabet . At that moment, Mettes was active mostly in academic circles, having become noted at Leiden University as a particularly gifted student of literary theory. Within the Netherlands, the field of literary theory has a very odd relationship to literature as it is practiced in the country. Academic theory tends to have a mostly international view and engage with international debates of cultural criticism, literary theory, and philosophy, with academics often publishing in English and attending conferences around the world. Literature itself however is much more concerned with domestic traditions. Consequently, in the Netherlands, there exists a language gap between academic theoretical practice (as it is studied in the literary theory departments) and literary practice (which, academically, gets studied in specialized departments of Dutch literature). The Dichtersalfabet can be seen as Mettes’s attempt to close this gap. It is also an attempt to bridge the divide between theory and practice, in which he could apply his theoretical knowledge in a very unorthodox and unacademic critical mode that moreover could reach far beyond the domain of conventional criticism. Mettes’s goal was to trace a diagonal through Dutch poetic culture, to “strangle” what he perceived to be its dominant oppressive traditions of agreeable irrelevance, in order to see whatever might be able to survive his critical assaults. But he could only do so by means of a very serious engagement with poetry itself. To this end, he would go systematically through the poetry bookshelf of the Verwijs bookshop (part of a mainstream chain of booksellers) in The Hague, buying one publication per blog item, starting from A and working his way through the alphabet, reading whatever he might encounter that way in the restaurant of the HEMA store (another big commercial chain in the country). He would subsequently write down his reading experiences, refraining however from trying to write a nuanced book review. Rather, he would write about anything that caught his attention and sparked his critical interest. This way of working would yield vast, at times somewhat rambling, dense, lively, and generally brilliant essays, in which he held no punches. He never hesitated to pull out his entire arsenal of concepts from the international theory traditions, while never degenerating into mere academic exercise and pointless intertextualities. The attempt was rather to live the poetry that he read, and to engage it with the full range of political, academic, cultural, and personal references that he had at his disposal—all that composed the individual named Jeroen Mettes as a reader. Often what he wrote would not be according to the standards of what we usually think of as a critical review of a book of poetry. Sometimes he would even be a little sloppy in his judgments of poets or representations of the books he read, for example by basing an entire essay on the blurb of a book rather than its poetry content. But what he did was always brilliant writing nonetheless—virtuoso riffs on poetic fragments randomly found within capitalist society, exposing an incisive and insistent poetical sensibility. Mettes read poetry for political reasons, to see whether poetry could offer him a way to deal with a political world he detested. The right-wing horrors of the Bush years, the Iraq war, and the turn of Dutch public opinion towards ever more conservative, narrow-minded, and xenophobic views alongside a complete failure of the political left to present any credible alternative, were weighing heavily on the times in which Mettes reported on his reading. Poetry was to measure this world, diagram it, to lay bare its inconsistencies and faults, to indicate where lines of flight might be found. Amid the ruins of a world wrecked by imperialist policies, corporate capitalism, and doctrinal neoliberalism it would have to show the possibility of a new community. And it was, through its rhythmical workings, to release the reading subject from his confinement to ideologically conditioned individuality and lead him into the immanent paradise of reading. The stakes were high. Much higher than anything Dutch poetry had seen for many years. Mettes’s blog was widely read from the start. His posts sparked lively debates. Some of these subsequently led to the publication of extensive essays on a few key poets in some literary journals, particularly Parmentier and the Flemish journal yang , for which Mettes would become a member of the editorial board, a few months after starting the Dichtersalfabet . This could have been the start of a brilliant career, but this was not to be. The initial manic energy that fueled the blog gradually subsided. The Alfabet was updated less and less regularly. Mettes sometimes just disappeared for many weeks, then suddenly returning with a brilliant essay. Until, on September 21, 2006, he posted his final blogpost, consisting of no text whatsoever. That night I learned from his mentor at Leiden University that he had committed suicide. Mettes and I had had some fruitful exchanges on poetry, rhythm, music, and form, mostly on the blogs, but also by email. Three weeks before his death was the last time I heard from him: a very sudden, uncharacteristically curt note saying “My old new sentence epic.” Attached to that message I found a DOC-file of a work so major that I felt intimidated. This was N30 , a text he had been working on for over five years. After his death, it took me a long time before I dared to read it in its entirety. In the meantime, the work of preparing the manuscript for publication was entrusted by his relatives to his colleagues at yang magazine. It took them a few years to brush up the text and to edit the Dichtersalfabet -blog (which, apart from the Alphabet project itself, incorporated many other fragments of political, polemical, and theoretical writing) into book form along with the essays. The result of this labor was finally published in 2011 as a two-book set, and Mettes burst onto the Dutch poetry scene for the second time. The work was widely reviewed, on blogs, in journals, magazines, and newspapers. Many critics who had not followed the blogs in 2005 showed themselves surprised, baffled even, by the intensity of Mettes’s critical writing. But for those who had read the blog, the main surprise was in the poetry. During Mettes’s lifetime, some of his poems had already been published in Parmentier . Although these were strong texts by themselves, in no way did they prepare readers for N30 . Nothing like it had been written in Dutch before. Instead, N30 explicitly follows the American tradition of Language Writing, directly referencing Ron Silliman and his concept of The New Sentence. However, it would seem that much of the poetical thinking around his use of this technique puts him closer to a writer such as Bruce Andrews. For Mettes, using non sequiturs as a unit of poetic construction was not only a way of reinventing formal textual construction, but it was another way of finding the fault lines in the social fabric. From the perspective of the Language tradition, one may put N30 somewhere between Silliman and Andrews. N30 shares an autobiographical element with Silliman’s New Sentence projects, and as in Andrews, there is a concern for mapping out social totality within text—what Mettes refers to as a “textual world civil war.” Again this shows a formal textual strategy for allowing the person “Jeroen Mettes” to be absorbed by the world, which here appears as a whirlwind of demotic and demonic chatter, full of violence, humor, intensity, beauty, disgust, sex, commerce, and strife. Influenced as it may by American precursors, Mettes’s tone and form end up quite different from his American counterparts, consistently referencing a world that is Dutch, all too Dutch, taking on the oppressive orderliness of Dutch society with its endemic penchant for consensus by introducing chaos into its daily life and laying bare its implicit aggressions. The work’s 31 chapters each have a different feel and rhythmical outline, but none of them follow a predetermined pattern. Rather, Mettes would consistently edit and reedit the text, randomly rewriting parts of it, as he explains in his poetical creed Politieke Poëzie (Political Poetry). N30 – referring to the 1999 antiglobalist protest in Seattle – was to be the first text of a trilogy. The work itself was written “in the mode of the present.” A second text was to be written in the mode of the future, and a third one, in the mode of the past, was going to be an epic poem about the Paris Commune, and to form an alternative poetic constitution for the European project. I still deeply regret that Jeroen Mettes never got to complete those projects, just as I would be very keen on knowing what he might have had to say about more recent political developments. Instead, in 2006, he remained stuck in the horrors of the present, that ended up consuming him completely. He left Dutch literature with some of its most piercing criticism and its most profoundly moving, exciting and powerful poetry. Excerpts from N30 Translated by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei from Jeroen Mettes. "N30." In N30+ . Amsterdam: De wereldbibliotheek, 2011. Published with permission of Uitgeverij Wereldbibliotheek, Amsterdam. Chapter 1 1999. A day is a space too. And another man, who had chained himself, had his ribs crushed, and a motor has driven over somebody’s legs. Dutch health care system spends ±145 million guilders per year on worriers. A spiderweb vibrates as I pass by. Randstad renovating. She slaps her bag against her ass: “Hurry up!” OPINION IS TRUE FRIENDSHIP Your skin. It doesn’t express anything. “But the use of the sword, that’s what I learned, and you’ll need nothing more for the moment.” Just try to interrogate a guy like that. Gullit in Sierra Leone. Codes silently lying all around. But that’s simply what belongs to “that it’s just allowed”: that sigh of “world” (a word expressing that the trees are now standing along the water like black men with white bags in their hair); that’s nothing else right? And you see how everything has to move, and first of all what cannot do so. Without Elysium and without savings, barbarians lashing out, horny for an enemy, staring across the water, staring into the air—staring to get out of it. “You’ve never showed me more than the mall,” she said. All those “dreams” in the end—and now? It was lying on the stairway, so I picked it up and took it upstairs. Chapter 3 “You know what?” Telecommunication. For love… I don’t really like that cheap cultural pessimism, but… The holy city is on pilgrimage in the earthly bodies of the faithful until the time of the heavenly kingdom has come. The end of an exhausting autumn day behind the computer, my eyes filled with tears of fatigue. KITCHEN / INSTALLATION / SPECIALIST. Network integration. In the sun, stretched out on a sheet. (…) I don’t believe what I’m reading, because I want to believe something else. An illusion? Suits me. There’s a variety of shapes and tastes… “So what?” you may think. 102 dalmatians can’t be wrong. But I want more, dear… A feel good movie. I’m smashing the burned body. So what? We continue to save the European civilization. What’s there to win? Plato with poets = Stalin without gulag? Ball against the crossbar. No wonder. She comes straight to her point. She’s standing in the kitchen eating an apple. (…) The godless Napoleon had used her as a stable and wanted to have her taken down. “Our” Rutger Hauer. Ready or not here I come. Psst… are you also wearing a string? Nobody understands our desire. Cliffs breaking the waves and shattering the sunset. I used to be a real romantic (as a poet). A typical fantasy used to be the one in which I brutally raped mother and daughter Seaver from the sitcom Growing Pains . Nevertheless you only contain bad words. Eyelashes. Automatic or manual? That your skin always in the afternoon. Integration. The air is empty. Too bad! Hand in hand on their lonely way. Alaska! Chapter 12 May 5, 2001 [10:00-10:30] A dust cloud on a hill. Globe. Indian (British) (tie) / pope. Damascus. Rape. We’re carrying the ayatollah’s portrait through the streets. At the moment the girl is mostly suede jacket with white ribbons on her sleeves. A small explosion flares up/impact. Camouflage. Close up. We’re analyzing the situation. He’s dead right? Dead dead. Dead. Everything without, these, and only with the body. Indices signal death. Dollar bills are printed in factories. Holes. Light patch. Globe in a box. Microphone. What’s the situation? Grey impact on a green hill (field?). The water is blue. He has no lips. Interns on the background with skirts that are too long. This is an example of a sonnet. An Islamic woman pushes against the door of an electronics shop. Arrows (percentages (prices)). Is this what awaits the American? Touch screen interface. The word, an island, can only be a sign in that situation. We pull up a chair, join in on the fun. On the shelves only books about computers. One glance in the distance is enough to lighten up a luna park in the distance. She’s really desperate, especially when she laughs. Click. Ah. Next. And now it’s raining, but that’s ok. Yellow stains sliding over the south. Shallow caves light: clothes, boots, electrical equipment. 45. 22:10. Nothing gives you the right to eat more than people starving to death. The Hague. Slam dunk. Traffic light. Two H’s, one L (standing for the L (little prick)). We’re happy to say something. Clouds, small suns, temperatures, cities. The truth is never an excuse. Yellow. Yellow. Green. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Green. Green. Yellow. Will you email me? Skeleton: “No.” Ex-nerds in brand-new and brightly red sport cars. $$$. I love. Shihab. Hooves in the sand. Skinny senior with over-sized sunglasses; old jockey (cap, trophy) smiling in slow motion. And there I am again, flashback, crying with my head in between my hands. Sometimes I’ve got the feeling that cannibals. Eyes: blue. Cancer. Why would I wait until tomorrow? Golden beams protruding from the lifted/lit earth. May 5, 2001 [11:30-12:45] You’ll remember this for the rest of your life. Graphs, diagrams. Bu$ine$$. Blue shirt, white collar, no neck (porn star). A name lights up. I’m hysteric. Will you join us? Letters falling in their words. Fingers set up a tent and start to dance. Young entrepreneurs from poor neighborhoods (read: black) guided by Microsoft. Kinda makes me happy, that sort of kitsch. A sense of exhaustion/impotence to see anything but the present. (…) Wouldn’t you like to? Orange explosion in an industrial zone. YOU’RE DOING THIS FOR AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL. Would you. A familiar face. Clouds and blossom. Sunflowers. Supermodels. Mountainous area in a rectangle: shades of brown, from dark to beige, more green toward the south. Tents and next to them (it’s all a blur) people. Plane. Stadium. Geometrical block of people. No, I ain’t crying. I don’t speak no more. I just want. Quote + photo. (Positive:) screaming crowd. Three-piece suit, seen from the back, before entering the arena. On the back: “Daddy abused me.” Oh, bummer. State of emergency has been declared and everyone has to cooperate. She’s cut her wrists. What we do know (…) is that there’s never been a unique word, an imperative name, nor will there ever be. [Click here for work that suits you.] Barefooted children are watching it (coherent pieces revelation of what’s lying below). Who knows how she’s changed during those two years. “Everything used to be better” + sigh. And here we are. An empty field of parquet. A city lying behind it. Explosion. Blue. A rain drop falling in my coffee. May 5, 2001 [14:30-15:30] A young Arafat on video speaking with raised finger. “I’m calling from my convertible.” Names on walls, victims, numbers… Tourists. Yellow. Yellow. “Your own child! Really, what kind of human are you?” I don’t want to hear it no more. A woman jumping out of the water in a yellow bikini against a background of fireworks and the Cheops pyramid. Thy sorrow shall become good fortune, thy complaints laudation. All planets will float and wander. Wo die Welt zum Bild wird, kommt das System (…) zur Herrschaft. It is something, but is it? May 5, 2001 [18:30-19:00] Iris. Leaves. NASDAQ. Open / and white and. For the one who’s doing nothing, just waiting. (…) NO DEFEAT is made entirely up of defeat -- since / the world it opens is always a place / formerly / unsuspected. October 2002. “Jeroen, I’m leaving for the cemetery, byeeee.” The rise of the middle class. My entire oeuvre is an ode to the. My entire head is a fight against the. God always demands what you cannot sacrifice. You may take that the easy way, but… “The state hasn’t made us, but we make the state” (Hitler). A stork exits the elevator. Skeletons of. Moscow. Helsinki. Palermo. Paris. Chapter 30 Like your paradises: nothing. United Desire, as only remaining superpower. And even though the sea is now calmer and the wind is blowing pleasantly in my face… Heart! Who determines whether a tradition is “alive”? The yellow leaf or the white branch? Mars. This sentence is a typical example. Most Dutch people are happy. No consolation. When I see a girl sitting at a table with a book, a notepad, a pen, a bottle of mineral water, her hand writing in the light—then I consider that one thing. “Presents,” “poetry,” “classics.” We are what we cannot make from ourselves. “Left”: mendicant orders, missionaries. Saint-Just: “A republic is founded on the destruction of its enemies.” She crosses the street with a banana peel between her fingers. (…) We chose our own wardens, torturers, it was us who called all this insanity upon ourselves, we created this nightmare… But “no”? Girl (just like a beach ball) talking rapid Spanish (Portuguese?) in a mobile phone. Do I have a chance now that her boyfriend is getting bold? CLIO, horny bitch. What else do you want? An old woman, between the doors of the C1000, is suddenly unable to go on; her husband stretches out his hand, speaking a few encouraging words. Selection from. Der Führer schenkt den Jüden ein Stadt. How can it reach us if we haven’t been already reached somehow? It doesn’t “speak.” No problem. Each word she uses is a small miracle, as if she doesn’t belong to it, to language, but wanders around with a pocket light looking for the exit; she’s never desperate (maybe a little nervous), lighting up heavy words from the inside. But indeed, we’re free. But the predicate is not an attribute, but an event, and the subject is not a subject, but a shell. That’s why also samurai, knights, and warriors raised the blossom as emblem: they knew how to die. Locked up in a baby carriage with a McDonald’s balloon. Blue helicopter, the blue sky. Whether you want to refer? The point is. How / Motherfucker can I sing a sad song / When I remember Zion? You’ll feel so miserable and worthless that you think: “If only I were dead!,” or: “Just put an end to it!” “So you’re an economist?” Her card—two little birds building a nest, her handwriting shaking—is still on the mantelpiece. Guevara: “No, a communist.” A straw fire, such was our life: rapidly it flared up, rapidly it passed. I’m fleeing, coming from nowhere. (…) Eazy-E drinking coffee with the American president. If I’d scream, would that be an event? Drown it: the cleaner it will rise up from the depths. No! The night, so fast… As if there’s something opened up in that face. Come on, we may not curse life. He shows me his methadone: “If you drink that all at once, you’ll die instantly.” The last one dictates how we should behave to deserve happiness. One shine / above the earth. “I want to go to Bosnia,” I said bluntly. I don’t even know the name of the current mayor. Let’s despise our success! “There is no future; this is the future. Hope is a weakness that we've overcome. We have found happiness!” Sun. Sushi. Volvo. I feel like a bomb about to explode at any moment. Makes a difference for the reconstruction right? The decor moves forward. Daughter of Nereus, you nymphs of the sea, and you Thetis, you should have kept his tired head above the waves! Alas! This sentence has been written wearing a green cap. I receive my orders from the future. A frog jumps into it. Her husband has turned the Intifada, which he follows daily on CCN, into his hobby, “to forget that he doesn’t have his driver’s license yet." Suddenly the sun slides over the crosswalk. Her (his?) foot is playing with the slipper under the table. Is this how I’m writing this book now? I’m not a fellow man. I hate you and I want to hurt you. These are my people. Their screaming doesn’t rise above the constantly wailing sirens which we've learned to ignore. My whole body became warm and suddenly started to tremble. Unfortunate is he who is standing on the threshold of the most beautiful time, but awaits a better one. Arafat’s “removal” is contrary to American interests. Jeep drives into boy. What you can do alone, you should do alone. A food gift from the people of the United States of America. Two seagulls. [...]. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present and evaluate a specific critical discussion of Peter Singer's view on philanthropy. This critique of Singer's position takes several forms, and here we focus on only two of these. First of all, it is claimed that philanthropy (based upon the giving up of luxury goods) should be avoided, because it harms the poor. As we shall see this is a view defended by Andrew Kuper. However, philanthropy is also accused (...) of harming the poor by being sub-optimal and standing in the way of the more effective and lasting poverty relief brought about by changes in the political and economic system. This second complaint is defended by, among others, Paul Gomberg, Anthony Langlois and David Schweickart, as well as Kuper. To our knowledge, little systematic work has been done on the presentation and evaluation of theses objections to philanthropy. In what follows, the objections are dealt with in connection with private donations made by individuals, as this is the focus, and target, of the philosophers/scientists we wish to discuss. (shrink)

When is it ethically permissible for clinicians to surgically intervene into the genitals of a legal minor? We distinguish between voluntary and nonvoluntary procedures and focus on nonvoluntary procedures, specifically in prepubescent minors (“children”). We do not address procedures in adolescence or adulthood. With respect to children categorized as female at birth who have no apparent differences of sex development (i.e., non-intersex or “endosex” females) there is a near-universal ethical consensus in the Global North. This consensus holds (...) class='Hi'>that clinicians may not perform any nonvoluntary genital cutting or surgery, from “cosmetic” labiaplasty to medicalized ritual “pricking” of the vulva, insofar as the procedure is not strictly necessary to protect the child’s physical health. All other motivations, including possible psychosocial, cultural, subjective-aesthetic, or prophylactic benefits as judged by doctors or parents, are seen as categorically inappropriate grounds for a clinician to proceed with a nonvoluntary genital procedure in this population. We argue that the main ethical reasons capable of supporting this consensus turn not on empirically contestable benefit–risk calculations, but on a fundamental concern to respect the child’s privacy, bodily integrity, developing sexual boundaries, and (future) genital autonomy. We show that these ethical reasons are sound. However, as we argue, they do not only apply to endosex female children, but rather to all children regardless of sex characteristics, including those with intersex traits and endosex males. We conclude, therefore, that as a matter of justice, inclusivity, and gender equality in medical-ethical policy (we do not take a position as to criminal law), clinicians should not be permitted to perform any nonvoluntary genital cutting or surgery in prepubescent minors, irrespective of the latter’s sex traits or gender assignment, unless urgently necessary to protect their physical health. By contrast, we suggest that voluntary surgeries in older individuals might, under certain conditions, permissibly be performed for a wider range of reasons, including reasons of self-identity or psychosocial well-being, in keeping with the circumstances, values, and explicit needs and preferences of the persons so concerned. Note: Because our position is tied to clinicians’ widely accepted role-specific duties as medical practitioners within regulated healthcare systems, we do not consider genital procedures performed outside of a healthcare context (e.g., for religious reasons) or by persons other than licensed healthcare providers working in their professional capacity. (shrink)

While differences in economic advantage can be put behind a veil of ignorance, this produces no transnational obligation to reduce inequality since the representatives of peoples are not concerned with the further, individual interests of people. If John Rawls's version of original position is extrapolated worldwide, the cosmopolitanism of equality ought to be rejected as inappropriate in the Standard Case. In contrast, a transnational demand for relief of abject poverty would be appropriate. Political conception specifies an ideal of well‐ordered (...) relations among governments that ought to regulate the foreign policy of a liberal government. The cosmopolitanism of need, basing a global political duty to relieve abject poverty on a global original position of individuals, accommodates all of the specifications by Rawls of domestic and global justice. However, there is one element that resists accommodation, the limited duty of assistance that is Rawls's actual demand for relief of foreign poverty. (shrink)

In 1972, the young philosopher Peter Singer published "Famine, Affluence and Morality," which rapidly became one of the most widely discussed essays in applied ethics. Through this article, Singer presents his view that we have the same moral obligations to those far away as we do to those close to us. He argued that choosing not to send life-saving money to starving people on the other side of the earth is the moral equivalent of neglecting to save drowning (...) children because we prefer not to muddy our shoes. If we can help, we must--and any excuse is hypocrisy. Singer's extreme stand on our moral obligations to others became a powerful call to arms and continues to challenge people's attitudes towards extreme poverty. Today, it remains a central touchstone for those who argue we should all help others more than we do. As Bill and Melinda Gates observe in their foreword, in the age of today's global philanthropy, Singer's essay is as relevant now as it ever was. This attractively packaged, concise edition collects the original article, two of Singer's more recent popular writings on our obligations to others around the world, and a new introduction by Singer that discusses his current thinking. (shrink)

George W. Bush is not only America’s president, but also its most prominent moralist. No other president in living memory has spoken so often about good and evil, right and wrong. His inaugural address was a call to build “a single nation of justice and opportunity.” A year later, he famously proclaimed North Korea, Iran and Iraq to be an “axis of evil,” and in contrast, he called the United States “a moral nation.” He defends his tax policy in (...) moral terms, saying that it is fair, and gives back to taxpayers what is rightfully theirs. The case he makes for free trade is “not just monetary, but moral.” Open trade is a “moral imperative.” Another “moral imperative,” he says, is alleviating hunger and poverty throughout the world. He has said that “America’s greatest economic need is higher ethical standards.” In setting out the “Bush doctrine,” which defends preemptive strikes against those who might threaten America with weapons of mass destruction, he asserted: “Moral truth is the same in every culture, in every time, and in every place.” But in what moral truths does the president believe? Considering how much the president says about ethics, it is surprising how little serious discussion there has been of the moral philosophy of George W. Bush. (shrink)

Cutting God in Half argues that, in order to tackle climate change, world poverty, extinction of species and our other global problems rather better than we are doing at present we need to bring about a revolution in science, and in academia more generally. We need to put our problems of living – personal, social, global – at the heart of the academic enterprise. How our human world, imbued with meaning and value, can exist (...) and best flourish embedded in the physical universe is, the book argues, our basic problem. It is our fundamental philosophical problem, our fundamental problem of knowledge and understanding, and our fundamental practical problem of living. It is this problem that we fail, at present, to recognize as fundamental – to our cost. It can be understood to arise as a result of cutting God in half – severing the God of Cosmic Power from the God of Value. The first is Einstein’s God, the underlying unity in the physical universe that determines how events occur. The second is what is of most value associated with human life – and sentient life more generally. Having cut God in half in this way, the problem then becomes to see how the two halves can be put together again. This book tackles outstanding aspects of this problem, and in doing so throws out original ideas about science, education, religion, evolutionary theory, free will, quantum theory, and how we should go about tackling our impending global crises. It transpires that bringing our basic problem into sharp focus has revolutionary implications. It becomes clear how and why many aspects of our social and cultural world urgently need to be transformed. Cutting God in Half is written in a lively, accessible style, and ought to be essential reading for anyone concerned about ultimate questions – the nature of the universe, the meaning of life, the future of humanity. (shrink)

This article approaches world poverty from the perspective of rectificatory justice and investigates whether the global rich can be said to have special obligations toward the global poor on the grounds that they have been harming them. The focus rests on the present situation, and more specifically on Thomas Pogge's thesis of a causal link between world poverty and the conduct of present citizens (and governments) in wealthy countries. I argue that, if (...) Pogge does not want his position to boil down to an institutional version of the ‘negative causation'-thesis – according to which one can cause harm simply by failing to alleviate it – and if he wants it to be accepted by those he seeks to convince – namely right-libertarians – he must specify that it is enough for institutions to be just that they do not actively deprive their members of the means of subsistence, even if many of them still do not have the capacity to enjoy the means of subsistence. South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 26 (3) 2007: pp. 252-270. (shrink)

For 40 years, Peter Singer has deployed the case of the child drowning in the shallow pond to argue for greater donations in foreign aid. The persistent use of the shallow pond example in theorizing about global poverty ignores morally salient features of the real world, and ignoring such morally salient features can have a variety of harmful implications for anti-poverty work. I argue that the shallow pond example should be abandoned, and defend this claim (...) against possible objections. (shrink)

In 2004, Garrett Cullity made a significant contribution to the literature on what the world’s relatively affluent owe to the world’s relatively poor through the publishing of The Moral Demands of Affluence. In this discussion note, I draw attention to a logical problem in Cullity’s master argument in favor of the view that affluent individuals are justified in spending monetary resources on themselves at a level that lies well above what Peter Singer finds justified. The proposition (...) I defend is that the premises leading to Cullity’s conclusion about the moderate, and not extremely demanding, nature of his position are inconsistent. These premises license any conclusion, including the negation of the one preferred by Cullity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 23-42 [Access article in PDF] Overcoming the Grip of Consumerism Stephanie KazaUniversity of VermontFor fifteen years the Worldwatch Institute of Washington, D. C. has been publishing a review of the declining condition of the global environment (Brown et al. 1998). For the most part, the picture is not good. Much of the deterioration can be traced directly to human activities--urban expansion equates to species (...) loss, industrial manufacturing to air pollution, factory farming to water pollution, chemical agriculture to poisoned soil. Accelerating these environmental impacts are rapidly rising population numbers, increasingly efficient technologies, and consumption rates beyond the planet's capacity. These three have been linked by the equation I=PAT, or environmental impact=population size multiplied by affluence (or degree of consumption) multiplied by technology. Reduce any one of these and the impact drops; increase one or all three, and the impact rises, in some cases dramatically.Much of the conversation among scientists and technologists has focused on the P (population) and T (technology) parts of the equation, with grave concerns that rising population numbers are swamping earth systems, yet often with buoyant optimism that technological breakthroughs will solve everything. These two perspectives dominated political discussion for much of the 1960s and 1970s (Ehrlich et al. 1977 and Lovins 1977, among others). But by the 1980s the facts were incontrovertible: high rates of consumption were driving environmental destruction just as fast if not faster than rising population. At the 1992 Rio Summit in Brazil, representatives of southern countries demanded that high-consuming northern countries examine their own contribution to the environmental crisis rather than placing blame elsewhere. It is our obligation in the North to respond to these serious requests.How much do people in northern industrialized countries consume? Here are some indicator figures: Americans consume their average body weight (120 pounds) every day in materials extracted and processed from farms, mines, range lands, and forests (Ryan and Durning 1997, 5). In the United States, the number of shopping malls (close to 35,000) eclipsed the number of high schools in 1987 (Dunning 1992, 130). Since 1950 the per capita consumption of energy, meat, and lumber has doubled, use of plastic has increased five times, use of aluminum seven times, and average airplane miles per person has soared 33-fold (Durning 1992, 29). As products have proliferated, we see the swelling ecological footprint behind each new thing: clear-cut forests replacing paper plantations in Thailand, toxic oil polluting native lands of Ecuador, women earning poverty wages assembling computer chips in [End Page 23] Malaysia--the stories are not as pretty as the products. Materials extraction, production, distribution, use, and waste disposal--all of these have ecological costs, many of which are life threatening.Why should Buddhists and Christians address consumption? For starters, it is a nonsectarian issue; responsibility cuts across denominations and religious belief systems. Collaboration of all kinds is needed to take apart this juggernaut of complex causes and conditions. I believe the Buddhist tradition has powerful analytical tools and spiritual practices which may be helpful in this undertaking. These may aid or inspire similar efforts explored through the Christian heritage. A survey of the landscape and the literature shows it is shockingly clear: the challenge here is enormous. It will require all the spiritual insight, dedication, and sheer stamina we can bring to it. This work cannot be done alone; we need each other's help to keep going through the many obstacles.To date, Buddhist initiatives in this conversation have been modest. Several popular books have brought Buddhist perspectives to bear on consumption issues, most notably E. F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful (1975) and Gary Snyder's The Practice of the Wild (1990). Both works popularize practices of simplicity and restraint, flavored by the exotic Western fascination with Eastern thought. Several Buddhist teachers in the U.S. have taken up particular sub-themes addressing over-consumption. Philip Kapleau has sounded an ethical call for vegetarianism based on the first precept, "no killing" (1982). Robert Aitken has taken a stand for reducing wants and needs to simplify... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 23-42 [Access article in PDF] Overcoming the Grip of Consumerism Stephanie KazaUniversity of VermontFor fifteen years the Worldwatch Institute of Washington, D. C. has been publishing a review of the declining condition of the global environment (Brown et al. 1998). For the most part, the picture is not good. Much of the deterioration can be traced directly to human activities--urban expansion equates to species (...) loss, industrial manufacturing to air pollution, factory farming to water pollution, chemical agriculture to poisoned soil. Accelerating these environmental impacts are rapidly rising population numbers, increasingly efficient technologies, and consumption rates beyond the planet's capacity. These three have been linked by the equation I=PAT, or environmental impact=population size multiplied by affluence (or degree of consumption) multiplied by technology. Reduce any one of these and the impact drops; increase one or all three, and the impact rises, in some cases dramatically.Much of the conversation among scientists and technologists has focused on the P (population) and T (technology) parts of the equation, with grave concerns that rising population numbers are swamping earth systems, yet often with buoyant optimism that technological breakthroughs will solve everything. These two perspectives dominated political discussion for much of the 1960s and 1970s (Ehrlich et al. 1977 and Lovins 1977, among others). But by the 1980s the facts were incontrovertible: high rates of consumption were driving environmental destruction just as fast if not faster than rising population. At the 1992 Rio Summit in Brazil, representatives of southern countries demanded that high-consuming northern countries examine their own contribution to the environmental crisis rather than placing blame elsewhere. It is our obligation in the North to respond to these serious requests.How much do people in northern industrialized countries consume? Here are some indicator figures: Americans consume their average body weight (120 pounds) every day in materials extracted and processed from farms, mines, range lands, and forests (Ryan and Durning 1997, 5). In the United States, the number of shopping malls (close to 35,000) eclipsed the number of high schools in 1987 (Dunning 1992, 130). Since 1950 the per capita consumption of energy, meat, and lumber has doubled, use of plastic has increased five times, use of aluminum seven times, and average airplane miles per person has soared 33-fold (Durning 1992, 29). As products have proliferated, we see the swelling ecological footprint behind each new thing: clear-cut forests replacing paper plantations in Thailand, toxic oil polluting native lands of Ecuador, women earning poverty wages assembling computer chips in [End Page 23] Malaysia--the stories are not as pretty as the products. Materials extraction, production, distribution, use, and waste disposal--all of these have ecological costs, many of which are life threatening.Why should Buddhists and Christians address consumption? For starters, it is a nonsectarian issue; responsibility cuts across denominations and religious belief systems. Collaboration of all kinds is needed to take apart this juggernaut of complex causes and conditions. I believe the Buddhist tradition has powerful analytical tools and spiritual practices which may be helpful in this undertaking. These may aid or inspire similar efforts explored through the Christian heritage. A survey of the landscape and the literature shows it is shockingly clear: the challenge here is enormous. It will require all the spiritual insight, dedication, and sheer stamina we can bring to it. This work cannot be done alone; we need each other's help to keep going through the many obstacles.To date, Buddhist initiatives in this conversation have been modest. Several popular books have brought Buddhist perspectives to bear on consumption issues, most notably E. F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful (1975) and Gary Snyder's The Practice of the Wild (1990). Both works popularize practices of simplicity and restraint, flavored by the exotic Western fascination with Eastern thought. Several Buddhist teachers in the U.S. have taken up particular sub-themes addressing over-consumption. Philip Kapleau has sounded an ethical call for vegetarianism based on the first precept, "no killing" (1982). Robert Aitken has taken a stand for reducing wants and needs to simplify... (shrink)

In World Poverty and Human Rights, Thomas Pogge argues that the global rich have a duty to eradicate severe poverty in the world. The novelty of Pogges approach is to present this demand as stemming from basic commands which are negative rather than positive in nature: the global rich have an obligation to eradicate the radical poverty of the global poor not because of a norm of beneficence asking them to help (...) those in need when they can at little cost to themselves, but because of their having violated a principle of justice not to unduly harm others by imposing on them a coercive global order that makes their access to the objects of their human right to subsistence insecure. In this paper, I claim that although Pogge is right in arguing that negative duties are crucial in an account of global justice, he is wrong in saying that they are the only ones that are crucial. Harming the global poor by causing their poverty provides a sufficient but not a necessary condition for the global rich to have a duty of justice to assist them. After engaging in a critical analysis of Pogges argument, I conclude by suggesting the need for a robust conception of cosmopolitan solidarity that includes positive duties of assistance which are not mere duties of charity, but enforceable ones of justice. (shrink)

Individual actions designed to address issues of public concern is a common theme in the discourse on how to mobilize resources and target efforts toward sustainable practices. We contribute to this area by developing and empirically validating a multidimensional scale for civic engagement; synthesizing and testing the adequacy of the theory of planned behavior and the value–belief–norm theory in explaining civic engagement; and considering how an individual’s orientation, identity, and beliefs motivate moral thinking and action. The focus is on the (...) important social issues of global warming and climate change, income inequality, and world poverty, and hunger. We follow both correlational and configurational approaches to examine symmetric and asymmetric causal relationships, respectively. The findings from a sample of 819 US citizens reveal that the TPB and VBN theory can adequately explain civic engagement, after we control for the influence of past experience. In addition, while belief in a just world inhibits the occurrence of adverse consequences and the formation of positive attitudes, social value orientation, and moral identity facilitate them. Notably, at least two causal conditions need to be present for adverse confsequences to emerge, while moral identity is almost a necessary condition for the development of positive attitudes. We conclude with a discussion of important implications for researchers and practitioners. (shrink)

Recent publications by Pogge ( Global ethics: seminal essays. St. Paul: Paragon House 2008 ) and by Singer ( The life you can save: acting now to end world poverty. New York: Random House 2009 ) have resuscitated a debate over the justifiability of famine relief between Singer and ecologist Garrett Hardin in the 1970s. Yet that debate concluded with a general recognition that (a) general considerations of development ethics presented more compelling ethical problems than (...) famine relief; and (b) some form of development would be essential to avoiding the problems of growth noted by Hardin. Better than renewing the debate, we should recognize two points. First, food needs do indeed evoke a moral response that is more direct and compelling than the philosophical positions often generated to rationalize a duty to bring aid. As such the argument for feeding hungry people cannot be generalized into a paradigm for development ethics without distortions that undercut the morally valid elements in Singer’s original argument. Second, contrary to prevailing assumptions in present day development ethics, food aid and famine relief continue to be important priorities for international agencies, notably the World Food Program. Emergency food assistance, the nominal topic of Singer’s original article, thus is an important issue for agricultural as well as development ethics, though one that should indeed be seen as distinct from more complex duties to address the conditions of chronic poverty and underdevelopment. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“We Need to Cut the Neck!”Confronting Psychological and Moral Distress during Emergency Cricothyrotomy1Stephanie CooperEnoughYou didn’t die in the ER, but rather, began your inexorable demise. The last, first, and only words I ever heard you utter was the weak mewl “tight, tight” as the blood pressure cuff constricted your left arm. You were 98–years–old, bed–bound, at the end. Your world was already partitioning itself from us, your brain (...) tunneling down the uneven corridors of consciousness. A concretion of otoliths muffled your hearing, and fatigue burdened your ancient heart.Your name–band encircled your skinny ankle like a bird. Deformed by arthritis, you were caged within yourself, imprisoned by senescence. You could not declare yourself to us. Words disintegrated into moans and your grimace became animal.When you came back from x–ray—hypotensive with multiple neck fractures confirmed—you could speak no more. Your pulse slowed, your blood pressure plummeted. I jammed a gloved finger against your femoral pulse, faint and tired. [End Page E5]“What’s her DNR status?” I gravely asked your nurse.The DNR paperwork for once had arrived with the patient. “No CPR” she said with relief. But then the paperwork went on, forcing me—the waitress of tragedy—to serve up the hash of an impossible menu.As health care providers, we are all often tasked with performing contradictory actions: the pain of IV insertion followed by the morphine push, drilling deeper into broken bone in order to plate it, the inadvertent cracking of ribs during chest compressions. We sometimes must perform violent action in the hope of sustaining and resurrecting life. We are asked to perform the impossible, the contradictory, the painful. And sometimes the actions we must take catalyze an inexorable chain reaction of actions, which can end in death–prolonging and painful interventions that we did not intend.Although our culture may imagine that one can choose one’s meal at the end–of–life fast–food franchise of death, such is not the case. You can’t suddenly decide you’re a vegetarian. You can’t order the cheeseburger without the cheese—and we all are getting the burger, in the end. Ordering the heart–squeezing drugs without the CPR to circulate them, or the antibiotics without the fluid to counter dehydration, is like ordering the burger without the bun. Sometimes the possible choices are not necessarily realistic choices. You get served what you get served, and perhaps we should question the assumption that we have the ability to choose at all.Your DNR form proclaimed no CPR but then said that antibiotics and intubation were okay—the cheeseburger without the cheese. An unfortunate choice for you, me, and the rest of us, as your death menu led to a very unhappy meal.You were comatose. I stuck a tongue blade deep into your desiccated throat. You did not gag. This means I should have intubated you, but morally, I couldn’t. To what end? You were 98 years old, broken, moribund. If you hadn’t suffered multiple neck fractures, or if you were a vibrant elder who had just walked off Mt. Rainier, maybe the story would have been different. But you? I doubted that you truly had a chance of ever feeling joy again. You were somebody’s wife, somebody’s mother. I knew this step would lead to the domino of unstoppable steps. I refused to flog your corpse.I called your daughter Kay on her cell phone, told her that you were in critical condition and that she should come to the ER immediately. But how to begin to tell a daughter her mother is dying, let alone over a cell phone? Gentle but surreal and impersonal, my voice tried to tell your daughter that the interventions you needed would likely kill you. I have seen enough human suffering to know. To me, the choices were clear: death by nature’s irrefutable course, versus a more painful, protracted, and violent death by what we’d do to you.Kay arrived in a wheelchair and scooted up to your bedside. Like all daughters, she wasn’t ready for you... (shrink)

continent. 2.2 (2012): 155–158 Michel Serres. Biogea . Trans. Randolph Burks. Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing. 2012. 200 pp. | ISBN 9781937561086 | $22.95 Conveying to potential readers the significance of a book puts me at risk of glad handing. It’s not in my interest to laud the undeserving, especially on the pages of this journal. This is not a sales pitch, but rather an affirmation of a necessary work on very troubled terms: human, earth, nature, and the problematic world we (...) made. It is this world that aspirates the silence (so to speak), and therefore the subject which, along with the development of the “made world” exports the excess augmentation of the cosmically missing, this silence of the natural, et cetera. Had we learned from Locke that lesson of “labor,” to consume what we need… but perhaps we need more than what matters? Serres’ Biogea has several functions on this manner, if it is indeed a book to be consumed. First, readers searching for novelistic entertainment have a place to dwell. Biogea deserves a place in your back pocket; biographical generosity and poetic fluidity should satisfy most textual fetishes. For lay philosophers who want to refresh their acumen, Biogea deserves a place on the book shelf, one already reads a sorely needed postmodern tune-up here. Serres’ style is clearly French; he leaves few cheese crumbs on his words, rather preciseness and breathing in the work give way to a sweeping manner that breaks the narrative line of sight. A circular narrative and anachronistic fragmentation of terms allows an abyssal atmosphere to swell, if only to pump into the book the externality of its broader text. Biogea aspires to a higher standard and the book, at times, is thinking this negentropic problem too. Univocal, the publisher, has crafted a book appropriate for the hands to hold and the translations are an achievement of an otherwise difficult writer to translate. Terms are the conditions of a broader text. It is important to note that Serres’ content is as much a thinking of terminal ports. There is a regard for the transportation technology of the written word. For me, this is the mark of genius, a craftiness that tells of a book device that I may trust. Serres is an accomplished thinker and a necessary voice to check the putative trendiness of anti-postmodernist and market-driven theory of endless cultural liquidation. Offering interventions on subjectivity as an open system we are given a chance to affirm the human, not merely to discard it, but to engage its poetic image emotion, the calibratory silent sense of the analogic world; the terms on which we base our efforts. 1 The human is the center of its own negation, constantly mediating it. Something deeper at stake appears in the work then, and it is quite obvious from the onset. Certainly, a book is an intensification of possible text and those who brought this actual book into existence have captured a rarity in regards to the subject matter and artistic accomplishment. I mentioned terms as conditions, so let us understand Biogea as bio-yea, a yes to bios . An affirmation of living and accepting presence for all of its defiance of images, words, and things temporal. Therefore Serres’ existence and its existants plays parts; out of linearity and still like a porous bone pumping blood it manufactures into the fleshy life it becomes. Starting from a man named silence chaos emerges, or the man “Old Taciturn” takes up a journey anticipating a great flood. In other words, a development akin to the one in Genesis. In dealing with this ancestral occupation, fusing Genesis with contemporary philosophical terms, Serres initiates this anachronistic fragmentation under the forming subjectivity of his own autobiography. This mutation in the open system is precisely one of Serres’ terms. There an abyss is at work, stated, but also measured by heels on the ground—the abyss dispatching earthen tensions, that which plays our tunes, that which we abide by and recognize in volcanoes, rivers, oceans, earthquakes and weaponry in the battles of the world. Set in later stages of the book, such tensions are harnessed through scientific principles in an attempt to unify the terms of natural force if only to terminate the world. Thus the elevation of the earth into the world is clearly set forth. Here already, and few pages in, a resonance is set forth under appellations such as the river Garonne, a subjectivity as much as it is inhuman, the river is the inhuman that makes us human. I get the sense that Serres is taking up a challenge issued by Wallace Stevens; namely, that the great poems of heaven and hell have been written, but that only the poem of the earth has resisted composition. 2 On this level we cannot avoid the killing factor of silence, given that our cognition blocks its pure, radical obliteration. Thus a silence of attunement to the earth is in a novel dialectic of the rithmic and rhythm. A technological world, a triumph of termination is set forth. If a text imposes its will given the reader who authorizes it, it is made to convey or convect a presupposition to a reader or its inhabitant(s). Text is therefore both, in-content, contenting, contentedness, and in reading it, a way to navigate self-destruction (dis-content). Here then would one note that the “inhuman” reveals itself, “an aperiodic rhythm of lovers and beloved…the sea as our friend…but as our enemy…maternal vivifying sea.” The sea is an open book, or vaginal birth canal, where the engagement of text comes forth: “…woman sea, open vulva.” One sees like the sea, but only after it, when the uninhabitable truth of inhabiting it switches the polarity of the sailors soul: “I was seeing like the sea” (9-11). In other words, we are invited to embrace the nonsense of the visible. At this point I am taken to Jean-François Lyotard’s work The Inhuman , specifically the first entry on negentropy that would be congruent with Serres’ thematic. 3 The human being exports, deports, or transplants its relation through text, through the system— and this is its sense or relation to silence, to music. Unaware of Serres’ proximity to this work, the concept of gender interrelation as regards a solar catastrophe runs clear. It would be, on this basis, that Serres references his peers, the other texts that, as mentioned above, are discarded in philosophy today. For students of philosophy what we have here is perhaps a gift, a needed project. If silence and death are at work, there is a political valence to deal with, and here, much like the domain of the text and the dominion of the reader, we confront the world of natural, fluid violence. The anti-postmodernist critique is in part based on a weak idea that the loss of ideology, of a world vision, motivates the “correlationist” project. 4 Serres seems to offer another way to view this when he notes that whereas persons “sometimes kill,” it is clearly “the collective” that “always kills” (17). What is the collective today, if not an organizing function we never see yet acts in its favor in the name of truth? One feels a sense of enigma here, if only to link to what Stevens remarked of communism as a “grubby faith,” providing this applies for capitalism as well, namely any ideology of progress overly interested in absolutes. Here we get the sense that the inhuman, silence, this type of killing, always killing, could not be matched by human-made, political dynamos. Or that if it comes to an equilibrium, a catastrophe is never too far from us to read with our heels. We are left to note that the forces of nature presuppose and permeate political systems, the more these systems obtain force, the more the system takes upon itself the proper name of nature that motivates its dissemination, albeit falsely. This note, that in an age of ecocide and technological captivity (sustainability and transparency) political regimes won’t grow our soul-learning ears any larger than our tongues, stands clear to us. The promise of technological desubjectification is here pushed aside. Regarding politics, Serres illustrates this fact: Where did this corpse come from? Who was it? Who killed it? I don’t know. I won’t try to find out. I refuse to get vengeance for it. And I only see Garonne. For our victims, today, are the rivers, too. Their waters have irrigated my life, enchanted my thought, invigorated my body; I’ve known them to be threatening, untamable, as dangerous as the sea when it rages. Yes, murderous. They decided to control their courses; dams, sometimes senseless, destroying sites and valleys, reduced entire populations to servile displacements; programs for the irrigation of thirsty farmland, often beneficial of course, completed their drying up.(22) Serres enters into his idea concerning the captivity of language from the natural into a world system: For thousands of years, we have been licking things with our tongues, covering and daubing them so as to appropriate things for ourselves. If language boils down to a convention, this convention took place between the speakers without consulting the thing named, become as a result the property of those who covered it in this way with their drawn or voiced productions. Malfeasance analyzes these acts of appropriation. Thus every inert object, every living thing as well, sleeps under the covers of signs, a little in the way that, today, a thousand posters shouting messages and ugly riots of color drown, with their filthy flood, the landscapes, or better, exclude them from perception because the meaning, almost nil, of this false language and these base images forms an irresistible source of attraction to our neurons and eyes. This appropriation covers the world’s beauty with ugliness. (38-39) Technological concealment coming to bear, we begin to get a sense of another commentary on the condition of sensing, driving home the necessity of a text dealing with such subject matter to be what its terms insist. Thus toward new openings: The new opening. As low beneath our feet as you like, the Biogea opens us to another space, high enough for us to be able to acquire a wisdom there, that of redeveloping this same place differently from our fathers, this place that’s still politically cut up by old hatreds, beneath the flood of tears and blood that we call history. Without this soft place, spiritually very old, but newly conceived in this way, without the juridical construction of a common good, opposed to our filthy ownership, I don’t see how our planet, hard, will survive. Hardness that depends on a softness, material belonging that depends on this temporary rented location (51). Serres enters into a summit on the content and the structure of his work. Archimedes is brought in with the concept of three volcanoes. Meaning fire, but as well earth, water, air. For it was Archimedes’ war machines that sought to lift the earth, thus bringing in the question of principles of science: “can a principle be invented while controlling its consequences?” (66-7). May the earth be put in a sentence, terminated by terminology, appellations, gone wild? By means of these element-dominating laws, this old physicist began to tear nature away from the ancient myths; by a strange return, today we’re plunging our successes back into the anxieties and terrors from which that ancient physics was born. Yes, our new history of science and technology is plunging, today, as though in a loop, into the fundamental human myths from which Empedocles’ first laws came. A major progression and a regression on the nether side of the origins. Consequently, the contemporary time requires that we try to return to that unity in which the principles of hate and love are at the same time human, living, inert and global. We will never attain a deontology of our knowledge and actions without thinking the subjective, the objective, the collective, and the cognitive all together simultaneously. Here, hate and love are the result of these four components.(71) Working then on the concept of fire-starting mirrors to the atomic annihilation of the Second War, Serres works into the subjectivity in question on the matter of rhythm—say rithmic— precisely at that point: Knowledge is changing today. The all-political is dying; the monarchy of the sciences said to be hard is coming to a close. The science of the things of the world will have to communicate just as much as the things of the world do, which do it much better than humans do, who don’t always want to do it. Let’s celebrate two changes this morning. The first one strikes a new blow to our narcissism. No, knowledge and the world don’t resemble our analytical enjoyments of refined cutting up, of endless debates and of exclusions full of hate. They, on the contrary, form a bloc and a sum, alliance and alloys. Uniting the fields of knowledge among themselves the way the things are connected among themselves, the second newness puts into place sets united by interlacing, webs and simplexes that combine with the things of the world, themselves combined, the combined knowledge that understands them.(130-1) Biogea closes on its opening flood thematic, approaching the initial telos of Genesis. Here the trees are brought into a position with atmosphere, the opaque abyssal reservoir, the tomb of the sun, sea in the polarity of the earthen heaven and hell. The poem of the earth then is silent but deadly, indeed, as funny as that phrase is, mainly a tomb gas. The meaning of the living and the non-meaning of things converge in the muteness of the world; this meaning and non-meaning plunge there and come out, the ultimate eddy. Mundus patet: through a fissure, through an opening, a fault, a cleft come noises, calls as small as these apertures. I’m listening, attentive, I’m translating, I’m advancing in the scaled-down meaning and science. Mundus patet: should the world open greatly, it will launch me into its silence. The totality remains silent. Knowledge expanded in elation. White origin of meaning, fountain of joy. (198) Final Remarks One test of a review is the long term trajectory the referee thinks the book will have. I see Serres’ text lending greatly into the vision of Biogea . In fact, in the vision of the novel inquiries of Stephen Jay Gould’s work there is something to be thought on the level of the individual and the species; namely, that humanity and its uniqueness is in its deferral, its thinking and naming, a thinking surrounded by silence that filters into everything, that pulls us through the world, the kinetic pulse we recognize, and all of that we cleave away in the base philosophical maxim of difference itself. Unique individuals are spatial creatures: we dwell, and we ought to get good at it. Yet this is an imaginative space that, if you are crazy enough to believe it, de-term-ine the conditions of its own terms. That is why we are not merely creating spaces on the acceleration of time, or so this ignoramus thinks, to accidentally transcend. Imagination already has this insatiable silence that we drink up and fail to manifest. Space is timeless. The imagination itself, shared by humans for themselves, their objects, and the species as a whole, is a non-defined space of relation; a whole human trajectory as part of nature, and part of worlds that are the other side of thinking nature, the consequence of it, at least our attempt to do so. Our survival is based on our deliberation, our caution, our natural deconstructive sense toward this silence that is already part of the song, sung, singing of this century without end. Good books will let us inhabit this space and recognize a form of life. Serres’ text moves toward dwelling, as noted, in masterful and accessible ways. The pitched battles are the falling replays of anemic and dead politics. As soon as we realize there is humanity, we may be able to enjoy the end of it, our inhuman capability of listening to silence. NOTES 1. See Michel Serres. The Parasite . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2007. 2. Wallace Stevens, “Imagination as Value” [ca. 1945], in Collected Poetry and Prose . New York: The Library of America. 1997. 724-39. 3. Jean-François Lyotard. The Inhuman: Reflections on Time . Trans. Geoffrey Bennington & Rachel Bowlby. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 1992. 4. See the introduction: Quentin Melliassoux. After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency . Trans. Ray Brassier. New York: Continuum. 2008. EDITOR'S NOTE: This review was updated on August 8, 2012. Substantial edits include block quotes from the book under review as well as the inclusion of comments from the author. (shrink)

This article begins with an examination of Peter Singer's ‘solution’ to global poverty as a way to develop a theory of ‘justice in assistance.’ It argues that Singer's work, while compelling, does not seriously engage with the institutions necessary to relieve global poverty. In order to realise our obligations it is necessary to employ secondary agents, such as non-governmental organisations, that produce complex social relationships with the global poor. We should be (...) concerned that the affluent and their secondary agents are complicit with unjust institutions or can be the source of injustice. What is needed is a theory of justice in assistance. This is a distinct area of justice theory because these agents are not primary agents, like states, but they often provide the basic social goods that we associate with primary agents. The article ends by putting forward a provisional conception of justice in assistance based on the republican idea of non-domination. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant is recognized as one of the first philosophers who wrote systematically about global justice and world peace. In the current debate on global justice he is mostly appealed to by critics of extensive duties of global justice. However, I show in this paper that an analysis of Kant’s late work on rights and justice provides ample resources for disagreeing with those who take Kant to call for only modest changes in global politics. (...) Kant’s comments in the Doctrine of Right clarify that he thinks we need a coercively enforced global civil condition. But his work also contains ideas that imply that within such a global legal order there must be no extreme forms of poverty and inequality, and that the current holdings of states are by no means conclusive possessions without confirmation by the global legal order we have a duty to establish. Thus, this paper challenges the prevailing interpretation of Kant as a conservative thinker about global justice that is held, for instance, by the leading contemporary liberal thinkers such as John Rawls, Thomas Nagel, and Ronald Dworkin. (shrink)

Two main types of philosophical arguments have been given in support of the claim that the citizens of affluent societies have stringent moral duties to aid the global poor: “positive duty” arguments based on the notion of beneficence and “negative duty” arguments based on noninterference. Peter Singer’s positive duty argument (Singer 1972) and Thomas Pogge’s negative duty argument (Pogge 2002) are among the most prominent examples. Philosophers have made speculative claims about the relative effectiveness of these arguments in (...) promoting attitudes and behaviors that could lead to the alleviation of poverty. In this article we present the results of two empirical studies that evaluate these claims, and suggest that both arguments have a modest effect on people’s attitudes and behaviors regarding global poverty. In a replication of the second study, the negative duty argument, in particular, had a statistically significant effect on donations. We discuss the theoretical and practical significance of these results and suggest directions for further research on the role that philosophical arguments can play in engendering concern and action on pressing moral problems. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Ethics of Wealth in a World of Economic Inequality: A Christian Perspective in a Buddhist-Christian DialogueJoerg RiegerThere is common agreement that we find ourselves in a world of economic inequality. More precisely, we are living in a world where economic inequality continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Income inequality in the United States is greater than it has ever been, greater than (...) class='Hi'>that of most other wealthy countries,1 and it is even greater than the income inequality known in the Roman Empire. In Ancient Rome, the top 1 percent controlled 16 percent of society’s wealth, compared to 40 percent in the contemporary United States.2 Nevertheless, although there is broad agreement on the existence of economic inequality, there are different perspectives on what it all means.While many lament the existence of economic inequality, others welcome it. Christians who follow the teachings of the so-called gospel of prosperity, for instance, are rarely bothered by economic inequality because they see economic success as a result of faithfulness to God, while stagnation or even poverty is the result of lack of faith. Among economists, one of the dominant perspectives on economic inequality is that it is necessary and beneficial. More specifically, one current economic theory that is widely agreed upon holds that cutting taxes for the wealthy and providing subsidies for large corporations is the only way to maintain economic growth as well as job growth. This theory is maintained despite mounting empirical evidence to the contrary. As a recent study by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service notes, “there is little evidence over the past 65 years that tax cuts for the highest earners are associated with savings, investment or productivity growth.”3Other prominent perspectives on economic inequality take more critical approaches, although some of the most common stereotypes also fail the reality test. One common assumption, for instance, is that the wealth gap is a matter of the so-called First World versus the so-called Third World. In the Americas, for instance, many believe that wealth resides north of the US-Mexico border, and that poverty resides to the south of it. Nevertheless, the world’s wealthiest individual is currently a Mexican citizen, business magnate Carlos Slim Helú. The case of Slim is, of course, [End Page 153] only the tip of the iceberg, as a tremendous amount of wealth resides in many places “south of the border.” Whenever I take seminary students on immersion trips into countries of the so-called Third World, I make it a point to take them not only into the poor neighborhoods but also into the wealthy ones.Observing wealth in Third World contexts never fails to create substantial cognitive dissonance, as most US residents do not expect to see so many expensive cars and expansive villas in São Paulo, Brazil; Lima, Peru; or Harare, Zimbabwe. By the same token, even most US residents do not expect to see so much dire poverty in the United States, although it often resides only a few miles from where they live. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 21 percent of all children in the United States live in families with incomes below the poverty level.4 Without ignoring the economic differences between North and South, substantial economic inequality exists in both so-called Third World and First World settings.Whose Wealth?One crucial insight emerges from our reflections so far: when we talk about an ethics of wealth in a world of economic inequality, we need to ask whose wealth we are discussing. When we are talking about wealth in many Christian communities, we tend to talk about ourselves and about the perceived wealth of the so-called middle class. What we are rarely discussing, however, is the tremendous wealth that is amassed at the upper levels of society, with the proverbial 1 percent or the 0.1 percent. I have observed similar discourses for many years, all around the world. There are several problems with this discourse.One problem is that by talking about members of the middle class as representatives of wealth, we fail to investigate the full scale of economic... (shrink)

Gender, ‘race’, poverty, health and discourses of health reform in the context of globalization: a postcolonial feminist perspective in policy researchIn this paper, I draw on extant literature and my empirical work to discuss the impact of globalization and healthcare reform on the lives of women — those from countries of the South as well as of the North. First, I review briefly the economic hardships identified in different sectors of the population that have been attributed to (...) how globalization is now working. Second, I examine what these global processes mean for health, with particular focus on poverty, gender, racialization and health. Third, I reflect on how nurse scientists might develop research agendas in the 21st century that would foster social transformation and social justice for all people. The position taken here is not an indictment of globalization. Rather, I argue that globalization is a fact in all of our lives. There are positive aspects of globalization. There are also negative aspects which we must collectively address, given that the issues identified can have deleterious consequences for the world’s poor, women in particular. I suggest that, to construct knowledge for practice and praxis, research agendas of the future should be inclusive of subaltern voices. I argue that drawing on a postcolonial feminist epistemology might help us to define such agendas, and express the multilayered sociopolitical contexts of health and illness in advocacy with policy‐makers. (shrink)

Most of the ethical literature on extreme poverty suggests, that some, if not most, of the incomes of the residents of rich countries ought to be donated to the global poor. Yet complying with this ethical demand becomes increasingly more difficult as the changes in lifestyle in the (post)industrial north demand ever more consumption in order to obtain the necessities for survival in such societies. In this article, I will discuss Peter Singer's famous arguments for (...) the ethical duty to donate one's possessions, and elaborate the conception of needs prevalent in both Singer's theory and the theories of many of his critics. My argument is that we have to recognise a category of needs called 'social necessities' that are neither luxuries nor basic needs. This leads to two main conclusions: first, the space for ethical deliberation on whether to donate to life-saving purposes is socially conditioned; and second, ethical strategies of redistribution ought to be accompanied with institutional changes, which also concern the conditions in wealthy countries. (shrink)

What are the principles and practices that academic management programs need to educate Millennials on social responsibility and sustainability? What can universities do to instruct managers to solve complex ethical problems such as world poverty? The article suggests theoretical and practical insights for higher education management programs based on the principles and practices of developing socially responsible leaders. Through a review of The Principles of Responsible Management Education, the research invites academics and institutions to commit toward business (...) ethics and poverty alleviation. The author suggests how the process of adopting the principles and developing appropriate educational opportunities in line with these principles provides a space for ethical education for current generations. Participating academic institutions enter into a network of scholars and programs acting as positive agents for world benefit. The current world challenges of poverty, ethics and sustainability require committed academic institutions and rooted in the principles and practices of social and global responsibility for the 21st century. (shrink)

Over the last twenty years, the idea that climate change – and indeed global environmental change more generally – is fundamentally a moral challenge has become mainstream. But most have supposed that the challenge is one of acting morally, rather than to our morality itself. Dale Jamieson is a notable exception to this trend. From the earliest days of climate ethics, he has argued that successfully addressing the problem will involve a fundamental paradigm shift in ethics. (...) In general, Jamieson believes that our current values evolved relatively recently in “low-population-density and low-technology societies, with seemingly unlimited access to land and other resources,” and so are ill-suited to a globalized world. More specifically, he asserts that these values include as a central component an account of responsibility which “presupposes that harms and their causes are individual, that they can be readily identified, and that they are local in time and space.” But, he claims, global environmental problems such as climate change fit none of these criteria, so that a new value system is needed, one which addresses “fundamental questions” about “how we ought to live, what kinds of societies we want, and how we should relate to nature and other forms of life.” In particular, he declares that there is little hope of success without direct appeal to a hitherto underappreciated “duty of respect for nature.” In my view, Jamieson is right to question the adequacy of conventional ethical thinking for addressing global environmental problems. However, I also contend that the situation with respect to responsibility is less clear cut than he suggests. In this paper, I offer several objections to Jamieson’s main arguments, and propose an alternative, less revisionary, account of our predicament. Nevertheless, I also suggest that much of the spirit of Jamieson’s position remains intact, so that my proposal is more of a “friendly amendment” to his view than an outright rejection of it. According to this amendment, climate change involves a failure of our attempts to delegate responsibility to political institutions charged with acting on our behalf. Such failures are jarring, since they throw many of our normal practices into doubt, and threaten to restore to us demanding social burdens to which we have become largely unaccustomed. This situation need not cast doubt on our basic account of ethical responsibility. Indeed, that account helps to illuminate what is going on. Still, it does imply that we face a large (although somewhat familiar) moral and political challenge. (shrink)

Positive psychology aims to help people live and flourish, rather than merely to exist. The term “positive psychology” may seem to imply that all other psychology is in some way negative, but that implication is unintended and untrue. However the term “positive psychology” contains a softer indictment, namely, that psychology has become unbalanced. In the years since World War II psychology, guided by its funding agencies and the rising social conscience of its practitioners, has focused on (...) helping people and society solve serious problems. Clinical psychology has focused on mental illness, social psychology has focused on prejudice, racism, and aggression, and cognitive psychology has focused on diagnosing the errors and biases that lead to bad decisions. There are good reasons to spend more time and money on illness and problems than on health and strengths. Utilitarianism, compassion, and a concern for equality suggest that people in great pain should be helped before those who are not suffering. But there are at least two costs to focusing on illness, problems, and weaknesses. The first cost is an inappropriately negative view of human nature and the human condition. We teach students about the many ways the mind can go wrong, and about the frightening prevalence rates of depression, child abuse, and eating disorders. We teach students that people are fundamentally selfish creatures whose occasional good deeds are accidental products of self-esteem management. Is such cynicism and pessimism really justified? Positive psychology is realistic. It does not claim that human nature is all sweetness and light, but it does offer a more balanced view. Most people are doing reasonably well in life, and have the capacity to thrive and flourish, even when -- or especially when -- confronted with challenges, setbacks, and suffering (see Ryff & Singer, this volume; Wethington, this volume). Most people have experienced powerful feelings of moral elevation and inspiration that are unconnected to any need for self-esteem (see Haidt, this volume).. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Masao Abe and the Dialogue BreakthroughStephen RoweI am profoundly grateful to Masao Abe for many reasons, including his articulation of Zen and his responsiveness to my own work, but most especially for his breakthrough work on dialogue. For he, along with his Christian partner in dialogue, John B. Cobb Jr., has taken us to a new paradigm, one in which dialogue, in complementary relationship with our more particular practices (...) and traditions, can be valued as a religious practice.1 Together these two towering figures of our time have broken through the koan of abstracted universality versus incommensurable particularity, and hence opened up a possibility for the human future the significance of which cannot be overestimated.In October 1986, I had the good fortune to find myself at the Third North American Buddhist-Christian Theological Encounter, the stated theme of which was “Notions of Ultimate Reality in Buddhism and Christianity.” A critical tension was evident early on in this event. Masao Abe spoke very persuasively of the “perspec-tiveless perspective” of Zen, arising from the experience of sunyata as the negation of negation or the radicalizing of Nothingness, of Zen as the affirmation of radical return. John Cobb spoke with equal persuasiveness of our inescapable particularity as historical beings, our ineluctable locatedness, and the irreducible wisdom of Israel and Greece. Both of these opposing views seemed right. How could this be so?To heighten the juxtaposition, it was equally evident that there were three large propositions on which Abe and Cobb very much agreed: first, our need of transformation; second, that this must be mutual transformation; and, third, that transformation must be in the direction of a new universality of humankind, which Cobb describes as “a global memory.” 2 How is it possible for these powerful elements of agreement to be juxtaposed with the critical tension mentioned above? Cobb and Abe, not surprisingly, have their own responses to this question,3 and we can learn from what Abe says about universality and transformation, and how his understanding of both leads him to a specifically religious valuing of the dialogical encounter with the difference that is presented by Cobb.In the paper Masao Abe presented at the 1986 event, he proposed two crucial aspects of dialogue between world religions: (1) seeking clarification of the views peculiar to one’s own tradition through allowing the different views between traditions [End Page 123] to confront one another, and (2) being “free from the peculiarity of our own traditions in order to scrutinize the notion of ultimate reality itself most fitting to our contemporary human predicament and the future of humanity.” 4 The second aspect needs to involve “a very creative and penetrating discussion in which we must be radically critical of our own tradition so that we can re-examine and regrasp the essence of our religion from the more universal and more fundamental position,” and hence “find out the truly ultimate reality for the future of humanity.” 5There is a paradox here: Abe indicates both a more universal orientation and a reappropriation of the essence of our particular traditions. The key to movement beyond paradox as frustrating antinomy to paradox as gateway to vitality is the dialogical practice, and specifically dialogue in its association with mutual transformation and the emergence of a new universality of humankind. For Abe, this turns on the understanding of “universal”:To become a “universal” world religion does not imply a monolithic religion common to East and West, but rather calls for a dynamic structure capable of freely assuming any form, oriental or occidental, according to the area in which it develops and yet without being confined to any limitation of that area. Such a dynamic realization of the “universal” world religion may become possible for Christianity and Buddhism should they genuinely regrasp their respective notions of universal salvation for all mankind.6Dialogue as locus of “dynamic realization” makes possible a new universality, which, for Abe, is based on the self-negation that leads to the awakening of the “true Self,” and “enter[ing] the third historical age of mankind, namely the age of Self-awakened cosmology.” Because “true investigation of the self is always... (shrink)

Hassoun argues that the poor in the world have a right to health and that the Global Health Impact Index provides consumers in well-off countries with the opportunity to ensure that more people have access to essential medicines. Because of this, these consumers would be ethically obliged to purchase Global Health Impact Index-labeled products in the face of existing global inequalities. In presenting her argument, Hassoun rejects the so-called democratic account of ethical consumption (...) in favor of the positive change account. Two versions of the democratic change account are relevant. One underscores the importance of democratic procedures and institutions, while the other stresses our fundamental moral equality. While at least one prominent institutionalist account has problems, revised versions would be less vulnerable to Hassoun’s counterexamples. Furthermore, institutionalist accounts come with the epistemological gains from democratic procedures and deliberations, which may be especially important under uncertainty. Finally, and perhaps more challenging for the Global Health Impact index project, this measure may place the burden unfairly on those who need to buy medicines. This is a pivotal insight from the non-institutionalist version of the democratic account of ethical consumption. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Gandhi's Hope: Learning from Other Religions as a Path to PeaceChristopher Key ChappleGandhi's Hope: Learning from Other Religions as a Path to Peace. By Jay McDaniel. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2005. 134 + viii pp.This book by prominent Protestant theologian Jay McDaniel suggests that Mahatma Gandhi challenged the modern world by publicly revealing that which he learned from other faith traditions and advocating this path (...) as a way for intercultural understanding. The wisdom of Gandhi holds special poignancy today, when the processes of globalization and migration have placed followers of different faiths in closer proximity than can be remembered in the past five hundred years.Jay McDaniel writes with crisp clarity and organizes his insights into bite-sized pieces. He lays out five challenges that face all the world's faiths: compassion, self-criticism, simple living, ecological awareness, and welcoming religious diversity. In approaching this decidedly postmodern list of issues, McDaniel draws from two primary resources: the experiences shared by his students at Hendrix College and the writings of Alfred North Whitehead. Along the way, he invokes the Buddhist teacher and leader Thich Nhat Hanh and several progressive Catholics, including Sister Joan Chittester and theologians Hans Küng and Paul Knitter.Continuing with a style developed in his earlier books, McDaniel latches onto a [End Page 237] metaphor and extends it to illustrate his central point—in this case, the value of diversity. In past books, he has used the image of the hunter and the hunted to underscore the need to respect animals. In Gandhi's Hope, the metaphor he employs is that of a jazz concert, with all different manner of instruments pooling their resources to create a tapestry of diverse yet harmonious music.Although the title of the book may seem to indicate that Gandhi will serve as thefocus, in fact, Whitehead anchors McDaniel's approach. Through an updated approach to Whitehead, McDaniel seeks to answer the questions regarding diversity and compassion that he has posed. He suggests that an experience of concrescence will result in the sort of heightened awareness needed to increase one's conscience and to make the ethical changes needed to respond to the current state of the world. McDaniel identifies twelve "planks" that will usher Whitehead's vision into the contemporary world. These twelve aspects seem also to be heavily influenced by McDaniel's own encounter with Buddhism: interdependence, impermanence, indeterminism, mind/matter, deep listening, value, God, creativity, persuasive power, divine empathy, many forms of salvation, and life after death. These broad categories embrace key notions found in all religious traditions. Some traditions emphasize certain aspects more than others. Buddhists cleave to impermanence and Jews to establishing a covenant with God, but Jews also recognize that all things will pass, and Buddhists revere their great teacher and many strive to emulate his experience through techniques akin to those who worship God.In order for religious traditions to maintain their urgency and relevance, McDaniel suggests that they must respond actively to the looming threat of environmental degradation. Consumer culture drives people into a state of indifference about natural resources, and arrogance prevents people from taking an interest in the life patterns and cultures of others. These tendencies lie at the root of the world's troubles. McDaniel suggests that process theology can remedy these ills by calling people into a state of compassion and can help guide people toward adopting thoughtful self-criticism, to living a more simple life, to recognizing the importance of other living beings and ecosystems, and to celebrating diversity of cultures. Echoing a refrain long associated with process thought, McDaniel writes "the universe is a creative and creating process of interdependent events, lured by but not controlled by God, such that the future is not yet decided, not even by God" (p. 71). To the extent that religions sustain themselves by reinforcing separateness and promoting a narrow cultural identity and/or an unthinking fundamentalism, they can be an impediment to peace, which, for McDaniel, is an important goal of the world's religions.When attempting to theologize about ultimate matters, McDaniel posits "four faces of the sacred," which he lists as the Abyss... (shrink)

Peter Singer’s famous and influential article is criticised in three main ways that can be considered libertarian, although many non-libertarians could also accept them: 1) the relevant moral principle is more plausibly about upholding an implicit contract rather than globalising a moral intuition that had local evolutionary origins; 2) its principle of the immorality of not stopping bad things is paradoxical, as it overlooks the converse aspect that would be the positive morality of not starting bad things (...) and also thereby conceptually eliminates innocence; and 3) free markets—especially international free trade—have been cogently explained to be the real solution to the global “major evils” of “poverty” and “pollution”, while “overpopulation” does not exist in free-market frameworks; hence charity is a relatively minor alleviant to the problem of insufficiently free markets. There are also various subsidiary arguments throughout. (shrink)

In the fifth century before the Christian era, the Chinese philosopher Mozi, appalled at the damage caused by war in his time, asked: "What is the way of universal love and mutual benefit?" He answered his own question: "It is to regard other people's countries as one's own." The ancient Greek iconoclast Diogenes, when asked what country he came from, is said to have replied: "I am a citizen of the world." In the late 20th century John Lennon sang (...) that it isn't hard to "Imagine there's no countries . . . Imagine all the people/Sharing all the world." Until recently, such thoughts have been the dreams of idealists, devoid of practical impact on the hard realities of a world of nation states. But now we are beginning to live in a global community. Almost all the nations of the world have reached a binding agreement about their greenhouse gas emissions. The global economy has given rise to the World Trade Organisation, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund; institutions that take on, if imperfectly, some functions of global economic governance. An international criminal court is beginning its work. Changing ideas about military intervention for humanitarian purposes shows we are in the process of developing a global community prepared to accept its responsibility to protect the citizens of states that cannot or will not protect them from massacre or genocide. In ringing declarations and resolutions, most recently at the United Nations Millennium Summit, the world's leaders have recognised that relieving the plight of the world's poorest nations is a global responsibility - although their deeds are yet to match their words. (shrink)

The large number of hungry people in a global economy based on industrialization, privatization, and free trade raises the question of the ethical dimensions of the worsening food crisis in the world in general and in developing countries in particular. Who bears the moral responsibility for the tragic situation in Africa and Asia where people are starving due to poverty? Who is morally responsible for their poverty - the hungry people themselves? the international community? any particular (...) agency or institution? In the context of Article 3 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which states that "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security" (UNDHR, 1948), the ethical question of poverty and hunger becomes a major human concern that should be discussed publicly and resolved by whatever means available. But how can the poor and hungry realize their right to life and security if their very survival is at stake? This paper maintains that responsibility for global poverty at present lies in recent neo-liberal trends in the global economy and with those individuals and organizations who, though small in number, have acquired a disproportionate share of the world's assets and financial resources. That being the case, it is suggested that our monetary and financial policies are in need of drastic changes with regard to global responsibility towards the hungry and impoverished. (shrink)

Photo by Alex Guillaume on Unsplash Introduction The problem of climate change raises some important philosophical, existential questions. I propose a radical solution designed to provoke reflection on the role of humans in climate change. To push the theoretical limits of what measures people are willing to accept to combat it, an extreme population control tool is proposed: allowing people to reproduce only if they make a financial commitment guaranteeing a carbon-neutral upbringing. Solving the problem of climate change in the (...) long run by halting the procreation of human beings is controversial. In the absence of human beings and consequent climate change, other animals and plant species would benefit from an atmosphere more conducive to prolonging their existence and even improving their ability to thrive. If someone were to invent something to reverse the effects of climate change and improve animals’ lives, then human beings’ presence would be justified by the invention. Whether the propagation of the human species is beneficial to anyone or anything but human beings themselves is difficult to answer. Perhaps human beings are unfit to tackle this issue, being unable to judge it objectively. Managing Procreation: An alternative to Piecemeal Approaches Measures aimed at reducing greenhouse gases by nudging individuals and corporations may have a positive effect, but if their behavior is not climate neutral, they continue to contribute to climate change. Consequently, as long as the number of people increases, reducing greenhouse gases is at best a mitigation tool. If humans could rely solely on renewable energy, decreasing the population arguably would not be necessary. Significantly reducing the number of people appears to provide a solution to both problems: people who do not exist do not contribute to climate change, and renewable energy could meet the demand of a smaller population. One option is to let only those who produce the problem pay for its solution. One could determine the expected annual emission of greenhouse gases per person, assuming an average life expectancy, and calculate the costs to compensate them by, e.g., installing extra solar panels. Those expected costs could then be paid by the parents of each new person annually over the first eighteen years of that person’s life by dividing the total expected costs by eighteen. There are also practical difficulties. It would be difficult to determine the payment necessary. What should be done if a child has been born whose parents cannot afford to pay? In addition, child benefits could be canceled, contrary to recent incentives for child births instated in Italy,[1] where additional benefits will be made available to pay for childcare, and Hungary,[2] where women with four children or more will be exempted for life from paying income tax. A transition period could exist once the policy has been adopted, since it would be unreasonable to confront those who are already pregnant with costs they could not reasonably have expected. While the analysis is both hypothetical and theoretical, the impracticality is a noteworthy obstacle. There are several practical issues that cannot be addressed here, like the difficulty of calculating the added negative effects of each new individual and the unlikelihood that many citizens will support politicians who propose adopting policies that discourage having children. The upshot of what I have proposed is that climate change can be solved in the long run without financial costs to society as a whole, notwithstanding the transitional measures that would bring costs with them. Managing Procreation to Reduce Suffering Should this be deemed too harsh a stance, it is important to consider the basic issue of whether it is justified to introduce measures to reduce the number of people in an already overpopulated world, especially if climate change leads to additional suffering. One need not agree with Benatar, but his perspective must at least be taken seriously: It is curious that while good people go to great lengths to spare their children from suffering, few of them seem to notice that the one guaranteed way to prevent all the suffering of their children is not to bring those children into existence in the first place.[3] Benatar argues that non-existence is preferable to existence,[4] which raises the question why new people should be created at all. Those who question whether this planet will be habitable for future generations presuppose that such generations will exist. If people are not brought into existence, they may be said to be deprived of what life has to offer, but life must not be presupposed to be something positive. Whether this is the case in fact merits an inquiry of its own. A solution to the problem of climate change despite an increased population does not equate to a positive outcome since it merely means that something negative is removed. After all, solving the problem is not a means to an end, but a means to a means, the latter means being a means to a happy life, which does not automatically ensue from a solution to the problem. Benatar, as an anti-natalist, argues that procreation is morally wrong. His basic idea is that there is an asymmetry between pleasure and pain and that the pleasure that is not experienced by someone because that person does not exist is not something bad whereas the absence of pain that is not experienced – for the same reason – is something good.[5] Accordingly, “The reason why we do not lament our failure to bring somebody into existence is because absent pleasures are not bad.”[6] One may question whether such a perspective suffices to prove that coming into existence is always a harm, but the assertion that coming into existence exposes a new being to potential harm is clear. Objections A drawback of the proposed radical solution, placing the financial impediment on procreation, is that it will not solve climate change in the short run. A significant drop in the number of people may have a positive effect in the long run, but for now the behavior of the people in existence is the problem. Other climate change mitigation policies would necessarily continue. Additionally, there are important practical reasons to continue to procreate. The benefits for the elderly are paid for by the labor force. It is a problem that new generations are created as mere means to benefit older people. Perhaps more troubling, a pyramid scheme is created: by the time those people have themselves become old, a new labor force must have been brought into existence, a process that must presumably continue. If a consideration for people in developing countries to have children is that they cannot provide for themselves at an advanced age, while benefits are either lacking or insufficient, developed countries could collectively fund a pension scheme.[7] This may be low-cost if it is tailored to the living standard in the countries in question and given the life expectancy. Such a pension scheme should be predicated on the countries’ efforts in reducing the birth rate. If the labor force decreases, the economy may suffer. The focus on economic growth is arguably one of the causes of climate change, but if the number of people is reduced, the living standard does not have to be compromised, since the economy can then still grow. If fewer people began to use natural resources and nonrenewable energy at higher per capita rates, then the procreation might not be beneficial to the climate. It would need to be accompanied by regulations on use. One may also object that only wealthy people will be able to afford children. This is correct, but there is no right to have a child one cannot afford. The right to procreate does not entail the right to have as many children as one wants.[8] Yet in many countries, like the United States, it is a fundamental right that is constitutionally protected. There are numerous social, emotional, and even biological reasons why people choose to procreate. These may include the joy of having a family, the hope that children may bring in society, and the intergenerational transference of knowledge. People may have a strong desire to raise children or even a religious duty. If someone procures a sports car that is highly polluting, it would be justifiable to impose a tax in such a case. Many taxes and fines are imposed on corporate polluters. Procreation is significantly different but if the issue is regarded with some distance, then a climate change prevention tax could be appropriate. Some may argue that raising children is expensive already, which nonetheless does not deter people from having children. The tax I propose would be additional and specifically dedicated to carbon neutrality, but it would be difficult to predict whether it would discourage procreation. One last objection may be that for those now dedicated to sustainability for preserving the earth for the sake of future generations, there would be little or no incentive to continue any climate change mitigation efforts at all. If they sense they cannot afford to procreate, they may simply use every natural resource rather than save the earth for animals or for next generations. In a democracy, this problem does not exist if the majority can afford to procreate and agree with legislation on the basis of which such behavior is discouraged or punished. CONCLUSION Prior to their existence, there is no obligation to bequeath the earth to next generations. Such generations will only exist if they are actually created, and there is no obligation to create them. The lack of existence should not be confused with harm. Climate change provides an important reason to stem overpopulation. Ironically, fast rates of procreation may lead to the earth becoming uninhabitable for humans altogether. The radical solution that has been proposed here is an unrealistic scenario. For now, the average global birth rate is just over 18 per thousand people, but there is a need to ensure that the number of people is not greater than the planet can endure. While it is better to prevent problems than to solve them, the interest in procreation and its associated joys, usefulness, and cultural value make mass reduction in the population unlikely. Some countries have smaller average family size than others and can act as models for reducing population in a less radical way. The need to continue efforts to reduce climate change persists. Whether it would curb population growth or not, an additional financial burden applied to neutralizing each person’s offspring’s carbon footprint provides a meaningful thought exercise that could help alleviate the pressure on current climate mitigation strategies. [1] The Local Italy, How Italy’s new ‘Family Act’ aims to increase the plunging birthrate, https://www.thelocal.it/20200612/what-you-need-to-know-about-italys-new-family-act/. [2] BBC, Hungary tries for baby boom with tax breaks and loan forgiveness, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47192612. [3] David Benatar, Better never to have been, 6. [4] David Benatar, Better never to have been, 44, 58. [5] David Benatar, Better never to have been, 14, 30, 38. [6] David Benatar, Better never to have been, 35. [7] Alastair Leithead, “Can Niger break out of its cycle of poverty?”, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-41018081; Sebastien Malo, “Fewer children, fewer climate risks? Niger ponders a controversial option”, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-niger-climate-change-familyplanning-idUSKBN1WM11E. [8] Sarah Conly, “The Right to Procreation: Merits and Limits,” American Philosophical Quarterly 42, no. 2 : 105-115, 105, 106. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAnthony Skelton, Violetta Igneski and Tracy Isaacs share my view that our obligations to help people in extreme poverty go beyond what is conventionally accepted. Nevertheless, the other contributors argue that my view is too demanding, while noting some tensions between my different writings on this issue. I explain my position, drawing on Sidgwick’s distinction between what someone ought to do, and what we should praise or blame someone for doing or not doing. I also respond to (...) the position that Skelton considers preferable to mine, drawing this time on an argument that Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and I have made in our recent book, The Point of View of the Universe. I also address Igneski’s concerns about gender inequality, and indicate my broad agreement with Isaacs’ suggestion that effective altruism could benefit from a more co-ordinated approach. (shrink)

Many corporations are large, powerful, and wealthy. There are massive shortfalls of global justice, with hundreds of millions of people in the world living below the threshold of extreme poverty, and billions more living not far above that threshold. Where injustice and needs shortfalls must be remediated, we often look towards agents’ capabilities to determine who ought to bear the costs of rectifying the situation. The combination of these three claims grounds what I call a (...) ‘linkage-based’ account of why corporations have demanding positive duties to the global poor. In this paper, I put forward a distinctive linkage-based account of corporations’ positive duties centred on the idea of dependence and the importance of meeting agents’ core needs. In addition to outlining and defending this account, I will show that we can utilise its basic conceptual components to make headway on questions that have received insufficient attention in the business ethics literature; specifically, we can say something substantive about the weighting of needy agents’ competing claims to assistance, and about the limits to the demands that can be lodged against corporations on the basis of others' unmet needs. Having integrated considerations of duties' grounding, their comparative weight, and the limits of their demandingness into a single account of corporate positive duty, I conclude by discussing a challenge to attributing to corporations duties owed to the worst-off amongst the global poor. (shrink)

While a relativist view of environmental ethics could be quite difficult to justify, it is also difficult to be so strict about the quest for global environmental justice. At the same time, even though the reality of environmental degradation is plain to see, most African traditional communities, and even their respective states at large, still wallow in poverty such that they remain in need of developing themselves if they are to reach the level of development of the (...) countries in the global North. More so, the majority of indigenous and mostly poor and underrepresented African people in the global South are faced with disproportionate amounts of environmental benefits and burdens compared to their counterparts in the global North. In this article, I therefore seek to examine a normative framework for conceptualising global environmental justice within different environmental, social, political and economic contexts. I consider how best environmental benefits and burdens could be fairly distributed across communities with different environmental, social, political and economic advantages. In the end, I appeal to John Rawls’s conception of distributive justice as a framework for arriving at an acceptable view of global environmental justice that takes into account the circumstances of the global South. (shrink)

The purpose of this discussion paper is to explore how nurses can be strategically poised to advocate for needed policy change in support of greater income equality and other social determinants of health. We adapted Bronfenbrenner's social‐ecological model to highlight how four broad pervasive subsystems shape the opportunities that nurses have to engage in advocacy at the policy level. These subsystems include organizations (the microsystem), professional bodies (the mesosystem), public policies (the exosystem), and societal values (the macrosystem). On the (...) basis of this adapted model, we recommend changes among modifiable elements of the microsystem and mesosystem that can help position nurses (ecologically and collectively) to advocate for public policy change and use examples from a Canadian context to illustrate these points. We believe that the ideas arising from this model can be widely used where policy action on the social determinants of health is needed to inform, guide, and frame change efforts and advocacy work. (shrink)

This book explores the nature of moral responsibilities of affluent individuals in the developed world, addressing global poverty and arguments that philosophers have offered for having these responsibilities. The first type of argument grounds responsibilities in the ability to avert serious suffering by taking on some cost. The second argument seeks to ground responsibilities in the fact that the affluent are contributing to such poverty. The authors criticise many of the claims advanced by those (...) who seek to ground stringent responsibilities to the poor by invoking these two types of arguments. It does not follow from this that the affluent are meeting responsibilities to the poor. The book argues that while people are not ordinarily required to make large sacrifices in assisting others in severe need, they are required to incur moderate costs to do so. If the affluent fail consistently to meet standards, this fact can substantially increase the costs they are required to bear in order to address it. (shrink)