In the still dominant paradigm, it seems that the possibility of being a "great philosopher" is ab initio discarded. So if this paradigm is accepted,… - Julio Cabrera
" "In the still dominant paradigm, it seems that the possibility of being a "great philosopher" is ab initio discarded. So if this paradigm is accepted, the real alternative would seem to be: would you rather be a great commentator on philosophy or a small philosopher? A genuine philosopher never thinks while foreseeing that they will make great or small philosophy; for he simply thinks, compulsively, his own "things", his points, his obsessions, and can do nothing but think them. (...) What has to be evaluated is whether, at worst, being a small philosopher is more important than turning into a brilliant commentator or a great expert on someone.
About Julio Cabrera
Julio Cabrera is an Argentine philosopher living in Brazil. He is best known for his works on "negative ethics" and cinema and philosophy.
Also Known As
Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.
Additional quotes by Julio Cabrera
Would a genuinely rational agent choose to be born? My argument against R. M. Hare can be reread in the "Critique of Affirmative Morality" (...). There I suggest that in the experiment where the non-being is magically consulted about their possible birth, Hare is mistaken in assuming uncritically that "they" would undoubtedly choose to be born. (This is the usual affirmative trend.) Let us suppose that we are talking about a human being, that is, a rational creature capable of pondering reasons. The information that is given to this possible being in Hare's experiment is incomplete and biased. We should also tell them that if they are born, they will have no guarantee of being born without problems; that if they manage to be born without problems, they will almost surely suffer from many intra-worldly evils; that if they manage to avoid them (and this is possible in the intra-world, even if difficult), we cannot give them any guarantee about the length of their life nor about the kind of death they will have, and they will also have to suffer the death of those they come to love and their death will be suffered by those who love them (if they are lucky enough to love someone and to be loved by someone, which is also not guaranteed). They must be told that if they manage to avoid a violent accidental death, they will decay in a few years (just as the people they love and care about), and that they have a high chance of becoming a terminally ill patient who could suffer terribly until the time of their demise. If it is still possible for the non-being, after having assimilated all this information, to choose to be born, could we not harbor well-founded doubts about their quality as a "rational agent"?
If freedom, according to traditional morality itself, is a fundamental ethical value, the very basis of ethics, one must be aware that the creation of a child may be the first huge disrespect of the freedom of the human person. The issue of freedom suffers here from the same problem as the issue of pain: it is a matter of ethical value that the traditional affirmative ethics is unable to radicalize.
Unlimited Quote Collections
Organize your favorite quotes without limits. Create themed collections for every occasion with Premium.
When a European philosophizes, all his problems are of essence, there is no doubt about the existence of his thought. When a Latin American philosophizes (and this could be extended, for example, to Africans and other marginalized thoughts) he has to prove that his philosophy exists, that he has the right to reflect. (...) I call this a requirement of "insurgency" of Latin American philosophizing: to come into being, the activity of philosophizing from Latin America must insurge against intellectual exclusion (...) not strictly because it "wants" to insurge but because it is not allowed to "arise" in another way (...) Philosophizing from Latin America is reactive and insurgent or it isn't; it is an imperative need for survival.