De manera que, continuando la posada y la conversación, mi madre vino a darme un negrito muy bonito, el cual yo brincaba y ayudaba a calentar. Y acuérdome que, estando el negro de mi padrastro trebejando con el mozuelo, como el niño vía a mi madre y a mí blancos y a él no, huía …
La misma deformación se percibe hoy en la única clase que, en su auto percepción “subjetiva”, se concibe y representa explícitamente como tal: es la recurrente “clase media”, precisamente, esa “no-clase” de los estratos intermedios de la sociedad, aquellos que presumen de laboriosos y que se identifican no sólo por su respeto a sólidos principios …
Reprochar a Hitchcock, el hacer suspense equivaldría a acusarle de ser el cineasta menos aburrido del mundo, como si a un amante se le censurase dar placer a su pareja en lugar de no ocuparse más que del suyo propio. En el cine, tal y como lo practica Hitchcock, se trata de concentrar la atención …
¡Cómo abundan los nombres poéticos en estos sitios tan feos! Desde que viajo por estas tierras, me sorprende la horrible ironía de los nombres. Tal sitio que se distingue por su yermo aspecto y la desolada tristeza del negro paisaje, se llama Valleameno. Tal villorrio de adobes que miserablemente se extiende sobre un llano árido …
It is often claimed that every contemporary ethical dispute is really a debate between Charles Darwin and the Pope. On the one side there is a secular (im)morality which finds it acceptable and desirable ruthlessly to use and sacrifice individuals. On the other, there is Christian morality which asserts that every single human being has …
In the course of the Crusade of King St Louis, Yves le Breton reported how he once encountered an old woman who wandered down the street with a dish full of fire in her right hand and a bowl full of water in her left hand. Asked what she was doing, she answered that with …
Bertrand Russell BBC Radio, London, 30 December 1954 Bertrand Russell’s claim to be remembered by his history rests on his work in mathematic and symbolic logic and his profound influence on philosophy. Yet he was also constantly involved in political affairs. Russell (1872-1970) was deprived of his fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, during the First …
What if, however, humans exceed animals in their capacity for violence precisely because they speak? As Hegel was already well aware, there is something violent in the very symbolization of a thing, which equals its mortification. This violence operates at multiple levels. Language simplifies the designated thing, reducing it to a single feature. It dismembers …
Children of Men is obviously not a film about infertility as a biological problem. The infertility Cuaron’s film is about was diagnosed long ago by Friedrich Nietzsche, when he perceived how Western civilisation was moving in the direction of the Last Man, an apathetic creature with no great passion or commitment. Unable to dream, tired …
Our blindness to the results of systematic violence is perhaps most clearly perceptible in debates about communist crimes. Responsibility for communist crimes is easy to allocate: we are dealing with subjective evil, with agents who did wrong. We can ever identify the ideological sources of the crimes-totalitarian ideology, The communist Manifesto, Rousseau, even Plato. But …