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 …
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 …
There is a small minority, for example, that believes that bad weather comes from bad thoughts. This is a rather mystical approach to the question, for it implies that thoughts can be translated directly into events in the physical world. According to them, when you think a dark or pessimistic thought, it produces a cloud …
This is why we are consciously relieved when we turn to reading after being occupied with our own thoughts. But, in reading, our head is, however, really only the arena of some one else’s thoughts. And so it happens that the person who reads a great deal—that is to say, almost the whole day, and …
The Euthanasia Clinics are not the only way to buy your own death, however. There are the Assassination Clubs as well, and these have been growing in popularity. A person who wants to die, but is too afraid to go through with it himself, joins the Assassination Club in his census zone for a relatively …
So many of us have become like children again. It’s not that we make an effort, you understand, or that anyone is really conscious of it. But when hope disappears, when you find that you have given up hoping for the possibility of hope, you tend to fill the empty spaces with dreams, little childlike …
There is one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest-whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories- comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer. And …
The hand of an acid attack victim hangs from a bed during a therapy session at a secure shelter outside Phnom Penh run by the Cambodia Acid Survivors Charity. 7 July 2010. Reuters. Our World Now 4.
Cuando se lucha contra monstruos hay que tener cuidado de no convertirse en mostruo uno mismo. Si hundes demasiado tiempo tu mirada en el abismo, el abismo acaba por penetrar en ti.