[Since
the Spanish ebola crisis is a global issue, I wrote this post in english with
the illusion of being read by people around the world, although it might be
just that: an illusion. I think the
world deserves to know what young writers from Madrid think about the
situation, instead of hearing once again the wishfull thinking from
intellectual globettroters such as Javier Marías. Thus I encourage my
fellow bloggers to follow my lead, to write about this topic in the global κοινὴ, although I am not 100% sure whether those “fellow bloggers” really exist at all. We will wait and see.]
i. Anonymous
philosophy. An atheist
from the 19th century, whose name I have no desire to recall,* said that
if he had to debate with a philosopher about the existence of God, he would
need Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft in order to win the debate, but if
he had to do it with a priest, Voltaire’s Traité
sur la tolérance would be enough to win the very same debate.
A moral thinker from the 20th
century, whose name I have no desire to recall either, said that
animals and humans should not be treated equally, since the average human has
dignity (or moral responsability) while the average animal doesn’t,** and therefore humans should be treated
acording Kant’s standards while animals
acording to Bentham’s.
(*) We parody here Samuel Putnam’s translation
of Miguel de Cervantes from 1949. For other versions, see Larry Lynch, «Comparing Translations of Don Quixote de la Mancha».
(**) Just for the sake of the argument, if we
want to claim that animals and humans should be treated unequally regarding
certain properties such as dignity or mental capacity, we will normally talk about the average human and the average animal in
order to avoid the argument from marginal cases, acording to which there is
no moral property shared exclusively by all humans, since marginal cases of our
species, such as people with the Down syndrome, have the very same properties
of other primates. The problem with
talking about the average as a moral standar is, roughly speaking, that it
average is always pretty shitty. See more problems in P. Vallentyne, «Of Mice and Men: Equality and Animals», Journal
of Ethics, 1964, 9, 403-433.
ii. Kant for humans. The anonymous
atheist and the anonymous thinker seem to agree that Kant works quite well for
rational beings, both in the logical and moral sense of the word ‘rational’,
and that’s why Kant is neither for priest nor for animals, because they cannot
think for themselves, but according respectively to the
authority of Nature or Church. My duty here is not to dispute this claim, which seems as disputable as schematic, but to see how it applies to the Spanish ebola crisis.
Pretty easy: If Ana Mato, the Spanish
health minister, is morally rational in the kantian sense of the term,*** and
therefore she acts on a maxim that she wills to become an universal law, and she
has brought ebola to Madrid knowing that the Spanish health system cannot cure
the disease, then I suggest that Anonymous
(or whatever hacktivist that might read this) should reveal Ana Mato’s adress
so that an escrache of potential ebola patients pay her with her with her same
coin. Kant would be definitively for it:
«The penal law is a categorical
imperative; and woe to him who creeps through the serpent-windings of
utilitarianism to discover some advantage that may discharge him from the
justice of punishment, or even from the due measure of it, according to the
Pharisaic maxim: “It is better that one
man should die than that the whole people should perish.” For if justice and
righteousness perish, human life would no longer have any value in the world. [...] But what is the mode and measure of
punishment which public justice takes as its principle and standard? It is just
the principle of equality, by which the pointer of the scale of justice is made
to incline no more to the one side than the other. The undeserved evil which any one commits on another is to be regarded
as perpetrated on himself. Hence it may be said: “If you slander another,
you slander yourself; if you steal from another, you steal from yourself; if
you strike another, you strike yourself; if you kill another, you kill
yourself.” This is the right of
retaliation (jus [lex] talionis); and, properly understood, it is the only
principle which in regulating a public court (as opposed to individuals’
private judgement), can definitely assign both the quality and the quantity of
a just penalty. [...] The equalization of punishment with crime is therefore
only possible by judicial sentence extending even to the penalty of death,
according to the right of retaliation. This is manifest from the fact that it
is only thus that a sentence can be pronounced over all criminals proportionate
to their internal wickedness; as may be seen by considering the case when the punishment of death has
to be inflicted, not on account of a murder, but on account of a political
crime that can only be punished capitally» (I. Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, part II, translated by W. Hastie)
(***) Just for the sake of the argument, we
assume that Ana Mato is morally rational, but you might dispute whether she has
any mental capacity at all, especially after regarding her criminal records,
full of things such as not noticing that her corrupt husband has a new Jaguar —the automovile, not the wild animal— but someone knowing about the ownership and existence of the car, which sounds
like being really stupid, and you are
right: we cannot kill Ana Mato because politicians, like priests and animals,
neither think nor are they responsible for their actions. Which leads us to
iii. Bentham
for animals. This week,
the government of Madrid sacrificed Excalibur, the dog of the first ebola
patient, and the arguments (the pros and cons) were the following. Against the
decision of the government, philosophers such as Eze Paez and Catia Faria argued that Excalibur is a sentient being
whose biological and subjective interests should be taken into account before
making any decision.
Moreover, I would argue that a dog
has greater subjective interest in being alive while having ebola than a human
with the same moral properties in the same biological situation (say, a two
year old child) since, according to the famouse article published in Emergin
Infectious Disease in 2005, dogs are asymptomatic. They don’t show any symptoms
and the illness eventually clear from them.
On the contrary, the life of a two year old ebola patient
could actually become so unbearable (constantly suffering from fever, diarrhea,
headache, vomiting, and internal hemorrhages) that if the illness didn’t kill
him, and all experimental treatments do fail, we might actually consider
sacrificing him for his own good.
There you have your Godwin law resumé, you little speciesist
hater: if I had to decide whether to sacrifice Excalibur or a two year ebola
patient, I would ceteris paribus
choose the later. And so would do also Bentham:
«The day may come, when the rest of
the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been
withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of skin is no
reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of
a tormentor. It may come one day to be recognized, that the number of legs, the
villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally
insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else
is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or
perhaps, the faculty for discourse? But a full grown horse or dog is beyond
comparison a more rational, as well as more conversable animal, than an infant
of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise,
what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk?
but, Can they suffer?» (Jeremy Bentham, Introduction
to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, chapter XVII, section 1.)
iii. Voltaire for priests. In favor of the decision of the government, contrarian facebook
opinators like Daniel Arjona, who were pro the repatriation of Manuel García
Viejo, the hospitaller who brought the disease from Sierra Leona, after recognizing
that such a repatriation was a mistake (Arjona said: «My bias was to play in the contrarian mode in which one locates himself
when seeking independence. To abuse of skepticism as an ideology rather than a
prevention. To rethorically invoke the scientific method, to loose afterwards
its track while defending a brouhaha trench in this bloody social network»),
he went back to that “brouhaha trench” by writing: «Those who didn’t want to
save the priest are crazy for saving the dog. I am even gonna sleep better».
Although he apologized once again,
Arjona is an example of the catholic political thought, so common among the Spanish intellectuals, always asking
for public pardon after following Rosa
Luxemburg’s exactly opposite principles: (i) always against the people even if
they are right; and (ii) freedom is always the freedom of those who agree with
us. In conclusion, when I claim that Voltaire works pretty well for
priests, I am not claiming that we shouldn’t repatriate terminal ebola patients
from Sierra Leona because they belong to the Order of Hospitallers, although I
think that we shouldn’t repatriate them because they are terminal and the
Spanish health system cannot cure them, but what I really want to defend here is that we should squabble with this catholic
intellectual priesthood with that classic french touch.
And that’s all folks: have a nice weekend and écrasez l’infame (hastag: #ecrlinf).
