Ferrater Mora and Politics: A Passion for Justice
It is somewhat ironic that Ferrater Mora calls each of these
collections of articles a dictionary since he was so well known for
the much larger Dictionary of Philosophy and since he so often
complained that too much attention was paid to that massive work
rather than to his more original philosophical writings, but he
realized that the easiest way of arranging the many and varied topics
was to order them alphabetically by subject matter and once he had
done that, they did, in fact, become a kind of dictionary.
The entries in both of these "Dictionaries for Our Time" attest to
the richness and scope of Ferrater Mora's interests. These articles
show that Ferrater Mora took a keen interest in the "political world."
There was a period, perhaps a long period, when he seemed to feel that
any involvement in politics was useless because the individual was
powerless to bring about change. This feeling was due, no doubt, to
his involvement in the Spanish Civil War, which he viewed as the
triumph of evil, and his subsequent exile. Professor Paz Espejo, a
former student of his, has said that this was true during the six
years he spent in Chile from 1941-1947. This outlook did not prevent
him from following with keen interest what was happening in the
political world, but for a while, he viewed such events as an onlooker
rather than a participant. At some point he lost that feeling of
hopelessness, although the exact date when this occurred is not
clear.
In September 1961, contemplating the vast amount of work he planned
to do on a new edition of the Dictionary of Philosophy,
Ferrater worried about finding enough time "to write (or rewrite) the
thousands of pages that will be needed to make it a decent fat thing."
He then added, " I am worried; perhaps I should not be, for it may
well happen that some super H bomb settles the problem once and for
all. Have you noticed how excitable the great statesmen of the world
have become during the last two weeks? Maybe it's the heat. I propose
a world-government of philosophers in which I would gladly play an
inconspicuous role. Philosophers are not better than anybody else, but
they are too timid to let loose atomic bombs."
In 1969 he wrote about his feelings concerning the march in
Washington, D.C., against the Vietnam war: "When I saw, and read
about, the silent March and the immense gathering I was truly moved. I
should have been there. . . . People responded. It was beautiful, like
a great symphony."
Some of the last newspaper essays Ferrater Mora wrote were protests
against the involvement of the United States in Iraq. Not only did he
publish essays voicing his concerns, but he sent telegrams to George
Bush, then President of the United States, saying, "Do not imitate
Hussein," and to the Pennsylvania senators asking them to vote
against sending United States troops to Iraq. Even as he lay dying, he
remarked that a world in which such violence existed, a world in which
the deaths of innocent people counted for so little, presented a
depressing spectacle.
Ferrater Mora's passion for justice was not narrow and limited. It
did not extend only to men, but included women, as was proven by his
often repeated announcement, "I am a feminist." ("Soy
feminista.") Nor was his passion for justice limited to his own
people or his own nation; he wanted justice for Catalonia, for Spain,
for the United States, and indeed, for all peoples. He went even
further. Rejecting anthropocentrism, he supported what has come to be
called "animal rights," although he was not entirely comfortable with
the language of rights, preferring to speak of "ethical preferences."
At the time of his death, he was writing a paper on "rights" and
reviewing the complicated history of this term. It is not necessary,
however, to use the term 'rights' to describe Ferrater Mora's
views. He believed that animals, who have preferences, and who are
capable of experiencing pleasure and pain, ought to be allowed to live
their lives freely—free from human exploitation and control.
This is an intellectual ideal or idea, an idea of justice involving
the notion that we humans must treat the other creatures who share
this planet with us fairly. Rational arguments can be formulated to
support this view; it has nothing to do with loving animals.
Perhaps some clarification is necessary. There is a difference
between being an "animal lover," which involves an emotional response
and includes enjoying animals, becoming emotionally attached to them,
taking pleasure in their company, thinking that one understands them
and is communicating with them, and so forth and being an animal
rights person, which is an intellectual position. There are animal
rights people who are not animal lovers, and there are animal lovers
who are not animal rights people.
Ferrater Mora did not believe that he communicated with animals,
nor they with him, for their behavior often puzzled him. He could not
understand why a cat would insist on jumping from the kitchen counter
to the table where Ferrater was sitting, whizzing past his ear and
almost spilling his coffee. He did not consider that maybe the cat
wondered why this human so stubbornly insisted on sitting in the one
chair that blocked, or almost blocked, the cat's passage from
countertop to table, enabling the animal to reach the floor without
making a large vertical jump. Neither cat nor philosopher modified his
behavior, but Ferrater Mora respected that cat and all animals, human
as well as nonhuman, and this is what it means to be an animal rights
person.
An event illustrates this point about respect. Once in Barcelona
when my husband Ferrater Mora and I were walking near the cathedral, a
baby rat appeared on the pavement. I no sooner saw the tiny creature
than a very tall, husky, young man, wearing heavy, metal-tipped
boots—accompanied by several other equally tall young men and
several young women—kicked the rat, to the amusement of his
companions. The rat flew up into the air and landed with a small
thud. It tried to run, but one leg was obviously injured, and it
scurried along awkwardly on three legs, desperately trying to
escape. My knowledge of the Spanish language departed, and all I could
do was tug on my husband's arm and say, "Do something! Do something!"
Ferrater Mora apparently had not seen the man kick the rat, but he
quickly understood what had happened and realized that the young man
was about to kick it again, perhaps to impress his female companions,
who were giggling and squealing in high pitched voices and expressing
their admiration for this example of what they seemed to think was
bravery. Ferrater Mora ran up to the young man, placed himself between
him and the small rat, and said, "You would not do that if it were a
lion." For a moment, the young man seemed startled. He looked as if he
would hit this interloper who blocked his passage. He appeared
uncomprehending for a moment, and finally, looking embarrassed, he
mumbled that he had intended no harm and had not meant to hurt the
small creature. The rat disappeared. Ferrater Mora returned to me in
triumph.
I tell this story and repeat Ferrater Mora's exact
words—which I remember so clearly because at the moment I
thought it such a strange thing to say—to illustrate how he
thought. First of all, outnumbered and outweighed, he apparently gave
no thought to his own safety in interfering with the amusement of the
young men. Nor did he consider that he presented them in an
unflattering light—as bullies—before their female
companions. Most importantly, his words show that he was emphasizing
the disparity between the might of the man and the tiny, defenseless,
little rat: a case of unequal power or injustice, if you will. It was
not a display of emotional sentimentality on the part of Ferrater
Mora; it was not that he loved that rat. What he was voicing was his
passion for an idea, the idea of justice; he was expressing his
revulsion at the idea that might makes right, wherever or whenever it
appears, whether it is between nations, between the sexes, the races,
or even in the treatment of that most despised of all
animals. Ferrater Mora's insistence on rationality, his intellectual
vitality, and his passion for justice—similar to what William
Kluback has called his love for the finite—shines through many
of his essays.
|
