Practical Holism and Nomadic Thought 9781666931822, 9781666931846, 9781666931839, 1666931829

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Practical Holism and Nomadic Thought

Practical Holism and Nomadic Thought Carlos Pereda Translated from Spanish by Sean Manning

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2023 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Pereda, Carlos, 1944- author.   Title: Practical holism and nomadic thought / Carlos Pereda.   Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, [2023] | Includes bibliographical     references. | Summary: "This book presents practical holism as a     framework for understanding the ways in which our society and individual     lives are affected by moral, legal, political, economic, and other     considerations. Only nomadic thought is able to capture the interactions     among all those crucial aspects"-- Provided by publisher.   Identifiers: LCCN 2023027076 (print) | LCCN 2023027077 (ebook) | ISBN     9781666931822 (cloth) | ISBN 9781666931846 (paperback) | ISBN 9781666931839 (epub)   Subjects: LCSH: Holism. | Transgression (Ethics)  Classification: LCC B818 .P38 2023  (print) | LCC B818  (ebook) | DDC     199/.72--dc23/eng/20230811  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023027076 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023027077 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Introduction: Warnings for the Winding Road Ahead Chapter 1: Learn to Know How to Let Go



Chapter 4: Learn to Know How to Begin Anew Bibliography Index

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Chapter 2: “I Am Myself Plus My Circumstance” ‌‌ Chapter 3: Other Complementary Postulates





63 101



185

207

217

About the Author



225

v

Introduction Warnings for the Winding Road Ahead

When beginning a reflection, it is best not to become too entangled in the initial steps. It is, therefore, wise to heed that age-old warning: Be careful with words (Psalms 141.3, Proverbs 18.21, Ephesians 4.29). After all, through our use, and abuse, of words, that is, being cautious with them or growing distracted, we describe people, desires, beliefs, emotions, habits, objects, norms, customs, and values. We also describe social formations like institutions and other organizations that often alleviate, but sometimes aggravate, the lives of human animals. At the same time, when describing people, norms, social formations, etc., when characterizing or condensing them in one way and not another, we distort or elevate them, inducing degrees of indifference, praise, and rejection. To some extent, we even use words to shape who we are and the world around us, expressing it, and on occasion, constructing it. We must be particularly careful when hearing words whose uses are prone to becoming dramatic. A word’s use becomes dramatic if it possesses one or more of the following properties: • considering its resonances aids in its understanding; • its uses refer to conflicts or produce them; • these conflicts typically combine legitimate uses of that word with its pathologies. I will examine the dramatic uses of certain words.1 In these reflections, which I consider to be a sort of “civil pamphlet,” I will dedicate significant attention to the uses of such words and their context. The word “pamphlet” alludes to speech that is intensely focused on simplifying and supporting a particular subject. In this case, it involves defending the possibility of porous reason and a related holism that is both theoretical and practical. To this end, it proposes models that are capable of reconstructing the interrelations, immediate and mediate, between diverse mental events—desires, beliefs, emotions, 1

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etc.—as well as between all types of norms and various practices. One way to reconstruct these frequent and complex associations is by attempting to realize them using forms of thought like those referred to in expressions like “nomadic thought,” “free thought,” “migratory thought,” “thought that is unafraid of displacement,” or “itinerant thought.” It is perhaps cause for concern that too much respect be granted here to the spirit of a pamphlet, a text that is never quite free of its heavy-handedness or its prologue-like nature. I mentioned, however, a civil pamphlet. The courteous word “civil” leads us in the opposite direction and toward an attempt to develop nuanced reasonings and counterexamples that not only support these reflections, but also put them to the test. However, a word of warning: I will proceed very, very indirectly. What do I mean by this? While indeed porous reason and its various components are at work throughout these reflections, only toward the end of this book will I explicitly and in detail examine the concept of porous reason. Furthermore, in order to outline it with greater rigor, I will contrast this concept of porous reason with alarming but commonplace exercises in arrogant reason. Conversely, I will immediately begin by clarifying slightly what I understand by two of the basic components of this reason, porous reason, with which we are so concerned: nomadic thought and practical holism. NOMADIC THOUGHT The word “nomad,” singular or plural, describes those who move from one place to another in pursuit of some variety of goods. The dramatic use of the words “nomadic thought” attempts to produce an echo inside the investigation of resonances similar to the social nomadism found in cultures and voluntary—and more frequently, involuntary—migrations. (We want to learn from the forced displacements of the many people who must desperately evaluate their every move as they risk their lives to cross deserts and oceans.) However, nomadic thinking does not ignore the conflicts that those walking in towns and cities can sometimes face. We also want to consider the movement of the adventurer: those who, by looking and listening in various directions, strive to continue living, or to renew their lives, in the (at times sinister) surroundings they encounter.2 I suspect that these relocations do occasionally achieve their goals when centrifugal imagination, imagination that whirls outward in multiple directions in an attempt to distance itself from the biases and obsessions of the imaginer, has not been suppressed.3 It is from this displacement and transcendence of borders—which leaves room for improvisation as well as meticulous and penetrating critique—that I can derive a brief presentation on two functions of this type of thought.

Introduction

3

In nomadic thought, one does not fear transgressing conceptually received distinctions and groupings. No qualitative or quantitative typology is rendered indisputable, even if it is considered to be a useful tool in one or various traditions. Organizations of styles of thought or disciplines are not considered to be definitive. Consequently, it is not impossible to leave behind what has until that point been well established. At best, everything is seen as a set of proposals to be analyzed in discussion and, provisionally, rejected or accepted. In addition, nomadic thought welcomes diverse forms of interaction between seemingly incompatible forms of argumentation. Thus, according to the problem, it seeks interaction between deductions, inductions, abductions, dialectic thought, and analogical reasoning. In nomadic thought, one attempts to relate dissimilar categories of materials when approaching a problem: scientific or thought experiments, redescriptions, results from mathematics as well as natural and social sciences, examples from everyday life, and fictions. The dramas produced by transgressing inherited certainties (information, distinctions, etc.) or by introducing interactions between what is frequently differentiated and even rigorously separated, can cause nomadic thought to sometimes be confused with convoluted or aimless thought. However, this is a risk that we must take. PRACTICAL HOLISM The word “holism” encompasses various methodological, epistemological, ontological, etc. stances according to which properties of people, objects, systems, or more or less articulated (physical, biological, social, etc.) organizations should be analyzed and explained, primarily according to their interactions with one another and then, and only through abstraction, as separate entities. However, it is also common, and critical, to employ holism as a normative perspective. For example, “personal holism” can be used to refer to the ways in which we describe the properties of people but also to how those properties are valued or despised. At the same time, and in part as a consequence of this, it can include how people describe and value or despise themselves and, thus, how they understand themselves. Such descriptions and self-assessments, which are often realized based on nonhomogeneous, yet persistent, categorizations within a group, like gender, skin color, sexual orientation, economic class, birthplace or place of residence, mother tongue, etc., are contained within dynamic, multiple, and simultaneous interactions, or intersectionality.4 As such, we discover that categorizations whose content is deemed positive—for example, if a reference is made in a conversation to white, heterosexual, upper- or upper-middle class men—tend to predetermine

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systems of positive discrimination. In contrast, personal holism also allows us to demonstrate how many forms of oppression (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and countless other forms of the vice that is intolerance) do not operate independently, but instead as systems of negative discrimination. Nevertheless, with a holistic perspective we must equally conceive of societies and social groups as organizations constructed from different materials (moral, legal, political, and economic, among others) through dynamic, multiple, and simultaneous interactions between those materials, or practical holism. Time after time, the discussions in this reflection are rooted in this second type of holism, practical holism. However, they do also examine, more or less implicitly, some systems of discrimination, especially those which are negative, established by the various forms of personal holism. Predictably, postulating a model of practical holism implies defending the interconnection of diverse types of reason, in particular, moral, legal, political, economic, and epistemic reasons. It also implies taking into account the links that those reasons progressively develop within desires, beliefs, affects, and their actualizations. Of course, practical holism attempts to learn from these resonances through what I call factual holism. What does this mean? According to factual holism, there are no isolated beliefs. All beliefs are interconnected in correlations and do not interact one-on-one with experience. For example, when in some science it is stated that an observation verifies or disproves a theory, other events, other theories are tacitly assumed.5 Despite this important parallel, we should not forget that in this pamphlet we are interested in defending a practical holism, which is emphatically normative and in permanent construction and destruction.6 With this objective in mind, I intend to show how the various dimensions of practical normativity and their various components (values, moral principles, legal rules, political tactics, virtues, desires, emotions, economic critiques), including those that govern casual matters of courtesy or the profoundest existential dilemmas, encounter one another in some type of interaction, without losing their specificity. Support for a model of practical holism enters into conflict with at least two conjectures. In particular, one might reject such a holism based on practical heterogeneity or practical atomism. From this viewpoint, for example, moral, legal, political, and economic practices, or some of them, as well as the corresponding desires and beliefs, are isolated atoms to be treated each according to their own rules. (If assuming a radical form of atomism, one could even dramatically declare: these values and beliefs are immeasurable.) In the most nuanced views of practical heterogeneity, hierarchical external relationships between the reasons (atoms) are often established, or claimed to be established. With practical holism, counter to this atomist or semi-atomist position, the relative historical emancipation of those spheres of interest and

Introduction

5

action, which progressively take shape until reaching maturity, should not be rejected. Maturity is achieved when it becomes possible to function according to the so-called “postulates of autonomy,” defining, perhaps methodologically, morals, laws, politics, or the economy. With these postulates, however, it is not uncommon for one to succumb to pathologies: transforming these into postulates of autarky. As a result, the dimensions of human life that we refer to with words like “morality,” “law,” “politics,” or “economy” become independent of one another. But where does this atomizing impetus originate? One epistemic, or more precisely, a methodological reason for practical atomism is utilitarian. If we are able to focus our attention on a few difficulties, we are better positioned to respond to them. In contrast, when we require our attention to remain attuned to a variety of difficulties, our comprehension tends to grow confused. Nomadic thought and practical holism, at a certain level of operation, take these reasons into account. However, with practical holism, the reasons that are most important in practical heterogeneity are rejected. Consider, for example, one of these many non-reasons: those who defend practical heterogeneity separate a person’s subjectivity, or the realm of the mind, from the needs of the body. Based on this (often implicit) hierarchization, morality is usually a matter attributed exclusively to a mind: to its intentions, to its will, and sometimes (perhaps illogically?) to its affects. Everything else belongs to that mixture of so many minds and many bodies. In this way, though, are not moral practices, as well as legal, political, and economic practices, destined to produce solely evil consequences? Does not the separation of mind and body play a dirty trick on us once again? In response to those “evil consequences,” we might introduce a further counterexample to practical holism, which develops along the same direction. But tentatively, we take a few more steps forward. We might defend the conjecture of a practical homogeneity or reductionist monism. Consequently, we would propose: behind their superficial differences, all practices (moral, legal, political, economic) make up one single practice. Hence, each virtue lacks specificity, defending virtue’s homogeneity and not its multiple interactions, as is the case with practical holism. What are the effects of this? For individuals who confront a problem, if they are faithful to the conjecture of practical homogeneity, then they are left with the arbitrary decision between considering only certain aspects of the problem or returning to infinity. If they decide the latter, the quickly overwhelming urgencies lead to such confessions as, “and looking at everything, nothing it saw, nor could it discern.”7 Unfortunately, some dramatic uses of the words “practical holism” tend to confuse it with the conjecture of this homogeneity that, through centripetal imagination (obsessive and self-referential), respects neither the specificities of the various practices nor their theoretical hierarchizations.8 But we must stress: when confronting a problem, at an initial epistemological, or perhaps

6 

epistemologically located level, that is, in precise circumstances, from the first-person point of view some practical reasons tend to interact with each other in only one way or in only a few ways, inviting us to take certain actions. Then, if we continue the exploration with nomadic thought, it is probable that those reasons will, in turn, refer to others that we, suddenly, discovered to be pertinent.9 For example, if we are protesting because of a violation of the legal state, perhaps in order to confront that violation, after further investigation we are also led to consider political and economic causes, not just legal causes. So, from the third-person point of view, these practices are entwined, integrating non-reductively with each other. This is a plural ontology. Yet, it is not an atomist ontology given that it is constructed with the direct and indirect interactions between reasons. It does not involve focusing on every dimension and potentiality in every problem at the same time in order to act—an impossible search inspired by the fantasies of practical homogeneity—or by no means focusing on all of them with the same degree of profundity, which would be utter nonsense. Instead, the inevitable methodological decisions that are dictated by the requirements of each situation and, therefore, by the reasons that progressively converge while investigating and acting, do not prevent us from looking toward an ontology where various practices interact and their various reasons intersect. The dramatic uses of the following words assist us in continuing our commentary regarding how nomadic thought and practical holism should be understood and in identifying several of their virtues. OVERDETERMINED VALUES Of the words with dramatic uses mentioned at the start, “overdetermined values” are the most irritating due to their resonances. But let us not be too alarmed. In any or almost any society, human animals are defined by the force of the positive that such values actualize without them realizing it. Indeed, their normativity exceeds both the rules and the habits through which they become rooted in actions and institutions. Certain values are then overdetermined if: • the groups participating in a cultural legacy that is governed by those values face numerous social stimuli such as demands, instructions, appeals, or suggestions. Or the multiplicity of normative forces that summon, that interpellate. • These forces refer to the past, but most of all to the present and to the future.

Introduction

7

In most cultural legacies, we encounter values that have been acquired through long and often painful processes of social apprenticeship. And although those processes are carried out amid conflicts, including the possibility of sudden interruptions, some values resist. They tenaciously cling to particular ways of life and, as a result, to concrete expectations, even if there is no guarantee that they will be able to provide such unpredictable futures. Accordingly, their normativity will occupy key positions in practical holism. They are the values that have most resisted changes to that continuum encompassing the public, private, and personal spheres. If I am not mistaken, the overdetermined values that are often implicit in many societies’ practices are equality, freedom, and collaboration. This pamphlet proposes, among other things, a continued defense of these values and their overabundance of interpellations. If they have been reaffirmed in so many legacies, it has likely been with good reason and based on the success of the experiences they put into practice. Those experiences can be articulated in many ways. On occasion their results are expressed in naive declarations, or declarations that may appear to be innocent. However, once a person has lived or is currently living in circumstances where such successful experiences are lacking, the declarations begin to lose their innocence. For example, people sometimes allude to a lack of equality with observations like: “for us women, any past was worse, or, at least, the pasts that I remember, those that were filled with economic inequality and moral affronts, were worse.” Or, “it is better to live surrounded by risk but in freedom than as a slave, officially or unofficially: as a worker subjected to the arbitrariness of a boss or corporation.” Or, “I was not born into a collaborative family nor do I live in a collaborative society. Yet, strangely, whenever I am faced with a lack of collaboration, I feel badly about it and become depressed or furious.”10 It is not surprising, then, that in response to the interpellations of equality, freedom, and collaboration, these values—or at least aspirations to establish these values—have become ingrained throughout time, and in diverse parts of the world. THE POTENTIA OF HUMAN ANIMALS The word “potentia,” so historically replete with resonances, refers to the innate (genetically determined) possibilities of human animals as a species.11 These possibilities allow them to act, and once they have acted, to be in conditions to do or undo something. In this way, human animals can produce, destroy, or transform a table, a family, a friendship, a political movement, a theory, a painting, a work of fiction, a piece of music, different forms of technology, a social formation, a state, or nature. Therefore, by implementing

8 

what first persons must inevitably assume they possess, human animals believe they know how and, at the same time, are able to undertake a wide variety of constructions and destructions. How do they do this? By putting into practice different modalities of their potentia. What do I mean? I propose that we can, provisionally, articulate a theory of human potentia in modalities like: • personal sequences of power-to (the power of each person), which constitute: • social sequences of power-over/under (or sequences that articulate asymmetrical interactions among people and groups), and • social sequences of power-with/against (or sequences in which the various powers-to are grouped together, as well as the various groups that represent positions that are, in some way, opposing).12 A sequential theory of human potentia should not exclude any of these sequences,13 at the risk of distorting the intersections between modalities that construct it. Consequently, prioritizing or emphasizing one sequence instead of others is only useful with specific objectives in mind.14 Also, so as not to lose sight of practical holism, it is worth pointing out in this pamphlet that a personal sequence of the power-to accomplish one thing or another does not appear “out of nowhere”: it is constructed and intertwined with social sequences of power-over/under and power-with/against. How so? On the one hand, power-to, the ability to do or undo, is conditioned by relationships of domination or control, or by a hierarchy, or with respect to an agreed upon— sometimes legitimate—authority, like those articulated by power-over/under sequences. On the other hand, that ability, as determined by power-with/ against sequences, is conditioned by concerted actions, or their counterexamples, competing actions, and even fierce rivalries (between people, groups, civil society, the state). DESTRUCTIONS Practical holism that is in a constant state of construction is also undergoing constant destruction. Unfortunately, the dramatic uses of the word “destruction” obscure its modalities. Therefore, we must at least differentiate between external destructions and erosion, or gradual destruction, and self-destruction, or internal destruction. These words refer to distinct events. Destructions of some item, those which are of greatest interest in this pamphlet, rarely occur suddenly or solely as external destructions. The more we believe the contrary, the more we tend to deceive ourselves. Many external destructions, both

Introduction

9

personal and social, are preceded by erosions and more than a few of them involve internal complicity. To some degree, then, they are self-destructions. However, it is important that we distinguish between types of self-destructions. Personal self-destruction, specifically its most extreme case, suicide, means precisely the deliberate taking of one’s life; various complex factors play a role in such an act: desperation, illness, problems of addiction. As such, even in situations of extreme suffering, the human animal that destroys itself may perceive that, at least in that moment and as confusing as the decision may be for it, that death is a greater good than any other plan of action available to it. In contrast, the homicide or murder of a human animal—external destruction—is, on many occasions, independent of what it believes, feels, or does. On the other hand, the external destruction of institutions and other organizations, those social formations built by human animals, is often the result of some complicity among their participants. Unlike human animals, in the case of institutions not only are possible nexuses established between erosions, external destruction, and self-destruction, but also complex internal relationships.15 Therefore, in these cases, it is once again beneficial for us to use nomadic thought and discover the interrelations between these actions. Because, as we know: an institution allows, and even requires, its own destruction when a group of people participating in that institution begin to sabotage it, for better or for worse. In this context, the word “sabotage” is almost equivalent to “self-destruction.” An institution is sabotaged when many of its participants cease to support it, directly or indirectly, with their practices.16 When considering the diverse ways in which values undergo social destruction, people in these institutions should tirelessly examine the missteps that occurred during the exercise of their power-to that led to unsuccessful interactions within the respective power-over/under sequences. For those participants, regardless of the paralyzing anger and resentment they may feel, this is a task that cannot be postponed. Unfortunately, for those of us who are fighting to institute arts of healthy coexistence, the act of scrutinizing our own failures—the role we played in the self-destruction—is painful, very painful.17 There is no doubt about it: confronting what we have done wrong, or what those with whom we coexist on a daily basis or who share our circumstances have done wrong, is painful. And so we tend to ignore that pain or suppress it. This is a mistake. For example, in the case of some discouraging societies, rather than assigning blame only to externally caused destructions, which certainly abound, their participants should also ask themselves: “what have we, the citizens of these dismembered republics, or the people around us, done with our potentia so that now we can only despair in the dark dead-end corridors offered by current power over/under sequences?” However, it is

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just as pressing that they ask: “in what way or ways can we begin to answer these questions?” The answer is by thinking with nomadic thought. Let us return, then, to a consideration of this type of thought by exploring two of its principles. THE PRINCIPLE OF COUNTERPOINTS BETWEEN PERCEIVING, THINKING, AND ACTING When confronting a problem, one who thinks with nomadic thought favors interactions between vigilant thoughts and reasonings, and equally vigilant visual, aural, and affective perceptions. Thus, one of the principles of nomadic thought is: Investigate by moving from acting and its self-comprehension to discerningly looking at and listening to what your environment offers you, without ceasing to consult your reasoning. But do not overlook the fact that counterpoints often form between acting, looking, listening, feeling, and reasoning. Or the principle of counterpoints between perceiving, thinking, and acting.18

One such counterpoint strategy is initiated by the characteristic interactions between two ways of proceeding with nomadic thought: the positive path and the negative path. If we proceed following the positive path of thought, we will first examine those entities that “are in a perfectly healthy state.”19 For example, in practical holism we theorize about overdetermined values like the ones defended in this pamphlet: equality, freedom, collaboration. In general, we explore virtues and not those entities that are “depraved” or “whose condition at the time is depraved.” One might counter: we must examine the latter as an absence of the former. If we follow the negative path, however, “depraved entities” typically possess specific properties.20 Arts of unhealthy coexistence are not merely the absence of arts of healthy coexistence: they are generated in destructions and, in turn, they generate destructions. Those destructions often have unexpected causes and consequences.21 Moreover, obsessing ourselves with those persons “whose condition at the time is not depraved” presents a slight (or significant) paradox. Indeed, throughout history the majority of people have lived, and sometimes barely survived, among “depraved entities”: cruel institutions, misery, hunger, vices such as cowardice, rigidity, envy.22 But we habitually pretend, at least in many technical reflections, as if this were not the case. But beware of constructing this counterpoint of nomadic thinking based on a false dichotomy between the positive and negative paths.23 Nomadic thought is not required to contrast or hierarchize them. As a nomadism, it attempts to

Introduction

11

continually move from one to the other; not only to complement them, but also to reciprocally calibrate and correct them. I stated that the counterpoints between perceiving, thinking, and acting are, in fact, various. Other strategies, also characteristic of nomadic thought and which greatly assist in supporting practical holism, establish a second and third type of counterpoint.24 Horizontal nomadism, or a strategy of detours, allows us to consider the ramifications (seemingly bizarre at first in some cases, but only at first) of problems that are frequently alluded to by the dramatic uses of words. This is a twofold strategy. On the one hand, it seeks out spatial detours: countless lateral roads that will lead us through cultural heritages, disciplines, languages, etc. (As a result, among other effects, a light is shined on experiences and actions “in the margins,” “in subalternity” that broaden the debates that originate “in the center.”)25 On the other hand, the detours can also be temporal: present discussions are enriched by the history of those discussions or, at least, by voices from the past.26 A strategy of detours functions as a window that opens to other windows. Vertical nomadism, however, or a strategy of transitions, serves to alter the level of abstraction. This method is also twofold: it allows for reciprocal learning experiences between ascending, or more abstract, and descending, or more concrete, levels of attention. In accordance with nomadic thought, by shifting back and forth between relatively more abstract and more concrete transitions, we attempt to locate and explain particular experiences inside general frameworks. For example, later in this pamphlet, I will consider how social corruption and its futile struggles via law shape events bearing interpersonal repercussions that soon become personal. For such analyses, I occasionally naturalize the reflection, a second nature, at least in the endnotes, by looking at investigations into concrete social and psychosocial circumstances. As a result, both interpersonal and intergroup difficulties can be revealed. Transitions are also windows that open to other windows. We should also include here a fourth counterpoint, no less characteristic of nomadic thinking: the strategy of trial and error. This fertile fourth method— which can often be confused with rashness—involves proposing possible solutions when confronted by a problem in order to then test whether one of those options is successful or correct; when these options do not hold up to criticism, we appeal to a strategy of detours to seek out other options and, so on, successively. Such gambles, while they do not eliminate tasks such as explaining why the generalization does not function in other cases of the discovered solution, they do postpone them for a later moment. Neither does this method eliminate deductive inference; although it is considered to be an appropriate method for articulating more-advanced phases of inquiry.27 We should emphasize: among other lessons, this strategy makes it very clear that in nomadic thinking, anyone who does not risk failure learns very little.

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Therefore, part of the arts of healthy coexistence consists in learning that failure is not a cause for despair. Despair consumes: it eventually destroys us. Failure should thus be accepted as one more step that encourages us to proceed with epistemic humility and moral drive. That courage teaches us to keep our sights set on a horizon of practical holism. But let us move on to another principle of nomadic thought that we want to have in mind. THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IMPERATIVE OF LIFE I will stress again that the following reflections may sometimes give rise to a concern that I have lost my way amid so much failure. But failures with which we can come to terms and be willing to leave behind, teach us something. How? One answer is this other principle of nomadic thought: Learn to know how to let go, how to resist, how to begin anew, and act accordingly. Or the imperative of life.

Based on this principle, those life experiences referred to by the dramatic uses of the words “let go,” “resist,” and “begin anew” represent categories of human life. This imperative also announces the way in which this civil pamphlet will construct its defense of nomadic thought and practical holism. Let us take a look. In the first chapter, preferentially following the negative path, I attempt to learn to know how to let go of reasons that directly or indirectly reinforce conjectures of practical heterogeneity. They are pseudoreasons, products of magic, of manipulations and self-manipulations that interfere with our ability to properly consider the interactions between politics, law, and the economy, and implicitly with ethics as well, though little is said about this crucial form of interaction. And, as stated earlier, I attempt to naturalize the reflection with endnotes. Furthermore, I also look to call attention to the fact that individual lessons and experiences are most often part of larger institutional and, in general, social lessons and experiences. In the second and third chapters, the longest and most detailed, I rebegin this pamphlet with abstract moral reflections: I resoundingly embrace the positive path, focusing on the interpellations of the overdetermined values of equality, freedom, and collaboration. As I have noted, these values constitute, at the very least, a counterfactual horizon for many societies, and we must answer their calls and demands if we wish to expand and develop arts of healthy coexistence. In particular, I attempt to learn to know how to resist obstructions to the interpellations of such values.

Introduction

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In the fourth chapter, I show that the experiments we undertake in our effort to learn to know how to begin anew do not undermine nomadic thought and practical holism, but are, in fact, integral to them. Because if it were not possible to start over in life—the adventure of human potentia, which is motivated, invigorated, not to mention permanently regenerated by this thought and this holism—then our pamphlet would be meaningless. NOTES 1. Of course, we are not only dealing with the care and disregard for word uses. Why not? In the triad of thought, language (words and their uses), and reality (what we presume thought and language to be referring to in everyday situations), we can easily succumb to viewpoints that, while sometimes exciting, are false. Either we declare explicitly that language constructs reality, even subjugating thought and reality to the particularities and idiosyncrasies of a language, or we declare that thought is independent of language, or we assume that thought and language are merely copies of a previously articulated reality. If, however, following a nomadic epistemology, we postulate numerous hybrid positions—in part, according to the content of the thoughts, the uses of languages involved, and the referents that are being indicated—and remain alert to the multiple relationships that exist between these extreme viewpoints, we will inevitably posit interactions between thoughts, languages, and realities. For this reason, when we are careful with words, we take the first steps in an enormous task that grows into a plurality of mindful acts. Like what? When we are careful with our words, we also begin to be careful with our thoughts and the realities to which they refer. 2. Such multiform nomadism—some causing injuries more terrible than others—is common throughout the experiences of the majority of populations in a wide range of countries and time periods, but it has become more visible in recent decades. Consequently, it is not a coincidence that expressions like “nomadic thought,” “free thought,” “migratory thought,” “thought that is unafraid of displacement,” or “itinerant thought” are being increasingly used by distinct and even opposing traditions of thought. For example, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari use some of these or analogous expressions in their well-known works Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980), which emphasize fluidity, the becoming of everything that is, and thus, the importance of insisting on disruption with respect to any state or existing social power at any given moment; one consequence of such a position consists in defending successive countercultures. However, I will not address the ideas of the aforementioned thinkers or others in these reflections. An analysis of the similarities and differences between the diverse appeals to nomadic, free, migratory, and itinerant thought in more or less recent traditions would be of interest in the future. Furthermore, in my book Los aprendizajes del exilio (México: Siglo XXI, 2008) / Lessons in Exile, trans. Sean Manning (Leiden: Brill, 2018), I examine various distinctions between these forms of social nomadism (displaced individuals, immigrants, exiles,

14 

refugees, etc.). In its final chapter, I outline how nomadic cultures can be understood as a foundation and defense of nomadic thinking. However, such a defense should be generalized. A culture ceases to be nomadic, closing itself off and conceiving itself as static, if it misunderstands and suppresses not only its origins but also its particular present, that place of constant intersection between different times and spaces. When a culture is not afraid to assume its nomadism, it soon discovers its richness: its countless convergences and divergences and, of course, the continuous folds in its beliefs and the precarious oscillations in its desires and emotions. For example, amid almost paralyzing collective fear and anxiety, we often begin to sing in order to gather strength: to continue the march; cf. Carlos Pereda, “A Purgative Against Despair: Singing with Mexican Immigrants,” in Latin American Immigration Ethics, eds. Amy Reed-Sandoval and Luis Rubén Díaz Cepeda, 220–39 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2021). 3. There are two opposing modes of imagining at work in this pamphlet: centrifugal and centripetal imagination. For an alternative topography of the imagination, see María Pía Lara, “Three Models of Imagination: As Faculty, as Context, and as Imaginal,” in Beyond the Public Sphere. Film and the Feminist Imaginary, 55–91 (Evanston, Il: Northwestern University Press, 2021). 4. Although variations of the concept of intersectionality were already a part of many feminist movements, the term was most likely explicitly introduced first by jurist Kimberlé Crenshaw in “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1 (1989): 139–67. 5. We can clarify future explorations by learning critically from the resonances of Hegel’s thought, of course, but more directly from the observations that W. V. O. Quine makes toward the end of his work “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” in From a Logical Point of View, 20–46 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961). Concerning “factual holism,” Quine states that “the totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a manmade fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges” (42). A few lines later, he adds, “but the total field is so underdetermined by its boundary conditions, experience, that there is much latitude of choice as to what statements to re-evaluate in the light of any single contrary experience” (42–43). 6. It is worth taking a closer look at the words “learning critically” from the previous footnote. In order to make the most of an experience, at some point we must learn to distance ourselves from the lesson received. To adequately address the distance between these reflections and Hegel would require another book. The distance from Quine is basically twice that. First, we are not concerned here with factual holism, but practical holism. Second, in addition to the third-person point of view that Quine favors for investigations guided by factual holism, practical holism also takes into account, in every case, the first-person point of view, singular and plural, from both those human animals who construct and those who destroy. We might also want to introduce a third difference and point out that with practical holism, we do not investigate solely according to a descriptive-explicative point of view, but according to a

Introduction

15

descriptive-explicative point of view that is also, and above all (perhaps in contrast to Quine?) normative. Indeed, Quine has often been understood as abandoning all concerns for what is rational or reasonable to believe and, as a result, based on a reductive naturalism, as limiting epistemological investigations to those of a purely descriptive cognitive psychology. But such a reading has received serious counterarguments that would need to be considered; cf. Johnsen Bredo, “How to Read ‘Epistemology Naturalized,’” The Journal of Philosophy 102, no. 2 (2005): 78–93. In any case, compared with Quine’s ontology of desertic landscapes, practical holism prefers an urban ontology that proliferates villages and populous cities, busy streets and highways, equally busy forests and oceans, with multitudes of human animals working, collaborating, loving each other, and also attacking each other and fighting among themselves, amid multitudes of other animals. 7. This verse (“por mirarlo todo nada veía, ni discernir podía”) confessing the disorientation and paralysis caused by the proposals of practical homogeneity is from Primero Sueño (First Dream), a so-called epistemological poem (975 verses) by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648–1695); Primero sueño y otros escritos (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2006), 56 / Selected Works, trans. Edith Grossman (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2014), 94. Her words represent a stark warning against confusing practical holism with the conjectures of practical homogeneity. The verse expresses the shock and disorder produced by a refusal to choose. As such, we are negatively reminded that in practice, at every turn, we are constantly deciding through interactions with our environment, oftentimes more or less tacitly: and opting for one path means not taking others. Because if we do not choose, if we do not preselect what our gaze will look at while taking into account our interactions with what we are looking at, or if we do not preselect what our ear will listen to, then there will be no looking or listening. Also, if in accordance with our interests, we do not consciously or unconsciously (or a combination of the two) use our understanding to trace partial maps and agendas regarding what we want to consider and investigate, soon our knowledge, judgment, and actions will begin to waver between disorienting conundrums and emptiness: for this reason, Sor Juana’s verse states: “ni discernir podía” (“could not even discern”). In general, regarding this epistemological poem and the monumental poet, keen thinker, and militant feminist that was Sor Juana, in what is now an immense bibliography, it is worth rereading the book (the novel of a poet) by Octavio Paz the he devotes to her, Sor Juan Inés de la Cruz o las trampas de la fe (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1982) / Sor Juana: Or, the Traps of Faith, trans. Margaret Sayers Peden (Boston: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1990). One might ask: What makes Primero Sueño an epistemological poem? According to Paz: “Con Primero Sueño aparece una pasión nueva en la historia de nuestra poesía: el amor al saber. Me explico: la pasión, claro, no era nueva; lo nuevo fue que sor Juana la convirtiese en un tema poético y que la presentase con la violencia y la fatalidad del erotismo. Para ella la pasión intelectual no es menos fuerte que el amor a la gloria. La pasión intelectual—la razón—alista el ánimo, en la mejor tradición platónica, para que la acompañase en su aventura. Y aquí surge otra y mayor diferencia con la tradición: si el conocimiento parece imposible, hay que burlar al hado y atreverse” (504) / “A new passion in the history of our poetry appears with

16 

First Dream: love of learning. Let me clarify. The passion, of course, was not new; what was new was that Sor Juana used it as a poetic theme and invested it with the fateful intensity of erotic love. For her, intellectual passion is as strong as the love of glory. In the best Platonic tradition, intellectual passion—reason—enlists the spirit to accompany it in its adventure. But the next step is an even greater break with tradition: if knowledge seems unachievable, one must somehow outwit fate and dare to try” (384). This courage, this drive to know, makes the work of Sor Juana perhaps the first appearance of the Enlightenment in the Americas. 8. Cf. J. J. Gibson, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1966) and The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (New York: Psychology Press, 1996); as well as E. Gibson and A. Pick, An Ecological Approach to Perceptual Learning and Development (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). These authors in the field of “ecological psychology” use “affordances” to generate their proposals. This use can be taken to mean: “possibilities for action suggested by the situation,” “invitations that extended by the circumstances to every first person and to every group,” “offerings from the multiple dimensions of practice to the agent.” They seek then to close the gap that much of modernity introduced between circumstances and organisms, particularly, the organisms of human animals responding to their circumstances. As such, potentialities for action are properties that appear at the intersection between perceptions, thoughts charged with values and norms, actions, certain environments, etc. Consequently, the positivist distinction between facts and values is transgressed by allowing the two to interact. We do not perceive only objects, but also what we can do with them and what they invite us to do (a door to be opened or closed, a ball to be caught or thrown). An excellent introduction to these theories can be found in M. Heras-Escribano, The Philosophy of Affordances (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). As Heras-Escribano points out, we animals do not live in an inert and indifferent environment but rather in “a meaningful world of promises and threats” (1). 9. In this sense, practical holism as a holism that defends the interactions between various types of practical reasons (moral, legal, political, economic, etc.) stands apart from other holisms in at least two ways. Firstly, it is not a holism for a single type of reason, for example, moral reasons. Secondly, practical holism like the one defended in this pamphlet does not eliminate the crucial, albeit provisional, hierarchies in the diverse types of interactions between reasons; consequently, it does not exclude the possibility of establishing principles, unlike in Jonathan Dancy, for example, whose holism of solely moral reasons supports a moral particularism; cf. “The Particularist’s Progress,” in Moral Particularism, eds. Brad Hooker and Margaret Little, 130–56 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000) and Ethics Without Principles (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004). 10. In The Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel mentions some of these pathologies as responses to Kantian ethics and the French Revolution. 11. In an extensive passage on human potentia in his Metaphysics, Aristotle begins by stating that “in general, the first principle of change or of motion is said to be potentiality” (134); Metaphysics, trans. John H. McMahon (London: George Bell and Sons, 1896). But later in the discussions, he adds clarifications like: “Further, is potentiality the capacity of accomplishing this particular thing well, or doing so

Introduction

17

according to free-will; for sometimes persons who merely have been walking or speaking, but yet who have not done so well, or not as they would choose, we would not say possessed the power or potentiality of speaking or walking” (134). In the same passage, he states: “Impotentiality, however, is a privation of potentiality . . . from being by nature adapted to have such, or already to have such when it has been naturally fitted thereto also” (135). Since Aristotle, and in a tradition that includes Saint Thomas Aquinas, as well as Spinoza and a not-insignificant fraction of modern thought, the Latin word potentia continues to be employed, or its translations, potential or power, varying resonances of the dictum: what is actual (being in action) does not exhaust that which can come to be. In everyday life, this word typically refers to the power-to do through an exercise of muscular force, or constructive force, or the force to produce effects, for example, in the case of a country with nuclear capabilities. In everyday language, this word is also used more or less interchangeably with words like vigor, energy, or intensity. 12. In his book The Forms of Power: From Domination to Transformation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), Thomas E. Wartenberg identifies two basic uses of the word power, which he formulates using the terms power-to and power-over. After acknowledging that both uses are valuable when working on theories of society and action, he writes that “despite the connection between them, they need to be kept distinct,” to which he adds, “I argue that a theory of social power has, as a first priority, the articulation of the meaning of the concept of power-over” (5). For her part, Amy Allen, in her book The Power of Feminist Theory: Domination, Resistance, Solidarity (Boulder: Westview Press, 1999), further develops this idea and astutely takes up lines of thought found in the research of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Hannah Arendt. Allen does not distinguish between types or forms of power, rather between facets of a power situation: power-over, power-to, and power-with. In this reflection, I attempt to follow in her footsteps. 13. It is sometimes argued: although all power is relational, not all power constructs a relationship. According to a sequential theory of power, this statement is false. All power constructs various types of relationships, even if they involve oppressively asymmetrical sequences and, as a result, relationships that may even be malicious. 14. Any more or less wide-reaching power is constructed through diverse correlations of sequences like these. For example, in some circumstances a power-to sequence or power-with/against sequences tend to destabilize or change the structure of a power-over/under sequence (like in revolutions and political reforms or other modifications to existing power). There can, of course, be other types of combinations and conflicts. 15. Accordingly, the logic of personal self-destruction (if there is such a thing) will be different from the logic of institutional self-destruction. Nevertheless, it is worth emphasizing that neither of these two cases involve solitary acts that end once they have been completed. Personal self-destruction leads to one or several other painful situations, including leaving behind many people with feelings of helplessness, considerable trauma and blame, and even victims. Institutional destructions and self-destructions, as we will discuss later in this reflection, in turn tend to breed epidemics of destruction.

18 

16. To name but some of the many extreme examples, let us recall the destructions, self-destructions, and erosions of the still-colonial or now-neocolonial Latin American societies of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. How can we forget those desperate accounts detailing the causes of destructions and self-destructions such as interminable suffering or constant danger? What is more, there continue to be many de facto dictatorships and external aggressions—and in many cases, bloody de facto dictatorships and equally bloody external aggressions. 17. Concerning these (overwhelming) observations, Ernesto Garzón Valdés offers an extremely simple and illustrative approach to two institutions that, when left to their own devices, destroy themselves: “Lo grave no es el simple hecho del ‘suicidio’ sino las consecuencias del mismo dado el tipo de instituciones a las que quiero referirme: la democracia y el mercado” (What is truly serious is not the mere act of “suicide” but rather its consequences, given the type of institutions to which I am referring: democracy and the market) (64); “Instituciones suicidas,” Revista Isegoría, no. 9 (1994): 64–128. He later clarifies: “Lo que me importa es analizar un aspecto institucional interno que, en cierto modo, puede ser considerado como más grave que el de las agresiones externas” (What I am interested in is analyzing an internal institutional aspect that can in some way be considered more serious than aspects of external aggressions) (78–79). 18. It is perhaps possible to see a non-conceptualist reconstruction (a violent reading?) of Critique of Pure Reason as an example of nomadic epistemology. Such a reconstruction does not look to meticulously correlate one “concept” with one “intuition,” to use Kant’s vocabulary, but instead to make the following proposal: knowledge is the result of discontinuous and anomalous imbrications between concepts and intuitions. However, in general, concepts do not exhaust intuitions, nor vice versa. In both cases, in fact, there is reciprocal overflow that is sometimes (and sometimes not) contained in the various processes of knowing. 19. In the first book of his Politics, translated by J. E. C. Welldon, London: Macmillan and Co., 1912, Aristotle formulates a program for the positive path, which has been the one preferred by many cultural legacies: “in order to discover the law of Nature we must choose instances in a natural and not a corrupt condition. Thus we must examine a man whose body and soul are both in a perfectly healthy state, and in his case the natural supremacy of the soul is evident enough; for in depraved persons or persons whose condition at the time is depraved the soul will often appear to be under the rule of the body, but the reason is that their condition is corrupt and unnatural” (11–12). 20. Aristotle also occasionally thinks of following the negative path, of course. Among the many examples we must not forget to mention the beginning of Book 5 of his Nicomachean Ethics or his treatment of the subject of fallacies. But if I am not mistaken, Aristotle and generally most cultural legacies often tend to subordinate the negative path to the positive path. 21. For example, Montaigne insists on the theoretical and practical power of thinking along the negative path, and many thinkers have continued to think in accordance with this legacy. Montaigne states: “Pausanias tells us of an ancient player upon the harp, who was wont to make his scholars go to hear one who played very ill, who

Introduction

19

lived over against him, that they might learn to hate his discords and false measures. The horror of cruelty more inclines me to clemency, than any example of clemency could possibly do. A good rider does not so much mend my seat, as an awkward attorney of a Venetian, on horseback; and a clownish way of speaking more reforms mine than the most correct. The ridiculous and simple look of another always warns and advises me; that which pricks, rouses, and incites much better than that which tickles. . . . I endeavor to render myself as agreeable as I see others offensive; as constant as I see others fickle; as affable as I see others rough; as good as I see others evil” (182). Michel de Montaigne, “Of the Art of Conference,” Essays, trans. Charles Cotton, vol. 3, 181–212 (London: Reeves and Turner, 1877). 22. In recent times, we find more and more investigations that follow the negative path, not only in ethics, law, politics, and economics, but even in epistemology. Three examples, among the many others, include, Miranda Fricke, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Quassim Cassam, Vices of the Mind: From the Intellectual to the Political (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019); and especially, José Medina, The Epistemology of Resistance. Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Medina is concerned with problems related to the production of both knowledge and ignorance. He discusses epistemic exclusions like the silencing that occurs as a result of racism, sexism, and homophobia as well as the marginalization that such exclusions produce. We also find a comprehensive use of the negative path in the splendid later works of Luis Villoro, who investigates a theory of injustices, not justice, in, for example, his Zapatista-inspired final work, Los retos de la sociedad por venir (Challenges of the Society to Come) (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2007). 23. Carlos Vaz Ferreira, with characteristic depth and rigor, analyzes the tendency to commit false dichotomies in his Lógica viva, Book 4 (Montevideo: Edición de la Cámara de Representantes del Uruguay, 1957). 24. In addition to the counterpoints they form, these strategies often overlap with one another. However, for analytical purposes it is useful to differentiate between them. 25. What I have referred to as “spatial detours” do not have to take place in the spaces of this world, as they do in this pamphlet. From Leibniz to David Lewis, we have learned that they can also be carried out in “possible worlds.” However, unlike Lewis, I suspect that nomadism through possible worlds does not necessarily imply a modal realism; cf. David Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986). It is perhaps sufficient to suppose, for example, a modal fictionalism. 26. If we use a strategy of temporal detours to study the various historical stages through which the conjecture of practical heterogeneity has progressively been consolidated in the social sciences, we can discover some of the consequences of its applications in these sciences. For example, legal theory, sociology, political theory, anthropology, and economics were developed throughout the eighteenth century and beginning of the nineteenth century as critical reflections. They are even often treated as moral sciences. Unfortunately, by making these types of investigations more closely resemble the procedures in mathematics, physics, and biology, and confusing

20 

the word “moral” with its degenerated form: moralism, these disciplines, while not improving in their explicative, let alone predictive, abilities, have become increasingly irresponsible: more immoral. 27. A detailed version of this strategy is used in scientific investigation. By definition, a hypothesis is a conjecture subjected to experimentation for either its verification or refutation. Of course, based on prior knowledge and its relationship to other knowledge, scientists choose from a reduced set of conjectures that they will subject to experimentation. (No geologist would decide to test the hypothesis that the center of the Earth is made of apple jam.) Also, in everyday life and in general thought, when employing a strategy of detours and transitions, we tend to select detours and transitions based on our previous experiences.

Chapter 1

Learn to Know How to Let Go

THE RECOURSE TO MAGIC AND OTHER MANIPULATIONS: PRODUCTS OF THE CENTRIPETAL IMAGINATION THEY REPRODUCE In order to defend practical holism, but without neglecting the vicissitudes of nomadic thought, I will venture into lengthy detours beginning with another visit to that sage advice: Be careful with words. For example, the dramatic use of the words “by magic” is often cause for confusion. These words are not typically used to evoke those beliefs and practices that were regularly, and fervently, carried out in ancient societies. Let me explain: the history of antiquity’s many magical practices leads to a study of the desires and beliefs of a multitude of human groups and their customs, including populations far removed from our time. These practices were based on particular views of the world and on how to take action in it, or first-degree forms of magic, to designate them somehow. However, the word “magic” is also used to denote residual behaviors still vaguely related to those complex pasts. This is the case when people in the twenty-first century turn to fortune tellers or shamans to learn about their future, acquire love potions, ward off their enemies, climb the corporate ladder, win a congressional election, or decide a country’s public health policy. Perhaps they believe that such spells will improve their luck or offer them the control that they lack. These people may feel cursed or subjugated, or, under difficult circumstances, distressed; these are second-degree forms of magic. It is also not uncommon to encounter announcements or advertisements for the use of magic by costumed actors who employ sleight of hand or tricks to astound, or simply to entertain, their audience; or thirddegree forms of magic.1 Also, as a residue or a mixture of these forms of magic and in continuity with second-degree magic, when we do not understand the circumstances in which we are living and the explanations offered to 21

22

Chapter 1

us are inadequate, or when we have problems and do not know how to solve them, we oftentimes resort to a recourse that is very difficult for us to learn to let go of, the recourse to magic (though we may not call it by this name or recognize it as such).2 To what I am referring? The recourse to magic can be reconstructed as a process governed by two rules: • it is considered possible that a phenomenon (mental, physical, social) is free of any links and, therefore, of any dependence, that it can appear or disappear “just because,” or the rule of autarky. And also, • it is considered possible that some events or solutions to critical problems lack expiration dates. That is, once those procedures begin to operate, it is assumed that they can continue without relying on “exterior energy,” or the rule of perpetuum mobile processes. Almost no one, if asked directly, would admit that they occasionally reason or try to reason according to such anti-holistic rules. Yet it occurs quite often, even when explicitly dismissing them as “outlandish rules.” Therefore, with respect to these many reasonings, I will begin by addressing some examples concerning or related to democracy, law, and the economy. EXTERNAL DESTRUCTIONS, EROSIONS, AND SELF-DESTRUCTIONS OF DEMOCRACY Democracy is at risk of destruction when the following definition, or characterization, is accepted: A genuinely sovereign power is immune to limitations. As such, the limitation of a sovereign power is a contradictio in terminis.3

This way of thinking, which succumbs to the temptation of omnipotence, is perhaps only convincing if we embrace the rule of autarky and disregard the fact that no power, however sovereign it may be, is free of a diverse exterior that causally operates upon it. Those inevitable causal interventions from the outside, the powers-against from those who dissent and possess other interests (either from an interior-exterior within the country itself or from some exterior-exterior), reveal that the words “sovereign” and “omnipotent,” when used to refer to a human power, can only be equivalents by resorting to magic. A democratic system and many of its projects are also vulnerable to a second risk of external destruction, erosion, or self-destruction that is not reliant on false conceptual equivalents, but false psychosocial appraisals that

Learn to Know How to Let Go

23

succumb to the temptation of impotence. Even so, these appraisals also resort to the rule of autarky for support. They are destructions based on an invalid inductive argument: In more than a few communities experiencing social deficiencies (poverty, insecurity, illiteracy, etc.), their democratic institutions are taking too long to establish themselves. As a result, at no point will that community presently be able to make use of such institutions.

From this “as a result,” we should instead infer: in these communities, if their institutions are allowed neither the necessary time to establish themselves, nor the necessary materials, including the appropriate learning experiences and economic resources, to operate (contrary to the rule of autarky), they will have nothing more than zombie institutions. (As if these institutions could truly be initiated and stabilized from one day to the next: “by magic.”) Then, to confront the shortcomings of these zombie institutions, it is sometimes suggested that mercenary institutions be employed. What do I mean by this? The word “zombie,” African in origin, means “a corpse seemingly returned to life.” (We use this word every day to describe those who have just awakened and are still in a daze, incapable of reacting: “Until I’ve had my coffee in the morning, I feel like a zombie.”) Analogously, a zombie institution is one that does not operate according to its constitutive objectives because its participants are either not yet prepared for the work or they lack the incentives to do so. (For example, in many developing countries, people working in education or public health institutions or in research institutes or in countless factories find themselves in just such situations.) On the other hand, the word “mercenary” refers to one who fights in exchange for money regardless of what or whom the fight is for or against. This applies to those who are willing to carry out actions (even criminal actions) for pay. Therefore, when an institution is not prepared or is unwilling to prepare those who must work in it, more often than not there is an appeal to magic (a notoriously colonial measure): hiring individuals from the exterior who have already been trained in institutions marketed as being prestigious. There is another false conceptual equivalence also with psychosocial roots that I consider to be a third risk of the more or less magical erosion of democracy. It involves the obsessive use of instrumental reason, particularly with respect to the economy. This type of erosion radicalizes the previous risks and delusionally announces the permanent establishment of current power-over/under sequences. For someone who has succumbed to the temptation of omnipotence and uses the words “to think,” “to plan,” and “to increase profit” interchangeably, it is difficult to learn to know how to let go of these fantasies. In addition to economic profit, an addiction to this new

24

Chapter 1

equivalence implies, among other consequences, also increasing the current power-over, even if that power weakens or destroys many people.4 Everyday Dramas Should we then assume that even a human animal’s personal desires submit to the recourse to magic? Everyday dramas occur during the production of suicidal desires because these are generated by mercenary institutions. How so? In any interaction, we announce ourselves—we present ourselves in a particular way, with particular needs and desires and particular interests— and, in turn, others announce themselves to us. In modern-day society, many of these announcements are advertisements. Frequently, they do not so much help to satisfy our existing needs, desires, and affects but instead generate needs, desires, and affects that benefit the announcing institution. Imagine that in certain social groups, announcements like “Riding a motorcycle promotes freedom!” and “Taking a cruise gives you a glimpse of paradise!” become overpowering, a common effect of magic. Then, in these groups, a hunger begins to grow inside each person, seemingly originating in the most “authentic” region of their identity, a hunger that must be urgently satisfied. Afterward, members of these same groups perhaps rebuke themselves with regrets like “Because I satisfied that ridiculous urge, I didn’t save for other expenses like buying a house or finding a place for my children to go to school” or “I waited too long to truly interiorize that maxim on prudence: do not desire something merely because your group desires that something.” This maxim can also be applied to political preferences: “Don’t vote for a party merely because those in your group have always and will always vote for it” or “When voting, don’t fall victim to magical announcements like: ‘This party is tailor-made for our society’ or ‘This party promotes social collaboration’ or ‘Any party besides this one will wipe out the country’s prosperity and security’ or, more ambitiously, ‘This party will lead to paradise on Earth.’” Beware: if a country’s institutions (political, economic, educational, cultural, religious, military) are transformed into mercenary institutions and generate desires that are suicidal, or at least imprudent, then we are facing circles that are not only vicious but also self-perpetuating. The recourse to magic is thus revealed to be another form of manipulation. Manipulate, Manipulations We must draw a distinction between first-nature manipulations, like those that occur in the brain to alter behaviors, and second-nature or interpersonal manipulations, or generally speaking, social manipulations. Second-nature or social manipulations5—including those that are immediately personal—are

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located at some point along the influence continuum between coercion, accompanied by threats and violence, and rational persuasion. But as “manipulate” and “manipulation” are disapproving words, manipulations are positioned closer, and on occasion very close, to the former pole of the continuum. How close? Since it is not possible to be entirely neutral when describing circumstances, certain approvals or refusals will be explicitly or implicitly suggested. It can be said then that a description ultimately functions as a nudge. One might argue: these nudges, when gently pushing in the direction of approvals or refusals, should not be met with moral, legal, political, or economic disapproval, if they cause people to make optimal decisions.6 But, is there some way to distinguish with some degree of generality at what moment a welcome nudge becomes a violent shove that, even when resisted, disorients? We again encounter a continuum that invites the question: how can we determine which sorts of nudges are manipulations and which also rely on the recourse to magic? As with most practical distinctions, I do not believe it is possible to offer precise, fixed, and general criteria for differentiating between good and bad nudges. But also like with most practical distinctions, we can provide a characterization by way of indications. We are likely experiencing bad (direct or indirect) nudges or manipulations if:7 • they only function using the logic of all or nothing; • they do not respect the practices of questioning, suspecting, and investigating; • they do not present reasons for and against the information or the practice being recommended or rejected; • they only select a few reasons so that one reaches the intended conclusion; • they adopt a categorically assertive discourse that lacks words like “perhaps,” “maybe,” and “it’s possible that.” (However, one must also beware the rhetoric of “perhaps” because sooner or later, it will lead to “everything is more or less acceptable or unacceptable” and thus to the allegedly elegant indifference proposed by the myth of the indifferent bystander.) • They mix false beliefs with true beliefs and appeal to illegitimate authorities mixed with legitimate authorities; • they conceal probable negative consequences of the behaviors they endorse.

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Once Again: It Is Important to Learn to Know How to Let Go of Descriptions That Possess Some Type of Continuity with the Rule of Perpetuum Mobile Processes When we reexplore a phenomenon or a circumstance from another perspective, previously unnoticed options, mistakes, tools, wounds, shadows, consequences, dangers, cracks, vices, and virtues tend to appear. Counter to practical holism, a prevalent objection to this proposal lies in thinking that modernity’s purportedly superior practical qualities,8 those that respond to the interpellations of the overdetermined values of equality, freedom, and collaboration—for example, moral universalism, the legal state, democratic policies, and dignified economies—can be reconstructed as operating according to the rule of autarky and, each one in turn, according to the conjecture of practical heterogeneity: atoms without interactions.9 Furthermore, this involves atoms whose behavior is governed by the rule of perpetuum mobile processes. Postulating a perpetuum mobile machine implies considering that a machine can indefinitely remain in motion without receiving “energy” from any exterior source. Until now, the history of such constructions has consisted entirely of amusing tales of reclusive and embittered inventors or of swindlers disguised as magicians. As far as we know, no independent machine can function forever. The energy that a machine uses to initiate its functioning is consumed sooner or later in order to overcome the frictions produced while in operation. But for our reflection, the fraudulent attempts to construct these machines are of no interest. What we are interested in is the recourse to magic and the temptation of omnipotence that causes one to desire the existence of something that functions forever. (Among the many other emotions that champion this “forever,” we should not overlook one unrelenting fear: that at some point we will experience failures that we do not understand.) In this pamphlet we are particularly concerned with how the rule of perpetuum mobile processes is generated for the purpose of desiring that some social institutions, and some personal circumstances, will become: • infinite processes, and • free of the need for “exterior energy.” In this second property, let us use the word “energy” in the broadest possible sense, as an approximate equivalent of the word “dependence,” also used in its broadest sense. Despite its absurdity, under certain circumstances, the anti-practical holism belief that formations like democratic politics, once they

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have been set in motion, no longer depend on ethical, legal, and economic influences is not uncommon. For example, the postulate of a democracy’s autonomy occasionally places this democracy either on the side of economic inequalities or social protests, on the side of the art of peaceful healthy coexistence or the art of violent coexistence. It can even position this political system beyond the passions, desires, and interests of its citizens. (This hollow and often zombie institutionalism posits that institutions function independently of its participants’ potentia and of what occurs in the encompassing social contexts.) It is not surprising, then, that as a result of nudges from the anti-practical holism rule of perpetuum mobile processes, postulates of autonomy cease to be such and instead become postulates of sovereignty. In everyday language, the word “autonomy” refers to a region (municipality, state, etc.) in a country that governs itself in some way. However, sometimes one might distractedly declare: “this region possesses administrative sovereignty” or “this region possesses economic sovereignty.” But as we have indicated, there is no power without some outside world that operates through causal interventions. Not even the most sovereign of powers is free of dependences “from the exterior.” (We do not need to apply the strategy of detours to see that even the most sovereign of countries continue to maintain friendly or hostile relations—in peace or in war—with their exterior worlds: with other countries.) Consequently, processes that want to be guided by the recourse to the magic of perpetuum mobile processes are not only impossible; they are counterexamples to life’s processes, which are necessarily precarious. A process is precarious if: • it is finite, and • it requires one or various forms of exterior “energy” or, if you prefer, it depends on various causes. With good reason, in our daily lives we frequently contrast precarity, contingency, dependence on various causes, or what requires too much effort and human potentia, with what occurs suddenly and without warning, “by magic.” Therefore, in addition to the two principles of nomadic thought introduced at the beginning of this pamphlet, the principle of counterpoints between perceiving, thinking, and acting and the principle of the imperative of life, we must now mention another principle of such thought: The principle of precarious processes: Always remember that all of life’s processes are precarious processes.10

According to this principle, all of life’s processes can fail. The opposition between the anti-holistic rule of perpetuum mobile processes and the

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principle of precarious processes only serves a polemical purpose. We can postulate a supposed opposition in order to carry out thought experiments. But let us first consider two characteristic properties of the supposed magic of perpetuum mobile processes. Perpetuum Mobile Processes Are Infinite If we decide to fantasize that the processes of certain institutions are infinite, then there is no reason for us to be concerned about how these types of institutions are developed, and we can trust, according to the positive path of thinking, that they are “in a perfectly healthy state.” What solace! Once they are operative, these institutions will proceed along a linear course, without any danger of becoming zombies or mercenaries. As a result, human animals can abdicate their power-to care for and their power-to care with, two modalities of their potentia. (Instead, these human animals can surrender to the myth of the indifferent bystander. From that moment on, they will adopt a purely third-person role and observe; they might also remark on what occurs in such institutions. Will these spectators not ultimately become retirees from life? At the very least, they will now be able to make the ever-expanding declaration: “I do not have to take responsibility for that.”) Institutions conceived using the magic of perpetuum mobile processes do not need to care for themselves because they have eliminated the possibility of erosion and destruction in advance.11 Therefore, if the interpellations of overdetermined values like equality, freedom, and collaboration are contaminated with this principle, then certain properties that characterize them (precarity, underdetermination, uncertainty) are eliminated. The responses to those interpellations cease to be what they are: experiments in time.12 It is helpful if we translate the phrase “cease to be what they are: experiments”13 as: “the processes of such institutions become processes that are not dependent on trajectory.” Let us then entertain the fantasy that we are dealing with processes that are independent of trajectory. What is this new opposition? Ideally, one way of reconstructing these processes is to think of them as stages in lineal succession beginning from their initial conditions. One stage does not impact the next. In contrast, a process that is dependent on trajectory can change during any of its stages in response to “exterior energy,” according to the causes that affect the process.14 Let us now look at the second property of the anti-practical holism magic of perpetuum mobile processes.

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Perpetuum Mobile Processes Do Not Require Any Form of “Exterior Energy” The fantasy that social processes are perpetuum mobile results in the abandonment of social formations and their institutions. In other words, we must confess that people are capable of ignoring their own productive or corrupted evolution. Following the negative path in search of understanding, consider the fact that where there are pronounced economic inequalities, social structures tend to hinder even the most formal legal processes. Therefore, in a population where poverty is the prevailing economic system, it is not unusual for large social groups to be manipulated. This produces electoral consequences, among others. (Direct consequences: “If you give me a washing machine or a television, I’ll vote for you.” Indirect consequences: “If you fix the town’s streetlights or supply us with clean drinking water, we’ll vote for you.”) And this is not all. As we will discuss later in more detail, a legal state grows stronger and democracy flourishes if its population is socialized into the arts of healthy coexistence. This education depends to a large extent on consolidating human potentia in habits that are also civic virtues. When are such habits acquired? When a population is not in a total state of frustration and feels that it is capable of forming power-with/against sequences to accomplish certain expectations.15 Thus, a democracy’s participatory and deliberative qualities prosper when we learn to know how to let go of the idea that power-over/under sequences are fixed and composed of pre-social, pre-political information that is immune to redefinition. Without these lessons, even reasoning can be deformed. Here are some examples. Perpetuum Mobile Processes Are Often Rationalized, or Pseudo-Justified If You Prefer, Using Argumentative Pathologies Let us continue our exploration of the negative path. In many cases, the anti-practical holism rule of perpetuum mobile processes is restructured with arguments that do not allow for criticism, employing instead reasons that do not explore, that do not progress: they perpetually revolve in place through the use of centripetal imagination. They are argumentative vertigos. In everyday speech, we employ the word “vertigo” to allude to an attraction considered to be both horrible and irresistible. A person’s attention becomes a prisoner of the mechanisms that carry it away. By analogy, I propose that we consider vertigos in which our arguments are susceptible to captivity. Those who engage in discussion while in the grasp of these vertigos rationalize a repetitive device in such a way that every new argument tends to be used to:

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• prolong the discussion in one, and only one, direction, avoiding relevant alternative reasons and ignoring those explorations that the strategy of detours and transitions would recommend; • reaffirm the basic assumptions of the chosen direction without allowing them to be called into question; • immunize themselves to uncooperative criticisms introduced into the discussion.16 In these situations, we are likely to hear comments like: “The leader of that political party—or the boss of that textile factory, or the coach of that soccer team, or the chair of that physics department, etc.—always turns a deaf ear to our appeals, going to great lengths to get their way. They do not understand the grammar of listening. Their reasons are dizzying. I hope that their attitude leads to their failure and their reputation is destroyed.” Practical holism shows us that argumentative vertigos are not only argumentative. This is because beliefs together with reasons and arguments, those structures we use to justify our beliefs, are not independent of desires and affects. Therefore, argumentative vertigos can frequently be symptoms of some type (political, economic, cultural, etc.) of oppressive power-over/under sequences.17 Possible Relationships between the Instances of Power-Over and Power-Under in a Power-Over/Under Sequence Articulations of power-over and power-under constitute a treacherous continuum of intermediate stages. For greater clarity, we should again consider the extremes. Generally speaking, at one pole of this continuum we find numerous examples of power-over and power-under interacting oppressively. I posited that in this type of articulation, the people who suffer a power-under are subjected to a power-over that encourages fantasies of omnipotence. Such a possibility, perhaps obeying the interests of those who have seized that power-over, is established by an instrumental use of reason that is solely concerned with maintaining the current state of that power-over/under sequence. To this end, the recourse to magic intoxicates people, causing them to consider the power-over/under relationships that govern their days to be as natural as the Earth’s orbit around the sun, and just as humanly inalterable. At the opposite pole of the continuum, we find democratic articulations, or, counterfactually, the promise of such. In these circumstances, the citizens who make up a power-under will recognize first that the corresponding power-over is contingent; and second, that they possess potentia in their personal and group interactions: the possibility of creating a civil society

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in which powers-to are assembled into a power-with.18 As a consequence, potentialities for action will emerge.19 In a functioning democracy—one not constructed solely of zombie and mercenary institutions—there are then fluctuating relationships between the power-with and the power-against that are articulated by political parties and other social movements.20 But it is time for us to pause our examination of the erosions of democracy, at least provisionally, and turn our attention to those parallel erosions of the legal state. BEWARE OF SUCCUMBING TO THE RECOURSE TO MAGIC: LEGAL PROCESSES ARE NOT PERPETUUM MOBILE PROCESSES In practical holism, no social formation can operate or be validated without taking into account its dependences. For the legal state to function, for example, it relies on social formations like moral universalism, democracy, and a dignified economy. Is this true? A proposal founded according to the rule of autarky and the rule of perpetuum mobile processes would support a negative response here. Let us look at an extreme case. Suppose that law is an autopoietic system. It would involve structures that reproduce themselves and self-regulate: this is a sort of structuralist vertigo. But does law, in fact, reproduce itself and self-regulate independently of the desires, beliefs, and affects of the people who live in that society? If we answer questions like these affirmatively, then law is constructed using centripetal imagination into a super-sovereign system: an “omnipotent entity.” Achieving this aspiration requires an appeal to formalism. However, with law, and with any practice in general, formalisms are conceived in a variety of ways and justified using different reasons. These reasons enable us to distinguish between at least two opposite types of formalism. First type: This type is contrary to the formalism needed for an autopoietic system. We can think of legal formalism as being a subsystem with interrelations that respond to various stimuli originating not only in other social subsystems but also in every other group or individual personal interaction. This subsystem contributes to what has been categorized as formal rationality, for a society as well as for interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships. Formal rationality promotes the arts of healthy coexistence and is divided into multiple branches: experience has revealed that the use of the words “formal rationality” refers to tasks that are more wide-ranging than we might expect. For example, despite expeditiously respecting formalism in law, a

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judge must often face potentially conflicting descriptions that interpellate and demand further deliberation, based on the available information, beyond the rules of any formalization. (“Was that death the result of a murder or involuntary manslaughter?” “Was this a sexual relationship between consenting adults or a rape between acquaintances?” “Is the evidence that has been presented biased due to the defendant’s skin color, because he or she is a poor worker, or because he or she is indigenous and does not correctly speak the state’s language?”) Applications of the law, therefore, constantly exceed the limits of deductive procedures because they are forced to confront opposing underdetermined descriptions and, on many occasions, also underdetermined legal rules. When comparison and analysis is required in order to apply the law, there are moral, political, and economic reasons that come into play, not to mention idiosyncratic arbitrariness. With this way of understanding formalism—a legal formalism in this case—we also encounter, among other consequences, distinct forms of argumentation (through abduction, through analogy, through inference to reach the best possible explanation) used by judges and other public servants. What is more, these are people with biographies: with biases and interests, with or without the ability to look and listen, with virtuous or vicious characters (oftentimes, they are people with an assorted collection of vices and virtues). Or a complex formalism. Second type: This type of formalism is constructed using a single category of rules such that, once established—in a democratic regime, a law’s approval is the responsibility of the legislature—it will operate automatically or almost as if immune to the stimuli of the circumstances. Consequently, law as an autopoietic system is postulated as a sort of desubjectivized and desocialized machine whose aim is that once it is set in motion, it will magically continue to operate in accordance with the anti-practical holism rule of perpetuum mobile processes. Law, then, is not concerned with social conditions or people’s virtuous or vicious subjectivities. As is sometimes said: “Judges do not reflect, they do not deliberate, they do not debate. They are the voice of the law.” Or a simple formalism. Unlike simple formalism and its conception of law as a procedure that is independent of trajectory, nomadic thought states: defending law’s autonomy does not imply isolating it directly or indirectly from the norms or suggestions of ethics, politics, or the economy. It also does not involve building walls to separate law from the habits or customs of the people in a society or from the environment, in general. Therefore, if we do not accept the formalism of law as a simple formalism, the age-old opposition requiring us to choose between “a government of men and a government of laws” is determined to be false. Laws are necessary. But laws do not create, interpret, or apply themselves: “by magic.” We should not fear processes that are complex, and which, for that very reason, are formed and operate slowly. A legal state is constructed

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with fair laws—it cannot be without a subsystem of fair laws. At the same time, it requires not only men, but any gender of human animal who knows how to intelligently and honestly apply those laws because they have interiorized the appropriate civic virtues. We must also be careful not to give in to that opposite condition of structuralist vertigo: voluntarist vertigo. In the grips of this vertigo, adhering to the rule of autarky, human potentia is explained exclusively in terms of an unbiased mind. Human animals do not possess any innate or habitual propensities nor do they experience any socialization that, to some degree, will endure for the rest of their lives. Premises such as these lead to an obsession; an excess of centripetal imagination leads to a delusion: as long as we have good intentions, we can do anything we want. Consequently, according to this voluntarist vertigo, social structures such as institutions (for example, legal institutions) do not possess any consistency “beyond the fact that their rules are written down somewhere on some paper.” The systematization of social formations as well as their power to condition and (sometimes decisively) inspire actions are rejected. Even visible institutional inertias that determine, or largely determine, actions are ignored. But should we not avoid this renewed appeal to magic and the temptation of omnipotence? Argumentative Vertigos That Promote Actions Leading to the Erosion, or the Destruction and Self-Destruction, of the Legal State and of the People Who Inhabit It Let us again assume that the legal state in a democracy is one response to the interpellations of overdetermined values like equality, freedom, and collaboration. It is, therefore, extremely important that the law not be misconstrued. And, once again, it would be prudent to heed the rule: Avoid argumentative vertigos. It entreats us to prevent those arguments that extend in a single direction (like a train following its tracks) from taking root in a discussion. We previously used the words “structuralist vertigo” and its instrument, simple formalism, to refer to one such tendency whereby law is immunized to anything exterior.21 However, countering the reaction to that vertigo, we must also defend against a voluntarist vertigo whereby institutions possess constitutive objectives beyond and independent of the wills of their participants. Is it possible to attribute law with constitutive objectives? Suppose that a given population accepts as a necessary presumption that law’s constitutive objectives are, first, to impart justice, and second, as a mediate and complicated consequence, to promote healthy coexistence. The latter is a consequence that is at times mediate and complicated because frictions often arise between these two objectives—justice and healthy coexistence—which

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require further and careful analysis (analyses that in some circumstances lead to bitter conflicts).22 “Necessary presumption”: a presumption is a rule of action that is valid in principle. A presumption expresses a reasonable expectation regarding the future and, at the same time, the possibility of delimiting that expectation with specific reasons. In a juridical context, the concept of presumption has a technical use and a long history. One common example of presumption in the majority of modern jurisprudences is that of innocence: one who is accused of a crime is innocent until proven guilty. This is a contingent presumption: there have been, and there may still be, legal systems that hold the opposite presumption. However, in the argument for law’s constitutive objectives, this is posited as a necessary presumption; as necessary as the presumption of truth is when we speak.23 What supports it? Even in nonjuridical discussions, there exists the question: why do many societies, perhaps all societies, possess a set of institutions or, at least, of positions, that are granted great authority and that we can easily equate with the concept of law? But if law is a set of institutions, then, like other institutions, law has constitutive objectives that are public: objectives that we use to justify and evaluate these institutions. Now an uncomfortable question: what constitutive objectives could law possibly have, in addition to imparting justice, which is a moral and legal objective, that at the same time contribute in some direct or indirect way to creating healthy coexistence, which is a moral and political objective? The dramatic uses of the word “justice” represent a long history, evoking various notions that range from “an eye for an eye,” that first rationalization for vengeance, to conceptions of retributive or educative justice. Something analogous occurs with conceptions of healthy coexistence. These allude to protection when facing violence in public, private, and personal interactions; to safety often by means of coercion; to the protection of private property; to the right to bear arms, as well as other rights. Of course, not all these conceptions of healthy coexistence are defensible. Certainly, some are not. Thus, in a democracy in which its citizenry participates through deliberations, such determinations constitute a part of the debates the redefine what is understood by justice and healthy coexistence. The citizens’ civic virtues and vices are laid bare in their willingness to debate these conceptions in a public forum. Those who participate in an institution, furthermore, tend to have personal objectives for their actions that do not coincide with the constitutive objectives of the institution.24 Both the legislators who formulate the laws and the judges, lawyers, or other public servants who apply them, can make use of laws’ creation, interpretation, and application for their own economic benefit, or in defense of a political party they serve or a company in which they are

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involved, in order to consolidate power-over/under sequences. This leads to degeneration of legal institutions into mercenary institutions. However, do not even the most corrupt civil servants risk sabotaging themselves unless publicly postulating justice, law’s constitutive objective, and consequently also some conception of healthy coexistence, as a necessary presumption? If they did not promote those constitutive objectives as a presumption, these civil servants would divulge their corruption and invalidate their practices (in the same way that if those who lied did not feign telling the truth, they would invalidate their affirmations).25 Let us test certain critiques of the argument for the necessary presumption of law’s constitutive objectives. (Anyone who does not use the strategy of detours to explore critiques of their proposals runs the risk of embracing centripetal imagination and succumbing to the fanaticism that leads to argumentative vertigos.) The first critique of this argument is the following: Law as a social subsystem can have any objective granted to it by society. This defends the possibility of bestowing law with opposing objectives. Therefore, the fact that law’s objective may be justice in some eras while in others it may be injustice is a historical contingency.

However, is it not surprising that throughout history law-related institutions have not been assigned other functions beyond that of some conception of the justice reflected in their history, as diverse as those conceptions have been? But is it even conceivable to attribute institutions that have been so costly to society, like those involved in law, with functions that have nothing to do with some pretense of justice?26 For this, I will examine a second, more persuasive objection: The argument for the presumption of a conception of justice and, indirectly, for healthy coexistence requires more context. It is accepted that such conceptions act as external constitutive objectives. But those objectives do not perform an internal role in the practices of judges, district attorneys, lawyers, etc.27

It is difficult to accept that an institution’s external constitutive objectives perform no role whatsoever in the interior of their practices if we do not also consider that those objectives are nonessential decorations. Suppose that this is not the case for law’s moral and political objectives. Even so—one might remark—the external objectives only justify law as an institution. It would be absurd to demand moral or political justifications for each and every obligation established by law. One might then point out: it is morally, politically, and economically insignificant whether vehicles drive on the left or right side of the road. To this, one might immediately reply: in this case,

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as in others, what is important is that there exists a rule that requires us to act in one way or another. (We should not abandon the foundation of law’s complex formalism.) In response to this second critique to the argument for the necessary presumption of constitutive objectives, we should notice: oftentimes in particular cases of legal reasoning, law’s external constitutive objectives have internal consequences. Thus, a legal norm like “contracts and promises must be fulfilled” is accompanied by moral assumptions (unwritten but morally implicit in many legal systems): “As long as the aims of these promises and contracts do not include carrying out criminal acts.” For example, if the head of a drug cartel orders the murder of the son of a rival gang and signs a contract with a hit man, but this hit man ultimately decides not to carry out the murder, the drug lord’s lawsuit against the hit man for breach of contract would be considered null and void. (If not, then feuds between drug traffickers would not only include gunfire and other forms of brutality; they would be complicated by discussions on legal doctrine.)28 On Formalism in Law: A Second Approach We have distinguished between simple and complex formalism. In simple formalism, the rules and their relationships are of the same type, and their interpretation is immune to moral psychology, geography, and history. Then, does this formalism function “by magic”? In complex formalism, however, given that some legal norms interrelate with underdetermined moral principles, many legal reasonings are likely to take into account considerations based on the circumstances, though they may not necessarily be applied as they would in a deductive argument. Consider the following type of example in support of complex legal formalism. Not so long ago, the majority of judges would not have even considered that sexual assault and rape were possible between a married couple. Due to changes in habits and customs—brought about in large part thanks to the moral and political battles of feminism—now very few judges would refuse to admit such a possibility.29 Nevertheless, it is not always civil society that precipitates the direction of change. Sometimes, a shift in legislation can also effect or radicalize changes in customs and introduce new legal and political proposals into public discussion. For example, laws that in many countries stipulate the right to universal healthcare could only be defended after passing health-related legislation.

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On the Possibility of Critiquing Current Law and, in General, Anything Current Stating that even manipulative and corrupt civil servants must postulate law’s constitutive objectives, such as justice and healthy coexistence, as a necessary presumption opens the door to debates that compare the factual and the counterfactual. The strategy of nomadic thought is therefore often used to contrast the negative and positive paths. But it is important to remember: all of these instances are a part of a practical holism under construction and that some cases of criticism can be extreme; for example, when we determine that law’s objectives are in a complete state of corruption. This occurs with the law imposed during a dictatorship, during which law and justice travel opposing paths. If the dictatorship comes to an end, the moral, political, and legal critiques of that type of law do not merely attempt to modify it; they fight to replace it, which will undoubtedly also be contingent on other fights. Suppose that we accept the moral and political constitutive objectives that I have ascribed to law: to impart justice and directly or indirectly foster healthy coexistence. Even so, we must beware of those nudges that spur us on in the same direction, taking steps that are no longer necessary. For example, are not these excessive steps the ones taken by those people who consider law to be the greatest instrument for regulating all social interactions: the publicprivate-personal continuum? Two Types of Circumstances in Which It Is Reasonable to Postpone or Eliminate Legal Regulations We discover the need to postpone legal regulations in circumstances that I will classify here as type 1. Consider the following example. Susan and Antonia have been neighbors for several years now, gradually becoming friends. Imagine that during the last few weeks, Susana has been throwing parties that violate the norms of domestic peace in an effort to cope with the death of her husband. These regulations state that no loud disturbances should occur inside the city limits after eleven at night. Those who are prisoners of the rule of autarky might apply this rule to law and determine: in accordance with the regulations (and maybe also with certain flawed practices that disregard all social and even ecological concerns?),30 her neighbor Antonia should call the police immediately. As a consequence, however, this could affect the health of their coexistence, destroying the climate of mutual respect that has existed for so long. In this case, one might recommend a more prudent approach: Antonia, exercising her ability to judge, should also allow an overdetermined value like the collaboration between neighbors to intervene. Thus,

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rather than immediately calling the police, Antonia might instead decide that she should first visit Susana and ask her: Susana, are you aware that I cannot get any peace and quiet, let alone sleep, when you have your parties? Caribbean music and the noise from your guests fill my house and probably the other neighbors’ houses too.

Perhaps Antonia should visit Susan on multiple occasions to reaffirm her complaints. Of course, if after various conversations, friendly at first, then not so friendly, Susana does not quiet her parties, Antonia will have to warn her that she will be forced to take more serious measures like calling the police. In this situation, like in many other interpersonal interactions, people who avail themselves to the interpellations of overdetermined values like collaboration and its consequence, healthy coexistence, resorting to legal means is not the first step for resolving disagreements. It is the penultimate or even the last step. We all know that when it becomes necessary to appeal to institutions of justice such as the police, mediations using the arts of healthy coexistence are no longer possible. For this reason, if we assume legal intervention to be the first step in a disagreement, then we have accepted that we live in society where good moral and political habits, and even the most basic rules of courtesy and etiquette, have ceased to exist. If these are indeed our circumstances, then we will find ourselves overrun with fear (as we will discuss more dramatically in the second part of this pamphlet): soldiers in a lost war, forever in enemy territory.31 Let us now consider more than just the postponement of legal regulations: their elimination. In type 2 circumstances, we must distinguish between legal sentences and moral or political sentences. A legal sentence, the consequence of a trial, is governed by the logic of all or nothing. The accused is found innocent or guilty (the “or” being exclusive). Furthermore, in practice, the punishment that justice decides through the application of the law suggests the end of all social mediations; if the accused is found guilty as a result of the trial, they will be required to serve their sentence.32 However, imagine the following characteristic example of type 2 circumstances: Sonia and Roberto are work colleagues who respect each other. But for a while now Sonia has been annoyed by Roberto’s behavior. At some point, now fed up, Sonia lets him know: Roberto, it’s disappointing that you use lab experiments as an opportunity to ridicule others who are older than you. We all know you are the young researcher with the most knowledge regarding your particular problem of interest. But there is no need for you to cruelly remind everyone each morning. Though you

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might find this hard to believe, many people think this problem, which is so important to you, is really not that important at all.

Of course, Sonia does not intend for Roberto to be legally punished. Sonia calls his attention to this so that he can correct his disrespectful attitude. This lack of respect, besides revealing his bad manners, weakens the interactions within their community, as well as relations with other communities who tend to cut off communication with people who promote unhealthy coexistence. (It is difficult to cope with being offended or ridiculed, particularly in old age. If one puts up with it for the sake of civility, such tolerance expects that the offending party should be willing to accept the consequences.) Without surrendering to voluntarist vertigo, we must reiterate: a person will often be surprised by the possibilities presented to them just by looking and listening to what is happening around them and by their centrifugal imagination. With this possibility in mind, relationships between people, close or distant, and relationships with ourselves can be less programmatic and more open to surprises and creativity than what we had previously anticipated. For that reason, moral or political censure is sometimes only an attempt to initiate a mediation. These mediations are not introduced according to a logic of all or nothing, but instead by using nomadic thought and following a logic of continuities and ruptures. Expressions of disgust or disapproval, or explicitly assigning guilt or indignation, or resentment or deception (in their most cognitive and most affective forms) are intended to be generators of new interactions. The examples of argumentative vertigos are by no means limited to those that we have mentioned. When Law Resorts to Magic: Another Approach For example, if we only create laws against laundering the money made by organized crime, we seem to believe that with this decree it will now be difficult for public servants, business owners, or banks to participate in such “dealings.” Or when very harsh sentences are handed down for femicide, it seems once again that we believe sufficient steps have now been taken. The words “seems” and “now” are stressed here because it is hard to believe that someone seriously thinks these decrees—obeying the rule of autarky, that is, on their own (“by magic”)—could even begin to produce the proposed effects. But, why not? Such decrees are notoriously formulated by using words in such a way that, because the conditions needed to achieve their desired effects are lacking33 (the moral, political, economic, or even law enforcement conditions do not exist), the words are reduced to mere screams into the void. Words in the wind.34

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Either adherence to law is encouraged only by appealing to a fear of punishment, but in many countries that fear is less terrifying than hunger or a life of suffering,35 or adherence is promoted through the use of attention-grabbing spectacles. To that end, a government pursues two or three drug lords with an extraordinary number of soldiers, recently acquired arms, and other fanfare of state power. Then, like in other third-rate magic shows, they repeat the agreed-upon words: “we are opening an investigation.” But the spectacle is even less convincing than carnival sideshows, since the crime networks have already reorganized themselves by the following morning. What is more, these performances are oftentimes nothing more than smoke screens to continue their collaborations with crime. Also, if I may use a problematic opposition, legal proceedings occasionally have manipulative objectives: the forms function as excuses to divert attention from the substance, the crux of the problem. Because procedural justice can, and in fact frequently does, transform into magical waves of the wand that distract. (No “perfectly healthy” entity is immune to the possibility of being corrupted.) In any circumstances like these that I have mentioned, we are acting according to a notion of means-end in which it has been repeatedly demonstrated that the means used will not lead to the desired end if we do not use other means at the same time—if we do not use diversified “exterior energy.” So then, how can the failures of the legal state be avoided?36 BEWARE OF FIGHTS AGAINST CORRUPTION AND VIOLENCE THAT RESORT TO LEGAL, POLITICAL, AND ECONOMIC MAGIC I will now revisit a question that is directly linked to practical holism: what happens when the legal state, the democratic system, and the economy face the “negative energy” of corruption? We obviously declare that acts of corruption are concerning. We are worried when we hear news of authorities being bought, bribes, or institutions becoming zombies or mercenaries. But can we refer to a single, common thing when using the word “corruption” in circumstances that are so diverse? I propose the following indicators for two characterizations of those “depraved” entities: Corruption consists in acting in service of what is considered to be self-interest, either as an individual or a group, rather than contributing to healthy coexistence. That mode of acting produces degenerative processes in the character of one or multiple people, or in the integrity of one or multiple institutions; generally speaking, it causes society to decay.

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This first indicator suggests that a theory of corruption must include descriptions and explanations of individual, institutional, and social perspectives. Consider another characterization: In a power-over/under sequence, those who take possession of a power-over— which can range from being minimal and momentary to enormous and lasting— abuse it in order to accomplish some variety of satisfaction, economic gain, or complicit behaviors that reinforce unspeakable reciprocities. These small or large abuses are upheld through threats or explicit acts of violence.

This second characterization adds complicity and violence to the agenda for developing a theory of corruption. I want to focus particularly on the latter element. Without a doubt: the dramatic uses of the word “violence” stoke fierce debates, including confrontations between differing conceptions of healthy coexistence. For example, by following the negative path we could note that since prehistory, people in many societies have managed to survive despite being surrounded by active and passive acts of violence. One might perhaps object: the violence used by power-over/under sequences to subjugate is not the same as the violence that indignant victims carry out through power-with/against sequences. Violence that crushes is different from violence that liberates. Unfortunately, in this pamphlet I will not explore the important, albeit sometimes ambiguous, oppositions between diverse forms of violence, much less the at-times-precarious intersections between violence and nonviolence. I am only examining one type of violence: continuums of violence that implicitly or explicitly generate corruption. Here are three of those continuums. Frequently, more than just a few populations live amid latent violence—in the form of threats directed at those who resist corruption or who protest against it—that can under certain circumstances transform into manifest violence, threats made reality. A second continuum forms when moving from violence that is concentrated on one or various individuals to violence that annihilates: violence by a state, a corporation, or criminal groups that proliferates death and more, that excess found in words like “brutal violence.” (Cadavers burned and turned to smoke, or dismembered and abandoned in garbage bags, a method of many armies, or of “narcocracies,” those new corporations, that use such horrors to send “messages.”)37 A third continuum develops when moving from subtle violence that conceals small, normally accepted acts of corruption, sustained by its applications and the customs of an informal or institutional environment, to open acts of violence.38 Any one of these continuums are characteristic of the violence used to perpetuate corruption.

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But we should return to our discussion of the various aspects of corruption. Consider the emphatically negative connotation in the everyday use of the word. It suggests a deterioration: “depraved entities,” “entities in decomposition,” something that is rotting. Yet, why is it so difficult to learn to know how to let go of the circumstances that lead to corruption? To answer this question, we must bear in mind that this personal and social deterioration is not another first-nature occurrence. These are actions by human animals that should be reconstructed on two levels: • A society often produces presumptions of trust.39 (These are positive expectations concerning the administrator of public policies or industrial corporations; or assumptions that the neighborhood pharmacy does not sell tainted medications or that the organic food vendor is not lying.) Fortunately, but also unfortunately, we frequently act as if that trust were generated by processes that are more or less perpetuum mobile. • Hence, our trust is frustrated when one or various of these assumptions are not satisfied. Furthermore, to keep our frustrations from spiraling out of control, the people responsible tend to complement their actions with manipulations and, if this is not enough, then with one of the previously mentioned continuums of violence. In what do such frustrations consist? One image that comes to mind when we speak about social frustration—suggested by our previous observations—is the product of a reduction. Under the influence of a vertigo of simplification, the frustration of a presumption of trust is reduced to isolated crimes. These are: individual corruptions. In this use of the word “corruption,” we are referring to the search for economic profits or private benefits by one or several people to satisfy desires and interests outside of legal means or with apparent legality.

Individual corruptions are frequently accompanied by manipulations not excluding threats and violence.40 These manipulations are usually invisible to us because we become blind to what we are exposed to on a daily basis, particularly if it is something upsetting. However, if we only consider individual corruption—which is a crime in addition to being an immoral act—we neglect perspectives regarding the collective assumptions that, as I have already mentioned, a theory of corruption must take into account. (Obsessing over one type of transition—in this case, more concrete transitions—and disregarding others leads to a corruption of nomadic thought because we surrender to vertigos, in this case, the vertigo of the highly specific.) This is why we should not overlook:

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institutional corruptions. These include widespread practices, in the form of immoral actions or omissions that are often legal transgressions, accompanied by concealed or open violence.

“Concealed violence”: make no mistake, victims of this type of violence are panic-stricken.41 Corruption in governmental institutions is somewhat more visible and is the object of criticism. However, corrupt actions can also contaminate private businesses, including entertainment, sports, and academic industries.42 There are as many forms of institutional corruption as there are types of institutions.43 Once the machines of corruption and the violence that usually accompanies them have been set in motion, they grow and it becomes difficult to imagine how they could ever be stopped; it would seem that they have triggered perpetuum mobile processes. Acts of corruption by individuals, backed by zombie and mercenary institutions, also draw support from the distortions spread by the media, purveyors of magic that are often controlled by government monopolies, financial capital, or mafias. (In some countries, the distinction between these is difficult to determine and is in constant fluctuation.) Accordingly, to this typology we can also add: structural corruption. To the detriment of presumptions of trust—the basic social capital in a democracy and, in general, of healthy coexistence—entire fragments of society, including legal institutions whose duty it is to fight corruption, become undermined by corrupt practices.

Hence the difficulty when hearing the warning: Beware of using “corruption” and “violence” dramatically and of everything you refer to and classify under these words. Why? Imagine that with great effort we succeed in not succumbing to the recourse to magic. Despite those efforts, it is difficult to learn to know how to let go of the culture of corruption. That culture becomes permanent and justified under the protection of an appeal to complicity (so commonplace that it usually goes unspoken because it is assumed): “Everybody cheats; I would be an idiot if I didn’t cheat too.” This conciliatory phrase, which destroys the basic modalities of human potential (like a musician who does not mind damaging the listener’s hearing), is further validated by the perception that the majority of corrupt acts go unpunished. In a theory of corruption, however, we must also distinguish between two attributions made to these acts and to the violence that sustains them. They are said to precipitate: • the elimination of social fabrics and, consequently,

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• the breakdown of groups and people through various forms of violence (latent, manifest, concentrated, widespread, subtle, material). The first attribution is false, but the second is true. While processes of corruption do tear social fabrics, they permeate others or create new ones in order to render the oppressive power-over/under sequences fluid. On the other hand, the reinforcement of corruption breaks down social and personal structures.44 Structural corruption manipulates even those who refuse to participate. Therefore, a theory of corruption must not forget to consider another consequence, which is also a part of practical holism. The substitution of a presumption of trust for a presumption of corruption carries consequences in social interactions similar to those that would occur if a judicial system were to substitute a presumption of innocence for a presumption of guilt. For through such a substitution, the social presumption is no longer one of civic respect and its acknowledgment as a response to the interpellations of the overdetermined value “collaboration.”45 These breakdowns are often fostered by the same authorities who proclaim to fight against them. Not only do corrupt “businesses” receive protection, but the authorities themselves (governors, secretaries of state, including sitting judges and district attorneys), contrary to the presumptions we hold regarding these authorities, are in charge of the forays into crime. On one hand, they take over the businesses and reorganize them, while on the other, they attempt to appease the citizenry with rituals chock-full of files and protocols.46 For this reason, it would be wise for any theory of corruption to revisit two exhortations from nomadic thought: The interaction of various types of reasons (moral, legal, political, economic) or practical holism constitutes the blueprint for approaching disagreements, conflicts, and problems. And consequently: Be careful with the dramatic use of the word “politics”: a corruption of its uses leads to violence. What is the relationship between these two rules? Does one determine the other? Concerning the possibility of confronting, resolving, or redefining public problems, the first rule—which establishes an alternative between either reasons, arguments, and negotiations, or threats and violence—not only shows us the way back to democratically integrating politics. Putting this rule into practice is democratically integrating politics. To elaborate on this statement, I will proceed along the negative path. Characteristic Counterexamples to Politics That Occur in a Society Governed by a Presumption of Corruption: Politicking and Neo-Despotisms A democracy tends to self-destruct when its civil society confuses—or, more precisely, when its citizens are manipulated into confusion by

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power-over/under sequences—debating politics with corrupting it. The first of these confusions is called politicking.47 In a more or less democratic regime, politicking manipulates argumentations, reducing them to nothing more than a masquerade. But politicking is not the only depraved counterexample to democratically integrating politics. It is important to also keep in mind the pre-politics that reemerge in the form of neo-despotisms. One might object: What about phrases like “tribal politics,” “imperial politics,” “monarchical politics,” or “caudillo politics”? But these and other analogous uses of the word “politics” do not have participatory and deliberative implications with respect to power-over/under sequences or the confrontations in power-with/against sequences.48 For this reason, in this pamphlet we reject such uses of the word “politics” as abuses. Why? Suppose we do not accept our proposal to use the word “politics” exclusively in reference to formulations of deliberative power-with/against sequences—states and civil societies organized into political parties, social movements, clubs, de facto powers, etc.—in which citizens can participate and debate, and therefore, negotiate and integrate. In this case, then, we accept that that word also refers to unhealthy coexistence. Such an abuse of the word “politics” does not summon the sovereign population to congregate in distinct types of assemblies to settle disagreements and conflicts.49 Nevertheless, even if we defend the use of the word “politics” only in reference to a form of democratic integration, as we do in this pamphlet, we will frequently be forced to use the word counterfactually: as a critique of current and past administrations of power throughout history. However, despite upheavals and setbacks, it is in part thanks to the debates generated by these counterfactual examples that our aspirations to democratize the organization of power occasionally gain strength. In these circumstances, a portion of the citizenry drafts a promise to govern, or at least to engage, with deliberations regarding coexistence. In this way, they seek to solve, dissolve, or negotiate interpersonal and intergroup conflicts with social pacts that eliminate the need for violence. But let us not succumb once again to the recourse to magic. These pacts are precarious.50 On the Winding Road of This Civil Pamphlet, We Continue to Examine the “Discordant Sounds” of Corruption and Its Violence along the Negative Path.51 Is There Something More We Can Add to This Violence? In the identified types of corruption (individual, institutional, structural), not only is it their delineations that can be elusive.52 Each type feeds off the

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others, resulting in a vicious holism of the violence of corruption that possesses the following properties: The general progression is not solely from the violence that usually accompanies acts of individual corruption to institutional violence, and from there, to the latent violence of structural corruption, the violence that is always there. On the contrary, the interrelations between classes of violence occur in various directions. The more implicit violence of structural corruption also tends to incentivize the explicit violence of institutional corruption, which, in turn, promotes the violence of individual corruption, or at least makes it appear to be less sinister.53

Let us look at a second property of this holism of the violence of corruption: The violence stemming from corruption is not a cultural product that originates in the social heritage of a region, and even less so in the character traits generally found in a country. For example, Mexican or Chinese or Nigerian cultures themselves do not in principle promote corruption or violence more than United States or German or Japanese cultures. However, once corruption is consolidated as a social structure, its violence tends to become ingrained and resist efforts to rein it in.

And a third property: The destructions that, in certain times and places, can be reconstructed as products of the violence of corruption—for example, by “narcoculture”—also represent symptoms.

The fact that it is a symptom does not mean that we are not facing social breakdown and violence. For this reason, explaining the multicausality of that symptom helps us to understand exactly what is taking place (poverty, zombie or mercenary institutions, oppressive power-over/under sequences, dishonest habits). Yet, in a theory of corruption, we should also consider another difficulty. Fights against corruption and violence can be used to justify even worse violence: Fights against the violence of corruption involve popular resistance. Therefore, they usually function as an excuse to employ even more violence to consolidate the asymmetry of oppressive power-over/under sequences.

Many print, television, and other mass media outlets emit shrewd disinformation to use the fight against corruption to conceal military coups, as well as crimes here, there, and everywhere.54

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Once Again: On Law as Magic and the Magic of Politics Imagine we find ourselves in a society that has transformed its public and private institutions into zombies, mercenaries, or some combination of the two. Then, in order to claim to be making progress in the fight against corruption, the magic of law is invoked. Additional assistance is also received from that other counterexample to democratic politics, politicking. We have already stated: acts of magic in law and politics, as with any manipulation, multiply the rituals that rely on centripetal imagination, which can also operate collectively. But imagine that instead we reject using law and politics according to the rule of autarky, that is, as magic. In that case, we dismiss the idea that merely enacting laws or drafting public policies now constitutes a fight against crime.55 Not only is it necessary for us to clearly identify the economic channels funneling criminal money;56 using practical holism, we must also propose economic reforms and begin to put them into practice. We Should Not Disregard One Attack That Has Been Levied Against Our Negative Narrative of Corruption.57 Thus, I Will Examine Whether This Pamphlet Has Mishandled the Dramatic Uses of Words Like “Politics” and “Economy,” As Well As the Practices to Which They Refer. Occasionally, a positive counternarrative to corruption is introduced. This perspective argues: acts of corruption effectively interrupt economic inefficiencies.58 What is more, they supply populations living in poverty with tools for survival.

As a result, corruption—structural corruption in particular—is the grease that allows “defective machines,” like social systems with obscene economies, to continue to operate. But corruption also establishes: enablers of a subaltern ethics such as an ethics of loyalty. This type of ethics provides concrete assistance. Furthermore, it creates a framework of commitments and affects that give social cohesion.

An ethics of loyalty is an ethics of favors that are designed to be honored— regardless of the degree of corruption they might entail. With these ethics, disadvantaged social groups promote: practices of political resistance, since society’s lower classes take advantage of corruption to attack the weaknesses in the social system.

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Is all of this true? Let us reexamine the first function articulated by this positive counternarrative to corruption: acts of corruption interrupt economic inefficiencies. Many bureaucracies become dysfunctional over time, in part due to their discouraging slowness. So: networks of political and economic clientelism that traffic in illegal privileges become useful.59

Such networks are the instruments available to the poor to expedite bureaucratic procedures. I have no doubt that citizens without means benefit from the use of bribes when attempting to get a copy of their birth certificate, receive their retirement, or gain access to the local school or to medical care. It even streamlines the construction of schools and hospitals at a lower cost than if it had been done through strictly legal channels. Therefore: in countries where there is great economic inequality, consumers in lower classes live in better conditions if they have a black market of products through a “chain of contacts” at their disposal.

According to this proposed positive counternarrative to corruption, acts of corruption function as mechanisms of informal distributive justice since “professional politicians” lack the grammar of listening. By using the black market and bribes, people can acquire items, food, medicine, clothing, or have access to possibilities (schools, hospitals, sporting facilities) that they would not have otherwise.60 Are There Reasons to Defend the Positive Counternarrative to Corruption? My answer is no. There is no magic capable of transforming corruption into that politics of the poor known as infrapolitics. What is this? The word “infrapolitics” has been used to describe forms of resistance involving deceit and silent disorganization by powerless groups, particularly in rural communities.61 It is important to note that these groups maintain a public attitude of consent so as not to produce open conflicts or defiant dissents. There are no organizations filing explicit petitions. Even so, they continue to fight using an accumulation of actions that have not been allocated to anyone. These actions constitute politics that refuse to reveal their name, though they are—one will argue—authentic. In the second part of this pamphlet, we will continue the discussion on infrapolitics. However, without jumping to any conclusions regarding other forms of infrapolitics, I find no reason that corruption—for example, the corruption involved in drug trafficking, in many

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countries with the complicity of government and private agencies—should be included as a weapon of liberation. In our search for the virtues of corruption in this counternarrative—interrupters of economic inefficiency, subaltern ethics, popular liberation—we find only ruthless nudges and violence used to destroy people and societies. When marginalized populations carry out corrupt acts, they are surrendering to the temptation of powerlessness: a society’s poorest groups are ultimately those who benefit the least from corruption. It is the state’s powerful civil servants, governors, for example, who reap the rewards of such abuses. We must not exclude private corporations and, of course, criminal organizations, from the list of the beneficiaries.62 Since corruption is not articulated through atomic processes that begin and end, each with its own dynamic, the holism of corruption is prone to expansion.63 We must not allow ourselves to be confused. In an ethics of loyalties, individuals fall into three categories: loyal multipurpose instruments; those who are disloyal and, therefore, enemies; and those who are indifferent—members of the group, enemies of the group, and everyone else.64 Furthermore, I would add: black markets that use a chain of contacts to sell basic products might operate as informal distributive justice in an impoverished economy for a time. But once those practices become habits, those who benefit are the ones with power in power-over/under sequences.65 The rest must then struggle to survive in kleptocracies, societies of thieves governed by thieves.66 If these observations—despite their irritating stridency—contain some truth, then we can infer it is also essential to learn to know how to let go of centripetal imagination and the manipulations on which this positive counternarrative to corruption relies. However, there is still a parasite of this profusion of magic that we have yet to critique. The Frenzy to Certify A static epistemology—an epistemology of ignorance in many of its suppositions, an epistemology that does not seek to know what should be known— ignores the dynamics that produce erosions, destructions, and self-destructions of legal states, democratic politics, and dignified economies.67 On the other hand, if we use nomadic thought to take these stories into account, it becomes clear that social and personal constructions and destructions are not produced by desubjectivized and desocialized machines (or those machinelike models used to describe many structures). But they are also not produced by subjectivities abiding by the rule of autarky. Considering the contexts for production and validation invites us to reexamine the processes of production, not only its products.68 Nevertheless, the frenzy to certify is explainable. If we assume the consequences that come from considering the context of production, then

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we will also be forced to instill new moral habits and realize legal, political, and economic reforms.69 How might we carry out such tasks? The Steps Ahead In this first part of our civil pamphlet for nomadic thought and practical holism, we used somewhat outlandish descriptions—descriptions that relied on the recourse to magic and its manipulations—so that we could begin to learn to know how, amid the onslaught of corruption and violence, to let go of the destruction of democracy, law, and the economy. However, we did not discuss moral universalism, the force for good that from the standpoint of practical holism cannot be absent from interactions between human animals who strive for healthy coexistence. In the subsequent second, third, and fourth parts, though we will revisit several problems and arguments that have already been mentioned, the focus will be on concerns regarding the principles of moral universalism and the postulates that in some measure determine it. As we might anticipate, the following reflections are formulated according to other directives in the imperative of life: learn to know how to resist and how to begin anew, even under less than hospitable circumstances. NOTES 1. Those who practice magic in shows do not assume that we believe (in the strongest sense of the word) the appearances, disappearances, and reappearances they perform with playing cards or other objects, or the mutilation of people who are returned to life only minutes later. One believes these illusions because, like in literature, theater, or film, we have agreed upon a momentary belief beforehand. 2. Cf. Leonard Zusne, Warren H. Jones, Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking, 2nd ed. (New York: Psychology Press, 2014). According to these authors, at the heart of any recourse to magic we find a “reification of the subjective” (18). The self and its functions are reified to such an extent that they appear to achieve a certain autarky, even from the nervous system. As a result, a person’s desires, beliefs, and affects can directly cause something to take place, independently of any other circumstance; for example, independent acting and, thus, without moving the body. Consequently, we might find truth in statements like “he believed so strongly that she was going to come that she did,” “she wanted to win the lottery so badly that she did,” or “it is raining because I am sad.” 3. Garzón Valdés, “Instituciones suicidas,” 73. 4. The instrumental use of reason with respect to the economy is of course not restricted to small-scale “freeloaders.” In many Latin American societies, for example, both the government and private businesses (those that are economically powerful and indecent, as well as those that are economically not so powerful, but

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equally indecent) make it their sole objective to calculate the economic profit that will consolidate their power-over. 5. First-nature manipulations, or manipulations in the brain, are often used in interesting thought experiments. For an extensive discussion of several thought experiments in which the brain is manipulated to explore problems related to responsibility, see Manuel Vargas, Building Better Beings. A Theory of Moral Responsibility (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), specifically chapter 9, “History and Manipulation,” 267–301. 6. Many often defend the need for what could be characterized as paternalistic manipulations. This refers to timely “nudges” aimed at effecting subtle influences that appropriately orient people, enabling them to resolve difficult dilemmas and face the complexity of our societies; cf. Cass R. Sunstein, The Ethics of Influence: Government in the Age of Behavioral Science (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Unlike Sunstein, we should not overlook the fact that some of those “nudges” are corrupted manipulations involving a wide variety of propaganda. 7. Cf. George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller, Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015). According to these economists, the market’s “invisible hand” helps, but also on occasion harms. Let me formulate this thought differently: the instrumental reason that uses the words “to think,” “to plan,” and “to increase profits” interchangeably exploits psychosocial weaknesses. More than we realize, we are driven by commercial advertisements. 8. Cf. Carlos Pereda, Razón e incertidumbre (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1994), 226–69. 9. In the public-private-personal continuum, it requires particular effort to differentiate objectives from ideals, on the one hand, and illusions and magical residue, on the other. We also cannot overlook the fact that such illusions and delusions are expressions of profound desires, even if the first person refuses to admit to them; or perhaps they are not conscious of them. Of course, in ethics and politics, as in love and friendship, illusions and delusions intertwine with objectives and ideals, and it is often an arduous task to differentiate between them. 10. The use of the words “precarious processes” in this principle of nomadic thought refers to a variety of distinct processes, although they all possess properties of contingency, vulnerability, and the need for one or multiple forms of “exterior energy” in order to survive. This is, then, a general use of the words “precarious processes.” Of course, following the strategy of transitions, it is extremely useful to reciprocally illuminate the more abstract uses with the more concrete uses of the words “precarious processes.” 11. This observation is made regarding particular institutions like ethics, law, politics, and economics. But it also applies to any institution and organization in the broadest sense of these words. For example, it is pertinent to interpersonal interactions in marriages, families, friendships, or in a school, university, or any of society’s organizations. Neglecting the dependencies that are produced—like not caring for a plant or not taking daily responsibility for the growth of a son or daughter—typically leads to some degree of ruin and in some cases, their eventual destruction.

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12. The properties of uncertainty in social formations like democracy cause anxiety and, as such, their bad reputation, but also hatred toward those who allude to such properties; cf. Jacques Rancière, La Haine de la démocratie (Paris: La Fabrique, 2000). His Moments politiques. Interventions 1977–2009 (Paris: La Fabrique, 2009) is also a valuable source on this subject. 13. If democracy’s fate were predetermined, there would be no democratic precarity. As a result, the principle of precarious processes would be rejected regarding such institutions. (And sometimes foolish triumphalist comments are made: “once democracy has triumphed, there will be no turning back.” But if practical holism is ignored, the same foolishness is also often reiterated with respect to other spheres of practical life: “once moral universalism has triumphed, there will be no turning back,” “once the legal state has triumphed, there will be no turning back.”) Thus, it is no longer necessary to care for public life because democracy, moral universalism, dignified economies, and other “non-depraved entities” will reproduce themselves like perpetuum mobile machines. Intoxicated by disciplined enthusiasm—or tedium—, beliefs such as these create conditions for us to make that comforting and absurd declaration: “This is the end of history! We no longer need to concern ourselves with those troublesome enigmas: societies throughout time and people, those dissimilar similar human animals.” 14. Revisions that occur during processes dependent on trajectory reveal any assumptions as well as the likely and unlikely consequences of the actions taken. Among other consequences, one will assess how an action might have affected all subsequent actions and the individual who carried it out. Because when a person narrates and reflects on their self-narration, they usually discover an intelligibility that differs to some degree from what was originally experienced. Many times, human animals misunderstand their processes of desiring, believing, feeling, and acting; for example, they refuse to accept that these are precarious processes and often the product of harmful nudges. Precarious processes, when self-deception and magical thought is at work, can be mistakenly perceived as being independent of trajectory and even as perpetuum mobile processes. This, like any other seductive magical residue, can be very effective: these people are rendered incapable of realizing that the processes they are setting in motion, or in which they find themselves despite their intentions, can to some extent be modified at any moment. 15. Cf. James Bohman and William Rehg, eds., Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999). This book normatively reassesses democracies in a variety of ways through an argumentative turn. See also John Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 16. Cf. Carlos Pereda, Vértigos argumentales. Una ética de la disputa (Argumentative Vertigos. An Ethics of Dispute) (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1994), 107–13. 17. With these vertigos, reasons as well as desires, affects, and interests, including fantasies about what life should be are prolonged, reaffirmed, and immunized using centripetal imagination. 18. History has frequently shown us that when the various forms of power-to join together, they acquire a power-with that has more force at its disposal than any

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isolated power-to. Nevertheless, this power-with continues to be a modality of human potentia and requires certain conditions before it can be exercised. 19. In his work The Spirit of Laws (1748), Montesquieu returns to the tradition of certain essayists from the Roman Republic and the recent experiences (for him) of English politics to propose a system of separation of powers that would prevent the danger presented by unlimited state power—a danger for the citizens who are vulnerable to the potential despotism of their own government. Despite the undeniable importance of possessing a constitution in which said separation of functions is clearly stated, history has demonstrated, and continues to demonstrate every day (in Latin America, for example), how fragile that separation can be. Indeed, if a society does not also possess “checks and balances” outside of state functions—competitive political parties, freedom of the press, vigilant social movements addressing public works, widespread habits of indignation in the face of injustice, and all in a relatively egalitarian society with a deeply ingrained and pervasive culture of civic virtue— separation of powers frequently becomes just another element of political fiction: empty platitudes. 20. A functioning civil society is made up of power-with/against sequences that are routinely organized into competing political parties, as well as social movements and other collaboration and influence groups. Intergroup power-with/against sequences nominate candidates to public office in diverse elections. Political parties are additionally assigned various functions. On one hand, with respect to the citizens, they assume an aggregative role: a party participates in politics by uniting the wills of the people; on the other hand, they hold an implementational role by reducing the complexities of public life to a few options that channel the voters’ decisions. In turn, with respect to the government, political parties fulfill both the role of recruiting future leaders and introducing alternative programs. These and other similar functions— despite the extremely negative characterizations that many political parties rightfully receive these days—lead parties or related organizations to be deemed “unavoidable” in more or less democratic articulations between a power-over and a power-under. 21. The possibility that law, as well as universalist ethics and politics, can operate according to what I have caricatured as “desubjectivized machines” has come under criticism. (Besides the caricature itself, I insist that here we are dealing with the aspirations of those who practice a simple formalism and their search for structures that eliminate all modalities of human potentia.) An important line of reasoning that restores, and fortifies, the potentia of people participating in the practices of law has found inspiration in the classical tradition of virtues. It seeks to demonstrate that the proper socialization of judges, district attorneys, lawyers, police, etc., relies on their adquisition of moral and political virtues. 22. This version of the argument regarding law’s necessary presumptions is inspired by Jürgen Habermas’s theory of validity claims, which he advanced in works like The Theory of Communicative Action (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984). Habermas addresses law more directly in the later work Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996). 23. For this reason, there is no doubt that lying necessarily implies a presumption of truth.

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24. For example, cooking’s constitutive objective consists in preparing food; however, the personal objectives of those who cook might include discovering new flavors, poisoning the dinner guests, demonstrating their superiority over others, etc. 25. In any practice, in order for the agents to achieve their personal objectives (the chefs who wish to poison the dinner guests), they must accomplish, or at least feign accomplishing, even extraordinarily well, the constitutive objectives of that practice. 26. Sometimes these observations are bolstered by arguments that are consequentialist in nature: dissociating law from the objectives we have mentioned represents an enormous threat to justice and healthy coexistence. Why? It is assumed that only a legal state that is not an assembly of zombie and mercenary institutions publicly preserves the principles of justice and directly or indirectly promotes healthy coexistence. For more or less parallel observations, see Brian Z. Tamanaha, Law as a Means to an End: Threat to the Rule of Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 27. This second critique can be reconstructed as dependent—albeit distantly—on a specific legal application of Rudolf Carnap’s early and, at the time, extremely influential distinction between internal and external problems in research; cf. R. Carnap, The Logical Structure of the World and Pseudoproblems in Philosophy, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967. 28. Because of its consequences—theoretical and otherwise—it is worth examining a particular example similar to the previous one, but that is different: the discussion raised by legal philosopher R. Dworkin regarding the case of Riggs v. Palmer, presented in the New York Court of Appeals in 1889. The situation was the following: an elderly man had named his grandson as his primary heir, but the grandson, for fear that his grandfather might change his will, poisoned him. The court invalidated the grandson’s designation as heir. Was this based on proper reasoning? To argue for an affirmative answer to this question, Dworkin revisits the proposal, a characteristic method of complex formalism, which requires that we consider various types of rules. Dworkin clarifies the proposal by distinguishing between rules and principles. Many rules are applied according to the logic of all or nothing, whose mode of inference is the deductive system. In contrast, principles rely on argumentation through necessarily informal fragments. This refers, for example, to principles of justice like: no one should profit from harm that they have caused. Or, even more general, the moral principle: everyone should be respected as an end in themselves. In the deliberations that took place during Riggs v. Palmer, it was likely taken into account that a grandson should not inherit his grandfather’s estate if he is the one who murdered him. Dworkin was accused of using this case to criticize legal positivism by revisiting a tradition with even more problems than this one: iusnaturalism. However, those who levy such an accusation against him overlook the differences between Dworkin’s thought and iusnaturalism. In fact, Dworkin, defending a third position in legal philosophy, does not appeal to any already-established order of reasoning, but rather to reasons that are in the process of construction. This is the tradition of universal moral objectivism; for example, modern traditions that range from Kant to Rawls and Habermas, though not exclusively, with their emphasis on the constructive autonomy of human reason. Dworkin’s discussions of this case can be found in one of his first books: Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), 23–45; and

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in later texts like Law’s Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 15–20, 33–44. 29. Thus, the polemics concerning the election of judges to the supreme courts in many countries. Such polemics would be nonsensical if law were composed of “desubjectivized machines” whose only function was to collect one modus ponens after another, or any other computation that a machine might carry out. On the contrary, these polemics do arise, and are typically impassioned and interminable, because it is generally accepted that a judge’s moral and political beliefs regarding gender, race, or economic position will influence their reasonings and legal judgments. 30. Cf. J. J. Gibson, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems and The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception; as well as E. Gibson and A. Pick, An Ecological Approach to Perceptual Learning and Development. Also see E. Jayawickreme and A. Chemero, “Ecological Moral Realism: An Alternative Theoretical Framework for Studying Moral Psychology,” Review of General Psychology 12, no. 2 (2008): 118–26; and P. Railton, “Practical Competence and Fluent Agency,” in Reasons for Actions, eds. D. Sobel and S. Wall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 81–115. 31. We might even be able to claim, perhaps with some exaggeration but also with a degree of reason: anyone who acts this way in their own neighborhood desires or foments a system destined to become a police state: a system in which the police are the only mediators between citizens. Caution: at the other extreme, the disproportionate praise of personal mediations can lead to a political angelism that produces disfunctional processes and, sooner or later, the destruction, or more precisely, the self-destruction of the freedoms found in many institutions (family, school, neighborhood, etc.), and even in the institutions of a legal state, 32. Retributive punishments different from those punishments determined by the justice system also exist in formal institutions, like families or universities, and in informal institutions, like friendships and relationships between colleagues. Therefore, we must look at how the attitudes we subsume under concepts like blaming someone who has caused harm, or morally censuring, or expressing indignation, or anger, or rage, or showing disappointment can perform decisive roles in the interactions between people or groups, even though they differ from legal punishments. 33. For more on the need to consider extra-linguistic conditions in order for words to be successful, see J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975). 34. Cf. Antonio Blanco Salgueiro, Palabras al viento. Ensayo sobre la fuerza ilocusionaria (Words in the Wind. Essay on Illocutionary Force) (Madrid: Trotta, 2004). 35. When young people, almost children, are imprisoned because they have become sicarios—another word for murderers—they usually say they would rather lead that dangerous and certainly short life filled with money and other pleasures than to continue living in the same poor conditions as many of their family members: becoming slave workers on a ranch, or in a factory, or in a small shop selling knickknacks. Of course, these statements mix reality with the fictions of awful soap operas like El señor de los cielos (Lord of the Skies). But that is not all. Such statements also reveal

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the desires of human animals (which soap operas use to their advantage), and are reminiscent of many heroes in Greek mythology, beginning with Achilles in the Iliad. 36. The following affirmation (so fundamental that it is often overlooked) is a good starting point: “we live where we live and we begin to think, to some degree, based on where we live.” This helps to remind us of “our inevitable lenses”: a series of contingencies that are sometimes fantasized as being “a point of view from nowhere.” The intitial affirmation may not, however, be good advice for other fragments of nomadic thought. We must stay alert so that such a starting point does not eliminate what are sometimes dismissed as “outlandish descriptions,” becoming instead an obsession that prevents us from using the strategy of detours as well as the strategy of transitions toward the abstraction and construction of models. In those renunciations we notably lose a possibility that should not be renounced: the possibility of looking to general and often unexpectedly universal horizons, those discovered by centrifugal imagination. 37. Cf. Carlos Alberto Sánchez, A Sense of Brutality: Philosophy after Narco-Culture (Amherst: Amherst College Press, 2020). 38. In Latin America, many fragments of the population, including those who express their horror, participate in this practice. (Among them, we must mention the well-paid “commentocracy” in much of mass media: people on television and in newspapers who rail against corruption and violence as a cover for the mercenary institutions of which they are often a part.) 39. Cf. Carlos Pereda, Sobre la confianza (On Trust) (Barcelona: Herder, 2009). 40. Coercion is used to the benefit of the corrupting person so that someone does what they do not want to do or stops doing what they want to do. 41. Part of what these threats disguise is the insinuation that one “impertinent” action—an action contrary to the interests of some power-over—will lead to the loss of employment, or perhaps other much worse consequences. 42. In certain regions of many countries—Latin America is again an unfortunate source of examples—even threats that are never explicitly expressed become interiorized beginning in childhood. They often involve terrifying alternatives that mercenary institutions use in their operations: “If you do not cooperate with the government and turn a blind eye to your bosses’ corruption, you will not move up.” Or “If you do not cooperate with the owners of the company where you work and turn a blind eye to their shady management, they will fire you.” 43. The words “police corruption” do not only refer to one or more police officers engaging in extortion. It also involves the improper use of power and privileged information by law enforcement when it transforms into a mercenary institution. In some states, police fabricate information that is then used to pursue citizens without a trial. Acts such as these frustrate the presumption of trust associated with the institution of law enforcement. Similarly, “corporate corruption” alludes to abuses committed for the benefit of business owners. Corruption is also present in sports in the form of banned substances, or in academia—plagiarism and other forms of misrepresentation—including that (perhaps minor?) corruption, so typically Latin American, of confusing participation in university bureaucracy with the completion of research projects.

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44. Societies increasingly become prisoners to hostility, at least latently; to “everyone versus everyone.” 45. An extreme illustration: in many regions of Latin America, drug traffickers not only use extortion, but they also consolidate interpersonal and intergroup interactions and pay and support the orange juice vendors, the children running through the park, or the small or large businessmen and women who, more or less consciously, become their “ears.” These various ears become informants: they warn of approaching military forces, of rumors around town, or which local authorities can be bought and for how much. They also develop that (obvious?) contradiction: the altruism of crime. In some countries, drug trafficking also creates or funds schools and hospitals, or senior citizen living facilities, resulting in a sort of “benevolent criminal state” operating in parallel with the legal state. Beware: we must not overlook the dark side of that “beneficence.” “Benevolent criminal states” also increase the number of unmarked mass graves or strew roadsides with bags of bones and decomposing human flesh. 46. In many Latin American countries, it is the state governors and the anticorruption prosecutors who oftentimes end up being the bosses of these “businesses,” criminal drug-trafficking organizations, among others, and their brutalities; and all the while, they maintain the enthusiastic uproar that accompanies the magic of legal entities combating mythologies (and only mythologies) of crime. 47. Words like “politicking” can be used to refer to machinations that conceal acts of influence trafficking and other crimes, in extreme cases backed by police brutality. 48. On the importance of participatory and deliberative implications in democratic politics, cf. Cristina Lafont, Democracy without Shortcuts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). 49. In ancient Athens, for example, sectors of the population began gathering together for this purpose, albeit with a certain aggressively exclutionary politics: the elimination of women, slaves, and foreigners from public life. Of course, in other cultural geographies, like in regions of Asia and numerous places in what is now America—for example, in many indigenous populations—we also find early indications of arrangements that sought to collectively manage the matters that were important to every human animal in a society. 50. The previous reflections were not the beginning of an analysis of the uses of the word “politics” in various traditions. I am only arguing for a normative proposal. For what reason? In politicking and neo-despotisms (pathologies of democratic politics), disagreements and quarrels between human animals are resolved using arts of unhealthy coexistence: instilling fear so that orders, ultimately preserved through brutal violence, are obeyed. Let us not forget: the intimidations and punishments used in neo-despotisms in particular rely on the excesses of the secret police or institutions similar in function, when necessary. Or, if more is necessary, perhaps because the popular resistance of a power-under has organized itself into a strong power-with, they will resort to tanks and other firearms to decimate the opposition. 51. Circumstances like these drive us to adopt non-collaborative strategies. This, in turn, leads to the growing isolation of people or social groups who attempt to defend their own interests “alone,” following the motto “everyone for themselves.” Nevertheless, disillusionment with politics is a complex social phenomenon promulgated

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for various reasons specific to a particular place and time. It is not difficult to find examples of societies that suffer from political disillusionment—and growing individualist strategies—but without a governing presumption of corruption. 52. The violence of corruption ranges from bribes, favoritisms, and all varieties of “gifts”—including political clientelism and demands for sexual “favors”—to the circulation and exploitation of economic influences, favorable political treatments, and, in general, criminal operations organized by the state or with its protection. (Hence, the public protests and marches with banners that read: “Beware: The Violence of Corruption Governs.” Or: “Corruption Has Led Supposed Democracies to Abandon Their Citizens.”) 53. We must not overlook the actions referred to by the word “tends,” which is used to describe the intersections making up a complex structure, as a first property of the violence of corruption. Because in many societies, a regime of structural corruption coexists with the presence of honest people and institutions. These, however, are often incapable of assuming their power-to, much less organize a power-with, to confront the violence of corruption and resist the self-destruction of democratic politics and the institutions of the legal state. 54. Given that corruption is claimed to be alarming through excessively publicized noise, we must use extreme caution so that, during the fight, this noise does not continue and increase to the point of becoming deafening propaganda capable of acting as a smokescreen to conceal politicking and other forms of corruption, or something worse: uninhibited criminal violence. For there is no doubt: anticorruption fights are also often used as excuses, one more weapon for carrying out the vilest abuses—including homicides in the name of the democracy and legal state they claim to defend. For that reason, the slogan “let’s put an end to corruption at all costs” often grants considerable freedom to operate. What is more, in Latin America, slogans like these have served and continue to serve as extremely effective discourse to justify or, if this is not completely successful, then to dress up coups d’état, totalitarian governments, and their crimes. 55. For example, many regions in Latin America have made no attempt to increase the little control they have over regional governors, nor have they brought the complicity of these governors with organized crime into the open or lobbied for the investigation of bank records to uncover how drug-traffickers, the federal government, or many private corporations and companies are able to keep—or “launder”—their corrupt money. 56. If the rumors that disquiet our quotidian routines repeatedly suggest that the “major” culprits are allowed to go free, that selective impunity exists, then the presumption of corruption is restored. Disenchantment also contaminates the legal state. From this damaging presumption, one might infer that judges are tools for legitimation: “subjects firmly subjected” by mercenary institutions whose profession consists in legitimizing interests through words that are difficult to understand. Under such circumstances, it is no coincidence that anticorruption organisms are perceived as being “for show”: a continuum of institutions ranging from zombies to mercenaries that disguise the disgraceful.

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57. Not pausing to consider objections and alternatives that have been defended, even if one is resistant to them and even repulsed by them, opens the door to covering one’s ears and, sooner or later, disregarding the warning: “Avoid argumental vertigos.” 58. Affirmations such as these can be found to some extent in Frank Anechiarico and James B. Jacobs, The Pursuit of Absolute Integrity: How Corruption Control Makes Government Ineffective (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). 59. For more on clientelism, see Susan C. Stokes, Thad Dunning, Marcelo Nazareno, and Valeria Brusco, Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism: The Puzzle of Distributive Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 60. It is customary in many neocolonial countries—though not exclusively—for those “deaf” politicians to only make themselves visible as elections approach. But since they can offer nothing more than promises that are impossible to keep, they resort to the magic of law and politics. 61. Anthropologist James C. Scott introduced the word “infrapolitics” in ethnographical studies like Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985) and Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). From the same author, see also The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009) and Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play (Princeton: Prince ton University Press, 2012). By “infrapolitics,” Scott refers to the silent tools used as instruments for freedom by rural classes in an autocratic regime like Malaysia. These are traps that act as forms of resistance. However, we can generalize the use of the word “infrapolitics” to describe any practice of subaltern politics hidden behind visible political activity (the electoral battles between political parties to which more often than not politics is reduced), or in its empty spaces, cracks, or dark corners. 62. When facing extortion by a police officer, even the most honorable person’s will to resist wavers because of the difficulties that will likely ensue if they refuse. Thus, citizens in many societies are trained daily to feel without the power-to know how to resist. As a result, social corruption becomes a school for personal subjugation and the arts of unhealthy coexistence. 63. Therefore, the selective streamlining of bureaucratic procedures or disregarding laws to act in one’s own self-interest will only have—in a few circumstances—positive effects for an individual or for a small group of poor people and only in the short term. The inefficiency of zombie institutions and the practices of subjugation used by mercenary institutions to de-educate eventually destroy society as a whole, as well as harming the large majority of the people from the disadvantaged group to which the unfairly benefited person belongs. It is important to highlight these consequences counter to the suggestion of Stephen D. Morris’s title (an otherwise illuminating work) “Mexico’s Political Culture: The Unrule of Law and Corruption as a Form of Resistance,” Mexican Law Review 3, no. 2 (2011): 327–42. The title proposes categorizing corruption as political resistance, when in reality it undermines it. Consider, for example, the following paragraph from Morris’s text: “Seeing bribery in this way fits within James Scott’s description of resistance. . . . So not only does corruption

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constitute a mechanism of everyday survival as often noted, but it also becomes a way to get ahead and exploit the system’s weaknesses for personal gain” (335). I must object: if an individual takes advantage of the weakness of a political system for personal gain, that individual becomes a free rider, not a militant of infrapolitics who uses the weakness of an oppressive political system as a weapon of resistance. 64. It is sometimes said: “It does not matter if you have read lots of books, even complex elucidations, on social humiliation or other horrible experiences. You only truly understand the damage they do when you have lived through those experiences.” This is true. However, we are often blind to what is happening to us. We may not realize that we are being humiliated and that we are humiliating, even destroying, ourselves. With these observations in mind, I again stress the need to use the strategy of transitions in a variety of ways. In order to comprehend the reach of a certain criminal act and identify certain experiences as humiliation and destruction, we must ascend to transitions of greater abstraction that clarify and perhaps explain why that humiliation or that destruction is possible in the power-over/under articulations of the society in which we live. 65. Corruption’s tendency to expand can be described as a “snowball” effect consolidating the power-over that rules a society through power-over/under sequences. Therefore, once again, we must be careful with our words: those “chains of contacts” are soon discovered to be one of the many other literal chains that shackle, that oppress. 66. In the second property of the violence of corruption, we stated that as these actions multiply, they generate a tendency to resist attempts to rein in both corruption and its violence. Thus, submitting to the loyalties of caudillos, governors, and assassins is in no way a form of resistance against the local or federal governments operating outside of the law. 67. For example, in the philosophy of science at the beginning of the twentieth century, a distinction was made between the context of justification (validating knowledge) and the context of discovery (producing knowledge), the latter being dismissed as lacking in interest. In general, it was limited to the narration of psychological anecdotes (“P came up with idea x while in the bathtub, and then . . . ”). In epistemology, we find the opposite tendency, but with a similar function; in its insatiable search for the necessary and adequate conditions for knowledge, for example. In both cases, without it being explicitly stated, it appeared that science, and knowledge in general, was considered to be produced by some variety of desubjectivized and desocialized machine. In the philosophy of science and in epistemology, this situation changed, in part due to the growing interest in the history of science, and in part motivated by renewed attention to the valuable habits or virtues of agents, both epistemic and practical, individual and collective. 68. It is commonplace for those who defend public policies, as well as for those who attack them, to show disinterest in investigating the causes that lead to corruption, opting instead to fight it using only the magic of law, politics, and the economy. We can reason then that a person who succumbs to the frenzy of certifications reveals, as Michel Foucault would say, their sadistic addiction to “surveil and punish.” This addiction avoids the arduous task of an investigation whose trajectory and end result

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are unknown beforehand, and it relies on a vice that is difficult to eradicate: a vice that originates in the lack of courage to investigate the causes of processes and the refusal to be blinded by accumulating collections of effects, precipitously forming an opinion about those collections. 69. In the fight against corruption, it is very easy to resort to magic and legitimize oneself by proclaiming laws and public policies, in addition to inventing organisms that have the intention—only the intention—of certifying whether or not those laws and those policies are fulfilled. On the other hand, it is very costly, and even more useless, for a state to offer excessive salaries to civil servants who, as impromptu magicians, announce the promised land of transition to democracy and prosperity and, if they can still recall the words, to justice and healthy coexistence.

Chapter 2

“I Am Myself Plus My Circumstance”‌‌1

BEGINNING ANEW: LEARN TO KNOW HOW TO RESIST OBSTRUCTIONS WHEN RESPONDING TO INTERPELLATIONS BY OVERDETERMINED VALUES LIKE EQUALITY, FREEDOM, AND COLLABORATION In the first part, we investigated descriptions of social formations like democracy, law, and the economy that were made using a (certainly irritating) language that resorts to magic: to manipulation and self-manipulation. We attempted not to allow the rule of autarky, which runs counter to practical holism, to transform the autonomy postulates of democracy, freedom, and the economy into super-sovereignty postulates. The autonomy postulate of moral universalism also often suffers such abuses, although we hardly broached this problem. What our investigations primarily sought to learn to know how to resist was: the conjecture of practical heterogeneity that eliminates interactions and, therefore, the correlation of reasons, the “exterior energy” that links all forms of normativity, for example, moral reasons, legal reasons, political reasons, and economic reasons.

In contrast, in this second part I will exploit a tactic that is commonly used in pamphlets: the clean slate, which includes wiping the slate clean and starting over even with regards to the use of certain words. Consequently, there will be increasingly more discussions centered on individual behaviors and moral universalism, as well as a use of the strategy of ascending transitions with successive degrees of abstraction and idealization. To that end, I contrast the first part’s recourse to magic and other manipulations with general 63

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theorizations on “non-depraved entities.” In order to articulate this counterpoint, I will again suppose that overdetermined values like equality, freedom, and collaboration, through arduous learning processes, have become deeply ingrained with good reasons in the traditions of many societies, and they interpellate. How do we respond to them? By realizing certain postulates as responses to their interpellations. However, before examining some of those postulates, I want to complicate this starting-over by distinguishing between types of behaviors: • I’m crossing a busy street while talking with a friend, and neither of us realizes that the crosswalk signal has changed to red; when I notice this, I grab my friend by the arm and run. Or: a child on their way to buy bread drops their money in the street; one’s first instinct is to pick up the money, return it, and maybe even accompany the child to the bakery. Or behaviors generated by non-deliberative competencies. • In a bookstore, student A witnesses one of his closest friends seemingly unintentionally walk out with a very expensive book tucked between his notebooks, a book that he very much needs but doesn’t have the money to buy; the next day the bookstore requests an investigation into the book’s disappearance, and, prior to giving his statement, student A has serious doubts about what he should say. Or: during a dictatorship, a woman pounds at a door, declaring her innocence and begging for asylum; almost immediately the person who has given her asylum begins to fearfully consider the moral, legal, and political consequences of this action; when confronted by the police, the person who has given her asylum confidently lies that there is no one hidden inside the house. Or behaviors generated by deliberative competencies. In the first type of behavior, we exercise the ability to grab hold of a friend’s arm and run in case of danger and the ability to come to the aid of a child. A virtuous non-deliberative habituation allows us to carry out such actions, but we are still acting based on reasons: implicit reasons that we do not analyze. These non-deliberative competencies have become automatic processes that respond directly, or more or less directly, to the circumstances. In these cases, perception not only immediately indicates how one should act, but it also encourages that way of acting because the action is generated by a link between the human animal and their circumstance. Let me reiterate: as human animals we do not passively perceive the environment, but rather our surroundings are experienced as possibilities that call upon us to act in one way or another, but often without us having to consciously decide.2 In contrast, in the second type of behavior, the human animal does not immediately interact with the calls that emerge from their circumstance: with



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the dimensions of normativity that seem to be immediately articulated with the situation. In the second type of behavior, normativity is distributed in conflict: between impartial moral reasons and moral reasons related to the duties of friendship in the example of the friend witnessed in the bookstore, and between moral, legal, and political reasons in the example of the person who lies to protect someone who claims to be a victim. In this second type of behavior, human animals are no longer immediately tied to their circumstances, but must instead weigh various reasons and deliberate over what they can and should do. With these two types of behavior, we are often confused by the following designations: • all behaviors belong to one type or the other (exclusive “or”), or they can be reduced to one of those types; or • if it is accepted that there is a distinction between both types of behaviors, then it is simultaneously accepted that this distinction is extreme, i.e., there are no meaningful interactions between them. These designations rely on the false dichotomy between so-called “intellectualist” and “anti-intellectualist” positions. I, on the other hand, consider it necessary to accept that: • intellectualist and anti-intellectualist behaviors represent the abstract poles of a continuum of human actions on which we find numerous intermediate instances at every turn; • this continuum is replete with constant interrelations. A thought, if it is sincere, that is, if it is nomadic, must often explore different instances on the continuum in order to reconstruct and clarify them as well as to justify them. Why do I assert that these two types of behaviors represent the “abstract poles” of a continuum? If we take another look at the apparently anti-intellectualist behaviors, we observe: the automatism in these behaviors does not entail any necessity. For example, instead of having taken hold of my friend’s arm, working in collaboration with him for us both to run, I could have theoretically run on my own without any concern for his safety in the oncoming traffic; or instead of collaborating with the child, that person could have picked up the money and disappeared. In both circumstances, the link between action and circumstance arises from a past learning experience, perhaps now forgotten, that constituted those habits. But those virtues were consolidated based on certain reasons, possibly not my reasons or the reasons of the person who helped the child, but indeed with the reasons of the cultures in which that

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person or I were raised. But what is the justification for those habits and, more comprehensively, for the culture that includes them? This is most likely not something about which many people stop to think. But when they do, if they appeal to the strategy of ascending transitions, they will discover that those habits are responses to interpellations by overdetermined values. In what follows, I will attempt to give free rein to nomadic thought and reconstruct the interactions between postulates that endorse, albeit oftentimes very, very implicitly, typical mixtures of behaviors. This include behaviors generated by non-deliberative competencies, or habits that are virtues, and behaviors generated by deliberative competencies that are also learned directly from cultures that afford themselves a modicum of healthy coexistence and even quantities of happiness. It is not useless for us to somewhat abstractly consider the learning processes that support healthy non-deliberative and deliberative habituation. For this reason, I will discuss a complex correlation of those postulates that overlap and underdetermine each other and whose non-realization leads to disaster. POSTULATE OF MORAL UNIVERSALISM This is a first resistance for removing obstacles from our responses to interpellations by overdetermined values like equality, freedom, and collaboration. Indeed, we have already regarded the presence of a moral universalism in the interactions that are reconstructed in practical holism to be a decisive learning experience for many cultures. This classification can perhaps be further clarified by pointing out: moral reasons in principle outweigh other types of reasons. However, the exact sense of a moral reason is often reinterpreted based on those other types of reasons. A moral universalism therefore possesses principles that are part of a type of formal normativity that, in our discussion on law in the first part of this pamphlet, was called “complex formalism.” It stated: the principles of this type of formalism require mediations in order to be applied. In each particular case, we must analyze various types of reasons, introduce arguments, qualify them, and calibrate them according to the context. But what is the essential content of those principles that generate non-deliberative and deliberative behaviors? We continue to suppose: as human animals, we are born, and we develop inside environments that interpellate. These interpellations interrogate. They invite. They intersect. They are interpellations that offer potentialities for action. And they do so mostly, though not exclusively, via the human animals that surround the first person and their customs, and with the rules from those organizations of human animals we call societies that impose modes of conduct. In this way, each human animal progressively locates and relocates



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themself, for example, amid calls to collaborate. On occasion, these calls are no more than hesitant utterances that are not fully understood. At some point in order to consider such a variety of appeals and demands, it is useful for us to take a step back. We must reflect using the strategy of transitions toward abstraction. Let us assume that certain principles, deeply ingrained with reasons and presupposed in our virtuous non-deliberative competencies, are rendered explicit through reflection. Such moral principles are part of a correlation.3 The following principle responds to interpellations by the overdetermined value of collaboration:4 Act in such a way that you are able to collaborate in the construction of groups—extensive groups like societies but also institutions that are not zombies and not mercenaries and small groups like families and friends and even casual acquaintances. With respect to large social organizations, be mindful to implement the legal, political, and economic presuppositions that make it possible to hear disparate interpellations from diverse human animals and, at the same time, help to transform the complex interpellative act into hospitable interactions. Or the principle of collaboration.5

The peculiarities for applying this principle to individual practices, groupings, and social organizations vary according to the legal, political, and economic institutions particular to each geography and each time. For this reason, the principle is underdetermined, though not indeterminate. Many of its orientations appear along the negative path: we suffer if that principle and the legal, political, and economic presuppositions that require its application are largely, or even slightly, absent. Moreover, when the stated principle of collaboration is applied to a person or a specific society, it tends to generate many questions like: What do we mean by a collaborative society? How can an institution be organized collaboratively and not as a zombie or mercenary? How can a family or friendship be organized collaboratively? In each of these cases, in what way do we collaborate and with whom? In order to apply principles like this one, they must be progressively determined using various types of reasons, as often occurs with the principles of any complex formalism. But at the same time, we must learn from each situation: allow the situation to both strengthen and restrain us. Another equally underdetermined universal moral principle from the same correlation responds to invitations by the overdetermined value of freedom, the absence of which can be a source of great suffering: Act in such a way that the autonomy of each person in a collaborative society is respected as an end in itself. Or the principle of personal autonomy.6

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The words “personal autonomy” are connected with human animals’ actions of self-construction and self-governance. However, governing and constructing, and self-governing and self-constructing, are gradual actions that respond to stimuli in the environment. This gradualness indicates another source of underdetermination regarding what is dictated by the principle of personal autonomy. Yet, of likely concern: what is the dramatic sense in which the words “a human animal constructs themself as a person” are used? These words do not refer to a construction from zero, but rather a construction using the materials that are available. Thus, the principle of personal autonomy does not lead to absolute self-constructions; for example, obeying solely the internal elaborations of one’s own reflection.7 As we pointed out in the first part with respect to social autonomies, personal autonomies do not respond to the rule of autarky either. Why not? The new does not emerge from nothing.8 On one hand, the materials used in these self-constructions are genetically received; they originate in what we referred to as “first nature” in the first part of this pamphlet. Human animals are born with innate possibilities, which we have classified under the venerable word “potentia” and its modalities in diverse power sequences. But I will now add some new distinctions. Human potentia, as it matures, organizes itself into: • the ability to know how or cognitive ability; • the ability to know why or the ability to judge;9 for example, the power to compare the states of things, nuance assertions, analyze reasons, calibrate what is affirmed or rejected, establish reflective equilibriums,10 and examine whether reasons and arguments are relevant to the circumstances. With time, these behaviors (generated by non-deliberative and deliberative competencies) allow human animals to infer conclusions and make decisions. Based on these inferences, human animals exercise: • the ability to be able to, that is, their power-to and therefore also their power-with or against or under or over; or executive ability. These maturations of human potentia are both comprehensive and disparate. For example, this is how we as human animals can partly intervene in the making of what we are and what surrounds us11—we intervene in the making and unmaking12 of our “second nature” and even partly our “first nature.” At the same time, we cannot avoid confirming that these self-constructions and self-destructions, like the practical holism that governs them, are also in the process of being constructed. The self-constructions and self-destructions of human animals depend, then, on processes in which we can, through abstraction, distinguish two levels: a biological or first-nature level, and a historical or second-nature



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level. At the second level, during processes of socialization and the proper or improper development of our abilities, people, in their various circumstances, learn to accept or reject habits and also beliefs that are typical of their surroundings. They do so through reasons, good or bad, that in part they also learn socially. However, sooner or later the human animal as a first person no longer supposes that they accept reasons as one of the many restrictions imposed on their cognitive, judicial, and executive abilities. Let us assume—as first persons we cannot help but assume—that accepting a desire, a belief, an affect, or a habit as being upheld by reasons is not reduced to the mere actualization of some social training. Based on these assumptions that we inevitably make as first persons, let us now assume that we learn to discover, using our abilities and often not without difficulty, reasonable desires, reasonable beliefs, reasonable affects, and good habits, in the same way that after attending school, a person learns to discover autonomously, for themself, that if they add eight and eight, the result will necessarily be sixteen. With the words that we have been using, we can now risk proposing: a theory of human development as an innatism of the abilities that grow or degenerate, that prosper or devolve, according to the circumstances—including responses to interpellations by the public-private-personal continuum—in which human animals live. Or an innatism open to the circumstantial development of the abilities, or mixed circumstantialism.

Unless I am mistaken, this theory of human animal development is in continuity with what we tend to presuppose such development is in quotidian life. It involves a combination of what our bodies have been granted at birth and what we acquire in our day-to-day experiences. We are each then a strange mixture that forms and deforms through rearticulations of the biological and the historical.13 We self-construct using both materials: illnesses, body fatigue, old age, sexuality, what we judge to be social successes and failures at work, personal sadness and happiness, important encounters, betrayals. Consequently, according to this type of innatism open to the circumstances, we self-construct by enhancing or diminishing abilities that are the products of a larger evolution of the species. Such enhancement or diminishment is also the result of social inheritances, of institutions that are products of a second nature that other human animals have produced and constantly continue to produce and modify. So, does that second nature not oblige every human animal to contribute to this production with what they necessarily have at their disposition? If the answer is yes, as I believe it is, the autonomy of each human animal consists in self-constructions that are not only relative, but also relational:

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autonomies that interact with other autonomies. Every self is a part of reciprocal relationships with others. These relationships are, on the one hand, based on the obligation to construct a collaborative society that respects each person as an end in themself. Thus, the use of the words “collaboration” and “autonomy” are also revealed to be ways of responding to interpellations by the overdetermined value of freedom. On the other hand, we cannot disregard the need for parameters in order to judge for ourselves the value and relevance of those responses to interpellations by the overdetermined values of collaboration and freedom. Because of this, a matrix of orientations is formulated by another overdetermined principle of moral universalism that responds to interpellations by the overdetermined value of equality: Act in such a way that you are able to, without contradiction, will the maxim of your action into universal law. Or the principle of universality.14

It is not uncommon for us to apply this criterion in our daily lives when we implicitly but also explicitly judge the moral, legal, political, or economic goodness or baseness of an action with thought experiments in questions like: “what would happen if everyone acted like this, in this exact same way?” or “what world would we help to build if all of us acted this way?” However, this principle does not establish a clear and precise criterion for judgment. Many of the applications of such a criterion are more underdetermined—and thus give rise to more problems—than those that are frequently recognized by the traditions that propose them. In what way? Let us return to our earlier example in which deliberative competencies were required, reminiscent of one of the many military dictatorships that marked the twentieth century, and surreptitiously, or openly, continue to cloud the twenty-first century. Imagine that while living through one of these social dramas, a woman who not only claims to be, but in fact is innocent and is being pursued, knocks on a door and asked for asylum. If the police from one of those dictatorships arrive and ask for her, those who have taken her in will perhaps have to decide between two maxims that, at least abstractly, appear to be equally universalizable: “one should not lie” and “one should do everything possible to save the lives of innocent people in danger.” Imagine that both maxims have been deeply ingrained in a human animal and are now non-deliberative competencies: virtues of trust that constitute their ways of acting. But the person who has granted the woman asylum is faced with a conflict; thus, they must inevitably appeal to their ability to judge. In this situation my ability to judge finds reasons to conclude and universalize: “one should not break the trust of a person who claims to be innocent and asks for protection from their pursuers.” So, if in this type of situation,



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someone lies to the police in a dictatorship, I believe that they are acting as anyone would want to act under similar circumstances. Am I correct? Could there be other ways of describing this situation? In my mind there are none. Therefore, it would seem that it is often risky to properly apply the principle of universality. Now, let me interrupt the discussion of this correlation of underdetermined principles in a moral universalism;15 it is characteristic of nomadic thought to change perspectives during its analyses. I will return to this correlation of postulates later to discuss them as determinations that need underdetermined moral principles in order to become responses to interpellations from the underdetermined values of equality, freedom, and collaboration. Another Perspective for Examining Practical Holism Using the strategy of detours, we can consider the difference between two types of these totalities that are games. There exists a type of game that is regulated like chess, soccer, or tennis. In these games, we discover two different categories of rules. Some rules outline the so-called “constitutive conditions” that construct the game: rules intended to be the precise, fixed, and general criteria that articulate a closed and unmodifiable system. However, in addition to the constitutive conditions, anyone who wishes to excel at one of these games must learn another category of rules, those clever tricks, the “regulative conditions,” which are underdetermined and subordinate to the constitutive conditions. Players hear stories about the game and learn to discover regulative rules: techniques for improving their play. Yet, such learning experiences do not alter the constitutive conditions. I refer to these as “determined games.” There is also a second type of game, common in childhood amusement like playing with dolls, cops and robbers, or hide-and-go-seek, where the constitutive conditions are also underdetermined. In many cases, these rules are established progressively through the continued play of the game itself. In this second type, the difference between both categories of rules is not so extreme: it is a question of assumption and acceptance. At the start of the game, the constitutive conditions outline the objective, which is oftentimes vague, and as the game is played—processes dependent on trajectory—the regulative conditions are adjusted, with frequent use of the strategy of trial and error according to interactions with the circumstances. I refer to these as “underdetermined games.” The contrast between determined and underdetermined games—which parallels the distinction between the two types of formalism introduced in the first part in relation to law—can be used to reconstruct two ways of

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understanding morals. The most commonly defended conception is where moral practices are reconstructed following the model of determined games. Here we can consider, for example, that the principles of collaboration, personal autonomy, and universality are the constitutive conditions for moral action that operate as determined criteria: fixed, precise, and general principles. If we want to live in a moral world, then we must use these principles to directly determine desires, beliefs, the legal system, political and economic practices—similar to the regulative conditions in any determined game. Conversely, the conception of morality that operates in accordance with nomadic thought and practical holism follows the analogy of underdetermined games. Moral principles are applied in two constantly intersecting directions. In one sense, it guides subjectivity: to a certain degree, moral principles gradually begin to determine and orient our desires, beliefs, affects, and their habituation inside our actions. In another sense, as we implicitly discussed in the first part, it also orients social life: the legal system, political and economic practices. We must not forget, however, that in these applications, while moral principles orient our ability to judge and gradually determine the maxims of our actions, they themselves also become progressively more defined. Consider, then, how even non-deliberative competencies, or habits, are determined to some extent by these principles.16 We previously noted: the word “virtue” is often used to refer to good habits of desiring, believing, feeling, and acting. Thus, in the body, many habits maintain a simultaneous stability and flexibility. These are deeply ingrained tendencies that train our cognitive ability, our ability to judge, and, if needed, our executive ability, so that we can respond to the circumstances that arise.17 Let Us Reexamine the Principles of Moral Universalism as Constitutive Conditions in an “Underdetermined Game” Even if we are apprehensive about actualizing the principle of collaboration in circumstances where, as was alluded to in the first part, the presumption of trust has been replaced by the presumption of corruption (because corruption has become structural as well as institutional in that society), courage as a virtue is characterized by the ability to control one’s fear of falling victim to threats. Honest modes of conduct, when converted into habits, also contribute to some degree to determining the underdetermination of the principle of personal autonomy, and, in turn, to determining themselves with it. If a person with honest habits verifies that “this is a lie,” they recognize such confirmation as a reason not to repeat this false assertion. But this is not an absolute reason, but rather a reason that, in case of conflict, must be analyzed by one’s



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ability to judge. That reason can be overruled under certain circumstances (as we saw in the example of a person who lies in order to assist someone who claims to be innocent and is being pursued by the police of a dictatorship.) We must also keep in mind certain virtues that operate as regulative conditions for the principle of universality. Virtues like self-discipline require us to train both our character and our body in order to instill the habit of not considering our own circumstances as a constant exception. Or virtues like self-esteem allow us to resist being corrupted. We observed: being part of social groups in which those virtues are ingrained as customs helps to consolidate these behaviors generated by nondeliberative competencies. Nevertheless, there is no reason that those customs must be generalized. With respect to diverse forms of courage and selfdiscipline, their reinforcement and regulation is well known within specific groups (athletic, military, political, religious, university, cultural). Likewise, self-esteem depends to some extent—small or large—on the acknowledgment that a person receives from the second persons around them. As for trust, this is often debilitated or bolstered through interactions with second persons, and more broadly, with the presumption of trust that governs a society. What is more, the human animal only becomes a person among other people, and, for that reason, their very existence demands it. If we are to continue to examine the positive force concretized by the interpellations from overdetermined values like equality, freedom, and collaboration, then there also exists a need for us to continue to gradually determine through a particular correlation of postulates those responses that are moral principles. At the same time, the content of these postulates is underdetermined in part due to the moral principles that those postulates determine and in part due to the social potentialities that suggest their determinations. This includes postulates like the following. POSTULATE OF EQUALITY FROM A LEGAL STANDPOINT This is a second resistance for removing obstacles from our responses to interpellations by overdetermined values like equality, freedom, and collaboration. In the first part of this pamphlet, we emphasized the importance of the legal state when it is not misunderstood through the use of simple formalism as operating “by magic”: an autopoietic system that self-regulates and self-perpetuates. Counter to the rule of autarky, we reasoned that a legal state needs “extralegal energy”—for example, the moral principles of collaboration, universalization such as the equality of circumstances, and personal autonomy—in order to function. Of course, a person or group of

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people can act according to such principles outside of this state, but they may perhaps not be as strongly motivated to do so or they may eventually face risks. These risks will be small or large depending on the circumstances they must confront. On the other hand, in order for these principles to be realized socially—for them to become part of the prevailing culture in a society—they need for there to be certain degrees of actualization of a postulate that solicits: a legal state regulated by legal equality. This state exists when its members can equally exercise the rights associated with satisfying the right to freedom of expression,18 to assemble, to participate in deliberations regarding matters that concern them. In actual power-over/under social sequences, citizens are able to use their executive abilities to constitute power-with/against sequences (organizations in civil society like political parties, social movements, civic associations, and more). As a consequence, in such a society, human potentia is allowed to develop and intervene in the public sphere among dissimilar and dissident similar voices.

Do not forget that a society with a legal state is the product of a social pact: an “underdetermined game” between human animals applying the moral principle of collaboration. But as we reasoned in the first part, these constructions require diverse forms of “extralegal energy.” They are second-nature constructions that have been configured throughout the ages based on more than a few moral and legal—and political and economic—battles. The legal state is not something that pertains to the myth of the particular in the second nature. There inequality typically reigns supreme. Countless circumstances are governed by a vicious fight for survival. For this reason, postulating egalitarian legal societies are precarious constructions. I used the plural: constructions. Undoubtedly, the various legal states approach or diverge from that ideal model: the legal state. However, as we emphasized in the first part, in order for a state to minimally satisfy the conditions of a legal state, it must fulfill to some degree its constitutive objectives: impart justice and promote healthy coexistence. Yet, it is not just a matter of using centrifugal imagination to propose counterfactual programs. Every generation finds support for these searches in past learning experiences, which are often products of the strategy of trial and error. We know: throughout the centuries human animals have managed to construct fragile public spaces, though not without tragic setbacks and despite considerable doses of aggression toward the principle of universality, hatred for the commoner, the plebeian, and panic by some social groups that they might lose even the slightest of privileges. We have striven for these spaces to be governed by fragments of relative equality—sometimes only vaguely— that aid in constructing societies in which the principle of personal autonomy



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is respected. Where those spaces reach some degree of stability, we find a plurality of human animals expressing their desires, beliefs, affects, and interests with voices that not only differ, but also often oppose each other. However, these voices are not necessarily incompatible. As a result, although social power-over/under sequences have not ceased to operate in these spaces, power-with/against sequences are also able to form, along with the respect for personal power-to sequences. As we proclaim in times of hope: what is important is the participation of autonomous people in deliberations regarding matters that concern everyone, regardless of the many differences in desires, beliefs, and affects that exist between those people. I will return to this point later when I address the presumption of social transparency. Furthermore, we must keep in mind: contemporary societies are not only constructed with multiple cultures, but also with frequent changes in the composition of each culture’s population. Accordingly, we must investigate which habits19 are most appropriate for cultivation in each type of circumstance. I have already alluded to largely individual virtues like courage, honesty, and self-esteem. In the following correlation of “non-depraved entities,” I will turn to the positive path to examine other good habits that make up the arts of healthy coexistence. Social Trust Virtues or Virtues of Centrifugal Imagination In this correlation, an initial practice requires the production of tolerance. Counterexamples to the many forms of tolerance20 have been and continue to be generated by fear. These have led to a hatred of one’s real or invented enemies. Among other forms of hatred, we must continue to denounce the reemerging danger of religious hatred. (What is often described as religious hatred is frequently a disguise for disputes over territory or a source of wealth, or it defends legal inequalities and current policies or the enslavement of women and, in general, anyone who is different.) The result: “religious” wars, or wars that are claimed to be religious. Surprisingly, tolerance continues to be disparaged in practice despite the pernicious destructions of entire populations, material goods, etc. that such wars cause. This is done by those who ask too little or too much of healthy coexistence. It is not uncommon for such disparagement to be theoretical, frequently spread by those who already enjoy certain forms of tolerance “just as one enjoys clean air for breathing.” Should not tolerance, like trust, be subsumed under the same category as “the air we breathe” or the experiences that “are only appreciated when they are absent”? Therefore, it is critical that we sound the alarm: Be careful with the dramatic use of the word “tolerance,” particularly when it is scorned.

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Along with many bad reasons, tolerance is met with disdain because it is an arduous habit to learn. The assumption of tolerance is also a generator of imbalances—although differently than the assumption of corruption. Thus, the act of tolerance is attacked through obfuscation for being a practice against the interests of the nation. (In this case, the noble and exclusive word “nation” is used to refer to the supposedly inalterable social sequences of power-over/under.)21 There are various forms of tolerance.22 We would be wise to at least distinguish negative toleration from positive toleration. Negative toleration or prudence—a propaedeutic for actualizing the postulate of equality from a legal standpoint—arises from the conflict or tension between the following two levels of evaluation: • First-Degree Judgments: a person or group of people directly or as representatives of an institution hold a negative judgment of other people, actions, or institutions. • Second-Degree Judgments: that person or group possesses the executive ability to act according to that negative judgment or, at least, to express that judgment, but recognizes second-degree reasons that justify adopting the habit of restricting that power-to as the lesser evil. But not only that. When the habit of adhering to first-degree judgments becomes obsessive, human animals will sooner or later be seized by the vice of fanaticism, that addiction that takes hold and refuses to let go. Freeing oneself from this vice represents the first step in acquiring the virtue of negative tolerance or prudence. In contrast, positive tolerance understands that what many cases of negative tolerance denounce with first-degree judgments is a mistake. It is not a lesser evil that is being rejected, but rather a difference. Both types of tolerance frequently overlap or form a continuum. I will first look at the circumstances that are characteristic of negative tolerance. Types of Practices in Which One Learns to Coexist with the Paradox, or Apparent Paradox, or Tension of Negative Toleration So that we do not succumb to the vertigo of voluntarism, we must remember that practices of negative tolerance are part of precarious social arrangements which include the institutions that condition them. We can now identify a type 1 of these practices: the use of a second-degree judgment to endure beliefs or actions that a first-degree judgment considers to be wrong or, in some sense, bad. Enduring is never easy, particularly when it is also painful. However,



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following the postulate of equality from a legal standpoint to progressively determine the principle of autonomy and the principle of collaboration, with a second-degree judgment, those who tolerate negatively recognize reasons that justify enduring those with whom they disagree. There are reasons to endure the people who are close to you such as family members; for example, a person is often required to dialogue, or perhaps to negotiate, with a son or daughter, whom they consider to be wrong and concerning. But along with such reasons for enduring, there is also an attempt to defend the rights of people removed from us to varying degrees—citizens making up groups of neighbors, members of churches, labor unions, political parties, nongovernmental associations—with whom we are in disagreement. The reasons for enduring also cause us to accept certain state-imposed laws with which we also do not agree (even protesting against these laws, though without ceasing to obey them). But the reasons for enduring are also present in interactions with the distant mistaken other who emerges with habits that may even seem crazy to us: the immigrant whose customs (desires, beliefs) anger us.23 These forms of enduring require us. . . . to do what? Those who are educated with the postulate of equality from a legal standpoint tend to find themselves in type 2 circumstances. As a first person, not only will we endure beliefs and actions that are considered to be wrong. We also strive to find meaning in them, even when a first-degree judgment determines them to be bizarre: initiating processes of understanding why we reject what is rejected. In this way, we aspire to gain access to what another first person found to be some type of iniquity, prior to the intervention of a second-degree judgment of tolerance: the sensation of “immorality” or even “dangerous dishonesty” that frequently arises when encountering different beliefs or different customs or different skin colors. We also attempt to understand the apparent danger introduced by foreign languages. (These are languages that can sound like the howls of wild animals for those blinded by intolerance.) We must not assuage the starkness of the statement: “negative toleration is an arduous learning experience.”24 It is arduous because, if beliefs and actions considered to be wrong or even wicked are accepted as a lesser evil within a family, a civil society, a state, or by immigrants,25 any enduring and understanding through enduring will lead to the sometimes-painful type 3 circumstances: the need to evaluate. If negative tolerance does not evaluate what it endures and understands, then it will self-destruct. Thus, the action of evaluating should not be mistaken for delimited tolerance. This idea introduces another difficulty. In order to evaluate, we must reconsider the first person’s authority and reject some or many of their beliefs, desires, emotions, biases, or ways of life, etc. Therefore, when we evaluate, it is in our best interest to resist attitudes that are deeply ingrained.

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The act of evaluating is (unsurprisingly) the most difficult practice involved in the learning experiences of negative tolerance. Why? When evaluating, it requires great effort not to succumb to the centripetal imagination that impels us to establish our position before having undertaken the effort to negatively tolerate.26 Sadly, our evaluations of enduring and understanding frequently take us to the limits of negative toleration. To express these circumstances dramatically, sometimes the paradox of negative tolerance shatters to pieces. Second-degree judgments are faced with the intolerable. It becomes impossible to ignore doubts like: to what extent is it reasonable to negatively tolerate something that is considered reprehensible? A tool for amplifying the reach of the first person’s negative tolerance consists not in understanding, but in explaining the intolerant person as a symptom. These explanations occasionally generate reflection. Intolerance is then weakened by reconstructing failed processes of socialization and uncovering the fears being expressed in the desperate ingraining of certain particular identifications that will exclude collaboration. Another tool, in this case in response to the intolerant person (which the first person should also keep in mind) consists in encouraging resocialization therapies. Certain constructive therapies can be initiated with sudden nudges that cause us to doubt what we have believed and felt up until that moment, like in the following example: Catalina fell in love with a person of a skin color other than white who speaks with a strange accent; however, Catalina learned to put aside those properties that she previously detested because that person demonstrated their good character. Or: at her job, Catalina was assigned to be the assistant of a person who was transexual. She quickly realized that this person was just as competent, if not more so, as her heterosexual colleagues.

Unfortunately, these jolts to one’s cognitive and judicial abilities are sometimes immune to the principle of universality. A person can fall in love with someone of color as an exception yet continue evaluating all other people of color as not being deserving of respect. Also, many of these experiences cannot be planned. We must trust that they will be imposed on us. Resocialization therapies against intolerance can also be carried out using fictitious experiences: Fernando reads a poem that expresses desires similar to his own despite the fact that the author loved differently and belonged to a cultural inheritance that Fernando describes as “strange.”

Let us further consider the observation: we must trust that the experiences leading to negative tolerance will be imposed on us. Such an



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observation should not be paralyzing. Although many experiences cannot be programmed, some can and should be prepared and/or reinforced, at least in part. Experiences do not only happen. It is possible to open the door to new experiences through reeducative processes and thought experiments of the sort that highlight the importance of the postulate of equality from a legal standpoint like: “If you were of a skin color other than white, would you like to be discriminated against and not be able to defend your rights?”; or “if you had a different sexuality, would you like to be harassed and denied the right to protest in public?”; or “if you had difficulties with a language, how would you react to people who mock you or are impatient with your poor pronunciation?” Even if we are reluctant to believe it, the strategy of ascending transitions that manifest the principle of universality as well as the principle of autonomy possesses a persuasive force. However, in circumstances like the ones previously mentioned, such strategies are often ineffective. It then becomes necessary to turn to the legal state and prohibit what is intolerable. The following transcendental argument is a justification for such prohibitions: one limit to negative tolerance occurs when those who practice intolerance are seeking to eliminate institutions that defend legal equality, and thus, the very conditions necessary for negative toleration. While this tool—the transcendental argument against negative intolerance that leads to legal prohibition—appears to be convincing, it is not and needs reinforcement from the first two tools: explanations and therapies. This is because when prohibited desires, beliefs, and actions acquire a repressed status, they tend to continue to survive in the shadows. They can even become imbued with dark attraction. As a result, fears of real or imagined losses, of which negative tolerance is often a symptom, do not disappear; they remain present in a latent state. And we must once again return to the first part of this pamphlet and its warning: merely decreeing legal prohibitions and merely positing equality from a legal standpoint, where the legal state governs in the absence of all “extralegal energy”—moral, political, and economic “energy”—condemns us to use law as magic and to accept zombie institutions. Let us not neglect the lessons of practical holism. But this warning is not intended to suggest: the legal state and its laws are not important. It does not even deny that, occasionally, legal prohibition is the only option possible.27 On the other hand, the declaration that “there is nothing beyond negative tolerance” is doubly false. In the first place, it is false because, like the majority of virtues, negative tolerance, as a conditioned virtue, is a bridge-virtue:28 to stabilize itself it calls on other virtues for reinforcement. Which ones?

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Types of Habits Belonging to the Virtues of Social Trust or Virtues of Centrifugal Imagination Correlation in Which We Continue to Learn from Non-Depraved Entities: Offering Hospitality and Exercising Our Abilities to Relocate/Self-Relocate, as Well as— Predictably—Never Ceasing to Fortify the Impulse to Explore If the principle of collaboration is taken seriously, another virtue in that collection of arts of healthy coexistence becomes clear: the production of hospitality or the production of positive tolerance,29 which expands negative tolerance.30 Type 1 practices, with which hospitality is initiated, are practices of recognition. These words refer above all to the attention given by friends or acquaintances to those who approach them in need of a favor, or those who come to our house to spend an enjoyable time together where trust is more or less implied. (Friendship includes a trust that is accustomed not only to allowing small disagreements, but also enjoying them and even being grateful that they arise.)31 But recognition generates more broad interactions: it invites and even forcefully summons each human animal to recognize others and to respect them as such. Therefore, in the case of extra-communal circumstances, the word “hospitality” refers to stories of successive complications. Like what? Every first person and every group of first persons is conditioned by the impulse to affirm themselves and protect “what they naturally consider as belonging to them.” But the recognition of other human possibilities forces them to recognize that foreigners have the right to penetrate a territory “that until now has not been theirs.”32 In this type of circumstances, the trust that grants hospitality becomes an adventure. For example, we will have to express agreement in principle with the idea that foreigners feel reasonably upset over causes like violence in their own territory or a lack of jobs, or they feel desperate for having lost “what was theirs.” Agreeing in principle with another’s hostility enables the person offering hospitality to anticipate difficulties. Most recognition requires us to proceed with unsettling type 2 practices of hospitality: recognizing the dissident, and the foreigner, inside our house, as well as welcoming inconvenient interlocutors, who will certainly cause us discomfort and annoyance, even calling into question our ways of life. I repeat: the risks of hospitality not only concern extra-communal hospitality; they also operate in personal settings.33 In a family, daughters and sons are people who are not strange at first. However, with time they can become slightly strange and, occasionally, incomprehensible brutes. In many instances, these people are the first candidates to become our dissident



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interlocutors, demanding to be treated with centrifugal imagination, as well as with respect and patience.34 Nevertheless, like what occurs in the relationship with negative tolerance, the hospitality expressed in recognition35 and in the welcoming of dissidence will at some point also require evaluations. Hospitality, like negative tolerance, is not without conditions. Here are some circumstances in which it is appropriate to deny hospitality: Miguel, in a fit of jealousy, shows up at his ex-wife Graciela’s door intent on harming and perhaps even killing her. Since she senses this, she does not invite him in, nor does she offer him shelter. Instead, Graciela tries to escape to safety or to respond to Miguel’s aggressions with aggressions of her own.

Let us take a few steps backward. We noted that the most fundamental use of the word “hospitality” describes the attitude of trust that is extended to similar and dissimilar individuals who are visiting.36 In quotidian life, the uses of the words “hospitality” and “visit” are frequently intertwined. However, in addition to referring to these cases of friendly practices between people who know each other, their uses also allude to an action limited by space and time. As we have stated: there are many classes of hospitality, or situations that, at least from a distance (or from a great distance?) can resemble it, even though they may be radically different. For example, it is not appropriate to refer to a migrant as a “visitor.” The following alternative is then a mere construction: • after a certain amount of time in a particular country, the foreigner will leave, or • the foreigner will remain in the new territory as a migrant, refugee, or exile, assuming to some extent the norms and customs of the place in which they have arrived—occasionally only “to some extent.” However, sometimes this assuming implies accepting: new maxims of action, even new allegiances. By definition, if someone is an immigrant, they “choose” their second circumstances. (Beware of this elegant way, or more precisely, deceitful way of expressing what constitutes fear alternatives. Such uses of the word “choose” and the word “visit,” with respect to migrants, are notoriously twisted. In most circumstances, a “migrant” does not “choose” because the other alternatives that they must “choose” from are terrible, and even include death.) Let us assume, then, that the migrant remains in the new territory, maybe on the path to becoming a new citizen of the society in which they have arrived. I emphasize the word “becoming.” We must consider its dramatic use. In the case of emigrations and exiles, we are dealing with practices that are akin to a

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religious conversion. As is the case with many religious conversions, a person tries to forget a part of their identity existing prior to the conversion. Or, at the very least, they attempt to erase a fragment of who they once were. For an emigrant, many everyday dramas arise because they are often betraying their own name. Furthermore, their body and skin color continue to accompany them like an inconvenient shadow, pointed out by incessant aggressive interactions. For this reason, hospitality is also a conditioned virtue: a bridge-virtue that solicits support so as not to deteriorate. Therefore, I will examine other arts of healthy coexistence referred to by the virtue of the ability to relocate/ self-relocate. What is this strange virtue?37 Let us not trouble ourselves too much. The words “relocate” and “self-relocate” refer to actions that are less susceptible to servility or immorality than we might suppose. Entering or reentering a location—an action we carry out regularly—forces people to “readapt” and recalibrate or modify their forms of trust. These are phases in a process whereby a human animal constructs itself as a particular person by opening up the self to second and third persons, but also to stimuli in a changing environment. Indeed, human animals lose or distance themselves from their family, friendships, teachers, and colleagues: processes that cause what at one time were intense presences to disappear. Even love sworn to be “forever” will fade.38 Yet following those farewells, we meet, love, and admire new people to whom we must learn to respond, deviating from previously acquired habits, little by little, or all of a sudden. We must adopt other habits and even modify the orientation of cognitive and judicial abilities.39 This involves training ourselves to recognize and be recognized, to allow ourselves to be uncomfortable in other circumstances. Of course, the need to self-relocate is frequently accompanied by tormenting emotions: In order for Luis to self-relocate, he must not only relearn how to use a less dominating voice when he speaks, but also how to doubt himself and be open to new opportunities. For example, Luis must cultivate his ability to judge in order to know how to listen. When he is outside of the workplace where he is the boss or outside of his circle of male friends, listening is paralyzing for him.

Due to various reasons, relocation tends to become more complicated for the migrant and the exile. When people enter a new territory (and are not there for tourism or business, and do not have enough money to isolate themselves doing what they enjoy most), they are forced to: • expand their cognitive ability and



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• their ability to judge in order to adjust to these unknown circumstances and then, as a result, be able to appropriately exercise their executive ability. Caution: in our description of the virtue of relocation/self-relocation, we have seemingly suggested that a person who self-relocates must rely on their own abilities. Such a simplification leads to voluntarist vertigo. Whoever self-relocates does not act independently of their circumstances. In the practice of this virtue, one will encounter obstacles that possess properties like the following: a relocation leads to self-transformations that demand new forms of social reciprocity.

Once a person has relocated, they will or will not recognize, or they will or will not accept, dissidence differently than in the past. Consequently, the following hostile circumstances are examples of relocation/self-relocation that lend renewed importance to the postulate of equality from a legal standpoint: • With respect to recognition at work, many relocations argue for legislation that establishes equal pay for equal work regardless of gender or color. • Many women demand recognition of the possibility to self-relocate within new family structures and romantic relationships, which will allow them to hold public positions and participate in political and economic actions the same as men. • People with disparaged sexualities or skin colors, in order to put an end to this disparagement, seek the legal implementation of their rights that, in turn, they again relocate.40 But for this precarious virtue, there is an extensive pathology lurking in the shadows. For example, if we yield to opportunism in order to self-relocate, then we are abandoning a virtue to yield to a vice. Returning to the negative path, the readaptations that are involved in relocation often imply actions that the first person or persons realize due to “opportunism” in the broadest sense of this terrible word: to accomplish unspeakable objectives or out of fear. And, as such, they eventually consent to the perverse redefinitions of their personal identity that will lead to their degeneration. Consider these extreme examples. An individual wishing to be accepted into a harmful environment—a group of thieves or a gang of kidnappers— is required to commit increasingly serious crimes. But heteronomy does not circulate solely in undeniably criminal environments. On occasion, in

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order to “appease” the bosses, an employee in a multinational corporation is ordered to commit offenses that little by little turn the workplace into a mercenary institution. For the person who takes the first steps and complies with demands that lead to vices, self-relocation becomes a mere ploy sometimes culminating in torment. That person must either don a mask in order to survive, and sooner or later that mask becomes their face, or they make no attempt to resist embracing their crime. What can we do to avoid settling for the recognition we receive from those who give the orders in oppressive power-over/under sequences? This is perhaps an opportune moment for us to return to the positive path of thought and appeal to the underdeterminations of the moral principle of autonomy and the moral principle of universality. To stay alert against the transformation of the virtue of relocation/self-relocation into a vice, we must fearlessly allow the maxim of the action of relocation/self-relocation to become a universal law. Because such efforts only accomplish their objective when they confidently endorse the impetus to explore. Initially, this new virtuous habit will only be adopted if our personal structures—our habits of desiring, believing, feeling, etc.—have not yet been solidified to such an extent that they are difficult to change or even slightly modify. How so? If we trust X, then we assume X to be true. Certain manifestations of trust constitute a groundwork for desires, beliefs, affects, and practices that are deeply ingrained in the first person. They often become so intertwined that the first person cannot help but perceive life as one enormous knot. For example, an adolescent has self-relocated becoming just another member in a criminal gang; or a high-ranking executive has turned a blind eye to several acts of fraud in order not to lose their power within a company that has progressively transformed into a zombie or mercenary institution. To disentangle such knots, we are forced—enduring considerable anxiety and suffering—to consider other ways of being. In collaboration with the impetus to explore, we would be wise to look and listen to our surroundings as suggested by the principle of nomadic thought that reminds us of those counterpoints that complicate—but also illuminate—living, perceiving, and thinking: Investigate by shifting from living and self-understanding to looking and listening all around with discernment, but also by shifting to thinking and reasoning with rigor, though without ignoring that counterpoints will usually be established between living, looking, listening, thinking, and reasoning.

However, the virtue of the impetus to explore is conditioned—we must again insist on this point to not succumb to voluntarist vertigo—by both the circumstances in which a person has lived in the past and the various social stimuli



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present in the group to which a person belongs, including its biases and other deformations. An example: Juliana does not yet know how to resist her entangled understanding of herself, in which she is imprisoned as a divorced woman—this situation is still a stigma in some societies. Furthermore, she has not only suffered affective losses. She has also suffered economically—she must remind herself that she has very little money left to make it to the end of the month, so she cannot buy the dresses that, according to her, make her attractive. This mortifies her.41 These affective and economic losses place such a burden on her that she is incapable of exploring other ways of being.

The impetus to explore demands disparate tasks. Besides being mindful of the principle of universality and the principle of autonomy, we must respond to past affective and economic needs with novel strategies, negotiate recognitions in the workplace or within one’s family and between friends differently, or, even more challenging, let go of suffering that overwhelms and imprisons us. However, long-standing desires, beliefs, and affects prevent us from learning to know how to resist phobic biases: hallucinations of mostly imagined enemies. They can even prevent us from wanting to resist them. But if we do not trust that it is possible, the mental entanglements can be paralyzing. Precisely because the temptation of impotence is absent from the virtues of tolerance, hospitality, relocation/self-relocation, and the impetus to explore, we can consider these arts of healthy coexistence collectively as virtues of social trust, as well as virtues of centrifugal imagination. If a person practices negative tolerance and hospitality, while also making a virtue of relocation/ self-relocation, then that person is willing to reexamine their own assumptions and to modify or expand them in order to welcome other people and other experiences. Such a person works to become more receptive to exploring new beliefs and new affects. The impetus to explore often enriches the arts of healthy coexistence that cause us to imagine unsuspected dimensions in the postulate of equality from a legal standpoint, put them into practice, and then direct us to new demands and tasks. At this point, I will address a suspicion, or more precisely, a wager that again affirms the need for nomadic thought: every art of healthy coexistence is realized by practicing virtues that should be adopted as paths. In the case of the collection of arts of healthy coexistence that we have been discussing here, their point of departure was the actualization of the postulate of equality from a legal standpoint, but the paths of negative tolerance, hospitality, relocations that relocate, and exploration quickly exceed the scope of this postulate.

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“There Is Nothing Beyond” Momentarily revisiting the virtue of negative tolerance, we noted that the declaration “there is nothing beyond negative tolerance” is false in one sense because like so many other virtues, it is in need of reinforcements. The declaration “there is nothing beyond negative tolerance” is also false if it is understood to mean “there is nothing beyond this type of tolerance.” Equally false are parallel declarations like “there is nothing beyond this type of hospitality,” “there is nothing beyond this type of relocations that relocate,” and “there is nothing beyond this type of exploration.” Even if we imagine a democratic society organized by institutions that respect disagreements between equals, such a society will experience the particular limitations of its place and time. Neither people nor societies are capable of vaulting beyond their geography and history. We are well aware of the looming inevitable: one unsuspecting morning, we will face as-of-yet unperceived obstacles; another reminder of our situation as human animals. It is also a reminder that an innatism open to the circumstantial development of the abilities, like the practical holism that governs it, is in permanent construction. Therefore, since the future, or more precisely, the futures are processes that are dependent upon trajectory, it is inevitable that the days to come will be constructed with what does not ask for permission, even violently bursting into our lives: the unforeseeable. One might object: this characterization of the correlation of virtues of social trust or virtues of centrifugal imagination in the arts of healthy coexistence is achieved through successive bridge-virtues that are conditioned virtues. And one might impugn: conditioned tolerances are repression in disguise. Conditioned hospitality is another form of subjection: refuge dictated by the hosts. Conditioned relocation/self-relocation tends to be indistinguishable from shrewd efforts to prosper: at any price. Overly planned practices of exploration are indistinguishable from calculations to prolong past schemes. Continuing along this path of reasoning will eventually lead to proposed alternatives like the following: • a person is capable of tolerating unconditionally, or negative tolerance is discovered to be a farce that conceals a vice; • a person is capable of extending hospitality unconditionally, or hospitality is discovered to be a farce that conceals a vice;42 • a person is capable of relocating and self-relocating unconditionally, or relocation/self-relocation is discovered to be a farce that conceals a vice; • a person is capable of exploring unconditionally, or the impetus to explore is discovered to be a farce that conceals a vice.43



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The construction of such alternatives in not inoffensive. I suspect that the words “unconditioned negative tolerance,” “unconditioned hospitality,” “unconditioned relocation/self-relocation,” and “unconditioned exploration” either represent nonsense or imply a negative value. If we eliminate the limitations and assumptions of each of these virtues, we are proposing experiences that occur without evaluation. These are uses of the strategy of trial and error in which we do not allow ourselves to learn from failure. Let us then reconsider words like “unconditioned negative tolerance.” We stated that if we eliminate the effort to evaluate what we tolerate negatively, then we are condemned to a position of “anything goes.” Frivolity of this nature leads to dangerous forms of the myth of the indifferent bystander. Actions like the practice of torture in extermination camps or helping an injured child or running on the beach become equal in value. An eye that does not let itself be stimulated by its circumstances is an eye that does not see. For human animals living is notoriously not merely about responding to good and bad circumstances, but also allowing ourselves to learn from them. The case of hospitality is no exception. The conditions are not set only by the host; the guest also has a say, and interactions are soon established between the two. Similar parallel observations can also be made with respect to alternatives involving virtues like relocation/self-relocation and exploration. We must do away with that magic: acting without conditions. No life is without conflicts that trap us in difficult corners. The ideal of “moving beyond any condition,” which is another way of wanting to “move beyond any dependency,” is nothing more than what we argued in the first part to be a recourse to magic. Because of the anxieties they produce, practices that are of great personal and social benefit like conditioned negative tolerance, conditioned hospitality, conditioned relocations that relocate, and conditioned explorations are disqualified. These practices, though dependent on “exterior energy,” hold value within certain limits, like every other virtue. Do not forget: bravery without conditions, without limits, becomes recklessness, a vice that is difficult to control because it is a bridge-vice to unfettered violence and barbarism.44 Therefore, the anxiety expressed in wanting “to move beyond all conditions”—oftentimes not knowing exactly beyond what one wants to move—can lead to suicidal radicalizations.45 This invites the question: Are the postulates of equality from a legal standpoint and the arts of healthy coexistence sufficient to adequately determine moral principles and, subsequently, to respond to the interpellations from overdetermined values like equality, freedom, and collaboration?46

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NOTES 1. José Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Quixote, trans. Evelyn Rugg and Diego Marín (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1961), 45. 2. This type of behavior has rightfully received significant attention in ecological psychology; cf. E. Gibson and A. Pick, An Ecological Approach to Perceptual Learning and Development (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 3. The exposition of this correlation of principles is an attempt to outline, and only outline, an argued (and too irreverent?) reading of the formulations of the categorical imperative, just as Kant presents them in his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). A “too irreverent reading” (with a Hegelian inclination?): among many other liberties taken, it may be upsetting that Groundwork’s second chapter will be read countercurrent to Kant’s exposition. 4. “Underdetermined principle”: Rawls, among other thinkers, warns against making the mistake of interpreting Kant’s moral principles as a strict “algorithm”; cf. J. Rawls, “Themes in Kant’s Moral Philosophy,” in Collected Papers, ed. Samuel Freeman, 494–528 (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1999). 5. What I formulate here as the principle of collaboration attempts to reconstruct what Kant understands as the third formulation of the categorial imperative, the “Kingdom of Ends” formulation: “Act according to the maxims of a member universally legislating for a merely possible kingdom of ends.” I. Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, eds. and trans. Mary Gregor and Jens Timmermann (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 107. In my article “¿Falta una fórmula del imperativo categórico?” (Is There a Missing Formulation of the Categorical Imperative?), Episteme 28, no. 2 (2008): 55–72, I propose that the expression “kingdom of ends,” which according to Kant consists in “the systematic union of several rational beings through common laws” (Kant, Groundwork, 95), alludes to a society of human animals governed by laws that respect each participant of said society, in which all its members are self-legislators and obey the universal laws that they have given themselves. However, this society is not a utopia to be reached in the future, but instead a counterfactual concept, a demand used to judge and evaluate our current social circumstances; as Kant emphasizes, “einem bloß möglichen Reiche der Zwecke” (“a merely possible kingdom of ends”). Thus, this formulation indicates bidirectionality: inward, toward morality, and outward, toward law, politics, and the economy. If I am not mistaken, this bidirectionality with which we must orient our attention is already indicative of the need to hold practical holism as the horizon for both our actions and their explanations. Additionally, Thomas E. Hill, Jr. in the chapter “The Kingdom of Ends” in his Dignity and Practical Reason in Kant’s Moral Theory, 58–66 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), after enumerating the negative and positive social conditions required to characterize this counterfactual concept of society, defends “the similarity between Kant’s kingdom of ends principle and the contractual model of justice developed by John Rawls” (66). Sarah Holtman develops this defense in “Autonomy and the Kingdom of Ends,” in The Blackwell Guide to Kant’s Ethics, ed. Thomas E. Hill, Jr., 102–17 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2009). Contrary to readings suggesting that the expression “kingdom of ends” refers to some caliginous



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beyond, even located in the heavens, Holtman indicates that Kant’s proposal “contrasts sharply with any version of divine command theory” (112–13). But that is not all. Holtman states: “we should notice the potentially fruitful connection between the moral perspective of the kingdom of ends and the accounts of citizenship and cosmopolitanism that are central to Kant’s later political theory” (113). Holtman also appeals to the Rechtslehre, or Doctrine of Right, to describe “citizens of the just state in a way that echoes this account of legislators for the kingdom of ends” (114). She does not go so far as to posit an at least implicit practical holism in Kant, a conjecture that would perhaps prove false. However, Holtman concludes: “the discussion of the kingdom of ends not only comprise[s] central elements of Kant’s moral philosophy, but connect[s] what otherwise may appear to be quite separate aspects of his practical thought” (116). 6. Following Kant, the formulation of autonomy is: Act “as a will universally legislating through all its maxims” (Kant, Groundwork, 93). The autonomy of the people is a limit that should include any politics it is able to construct, or that should determine the degree to which a society is collaborative. For the dignity of each human animal is founded on this autonomy, regardless of skin color, sexuality, language, religious or political beliefs, economic position, age, health, or sickness. The respect for common dignity is the non-negotiable price that people must pay in order for different walks of life to live together. 7. In Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), Andy Clark states: “It is the problem of understanding how human thought and reason is born out of looping interactions between material brains, material bodies, and complex cultural and technological environments” (11). 8. Cf. I. Brigandt and A. C. Love, “Conceptualizing Evolutionary Novelty: Moving Beyond Definitional Debates,” Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B Molecular and Developmental Evolution 318, no. 6 (Sept 2012): 417–27. These authors emphasize that the characterizations of novelty reconstruct its diverse functions according to an evolutive epistemology. 9. These words are a direct attempt to recover what Aristotle understood as phronesis and, perhaps more indirectly, what Kant understood as reflective judgment. 10. This strategy is famously used by J. Rawls in “Themes in Kant’s Moral Philosophy,” 1999. 11. A girl or a boy is not able to walk or speak prior to physiological and cerebral maturation. But they are also unable to do so independent of stimulation from the circumstances of their environment: without interpellations from their physical, vegetable, and animal surroundings, as well as from various social constructions. 12. The relativity of self-constructions that elaborate the autonomy of cognitive, judicial, and executive abilities becomes particularly apparent along the negative path. Among other degenerative conditions, we must take note of those violations of human rights that are specific to political despotism. The suffering produced by torture, the murder of loved ones, or living amid forced disappearances or perpetual extorsions not only shapes the outrage of a precise moment in time; it also undermines

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the sense of control over one’s life in the subsequent days and even years. Consequently, it weakens our confidence in our abilities. 13. That “strange mixture” of biology and history does not cease to defy thought. If we appeal to the strategy of temporal detours, among other memorable responses to this challenge, it is worth considering, and carefully rethinking, the Myth of Er from Plato’s Republic, and in the language of modernity, the third antinomy regarding spontaneity and determinism in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. In the theoretical tradition that began with Darwin, sociobiology has explored interactions between natura and nurtura, between the genes at the conception of the human animal and what it acquires later, and how it transforms these acquisitions according to the circumstances of its life. For more on this, two collections of articles still merit interest: Sociobiology: Beyond Nature/Nurture? Reports, Definitions and Debate (1980), eds. George W. Barlow and James Silverberg (New York: Routledge, 2019) and Sociology and Epistemology, ed. James H. Fetzer (Netherlands: Springer, 1985). It is also useful to consider Evelyn Fox Keller, The Mirage of a Space Between Nature and Nurture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010). From a different perspective, Scott Atran traces a sort of map of the various positions on this “strange mixture” in his work “Adaptationism for Human Cognition: Strong, Spurious or Weak?” Mind and Language 20, no. 1 (Feb 2005): 39–67. A position similar to the one I outline in this pamphlet can be found in Sergio F. Martínez, “What Is Innovation? New Lessons from Biology,” Theoria. An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science 34, no. 3 (2019): 343–55. 14. Kant expresses his formula of universal law like this: “Act only according to that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law” (Groundwork, 71). In other passages, Kant clarifies that it involves being able to will “without contradiction.” In tradition, a distinction is made based on Kant’s work between contradiction in conception and contradiction in will. It is often assumed that the first class of contradiction constitutes a clear and precise criterion for judgment and, therefore, establishes perfect duties: duties that are immune to controversy, for example, one should not lie. In order for my act of lying to have meaning, I must make my hearing believe that I am speaking the truth. It is impossible to attempt to universalize the maxim of lying, since in a world of only liars, a lie would lack meaning. In this text, I argue how this seemingly perfect duty is not immune to controversy. The contradiction in will typically provides us with even more controversial criteria. In Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Christine M. Korsgaard effectively distinguishes three ways in which this contradiction can be interpreted: as a logical contradiction, as a teleological contradiction, and as a practical contradiction (78). 15. For a vigorous critique of moral universalism in those versions that reconstruct it as a form of practical heterogeneity, see Talbot Brewer, The Retrieval of Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Brewer insists that we must distance ourselves from conceiving deliberative actions and episodes as if they were atoms. Instead, we must consider—I would say through the use of nomadic thought—the complex continuum of those activities and its foundation in our habituations, in our virtues and our vices.



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16. For centuries, the word “habit” has been the preferred translation in many cultural heritages to express the Greek word “hexis” used by Aristotle in Nichomachean Ethics, 1104a25 (23), a work as decisive in the reflection on practice as Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, to denote a necessary task in moral education. This translation is based on observations like: virtues are gradually acquired through repetition, if these repetitions are begun during childhood education; cf. Nichomachean Ethics, 1103b21-25 (22). In the second half of the twentieth century, the translation of hexis as “habit” is sometimes substituted instead by words like “state” and “character traits,” which belong to a purely mentalistic language. I suspect the reason behind this substitution—besides avoiding our embodied cognition and, thus, attempting to imprison morals inside the tower of a windowless subjectivity—was to misrepresent habits. They were reduced to the external routines of a behavior that consisted in the mechanical repetition of body movements—without allowing for even minimal degrees of spontaneity and transformation. 17. People usually possess idiosyncratic habits. Nevertheless, a person tends to adopt both the particular habits of the social group to which they belong as well as the habits of the rest of society. Furthermore, the collection of habits, particular and general, construct the customs that contain desires and interests satisfied in the past, and reaffirm the respective emotions. In turn, customs also serve to reaffirm personal habits. This partly explains the persistence of good and bad habits rooted in customs and the difficulties in modifying them. But it is possible to modify bad habits if the person is open to reeducation. For example, in order to change bad habits—including freeing oneself from addictions—strategies such as the following are useful: modifying behaviors with which they are usually associated (let us say for example that a selfish person forces themself to start doing small favors even though it annoys them, but to also start assessing their failures in their interactions with other people), changing desires and affects linked to their vice (using the strategy of trial and error, a person tries out alternative desires and affects), and examining the ideology that is partly responsible for the existence and reinforcement of their vice (the vice of selfishness can be identified as a cog in a fiercely competitive and extremely non-collaborative society). Therefore, any fight against vices should also make use of practical holism. 18. Christoph Menke in his radical Critique of Rights, trans. Christopher Turner (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020) warns of the ambiguity of subjective rights. These rights do not only express the respect of each individual’s freedom but also the separation of each individual from other individuals and their community. Thus, we cannot disregard the (sometimes agonizing) conflicts that in fact occur between the values of equality, freedom, and collaboration. 19. Caution: Non-reductive concepts of habit are not only found in Aristotelian and Aristotelian-Thomist traditions. In many cultural heritances deeply rooted in quotidian life, such a reduction is not admitted. Neither is it accepted in many traditions of thought. For example, pragmatism frequently praises the cultivation of good habits. In The Principles of Psychology (1809), William James makes his position clear in the famous aphorism: “Habit a second nature! Habit is ten times nature” (120). Of particular interest is the fourth chapter titled “The Laws of Habit” (104–27), which contains the conferences for educators that James gave in 1899. In his elaborations,

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he reconsiders Alexander Bain’s proposals on habits and formulates five maxims that should be examined step by step, especially the link that he establishes between habits and emotions, as well as his insistence on how habits shape character. The work of John Dewey in texts like Human Nature and Conduct (1922) or Experience and Nature (1925), in which the education of one’s habits plays a decisive role in both personal life and the democratic constructions of a society, should also not be overlooked; cf. Gregory Pappas, John Dewey’s Ethics: Democracy and Experience (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008). Additionally, in philosophical traditions perhaps not so related to pragmatism, M. Merleau-Ponty in La Structure du comportement (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1942) and Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945) understands habituation as the process that preserves the continuity of perception with communication and action. In a more sociological perspective, Pierre Bourdieu places great value on habits, which he describes as “structured structuring structures” that make society possible, cf. Raisons pratiques. Sur la théorie de l’action (Paris: Seuil, 1996). Those who accept a non-reductive concept of habit include, as a part of said habit, the desires and beliefs regarding the end to be achieved, which are subjectively considered to be some type of good, and the possible transformations of those habits during the experience. 20. But not only these. Among others, scientific disciplines in many fields (research on the brain, neurosciences, cognitive sciences, experimental psychology . . . ) analyze habits in terms of the power they wield, for better or for worse, over behavior. “For better or for worse”: we strive to incorporate virtues like respecting every person as an end in themself into our ways of desiring, believing, and acting, but we also strive—often unsuccessfully—to rid ourselves of compulsive behaviors and conducts that have become fixed stereotypes, like xenophobia and racism, or addictions to certain drugs. (These conducts are more related to each other that what we might assume.) As Ann M. Graybiel points out in her article “Habits, Rituals, and the Evaluative Brain”: “Many of these repetitive behaviors, whether motor or cognitive, are built up in part through the action of basal ganglia–based neural circuits that can iteratively evaluate contexts and select actions and can then form chunked representations of action sequences that can influence both cortical and subcortical brain structures.” Annual Review of Neuroscience 31 (2008), 361. In addition, studies on habit formation distinguish the way in which they are learned, the result of a procedural brain system that differs from declarative learning. For example, forgetting certain facts contrasts with the preservation of habits and daily routines (362). For more on this, refer to the research of B. J. Knowton, J. A. Mangles, L. R. Squire, “A Neostriatal Habit Learning System in Humans,” Science 273, no. 5280 (06 Sept 1996): 1399–1402. Wendy Wood in her article “Habit in Personality and Social Psychology” presents a sort of summary of investigations on this subject since the second half of the twentieth century: “‘Habit’ is largely missing from modern social and personality psychology.” Two lines later, she qualifies this: “But there are signs of change.” Among the many reasons behind this temporary neglect, the author indicates the preference for experimental methods: “Habits and other slow-to-change dispositions are not amenable to experimental designs that test immediate consequences of a manipulation.” But even more important is the fact that “habits and goals have been treated



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as alternative ways to explain behavior.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 21, no. 4 (Nov 2017), 389. Consequently, many researchers have treated behavioral explanations guided by goals and evaluations as alternatives to those caused by habit (390–91). This is the way in which what I referred to as a reductive concept of habit has been used. 21. Could the word “nation” not be used to refer to something ignoble like a mega-dictatorship or a mega-mafia? In the following pages, I will reconstruct the virtue of tolerance as learning experiences that serve to counter the confusion brought about by nationalism: difficult lessons both for the collective and the individual. To do this, I consider the reflections of Carlos Thiebaut in his book De la tolerancia (On Tolerance) (Madrid: Visor, 1999) and his article “Tolerancia y hospitalidad. Una reflexión moral ante la inmigración” (Tolerance and Hospitality. Ethical Thoughts Concerning Immigration), Arbor 186, no. 744 (2010): 543–54. I also attempt not to neglect the contemplations that make up the intellectual canon—the venerable canon—of modern discussions on tolerance: Baruch Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise (1670); John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689); Voltaire, Treatise on Toleration (1763), John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859). As was previously noted, these reflections primarily emerged from the religious intolerance in Europe that caused one disaster after another. Unfortunately, at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, we are again witnessing variations of these destructions, symptoms of problems that are not only religious—certainly the majority of them are not religious. It is as if we human animals were incapable of learning from our failures at healthy coexistence and the suffering they provoke, and thus incapable of refusing to become addicts of a torture-filled past not quite so past. 22. Cf. Rainer Forst, Toleration in Conflict: Past and Present, trans. C. Cronin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) and The Right to Justification: Elements of a Constructivist Theory of Justice, trans. J. Flynn (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012). 23. Virtues and vices—which through practical holism I have deemed the regulative conditions for the “moral game”—are often criticized by pointing out: systematic empirical observations (using the appropriate psychological experiments) reveal that people do not possess the more or less fixed character traits that would be expected if virtues and vices were possible. We find this “situationist” critique—which I will return to later—in John Doris, Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) and, somewhat ambiguously, in Mark Alfano, Character as Moral Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). I will defer the discussion on whether that same criticism can be levied against thinking, following the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition, for example, that virtues and vices are above all good and bad habits. In any case, Doris does not call into doubt that there are character traits, or as I prefer to assert, local habits that find expression in particular situations like, for example, being tolerant with friends and being willing to satisfy their needs. But Doris upholds that there are good empirical reasons to consider that people do not have global character traits (i.e., consistent and stable in very diverse situations), like besides being tolerant with friends, also being tolerant with exiles, deliberating over their needs, and acting in accordance. This observation

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by Doris is reaffirmed constantly throughout everyday life. In fact, part of an education—oftentimes a civic education—consists in striving to increasingly extend the reach of underdetermined good local habits, progressively determining them using the principle that, from Kant, we call the principle of universality. The intention is that through education good local habits become generators of expanding circles so that many interactions will at the very least be less destructive. In Mark Alfano, “A Plague on Both Your Houses: Virtue Theory After Situationism and Repligate,” Teoría 38, no. 2 (2018): 115–22, we find a call for caution with respect to these discussions between those who defend that virtues should be our ideals and those rooted in empirical research who consider such ideals to be impossible to realize. 24. Statements like “toleration is an arduous learning experience” are easily upheld, even if the existence of virtues and vices as character traits is called into doubt. For example, Mark Alfano argues that virtues and vices function as self-fulfilling prophesies (Character as Moral Fiction, 2012). People do not act because they possess certain character traits (despite the fact that many social scientists, including a good number of psychologists, accept them as variables), but because as first persons, they believe that they possess them or because the second persons with whom they interact believe this. Indeed, observing that customs perform a reaffirming function regarding personal habits is an allusion to the role played by social expectations that make it difficult to modify cultural or moral habits, for example, if not also modifying the relevant political and even economic customs. 25. The paradox of the tolerant racist is unquestionably troublesome: an immoral belief (the belief that people of a skin color other than white are inferior), if limited and not expressed through hate language or actions, is considered to become a virtue or partly a virtue; cf. J. Horton, “Three (Apparent) Paradoxes of Toleration,” Synthesis Philosophica 9, no. 1 (1994): 17. However, is not the paradox of the tolerant racist nothing more than an irritating case of the paradox or apparent paradox, or tension that is involved in all negative toleration: accepting with second-degree judgments what is simultaneously rejected with first-degree judgments? 26. Evaluating constantly tempts us—and how!—to emphatically return to the hostilities that are oftentimes provoked by other people’s beliefs and actions we do not accept, hostilities that we believed we had already learned to let go of by using a second-degree judgment. 27. We should also consider that supposedly aristocratic, but constantly reappearing, character: the more or less intolerant intellectual who is aware of their intolerances and celebrates them. Because for such characters, not understanding disagreements is an attribute or, more precisely, just another tic in their resounding personality. The various manifestations of this character—in men, in women—move about the world contemplating, not without weariness and soon with boredom, enigmatic objects and events that teach them nothing—bored tourists who, on safaris, hear the howls of the jungle society in which they are living, and feel disdain. 28. In a sense, the various virtues and, sadly, vices also, tend to be transitional virtues and vices in that a virtue tends to lead to another virtue and a vice to another vice. Nevertheless, some virtues and some vices deserve to be explicitly recognized



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as being emphatically transitional virtues or vices: gateway virtues or vices. But does not something similar occur with moral principles? 29. Let us again consider the paradox of the tolerant racist. With this paradox, it is often suggested: one should not ask the racist to be tolerant, but rather that they make the effort to let go of their racist beliefs. However, such a request abandons the situations of negative tolerance, and, at the same time, negative tolerance is reaffirmed as a transitional virtue. This is because the request urges one to proceed according to the arts of healthy coexistence: it asks the racist, as a next step—though there are others— to produce hospitality in relationship to people of skin colors different than their own. 30. Does the production of hospitality imply a democracy? It is clear that since time immemorial hospitality has been honored without democracy. (Among other testimonies, we can find offerings of hospitality in the Bible, the Iliad, in many Meso-American songs, etc.) Are these, then, counterexamples to practical holism? Not at all. We must not confuse the words “normative practical holism under construction” with the words “definitive practical homogeneity.” The latter words refer to what is homogeneous once and for all. Furthermore, the recognition of the other that hospitality realizes without democracy can, and even should, be reconstructed as a promise. Or it should at least be reconstructed as the seeds that in fertile soil can become the timid contours of democracy. 31. I will not examine the type of hospitality that is understood as a form of merchandise—like hospitality for sale—as it is used in hotel and restaurant signs that announce: “Great Hospitality and Comfort.” 32. It is strange that adopting nomadic thought and becoming hospitable to other voices—for example, foreign voices—in the conversation that we have with ourselves and with those around us often encounters difficulties that are perhaps not as serious but are to a certain degree similar to receiving foreigners in what we consider to be our own land. 33. Wendy Wood states: “Habits are also a component of close relationships. When relationships are diagrammed as behavioral exchanges, they reveal how everyday social interactions between close partners reflect ‘norms, interaction habits, and understandings’ (H. H. Kelley et al., Close Relationships, 67)” (Wood, Habit in Personality, 399). 34. In Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch—or translated/interpreted as Perpetually Towards Peace (perhaps more in line with its intentions?)—Kant considers that the “right of visitation” (138) and the obligation of hospitality are not only beneficial for knowledge and commerce. The reasoning he puts forth in support of that right and that obligation may be surprising to the those who have imbibed the certainties of the nineteenth century. That support is “the common right to possession on the surface of the earth” (138) of all human animals. The vile counterexamples to this “right of visitation”—counterexamples to which Kant is not blind—were provided by European powers and their armies that advanced over Africa and Asia, but also over the Americas, sacking the land of riches, oppressing the indigenous peoples, constructing new forms of slavery, and along the way, establishing the bad reputation of hospitality. For more on this, see Carole Pateman and Charles W. Mills, Contract and Domination (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007).

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35. Perhaps the most influential theoretical proposal on recognition is found in Hegel. In The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Hegel expounds the struggle for recognition in the life-or-death, master-slave dialectic. Of interest for the moment is the opposition in this dialectic between asymmetrical recognition, the product of coercion like that of the master over the slave, and mutual recognition, reciprocal between free individuals. Hospitality seeks to achieve the second type of recognition. One thinker who has continued to explore the experience of recognition is Axel Honneth; cf. Das Recht der Freiheit (Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2011); The Pathologies of Individual Reason: Hegel’s Social Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). 36. Visiting friends—the most common use of the word “visit” in daily life—is an excellent, age-old custom in many cultures that reaffirms the interpersonal trust that produces recognition and, therefore, healthy coexistence. This visitation introduces therapies to counter not only the tedium of centripetal imagination and its monotonous thoughts, but also the social knots and hostilities that this type of imagination typically occasion. 37. There is no existing canon or fixed hierarchy of virtues, or vices. Instead, they are often gradually discovered over time using a strategy of trial and error. There is also no canon or fixed hierarchy of reasons. In diverse historical circumstances we can respond with old or new, good or bad habits, and with good or bad reasons. Moreover, in good moral and political habits like hospitality and self-repositioning, it again becomes evident that a habit does not consist, or does not only consist, of a set of body movements, but rather of an action that the first person considers to be of value and whose practice furthers and amplifies that evaluation. For example, something analogous to what we observe with other types of habits like playing a sport or a musical instrument also occurs with respect to moral and political habits. 38. Concerning the expression “forever”: human animals are unable to profess this word without lying, unless it is understood as a challenge. 39. The phenomenon of repositioning/self-repositioning, when functioning as a virtue, gradually causes oppositions like friend/enemy, advocate/adversary, proponent/ opponent, amenable/hostile, and others that determine specific roles to become more measured and often blurred. So, counter to those who—adopting, for example, the warlike biases of Carl Schmitt in The Concept of the Political (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007)—attempt to formulate all, or at least many social interactions according to a “friend/enemy” opposition, we must insist on a twofold reminder. The first harks back to the warning: Be careful with words. But why? Each and every word in oppositions like friend/enemy, advocate/adversary, proponent/opponent, amenable/ hostile suggests different practical and theoretical orientations. For example, the commonplace dictum still holds true: “the enemy who kills must be contained, or if that is not possible, then destroyed, whereas the friend must be defended and protected.” In turn, we enter into agreements with the advocate and the adversary alike, though the agreements are usually different in nature and with differing consequences. In a discussion, the word “proponent” refers to someone who presents a problem and the word “opponent” in one who introduces criticisms; however, when a debate takes place between two or more people, each of them makes use of the functions of a proponent and opponent alternately. Using the word “enemy” interchangeably with



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words like “adversary,” “opponent,” or “antagonist” reveals an alarming insensitivity to words, which in many circumstances leads to imagining enemies around every corner. That insensitivity also becomes a shield preventing interpellations from the circumstances. For that reason, the second reminder states: in the various contexts— public, private, personal—in which one exercises the virtue of repositioning and self-repositioning, it is wise not to adopt any of the mentioned oppositions before the fact. Too many ties to the word “enemy” and even the word “adversary,” for example, eliminate the surprises and new experiences that often emerge from the circumstances suggested by these oppositions. (Many times, those whom we considered to be enemies and adversaries surprise us with kindness and shows of goodwill. They were more our friends than we realized or, maybe, more than what we wanted to believe.) 40. Relocation often entails negotiations that not only regard the norms of coexistence. They also involve (sometimes very focally) religious, legal, and political norms, not to mention economic measures. It must be stressed, however: these relocations are not only the product of reflections—although they must include them to some degree. They largely result from the habit of taking part in practices that include interactions with people, even those who are unpleasant and provoke affects that tend toward aggressivity, as well as in other practices of trial and error. It is then a question of not yielding to the vice that I will call “argumentative vertigo” and that John Doris in his book Talking to Our Selves: Reflection, Ignorance, and Agency (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015) calls “reflectivism” and that consists in that particular form of magic: defending that “the exercise of human agency consists in judgment and behavior ordered by self-conscious reflection about what to think and do” (x). Nevertheless, I will reiterate that we must be alert not to succumb to the false dichotomy between those positions that are commonly called “intellectualism” and “anti-intellectualism.” 41. The content and necessity attributed to a particular experience is frequently not the same from the point of view of the first person who lives that experience as from the point of view of a third person who observes and judges that person. In this example, Julianna’s belief in the need to spend money buying dresses that according to her make her attractive instead of satisfying more urgent needs can perhaps be reconstructed from a third-person point of view as her anxiety to discipline the female body subjected to the male gaze. However, we must also take into account the constant interaction between the first- and third-person points of view; cf. Linda Martín Alcoff, Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 42. Does Jacques Derrida defend this alternative? Cf. The Gift of Death (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008) or Anne Dufourmantelle in Of Hospitality (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000). One might remark: Derrida does not contrast conditioned and unconditioned hospitality, but rather he places them in conflict. But only two events, concepts, or ideals to which meaning can be assigned, even if it is a purely contrafactual meaning, are placed in conflict, like when since at least the time of Antigone, justice confronts law and a declaration is made, for example, that “this law is not just.” (For example, a law that criminalizes exiles or prohibits marriage between people of the same sex is unjust.) Unfortunately, I do not understand what

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the expression unconditioned hospitality could refer to even as a contrafactual value. Undoubtedly, a conflict exists in hospitality, but it is not between conditioned and unconditioned, but rather between receiving, that acceptance in principle, and judging, the evaluation of whether or not one is willing to offer shelter. However, imagine that one responds: an attempt to give meaning to the words “unconditioned political hospitality” is one that proposes eliminating borders. This response possesses at least two complications. During the present of those entangled paths that we call “history,” no one really knows what eliminating all borders would actually mean or how such elimination would be accomplished. Even more importantly, the project for a borderless Leviathan—for an army with a singular and centralized authority? for a market to which all other markets become subservient, including those that are extremely local and volatile? for an official language that represses all other languages?—perhaps more than heralding the apotheosis of cosmopolitism, it should make us fear the apotheosis of subjugation under a terrifying power-over/under sequence. I also find there to be difficulties with the words “unconditioned hospitality.” Obeying the logic of all or nothing, they can be, and usually are, used rhetorically to such detrimental ends as the following: since in practice it is not possible to receive everyone who requests shelter, one arrives at the conclusion that “we cannot be blamed if we discriminate,” where the word “discrimination” lacks that more or less impartial sense of judgment. 43. Contrary to the previous note, one might warn: perhaps we should direct our attention in a different direction and understand the use of words like “unconditioned tolerance,” “unconditioned hospitality,” “unconditioned self-relocation,” and “unconditioned impetus to explore” in a less literal sense: like tolerance without prejudice, strong hospitality, or self-relocation that is capable of risking unexpected recognitions, bold changes in one’s assumptions. For example, at the moment of receiving, strong hospitality offers recognition to the one who is received: it bestows honor and freedom on the other, an obligation due to the fact that we exist together. Whoever receives makes an effort, then, to directly actualize the second moral principle. To do so, they attempt to rid themself of the custom of believing and acting according to stigmas. However, at the same time, they do not pretend that they have eliminated all judgment: because it is not possible to dispense with judgment. Furthermore, judging, evaluating, implies calibrating, contemplating, and weighing reasons. In any case, anyone who is not mindful of the need to exercise their ability to judge will succumb to the vice of “anything goes.” One must also not forget the link that all nondegenerate judgment sustains, or should sustain, (oftentimes in the midst of conflict, trepidation, and suffering) with justice. 44. Cf. Martin Seel, 111 Tugenden, 111 Laster: Eine philosophische Revue (Frankfurt: Fischer, 2011). Seel warns that virtues and vices are more alike than one might suspect; hence, the need to establish conditions and limits for every virtue. 45. This type of violence is not only present in crimes committed by the numerous fanatics of religious or political groups, or by mafias like those involved in drug trafficking, or designed by private corporations and national governments that, as I discussed in the previous chapter, tend to consolidate societies through a presumption of corruption. Unfortunately, the age of the internet also deranges the isolated individuals who, wavering between bitterness and desperation, identify “sacred



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missions” in the creation of terror. They transform their personal frustrations into that frenzy: the will to destroy. Cf. Mark Alfano, J. Adam Carter, and Marc Cheong, “Technological Seduction and Self-Radicalization,” Journal of the American Philosophical Association 4, no. 3 (2018): 298–322. 46. These are complements that sometimes face fierce resistance, even from those who would be their most immediate beneficiaries.

Chapter 3

Other Complementary Postulates

POSTULATE OF A DIGNIFIED ECONOMY The question that concludes the previous chapter must be answered negatively. There is certainly a third resistance for removing obstacles from our responses to interpellations by overdetermined values like equality, freedom, and collaboration. Yet, it is no doubt surprising to associate a society’s economy with “dignity,” a property more commonly employed to describe people. What is more, how does this postulate serve to continue determining the principle of collaboration, the principle of personal autonomy, and even the principle of universality? Initially, it is possible to describe a society’s economy as dignified derivatively: if the dignity of each person in that society is respected. For example, such respect exists if all members of that society can satisfy their legitimate life plans and, as a consequence, the principle of personal autonomy is respected socially. These words will be cause for contention because, among other doubts, how are these plans defined and what are the basic necessities of a population?

The interrelationship between the postulate of equality from a legal standpoint and the postulate of a dignified economy is sometimes not accepted, but putting the former into practice largely relies on economic structures being free of major inequalities. One might also object: it is impossible to “measure” the dignity of an economy (just as it is impossible to “measure” how many hairs a person must have in order to not be considered bald). However, degrees of dignity can be analyzed by using the ability to judge. The ability to judge, in collaboration with cognitive ability, will have to consider ways of evaluating markets, for example. But these markets as well as models for

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public policies will be different if they are conceived under the guidance of one, or perhaps two, of the following questions: • Should we advocate a redistribution of wealth in order to reduce the obscene, or the most obscene, distances that separate the richest from the poor? • Should we advocate for the most underprivileged people, even if that leads to an increase in the distance that separates the richest from the poorest? • Should we advocate that every person has sufficient, independently of comparative scales within society as a whole? Models for economic policies that respond to the first question consist in redistributing the wealth of a society (goods, resources) for the purpose of eliminating or, at least, reducing economic inequalities, as these reinforce oppressive power-over/under sequences, i.e., models for economic restructuring.1 On the other hand, economic models responding to the second question seek to alleviate deficiencies for the most underprivileged by satisfying their immediate needs (food, shelter), i.e., models for economic urgency. In my view, both models can be integrated—although in practice this integration is often not so easy—as part of an economic policy that introduces determinations that gradually actualize the principle of collaboration. In contrast, an economic model conceived as a response to the third question will promote subsidies so that every person will have access to a sufficient minimum (perhaps including an acceptable job, a decent minimum wage, an acceptable home, acceptable food, basic rent?), i.e., models for economic compensation.2 This last model immediately raises perturbing objections. Is having a sufficient minimum to live a subjective assessment or are there objective scales for measuring this? Is there a way of eliminating comparisons from public life without resorting to manipulation? Comparisons commonly rouse the fury of certain social groups. Is it possible to make it so that fortunes—often ill-gotten—do not perpetuate luxuries and ostentatious power-over/under sequences that humiliate? What can be done so that mercenary institutions, like some forms of mass media, do not endorse false forms of prestige? Let me return to the first two models. Contrary to those people who determine the underdetermined moral principles of collaboration and personal autonomy using models that respond to the first two questions, one might argue: when it comes to fast and profound economic restructuring,3 historical experience warns us of dangers like ineffectiveness and authoritarian power-over/under sequences. Ineffectiveness: if the economic restructuring is realized too quickly without first establishing institutions and new work

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habits, it might not only eliminate the incentives for productivity, but also encourage useless improvisation. Authoritarianism: if there is a lack of horizontality when answering interpellations from the overdetermined value of equality during the establishment of this restructuring, these policies will tend to become blind to the principle of personal autonomy. Also, with respect to theories of economic urgency, it is unclear whether they are concerned with the victims of extraordinary disasters (floods, earthquakes, wars) or the victims of ordinary disasters like poor alimentation, poor housing, and poor education, i.e., those who are permanently in need. It is perhaps possible to confront these difficulties if both models are linked to nomadic thought: plans for momentary economic urgency should not lose sight of restructuring theories, and vice versa.4 Consequently, in order to construct a dignified economy proper to the circumstances of each country, economic theory should combine long-term economic restructuring and short and medium-term policies on economic urgency. However, who are the agents (collective or individual, public or private) that should exercise nomadic thought in order to realize short and mediumterm models and, thus, intervene in what are assumed to be operations of the market? They directly serve to negotiate prices, but through the perspective of practical holism, we must also recognize that markets bolster or undermine dignity. Therefore, one might stipulate: in a policy on democratic integration, it is important for multiple agents to put these economic models into place. For example, there should be both state entities and private businesses present, in addition to those diverse social groups subsumed under the words “civil society.” These groups often overlap with state entities, private businesses, political parties, mass media, labor unions, etc. Why is a multiplicity of agents necessary to realize economic models and put them into practice? There has to be the possibility of confronting corrections to those models and, more importantly, uncooperative criticisms and dissenting alternatives. Historical experiences teach us that no individual or collective planner is, on their own, absolutely benevolent: without bias or personal interests. Or, what is worse, no economic planner is without their own caprices, which they mistake, via self-deception, for good reasons. Based on these observations, suppose we adopt an economic theory that includes temporary policies that address economic urgencies and restructuring measures designed to gradually determine a collaborative society; both as frameworks for a dignified economy. How should these “gradual determinations” be equilibrated? There is no single fixed, general, let alone precise, answer that is independent of place and time. In each case, it is essential to examine empirical local structures of an economy using one’s ability to judge and centrifugal imagination. The nature of economic policies and the need for the postulate of economic dignity in order to respond to interpellations from

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overdetermined values like equality, freedom, and collaboration is intensely situated, as we will highlight again later in relation to infrapolitics. If we expect our responses to be taken seriously, we cannot act as if the inequalities typical of an obscene economy and problems of scarcity and impoverishment—and in an overwhelming number of societies, abject poverty—do not exist. Because as has been unceasingly argued and felt throughout history, frequently with bitterness and desperation, economic conditions have always played a decisive role in human life, to the point of obsession. For many it is a daily source of torment and humiliation, giving rise to bad habits like the ones I will now examine. Vices of Social Distrust—As Fragments of Absolute Distrust—or Vices of Centripetal Imagination: Fear, Envy, Rigidity, Authoritarianism In order to assess exactly when practices of distrust transform into vices, I will return for a moment to the discussion on corruption from the first part of this pamphlet. We observed: the habitual assumption of human animals— perhaps the instinct of all animals—is something similar to trust. Each morning upon waking, we human animals trust that the bedroom floor has not disappeared and that a malevolent genie has not decided to cast us into the abyss. Without even thinking about it, at breakfast I trust that my wife has not poisoned the coffee. And on and on like this, I go about my days working and resting. However, as we pointed out, when corruption reaches the institutional and, especially, the structural levels, at least the assumption of social trust tends to be replaced by an assumption of social corruption. Social practices of distrust cease to cause fissures in a horizon of trust and instead become integral fragments of that horizon. We then yield, often for good reason, to the vices of the assumption of social distrust as absolute distrust. Imagine that counter to the moral principles of collaboration and universality, we must suffer an obscene economy wherein the arts of unhealthy coexistence produce shortages, including economic shortages, as well as others. Let us follow the negative path and examine the lattice of “depraved entities”: vices of social distrust as absolute distrust. Many times, those vices begin with the production of fear. Why is that? Fear is one of the human animal’s (and other mammals’) primitive emotions.5 For example, we are afraid of heights, or spiders, or that someone will harm us and take our economic resources, or even eliminate us altogether. Or we are afraid that we might be rejected or belittled. It is therefore valuable to point out through the use of ascending transitions that being afraid introduces two reminders:

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• As human animals, we are vulnerable to poverty, hunger, and sickness, but also disdain and betrayal, and not least, to suffering a painful and violent death many times at the hands of other human animals. (We must include among our potential attackers those who are close to us and have claimed or claim to care for us, as is the case of so many femicides and personal betrayals.) • When in fear, we tend to adopt lesser or greater degrees of uncertainty with respect to evils. (Though we attempt to avoid them, we sense that there are some evils we will not be able to escape.)6 The first of fear’s reminders will in some circumstances cause us to distrust everything around us. As human animals develop their abilities, it becomes normal for them to protect their bodies as well as their vulnerability. When we consider those attempts at self-protection, we must not ignore the ambiguity of the non-deliberative competencies involved in being afraid. In what way? A common experience consists in moving our legs quickly to run away and escape danger when we are afraid, but being afraid can also limit and impede movement. To further differentiate between these two non-deliberative tendencies of fear, we can say that, on one hand, fear induces the human animal to move to safety, or, a subjectively defensive tendency. (Fear is a part of human and other animals’ first-nature apparatus required for survival.) On the other hand, fear also restrains the human animal, or, a subjectively paralyzing tendency. When this second tendency prevails, fear induces mental knots. Immobility, through centripetal imagination, causes us to put ourselves in danger more often.7 Fear’s subjectively paralyzing tendency imprisons each individual human animal inside itself, forcing it to cling tightly to its own body in an attempt to protect it from some approaching, or seemingly approaching, evil. In this way, fear isolates and abandons us to often-absolute social distrust, and, in both tendencies,8 it compels us to repeat, “everyone for themselves!” Let us take a closer look at fear and its relationship to the economy. For example, if a serious economic crisis occurs and there is a food shortage, our fear of being robbed of the little food we have will either cause us to go into hiding, not knowing what else to do, i.e., subjectively paralyzing tendency, or to arm ourselves and attack those who intend to rob us, i.e., subjectively defensive tendency. In both cases, acting out of fear is a characteristic counterexample to the moral principle of collaboration. It is also a counterexample to those habits found in arts of healthy coexistence that promote a certain cultivation of negative tolerance and hospitality.9 While fear’s first reminder concerns our vulnerability, the second reminder employs a dramatic use of the word “uncertainty.” Using this particular word

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suggests that we can only foresee fragments of the future and only control a handful of its events. It is precisely in these situations of uncertainty that distress and fear can arise. In obscene economies we fear which of the future evils will be worse. Fear circumstances that produce economic noncollaboration should therefore come as a terrifying insult. Nevertheless, this is often not the case.10 Why? I tend to believe that some causes of a fear of economic collaboration are the result of manipulation, evil nudges responding to the interests of a more or less oppressive power-over/under sequence. However, there are also good reasons to fear economic collaboration. These reasons are due to those we pointed out when, in the case of quick and profound economic restructuring, historical experience warns against dangers like ineffectiveness and authoritarianism that can lead to terror. At this point, one might ask: what circumstances are capable of generating widespread fear at the social level? What is the particular shared imaginary that collective fears typically target, like an arrow that never misses its mark? Seldom Does Anything Cause More Fear than War Again: Be careful with words. Because in quotidian life “war” can be expressed in many ways. Of course, the word “war” is often used in a strict or literal sense to refer to: open combat between enemy armies or combats in which an army decimates a population. Such fear circumstances produce continuums of manifest and mortal material violence that arouse something even greater than fear: panic.

In these “conventional” wars, if you will, the subjectively paralyzing tendency of the fear of being injured or killed and the subjectively defensive tendency to watch out only for oneself diminish. This is because such wars awaken a trust in the group, bolstered by discourse riddled with words like “heroism,” “glory,” “service to a noble cause,” etc. At the same time, this type of discourse encourages fragments of distrust that cause us to act according to a friend/enemy duality. However, are there not also other wars that we allude to throughout our quotidian lives? For us to continue our exploration of these fear circumstances, I will again give free rein to nomadic thought and observe how the word “war” is used more generally.11 These are fear circumstances that, although they collectively incite less fear and considerably less destruction and death, still on occasion force human animals and their cognitive, judicial, and executive abilities to become aware of their vulnerability, their uncertainty.

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Other Wars or Circumstances That Are Experienced through Hostile and Even Warlike Biases That Provoke Less Collective Fear, but Often Interpersonal Panic Counterexamples to negative tolerance and hospitality are: latent collective wars or, if you prefer, latent hostile and even warlike collective biases. As an illustration: populations under a dictatorship or any authoritarian system live amid threats of injury to their own vulnerability. Few people in such circumstances expect negative tolerance or hospitality for desires, beliefs, or actions that go against the political regimen. More precisely, the majority of people live in distrust. They might even suspect there to be enemies among their loved ones who are capable of distorting their words, causing them to lose their job, and even reporting them to the authorities so that they are sent to prison. At the same time, those people know that many others are afraid of them because they suspect they are the enemy lying in wait: maybe a “rat” for the government.

In these other wars, there are no differences between “combatants” and “noncombatants.” For example, in latent collective wars no one is safe or able to forget their fear—with the exception perhaps of those who control the power-over in those oppressive sequences of power-over/under. In such fear circumstances, there is then no place to exercise the virtues of criticism. They are inhibited by fear: they are repressed. But there are also other latent and not-so-latent collective wars, for example, the persecution of undocumented, and often even documented, immigrants. In the case of these groups, more than a few mass media outlets declare: “these are criminals attempting to destroy our way of life.” In general, the attitude assumed when encountering any group of victims— negative tolerance and solidary hospitality or aggression—reflects one’s decision regarding which side of these wars they will fight. Thus, in latent collective wars, citizens, as active or passive “inevitable combatants,” cannot avoid confronting some form of that often-paralyzing alternative: the fear alternative, either the fear of becoming an accomplice to oppressive situations or rebelling and the fear of social retaliation that commonly extends beyond merely economic losses. These are not the only fear and absolute distrust circumstances between human animals. There is also no shortage of: explicit individual wars or, if you prefer, explicit hostile and even warlike individual biases. For example, Fernanda is afraid of her vulnerability with respect to her husband because he beats, mistreats, and abuses her on a daily basis. (In some countries actions like these are sustained by customs and, in some regions, even by law.) Another example: sweatshop supervisors in the so-called third and

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fourth worlds harass their employees on a daily basis with complete impunity, causing these employees to live in uncertainty.

These are subjectively isolating tendencies: paralyzing or defensive tendencies of fear that corrupt the victims and those who become prisoners of the myth of the indifferent bystander. (I repeat: there are no noncombatants in these wars.) However, fear crushes many women most of all who have no other choice but to confront the fear alternative: either live in fear (of the abusive husband or the equally abusive boss) and ultimately obey or live in economic misery and its consequences: prostitution, the criminal underworld, and a pending death sentence. In the face this succession of “depraved entities,” what place is there for the principles of a universal moralism and the virtues of healthy coexistence? There are also circumstances of fear that are baroquely disguised. They are: concealed individual wars or, if you prefer, concealed hostile or warlike individual biases: subtle symbolic forms of violence that often go almost unnoticed. While there are many such circumstances, consider in particular those in which there are abundant economic resources, luxury, polite manners, elegant clothing, magnificent facilities, vacations, and refinement. This could apply to married couples or neighborhoods with polished exteriors, or the offices of powerful governments, large corporations, or professors in wealthy universities. However, despite their peaceful appearances, fierce distrust and stress can sometimes seep in, disguising fears that those who suffer from them have not yet acknowledged even to themselves. When educated professionals well-versed in their fields—but only in their fields—are in situations that are unfavorable for their projects, they begin to suspect during sleepless nights that their position has become vulnerable.

Since these biases are not usually recognized as such, individuals who suffer from them are forced to manifest them “obliquely wherever they can.” For example, these biases can find an outlet in aggressions directed at those who occupy dependent positions in power-over/under sequences. We must also consider the consequences of these other wars, of these circumstances of absolute social distrust that produce fear. They include: • following the popular wisdom of many countries, we frequently live according to warlike biases but in apparently peaceful circumstances, and we do so more that we would like to admit, at least, out loud. • The concern for one’s own vulnerability becomes obsessively present in many social circumstances. As a consequence, • in those other wars—not as ostensibly lethal as the conventional ones—fear’s subjectively paralyzing and subjectively defensive

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tendencies become confusedly intertwined and often isolate the person inside themself. • Additionally, in such wars, fear becomes ubiquitous and can reproduce fear alternatives. When these diverse generators of fear are subsumed under the alarming word “war” or its consolidating derivative: “biases,” we are not dealing with the same presumption of social distrust, the same fears, and much less the same causes. Nor are we dealing with similar possibilities of physical or moral harm: in the majority of what I have called “conventional wars,” death in the hours or days to come is something that is tangible for the combatants and even the noncombatants. Also, the destruction of homes and workplaces often renders entire populations powerless. Yet, we should highlight two more consequences of nonconventional wars. We have already stated, but it is worth emphasizing, that one effect of concealed individual wars is: fear promotes fantastical substitutions. Instead of confronting problems by using cognitive ability and the ability to judge, particularly, but not only, if they involve economic and political difficulties, the person isolates themself and substitutes confronting the circumstances with blind rejections of the people they falsely blame for those difficulties.

For example, warlike biases produce disproportionate aggressions against the unemployed poor and people of color who, in order to survive, carry out small, not entirely legal, jobs. Rather than confront these problems, which are of course not easy to resolve, they construct objects of hatred.12 And let me add one additional consequence of fear that stems from these other wars: since fear alternatives lead to paralysis, the possibility that one’s cognitive, judicial, and executive abilities will be able to operate dwindles little by little, and the habit of self-isolation and yielding to the temptation of powerlessness through centripetal imagination becomes increasingly ingrained.

One might object: by taking advantage of the vagueness in everyday language and diverse commonplace (and mostly analogical) uses of the word “war” to examine the properties of fear, are you not inciting confusion and even outlandish warlike rhetoric? Does not this imaginary of militarized thought, in fact, introduce counterexamples to nomadic thought? At the very least, the dramatic uses of the word “war” construct some disconcerting challenges. Furthermore, wars, conventional or otherwise, do not disappear just because we ignore them. But remaining alert to these dark correlations between the various fears compels us to search for answers. For example, it is in our best

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interest to devise a way to recognize “moral equivalents of war,” of any war.13 We must learn to know how to resist the shackles of fear.14 If we do not, then we are no longer fighting to change some of its causes, we merely envy those who possess power-over. Envy is a notorious consolidator of social distrust that reinforces warlike biases and becomes a bridge-vice for fear. People are possessed by a feeling of anxiety at not having what others have. Such misgivings distort the orientation of their cognitive and judicial, as well as executive, abilities. In envy circumstances: • whoever feels envy desires something (wealth, power, affection, opportunity, or to have certain qualities, some variety of good or alleged good) that other people or social groups possess. Consequently, that person anxiously desires to move away from their current location in order to acquire those goods. • Those goods or alleged goods are assigned value by the cognitive ability of the person who envies. This lack is a cause for fear so the person seeks to eliminate it. It becomes necessary to dislodge the person who currently occupies the desired location. In this description of envy and its mechanisms, I twice used derivatives of the word “anxiety.” Anxiety is usually understood as an emotion of permanent dissatisfaction brought on by social distrust that is experienced as a threat. The real value of the good that is the object of a person’s envy, outside of its relationship with that envy, is of no importance. As minimal as that value might be, the envier suffers because they feel inferior to the people or social groups who possess said alleged good. There is often an accumulation of fear at the root of this diminishment that, in more than a few situations, generates obsessions that become traumas: conjuring ghosts that incite self-contempt. This, in turn, leads to actions that are detrimental, and not only for the person who is suffering from these traumas. One might object: the feelings of inferiority associated with envy, which cause so much damage, are sometimes intertwined with feelings of superiority. For example: Javier envies Mateo because he is rich, but because he knows that Mateo acquired his wealth through corrupt dealings with high-ranking public servants and supervisors at rival private corporations, he also asserts his superiority to him.

In many envy circumstances, there are reasons to suspect that declared feelings of superiority are operating as a symptom: masks for feelings of inferiority that overwhelm the individual who dons a disguise for fear of facing up

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to them. However, there can be cases where Javier feels morally superior to Mateo, despite his envy of him. Human emotions constitute complex mental states. It is not uncommon for the same person to experience various layers of disparate emotions, which are difficult to identify not only for a third person—a psychologist, for example—but also for the person experiencing them. Envy is no exception. It can often be confused with jealousy and social indignation. These emotions require further clarification. Jealousy implies a link between at least three people. (In adults, jealousy typically involves a couple and sexuality.) Unlike jealousy, envy can affect the relationship between two or any other number of people. The feelings that accompany both emotions also differ. With jealousy, we experience distrust at the possibility of a betrayal. This is not so much the case with envy, which only seeks to possess what is considered to be an unpossessed valuable.15 In this reflection, however, it is more important that we distinguish between envy and social indignation. It is clear that social comparisons are an abundant source of envy, and part of one’s own self-esteem is frequently derived from such comparisons, particularly between peers and acquaintances.16 For example, with envy one tends to unreasonably perceive the success of others as a personal failure. Consequently, fear and feelings of inferiority with respect to those who are envied are very commonly experienced as desperate rivalries. Or even worse: from the envier’s point of view, the envied goods are the result of an unfair competition, and so there should not be an expectation that justice will be served at any point in the public-private-personal continuum. As such, the real or perceived inequality motivating a person to envy is not recognized as legitimate. It is more a result of good luck. In experiences of envy, there is therefore significant social distrust, resentment, and the looming shadows of other wars. One can even succumb to uncontrolled states of anger “at the luxuries that other people possess” or “at how undeservedly well things have gone, or are going, for other people,” people who “are not deserving.” But the circumstances of people’s envy do not arise solely out of an anxious desire to move away from their current location. The envying person or group wants to possess the good that is envied. Guided by warlike biases, they want to dislodge the person who currently occupies the desired location.17 Therefore, a person who envies wealth is not at all similar to someone who fights for social justice. Under the influence of envy, a person does not criticize social inequalities that their cognitive ability has enabled them to detect. Nor do they want to exercise their executive ability to eliminate, or even confront, one or more of these injustices. Instead, they seek to magically dislodge those who possess the desired good and take their place. Someone who fights for social justice has hopes of achieving something, at least to leave behind traces of their fight. Enviers tend to feel they have been

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defeated by destiny, and so to them the struggle for change feels futile. The feeling that there is no way to obtain what the rival possesses is another form of drowning in one’s own powerlessness. During agonizing states of envy, it is not unusual for the envier to scream: “If I don’t have it and can’t have it, then you shouldn’t have it. And neither should anyone else.” Anxiously moving away in order to dislodge other people amid feelings of inferiority that lead to self-contempt and fluctuations between aggressive rivalry and defeatism: in mechanisms like these, the efforts of the ability to judge and the willingness to offer hospitality tend to progressively, or abruptly, diminish. The production of envy is then a vice and a characteristic counterexample to the virtues that contribute to the construction of a collaborative society and the application of the principle of personal autonomy. Envy also becomes a bridge-vice to the other vices it promotes, and these vices in turn reinforce envy. Indeed, in many people and social groups, a trick for lessening their envy is to pretentiously accept the assumption of social distrust. Through the use of centripetal imagination, they elude both the harm caused by comparisons—so indispensable to envy—and the benefits that come from interacting and generally being available to what the world around them has to offer. They socially distrust “everything” in advance: human bonds are branded as unhealthy. As frequently happens, one error is corrected with another. To become immune to the comparisons that lead to envy, people close themselves off, though in such a way that it resembles envy, and succumb to the production of rigidity. These rigid modes of human self-understanding reject nomadic thought and practical holism. Self-imprisonment inside one’s own subjectivity eliminates the strategies of detours and transitions by tethering people to an alleged “original situation.” But we soon realize that these lovely words (“original situation”) are deceptive when we begin to analyze them because they refer to the vice of self-isolation in your current position without evaluating your misfortunes. Defending one’s personal identity is confused with holding on to certainties from the past, even if those certainties have become obsolete. Therefore, with more lovely but deceptive words like “distrust what is not authentic,” the only thing that grows stronger are the fears that ready us for some variety of war. An effective indicator of rigidity in oneself and in others is the refusal to trust in the existence of a type of cognitive ability that is capable of exploring this world filled with possibilities that call out to us, a judicial ability that compares and contemplates, and an executive ability that is capable of learning to know how to resist. A person who produces rigidity and identifies personal autonomy with tethering oneself to an alleged “original situation” forgets, or more likely, suppresses the fact that people and groups are constructed through self-transformation: like personal histories, processes reliant on trajectory. Or

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to be exact, like fragments of personal histories containing a present perspective that overstresses what is important in that present, imprisoning a person in that present. However, among fragments of histories we also discover that there is more history that present history. How so? To answer this, I will resume the strategies of detours and transitions. For example, consider this presentation of a first person who reflects: I, Roberta, am a Black woman who is poor, but I’m not ashamed. I’m able to choose who I interact with and where I work.

“I am able to choose . . .”: this is one way to begin assuming the principle of personal autonomy. But with statements like these, let us also not forget about possible detours in the same woman’s presentation like: I, Roberta, am not resigned to washing dirty dishes for the rest of my life. That’s why even though it’s not easy for me, I’m taking evening classes and plan to study biology.

No specific characteristic (economic status, skin color, sexuality) or choice (political, scientific, cultural) encompasses all the materials that define a personal identity forever. Having an identity does not mean hanging one’s self-portrait on the wall and looking at it day and night. It is accepting starting points for one’s journey. For this reason, the ability to judge should also use ascending transitions, including strategies toward the universal, which in many circumstances are silently and even forcefully perceived, even if they are not expressed explicitly with statements like: I, Roberta, am a human animal who constructs herself with other people who are also human animals.

Defending diverse presentations of the self in response to our current situation is not only very useful; it is an unavoidable task if we want to apply, without rigidity, the principle of autonomy as a relational autonomy that is mindful of the circumstances. If Roberta is an unfairly paid domestic worker in Los Angeles, it might be necessary for her to defend her rights based on the second transition, the transition toward the universal and abstract. Perhaps Roberta will protest by demanding better economic compensation using words like: “I am not just some Black woman from Veracruz who speaks poor English. I am a person who demands a decent wage.” However, in Mexico the same Roberta, based on a transition toward the concrete, might demand that she be recognized as an individual. Perhaps she will demand to be allowed to leave work an hour earlier because she is a woman and Black and, therefore, at greater risk in this white and poorly lit neighborhood. In addition, when

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Roberta insists on equal treatment as a human right: “I should be paid the same as any other person for the work I do,” she is also implicitly stating the extrapolation of her protest: “I will not accept being paid the amount you think you should pay someone who is not a person, who is just a poor Black woman from Veracruz.”18 With the versatile use of detour and transition strategies, we free ourselves from a dual rigidity: particularizing and restrictive stereotypes (those formed based on poverty or wealth, skin color or sexuality) and the rule of autarky, that recourse to magic.19 Identity politics that consider which detour and transition strategies the ability to judge should defend in each specific situation are to be encouraged. (We must use these politics, like any other authentic politics, as a tool that is situated and revisable, but also reversible.) In our example, Roberta, an employee in California or an employee in Mexico, defends equally legitimate complaints in ever-changing situations. But such complaints can only be realized by those who do not cling to the fantasy that “one should always distrust what is inauthentic,” a bridge-vice that reaffirms other vices and, in turn, reaffirms itself through the production of generalized authoritarianism. What am I referring to? Authority over a person is typically measured by the degree to which that person must obey the rules with relative or complete independence of their own judgment. The clause “relative or complete independence” contrasts the authority that emanates from legitimate power-over/under sequences with that which relies on illegitimate, oppressive power-over/under sequences, or authoritarianism.20 This contrast is critical because authority or authoritarianism is exercised in a wide variety of contexts, both theoretical and practical, the latter of which include face-to-face relationships in a family or a business, or impersonal relationships between a state and its citizens. Here we encounter a new paradox: the authority paradox. If the ability to judge commits to making decisions by relying exclusively on behaviors that are generated by deliberative competencies, it can and usually does enter into conflict with the demands of some authority, even the most competent and legitimate authorities. Therefore, it does not seem possible to reconcile a priori the reasonings of one person in each circumstance with the power of authority. One might point out: just as we found with negative tolerance, it is not always virtuous or conducive to healthy coexistence for me to act in every circumstance according to the first-order reasons considered by my ability to judge. There are times when my ability to judge should also seek reflective equilibriums with second-order reasons that indicate, counter to my own deliberations, that I should trust in the directives of an expert (a theoretical authority) or a constituted power (the state).21 Unless I am mistaken, while

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the authority paradox will not be eliminated entirely, such an equilibrium will weaken it, transforming it into authority tension. This is a tension with which we must coexist, as difficult as it will be. Unfortunately, if we ignore the fact that this tension inevitably exists in relation to any authority, we will tend to alternate between: • rejecting all authority and contributing to the cultivation of growing ignorance, if not to theoretical and practical chaos; or • yielding to blind obedience to an authority, isolating ourselves inside that obedience and distrusting any order or reason that does not originate with that authority or authoritarianism. In the latter of the two cases, one persistent effect is the attempt to engender a contagious phenomenon, which leads to so many personal and social evils.22 Blind Obedience and Its Rationale, Well-Integrated Assumptions The phenomenon of blind obedience is a vice: an individual renounces personhood to become an instrument of other people. There is nothing admirable about this surrender just as there is nothing admirable about a person willingly becoming a slave. These are self-destructive behaviors. In addition to the social structures whose objective it is to produce this obedience, other causes include psychological predispositions to subordinate oneself to authoritarian character traits. Indeed, there exists a type of authoritarian personality23 whose most dubious opinions are accepted as irrefutable merely because that person adamantly believes them: because they are part of that person’s assumptions. Consider the emphasized word. The assumptions of an individual or social group are implicit biases or underground networks that sometimes lead to the development and other times to the degeneration of human animals’ cognitive, judicial, and executive abilities. Consequently, they present a choice: • use assumptions as provisional convictions that offer starting points; or • use assumptions as presumably inalterable “straitjackets” regarding what we want to desire, believe, and feel, propagating impositions in every direction (including more than a few self-impositions). Besides the fear of inconsistency, what is the source of this tendency to treat assumptions like “straitjackets” that generate blind obedience? Oftentimes, an assumption is vested with authority and, as a result, so is the person who holds it because it is considered to be a “well-integrated” assumption.

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However, why should we bestow authority on an assumption in which explicit and implicit negative biases combine to form a rigidly structured assumption? Let us continue to seriously heed the warning: Be careful with words. Perhaps some confusion between authority and authoritarianism stems from a lack of caution when using the word “integrate.” Is not a derivative of this word given a place of honor in the expression “politics of democratic integration”? Nevertheless, here “democratic integration” does not refer to societies in which the arts of healthy coexistence integrate, in the sense of homogenizing or fusing people. On the contrary, in processes of democratic integration, the principle of personal autonomy is actualized along with the principle of collaboration, which in this case refers to the collaboration between dissident fellow citizens. Now consider the words “well-integrated person.”24 They are often used in the sense that the assumption the person holds is a strong structure immune to the calls and rejections of their environment. A person is considered to be well integrated if they coordinate their desires, beliefs, and affects into a coherent whole that allows their cognitive ability to immediately move to action.25 Well-integrated people, then, lack provisional desires and reasons of equal intensity for and against a particular matter.26 The negative circumstances of such strong integrations are many: • Antonio demonstrated complete coherency in his assumptions in that at no point did it even occur to him to consider his prior affection for Susana and his prior beliefs regarding the evils of betrayal; he remained firm in his desire to obtain money quickly and successfully managed to scam Susana. • Elena, remaining loyal to the assumptions she has held throughout her life, did not allow interpellations from those feelings of sentimentality that are usually awakened by the principle of collaboration and refused to hear the pleas of the emigrants hoping to reunite their families.27 • Juan pledged his allegiance to the dictatorship’s political program and transformed that commitment into an ideal. I find no reason to deny that Antonio, Elena, and Juan satisfy the necessary conditions for us to describe them as “well-integrated people” in the sense that their biases are coherent. It is effortless for Antonio to set aside his previous affects or moral beliefs on honor. He is so well integrated that he never considers those affects or beliefs to be obstacles to acting. Similarly, empathy for the suffering of others is not something that Elena values. Antonio and Elena are examples that demonstrate that the successful integration of desires, beliefs, and affects is only a precondition for acting quickly and efficiently.

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However, if this type of example becomes radicalized, it is not difficult to conclude that any sadist or murderer can be a well-integrated person. Juan’s example is different. Unlike Antonio and Elena, we might not associate Juan as much with a successful integration of his own desires, beliefs, and affects as with a complete identification with his ideological commitment—perhaps the result of powerful nudges and other manipulations within his activist group. In this example of a “well-integrated person,” we see the authoritarian rigidity of a fanatic of an ideology who accepts and even commits the worst crimes without the slightest scruple because “the end justifies the means.”28 For the same good reasons that we do not admire sadists, murderers, and fanatics, we should also reject the formal designation “a well-integrated person” as a presumption of the substantival designation “a person with integrity.” The words “person with integrity” do not suggest a person with behaviors generated by non-deliberative competencies that prompt them to react in any circumstance as a “coherent whole.” On the contrary, a person with integrity is, in fact, someone whose ability to judge is open to a meticulous examination of the conflictive circumstances they are facing, weighing the various facets with reasons. Thus, the designation “person with integrity” is linked to designations like “a person who looks and listens with honesty,” “a person who does not cheat.” If we exercise caution when using the words “integrate,” “integration,” and their derivatives, then we must make a correction: a “well-integrated” personal or collective assumption does not automatically generate authority and, even less so, blind obedience. Occasionally, it only presents us with reports on how people and groups administer their prepotency: their authoritarianism.29 In the First Part, We Briefly Interrupted Our Analysis of Corruption with Reasons from Infrapolitics; We Must Also Now Interrupt These Observations on the Virtues of Social Trust, the Vices of Social Distrust, and Their Contributions to the Arts of Healthy and Unhealthy Coexistence That Help or Hinder the Determination of the Underdetermined Principles of a Universal Moralism Consider the following objection: it is dangerous to develop a universal moralism, the above-mentioned postulates, and the arts of healthy coexistence, even as counterfactual conditions. It is dangerous—argues the objection— because such a process is indebted to the strategy of pure ascending transitions and, thus, to an epistemology exclusively from the positive path in its most abstract form. As such, no one is ever committed to doing anything. But

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in order to combat a politics of warlike biases, for example, we must appeal not to the strategy of ascending processes, but rather inexorably reject what we face at every turn: individual cruelties.30 Among so many examples of cruelty, we must include the massacre of people in a particular city, entire populations living in extreme poverty in a particular country, and this person or that person who has a name and disappeared not only during conventional wars, but also during those other wars. Once again, we are called upon to resist the temptation of the alleged magic of generalities: moral principles, the postulates of equality from a legal standpoint and a dignified economy. This objection, derived from a particularist way of understanding the negative path, is primarily directed in modern thought at the legacy of reflection founded on the principle of universality. With nomadic thought, I do not share this objection. Based on what reasons? Certainly, though they are horrendous and we do our best to ignore them, I cannot deny that even the most distracted gaze will perceive: cruelties toward concrete individuals or individual cruelties. With regard to these abuses, which have been incessant throughout the past and continue to be so in the present, we encounter “depraved entities” that from the beginning should have been impossible to overlook, yet we continue to overlook them.

Regrettably, these individual cruelties are not only the product of the horrors of “conventional wars.” We are dealing with the same category of victim when a worker suspiciously “commits suicide” after reporting the fraud that has been occurring in their workplace, or the physical torture and subsequent death of an inconvenient journalist, or the “disappearance” of workers in a sweatshop. Besides the terrible suffering they experience in the moment of this or that individual brutality, if the victims survive, they will continue to suffer the aftermath; for example, one repercussion of rape consists in the destruction of the trust assumption not only in the specific social reality of that person, but also in any potential personal application of the principle of autonomy. However, for a second person, and for someone who assumes the point of view of a third person who investigates—and risks succumbing to an attitude of shock that can transform into cowardice—these injuries must be both morally condemned and met with short and long-term policies. With these objectives in mind, we must construct explicative theories that identify causes for such acts of brutality. The experience of suffering should also become an object of research. But how?31 For one who assumes an investigative third-person point of view or who fights against an act of cruelty, the harm is not limited to an individual horror. If it were, then the contexts of

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its production would be lost. For example, in the case of rapes, tortures, and “disappearances,” we are generally dealing with: anti-community communities. In these social groups, practices of human destruction like torture, rape, and murder become weaponized for use in combat.32 For evil to proliferate, it is sufficient for the indifference of public and private zombie institutions to be in tacit collaboration with mercenary institutions, which are quickly revealed for what they are: cruel institutions.

Anti-community communities are characteristic counterexamples to a collaborative society. Suppose the laws of a society do not entirely prohibit the practice of torture. One might declare (in private or with unabashed hypocrisy): legislation only—only!—allows torture in “cases that threaten national security.” Since the category for such cases lacks defined limits, in some societies this leads to violence against people of color or against students participating in an unauthorized march to protest the torture of animals. But acts of physical brutality are not the only characteristics of cruel institutions. There is also blind obedience in the workplace, a generator of self-humiliation that undermines a person’s integrity. Jobs—in shops, factories, or as field laborers, or domestic workers in private residences—possess the modality of informal slavery. This type of slavery is sometimes not so radically different from what has been historically recognized as formal slavery, that lifelong torment.33 Anti-community communities and their arts of unhealthy coexistence subsequently ramify, and personal and social destructions expand. Among the conditions in which they are formed, we observe: structural cruelties or wars of all types. Not only are there injuries that circulate throughout a social fabric, but this fabric also enables, encourages, and “normalizes” them.34 A society becomes so accustomed to such horrors that, like any other custom, they become invisible, or almost.

One indicator of structural cruelty is when a significant part of a population is barely surviving in poverty without access to shelter to protect themselves from the cold or heat, or without basic medical assistance when suffering from illnesses. Furthermore, let us not overlook the fact that such first-nature prolongations (hunger and sickness) distort the human animal’s ability to construct second-nature forms: they deprive them of the possibilities of their potentia, of their centrifugal imagination.35 But how can this be avoided? Here are a few warnings. First warning: it is not true that positing moral principles and postulates regarding democratic societies relies on indeterminate generalities and ambiguities. It involves underdetermined generalities.36 Therefore, by holding

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those underdeterminations as a contrafactual horizon, we seek to gradually determine them by using the strategy of correcting the positive path with the negative, and vice versa. At the same time, we must also use the strategy of trial and error.37 However, those determinations also operate in the opposite direction. The fight against cruelty often confronts nomadic thought with doubts like: against what type of cruelty should the fight begin: the individual, institutional, structural cruelties that encourage a lack of democracy?38 Once again we lack precise, fixed, and general answers. We must appeal to our ability to judge in order to determine what is required in each situation and how we should respond in that context. Second warning: in this typology we must face precarious events. It is often difficult for our cognitive ability to detect whether cruelty is only— only!—an individual act or if it has planted its roots in the cruel institutions of anti-community communities that are the products of structural cruelties. For example, one injury tends to bolster others and creates confusion because it hides the intersections between robberies, rapes, and kidnappings that build climates of insensitivity: we grow accustomed to coexisting with brutality, and it becomes “the norm.”39 Third warning: not considering cruelty typologies as a framework, product of a holistic view of violence, subverts our efforts to learn to resist the horror. On the one hand, someone who is neither the victim nor directly connected to the victim in any way, but who is committed to only rejecting an individual cruelty, can mistakenly appropriate the pain of the grieving sufferer, forgetting that they are not the victim. They do not reflect on the conditions—moral, legal, political, economic—that produce and reproduce victims. On the other hand, if we embrace the converse vice of voluntarist vertigo, the structuralist vertigo that is found in some social sciences, brutalities are recorded as mere effects caused by . . . structures. Consequently, all that matters is the documentation of generalities.40 Fourth warning or objection: producing and reproducing that second nature that is social trust and, thus, implementing a moral universalism and making societies relatively egalitarian from a legal standpoint and dignified from an economic standpoint are, more than factors for learning to know how to resist, ex ante conditions: historical prerequisites. But this fear or objection derives its strength again from the fallacious use of all-or-nothing thinking. We can mitigate that strength if we exercise our ability to judge, to analyze aspects, to identify nuance, to calibrate. Let us try a thought experiment: suppose that some parts of society in some aspects attain security to some degree because those societies tend to become egalitarian from a legal standpoint to some degree. Later, we will see what happens to the rest. Fifth warning, which also expresses a tacit fear (for lack of a better term): the fight to reduce inequalities and build egalitarian societies from a legal

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standpoint and dignified societies from an economic standpoint usually leads to progressively greater repression of the status quo in the struggle to keep the current power-over/under sequences intact. Therefore, if we initiate these fights, the situation will soon become worse than it already is. If in a civil society we organize power-with sequences against oppressive power-over/under sequences, will this not also generate power-against sequences by those anticipating restrictions to their power-over? A politics of democratic integration must be aware of this objection. However, it should not be so aware as to become paralyzed. Of course, fighting to implement interpellations from overdetermined values like equality, freedom, and collaboration is not easy. This is because for us to respond to those interpellations, we must involve ourselves in a practice that is frequently disparaged, but one which we have continuously alluded to throughout this pamphlet: politics. POSTULATE OF THE GOOD REPUTATION OF POLITICS This is a fourth resistance for removing obstacles from our responses to interpellations by overdetermined values like equality, freedom, and collaboration. Undoubtedly, the bad reputation of politics seeks to depoliticize politics. But is living in a society without politics actually desirable? Answering this question negatively introduces reasons in favor of practical holism and nomadic thought. How? I will base my justification on the following observations: • cognitive ability, which meticulously explores the diverse contexts of human life, calls into doubt the radical oppositions that attempt to eliminate the continuum between the public, private, and personal spheres; we are then able to recognize direct and indirect interactions between politics and fields that are removed, and even very removed, from what are considered to be “political contexts”; • the ability to judge is often required to introduce political reasons even in seemingly personal circumstances; and • executive ability must constantly make political use of these abilities. In our discussion of corruption and the violence of corruption in the first part, we took the negative path to examine the perverse uses of the word “politics” that prevent us from seriously considering the conflicts that arise when dissimilar similar individuals live together. By taking the positive path, we can learn to know how to resist the destructions and self-destructions of politics. We call for:

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the constant restoration of the good reputation of politics as a factual and counterfactual petition. Resuming the normative proposal from the first part of this pamphlet—a proposal that continues to resurface—we can identify the use of the word “politics” with politics of democratic integration. Such politics construct their practices with varying degrees of participation and deliberation.

Caution: the bad reputation of politics at the beginning of the twenty-first century is not only apparent in the openly warlike biases promoted by some governments and, in a variety of ways, by many forms of mass media and entertainment including films and popular television series.41 This bad reputation is not superficial, or accidental, or new: it is present throughout the history of thought like a seductive shadow, and it was already the backdrop for many reflections during Greek antiquity. Since then, even thinkers whom we do not expect to succumb to this bad reputation have discussed it in great detail.42 For this reason, let me again speak the warning: Be careful with the dramatic use of the word “politics” because debasing and scorning its uses leads us into the abyss.43 But what exactly does it mean to “be careful”? Suppose that in at least a large number of societies (perhaps in almost every society in the twenty-first century?), the bad reputation of politics contaminates all politics, even the politics that invade the public sphere, meddling with and distorting personal interactions. As we indicated in the first part, this bad reputation causes politics to be identified with its falsifications, which we must now examine more closely. We are witness to “politicking” when: • “professional politicians” consolidate power-with/against sequences with intense desires and strong emotions, or emotivist techniques. • In these sequences, the influence of beliefs is reduced to such an extent that it becomes difficult to realize even minor deliberations. • As a result, people’s cognitive abilities feed off negative biases that bolster mildly aggressive exclusionary politics. This first counterexample to a politics of democratic integration is a method of preventing the formation of the citizenry. Civic education implies training the ability to judge to use reason to ponder desires, beliefs, and affects and to fortify habits, not based on emotivist techniques or techniques that are immune to reason. The absence of those ponderations is proof that civic education has not achieved its goal. However, is it so easy to reduce politics to the application of emotivist techniques? Yes, sometimes it is. In a recent newspaper I read the following headline: “Effective Politics Must Unify the Masses by Evoking Immediate Emotional

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Responses.” This headline describes (perhaps recklessly for the benefit of its cause?) precisely what politicking seeks to accomplish. It tries to “unify people through emotions.” There is then no need to provide reasons to change the desires and beliefs that interact with these emotions. The controversies triggered by politicking come down to the exploitation of a crack: “I am against A and in favor of B.” If necessary, that crack can be deepened with biases that generate dread against A and frenzy for B. Beliefs become weakened to the point of nonexistence. It is enough to employ the stereotypes “we must fight against the enemy” and “we must continue to praise our friend with unfaltering enthusiasm.” But beware: a crack can quickly spread and fracture various segments of society. How so? It is frequently noted that a distinction must be made between personal morality and morality in politics or in public life in general, including professional morality and morality in corporate roles.44 Or else the argument is made that the public sphere is immune to morality. For example, one might note: it is not uncommon for politicians to be forced to violate principles of moral universalism and sacrifice innocent lives, like when giving orders during a conventional war. Or it is not uncommon for politicians to lie. These and other violations of the principles of moral universalism are known as the “problem of dirty hands”: doing bad to achieve some good.45 But is the problem of dirty hands a difficulty that is exclusive to politics? If answers to questions like these should be negative, then we are approaching what might be another reduction to the absurdity of normative heterogeneity and another defense of practical holism: with respect to almost every problem of human coexistence, the ability to judge must directly or indirectly contemplate and weigh various types of reasons: moral, legal, political, and economic. In this sense, rejecting practical holism often carries consequences even in opposing directions. On the one hand, one might argue that moral reasons have no place in politics or in the economy, since for these to achieve their intended objectives, they should not consider reasons derived from the principles of a moral universalism. What is more, any politics or economy that attempts to apply those principles is already condemned to fail. On the other hand, many also contend that if moral actions take legal, political, or economic reasons into account, that action may become more effective, but it will lose its “purity.” Now consider the second counterexample to a politics of democratic integration, one which we encountered in the first part. We are witness to neodespotism if: • there is a return to organizations that are historically prior to the politics of democratic integration in which power-with sequences are absent or extremely weak. Civil society practices have been reduced and

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subordinated to oppressive power-over/under sequences (tribal officials, imperial decrees, military dictatorships, corporate hierarchies, etc.). • In these circumstances, power-over is administered without public deliberations, or if there are deliberations among those in charge, they operate using instrumental reason to calculate increases in existing power. • Consequently, oppressive power-over/under sequences lead to the construction of fiercely aggressive exclusionary politics. If politicking does not allow the formation of the citizenry, in this second counterexample to democratic politics, neo-despotisms, the citizenry becomes deformed.46 Invoking past despotic forms brings about the elimination of public life. In neo-despotisms, those in power foster that dangerous phenomenon called blind obedience and the need to immunize oneself to all reasons that oppose those mandates. As a justification, or more accurately as an excuse, for such regressions, they declare: “due to the precarious situation of our internal instability or the external threats we are facing, we must establish a strong leadership to restore peace and, in general, to defend the nation.” Notice the words “precarious situations.” If possessing enough power, any social circumstance can give rise to what might be considered “situations of internal instability or external threats that justify getting one’s hands dirty.” In the first part, we also noted the introduction in recent years of a proposal for “infrapolitics.” This includes: • engaging in politics by producing simulations and deceptions through the use of cognitive, judicial, and executive abilities without publicly articulating a power-with. (Engaging in politics without it being detected or even suspected by those who hold power-over in power-over/under sequences.) • These simulations attempt to operate as disordered power-under sequences in small unidentifiable forms of resistance that accumulate to erode the dominance of power-over/under sequences. • The accumulation of small sequences of power-against is effective. Another way of understanding infrapolitics is to reformulate it as the practice of camouflage. Infrapolitics is favored in circumstances where public interventions are not possible unless we aspire to what is sometimes called a “heroic suicide.” The political militant must deceive in order to avoid risking their own life. But in such circumstances, should these infrapolitics militants be immune to moral universalism? Not at all, even if there are circumstances that make it impossible for them to openly engage in public life. For example, if they live in oppressive power-over/under sequences or in situations that

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are perhaps much less oppressive, but where it is assumed that a valuable proposal introduced in accordance with the required transparency will be rejected.47 However, it is important to distinguish between two antithetical uses of the word “infrapolitics”: • a substitute use for all politics—for all possibilities of carrying out political practices. Or positive infrapolitics. • A dramatic use as a propaedeutic to a future participatory and deliberative politics. We resort to this dramatic use because it is not possible at that moment to realize a democratic politics: the social conditions for successfully realizing public proposals are lacking. Or negative infrapolitics. Negative infrapolitics—which in times of adversity surreptitiously organizes power-with sequences—often erodes politicking and neo-despotisms and prepares. In this sense, negative infrapolitics occasionally manages to introduce certain arts of healthy coexistence, or designs for them. (We find good illustrations of cultural camouflage in the more or less secret actions of scientific thought and, in general, the new theoretical thought of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and even eighteenth centuries.)48 We continue to see current examples of negative infrapolitics in many countries and their fights against racism, or struggles in support of feminism or marriage equality, or any other number of protests in societies where these and other applications of the principle of personal autonomy are still prohibited in legislation.49 In contrast, positive infrapolitics represents a third counterexample to a politics of democratic integration. Why? Negative infrapolitics encourages social trust and centrifugal imagination for a better tomorrow: it fights for a future where difference and dissidence can be integrated but not eliminated. It works in secret to develop deliberations that are progressively more open. Positive infrapolitics, on the other hand, uses centripetal imagination to isolate itself inside a perpetually unchanging present, maintaining the current power-over/under sequences. One might (scornfully?) consider: deception and fear are all that we can expect from existing alongside those (atrocious?) animals, humans, and their enterprises. Accordingly, if politicking forbids the formation of the citizenry and neo-despotism deforms the citizenry, positive infrapolitics rules out the possibility that a citizenry can even exist and that there can be a public sphere in which we participate in deliberations on shared problems.

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Defective Forgeries Politicking, neo-despotisms, and positive infrapolitics constitute a particular type of counterexamples to democratic politics. They are defective forgeries. Like poorly made counterfeit money, like second-rate falsified paintings, when these defective forgeries are held up to the light, they do share some properties with the original. We thus find properties, albeit deformed, of a politics of democratic integration in these forgeries. These properties include: • provoking desires to be involved in collective participation to solve or dissolve or redefine or negotiate conflicts that inevitably arise during coexistence. • This solution or dissolution or redefinition or negotiation of conflicts should be accomplished through deliberations50 that do not avoid disagreements and criticisms or that confuse criticism with censure. This way, at the same time that democratic institutions are being constructed, we are also working to destroy anti-community communities, • effectively producing experiments in healthy coexistence and its virtues. Faced with these forgeries (politicking, neo-despotisms, positive infrapolitics) that sustain the bad reputation of politics and disregard practical holism, we must be aware of a common expectation that was mentioned in the first part of this pamphlet: that through a restorative political movement, or even a simple electoral change, the social situation will change overnight. Here we again succumb to magic, in this case, the magic of politics.51 It becomes imperative, then, that we address the question: How Can the Difficult Habits of Democratic Politics Become Ingrained? Immediate response: by promoting the correlation of virtues that are the arts of healthy coexistence as a “set of social trust virtues or the virtues of centrifugal imagination” and by being sensitive to the stimuli of the circumstances. At the same time, we must learn to know how to resist sets of vices like the correlation of “social distrust vices or vices of centripetal imagination.” Mediate response: by recognizing that the limits of a politics of democratic integration are determined by the moral principles of universalization, personal autonomy, and collaboration. These principles in their factual or counterfactual operations belong to the discourses that I placed in the category of “the air we breathe.” They are desperately valued when they are missing. However, in each and every circumstance, a person’s ability to judge must decide what exactly they prescribe. Such principles are products of a social

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pact the depends on “energies” that are exterior to morals: interactions with legal, political, and economic petitions. That pact possesses no more energy than what it is factually granted by the cognitive, judicial, and executive abilities of the people in the specific circumstances of their diverse histories. Therefore, we should keep in mind that arduous principle of nomadic thought that also concerns politics: Always remember that all of life’s processes are precarious processes. Or the principle of precarious processes.

Surrounded by so much precarity, we should rid ourselves of useless generators of entanglement and confusion, for example, the dangerous false dichotomies between liberal and communitarian or republican or social democratic positions. Why are these dangerous false oppositions? In order to limit its precarity, a politics of democratic integration requires nomadic thinking to produce interaction between customs and laws; otherwise, it will self-destruct. But again: Why? Those who defend an innatism open to the circumstantial development of the abilities, or mixed circumstantialism—as we do in this civil pamphlet—must defend, in collaboration with liberals, hospitality for the autonomy of each person’s abilities to elaborate and recognize laws. At the same time, we must, in collaboration with communitarian or republican or social democratic ideals, continue to recognize the importance of habits, including the affective bonds of a particular place and, therefore, how the various circumstances (legal, political, economic) increase or decrease the development of the human animal’s abilities, even constructing them to a certain degree. Liberals who do not defend the need for that “extralegal energy” validate those who accuse their proposals of magic: advocating universal moral principles and laws inside a vacuum.52 However, for nomadic thought and this practical holism under construction that we are defending, we must gather further determinations that are interconnected with democratic politics. The following sub-postulate is one of those underdeterminations. SUB-POSTULATE OF PUBLIC TRANSPARENCY, INCLUDING A CULTURE OF NON-IMPUNITY This is a fifth resistance for removing obstacles from our responses to interpellations by overdetermined values like equality, freedom, and collaboration. We know: in more than a few public protests or in discussions— face-to-face, in mass media, or on social media—in addition to other moral, legal, political, and economic demands, the banner of “more transparency in

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political activity” is often raised. Also, depending on the type of protest, it may specify: “more transparency in government agendas,” “more transparency in the management of public resources,” “more transparency in how news is obtained and disseminated,” “more transparency in pharmaceutical companies,” “more transparency regarding who is legally sentenced and who is set free,” etc. In these protests, what is the dramatic use attributed to the word “transparency?” This is another way of asking: How can these types of demands be satisfied in the face of state secrets and repercussive private negotiations of elusive accessibility? The presumption of a culture of transparency is satisfied if, first, there exists a public justification for government activities and its various subordinate administrations, as well as visibility regarding how corporations and private institutions and their agendas operate where it concerns the public sphere. And second, that justification or, more precisely, those justifications must be expressed in everyday language.

Toward the end of the first part of this pamphlet, we objected that the frenzy to certify corruption—in that case, to vainly certify corruption via static epistemology—by favoring the contexts of validation eliminated the contexts of production from consideration. We immediately clarified: it was not a matter of choosing one perspective or another, but rather to move from one to the other using nomadic thought. In the same way, it is useful to keep both types of contexts in mind with regards to the justifications expected in a culture of transparency. We must then begin by asking how the first condition of that presumption is produced and why it is important that it be fulfilled. And, in general, we must respond to the protests that demand “more transparency.” Here are a few reasons: • For there to be a public justification for the actions of power-over agencies in governmental, but also private, sequences, they must break with the vices that multiply social distrust: confidential management, state secrets, and the opaque practices with which those agencies are shuttered. Those agencies must therefore be open to the scrutiny of the people in order to demand the appropriate amount of accountability. • The public justification for the actions of a power-over agency in power-over/under sequences (government activities and those of private institutions that exercise power among citizens) is a door that grants access to such activities. Opening that door enables the mutual appearance, though oftentimes in competition, of the various particular interests of private individuals, civil society, the state, and those who hold

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positions of power in the government, all of whom are offered a forum in which to express disagreements and intervene against one another. • The public justification for the actions of a power-over agency in power-over/under sequences allows expressions of indignation in civic organizations (political parties, social media, etc.) or in personal protests. (As we mentioned previously: social indignation is a counterexample to envy and is usually a prelude to social justice.) • The public justification for the actions of a power-over agency in power-over/under sequences limits uncertainty, a reminder that in any society some human animals or groups of human animals are afraid of other human animals. The first condition for a culture of social transparency or public justification is discovered to be a generator of democratic politics: it makes it possible to demand accountability, the right to express oneself (defense of the freedom of speech, the press, to peaceful assembly), to intervene in communal matters, as well as allowing indignation and limiting social uncertainty.53 The dramas within a culture of transparency reveal who we are, dissimilar similar individuals cultivating the public sphere through the arts of healthy coexistence. But bringing to light the differences and dissidences between human animals also demonstrates the need for a politics that is not ignorant of the tensions inside practical holism: the many conflicts between moral, legal, political, and economic reasons and the ideals or interests of those who defend them. It would be propitious for us to develop a theory of a culture of transparency according to empirical discussions related to the following axiom: The greater the public transparency, the greater the civic trust and the possibility that the correct public decisions will be made and carried out. However, the construction of a culture of transparency should not be proposed as a presumption only; it should also be a right. As constitutions and civic regulations often decree: the right to the principle of publicity54 is of communal interest. It is for this reason that the second condition for a culture of transparency is so important: information regarding the public justification should be expressed in everyday language, not in a language that is specific to a group of experts. No special certification should be necessary to access that information,55 with the exception of what is classified as confidential. With respect to this “exception,” I would say, regrettably, that we must recognize that various circumstances not only frequently recommend, but demand operating against the presumption of transparency. (We previously noted: with any presumption, it is common for there to be special circumstances in which arguments introduce good reasons against the presumption and for limiting it.)

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A first type of reason against the presumption of transparency is introduced by those legitimate secrets to which a state government must sometimes resort. Legitimate secrets? It is reasonable for a state to maintain certain information hidden concerning the economy—for example, its plans to devalue the currency—or military secrets—for example, self-defense plans for a territory. In situations like these, obeying a principle of publicity would provoke financial chaos or a failed defense strategy. A second type of reason runs counter to the first in that it does not concern the state but rather civil society’s struggles against the state. Occasionally, these struggles require a provisional restriction or suspension of the presumption of transparency in politics, operating instead with the precarious tension that is precisely negative infrapolitics’ role in the organization of the political sphere. On the one hand, that tension confronts a present conditioned by adversities that make it extremely difficult, when not practically suicidal, to adhere to practices regulated by the principle of publicity. On the other hand, however, unlike positive infrapolitics, in negative infrapolitics we must trust that the same people or others—for example, new generations and their proposals for change—will venture to introduce designs for public practices. Both reasons are indicators of certain withdrawals from a culture of transparency. But that complexity increases if we explore the diverse ways in which the justifications for what is deemed common were, and continue to be, constituted. In doing so, the histories of groups of dissimilar and dissident similar individuals begin to come to the surface. Those fragments of collective histories56 compellingly demonstrate—though not always as compellingly as many reasonable people would like—how public justifications are impacted by: the receptivity or resistance to groups of people who have been ignored and even denigrated in a society.

These fragments of collective histories, when considered, also contribute to: the construction or reconstruction of spaces—networks of spaces often with their own distinctive qualities—in which to evaluate public justifications.

These observations refer us back to the second condition for a culture of transparency: public justifications should be expressed in everyday language so that they can be evaluated not only by a handful of experts but by the general citizenry.57 This means holding argumentations in which everyone can intervene. Without a doubt: we must evaluate the validity and the value of public justifications because justifying does not mean gathering opinions or immediately initiating conversations. On the contrary, we must use our

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cognitive and judicial abilities for ascending transitions that allow us to abstractly consider the reasons put forth and, between all of us, to judge them. One might object: do not cultures of transparency introduce other forms of manipulation? Their prestige has multiplied public justifications and, in the confusion that results from those numerous justifying practices, it is difficult to distinguish between justifications that matter, justifications that do not matter, and pseudo-justifications. This is one of the many consequences of the increasingly more frequent mixtures of false information, true information, and truly useless information that disturbs us day in and day out. Without a doubt: the profusion of practices claiming to justify, in fact, propagate transparencies that are not only banal but also disorienting. For that reason, we are dealing with transparencies that conceal. With respect to objections like this, we are again left with no other option but to educate the ability to judge in order to learn to know how to resist disorientation and continue to strive to promote cultures of transparency that do not conceal, that reveal. Error’s promiscuity is not an invitation to renounce the truth. Let me return to the protests that demand: “more transparency regarding who is legally sentenced and who is set free!” This proposal is another way of raising the “zero impunity!” banner. Again, depending on the type of political protest, one passionately specifies: “zero impunity for femicides,” “zero impunity for police misconduct,” “zero impunity for kidnappers,” “zero impunity for crimes by public servants,” “zero impunity for drug traffickers,” “zero impunity for abusive spouses,” “zero impunity for animal cruelty,” “zero impunity for those who raise the price of basic foodstuffs.” And also, like in the first part: “zero impunity for corruption.” However, anyone who reflects on these or analogous protests will encounter, among others, a perplexity, or an apparent perplexity: the banners of “more transparency!” “zero impunity!” and “zero tolerance!” are raised almost interchangeably. Is this an abuse of these words and a twisting of their most dramatic uses? Did we not just defend the virtue of tolerance, both negative and positive, as one of the virtues of social trust? Then how can we insist on “zero of a vice” and “zero of a virtue”? I take these demands to be incompatible. The sphere of negative tolerance (defending the tension involved in applying second-degree judgments to accept what is rejected with first-degree judgments) and the sphere of non-impunity (demanding punishment for crimes that should not be accepted by judgments of any degree) do not coincide. Why not? A Culture of Non-Impunity A culture of non-impunity is an essential constituent of a culture of transparency and of all practices in general, and it begins by establishing that:

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The presumption of non-impunity consists in the expectation that if crimes are committed, those responsible are penalized in some way: individuals, or social groups, or states, or multinational corporations, regardless of the amount of power-over they possess.

This presumption endorses a society that is governed by the principle of publicity and, therefore, the presumption of trust because citizens practice arts of healthy coexistence when they are among institutions that are not cruel or that have a low level of cruelty. It is perhaps strange to allude to a low level of cruelty, as strange as alluding to a low level of rage. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that it is possible to be more or less cruel: that some cruelties, even if not morally, legally, or politically accepted, are perhaps somewhat excusable in certain limited contexts, and some cruelties are completely unjustifiable in any context. In contrast, a person who lives in a society under a presumption of corruption and, therefore, in a society without a culture of transparency, will expect to often face unjustifiable cruelties. This person might even assume that bribery, perjury, fraud, intimidation, femicide, forced disappearance, and murder will go without the appropriate legal, political, economic, and even moral consequences. It is precisely for this reason that, to more closely examine a culture of non-impunity, I will consider a few observations. First of all, we must oppose factual legal impunity. In a regime of legal impunity, if there are indeed any laws in place, corruption in the legal state impedes the application of juridical norms and, their subtype, laws against impunity. As a result, sentences are not carried out and rules are not applied. Some crimes might be penalized, such as those committed by criminal groups without connections to the government or to powerful corporations, but few others. In any case, there are no public justifications that allow an opportunity to demand accountability. Instead, factual impunity exists when there are no corresponding juridical norms or when laws are rife with ambiguities. Although legal and factual impunity may be two types of impunity, the concurrences between them tend to multiply. Additionally, in regimes where factual impunity, legal impunity, or their concurrences exist, while suffering the consequences of violating implicit or explicit de facto or de jure norms, there is also no call for political or economic responsibility. This produces a culture that learns not to be morally indignant. Using the strategy of transitions, we can elaborate a typology of acts of impunity that are primarily legal, but carry moral, political, and economic repercussions. Each of these types of impunity feeds into the others. Also, this typology is parallel to the typology of acts of corruption. As such, we have:

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individual impunity. This is not limited to crimes committed by those who occupy government positions (one cause for the bad reputation of politics) or powerful economic positions (financing private luxuries with monies from the company in which they work). Individual impunity also occurs within minimal hierarchies that make it difficult for the victims to protest.

It is not uncommon to find examples, though unexpected for many, of a renowned opera singer who harasses their colleagues, or a university professor who harasses their students, without consequences. Or the police officer on the corner who deviates from the law (because they count on the protection of their colleagues/accomplices.) However, similar to what occurs with corruption, the most dangerous impunity is that which becomes normalized within the operations of zombie or mercenary institutions: institutional impunity. This consists not only in the explicit, and occasionally implicit, shielding of certain public or private organizations. There also exists institutional impunity that is not only de jure, but de facto.

Among other circumstances, we find this type of impunity when those in charge of mercenary institutions commit crimes and are not penalized. For example, a court of justice serves injustice because its judges have been bought. Or mass media outlets disseminate fake news that favors their owners or anchors and manipulates public opinion. (In the latter case, we face an epistemology of ignorance that is another cause for the bad reputation of mass media.) Institutional impunity also violates the moral principle of personal autonomy and renders people, workers for example, defenseless subalterns. In social circumstances of unemployment, these workers fear that even the slightest grievance may lead to a decrease in wages or firing, and, as a result, they censor their complaints. But institutional impunity not only humiliates those who work in these institutions. It is also the passport to the deterioration of other institutions because the phenomenon of blind obedience (disguised as appropriate obedience) soon begins to circulate. When such levels of impunity are reached, complicity or resignation (complicity in its passive form) grows, and the powers-over do not acknowledge the law, impunity becomes a snowball that permeates society. A population must then face: structural impunity. This is another way of describing the effects of a culture of corruption. A culture of impunity becomes an effective school for distorting or intimidating the cognitive, judicial, and executive abilities of those who find themselves under in power-over/under sequences.

The production and reproduction of individual, institutional, and structural impunity require a growing pact of silence. Yet, these do not exist without

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the participation of those with a vested interest in maintaining oppressive power-over/under sequences. Extreme situations of structural impunity, through an epistemology of ignorance—an epistemology that adopts guilty ignorance as its motto—can even lead to a whitewashing of the past. Whitewashing the past? In a society with the presumption of institutional or structural impunity, even past crimes can be accepted. Accounts of what occurred can be replaced with an “official history” that erases racism, torture, femicides, and forced disappearances. It is no longer the victims who reconstruct the past, in conjunction with witnesses and with the aid of authentic historians (meta-witnesses), and, in the case of the immediate present, journalists who have not been bought. Guided by political or economic interests, yesterday is invented by the employees of mercenary institutions. Herein lies the need to promote habits that instill, as part of the principle of collaboration and a culture of transparency that includes cultures of nonimpunity, a culture of social indignation that denounces.58 The practice of denouncing consists of interwoven actions: making the damages public, including damages committed against especially vulnerable groups like women and people of color.59 It also entails defending the reconstruction of those damages as crimes, supporting these reconstructions with empirical evidence, and petitioning for justice by demanding compliance with the sanctions established by criminal, civil, or administrative law. From these observations I propose we consider another theorem: There is often an explicative function found in reconstructing the acceptance of impunity as a symptom of a society where oppressive power-over/under sequences are present and, in particular, where some degree of realization of the postulate of a dignified economy is absent. Of course, there are eyewitnesses to extortion or robbery who, if interrogated, remain silent. That silence is sometimes rooted in not wanting to waste time with interrogations that police bureaucracies deliberately render tedious in order to undermine the custom of denouncement. However, even in those cases, not denouncing also acts as a symptom. That behavior reveals the mindset and emotional state of people who are struggling to survive in societies with great social inequalities and significant corruption: their society has pushed them aside. Their compatriots are indifferent to their hardships. The economic policies in place do not contribute to the actualization of the principle of collaboration. Therefore, why be subjected to the discomforts and considerable risks involved in denouncing only to contribute to the production of arts of a healthy coexistence that excludes them? The custom of non-denouncement is also consolidated not only as a product of reasonable bitterness and anger, but also out of a fear of retaliation in a society whose legal state is too weak to protect those who denounce. This fear has as many modalities as those realized in the dramatic use of the words

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“warlike biases.” These biases encourage practices in the personal sphere, like an abusive spouse; or in almost-private public incidents, like an irate police officer who at the slightest suspicion, draws his gun and uses deadly force because his girlfriend left him; or in collective events, government leaders using public funds for private businesses and threatening vengeance against anyone who reports it, or business owners who transform institutions into zombies or mercenaries, or secret police who coerce confessions through the use of torture. Such circumstances will continue to multiply if a population believes that no one will be penalized for these crimes.60 It becomes public knowledge that those who possess some, even the slightest, power-over will enjoy the privilege of impunity. At this point, let us turn to the strategy of detours as I reformulate difficulties that were previously discussed with respect to tolerance and that are directly related to a culture of transparency and its demand for a culture of non-impunity. (There are difficulties like the following that, once considered, will begin to reappear in various forms, even when we attempt to ignore them.) An Antinomy Regarding the Law of Freedom of Expression, a Law that Expresses and, at the Same Time, Contributes to Generating Cultures of Transparency It is often stated: crimes identified by current law (according to penal, civil, or administrative codes) that are not penalized are the only cases of non-tolerable impunity, or the reduced criterion of intolerability. This reduced criterion establishes that a second-degree judgment should tolerate damages that are not legally considered to be crimes under current law, even if those damages are condemned by moral, political, or even economic first-degree judgments. Is this true? Remember that a society guided by the postulate of equality from a legal standpoint has the right to freedom of expression. That freedom and the virtue of negative tolerance, intrinsic to the arts of healthy coexistence, are undermined if citizens are not also guaranteed the dual freedom to defend what is socially uncomfortable and even to furiously offend if need be. On one hand, this freedom implies the possibility that we may have to accept desires and beliefs with which we morally and politically disagree, or that may even disgust us. On the other hand, it affords us the opportunity to vehemently attack and publicly ridicule them through satire, pamphlets, films, television series, etc. If this reduced criterion of impunity is accepted, freedom of expression establishes ample space for legal negative tolerance, albeit with moral, political, and even economic repercussions. Following this reduced criterion of intolerability, offenses against abstract entities like moral, legal, political, religious, sexual, economic, or artistic beliefs,

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save for explicit and direct threats to people’s lives, should be tolerable in a democratic society. Offenses against institutions and symbols should also be tolerated. Consequently, a democratic society should not prohibit the ridiculing of already stigmatized minorities: those who hold disparaged religious beliefs, sexualities claimed to be unconventional, people of color, people in poverty, or emigrants. Therefore, according to the reduced criterion, we have no reason to consider something to be intolerable except what the current law of freedom of expression classifies as a crime. We can now formulate a thesis for what I consider to be the antinomy of freedom of expression: Thesis: The law of freedom of expression is constitutive of the national constitutions that respect people as ends in themselves. As such, it should, like any law, support the diverse social interactions—even those that are most offensive—of a democracy, completely and without exceptions.

However, in our discussion in the first part on the vertigos of law, we argued that by comparing the factual with the counterfactual, nomadic thought introduces the possibility of morally, legally, or politically critiquing current law and, in general, anything currently considered to be valid. What is more, the perplexities intensify as soon as we begin to reflect on the reduced criterion of intolerability, and even more so if we put it into practice. Unfortunately, words like “ridicule” and “offend” in relation to beliefs, behaviors, habits, people, and social groups suggest a precarious continuum. At one extreme we find opinions of disapproval and at the other, emotions and languages of hatred. Is it reasonable for there to be no social orientation concerning that continuum?61 Is it possible to radically separate the defense of a person’s physical integrity from the respect for their moral and religious beliefs, their sexual habits, and even isolate that integrity from some of their desires? Imagine a young person who is devout in their Christian or Jewish or Muslim or atheistic beliefs in a society that for the most part is not. When being ridiculed for the beliefs themselves—which we will assume is not considered to be a crime according to current law—will that young person not perceive this to be more than mere insults, but rather a rejection of their personhood by the society in which they reside? Does not the repetition of aggressive jokes about nonheterosexual behavior or the mockery of people of color eventuate in the formation of biases that, in the short or long term, incite harassment in the workplace and persecution, not to mention, in heinous circumstances, murder? Observations like these might perhaps cause us to substitute the reduced criterion of intolerability for an extended criterion. According to this criterion, it is morally and politically intolerable to endanger a person’s complete integrity, their beliefs and desires, their way of life, and their projects. Based

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on that extended criterion, then, we can formulate the antithesis of the antinomy regarding the law of freedom of expression: Antithesis: In a democratic society, the application of the law of freedom of expression should be prohibited if it results in the offense of people or social groups and, thus, exacerbates unhealthy coexistence.

As with any of the countless circumstances in which conflicts between beliefs arise, and particularly if these conflicts reach the radical form of antinomies, we must investigate whether or not we might possibly be operating under one or various deceptive premises, or premises that are at least implicitly deceptive due to their ambiguous expression. Because we know: vague beliefs often confuse more than we suspect and in ways that can be difficult to perceive. Both the thesis and antithesis are regrettably guilty of this in their temptation for simplicity. This causes us to succumb to simplifying vertigos. In what follows, I will reflect on a few—very few—difficulties that tend to be overlooked when constructing this antinomy. My conjecture: they are all generated in a variety of ways as a result of avoiding practical holism. Let us see. Firstly, the end of the Thesis asserts that the law of freedom of expression, like any other law, should support social interactions, in a strict use of that expression: it asserts, then, that laws should immediately give rise to such interactions, suggesting that they should do this automatically (or magically). However, as we repeatedly emphasized throughout the first part of this pamphlet, laws are not easily applied, except on rare occasions, if any at all: they require interpretation. This arduous intermediary task in the application of a law, in the most diverse countries, is not performed by machines operating with neutrality. It is done by different people and social groups using specific virtues and vices, any number of interests, and many emotions. Furthermore, that task is in fact realized by more people that we usually consider. It is directly carried out by judges, members of parliaments, and juries. But interpretations are indirectly formulated, though sometimes too effectively, by journalists, spokespersons, artists with considerable public influence (people who participate in the production of films and television series, newspaper cartoonists, popular musicians, etc.), and, in general, that small portion of citizens who have the power-to do so. It is therefore not true that with any use of the law of freedom of expression, one can simply look to the Thesis and declare: “the law allows me to do this.” On the contrary, one must assume the responsibility that this implies and declare: “my interpretation of the law (or the interpretation of the group in which I participate or that influences me) allows me to do it (and even encourages me to do it).” Secondly, it is often reasonable, as we also argued in the first part, to suspend or even eliminate not the law itself, but interpretations of its regulations

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in certain precise moments, in certain precise situations. These observations lead us back to practical holism and its various normativities that, not without conflict, come into play in every circumstance. As argued, the application of a law can be suspended to protect goods like friendship and healthy coexistence, or its legality can be eliminated from spheres of the normativity of face-to-face interactions where punishments are symbolic rather than legal (individual scolding, educational reprimands, avoiding interactions with the person whose conduct we deem negative, etc.). In addition, it is appropriate to suspend or eliminate the law of freedom of expression with regards to the previously considered state secrets and the secretive behaviors in a civil society that arise as part of negative infrapolitics. We also find legitimate withdrawals from a culture of transparency when, based on moral or political reasons, we reject the humiliation of social groups occupying the lowest rungs in oppressive power-over/under sequences. (As the saying goes: “it’s best not to add insult to injury”: ridicule only reinforces the oppression of those who are already oppressed.) For example, the first step in developing a language of hate occurs when Mexican emigrants in the United States are portrayed—in many films and television series—as extremely overweight, poorly dressed, dirty, only capable of earning a few pennies in foul-smelling kitchens preparing food that makes people sick. Or worse still, other depictions are even more humiliating: these emigrants are represented as people who do not want to work and who only survive by joining criminal gangs. Consequently, those who use the law of freedom of expression to produce such insults are taking a second or third step toward the formation of hate languages that culminate in many people shouting, “You don’t belong here!” and “Go back to your country!” or requesting the construction of increasingly more electrified walls at the borders, or committing even more aggressive acts. Therefore, there is no doubt: the liberalism of the reduced criterion, which holds strong even when it comes to insults, both personal and social, and which uses the Thesis to express and defend itself, will sooner or later become a liberalism of humiliation. The difficulties of the alleged antinomy are unfortunately not resolved this way. Thirdly, the Antithesis also succumbs to that unrelenting temptation: simplicity (which on many occasions causes a recourse to magic or is confused with magic). As a consequence, we put our faith in a simple, immediate, apparently decisive solution: a partial or complete prohibition of the law of freedom of expression. Once again, we are faced with that variety of simplifying vertigo that consists in avoiding practical holism. On the one hand, we fantasize that the personal-private-public life continuum is without the inevitable tensions and frequent disagreements between legitimate interpellations of the various forms of moral, religious, legal, political, and economic normativity. On the other hand, we deceive ourselves or pretend that we

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deceive ourselves by succumbing to another simplifying vertigo that causes us to forget that personal-private-public life is not only pervaded by normativities in conflict, but also by power-over/under sequences that manipulate and deform it. Fourthly, the end of the Antithesis again succumbs (now with some monotony) to the temptation of simplicity. The object to be prohibited is identified as if it were something simple, plain: the application of the law of freedom of expression should be prohibited if it results in the offense of people or social groups. It is clear: according to such a proposal, it would seem that anything that offends a person or a group, except for minor criticisms, should be deemed intolerable using a second-degree judgment. But some people are offended by hearing songs in languages that are not their own, or encountering skin colors that are not white, or sexual relationships that are not heterosexual, or even unconventional clothing or hairstyles. Prohibiting this then seems to imply the end of those experiments that we considered virtues of healthy coexistence: negative tolerance and hospitality. Consequently, benevolence or apparent benevolence (the benevolence of simplicity) that does not stop to examine and evaluate the various classes of offenses will sooner or later confront urgent social dilemmas. Thus, the need to decide transforms these behaviors into a dictatorship of arbitrarity. Face with so many evils, what should we do? Perhaps in order to regulate this antinomy regarding the law of freedom of expression and to distinguish the tolerable from the intolerable on a case-by-case basis, it is not possible to offer strict definitions that are not stipulations. Nevertheless, this absence does not lead to a complete lack of orientation because when such definitions are not possible, there are characterizations available to us according to certain indicators. Concerning the regulation of this antinomy, it is beneficial to consider the following indicators: • The law of freedom of expression should be defended as a constitutive law of any democratic constitution. • When applying this law, or any other law, its various interpretations should be analyzed (interpretations that destroy stereotypes and interpretations that reinforce them). • In the various applications of this law, or any other law, we must not avoid the challenges that practical holism introduces. Therefore, we should also not ignore conflicts with other types of normativity: moral, religious, political, economic. • In these conflicts between different forms of normativity, the normativity that should not be neglected under any circumstances in the one that articulates a universal moralism in its interactions between the principles of collaboration, personal autonomy, and universality.

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Following these types of indicators, sometimes not without numerous difficulties, nomadic thought should never cease to shape and continuously adjust and readjust the ability to judge. We must employ this ability to judge to evaluate reasons, contrast varying descriptions of an event or action, and establish sensible equilibriums, while also balancing the continuities and ruptures between diverse forms of normativity, and justifying them. This will of course be carried out by relying on some behaviors generated by non-deliberative competencies that are rooted in habits intrinsic to the arts of healthy coexistence. Let us assume then that we defend: When the banner of “zero tolerance” is raised in many protests or in various types of public discussion, it is being used as another way of demanding: in these situations (murders, kidnappings, rapes, crimes committed by public servants, financial scams by corporations, institutional corruption) we must put an end to impunity, even if these crimes are not explicitly condemned by current law. For we find ourselves confronted with the intolerable. Thus, in these situations the banner of “zero tolerance” is interchangeable with the banner of “zero impunity now and in the future.”

However, among other conflicts that undermine the politics of many societies, we encounter the following. The Repeated (and Perhaps Inevitable?) Scandal: The Absolutely Intolerable That Is Legally and Politically Accepted62 It is easy to enumerate the political horrors of the twentieth century. Whichever list is being created, you will likely find Nazism and its death camps at the top. The word “Auschwitz” not only refers to an evil place, it is also a symbol of atrocity. But that horror should not cause us to forget vicious political, as well as moral and legal, destructions like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Stalinism and the crimes of the gulag, the Cambodian genocide, the genocide of the former Yugoslavia, the forced disappearances by dictatorships in Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile, among other horrors. Unsurprising, in the wake of these and other similar political catastrophes, subsequent populations and governments, in shock, frequently asked questions like: how can we not yield to complete legal, moral, and political impunity and restore the arts of healthy coexistence in societies that are so fractured? More than a few of the answers to this question are articulated in two interrelated sets of reasons that should be explored. Those answers formulate mandates that are repeated, though not without significant controversy. I am

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referring to the mandate to act under siege and the mandate for the difficult reconstruction of healthy coexistence. Auxiliary considerations are usually introduced together with these two sets of reasons: proposals for causal explanations of the horrors suffered. Using the strategy of transitions, I will present these mandates through ascending transitions of thought. Hence, I proceed with great idealization.63 Mandate to Act under Siege After collective destructions like coups d’états, dictatorships, and other obstacles to interpellations by overdetermined values like equality, freedom, and collaboration, societies strive to avoid the temptation of powerlessness by developing more democratic political regimes. To this end, they are often prepared to pay a price as high as not calling for public justifications that would suggest accountability and even tolerating various types of impunity, effectively legalizing them. Using second-degree judgments, they decree amnesties for those who through first-degree judgments are rejected, and rightly so, for having participated in the intolerable: the horrors recently experienced. They impose full stop laws regarding prosecution and, therefore, impunity for at least some of the individuals responsible for the brutalities. Actions like these have continuously received support across large social sectors as one referendum after another has continued to demonstrate. What is more, for many populations who vote in favor of these amnesties or full stop laws, their justification is categorical.64 It is often commented: except for a desire for justice, delusions mixed with political saviorism, and temptations of omnipotence, there is no other option. Such public justifications are usually articulated citing reasons of prudence or, in other words, reasons that belong to the morals of political realism. Thus, the argument is that this is “the least bad option,” an “unavoidable political need.” Proponents of such arguments might even add: in the wake of these oppressive regimes, the objective is to establish regimes that are not oppressive or that are less so. However, the powers that gave rise to oppression are still present in society. This mandate is then supported by substantiations regarding the circumstances in which a population lives post-conflict. After such social destructions, despite the countless abuses and crimes, it is unfortunately not possible to learn to know how to resist from zero. Also, this is never possible. In these circumstances, the only resistance possible will be conditioned by the recent past’s brutal power-over/under sequences that have not been removed.65 One might further argue: in the majority of circumstances, transitions from a dictatorship to the fragile draft of a democratic system have been carried out with the results of

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negotiations imposed by those who occupied roles of power in the powerover/under sequences of a still-present past. It is not too difficult to construct in the abstract an antinomy with reasonings that oppose the previous reasons and arguments. For example, in response to the reasons put forth by those proponents of the mandate to act under siege, its opponents will note that such a mandate, and the morals of political realism that it implies, is an affront to a fragment of society: the people who were persecuted or tortured or “disappeared.” Furthermore, refusing to construct and maintain a culture of social transparency usually generates conflicts that will sooner or later disrupt the entire society during later periods of their history. Why? Legalized impunities are factories for civic ignorance. It is possible for that ignorance and destruction to be inherited from one generation to the next and for it to expand until becoming a shared tradition of malaise, if not hatred toward the rest of society that has been so insensitive. This hatred eventually reappears, upsetting the whole of society, like an illness that was never completely cured. Also, legalized impunity fosters a lack of respect for the state that does not impose sanctions against those who violate its norms. In such circumstances, does the legal state not weaken its legitimacy? And that lack of legitimacy can, in critical situations, lead to vengeance. One could reach the conclusion: seeing as how the state has become inoperable, we must be the ones to carry out justice or we must form armed groups that can. We could remain in the abstract exploring arguments from the proponents and opponents of the antinomy that arises from the mandate to act under siege. And those arguments will certainly be stronger or weaker according to each specific situation. I will add one more observation: though societies act according to the mandate to act under siege following many catastrophes, they often conceal it. However, if this mandate is accepted, such an approach is a mistake. Negotiating with what has been imposed and with what is considered impossible to avoid is—if cognitive ability has been correctly used to determine “what is impossible to avoid”—a demonstration of humility and practical wisdom, not a sign of resignation in the face of adversity, as it is often rebuked to be. In particular, verifying that the present circumstances have the form of a fear alternative, i.e., any option besides that action implies succumbing to worse options, exhibits brave humility.66 Why then is this mandate kept hidden? Admitting that our actions have been determined because we feel cornered is cause for shame. It is even shameful that the pressure being exerted comes from a past that continues to be a present past and which we are still learning to know how to resist. For this reason, a second mandate is typically announced to the public. One whose content is oftentimes not so radically different from the previous mandate, but which makes

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the present-past’s impositions more presentable by designing a horizon that is increasingly rid of such impositions. Mandate for the Difficult Reconstruction of Healthy Coexistence67 It is commonly argued: if we desire continuity between a present and a future governed by the arts of healthy coexistence or, at least, a new era that differs from an unremitting horrific past, then we must quickly reeducate ourselves and others in habits like negative tolerance, hospitality, the ability to relocate/self-relocate, and possess the impetus to explore other possibilities. What is most essential is the implementation of morals and policies that favor democratic integration.68 These morals and policies seek to produce negative tolerance toward people who, with first-degree judgments, are considered—not without reason—to have committed acts belonging to the realm of the intolerable. Yet, how is it possible to be accepting through negative tolerance, even becoming hospitable and relocating/self-relocating, so that, with basic agreements, those whose actions destroyed a community can now be reintegrated into it? The most radical measure, though often the most stable in the long term, is to by law decree a mass oblivion. But if I was at all correct in my discussions in the first part of this pamphlet, we certainly cannot place our trust in the rule of autarky: in wanting to operate exclusively via law. Furthermore, a law of amnesty does not erase tortures, rapes, arbitrary detentions from public memory. Except for appealing once again to magic and to a strong conjecture of practical heterogeneity, how can a law that decrees: “the past did not happen” be implemented? In order not to lose hope, we might recommend: one way to support the power of law in these circumstances consists in appealing to “transitional justice.” The purpose is, among other actions, to economically repair the victims or their families. These reparations are important, although in poor countries they may be rather or completely unsatisfactory. Transitional justice also seeks to officially establish, for designated periods of time, truth commissions. Let us more closely examine these commissions whose objectives are and have always been undoubtedly admirable, though their results not quite as much. Truth commissions, as their name indicates, set out to satisfy a right that has been neglected. This refers to the practical need of human animals and their communities to know what destructions of goods—material and nonmaterial—have occurred around them; those who live in oppressive power-over/under sequences also suffer the propagation of disinformation. Truth commissions investigate what happened to loved ones who disappeared

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and create forums where victims are able to recount their traumatic experiences. Consequently, they continue the arguments that oppose the mandate to act under siege by demanding: • the elimination of social factories of ignorance. Or, in order to describe those violent destructions, they seek to frame the victim as a sacrificed human animal. At the same time, they • acknowledge the victim as a bearer of rights and, thus, as a person with the rational ability to protest before competent authorities that their rights have not been or are not being respected. Of course, the possibility of demanding their rights be respected presupposes that they now live in a legal state or in a state that is attempting to be so. Otherwise, it involves risking exercising their own power-to in order to learn to know how to resist; for example, by implementing negative infrapolitics. Truth commissions also • acknowledge the victim as a citizen and, thus, with the potentia to participate in the collection of collaborative ventures typical of a society that is not entirely dysfunctional.69 The efforts of transitional justice must be welcomed. When it is understood neither as including acts of forgiveness and reconciliation,70 nor as an implement of political propaganda—which it frequently is—then it is a part of learning to know how to resist. One might object: a careful distinction must be made between prudence and morality. Both the procedures of transitional justice and the mandate that calls for intersubjective and intergroup agreements in order to rebuild after collective disasters and tense periods of coexistence are based on arguments that are only prudential: reasons that are only political, not moral. Is it so important to celebrate the conjecture of practical heterogeneity by using the word “only” and the static thought it expresses? Those who use nomadic thought and do not obsessively adhere to these uses of “only,” nor to the walls they erect, are concerned with cultivating interactions between diverse dimensions of normativity. Let us move now to some ancillary considerations related to the mandates we have discussed. Explanations It is helpful to engage our cognitive ability to investigate the internal and external causes—for example, political and economic causes—for social catastrophes. With these explanations, we discover to what extent the causes that produced these events have remained unmodified71 and are apt to

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reproduce analogous catastrophes.72 (Unlike compromises that demand more or less immediate action, in order to reach an explanation by investigating the causes, we must separate ourselves from the events. This requires us to adopt an exasperating distance from what continues to be a source of suffering and, despite that pain, proceed with the investigation. Otherwise, without these explanations, any future plans are nothing more than desires in the void. Because, while there is no exact correspondence between explaining and predicting, explaining and reconstructing causalities provides the most reliable platform from which to anticipate potential events.) There are, however, also difficulties with explanations. They typically evoke the slogan: “The causality of the past is inescapable.” This dictum is a shameful way of evading the active potentia of our human abilities and accepting the impositions of prevailing power-over/under sequences. How do we learn to know how to resist these impositions? I Insist That I Am Myself Plus My Circumstance and We Are Ourselves Plus Our Circumstances. We Are Human Animals with Histories That Are Both Situated and Modifiable We observed that in many public acts of protest and debate, objectors raise banners equating demands such as “more transparency,” “zero tolerance,” and “zero impunity.” If we bear in mind that an act of impunity, like an act of corruption, often initiates expanding processes, then we must analyze those requests because, sooner or later, legal impunity contributes to the formation of moral impunity and other types concerning the political and economic structures of a society. And exacerbating the distress, it eventually leads to more serious circumstances: impunity that is legally and politically tolerated. One might ask, with some outrage: Are you then condoning a vice and accepting it as a virtue? Not at all. The legal and political circumstances that result in allowing forms of impunity refer exclusively to past crimes. This is retrospective legal, political, etc. impunity. Because we are all situated histories, sometimes even surrounded, finding ourselves in positions where we can only choose the least bad option. Thus, are we not many times forced to tolerate intolerable past events through a second-degree judgment in order to avoid worse evils in the present? Anyone who responds affirmatively to this question likely does so according to the same reasons provided by proponents of the mandate to act under siege. However, those who defend this mandate often cannot avoid couching it in words like: “although we morally reject what occurred, we must also legally and politically tolerate what occurred. Sadly, every other option is irresponsible.”

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Irresponsible? Why? Before turning to the virtue of responsibility, I will return for a moment to situations in which the interchangeable banners of “more transparency,” “zero tolerance,” and “zero impunity” are raised. In demonstrations like these, the word “impunity” does not refer to retrospective legal impunity (like in post-dictatorship situations), but rather the contrary: it looks to the future. This use of the word wagers on the elimination of prospective impunities. I would almost say that it formulates an oath: “from now on, we take responsibility for resisting any and all types of impunity.” If we employ the strategy of transitions, we can, with an epistemology of the abstract, also declare: “we take responsibility for preventing any more obstacles to the interpellations of equality, freedom, and collaboration.” How is it possible to accomplish such ambitions? The question itself is overwhelming. Therefore, in order to address it, I cannot avoid taking a fanciful detour. A SMALL PARODY: “NORMATIVE SUICIDE CLUBS” There are occasionally alerts regarding epidemics of suicides, alluding to personal self-destructions.73 I venture to consider other types of such epidemics: avalanches of theoretical self-destructions that are proposed and realized in “normative suicide clubs,” which are perhaps more common that we imagine. For example, we sometimes find opinion groups who, in their defense of practical heterogeneity, block reasons that are put forth by principles of moral universalism, the legal state, democratic politics and their presumptions of transparency and non-impunity, as well as by dignified economies. But before examining such “normative suicide clubs,” I will pause for a moment to look in the opposite direction. In order to strengthen practical holism or to at least make it more reasonable, we should be aware of successions of other holisms that also contribute to the force of good in human animals and their lives. For example, • the holism of the senses. Sight, sound, taste, smell, and other sources of sensations and perceptions interact with one another to produce reliable gateways into the world and equally reliable interactions. • “Human faculties” (to use a perhaps outdated expression) or, if you prefer, the orientations or directions of the mind, interact with one another and with the environment. Desires interact with circumstances and emotions that, in turn, motivate the appreciation or rejection of certain objects or certain circumstances. These interactions result in the reinforcement or weakening of the modes in which we focus our attention.

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Something similar occurs with the habits and automatisms ingrained in the body. These holisms allow us to reconstruct diverse families of holisms: • descriptive holisms, • explicative holisms, • motivational holisms, which, based on holisms of the mind, orient the behaviors of human animals. However, do these holisms at all support the normativity of practical holism? Thinking holistically about the functions of the mind and its motivations at least suggests that, spontaneously, one normative dimension tends to cause us to become interested in others, even appreciating or rejecting them. But we would need to further investigate this direction of thought. For now, we are compelled to return to those “normative suicide clubs” that use centripetal imagination to defend atomic normativities. They even frequently resort to aggression to realize this defense.74 So, to hammer home the point, an expression typically used in pamphlets, I will look at several of these frequent organizations. There are those people who orient their abilities in such a way to judge exclusively in moral terms—often delivering anathemas that are limited to projecting a voice of condemnation. We have reiterated that the members of those “moral suicide clubs” tend to show contempt for the situated character of human animals; for example, they refuse to acknowledge circumstances that legally, politically, or economically condition people. They even show disdain for emotional education. The moralist appears to be in distress, but their purity paralyzes their executive ability. As a result, their cognitive ability disregards whether or not laws are legitimate, if institutions are democratic or cruel, or if the economy is dignified or obscene. They are also uninterested in desires and passions. They are only obsessed by free will (and some mechanism for deducing the hierarchies of responsibility). But does a person’s biography—including ingrained sensibilities and equally ingrained biases and habits—and legal, political, and economic recourses or obstacles not orient their ability to judge, as well as, to some degree, construct how they desire, believe, remember, feel, imagine, and reason? Parallel observations with respect to law are also relevant. In their “suicide clubs,” they insist: the circumstances are irrelevant for people to abide by the laws, whether they live in a power-over/under sequence that is as oppressive as a death camp or enjoy the considerable privileges of a country that is rich, secure, and free. Geography and history do not matter. Biographies do not matter either. The inability to learn to know how to resist the distortions by

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courts of law that have become unjust is only a question of will. As such, a person is guilty if they do not do what they should with complete independence from the “exterior energy” emitted by their current circumstances. Of course, stating that people are dependent on their circumstances does not imply that they are determined by them. For example, in many societies it is a commonly accepted that “law is an intrinsically immoral profession.”75 Does this cliché imply that all lawyers are necessarily immoral? Let us pause to consider this question. This cliché often gives rise to the following belief: “since we cannot be completely and absolutely moral always, and in every case, when practicing this profession, let us not concern ourselves with morality.”76 We again encounter a reasoning governed by the (often fallacious) logic of all or nothing. Consequently: either law depends on the “exterior energy” of an “absolute morality” or we resign ourselves to immorality. I use the following properties, defended by many adherents of those “suicide clubs” for morals and law, to reconstruct what “absolute morality” might refer to: • “Absolute morality” can be reconstructed with what we referred to at the beginning of this second part as “determined games” that are governed by a simple formalism. For example, the maxim: “Lying is prohibited always (not in principle)” even in extraordinary circumstances, like when lying would save the lives of innocent people, or a city, or—if we exaggerate as a thought experiment—the plant and animal life on our planet. • Therefore, morality conceived as a determined game is omnicomprehensive. The strict rules must be applied with simple formalism: automatically always and everywhere. According to this “absolute morality,” then, there can be no moral conflicts that make it necessary to exercise the ability to judge. One way to block these reasonings—one way to stop these legal vertigos—is by eliminating any aspiration for a morality in terms of a determined game. Doing this will, on the one hand, make room for various normative interactions inside morality and law, for example, with politics or the economy, or personal biographies. On the other hand, and even more importantly, it will make room for each person’s ability to judge inside the legal state: that power-to of judges, district attorneys, lawyers, and citizens in general. Now, “suicide clubs for politics” might claim: although there are no direct moral (or prudential, if you prefer) controls over actions, because people lack the supposed potentia, there are indirect controls. If we affiliate ourselves with a “suicide club for politics,” we will have to defend that there is no mediate or immediate room in political reasoning for moral or prudential, or legal

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or economic, considerations. But if human animals—either as individuals with power-to or as members of organizations in a civil society with powerwith—cannot find any motivation and, therefore, purpose to act in accordance with their desires and beliefs, some of which are moral, legal, and economic reasons, then how can they motivate themselves?77 Some economic traditions also constitute “normative suicide clubs.” For example, based on certain influential structuralist perspectives, economic causes are attributed with functions that allow human organisms to maintain and reproduce societies, including changes that are governed by laws.78 At the same time, these functions—it can be claimed—lead to the fantasy that there exists something akin to human potentia: that in nature there are animals with power-to and, therefore, also with power-with. Consequently, according to these “suicide clubs,” the judicial and executive abilities that human animals rely on from the first-person point of view are fantasies, byproducts generated by their organisms as a means of adaptation. Caution: We must also consider difficulties of the opposite nature: Unfortunately, challenges to practical holism do not only stem from these “suicide clubs.” Another disturbing concern has been with us all along. Suppose we accept practical holism. Suppose that there are interactions between moral, legal, and political (including economic-political) reasons. And let us also suppose that there are interactions between their actualizations in desires, beliefs, emotions, and habits, as well as with the arts of healthy coexistence. How then is it possible to learn to know how to resist the obstacles to interpellations by overdetermined values like equality, freedom, and collaboration? Indeed, how is it possible for us to act if in order to do so virtuously and effectively, we would need to consider such disparate reasons as moral, legal, political, economic, and even affective reasons, even if in principle we give priority to the first? If this is the case, would not every person who decides to act responsibly be required to analyze so many reasons and such varied content that they would be condemned to the paralysis expressed in the confession mentioned at the start of this pamphlet: “and looking at everything, nothing it saw, nor could it discern.”? SUB-POSTULATE OF A CULTURE OF RESPONSIBILITY This is a sixth resistance for removing obstacles from our responses to interpellations by overdetermined values like equality, freedom, and collaboration. But more than that, it is also a necessary component of all the previous postulates. Again, a “non-depraved entity” proposes:

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we should foster a society that interiorizes a culture of responsibility in the habits—and the affects—of the people. There are good reasons to make an ingrained habit of a presumption that favors this culture.

I will again use the strategy of detours. We encounter numerous questions regarding what is responsibility and how we should assign it—whether with moral, legal, political, or economic dimensions—and to whom we should assign it. Is responsibility only argued at an individual level or are there judgments for a collective responsibility as is perhaps implied in the use of the words “civic responsibility”? Let us provisionally assume that both exist, at least regarding some types of responsibility, for example, moral and political.79 But what presuppositions do we use to attribute that obligation—the imputation of responsibility—to a person or persons who we thereby transform, or who thereby transform themselves, into individual or perhaps collective agents, who must defend their actions or omissions: who must assume their actions or omissions as their own? Conditions of Responsibility In general, responsibility is predicated, and has been theorized at least since Ancient Greece,80 considering the basic modalities of the innate potentia of human animals. Therefore, a human animal is responsible if: • they possess degrees of knowledge concerning what they should do or omit. (We do not consider a person to be responsible if they do or cease to do something because they are unaware of the circumstances that determine it, although we can hold that person responsible for not having informed themself. We also do not consider someone to be responsible if they act under hypnosis, even if we consider them responsible for not having foreseen the possible consequences of allowing themself to be hypnotized.)81 Or the responsible use of the cognitive ability that is inherent to the human species. • Based on knowing-what is occurring around them, the human animal must explore the reasons that are relevant to their current circumstances, compare those reasons, and analyze them. Or the responsible use of the ability to judge that is inherent to the human species. • That human animal must have the ability to act or omit acting if they so decide, the power-to do or undo. (We do not hold a person responsible for their muscle spasms.) Or the responsible use of the executive ability that is inherent to the human species.

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The cultivation of these abilities causes them to become more intertwined. On some occasions, the executive ability, the condition of our power-to, what we are capable of doing or omitting, predetermines our know-how, the cognitive ability, what we are able to know, and even how we deliberate with ourselves or compare reasons, or the ability to judge. These reflections are also guided by interventions, or the possibility of articulating a power-with. Following these conditions, we can reconstruct some properties in the attribution of responsibility. For this, we often differentiate between moral, legal, political, and economic attributions. Characteristic Properties of Those Who Are Responsible and Who, Therefore, Can Be Granted Responsibility We assign moral as well as legal, political, and economic responsibility in both negative circumstances—when someone is deserving of censure82—and in positive circumstances—when someone is deserving of praise. In both cases, the use of the word “responsibility” is normative. On one hand, in negative circumstances, we assign blame to second or third persons, or we blame ourselves for not being able to act responsibly, for example, not being able to fulfill the obligations of a moral universalism, a legal state, a democratic politics, or a dignified economy.83 On the other hand, in positive situations, we show our gratitude, applauding commendable acts or a praiseworthy omission that supports practices of healthy coexistence. However, assuming responsibility for harm caused does not lead to remorse, nor does it imply the need for legal punishment. If a person punches another person and provides reasons (clarifying that they acted in self-defense), then that person assumes responsibility for the damage, but avoids legal punishment, as well as other punishments, by presenting reasons to justify their actions. Circumstances like these also refer to another property of the attribution of responsibility: its allocations usually possess varying degrees of complication.84 A person can be considered co-responsible for an action or omission because they suggested or planned that action or omission: mediate responsibility or, as it sometimes called, intellectual responsibility.85 Or if a person has acted in conjunction with others, or “collective responsibility” like, for example, in the case of civic responsibility. In these and other similar cases, some circumstances are more or less clear and others are confusing and introduce degrees of attribution of moral, legal, political, or economic responsibility—for example, if someone did not fully comprehend the consequences of their actions.86 Attributing degrees of responsibility is frequently the start of disagreeable moral and political controversies, if not legal trials. In the case of trials, explanations are demanded

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regarding the degree of the offense, the principle of in dubio pro reo is claimed, the complicated causal sequences are reconstructed, defense statements are made along with requests for pardons or punishments, and sentences or conditions are recommended. Attributions for evaluating normativity, its complications, and its gradualness are intertwined with social practices like praising and blaming, but also providing and asking for reasons from ourselves and from others, i.e., with practices of reflecting alone and deliberating with other people and, thus, with feeling guilt or defending oneself from attributions of guilt. Because engaging in moral, legal, political, or economic actions or omissions implies having the power-to not only carry them out, but also to eventually defend those actions or omissions, and the ensuing expectations and demands, with reasons. In negative circumstances in particular, the person is interrogated so that they can explain the intentions and beliefs that led them to act in such a morally, legally, politically, or economically reprehensible way. Upon hearing their responses, one might reply: “Knowing your intentions and beliefs helps me to now understand how you acted. But your reasons do not justify it.” Attributing responsibility then implies having some epistemic access to the reasons that sustained the person or persons who acted, assuming that those who are responsible are minimally sensitive to reasons. Of course, a person can—and usually does—refuse to give reasons for their actions; that refusal becomes a part of the judgment that we form about them. In negative cases, this will increase the irresponsibility and censure we assign; in positive cases, we would perhaps interpret this as a show of modesty and an attempt to avoid the vice of vanity. Whoever accepts these observations would be wise not to forget that principle of nomadic thinking: Always remember that all of life’s processes are precarious processes. Or the principle of precarious processes.

Why is this principle also so important in this context? Similar to other social interactions, we deal with precarious processes in the practices of attributing responsibility. When taking responsibility or assigning it to others, human animals tend to commit errors. It is not only because such practices are complicated; people also deceive themselves and others. An observation like this cracks open a new door. If we are courageous enough to open it completely, could not the conclusion be devastating?

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Let Us Examine Attacks on the Cognitive, Judicial, and Executive Abilities, Which Are Presumptions of Responsibility, According to Situationist Challenges It may be that we are mistaken or that we deceive ourselves more than just occasionally. One might again propose (like in some suicide clubs dedicated to politics or the economy) that human potentia is a fiction. If this were true, then our know-how and, especially, our power-to, conceived within the executive ability according to the principle of personal autonomy, would constitute a façade, a puppet show. What pulls the strings throughout quotidian life remains hidden: its causes. The existence, or the alleged effectiveness, of the innate abilities of human potentia and their various social developments is rejected. It is argued: • When confronted with a wide range of problems, there is no cognitive ability that allows us to learn to understand the circumstances, or, at least, that capacity does not possess the effectiveness it is granted according to the principle of personal autonomy. • When confronted with a wide range of problems, there is no ability to judge that allows us to analyze various beliefs as reasons for action, or, at least, that ability does not possess the effectiveness it is granted according to the principle of personal autonomy. • When confronted with a wide range of problems, there is no executive ability that allows us to act according to moral, legal, political, or economic reasons, or, at least, that ability does not possess the effectiveness it is granted according to the principle of personal autonomy. Is human potentia, then, just another useful fantasy for human organisms to function, despite us not having any reason to assume its existence? Or, at least, we lack good reasons to defend that the education of those abilities, and through this their maturation, is important.87 According to some so-called “situationist” challenges, the influence of the circumstances—social, personal—in human deliberations and decision-making are underestimated. In turn, as a correction, the potentia of human abilities is overestimated and the influence of its reasonings in the formation of its modes of acting is valued to an absurd extreme. As a defense of these challenges to the cognitive, judicial, and executive abilities, I will again attempt to naturalize the reflection. However, unlike during our discussion on corruption in the first chapter, or at the end of the section on public transparency in this chapter when we examined the alarming difficulties associated with legalized impunity, I will not use the natural experiments of sociology, political theory, or history. Instead, I will examine

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familiar psychosocial experiments with moral consequences, though they have indirect legal and political consequences as well. The first of these psychosocial experiments produces harm; in the second, we witness refusals to help someone who has been harmed. The harm-causing experiment demonstrates an individual’s willingness to obey orders that emanate from what were condemned as vices of social distrust in the arts of unhealthy coexistence, in this particular case, by glorifying an alleged “scientific authority”88—even if this means entering into open conflict with their moral conscience.89 The experiment is disturbingly simple: a researcher explains to a voluntary participant that he must perform the role of the “teacher” and is responsible for punishing a “student” each time the student answers a question incorrectly. The experiment begins by administering a 45-volt electric shock to the “teacher” and the “student” so that they both realize the pain involved. Once the shocks reach a certain level, the “student” (who is an actor) pounds against the glass that separates him from the “teacher,” becomes upset, and asks to end the experiment claiming that it is going to cause him to have a heart attack. When the shock reaches 270 volts, the “student” stops answering. Two theories, previously mentioned as part of the arts of unhealthy coexistence, have been proposed to explain due obedience as blind obedience—with cases of such irrational and alarming subordination as in this “classroom” experiment. According to the theory of conformism in the presence of what is recognized to be an “authority,” everyday people are capable of destroying goods and even murder if they have been trained to obey an “authority,” be it political, military, religious, scientific, commercial, criminal, or any combination thereof. There have also been attempts to explain this phenomenon of blind obedience with the help of the theory of self-instrumentalization: a person does not consider themself, in accordance with the principle of autonomy, to be an end in themself, but merely a tool for accomplishing the objectives of other people. (The principle of instrumentalization is intrinsic to many armies. However, it is also very common in other wars. Sometimes, in politics and in some religions, the militant or the believer conceives themself as just another cog with due obedience.)90 Both theories reaffirm a fact noted earlier in relation to the arts of unhealthy coexistence: when fear advises people not to take charge of themselves, they seek refuge inside a strict assumption that heeds no other directives except those that emanate from the continuum of due obedience. At one extreme of that continuum, there are habits that constitute small and large civic responsibilities. At the other, we must not forget the warlike biases that, along with other factors, gave rise to the tragedies of the twentieth century; for example, the blind obedience of the German soldiers in the Nazi death camps that led

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them to assassinate Jews, Roma, homosexuals, social militants, and other “enemies of the state.” Now let us look at the second experiment in which aid is refused to someone who has been harmed.91 A class of theology students is divided into two groups. The students in group A are invited to give a talk on the parable of the Good Samaritan from the New Testament. The students in group B must prepare a conversation about possible job options. Both discussions will take place in a different building than the one where they are currently gathered. On their way to the other building, the students come across someone who is sick and in urgent need of medical attention. The experiment found that the actions of the two groups of students were not influenced by the topic of their presentations, but rather the pressure of time that has been placed on them. More pressure, less willingness to help.92 As the strategy of detours recommends: it is important not to overlook experiments like these or ignore historical situations that can be easily identified as even more examples of blind obedience. But we do not have to use such extreme examples. There are perceptible degrees of blind obedience in the everyday life of a family, an office, a school, a supposedly more critically minded university community (but which is in reality an anticommunity community), a religious group, or a seemingly more-democratic political party. The pervasiveness of the phenomenon of blind obedience both bolsters the bad reputation of argumentation and confirms situationist challenges. Should we then declare ourselves powerless and free of any reference to the uses of the word “responsibility”?93 If we have succumbed to that variety of voluntarist vertigo known as argumentative vertigo, then our answer is affirmative. But what specifically is this vertigo?94 Argumentative Vertigo With good reason, situationist challenges reject any recourse to magic and the temptation of omnipotence like the following: as rational animals, humans, if we have the will to do so, can respond immediately and in any situation to the power-to that is found in the best reflections, the best deliberations, and the best arguments, or argumentative vertigo. Premises articulating the “magic of the reflection” are adopted to defend this vertigo. This is a similar type of magic to the ones discussed in the first part of this pamphlet: the magic of law, the magic of politics, and the magic of the economy as ways of avoiding practical holism and other obstacles. So, even if explicitly and emphatically denying it, some of the following premises are more active than we realize in arguments and theories that are considered to be highly respectable. I will again turn to a gentle parody:

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• It does not matter that the mind runs deep and, therefore, harbors biases, including some that are warlike—another way of saying: it does not matter that a person has history. A person’s mind, regardless of their body’s biology and their personal biography, is transparent or can be if they are responsible. Therefore, if we choose to, we are able to use our cognitive ability to know without bias what it is we need to know so that, with our ability to judge, we can analyze the relevant reasons and reach a decision. Furthermore, with our executive ability—with our will—we are able to directly put those decisions into practice. Behaviors generated by non-deliberative competencies, conducts guided by ingrained habits, and immediate reactions do not exist. Or the postulate of individual transparency. • Social structures (economic, political or geopolitical, military, administrative, etc.) and, in general, the circumstances in which we live do not impose, condition, or suggest desires, beliefs, or actions. Or the postulate of environmental neutrality. Based on observations like these (or more presentable variations but with fundamentally similar content), and perhaps many other premises that are sometimes introduced in order to confuse, we can infer a magical conclusion: Through self-reflection human animals are able to act directly and independently of their present and past circumstances by responding to the best reasons, radically distancing themselves from their own bodies, the biases that their biographies have accumulated, and the environment in which they have grown and currently reside. Or the postulate of the omnipotence of reflection or argumentative vertigo.

Like at the beginning of the first part of this pamphlet, the dramatic use of the word “omnipotence” is once again revealed to be a magnet for errors. However, if we eliminate the magic expressed by premises such as these in argumentative vertigo, does it not also become impossible to take and to assign responsibility? Not only is it difficult to abstract ourselves from the physical pains of our bodies. We also struggle to let go of agonizing memories or to confront despotic power-over/under sequences present in certain economic structures. Even in more or less democratic social circumstances, there can exist extreme conditions of oppression like those that are produced in institutions designated as “total,” such as prisons, psychiatric hospitals, etc.95 However, even these conditions do not necessarily produce entirely sub-agency modes of acting: independent of the human animal’s cognitive, judicial, and executive capacities. Therefore, in circumstances of oppression, neither those who

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learn to know how to resist nor those who surrender and seek refuge in the mandates of blind obedience, though in both cases they do so by relying on habits and automatisms, are immune to reasons.96 Of course, in practical holism, little trust is placed in the efficacy of isolated reasons, their simple logical connections, or inspirational speeches. Yet we continue to believe in the medium or long-term power of some reasons, at least, under more or less propitious circumstances like those introduced by a culture of transparency, which includes a culture of non-impunity and a culture of responsibility. In a dense culture (as any culture is) of responsibility, we therefore reject the premises of mental transparency and environmental neutrality. This is the reason why so much value is given to the correlations of desires, affects, and beliefs that become interiorized as good habits and virtues. Good habits and permanent automatisms also lead us to reflect using nomadic thought. The following final observations restore a culture of responsibility and highlight the possibility of limiting both the range of situationist challenges and the phenomenon of blind obedience. We should then first take a moment to consider how and why the abilities of human animals socialized in a culture of responsibility will, to varying degrees and in a variety of circumstances, assume this responsibility or experience regret if they do not. Types of Circumstances Experienced When Living in a Culture of Responsibility In circumstances that we can classify as type 1, we find a responsibility in behaviors generated by non-deliberative competencies or with low degrees of reflection. Ramona, a single mother, is driving through a small unfamiliar town. She is in a rush to get home and, at this particular hour of the morning, there is no traffic or police. Still, Ramona obeys the various signs and lights as if the streets were filled with cars. This responsibility is a part of Ramona’s habits. She not only heeds the traffic signals, but she also shows respect for potential drivers. Nevertheless, there are also degrees of complication involved in her civic responsibility. Ramona implicitly analyzes her respect for traffic norms together with her need to get home early to care for her children. These analyses reveal to what point Ramona actualizes a culture of responsibility. Let us now consider explicitly or implicitly shared responsibility generated by the deliberative competencies of individual agents. These circumstances can be classified as type 2. One early Saturday morning, Magdalena and Jorge, a married couple with little money who make a living selling fabric and are on their way home to their young children, find themselves in an unfamiliar city. Suddenly, a police officer pulls them over under the pretense that they committed a traffic violation by driving in the wrong lane. The

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couple maintains that they were only following the other cars from the area, even pointing out cars that are driving in that same lane at that very moment. The officer then changes the charge: he says that they ran a red light. That violation requires, in addition to paying a fine on Monday, the confiscation of their license plates, which will not be returned to them until after they have paid the fine. Magdalena, who is behind the wheel, mulls over some (not all) of the moral, legal, political, and economic implications that they should bear in mind and some (not just any) of the decisions that they can make as she argues with the officer that she had of course stopped at the red light. Jorge engages in similar reflections. But after analyzing the situation, he gets out of the car to ask the police officer for information about areas of interest in the city, taking the opportunity during this so-called “conversation between men” to offer him money, which the officer readily accepts and then drives away. The couple has succumbed to a form of moral, not to mention legal, corruption since they are part of a culture of responsibility from which Jorge has strayed. Suppose that once they have resumed their drive home, Jorge, defends himself: Of course, I regret that I had to commit a moral and legal offense by reacting to extorsion by offering a mordida (bribe).97 But our children are waiting for us and the person watching them said she had to leave at noon. I was also tempted to offer him money, but I stopped myself—responds Magdalena—. Not only was it a moral and legal offense, it was also political. We are always complaining that this country is run by a presumption of corruption. But with behavior like yours, we are never going to be able to instill a culture of responsibility. Besides, your actions were doubly sexist. You did not think that I might also have a say in this and you took advantage of a certain “machista” complicity. You exercised the power of your gender identity to silence me. With that police officer you endorsed the stereotype of female irrationality. You excluded me and you excluded women as valid interlocuters. Nevertheless, you weren’t alone in your lack of civic responsibility: I could have rejected that stereotype by interrupting your course of action.

To this, Jorge might reply: There was no time or place to ask you. That policeman has been conditioned to act based on a long socialization process and with considerable complicity. Anyway, he was growing impatient, and I also had to analyze various reasons. That’s why I’m planning to write a letter to the newspaper to protest this abuse of power. Maybe that protest will carry more political resonance than standing up to extorsion with its predictable consequences: having to find someone else to watch our children while we’re stuck here, bearing the additional costs that

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will drain what little savings we have. Besides, our primary moral responsibility is to our children. That duty weighs heavier than any other obligation.

In this conversation and others like it, attributions of responsibility highlight the various complications and their sensitivity to reasons. Magdalena and Jorge offer reasons with distinct degrees of moral, legal, political, and even economic relevancy, or, more precisely, combinations of all four. Of course, Jorge’s decision is arguable. But their problems of conscience, the guilt they express regarding their actions, and Magdalena’s reproaches are all an indication that they both participate in a culture of responsibility. Let us now consider a third type of circumstances and a possible responsibility of collective actions oriented by a clearly defined, but momentary, purpose. In a bus, three drunk passengers are walking in the aisle blowing up balloons, which they subsequently pop using their knives. Then, they begin waving their knives in the direction of some schoolchildren who have just got on to go to their school in a nearby town. Perhaps no individual passenger’s executive ability is alone able to prevent the danger facing the schoolchildren and the rest of the bus. However, we assume that in a culture of responsibility, with its various powers-to, a group can constitute a power-with capable of warding off the aggressors.98 But imagine that no one acts and three children are injured. In type 3 situations like this one, is it valid to pass a moral judgment like: “the other passengers should have taken responsibility for the situation and acted”? There are those who would answer affirmatively.99 If it becomes imperative to act in a situation where the first condition of responsibility, the condition of know-what, has been satisfied (in this case that condition is clear: “the three dangerous passengers must be stopped”), then a random collection of individuals can be held morally, but perhaps not legally, responsible for failing to participate in a rescue action.100 In opposition to this answer, one might claim: a random collection of individuals—the passengers on this bus, or a group of people who happen to be in line at a bank when robbers suddenly burst in, or people sunbathing on a beach who hear the cries of someone drowning, or passengers on a plane faced with some aggressor or aggressors—lack a shared decision-making procedure. But, is such a procedure a necessary condition for realizing collective actions?101 In circumstances like these, the impossibility of deliberating is substituted by gestures and a shared purpose. Experience shows us that these factors allow us to improvise collective actions through glances and few if any words if a culture of responsibility is already in operation. There is another type of collective scenario, for example, the responsibility of people who make up an organization, or role responsibility, which occurs in type 4 circumstances like the following: On a newly built federal highway, two people traveling by car fall into a sinkhole and die. The Public Works

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Department was in charge of the highway’s construction. As in most other organizations, there is a hierarchical structure of functions. Let us assume that an investigation is carried out and uncovers several cases of corruption. For example, to increase profits the construction company that won the contract used less-resistant materials than what were required. At the same time, those who inspected the construction of the highway on behalf of the Public Works Department accepted bribes to ignore these shortcuts. Of course, if a culture of responsibility exists, the inquiry will investigate the responsible individuals, determine the extent of each person’s responsibility, and bring legal charges against them. This does not, however, prevent us from also attributing some degree of legal and political responsibility to the construction company for not properly supervising their employees and moral and political responsibility to the various government employees at the Department of Public Works. There are tragedies that are still more complex. This involves type 5 circumstances and overwhelming civic responsibilities in the face of widespread destruction that is beyond even the control of governmental policies, for example, the destruction of the environment. Even in a deeply rooted culture of responsibility, the actions required to solve such problems are confusing—unlike the circumstances for the random group of passengers who face a clearly defined danger. This type calls for concerted actions that are diverse in nature: moral, legal, economic, and, most of all, political. Furthermore, the agents are not identified like they are in the case of the random group of passengers on the bus and, to a lesser extent, the Department of Public Works; instead, they must be constructed. This construction must largely be carried out through public deliberations, though also in part with the assistance of various organizations, for example, environmental activism groups. In circumstances like these that affect everyone, assuming ecological responsibility becomes more apparent than in other circumstances if a culture of responsibility has been ingrained. Regrouping the Above Circumstances In the first three examples, we encountered circumstances of immediate but momentary urgency: one or more travelers in an unfamiliar city or a random group of passengers confronting an aggression. In contrast, the last two examples present circumstances of mediate urgency—forgive the oxymoron—and also with structural degrees of increasing complication that include historical, economic, and cultural factors. In type 5, the most complicated circumstances, the aspiration is to ingrain new non-instrumental habits regarding our interactions with the environment. Unlike in type 1, 2, and 3 circumstances, in type 4 circumstances, and particularly in type 5 circumstances, each person’s power-to gradually decreases; or circumstances with progressively less

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effective individual responsibility. Types 1, 2, and 3, and perhaps also type 4, involve sets of accumulated small-scale actions. Type 5 involves accumulated large-scale actions. And once again, that warning returns: Be careful with words. How can we justify using the same word—“responsibility”—for such dissimilar types of practices? Although the cognitive, judicial, and executive abilities function differently in the examples from types 1 through 5, they are in constant operation throughout all of them. Of course, the possibility for each human animal’s abilities to operate gradually weaken. The individual or collective agent is clearly aware of what must be done or not done in type 1, 2, and 3 circumstances, slightly less in type 4 circumstances, and considerably less in type 5 circumstances. Therefore, at least in the case of type 5 circumstances, are we not abusing the word “responsibility”? Power-With In type 5 circumstances, human potentia offers each individual the possibility of joining forces with others to constitute a power-with. For example, it could be argued that those seeking a different way of interacting with the environment possess the know-how to be able to construct a moral, political, legal, and even economic power-with. However, the objection still looms whether it is reasonable to employ the word “responsible” with respect to a progressively less effective responsibility. One might claim: the contribution of each power-to is of little importance in the construction of that power-with. I suspect that we must learn to know how to resist this response. If we can do that, then it can be inferred that in circumstances of types 1 through 5, it is not an abuse for us to use the word “responsibility.” Based on These Distinctions, We Must Emphasize Another Property of Responsibility The circumstances of responsibility indicate salient points in a continuum where we also find intermediate circumstances or circumstances that combine with one another. As such, it is important to consider, together with the properties of responsibility that we have already discussed (normativity, gradualness, complication, sensitivity to reasons), a new property: diversity. • There are diverse forms of responsibility and attributions according to content. Although these forms of responsibility tend to overlap in an ideal theory, in practice for various reasons they do not.

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• There are also diverse attributions of responsibility in relation to time. There is prospective responsibility: the action is located in the future. Inversely, there are decisions that, after acting, elicit forms of retrospective responsibility. • The structures of responsibility are no less diverse: collective and individual responsibilities function differently. Let us reflect further on the difficulties of collective responsibility. Attributing responsibility to the bus passengers if they did not act or to the Department of Public Works does not imply sentencing each and every passenger or each and every employee in that department. Some of those passengers are able to offer justifications for their inaction such as advanced age or delicate physical condition. As for the Department of Public Works’ responsibility for the deadly sinkhole, subordinate participants in that organization might perhaps be exonerated. We must also explore the conjecture: moral responsibility and, with certain specifications, political and economic responsibilities operate simultaneously on two levels: the individual and the collective.102 But these difficulties multiply when facing challenges like the destruction of the environment. For this confrontation, we must create new organizations, often in opposition to current organizations, that are aware that the first presumption of responsibility in type 5 circumstances, the cognitive ability’s know-how, is still emerging.103 Sometimes, we anxiously decry: “All over the planet nature is being destroyed. Something must be done now.” With such observations, we are dealing with what we can call a “precondition of knowledge.” It involves a collection of emotions, desires, and maybe some vague reflections. Social groups and people have to convert that precondition into a condition of motivation in order to articulate, using their ability to judge, a power-with that possesses executive abilities. Of course, in some circumstances the transition from cognitive and judicial abilities to executive ability is more or less straightforward. In traditional words: the gap between theory and praxis is small, if there is indeed any gap at all. This, however, is not the case in type 5 circumstances. Here we face numerous dilemmas when attempting to move from relatively abstract theories to nonideal theories and then, from these, to how we should act in a specific circumstance if we want to act responsibly. Nevertheless, between theory and praxis—between ideal theories, nonideal theories, and circumstances—complications arise that can be addressed through practical holism. Despite these difficulties, I will venture a general theory of responsibility that encompasses individual responsibility, concerted responsibilities, and a culture of responsibility that decides the future of the various normative practices (moral, legal, political, economic) in a society.

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Once Again: Toward an Innatism of Human Potentia Open to the Circumstantial Development of the Abilities Throughout the second and third chapters of this pamphlet, I have suggested a naturalist theory of human development that allows us to cultivate arts of healthy coexistence including the construction of various cultures such as a culture of responsibility. With respect to this, we can now state: • It is inherent in our species of animals, human animals, to be born with a potentia that diversifies into cognitive, judicial, and executive abilities, among other maturations, or the innatism of certain abilities. However, • these abilities, like this species’ other abilities (for example, muscular abilities whose development enables them to run, jump, and with time, swim, or abilities that permit the diverse uses of a language—literal, ironic, metaphorical, etc.—and even learning different languages), depend on appropriate socializations in various cultures. • Therefore, we now have several reasons to defend an innatism that is open to socializations or a mixed circumstantialism of responsibility. Consider the word “circumstance” as it is used dramatically in the expression mixed circumstantialism. It contrasts with the use of the word “situation” in situationist challenges. In this type of challenge, the word “situation” has the sense of an “immediately present situation.” As such, according to these challenges, the immediate present situation would alone determine a person’s behavior, and counter to practical holism, it would do so independently of their genetic inheritance and lived history. Consequently, the degree to which an individual exercises responsibility in a “given situation” approaches zero. One might object: mixed circumstantialism as a theory of responsibility is nothing more than a complex situationism that, like any situationism, tends to sooner or later eliminate responsibility. The only difference is that instead of postulating immediately present situations as determiners for actions, it postulates that they are determined by the accumulation of past and present circumstances. This is false. Mixed circumstantialism takes into account the interactions constructed using genetic inheritance and diverse past and present circumstances, including present circumstances in a broad sense, not only those that are immediately present. But, more importantly, it takes into account what maturing human potentia does with all this and how it remains open to interpellations.104 Therefore, the circumstances in which the abilities develop in one way or another and the circumstances in which a culture of responsibility

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has the potential to be ingrained are not determiners. They are conditions, but also stimuli, summons, invitations. Without a doubt, human animals are—contrary to the assumptions that result from argumentative vertigo—frequently more or less deaf to reflections and even immune to the best thoughts. But oftentimes, especially when we reside in the appropriate cultures, the possibility emerges for us to be more attuned. In these circumstances, we human animals construct ourselves as people with the potential to analyze diverse types of reasons, or practical holism, without rejecting our innate abilities and acquired automatisms, but instead integrating them. In this sense, with understandable exaggeration considering the impact that these words might have, during the Enlightenment obstacles to interpellations from overdetermined values like equality, freedom, and collaboration were described as “verschuldeten” (self-incurred).105 Nagging questions continue to reappear, for example: How can we best promote the maturation of our abilities? With what types of lessons? And what role does nomadic thought play in those lessons? NOTES 1. These will involve, for example, the enactment of onerous taxes and, in certain circumstances, expropriations and other analogous measures. 2. These practices seem to acknowledge that economic equality is a value, albeit one that is overdetermined. Nevertheless, some discrepancies arise with respect to the exact nature of that value, to what degree it should be realized, and even what causal forces are behind economic inequalities in general, or certain types of economic inequalities, within the vicious circle of inequalities. 3. We will need to investigate, for example, whether or not agricultural reforms are essential or if some fiscal reorganization is sufficient. We will also have to decide which incentives are appropriate to grant to local industry and which variety of balances should be applied to both national and international commerce, among many other public policies. 4. If we react immediately and punctually to every urgency, without plans that organize them hierarchically and, therefore, without having an ultimate objective in mind to plan for the medium and long term, those practices will certainly lose their way in the labyrinth of countless urgencies and the confusion between what is extremely urgent with what is also important to resolve, but less urgently. Confusing an economic theory or, in general, a social agenda, with a hospital emergency room often causes effectiveness to be neglected. But no theory that effectively supports fair economic policies—policies not intended as politicking or neo-despotism—can eliminate the problem of effectiveness, that framework of justice. 5. Fear is perhaps the emotion that human animals share most with many other animals. This emotion has no need for language or reflection. It is enough to sense

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that something bad is approaching. In his article “Fear,” The Philosophical Review 89, no. 4 (October 1980): 560–78, Robert M. Gordon characterizes the emotion of fear as the quest to avoid harm. Gordon distinguishes between being afraid and being in a state of fear. According to him, “the state of fear appears to have been a complex evolutionary experiment, perhaps universal among mammals, involving physiological (especially autonomic) arousal, the riveting of attention, readiness for flight, and a disposition to flee. Such a state might also be termed the flight-arousal syndrome” (565). 6. Cf. Aristotle, The “Art” of Rhetoric Book 2, chapter 5, 1382a 21–25. 7. In his book Fear: The History of a Political Idea (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), Corey Robin offers an innovative narrative of the political use of fear, both in the history of modern times and in the thought of those times—from Hobbes to Arendt. I do not agree, however, with one of his many reflections. If I understand him correctly, for Robin fear—political fear, at least—invigorates: it awakens us from drowsiness of peace and its “dogmatic dreams.” At the very beginning of his book, Robin states: “Fear restored us the clarifying knowledge that evil exists, making moral, deliberate action possible once again” (2). And later: “Without fear, we are passive; with it, we are roused to ‘the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling’” (4). The text that Robin quotes at the end is from Locke. Precisely because fear tends to be, as Locke says, such a strong emotion, and being an emotion that causes the first person to seek, in many cases, to protect their physical integrity, more than open our eyes to freedom and generalize collaborative action, fear tends to produce paralyzing tendencies. 8. Nevertheless, there are circumstances in which Corey Robin is correct and fear’s subjectively defensive tendency can become a collectively defensive tendency. 9. From the first line of the introduction to her book The Monarchy of Fear. A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), Martha C. Nussbaum implicitly opposes Robin’s proposal of fear as a social awakening: “Fear all too often blocks rational deliberation, poisons hope, and impedes constructive cooperation for a better future” (1). Fear obstructs any cooperation because “you don’t need society to have fear; you need only yourself and a threatening world. Fear, indeed, is intensely narcissistic” (29). Fear is then a useful tool for supporting antidemocratic policies. 10. History shows that any phase in the continuum of collaborative economies—a continuum that ranges from the liberal economies of wellbeing, roughly in the tradition of Keynes, to more or less socialist economies—can be feared. 11. Analogies can often be illuminating devices. On the one hand, situations that are different but analogous to the original situation, by introducing contrasts, reveal the disguises propagated by some power-over with respect to the original situation. On the other hand, analogies shed light and shadows on the analogized situations and allow for new unexpected scrutinies that have been previously overlooked. 12. For example, they reject people who practice “strange” religions like Islam—in largely Christian societies—which they “claim” is a religion that is “violent by nature” and, consequently, “spreads fear everywhere.” In a not-so-distant past, Jews were a

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part of that category of invented enemies, which resulted in terrible consequences like the genocides that occurred under Nazism in the first half of the twentieth century. 13. This refers to the power-over of those who possess wealth, hold political positions, or are directors of large companies; or, at least, someone who is a “husband/owner” with the authority granted to them by certain customs or traditions. 14. When we think about virtues as bridge-virtues, and vices as bridge-vices, those “bridges” usually contain obstacles. For example, the space between resigned powerlessness and envy is mediated by the objectification of social hierarchies. Many people process their inferior status with words like: “those who are higher up deserve it.” As a result, the “bridge” is interrupted and the appearance of envy is postponed, but only postponed. 15. Cf. W. G. Parrott and R. H. Smith, “Distinguishing the Experiences of Envy and Jealousy,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 64, no. 6 (1993): 906–20. 16. This observation dialogues with some aspects of Rawls’s discussion on envy in A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971). I agree with Rawls that a frequent cause of envy is the lack of self-worth and a sense of powerlessness to compete for goods (like immediate intersubjective sympathy, or physical beauty, or some variety of athletic, cultural, political, or economic goods, and others), those typical competitions of any society. However, envy does not gain intensity if the goods are quantitatively greater or qualitatively more important. On the contrary, envy often becomes more intense if a person finds themself in direct competition with the envied other. For that reason, it is rare for an investor to envy J. D. Rockefeller, for a doctor to envy Marie Curie, for a physicist to envy Einstein, or for a poet to envy Sappho. We envy the people who are beside us or in front of us, those who are nearby, not those who are far away. The scales of envious feelings are frequently even ridiculously local: small-mindedly personal. 17. Regarding this, consider the distinction that is sometimes made in everyday language between “malign envy” or envy in the strict sense and “the good kind of envy.” The latter is understood as aspiring to obtain something of value, but without wanting to dislodge the person or persons who possess said valuable from their location. For example, a composer from the twenty-first century who experiences “the good kind of envy” for Bach is not attempting to dislodge Bach from his place in musical history, nor does that person want Bach to be stripped of his greatness, much less does he view Bach as a rival with whom to compete. (Would such attitudes even make sense?) What that composer likely seeks is to emulate, as Aristotle would say, the inspiration of that music, or perhaps more precisely, be enlightened to some degree by Bach’s greatness: be “touched” by his greatness. Thus, I consider the expression “the good kind of envy” to be a rhetorical abuse of the word “envy.” 18. Sometimes certain “identity politics” are understood to be the enemy of any transition toward the abstract. In the strategy of transitions, the descending transition (toward the concrete and particular) is absolutized. That absolutization (to which I will promptly return) is a way of raising walls and immobilizing personal histories or of directly embracing essentialism. For example, Sonia Kruks in Retrieving Experience: Subjectivity and Recognition in Feminist Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001) writes: “it is qua women, qua blacks, qua lesbians that groups

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demand recognition. . . . The demand is not for inclusion within the fold of ‘universal humankind’” (85). However, does not someone who makes statements like these assume that their recognition as a human animal is assured? By doing so, they lose sight of the fact that this assumed recognition is a historical achievement that can be lost at any moment—just as any historical achievement can be, and often is, lost. For example, that very assumption was called into question during the Valladolid Debate (1550–1551) when as part of the “indigenous controversy,” it was discussed in what sense the predicate “human” should be applied to indigenous people in the Americas, either as an actual or a potential state. Many European voices favored the second position. (Europe was notoriously interested in obtaining unpaid labor.) In fact, that “controversy” and its consequences, the legitimation of formal and informal slavery, continues to be repeated in various corners of the planet in its many, sometimes unrecognizable, variations; cf. Linda Martín Alcoff, “Comparative Race, Comparative Racism,” in Race or Ethnicity? On Black and Latino Identity, ed. Jorge J. E. Gracia, 170–88 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007). 19. If absolutizing the strategy of descending transitions leads to blind identities and ghettos, absolutizing ascending traditions usually gives way to the ridiculed (and rightfully so) “murky rhetoric of open arms,” the teary-eyed discourse used by powers-over—or whoever believes themselves to be a part of them—to better manipulate power-over/under sequences. In many situations, ascending transitions can of course be used beneficially. One illustrious example, among many: in Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute, his quasi-hymn to the Enlightenment, one character informs another: “He is a prince,” to which the other immediately replies: “Even more importantly, he is a man.” In this case, the ascending transition, by relativizing or nullifying the privileges of nobility, also reaffirms the overdetermined value of equality. 20. Authority is often contrasted with power. Another opposition is more reasonable: power with authority, or legitimate power, versus power without authority, or illegitimate power. 21. Joseph Raz proposes a similar strategy for dissolving the authority paradox. Cf. The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). However, Raz seems to believe that such a dissolution will not also lead to other difficulties; for example, that it will not leave us with a disturbing tension with which we must learn to live. 22. Authoritarianism is authority’s mortal illness. Any authoritarianism contributes to the erosion of all authority, even the most necessary and legitimate authority. 23. Cf. Theodor Adorno et al., The Authoritarian Personality, Introduction by Peter Gordon (London: Verso, 2019); Gordon W. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1954). These texts investigate different problems and stem from equally different and even opposite premises. Nevertheless, if they are read using nomadic thought, many passages converge and inform each another. 24. Cf. Niko Kolodny, “The Myth of Practical Consistency,” European Journal of Philosophy 16, no. 3 (2008): 366–402. 25. A common candidate for realizing this integration is the so-called willpower. Therefore, a person who holds a well-integrated assumption is capable of overcoming any obstacle that arises when moving to action in order to achieve their desires, beliefs, and affects—including their greatest moral desires, beliefs, and affects.

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26. It is often argued that a well-integrated person is someone who harmonizes their desires and beliefs into a compact whole without evaluating if, for example, the desires are collaborative or corrupt or if the beliefs are true or false. For this person, self-integration is the only success. One objective of these neutral self-integrations is perhaps Harry Frankfurt’s proposal in which desires are organized into a hierarchy. First-order desires are subordinated to second-order desires and also possibly to third-order desires. According to Frankfurt, a well-integrated person overcomes the desires that enter into conflict and identifies “wholeheartedly,” to use his word, with the desires positioned at the highest level. Cf. Harry Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” Journal of Philosophy 68, no. 1 (1971): 5–20; “Identification and Wholeheartedness,” in Responsibility, Character, and the Emotions: New Essays in Moral Psychology, ed. F. Schoeman, 27–45 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987). However, for Frankfurt, could not a murderer, who is also a fanatic, be a characteristic example of a well-integrated person? 27. Christine Korsgaard proposes a description of non-neutral self-integrations. According to her proposal, a person’s successful integration is not so much a condition of their excellence as it is a precondition for being an agent capable of acting. Thus, the hypothetical imperative that harmonizes present plans with future actions is a necessary condition, but insufficient for moral action; cf. Christine M. Korsgaard, Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). One might object: Korsgaard does not seem to consider that each agent is a web of histories (often vaguely articulated) that varies from one moment to the next, and perhaps that is precisely what constitutes the circumstances of freedom. In any case, the meaning of the self, or if you prefer, the inner voices that channel our abilities are usually not the same throughout our existence: they are moderated, nuanced, changed just like the experiences of the body (to make a distinction based on an abstraction). Of course, in each and every moment of one of those histories, the agent must hierarchize—though not necessarily integrate—their desires and beliefs in order to act. But this does not imply that the agent does not also continue to have other desires and beliefs, other fantasies of happiness, which over time, or immediately, lead to other hierarchizations of desires and beliefs in order to act more autonomously and collaboratively in the future. If we suppose the contrary, a suspicion arises: does a well-integrated person who constantly acts with rigidity, without hesitation, without the slightest doubt, following what they consider to be demanded by the categorical imperative, not ultimately become a fanatic? Unfortunately, at least since the French Revolution and Robespierre, these so-called purity clubs—not to mention the “purity guerrillas” that clouded the twentieth century—have not been judged by history to be schools for freedom and justice. What is worse, we know that many self-declared moralists—when they are also authoritarian—ultimately become righteous murderers. 28. Is not this variety of commitment what Bernard Williams calls “identity-conferring commitments”? According to Williams, such commitments are the condition of one’s existence; cf. Bernard Williams, “Persons, Character and Morality,” in Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973–1980, 1–19 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). Of course, this type of commitment does not imply a valuation in and of itself,

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beyond the doubtful value of “authenticity” in the sense of coherency or, even worse, of being tempted by the firmness of a character. 29. The imaginary walls that prevent nomadism in thought and, therefore, eliminate any use of the strategy of transitions fortify even the most ridiculous authoritarian traits, including the authoritarian traits of those who revel in frivolity and wasteful spending. This is why these walls also tend to produce what can be called second-degree illiteracy: moral illiteracy and political illiteracy, which is in fact more dangerous than first-degree illiteracy. 30. This seems to be Judith N. Shklar’s position in her provocative book Ordinary Vices (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984). Her first chapter is titled “Putting Cruelty First,” and its first statement is a criticism of the strategy of ascending transitions: “Philosophers rarely talk about cruelty. They have left it to the dramatists and historians, who have not neglected it” (7). A few pages later, as one example among many of the scant effectiveness of abstract beliefs, Shklar reminds us: “For both Montaigne and Montesquieu after him, the failure of Christianity from a moral point of view was made perfectly manifest by the conduct of the Spaniards in the New World” (11). 31. In Entre nous. On Thinking-of-the-Other, trans. Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), Emmanuel Levinas formulates a similar concern: “How to enter into this comparison of incomparables without alienating the faces?” (205). In response to his own question, Levinas warns: “I must henceforth compare; I must compare incomparables, uniquenesses. . . . In the meeting with the face, it was not one’s place to judge: the other, being unique, does not undergo judgment; he takes precedence over me from the start; I am under allegiance to him. Judgment and justice are required from the moment the third party appears. In the very name of the absolute obligations toward one’s fellow man, a certain abandonment of the absolute allegiance he calls forth is necessary. Here is a problem of a different order, for which institutions and a politics—the entire panoply of a state—are necessary” (202–3). Earlier in this text, Levinas had formulated the very question that concerns us. His answer must be included in the universalist tradition, in some Kantian traditions: “By virtue of what, and in what way, could the free or autonomous will claimed by the right of man impose itself on another free will without this imposition implying an effect, a violence suffered by that will? Or could it be that the decision of a free will conforms to a maxim of action which can be universalized without being contradicted” (156–57). The paragraph concludes that the categorical imperative is “the ultimate principle of the rights of man” (157). 32. In many wars, like those in the former Yugoslavia, rape was detached from desire or, more precisely, from compulsion or, more precisely, from masculine irrationality, in order to become a weapon of combat that was enthusiastically endorsed by one’s “comrades.” Something parallel occurs with Mexican drug-traffickers and decapitations, horrendously transformed into “weapons of persuasion” and “messages.” Messages? For whom? Ultimately, they are messages intended to produce panic and block interpellations from overdetermined values like equality, freedom, and collaboration.

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33. In his book Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), Michael Walzer states: “Morality is thick from the beginning, culturally integrated, fully resonant, and it reveals itself thinly only on special occasions, when moral language is turned to specific purposes” (3). Unless we understand “specific purposes” to mean something like “descriptions of uncommon situations” on the one hand, and, on the other, we accept that throughout the course of the lives of people and societies, sometimes “thick” and “thin” descriptions are complementary and at other times they correct each other, we can also position Walzer’s statement as a way of not succumbing to false dichotomies. These arise, for example, when our attention becomes obsessive, whether with individual, particular, or structural damage, or with the opposition between what a character contributes to an action and what is appropriate for the situation. If we interpret Walzer this way, he would agree with the need to devise typologies for cruelty in order to better understand the interrelations between people and situations. 34. In addition to the possible uses of cruelty (to incite fear and suppress, as a weapon of combat), when “normalized,” it can become an end in itself that brings perverse pleasure. In Montaigne’s essay on cruelty, he notes: “I could hardly persuade myself, before I saw it with my eyes, that there could be found souls so cruel and fell, who, for the sole pleasure of murder, would commit it; would hack and lop off the limbs of others; sharpen their wits to invent unusual torments and new kinds of death, without hatred, without profit, and for no other end but only to enjoy the pleasant spectacle of the gestures and motions, the lamentable groans and cries of a man dying in anguish. For this is the utmost point to which cruelty can arrive: ‘Ut homo hominem, non iratus, non timens, tantum spectaturus, occidat.’ (‘That a man should kill a man, not being angry, not in fear, only for the sake of the spectacle’) –Seneca, Epistle 90” (844). Michel de Montaigne, “Of Cruelty,” Essays, trans. Charles Cotton, 824–50 (Floating Press, 2009). Immediately afterward, Montaigne, anticipating twenty-first-century animal rights movements, warns that the entertainment of cruelty often begins with practices of cruelty toward nonhuman animals before then extending to cruelty toward human animals: “After they had accustomed themselves at Rome to spectacles of the slaughter of animals, they proceeded to those of the slaughter of men, of gladiators” (845). 35. Returning to Levinas for a moment, contrary to what was stated in note 31, this author is sometimes mistakenly identified as a defender of a rigorously individual thinking; in the case of Levinas, that modality would no longer be considered a part of the negative path, but rather characteristic of the positive path. However, in Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), Levinas warns: “The face arrests totalization” (281) and, so, he bases his argument on an emphasis on what he calls “the epiphany as a face” (187), that distinct face of the Other that introduces “the presence of a being not entering into, but overflowing, the sphere of the same” (195). However, Levinas specifies that the appearance of the Other is not reduced to a distinct presence: “the epiphany of the face qua face opens humanity” (213). As was mentioned in note 31 based on a text posterior to Totality and Infinity, others (humanity) imply the need for institutions and politics. Levinas had also already indicated in Totality and Infinity that keeping

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humanity visible on our horizon of thought serves “to call me to responsibility” (213); “that constitutes the original fact of fraternity” (214). 36. Invocations of an authentic democracy belong to discourses that, like discourses of tolerance and hospitality, must be placed in the category of “the air we breathe.” Why? Like the air we need in order to continue living, it becomes desperately evident when democracy is absent. For this reason, it is only undervalued by those in societies without significant social inequalities who have lived very comfortably by following the maxim “it is always good to have more of the same and bad to have something different” and have never felt, even remotely, the need for practical nomadism. On the other hand, democracy is appreciated—anxiously appreciated—by those who are living or barely surviving in societies where democracy does not exist or exists in name only. 37. In order to attack the universalism of modern thinkers who articulate universalist legacies, among other cultural legacies, it is not enough to raise the “Putting Cruelty First” banner, if we understand this as a fight against individual cruelties. Otherwise, we mistake the negative path of action for a particularist procedure that reduces the first formulation of the categorical imperative—the formulation of universality, according to Kant—to vague excuses for not confronting concrete cruelties, or something worse. Based on these misunderstandings, Shklar is incorrect when she states: “Kant’s categorical imperative reeks of cruelty” (41). Judith Shklar, Ordinary Vices (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984). 38. In the third part of his book, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), titled “Cruelty and Solidarity,” Richard Rorty reconsiders the criterion proposed by Shklar: “someone who believes that cruelty is the worst thing we do” (146). But we are again compelled to ask: what type of cruelty, individual, institutional, or structural, or its continuum “is the worst thing”? Rorty makes clear his rejection of ascending transitions, and thus his criticism of universalizing thought—of any attempt to approach the motives of the Kantian tradition or even take them seriously: “I share Nabokov’s suspicion of general ideas when it comes to philosophers’ attempts to squeeze our moral sentiments into rules for deciding moral dilemmas” (148). Almost immediately, Rorty reaffirms: “We should stick to questions about what works for particular purposes” (148). Later, while summarizing his ideas, he again delineates his position as incompatible with the “universalistic attitude, in either its religious or its secular form” (191). 39. Has not such “normalization of cruelty” circulated, and does it not continue to circulate, throughout fragments of the most diverse histories in the most diverse populations, in public, private, and, of course, personal spaces? 40. Those who have become supposed “impartial observers”—impartial social scientists?—perhaps feel overwhelmed by so much harm and confess: “nothing can be done.” This “nothing can be done” does not even propose constructing a theory of cruelty; it only leads to that cynical form of powerlessness that brings such pleasure to those who believe: “everything is so bad that it is not worth concerning ourselves with any evil, specific or general.”

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41. It is rare that films and television series do not portray politicians as shady characters, immune to the grammar of listening and obsessed only with their small-minded interests. 42. In her book Wittgenstein and Justice (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1972), Hanna Fenichel Pitkin emphasizes this point: Plato’s attempt to theorize the problem of order in the polis ultimately ends “by eliminating politics” (326) in favor of good management. But as Pitkin states, this is not an isolated phenomenon in the history of political theory. 43. Even in Marx, a thinker who so lucidily examined social conflict, we find occasional patent and veiled desires to, in some emancipated future, reduce politics to administration. This desire is one more symptom of the bad reputation of politics: the temptation to substitute politics with that anxiety that is impossible to satisfy: to replace it, most certainly not with philosophy like Plato, but with social engineering, to be exact. Ambitions such as these fuel attempts to form an administration run by experts without any desire for power, without personal interests, and without self-serving passions: a “wise bureaucracy”—like the philosopher king in The Republic—solely concerned with healthy coexistence. 44. Cf. Stuart Hampshire, ed., Public and Private Morality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978). 45. Michael Walzer provides a decisive description of this violation of moral principles in politics: the politician does “wrong to do right.” “Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 2, no. 2 (1973), 160–80. The expression “dirty hands” garnered fame in the dilemmas discussed—and continue to be discussed ad nauseum—by a group of revolutionaries in a play of the same name by Sartre. 46. This might be considered a political regression, if we admit the psychoanalytical use of the word regression. 47. For example, there are cultural or political proposals that confront prejudices— oftentimes misunderstandings regarding personal identity traits or the constitutive traits of a community. This is the case with such a variety of issues as the diverse forms of sexuality, respect for women, the use of drugs, or the treatment of emigrants. 48. We should not overlook the beautiful paradox: Descartes’s revealing banner when he exclaims (or perhaps whispers loud enough to be heard but without putting himself at risk?): “Masked, I advance.” Countless emigrants carry this banner in their hearts and minds, but also in their weary feet. 49. However, we should be careful not to hide the fact that this is a practice that can—without a doubt—become permanent and can produce problems, and, therefore, one more habit that slowly destroys the virtue of honesty. Montaigne warns: “’Tis a cowardly and servile humour to hide and disguise a man’s self under a visor, and not to dare to show himself what he is; ‘tis by this our servants are trained up to treachery; being brought up to speak what is not true, they make no conscience of a lie. . . . A man must not always tell all, for that were folly: but what a man says should be what he thinks, otherwise ‘tis knavery” (931–32). Michel de Montaigne, “Of Presumption,” Essays, trans. Charles Cotton, 903–57 (Floating Press, 2009).

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50. In many power-over/under sequences, another bad reputation of politics is also advanced, though in a sense contrary to that which is spread by politicking and neo-despotisms. There has been no shortage of proposals to restrict participative and deliberative politics. These restrictions have oscillated between different forms of the principle of exclusion, occasionally accompanied by renewed cruelty. On the side that is not explicitly cruel, we can group those restrictions defended by Plato’s confused (and pretentious?) disciples: only “those who know” should participate in politics, the “experts.” But how do we determine who belongs to that category? Maybe universities could make such a determination. Unfortunately, everyone is aware that university politics are just as uncertain and deceitful, as teeming with personal interests and passions as any politicking. Even more serious is when those who are part of an “underclass” are excluded from political participation: the “underclass” of people of color, the “underclass” of the poor. With respect to this last “underclass,” one might propose, for example, the formal possibility of buying votes. 51. Allowing ourselves to be seduced by the magic of politics also usually has an effect that is the opposite of those I have been describing: hyperpoliticization with its excess of promises that sooner or later become unfulfilled promises, another cause of the bad reputation of politics. This is one more symptom embraced by voluntarist vertigo, executive ability’s dangerous addiction. Like other forms of magic, like the magic of law, morals, or the economy, the magic of politics relies on the proposal of practical heterogeneity. Why? Because there is no need for the “energy” required for the extremely difficult process of moral reeducation; the “energies” required to construct a just legal state or to restructure the economy to transform it into a dignified economy are also unnecessary. Political agitation is sufficient enough to abandon the hell in which we reside. Furthermore, since practical holism has been rejected, the agitation cannot be “recharged” with other sources of “energy.” Therefore, those who were at one time “politically agitated” very often become “politically disenchanted,” when not becoming agitators who defend politicking or neo-despotisms. 52. That negative path (vaguely?) involves what the Ancients called temis, and what Hegel denominates Sittlichkeit, a German word that can be translated/interpreted as “implicit norms in the practices of a way of life” or, through abusive paraphrasis, as “valorative social education.” But, then, are we not freely reconstructing ancient resonances of the word “temis”? Moreover, in The Phenomenology of Spirit, and thinking with practical holism, Hegel states that universal principles like Kant’s formulations of the categorical imperative function as the alluded-to smoke screen if and only if these norms are not understood as underdetermined principles to be determined on a case-by-case basis: to be determined by the ability to judge in each situation and in each society. 53. Not only do concerns regarding a culture of transparency and concerns regarding public space overlap, they are often two perspectives for dealing with the same problems. Therefore, it is worth attempting a redescription of the goods I attributed to the culture of transparency by recurring to the distinctions Rabotnikof makes with respect to the formation of the public sphere; cf. Nora Rabotnikof, En busca de un lugar común. El espacio público en la teoría política contemporánea (In Search of Common Ground. Public Space in Contemporary Political Theory) (Mexico: Instituto

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de Investigaciones Filosóficas-UNAM, 2005). Rabotnikof thematizes this formation based on three oppositions. Firstly, public contrasts with what is individual or personal: “‘public’ alludes to that which is of common interest or use to all members of a political community” (9). Secondly, public contrasts with what is secret: “Private, in this case, refers to what is hidden, kept, or withdrawn from the view of the community, to what does not appear in front of others” (10). The Kantian principle of publicity encompasses that acceptation. Thirdly, public, in terms of openness, contrasts with what is closed: “If we think about the public-political space, what enters into play is who is included in that public space and how, and who is excluded and how” (19). 54. In the second appendix to his Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay, trans. Mary Campbell Smith (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1917), Kant emphasizes that without publicity, “there could be no justice, which can only be thought as before the eyes of men; and, without justice, there would be no right, for, from justice only, right can come” (184). Therefore, Kant concludes, “all actions relating to the rights of other men are wrong, if the maxims from which they follow are inconsistent with publicity” (185). 55. Additionally, by not embracing the conjecture of practical heterogeneity or, at least, not embracing it without nuances and restrictions, Kant recognizes that it is not necessary to regard the principle of publicity “merely as ethical, as belonging to the doctrine of virtue, but also as juridical, referring to the rights of men” (Perpetual Peace, 185). Consequently, the principle of publicity becomes another generator of interactive practices between the moral, the legal, the political, and, eventually, the economic. 56. One thinker who has astutely examined the context of production for a culture of transparency is Hannah Arendt. In The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), she writes: “the common world is what we enter when we are born and what we leave behind when we die. . . . But such a common world can survive the coming and going of the generations only to the extent that it appears in public” (55). For Arendt, a culture of transparency is therefore not possible without the ability of the people to appear together from time to time. 57. It is worth recalling how Dewey warns against the transformation of politics into a technology of experts (“professional politicians” and their advisors), because such a transformation immunizes politics from popular concerns and interventions. It then becomes no longer necessary to offer public justifications beyond propaganda in support of certain social programs and their practices; cf. John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (Chicago: The Swallow Press, 1927), particularly pages 123–208. This conversion of politics into another form of technology is one more example of a political forgery along with politicking, neo-despotisms, and positive infrapolitics. 58. Beyond concrete individual denunciations, denouncing institutional and structural impunity in particular often involves a complex series of actions that at times operate in opposing directions. For example, in their important study “Overcoming Impunity: Pathways to Accountability in Latin America,” The International Journal of Transitional Justice 8, no. 1 (2014): 75–98, Francesca Lessa, Tricia D. Olsen, Leigh A. Payne, Gabriel Pereyra, and Andrew G. Reiter propose the reinforcement of four factors for denouncing structural impunity or “cultures” of impunity: “civil society

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demand, domestic judicial leadership, the absence of veto players and international pressure” (75). Unfortunately, since these factors are described in this work with the use of the strategy of transitions only as ascending transitions, it does not adequately examine the valorative ambiguity or the particularities that, when applied, are possessed by those factors: the different positions that constitute them and how those differences often lead to moral motivations and the establishment of even opposing policies. For example, without further elaboration, they consider international pressure as highly positive (81–83). They never mention that in each situation it is also important to analyze the political and economic interests that typically drive those forms of international pressure. They also do not address one of history’s many infamies: how countries that have caused or contributed to causing coups d’état or have backed authoritarian governments that are responsible for human rights violations— in order to support their own political and economic interests—occasionally exert public pressure to judge violations that they themselves have contributed to causing. 59. Cf. Jilliene Haglund and David L. Richards, “Enforcement of Sexual Violence Law in Post–Civil Conflict Societies,” Conflict Management and Peace Science 35, no. 3 (2018): 280–95. This article points out the following: on the one hand, “some research shows that civil conflict may serve as a catalyst for change as women take on non-traditional roles during and following conflict” (281). On the other hand, “public reintegration of soldiers may increase domestic violence, for example, as a result of increased militarization in society” (282), and, consequently, the celebration of the dominance of a certain masculinity that this militarization brings about. 60. Individuals, governments, influential business owners, and countless other participants who possess power-over in power-over/under sequences operate with a presumption of impunity that is verified time and time again: complete exemption from punishment in the present and in the future. 61. The intoxication with authoritarianism in the twentieth century causes us to declare, with grave centripetal imagination, that any proposal for perfectionism blocks responses to the interpellations of overdetermined values like equality, freedom, and collaboration. Of course, there is no analysis of the diverse uses of the word “perfectionism.” Among other useful auxiliaries in the construction of a collaborative society, I include that perfectionism which compels us to fight against legal and political inequalities, obscene economies, and cruel institutions, or to combat “cultures” of corruption and impunity, such as politicking, neo-despotism, or positive infrapolitics, and violence and impunity in general. Moreover, should we also dismiss the previously mentioned great work by Manuel Vargas, Building Better Beings, as arguing for a perfectionist program? 62. This scandal is not an exception to practical holism, but rather its renewed confirmation. A scandal arises because that strange combination—illegal-legality and politics, and on many occasions, the economy—contradict the rules of morality. 63. Nevertheless, I use the strategy of descending transitions in an attempt to indicate in which direction we should look to find examples that might constitute a discussion on situations of legalized impunity—that apparent oxymoron—for example, in Latin America.

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64. Francesca Lessa et al. refer to what I call beginning anew while under siege with what they and other authors call the presence of “veto players—those actors who oppose accountability for, or investigation into, past human rights violations—in promoting and sustaining impunity and blocking accountability” (78). “Overcoming Impunity: Pathways to Accountability in Latin America,” The International Journal of Transitional Justice 8, no. 1 (2014): 75–98. As I see it, in order to evaluate proposals for this type of tolerated immunity, we must establish a difference between political as well as moral interests. It is of course very often difficult, not to mention painful, to analyze these interests. Proposals for impunity can be based on a perverse interest in not judging those responsible for the abuse—for example, not judging the soldiers responsible for serious human rights violations—in order to protect them and allow them to carry on without accepting the slightest responsibility and, in that way, not compromise the prestige of the military institution. However, these proposals for impunity can also be guided by an interest in working to forget past horrors in order to restart another social history. In this case, as the article’s authors point out, the argument is: the new democratically elected authorities “may anticipate that prosecutions would plunge the country anew into violent conflict—a worse option than impunity” (79). 65. In addition to being used following collective destructions, this mandate to begin anew while under siege also enters the minds of those who have suffered personal losses they reluctantly accept as irreversible. Because neither social groups nor people can rebegin from zero. Despite however much they might wish to (which can sometimes lead to delusions), rebeginning is not being reborn from nothing. Every present is permeated by pasts that frequently continue to present themselves for a certain amount time. This is not only because we are animals with voluntary and involuntary memories, but also because we are animals who face the inevitable at every turn. Therefore, between the opportunism that exploits the slightest obstacle as an excuse to weaken one’s own executive ability and the cynicism of those who also do not want anything to change, spaces still remain: opportunities. 66. Pablo de Greiff offers strong arguments in this respect in his “Transitional Justice and Development,” in International Development: Ideas, Experience, and Prospects, eds. Bruce Currie-Alder, Ravi Kanbur, David M. Malone, and Rohinton Medhora, 412–27 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). 67. We should not confuse a mandate for the difficult reconstruction of healthy coexistence with the more ambitious argument for national reconciliation. There are historical circumstances in which it is possible to take measures that favor the moral restoration and even reconciliation of a community. In these situations, after the violence that occurred has been publicly presented, there must then be amendments, memorials, commemorations, and even, through religious mediations, dialogues between the victims and the perpetrators in which the latter ask for forgiveness. However, many people believe that such measures, if they attempt reconciliation and forgiveness, ask for too much. Because reconciling and forgiving, they argue, are practices to be carried out in private, between willing individuals, and not a problem to be discussed in public through legal trials and governmental actions. For this reason, reconciliation and forgiveness discourse is often suspected of being a sentimental

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veil to disguise impunity: pardon the perpetrators and do nothing constructive for the victims. 68. See, for example, Lavinia Stan and Nadya Nedelsky, eds., Encyclopedia of Transitional Justice, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 69. It is important to stress this last dimension in acknowledging the victims. More than a few oppressive power-over/under sequences promote assumptions of isolated subjectivities driven by fear to survive in accordance with the rule of desperation: “everyone for themselves!” Still, truth commissions do have their faults. Here are a few. Such commissions investigate systematic abuses during periods of time that have been decided by authorities. However, destructions and abuses do not begin without precedents and do not end on a specific date. Therefore, the establishment of those dates—the time limit for a commission’s mandate—often tends to exclude crimes committed by people with significant power-over. This is usually the case with crimes committed by political groups, or soldiers, or owners of large companies belonging to the regime that a society is attempting to put behind them. There also exists the inverse difficulty: if these commissions are prolonged for too long, their work becomes diffuse. These two opposing difficulties constitute an initial type of fault. There are also thematic limits that give rise to partialities and, consequently, to a second type of fault in parallel with the first. Authorities also designate the kinds of violations to be investigated when these commissions are organized. Based on the accounts given by the victims, they attempt to verify details concerning those who have disappeared in countries where the authorities deny any knowledge of the matter. For this reason, it also entails uncovering traces of disappearances that have not even been made visible. There are often interests involved, like those of governments with democratic intentions but that, as uncomfortable replacements for dictatorial regimes (or more or less comfortable prolongations of previous regimes), introduce fragments of legal impunity for the purpose of preventing the continuous discovery of past horrors. Nevertheless, if those thematic limits cause difficulties, there are once again the inverse difficulties that arise when these commissions try to expand their functions so much that they create expectations that are doomed from the start. Sometimes such commissions are expected to develop economic programs that ensure prosperity or, even worse, that take the place of the legal state and criminal justice. 70. Truth commissions are sometimes an important factor, albeit just one factor among many others, with respect to these processes. 71. This argument is found in the work of many researchers and proponents of transitional justice. For example, Pablo de Greiff points out: “‘fact-finding’ became an effort to understand comprehensively root causes, circumstances, factors, context, and motives of countrywide situations of violence. This, of course, not unlike historical accounts, is much more than a mere collection of facts” (288). “‘Truth without Facts’: On the Erosion of the Fact-Finding Function of Truth Commissions,” in The Transformation of Human Rights Fact-Finding, eds. Philip Alston and Sarah Knuckey, 281–302 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). 72. I maintain: taking time to look back not only brings clarity, it also encourages us to reconsider what we have already examined.

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73. Nomadic thought, I have already argued, should not cease to explore what occurs with the strongest proposals that are presented to us as options. 74. Due to the frequent aggressivity of those who participate in such “clubs,” they are sometimes dismissed with the word “fanatic.” A fanatic of something (for example, of morality, of religion, of law, of politics, of the economy) is someone who, with extreme discipline, is not only not hospitable, but is completely intolerant of other desires, beliefs, or affects. A fanatic dispenses with the “exterior energy” that could be provided by the desires, beliefs, and affects of those who do not belong to their club. 75. In his book Filosofía del derecho y transformación social (Philosophy of Law and Social Transformation) (Madrid: Trota, 2007), Manuel Atienza discusses a young Carlos Vaz Ferreira’s “defensa muy matizada” (very nuanced defense) (256) of this thesis. According to Vaz Ferreira in his book Moral para intelectuales (Morals for Intellectuals) (Montevideo: Imprenta El Siglo Ilustrado, 1920), the intrinsic immorality of some professions, like law, implies the following premise: “siendo necesario socialmente y aún moralmente que algunos las ejerzan, no puedan, sin embargo, ser ejercidas con arreglo a una moralidad absoluta” (it being socially and even morally necessary that some people practice [these professions], they cannot, however, be practiced in accordance with absolute morality) (36). This premise is further supported by various other premises (the subconscious immorality of lawyers that allows them to “sincerely” convince themselves of anything, the simple formalism we argued against in the first part of this pamphlet, and other factors). This use of the logic of “all or nothing” is extremely surprising in Vaz Ferreira if we consider his refined and meticulous approach that, with nomadic thought, led him to explore the most diverse problems by caring for each question with clarity, “calibrating” and “nuancing” his most diverse assertions. 76. Vaz Ferreira, Moral para intelectuales, 47; “Puesto que no se puede ser completamente, absolutamente moral siempre y en todos los casos en el ejercicio de esta profesión, no nos preocupemos de la moralidad.” 77. The criticism of the “suicide clubs for politics”—of the proposal to separate democratic politics from moral universalism, the legal state, and a dignified economy—should not be misunderstood by subsuming it under any use of the banners of “legalization of politics,” and particularly, “moralization of politics.” Because, when we do this, many times we forget, or suppress, the previous warnings regarding some of the perverse uses of the fight against social corruption. If invoking a “legalization,” and particularly, a “moralization,” these proclamations are on occasion used as a public excuse to condemn uncomfortable policies. 78. I use expressions like “structuralist perspective” and “social structuralism” in general terms. To some extent, they can also be substituted with “systemic perspective” and, sometimes, even “functionalist perspective.” In effect, with expressions like “structuralism” and “social structuralism,” I am referring to theoretical viewpoints from which a society, among other phenomena, can be analyzed as a structure—or a system—of functionally interrelated elements, according to certain subpersonal and suprapersonal rules—rules of blood, economies, and other kinships—that determine the behavior of the members in that society, even if they are unaware of them. (From a structuralist or systemic perspective, we are able to propose something more than

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an analogy between, for example, the deep structure—or implicit system—of a society and the structure—or system—of a chess match, because like the pieces on a chessboard, human organisms and various social formations—heredities, histories, fantasies, images, values—possess no other meaning, and do not strictly exist outside of the [causal?] relationships that constitute them and that specify their behavior possibilities in advance.) Such perspectives—structuralist, systemic, functionalist— are extremely useful as scientific tools for carrying out third-person analyses and explanations in disciplines like linguistics, sociology, anthropology, or political science. However, we succumb to error if we ignore the normative uses of the first and second-person points of view—singular and plural—and the various reflexive uses of the third person, or other possibilities for the scientific use of the third person. 79. If we trace a quick genealogy of the epistemology of responsibility, we can schematically list four stages. The first is governed by a comprehensive and single use of the word “responsibility”; as a result, homogeneous attributions are formulated without distinguishing between the “responsibility” of natural events as “agents” and the responsibility of social agents. As such, human actions are integrated into equilibrium with nature, and ruptures in that equilibrium demand rites of purification to reestablish the equilibrium that was lost. In the second stage, a distinction is made between the natural and the social, and responsibility is only attributed to social agents. In the third, a clear and precise separation is established with respect to social agents between moral, legal, and political (including economic-political) responsibilities, and, in theory, each of those normative dimensions is considered autonomous and often “super-sovereign.” As a consequence, the conjecture of practical heterogeneity is confirmed: moral responsibility must be judged exclusively according to moral norms; legal responsibility will be judged in relationship to current law, recognizing within this criminal responsibility (between an individual and society) and civil responsibility (between individuals); similarly, political responsibility will be judged in relation to political norms that include social mechanisms for conflict resolution and the evaluation of various uses of power; and economic responsibility judged in relation to the economic circumstances. In the reflections contained in this civil pamphlet, I attempt to articulate a fourth stage in which, through nomadic thought, we focus our attention on the frequent differences and the equally frequent interrelations between types of moral, legal, political, and economic responsibility, both individual and collective. Furthermore, it is important to note that the assumption of an equilibrium—natural or purely social (legal, political, etc.)—that must be cared for, and for which we are responsible, persists with certain variations throughout the diverse stages in the history of responsibility. For example, in the legal sphere, this assumption underlies the retributionist justification for punishment in criminal matters, and the demand for compensation in civil matters. Both cases involve symbolic or material obligations for the purpose of restitution: to return to the status quo prior to the illicit act. 80. At least theoretically since, for example, Aristotle in Book 3 of his Nichomachean Ethics. 81. In this sense, we hold someone responsible if they forget an appointment. While one does not voluntarily forget, we consider that the person should have anticipated

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possibly forgetting it and, for example, they should have written the appointment down in their planner. 82. In some negative situations, which deserve moral censure, the first person usually attempts to escape blame. For the first person in these negative situations, that perspective is often unpleasant, harsh, and even lacking in compassion, if not—by dint of denial—wholly unfair. 83. Cf. P. F. Strawson’s work on “reactive attitudes” (resentment, censure, gratitude, honor, etc.) in “Freedom and Resentment,” in Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays, 1–28 (New York: Routledge, 2008). 84. Continuing with the topic of complications, among other unusual attributions of responsibility, we also hold the dead responsible. For example, we assign responsibility both to past despots for their crimes and, at the other end of the continuum, to family members for their negligence and, of course, to a long succession of intermediate cases. When attributing responsibility to the dead, we cannot interrogate them about why they acted the way they did, nor can we argue with them. The attribution of their reasons for acting, if we reject them, for example, is our own supposition. 85. For example, if I am a member of a group of investors or a gang—the two can occasionally resemble each another when observed from a distance—and they order me or encourage me to commit certain abuses to benefit the group. 86. In these circumstances, it is possible to assign “culpable ignorance”: the agent did not know full well what they were doing, but they should have. 87. If these attacks prove successful, they destroy some of the deepest-rooted modalities concerning how we comprehend the life of human animals or even their most basic forms of self-understanding, like possessing know-how (the ability to know what is occurring in the world) and the power-to intervene in it. Consequently, general skepticism becomes unstoppable, and the possibility of educative processes with which human animals can, at least in part, reeducate and correct themselves and, thus, produce a second nature, is also destroyed. 88. Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority. An Experimental View (New York: Harper & Row, 1974). 89. Many people spend their entire lives like this, suffering injustices, injuries, and difficulties for fear of saying no to their instrumentalization. 90. In addition to these psychosocial experiments, there have been many other methods for reflecting on the criminal consequences of blind obedience, for example, narrations of horrific pasts. A few years prior to these experiments, Hannah Arendt in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Viking Press, 1963) had vigorously attacked—in a direction similar to that which Milgram would take—the inability of people like Eichmann to assume moral and political responsibility: to understand their decisions as their decisions and to think for themselves unlike the banal agents in Milgram’s experiment. If we consider the (terrifying) moral and political consequences that this inability—this destruction of autonomy as a form of one’s own power-to—produced during Nazism, Milgram and Arendt are right to alarm us. Furthermore, such inability to think is already superficially expressed when excuses are reduced (as often occurs in politicking) to repeating “stock phrases” that attempt to initiate a ritual of “pseudojustifications” in the face

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of destruction and crime. In this way, as we discussed in the first part, bureaucracies turn to magic to “erase the past.” For example, according to Eichmann’s declarations collected in Arendt’s book, he had nothing to do with those destructions, with that horror: he was only part “of a bureaucratic hierarchy” and only “obeyed orders.” Like Milgram’s volunteers, Eichmann also stated that his actions were limited to following the maxim of blind obedience: “Do what authority commands, no matter what they command, and in no case think for yourself.” (Perhaps in Eichmann’s case, we should remain somewhat incredulous. Maybe after the Nazi defeat, he disguised and hid his deepest anti-Semitic convictions in hope of making us believe he acted only according to that maxim. Nevertheless, despite doubts concerning Eichmann’s particular example, Arendt’s general theory on the banality of evil merits our utmost attention.) 91. Cf. John Darley and Daniel Batson, “From Jerusalem to Jericho: A Study of Situational and Dispositional Variables in Helping Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 27, no. 1 (1973): 100–8. 92. For example, the blind obedience that leads one to stand behind totalitarian political systems like Nazism, fascism, and Stalinism or to defend the myriad military dictatorships that have existed and continue to exist throughout the world, like in Latin America. 93. We must remember, with nomadic thought, that not all “situationism” or, what is sometimes understood by such viewpoints, responds affirmatively to these questions. Other developments based not only on different premises than those in these psychosocial experiments but also on different reflections have also been described as “situationist,” although more commonly as “existentialist.” In any case, their arguments support opposing conclusions. For example, Jean-Paul Sartre published the majority of his essays in a series he titled Situations, 10 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1947– 1976). However, for Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, the fact that people inevitably find themselves “in a situation” does not represent any challenge to the responsible exercise of their abilities. On the contrary, based on their situations, agents choose freely because the restrictions of a situation are not determinant: they establish the conditions for acting. 94. We often find implicit and even explicit forms of argumentative vertigo operating in some fragments of the work of some existentialists with their excessive emphasis on defending a freedom to choose not only between various options, but also who one is. Such an impassioned defense explains the vigorous but disproportionate structuralist and poststructuralist reactions by French thinkers who were contemporaries of or who immediately followed Existentialism, like Claude Lévi-Strauss or Michel Foucault. Though with a different style of thought, thinkers in the Kantian tradition also tend to succumb to forms of argumentative vertigo, for example, Christine M. Korsgaard in The Sources of Normativity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996) or Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). Among other consequences, the magic of reflection enables the empirical contributions of any naturalization to be discarded, like resorting to experimental psychology or, with even greater disdain, to the strict limitations placed on decision-making and acting explained in sociological, political scientific, anthropological, and historical investigations.

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95. Cf. Erving Goffman, Asylums. Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (New York: Anchor Books, 1961). For Goffman, “total institutions” are institutions that are to some extent isolated from the rest of society, such as prisons and psychiatric hospitals. According to the author, the various spheres of a society are condensed into one for the residents of these institutions: “First, all aspects of life are conducted in the same place and under the same single authority. Second, each phase of the member’s daily activity is carried on in the immediate company of a large batch of others, all of whom are treated alike and required to do the same thing together. Third, all phases of the day’s activities are tightly scheduled, with one activity leading at a prearranged time into the next, the whole sequence of activities being imposed from above by a system of explicit formal rulings and a body of officials. Finally, the various enforced activities are brought together into a single rational plan purportedly designed to fulfill the official aims of the institution” (6). It is not difficult to adapt this description of “total institutions” and extend their characterization to include other institutions that are seemingly less total like the police, mafias, political parties, educational institutions, as well as universities and research institutes, and even countless situations in which it is difficult to refuse orders because that is how we have been taught. Or, more precisely, that is how we have been mistaught. Michel Foucault for his part has explored some of the terrible consequences of these institutions and their ability to construct mental patients and delinquents; cf. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977). 96. In many practices, avoiding strongly self-referential interests, or even momentarily setting them aside, is painstakingly difficult to do (as we made clear in the first part of this pamphlet with respect to corruption). 97. The word “mordida,” which in English literally means a “bite,” is used in Mexico to refer to a small bribe. Likewise, the police officers who engage in this activity are called “mordelones,” or biters. 98. This example evokes a panic-inducing experience, but one in which it was thankfully possible to undertake collective actions to counter the threat represented by the three passengers on the bus. The discussion of this example is derived from many other similarly designed experiences or thought experiments, including those found in V. Held, “Can a Random Collection of Individuals Be Morally Responsible?” The Journal of Philosophy 67, no. 14 (1970): 471–81; or the case of the broken car in T. Tännsjö, “The Myth of Innocence: On Collective Responsibility and Collective Punishment,” Philosophical Papers 36, no. 2 (2007): 295–314; or the case of bystanders to a river rafting disaster in T. Isaacs, Moral Responsibility in Collective Contexts (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 99. This question, which she answers affirmatively, is the title of Virginia Held’s article “Can a Random Collection of Individuals Be Morally Responsible?” 100. The attribution of legal responsibility is individual. It is not possible, for example, to legally assign blame to a family for what one of its members has done, or to a population for how several of its residents have acted—despite what was described in our proposed genealogy of responsibility as the second stage of understanding responsibility. As a counterexample to these statements, we might submit Spanish

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playwright Lope de Vega’s seventeenth-century dramatic work Fuenteovejuna. In this play, when the judges ask: “Who killed the Commander?” (that is, who killed the tyrant?), the response of the inhabitants of that village is collective, the village itself: “Fuenteovejuna, sir.” If I am not mistaken, in this case the inhabitants of the village of Fuenteovejuna describe their situation in moral, and above all, political terms: the revolutionary struggle of a village against an oppressive, despotic power-over/under sequence. In this example, we again encounter the frequent complications in the attribution of responsibility; specifically, an eventual collective attribution of responsibility. For a discussion of this work, see Carlos Pereda, Patologías del juicio. Un ensayo sobre literatura, moral y estética nómada (Pathologies of Judgment. An Essay on Literature, Morals and Nomadic Aesthetic) (Mexico: UNAM/CENART, 2018). 101. Compare the situation of the bus passengers with circumstances that are seemingly analogous, though in reality they are not in the least, like the following: in the final minutes of a soccer match, the players must decide what to do to win the match in which they are currently trailing; or a group of soldiers who do not know each other, but who are on the same side and by chance find themselves together under enemy fire. One difference between the case of the passengers and the soccer players is that the players are not a random collection of individuals, rather a team that has trained together and has a captain to lead them; in the second case, even though the soldiers have never met previously, they recognize each other as soldiers in the same army, and the command, while perhaps momentarily vacant, will soon be reestablished in the next few moments. 102. Cf. Tracy Isaacs, Moral Responsibility in Collective Contexts, 2011, especially 8–12 and 52–70. From the same author, also see “Collective Responsibility and Collective Obligation,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 38, no. 1 (2014): 40–57. Isaacs studies two cases of collective responsibility: the obligations of the Canadian government and people regarding the unjust treatment of their indigenous populations—a partially retrospective responsibility—and the current sexual violence against women—a prospective responsibility. Both cases can be applied more generally to many other countries, for example, in Latin America. 103. Michael D. Doan insists on this point in his work “Responsibility for Collective Inaction and the Knowledge Condition,” Social Epistemology 30, nos. 5–6 (2016): 532–5\54, especially 540–42. 104. On page 199 of the already cited book Building Better Beings, Manuel Vargas quotes the words of Ortega y Gasset that serve as the title for the second chapter of this pamphlet. However, at some moments I feel that Vargas’s insightful theory of responsibility eliminates, at least sometimes, Ortega’s “myself.” This then would not be a theory of “I am myself [my potentia] plus my circumstance,” but rather a theory of “I am my circumstance.” In this case, Vargas is not defending a mixed circumstantialism, but instead a simple (and maybe revisionist?) circumstantialism. But this reading is possibly incorrect since in the book’s introduction, Vargas proposes “the agency cultivation model” (2), which is “a kind of reasons-responsive agency” (3), as being central to his theory. 105. On December 5, 1783, Kant responded to the question “What is the Enlightenment?” The first lines of his answer are decisive: “Enlightenment is man’s release

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from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another” (263). Kant then almost immediately offers various examples of power-over that wish to take charge of our lives in order to fiercely consolidate one more power-over/under sequence. “If I have a book which understands for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a physician who decides my diet, and so forth, I need not trouble myself. I need not think, if I can only pay—others will easily undertake the irksome work for me” (263). These various functions of power-over are carried out by relying on two mechanisms of the arts of unhealthy coexistence. On the one hand, Kant indicates that those who consider themselves to be authorities “domesticate”; on the other hand, these supposed authorities or “authoritative” authorities instill fear. The “authoritative” authority ensures that the citizenry, who in this state are compared to cattle, “will not dare take a single step without the harness of the cart to which they are tethered [and are shown] the danger which threatens if they try to go alone” (263); “What is the Enlightenment?” trans. Lewis White Beck, in Philosophical Writings, ed. Ernst Behler, 263–69 (New York: Continuum, 1986).

Chapter 4

Learn to Know How to Begin Anew

TWO DIRECTIONS FOR APPLYING NORMATIVE THEORIES In the second chapter of this civil pamphlet, we introduced moral universalism as an abstract normative theory and a first resistance for removing obstacles from responses to interpellations by overdetermined values like equality, freedom, and collaboration. In essence, the theory defended: a collaborative egalitarianism that is respectful of each person as an end in themself.1

In order to underdetermine, particularize, and increasingly develop this theory, we introduced various postulates (equality from a legal standpoint, a dignified economy, the good reputation of politics, and some of their virtues like tolerance, hospitality, and the abilities to relocate/self-relocate and explore) as well as sub-postulates (public transparency, responsibility, also with some of their virtues). These postulates and sub-postulates were proposed as a means to assist in the construction of this theory as a radical republicanism. But beware: the need for progressively greater determinations is not common only to a theory of collaborative egalitarianism. More comprehensively, it is intrinsic to any use of this type of normative theory with high levels of abstraction and generality. One might still perhaps argue: why are these processes of determination or underdetermination not just useful, but necessary conditions for these theories? To begin to answer this, I turn once again to the strategy of detours. In this case, I venture a detour in two directions as modes

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of applying normative theories, if they are both abstract and general: they can be used as maps, but also as traps. In what sense do maps serve to illustrate, or as a direction to apply, the uses of these theories?2 A map typically offers a simplified representation of a space.3 Accordingly, a political map only includes those states and regions with some amount of sovereignty or self-government and their borders. A physical map, on the other hand, provides information related to the geographical elements of a territory. Of course, the degree of simplification depends on the interests involved in the map’s creation, which also holds true for other types of maps. A conceptual map is a mental image or graphic that depicts how desires, beliefs, interests, people, and events interact with each other in relation to a specific topic. Among these conceptual maps, for this reflection I am interested in what we might call “normative maps.” For example, a general and abstract normative map is precisely the theory of collaborative egalitarianism for a radical republicanism that we developed, using practical holism, in the second and third chapters of this pamphlet. Like other maps, normative maps are also constructed to scale. The most abstract, most general maps (political, physical, mental, normative, etc.) serve to indicate a path that will be progressively determined by more-specific maps, along with practices and the experiences and observations realized during such practices. Suppose there is a general physical map that shows the course of a river that we want to describe. Without a doubt: if we were to travel the length of the river using specific maps, our experiences and observations along the way would help us to verify the details. And some of our observations would certainly lead to corrections to some of those specific maps, and, of course, to the general map as well. We can make similar considerations with respect to abstract and general normative maps. Suppose we accept our initial orientations using a map of collaborative egalitarianism that is respectful of each person as an end in themself. It is likely that our various practices and experiences, together with our moral discussions with friends and colleagues, and, above all, the legal, political, and economic fights that tear apart our societies, will progressively determine, and even correct, our orientations. Among other determinations or underdeterminations, it is also likely that we will attempt to clarify whether or not the equality being proposed regarding collaborative egalitarianism is merely legal or if it is also social, or if it is being put forth as an ideal or horizon that public policies—for example, fiscal policies seeking to build a society in the direction of a radical republicanism—should strive to reach. At the same time, we might investigate which practices of healthy coexistence—which virtues of trust or centrifugal imagination—commit us to treating each person as an end in themself. We will perhaps fight against the reduction of the concept of personhood, either to a purely legal or a purely “spiritual” sense, whereby we

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only interact with “souls” rather than engaging and negotiating with people. In those assorted processes of progressive determination, not only will the general map achieve greater precision, but I repeat: it will undergo various transformations, among other consequences. One might object: despite the possible transformations of a general map like the one dedicated to collaborative egalitarianism, when we apply this map to a concrete situation, using the strategy of transitions “from higher to lower” and following the positive path will predetermine the way in which we continue our explorations and how we apply this theory, as vague as it may be. Should we not instead begin “lower” and follow the negative path: with the abuses and countless harm that diverse concrete people have suffered, with exterior destructions and their consequences, the self-destructions of people in response to their hostile surroundings? It is true that our exposition of collaborative egalitarianism in the second part of this pamphlet proceeded principally (but not only) “from higher to lower” and along the positive path. It would thus be wise for us to use nomadic thought to continue exploring in other directions: “from lower to higher,” or transversally, and alternating between the positive and negative paths. I apologize for this, but we must begin somewhere. Additionally, do not forget: in any exposition—at any of life’s moment—we are inexorably only halfway there. For this reason, at least when it comes to thought, it is often wise for us to redefine our trajectory in various ways. The only legitimate alternative, however, is the one suggested in questions like: “should we not have begun our exposition, or construction, of a normative theory ‘lower’ and along the negative path, if we are thinking with nomadic thought?” If we are not thinking with nomadic thought, then, among other errors, we are not using the strategy of alternatively descending and ascending transitions, again and again, nor are we using the strategy of interactions between the positive and negative paths, also again and again. As such, an abstract and general normative theory—even an abstract and general normative theory that is widely shared due to its fairness and generosity, like perhaps collaborative egalitarianism—will sooner or later become a trap: a map used to deceive and cause harm. As we have said: “traps” are laid surreptitiously in order to, for example, confuse human animals or groups of human animals who then unexpectedly and often without realizing it “become trapped and do not know how to escape their captivity.” A general normative theory can be used to lay traps by suggesting promises that not only go unfulfilled, but that the theory is either incapable of fulfilling or that are systematically prevented from being fulfilled by the theory’s determining postulates or sub-postulates. For example, a general normative theory like collaborative egalitarianism becomes a trap if an exclusively legal postulate of equality eliminates practical holism and,

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as a result, disguises structural injustices like oppressive social classes, the racialization of bodies, sexisms, etc. These reductions allow for complicities with patriarchal and white supremacy institutions to be concealed. It is also not unusual for theories like these to be used to conceal colonial forms of oppression, including economic oppression, among others. Consequently, the “collaborative” property of this egalitarianism becomes a charade: more or less covert (or entirely covert) variations of formal or informal slavery regimes—groups of farm workers, exploited factory workers, or domestic workers who “collaborate” by obeying the orders of their masters. It is not only the case that abstract and general normative theories cannot be automatically applied and that they undergo transformations during the process of their application. The lesson is radical: in order to correctly apply an abstract and general normative theory, we must treat it like a map and use nomadic thought to experiment with the theory in view of the concrete circumstances in which we wish to apply it. Then we must use the strategy of trial and error every step of the way to verify the results of such experiments and adjust, modify, or completely change the theory accordingly. Still, I ask: how are these dissimilar and complex tasks accomplished? INDICATIONS OF NOMADIC THOUGHT AND VARIOUS WAYS TO LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE: CONTROLLED, SPONTANEOUS, NATURAL, REFLECTIVE, AND EVALUATIVE EXPERIMENTS Since the opening Warnings alerting us to this winding road, we posited: practices of transgression are indications that we are operating with nomadic thought. When we encounter reasons, or, at least, indications of possible reasons, we use this thought to reexamine and perhaps disobey ingrained conceptual distinctions, break rules, and exceed the boundaries of styles of thought or established disciplines and even canons of rationality. We also posed a second indication of this thinking that, at the same time, supports practical holism: it consists in the impetus to reconstruct improbable interactions, for example, reestablishing links to what has been explicitly or tacitly considered without dependencies and, therefore, conceived according to rules of autarky as practically self-sufficient; or integrating what has been made heterogeneous, or detached, and even exactingly separated by habits or questionable methodological (or moral, legal, political, or economic) interests. In addition to these two indications, nomadic thought also implicitly involves two more. A third indication of this thought is characterized by its reversible nature. This is a thinking that regularly reexamines, again and again, what has already been examined. After having reached seemingly solid

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conclusions, its arguments once again return to a revision of its assumptions as well as the distinctions and relations that underly them. It is a thinking that does not disregard the fact that, inevitably, in any circumstance the person who thinks is always halfway there. At this particular moment, however, I am more interested in highlighting a fourth indication of nomadic thought, which often overlaps with the others and to which I have tacitly made reference throughout this pamphlet. It consists in rethinking many of the practices as practices of experimentation. The word “experiment” possesses dramatic uses whose vast resonances confront those who employ it this way in many conflicts. It is common to use the word “experiment” as a verb and a noun to refer to procedures that test, validate, or falsify a suspicion, doubt, or conjecture. For example, let us assume a conjecture concerning the workings of some phenomenon or process X. There are, then, one or various hypotheses or theories about X. Nevertheless, an experiment not only acts as a test for these theories. It is also an invitation to produce other theories and to defend other postulates about phenomena or specific aspects of phenomena or processes related to X that must be taken into account and that have gone unnoticed for some time. Experiments are modes of learning from experience. But performing experiments and learning from experience is expressed in many ways. However, I suspect its essential model is to learn from present experience. Typical examples of this learning experience are: controlled experiments in the natural sciences. These usually provide reliable information concerning cause-and-effect relationships in nature. For example, they often compare the causal results obtained on a particular phenomenon with control samples that are equal or probabilistically equivalent save for the variable that is being contrasted (or the independent causal variable). It is also common to employ various control samples replicated for the test that is being conducted as well as averages of these samples.

While continuing to use experiments in the natural sciences as a model, other types of practices for learning from present experience, other experiments, are often considered, though not without bitter conflicts. They are: spontaneous experiments. We frequently carry out these experiments in our everyday lives. Even small children conduct them when, for example, they throw an object to check its consistency. These experiments can be reconstructed as derivatives of experiments in the natural sciences: their proximate genus. However, the difference lies in that they lack the controls that define and give credibility to experiments in the natural sciences.

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We stated that spontaneous experiments can be reconstructed as derivatives of experiments in the natural sciences. We must examine the scope of this statement. Many of these “spontaneous experiments” are simply called “experiences” in everyday language. We say things like “people have experiences all the time, but young people are often hungry for new experiences.” We also say: “experience is the hardest teacher; if you want to learn, you must know how to endure what you detest.” These properties of experience (realized constantly and anywhere, “hungered for,” and occasionally “endured” or “suffered”) are not typically found in controlled experiments, which occur according to a predetermined design. However, in nomadic thought, experiences and experiments are often interrelated. For example, on the one hand, many people carry out some controlled experiments as a result of their experience of desperation. On the other hand, some results of controlled experiments have reached beyond their design and exceeded the expectations set out at the start. Experimentation in medicine, chemistry, and psychology present but a few of the countless examples of this reciprocity. Some controlled experiments have made the natural sciences the unquestionable “paradigm for knowledge in modern times.” At least, the technologies that rely on those sciences have become indispensable. For this reason, there is no use in assigning greater importance to experience over controlled experiments.4 It is more informative for us to postulate tensions between experiences and experiments, or between two types of experiments—controlled and spontaneous—and, with nomadic thought, redefine those tensions by establishing reciprocal interactions. Of course, it is not always possible to control and replicate experimental conditions. But it is perhaps possible to learn from the experience that we have already attained. To that end, we propose: natural experiments or quasi-experiments. Instead of manipulating variables in a laboratory, we make field observations like those collected in the first part of this pamphlet. For example, we postulate causes: for a social occurrence like zombie or mercenary institutions, for decrees in the legal void, or for a political reform that can be reconstructed as implicitly resorting to magic. We also utilized natural experiments when reasoning the importance of investigating the causes of social catastrophes to prevent them from reoccurring.5

However, it is common in a broad range of thought to learn not only from real experiences, but also to learn from potential or fictional experience by conducting: reflective or thought experiments. To carry out these experiments, we generate a hypothetical narrative; with a certain degree of detail, we consider what happens

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in that narrative, for example, what do its circumstances demand. Then, we reach one or various conclusions.

In thought experiments, centrifugal imagination and debate function as laboratories. We imagine circumstances, explore and discuss, and, at some point, formulate inferences and conclusions. Despite significant criticism,6 this form of experimenting is more common that we imagine. It frequently appears not only in the social sciences, but also in physics7 and biology,8 as well as in moral, legal, political, and economic debates. It is a permanent part of discussions in quotidian life. On more than a few occasions, such experiments are conducted by making an effort to use outlandish language, like in the first part with language containing magical residue. But the effort is not in vain: when we redescribe familiar circumstances using less familiar forms of language, different phenomena and problems can emerge, including explanations for those phenomena and problems that we might not have previously imagined. Often, one or several of these types of experiments are combined. For example, in the first part of this pamphlet, with the recourse to magic we alternated between two objectives, each one as ambitious as the other. On the one hand, we attempted to use natural experiments in support of a conjecture: that many behaviors generated by competencies in law, politics, and the economy are parasitic behaviors with magical residue (often disguising political or economic interests). On the other hand, with thought experiments, we constructed scenarios (like those generated by perpetuum mobile processes) or theoretical proposals like practical heterogeneity and homogeneity that allow us to learn from experience through contrast. However, and this is one of the implicit conjectures throughout these reflections, we also conduct experiments with the conflictive and sometimes dangerous workings of moral principles, norms, rules, obligations, virtues, vices, etc. Therefore, I also venture to propose evaluative experiments. Similar to some spontaneous experiments, evaluative experiments are usually lived experiences. (As we pointed out: they are “hungered,” “endured,” “suffered” experiences.) But other experiments—natural experiments and many reflective experiments, in particular—should also be attributed with this property of being a lived experience. One might insist: Do evaluative experiments, in fact, exist? For the purpose of defending their possibility, I will take a moment to redescribe the postulates for resisting obstacles to interpellations by overdetermined values like equality, freedom, and collaboration, which were the subject of the second and third chapters of this pamphlet, in terms of evaluative experiments. Experiment 1: We hypothesized that in many societies overdetermined values like equality, freedom, and collaboration have become ingrained using reason through very slow learning experiences, and that these values

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interpellate. We often respond to these interpellations by constructing practices based on the postulate of moral universalism, confirming that the executive ability acts according to the principle of collaboration, the principle of personal autonomy, and the principle of universality. However, with those underdetermined interpellations and their equally underdetermined responses, it is necessary for us to continue forming gradual and reciprocal correlations. Experiment 2: Based on attempts to put experiment 1 into practice, something becomes apparent: it is not easy to motivate the ability to judge and the executive ability to collaborate and universalize the maxims of actions as they should, or treat each person as an end in themself, if a society contains great social inequalities. Thus the need to rehearse determining the principles of universal moralism and allowing them to determine us, by conducting another experiment: implementing the postulate of equality from a legal standpoint in high degrees of determination. That postulate calls for the creation of a legal state in conjunction with the establishment of arts of healthy coexistence. Then, we must attempt to examine what happens if this postulate is or is not gradually fulfilled. Experiment 3: However, in order to completely realize the previous postulate, it becomes necessary to effectuate the postulate of a dignified economy to some degree. Therefore, we posited the need to operate with economic policies whose end is to guarantee that, at least, the basic needs for the majority of the population are satisfied. We then examined what happens if in this society, when promises of equality and collaboration are not made credible through economic policies, arts of unhealthy coexistence begin to proliferate. Experiment 4: We alluded in the previous experiments to the need to appeal to politics. In a society of dissimilar and dissident similar individuals, it is inevitable that problems, disagreements, and conflicts will arise at every turn. Exercising a politics of democratic integration promotes experiments that, while they often fail, are conducted again and again because they are important. Such experiments include discussing and debating shared problems in order to reach joint solutions, negotiating and renegotiating disagreements, redefining desires, beliefs, and interests, and seeing what happens. Because in our social life, and even our personal life, we will eventually face a choice: either establish and assiduously reestablish the good reputation of politics or impose oppressive power-over/under sequences that will lead to the proliferation of anti-community continuities. In the latter option, disagreements are met with violence—with conventional wars and with those other wars, those we are too ashamed to call by their name. Experiment 5: Experiment 4 is more fragile that we imagine. Politics of democratic integration frequently devolve into politicking, neo-despotism, positive infrapolitics, and other traps. Additionally, their practices must be defended against recurrent external destructions. To accomplish this dual

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objective, it is essential that we do not allow the various institutions of a society (legal, political, economic, military, etc.) to escape civic scrutiny, to degenerate into zombie or mercenary (i.e., cruel) institutions. Thus, the need to use politics to foment a culture of transparency that produces the presumption of inhabiting such a culture. But a culture of transparency does not exist if not first introducing another social experiment whose result is difficult to stabilize: non-impunity. The task of making non-impunity a generator of norms and institutions that are capable of imposing effective sentences, even on the most powerful, is arduous. Furthermore, for non-impunity to be established, it must become intrinsic to the desires, beliefs, and affects of the people. Experiment 6: None of the experiments 1 through 5 constitute an achievement, or at least a moderate achievement, if every human animal does not construct itself as a participant in a culture of responsibility. Without this socialization, which must soon become self-education, it will be difficult for people to determine and be determined by a collaborative egalitarianism that determines and is determined using the postulates of equality from a legal standpoint, a dignified economy, and the good reputation of politics, fostering arts of healthy coexistence. When considering circumstances 1 through 6, among other difficulties, the question remains: Are our reasons correct when we redescribe such circumstances as evaluative experiments? Perhaps we are using the words “evaluative experiments” when we want to refer to analyses and counterfactual constructions. Is the dramatic use of words deceiving us once again? If we use the word “experiment” so dramatically, are we attempting to highlight something beyond the creative and new, or surprising, dimensions of learning from experience? What is it specifically that is so attractive about any experiment, almost irresistibly so? What is that spirit that we are not willing to abandon? Why are we attempting to redescribe experiences 1 through 6 as experiments that invite us to learn to know how to begin anew by responding to the interpellations of overdetermined values like equality, freedom, and collaboration? Here are two answers. First, nomadic thought’s attraction to experiments is explained in part by the family of practices to which experiments belong. Second, we should note that the spirit of experimenting confronts a fear that persistently arises in analysis: imposition, a mode of acting under blind obedience or threats. I will expand on both answers.

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First Answer: The Willingness to Embark on Small or Large Adventures Belongs to the Family of Experimental Practices When motivated by the virtues of social trust, we often take the (small or great) risk of embarking on adventures in nature, in society, concerning people with whom we are close or distant, and even sometimes exasperatingly venturing into self-examinations. In these circumstances, with nomadic thought, we use counterpointing strategies: strategies of detours, transitions, and contrasts between the positive and negative paths. The objective: to use the strategy of trial and error in the most radical way possible. However, even though experimenting and embarking on adventures are different types of practices, should we not include the practices of venturing in the same family as those guided by the spirit of experimenting? The words “venture” and “adventure” are frequently used to refer to how we use our cognitive ability to explore unknown or little-known places: a region, a city, a house, a garden, a human or nonhuman animal. In this sense, it is not unusual to conduct spontaneous experiences or experiments. At the same time, when we examine events from the past, we are treating adventures in which the executive ability of one or various people was put to the test as if they were natural experiments; for example, the adventure of a citizen who lies to protect an innocent woman who is being pursued, the adventure of a doctor who runs the risk of becoming sick during an epidemic,9 or the adventure of a political group with slogans like “More transparency!” or “Zero prospective impunity!” Such adventures involve great danger if these banners are raised in more or less oppressive power-over/under sequences. We also recognize that small adventures to improve communal life are carried out every day when we welcome with hospitality desperate emigrants who have lost “what was theirs.” We even realize purely reflective adventures: seated in an armchair, hardly moving a muscle, almost without blinking, we conduct intense thought experiments and argue with ourselves, for example, when we examine the wear and tear to our lives and what we should do to not succumb to its ruin. Second Answer: The Extreme Alternative to Experimenting and Embarking on Adventures Consists in Suffering Impositions Consider the continuum of the practices of imposition. At one end, we find strong impositions. Such practices consist in demands and pressure from within oppressive power-over/under sequences: threats are used to instill fear and produce blind obedience; disobedience is punished. This, in turn, feeds

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vices of social distrust and generates those bad adventures or anti-adventure adventures that lead to warlike biases. At the other extreme of the continuum are weak impositions limited to declarations that this is simply the way it is. We are forced to resign ourselves to the circumstances: current laws that discriminate against people based on the color of their skin, corrupt secrets that are part of a state or an industrial corporation’s traditional customs, or constant envy because that is human nature. However, these initially weak impositions represent a slippery slope; with a slight amount of pressure, they can become strong impositions. Of course, the temptation of powerlessness reappears again and again throughout this continuum. There is notably no point in this continuum where a person is encouraged to interrupt themself, interrupt the course of events, and look and listen in multiple directions in accordance with the strategy of detours. That is, the ability to judge is not used in the spirit of experimenting or adventuring, but instead the person conditions themself to accept the imposition of domineering maxims,10 even maxims that may, under ideal circumstances, represent virtues. In this way, they appeal to vices that multiply rigidity and authoritarianism, and their teacher: fear. But are these multiplications not also forms of holism? DRAMATIC USES OF THE WORD “CULTURE” AND NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE PRACTICAL HOLISM In this civil pamphlet, though we have used and even abused the drama of the word “culture,” we have not explicitly discussed its resonances. I will again appeal to the strategy of detours with respect to holism. First Detour: Cultures Form Our Abilities, But They Do So Because They Are Also Forms of Life At its origin, the word “culture” referred to caring for livestock or cultivating land, though as early as ancient Rome, it was already being extended to other necessities as distinct, or seemingly as distinct, from those concerns as the “cultivation of the soul.” But in the mid-sixteenth century, this use began to be applied to all types of care or cultivation, which is still vaguely one of our current uses. So, when we proposed formulating the development of human animals as an innatism open to the circumstantial development of the abilities, we could have also expressed it, in other words, as an innatism open to the social cultivation and care of the abilities of the species. Because mixed circumstantialism is a mixed innatism that is a mixed culturalism. Furthermore, if we continue to examine what makes up a culture, we can begin to identify the dramatic uses of the word “culture” in various divergent directions. First,

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the word “culture” is used to refer to those previously mentioned processes that socially care for and cultivate the innate potentia of the species, which allows certain abilities to mature. Through this maturation, human animals transform themselves and, in part, shape their desires and beliefs into the desires and beliefs of a person. These are complicated constructions realized in interaction with other groups of people and the environment, and in diverse collaborative and hostile circumstances. In these strange interactions between biology and history, geography is omnipresent. For this reason, we must use the plural: we are dealing with cultures. Second, these processes that form the species depend on established cultures in various environments that, through ingrained values, summon and demand, using deliberative and non-deliberative competencies that are learned in the early childhood years, using objects, and using all sorts of technology, including those related to health, communication, and war. Therefore, these two uses of the word “cultures” refer to processes as well as the products of those processes, which are the conditions for other processes to be possible, and so on and so forth. Cultures form human animals when they stimulate maturation, socially caring for and cultivating the abilities. But cultures are also forms of life for these animals:11 strong customs make formation possible and even determine those possibilities to some extent. The second use of the word “culture,” as forms of life, refers us directly back to underdetermined games, complex formalisms, and the problem of holism. For if we are dealing with cultures, we are also dealing with forms of life that, although open and without precise limits, are more or less articulated as totalities. Each culture is organized as a practical holism that forms or deforms abilities. Consider this alternative: “a culture forms or deforms.” For example, in the expressions “cultures of corruption” and “cultures of impunity,” we used the word “culture” to designate forms of life that deform human animals and their cognitive, judicial, and executive abilities with vices that multiply the rigidity of behaviors and authoritarianism. But we also used the word “culture” to refer to the holisms that form those abilities, even in their political dimension, as in the expression “cultures of transparency that include a culture of non-impunity and a culture of responsibility.” That being so, when we discuss practical holism, we are in reality discussing a meta-holism comprised of negative and positive holisms. Second Detour: Experiences and Their Complex and Even Contradictory Conditioning of Practical Holism At the start of this civil pamphlet, I introduced a parallelism elucidating practical holism (descriptive, explicative, normative, open, and in permanent construction) with factual holism (in many versions, only descriptive and

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explicative). According to factual holism, the field of knowledge is only in contact with experience tangentially. Thus, those peripheral locations are where experience will intervene. What happens in practical holism? In the first part of this pamphlet, and occasionally in the second, we considered or implied, as we have just noted, that some experiences form while others deform. For example, if we add the vicious holism of violence to the previous cases of negative practical holism, then we observe: it is not only characteristic for this holism to surrender, but also to expand in all directions, even circulating inside those other wars where it is often difficult to detect. For this reason, we recommended using the negative path to examine those adventures that are more precisely anti-adventures: adventures of non-collaboration, frustrated adventures of reason. How do the experiences of these anti-adventures influence the respective forms of life? According to factual holism, conflicts with experiences on the periphery give rise to various possible readjustments in the interior of the field. However, according to practical holism, counter to those who propose a situationist viewpoint, practices hold even more uncertainty. For example, we spontaneously act under presumptions of trust. Those presumptions are often not satisfied. We then readjust our expectations. This new attribution of values implies a reevaluation of others. A negative reevaluation causes us to formulate troubling diagnoses. If we take into account the experiences that occur in cultures of corruption like those alluded to in the first part of this pamphlet, we might suspect that we do not live, at least not completely, in a legal state. In cases of political tragedy, we might infer that it is not possible to exercise a politics of democratic integration. But despite this, we do not necessarily reject the value of these politics. Perhaps we preserve it as a counterfactual horizon and act in accordance with the stratagems recommended by negative infrapolitics.12 Consequently, the entire field of practical (moral, legal, political, economic, etc.) normativity is extremely underdetermined by experiences: experiences of equalities and inequalities, of justice and injustice, of hospitality and envy, of responsibility and irresponsibility, etc. This underdetermination leaves large spaces open to the practices of human animals. For example, because of the bitterness and frustration produced by the non-satisfaction of presumptions of transparency and non-impunity, people and groups might draw different, even opposite, inferences. A person or group might succumb to active or passive forms of cynicism—or indifference, equally foolish despite its elegance—and lose faith in the very possibility of the arts of healthy coexistence and a politics of democratic integration. Encouraged by their centripetal imagination, their motto will be “nothing matters.” However, it is possible that those frustrations lead other people and different groups to reconsider the characteristic potentia of human animals. These animals might not give up.

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With such diverse and even contradictory forms of acting, I again ask—yes, once again!—how can we embrace the second option? How can we learn to know how to begin anew even when we are besieged by cruelty? How can we continue to keep our sights set on a horizon of collaborative egalitarianism that is respectful of each person as an end in themself? BEWARE OF ARROGANT REASON LURKING AT EVERY TURN13 Using the principle of counterpoints, we calibrate descents and ascents in reflection, i.e., the strategy of transitions; or we analyze proposals derived from diverse places and times (maybe even from other worlds?), i.e., the strategy of detours; or we compare ways of thinking, i.e., the strategy of contrasting positive and negative paths; or we venture out to test our luck, i.e., the strategy of trial and error. We do not, however, attribute those tasks of “weighing” and “counterweighing” transitions, detours, paths, and risks to an external instrument, to some artifact such as a scale. We attribute them to our cognitive ability, and particularly, to our ability to judge: those two modalities of human potentia. With this reminder of the existence of the potentia proper to our species, not only do we solve problems, but, unfortunately, we also see the arrival of others. This is because cognitive, judicial, and executive abilities alternate between uses of arrogant reason and porous reason. Therefore, it is imperative that we revisit and examine more explicitly that modality of human potentia, porous reason, with which we have been tacitly working throughout this pamphlet and whose defense was announced at the start as its essential concern. For now, let us pause for a moment to consider the adjective in the expression “porous reason.” Words like “porous” and “porosity” in a literal sense allude to a surface with intermolecular spaces: orifices, holes, openings that are visible or invisible to the naked eye. We commonly speak of the porosity of the skin, a fabric, or a stone. Surfaces of this nature, which allow the filtration or absorption of air, liquids, gases, etc., are decisive in life. (For example, in mammals, the skin’s pores are invisible orifices for the sweat glands.) The proposal to defend a porous reason takes into account that something analogous occurs in the uses of reason when it follows a normatively well-oriented path and is attentive to the interactions implied by its theoretical and practical holisms and the problems and complexities that they introduce. In these situations, such uses allow “filtration” as well as “absorption” and the development of diverse reciprocal influences among knowledge, practices, experiences, and norms.

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As a result, reasonings are not only mindful of the links between scientific and everyday knowledge, but also simultaneously remain receptive, on the one hand, to the countless manifestations of human life. On the other hand, they also do not cease to explore the conflicts and collaborations between forms of moral, legal, political, prudential, and economic norms, though not without establishing a hierarchy. We are dealing, then, with theoretical-practical-normative porosities that enable reasonings to contemplate the scope of assertions, questions, imperatives, etc. while at the same time remaining hospitable even to hostile interpellations and challenges. Therefore, when we argue using porous reason, we give ourselves permission to continue calibrating or modifying desires, beliefs, emotions, etc. On the contrary, as was stated earlier, the characteristic counterexample of thinking and acting with porous reason consists in thinking and acting with discriminatory partialities: employing a range of imperious attitudes that vary from disdain and contempt to cancellation, or arrogant reason. However, what are those actions and, thus, the norms in which both types of reason, arrogant and porous, are actualized through modes of looking, listening, believing, inferring, acting, as well as in desires and emotions? Human animals are quite often disparaged as being arrogant for possessing feelings of superiority with regards to other human animals. However, that disparagement intensifies, and multiplies, when facing general attitudes that are unbearably presumptuous: when a person desires, perceives, and reasons with insolence and conceit. In cases such as these, it is not an exaggeration to declare that these people are acting with arrogant reason. It is useful, it brings some clarity, if we reconstruct that mode of acting in accordance with a few of its norms, both implicit and explicit. For example, when acting with arrogant reason, one believes one can trample other human animals without the slightest remorse, not considering such actions as mistreatment. Frequently, the person is not even aware of the superciliousness and pride involved in this way of acting. Thus, a first norm of arrogant reason recommends: Act by exhibiting superiority. Of course, quite often some human animals insolently draw battle lines and protect themselves: they give themselves strength and conceal their shortcomings. In spite of this, with arrogant reason, one is often not in any condition to assume some type of effective superiority—cultural, economic, physical, etc.—with respect to others, but rather what we are witnessing is an adherence—fantastical in many cases—to social positions that those arrogant individuals extol as “the only thing that matters.” As such, on occasion, the superiority that one presumes is not founded on believing oneself to be better than the rest thanks to certain intrinsic qualities, but instead due to their affiliation—let me reiterate, fantastical in many cases—with those “positions

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that matter.” Nevertheless, both the belief that one is deserving of privileges because of one’s own extraordinary and exclusive merits, or direct arrogance, and arrogant identity through affiliation, real or fantastical, or indirect arrogance, have something in common: they are upheld only by various forms of rejection directed at the desires, beliefs, plans, or ways of life that oppose, or are simply unrelated to, that supposed superiority, be it one’s own or one that is loaned or experienced vicariously. Thus, a second norm of arrogant reason commands: Act by justifying yourself using attitudes that range from active indifference—from more or less visible disdain—to declared contempt for everything that is unrelated to what you consider affords you superiority. Notoriously, with arrogant reason one acts according to biases that range from treating other human animals with scorn—“looking down your nose at them,” as they say—to fighting them with whichever weapons are at one’s disposition. But not only this. Such arrogant uses of reason, both those that are gestural or in the form of sarcasm and those that are violent, use centripetal imagination to immunize with rigidity the authoritarian and insolent assumptions of these practices, these vices of the arts of unhealthy coexistence. Therefore, a third norm of arrogant reason has no qualms instructing: When your presumption of superiority is confronted with difficulties, shield yourself. Consider now the alternative to arrogant reason: porous reason. Suppose that cognitive, judicial, and executive abilities do not seek validation by affiliating themselves with some power-over/under sequence (political, economic, cultural, etc.). As a result, people do not view others, or anything other in general, with disdain or contempt. They reject the rigidity that shields their abilities from assumptions and arguments derived from other traditions. Furthermore, their listening and thinking acquires greater mobility between numerous points of view. Those interrelations and changes in perspective not only effect the past and the present, but also practices that will be realized in the future. With such considerations, we can formulate a first norm of porous reason: When faced with doubts, ambiguities, or conflicts, act with nomadic thought by visiting numerous affiliations and points of view. We have seen how complicated it can be to evaluate the counsel of reasons and arguments if we also wish to avoid the vices of “rationalizing” and ruminating. Those vices, linked to a fear of the risks we run by seriously considering other desires, other beliefs, other life proposals, drive us to react with shows of contempt—often resorting to the urgencies of magic and its residue. To counter them, we must formulate a second norm of porous reason: Act with nomadic thought by visiting many real or imaginary conversations in which you engage diverse processes of desiring, believing, growing excited, and reasoning, remaining constantly alert to the possibility of introducing various types of experiments into these conversations.

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Such unremitting demonstration of profound respect for a nomadic thought that ensures interactions also implies a rejection of any rule of autarky. We correct our existing beliefs and acquire new ones through conversation. Of course, the best beliefs often appear when the conversation continues to explore and begins to take the shape of an experiment. With this we can formulate a third norm of porous reason that refers back to the arts of healthy coexistence: Be hospitable; with nomadic thought, relocate yourself among people and relocate your centrifugal imagination, intervene in it, make it soar, argue. Be open to interpellations. To briefly illustrate how an innatism open to the circumstantial development of the abilities, in particular, the cognitive, judicial, and executive abilities, operates with arrogant or porous reason, I will return to our discussion on one type of attribution of responsibility. We remarked that responsibility can often become complicated regarding what we described as type 5 circumstances; for example, actively protecting the environment, and within it, many animals, including many nonhuman animals. In these circumstances, we should use nomadic thought to learn to know how to begin anew. Beginning anew means crossing the border that allows us to leave previous territories of error behind. Among other obstacles, this involves abandoning juridical norms that often pervert the legal state and false scientific information like: “Nature is unaffected by the behavior of human animals. Even if the rain forests are destroyed, it will continue to rain; even if the atmosphere is contaminated, we will continue breathing and we will not get sick; even if the oceans are polluted, the fish will be fine. Global warming is a fantasy conjured up by idealistic youth and crazed ecologists. Nature’s processes are perpetuum mobile processes.” It would also be wise to abandon one of the many negative consequences of those falsehoods: “Nonhuman animals have no feelings. They are primitive robots. We can treat them however we wish because, anyway, we cannot hurt them.” After leaving territories of error like these behind—often through arduous learning experiences—we must gain access to territories of truth. Inside them, the cognitive ability must acquire veridical information and make correct inferences. But it must also use centrifugal imagination to explore other relationships with plants and animals, with the land and the sea, other desires and affects beyond that form of arrogant reason that is purely instrumental reason.14 And no rest awaits us inside the territories of truth. We must allow the force of positivity to determine even the most concrete actions because without organizations to orient the executive ability, it will gradually lose its way in the residue of magic. It therefore becomes necessary to abandon once again the bad reputation of politics because in many circumstances, the most important thing is that we organize: educate ourselves through collaboration, plan coordinated actions using our powers-with. For example, imagine that

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in the fight to save the environment, it is recommended that we avoid bus travel, or any other form of mass transit, and should instead use bicycles. But by applying the strategy of ascending transitions, one might object: our goals are very narrow if we limit ourselves to this measure. Confronted by nature’s destruction, recommending the use of bicycles is a testimonial act, not a political one. Do we not need mass transportation to connect groups of people from distinct places, enabling them to exercise their civic responsibility and concert actions that demand particular public agendas of states and civil societies (political parties, nongovernmental organizations, etc.)? Moreover, thinking with positive practical holism helps dismantle authoritarian assumptions: to continue “altering and transcending operative social imaginaries.”15 Modes of knowledge that seem to resolve a problem should often be offset to show that they are not, in fact, solutions, but rather obstacles. Many detours or transition strategies considered to be the most relevant at a specific time and place are inheritances from systems of knowledge and practical traditions that, though beneficial in the past, now lead us in the wrong direction. They have become negative holisms proliferating territories of error. (Human obstinacy clinging to old vices can possess as much strength as the virtues of knowledge.) Therefore, it often becomes critical that we recover nomadic thought. Caution: in this context the word “recover” can be cause for confusion. “Recover” seems to asks us to recapture an original state that, due to our bad habits, we abandoned long ago. This would suggest positive beginnings that were lost and to which we must return. Almost without exception, this is not the case. If we are responsible, we must risk embarking on an adventure and conducting experiments in porous reason—spontaneous, controlled, natural, reflective, and evaluative experiments—to construct novel practices of learning to know how to begin anew. Where Do We Stand? Where Has This Civil Pamphlet for Practical Holism and Nomadic Thought Taken Us? I repeat: we are halfway there. Although you might get the sense that I am tying up loose ends in an effort to reach an end point, I am not. Loose ends are not inconvenient neither in life nor in a pamphlet that, as I warned, is only a prologue—and in this case, a prologue that strives to provoke thoughts; indeed, they galvanize by indicating tasks yet to be accomplished. We should also not be overly concerned by everything that still remains in the shadows. As long as we are alive, there is no other option: we are permanently halfway there. Another doubt: why has this halfway there been constantly accompanied by the biblical warning “Be careful with words”? We were even occasionally forced to vary that warning to the point of voicing multiple

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unrelenting invitations: be careful . . . , beware . . . , caution . . . Why so much precaution? We journey through life hand in hand with words. Sometimes we do this with the aid of arts of healthy coexistence, sometimes wrought with bitterness, and other times anxious for fear of destroying or destroying ourselves by using inappropriate—and even deformative and offensive—words to describe or redescribe experiences. Also, the proposals and conjectures we consider to be reasonable at a particular moment are formulated using the words of that moment. They are proposals and conjectures that we might soon need to correct. As one of the principles of nomadic thinking suggests, the principle of precarious processes, there is nothing beyond learning experiences in the lives of human animals, something so clearly expressed in that other principle of nomadic thinking that has been our guide, the imperative of life. Faced with the dangers of succumbing to obstacles to interpellations by overdetermined values and even to the destruction of the environment, we must therefore be alert to arrogant reason’s fantasies of an end point: the idea that “once we reach this point, we must immediately raise our shields.” This is a vice acquired in the desires and beliefs of people who only see themselves and no one else. All morals, laws, politics, or economies based on arrogant reason are revealed sooner or later to be morals, laws, politics, and economies of mirrors. Every once in a while, nomadic thought urges us to transgress habitually protective affiliations, and incorporate new virtues into our missteps. These are morals, laws, politics, and economies based on porous reason: morals, laws, politics, and economies of windows. This is how we are able to continuously conduct experiments with what we see, hear, remember, desire, feel, believe, reason, imagine, and analyze. Perhaps one thing is clear following this handful of adventures in porous reason that I have only barely examined in this civil pamphlet: many conflicts and horrors, both personal and social, as well as the difficult paths out of them, are the result of complex variations of the same choice. NOTES 1. Elizabeth Anderson proposes a “relational egalitarianism” in “What Is the Point of Equality?” Ethics 109, no. 2 (1999): 287–337. However, instead of a theory of relational egalitarianism, I prefer to begin to define it with the expression “a collaborative egalitarianism that is respectful of each person.” In this way, we avoid the vice of eliminating the solidarity found in the ideals of the French Revolution and neglecting Kant’s formulation of the imperative that instructs us to participate in a collaborative society: a society conceived as a Kingdom of Ends.

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2. In my review of Amy Reed-Sandoval’s book Socially Undocumented. Identity and Immigration Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), rather than thinking of the application of these abstract normative theories in terms of general maps, I propose the metaphors of a vestibule or a living room to introduce more-valuable orientations, albeit orientations that will need to be progressively determined, orientations that will be concretized in other rooms of the house like the kitchen, bedrooms, study, bathroom, or patio, or outside the house in the workplace, when participating in religious or political associations, or during recreational activities; cf. Carlos Pereda, “On Amy Reed-Sandoval,” Inter-American Journal of Philosophy 12, no. 2 (2021): 54–57. 3. Cf. Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther, When Maps Become the World (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2020). 4. For example, Friedrich Kambartel tends to defend this primacy in his book Erfahrung und Struktur. Bausteine zu einer Kritik des Empirismus und Formalismus (Experience and Structure. Elements for a Critique of Empiricism and Formalism) (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1968). 5. Cf. Thad Dunning, Natural Experiments in the Social Sciences: A Design-Based Approach (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 6. The usefulness of reflective or thought experiments, and even their basic legitimacy, have been called into question; for example, by Kathleen V. Wilkes in Real People: Personal Identity without Thought Experiments (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988). For a more nuanced position, see Tamar Gendler, Thought Experiment: On the Powers and Limits of Imaginary Cases (New York: Garland, 2000). 7. Thomas S. Kuhn, “A Function for Thought Experiments,” in The Essential Tension (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 240–65. Kuhn is perhaps not sufficiently generous with the functions of this type of experiment, at least, with regards to physics. Paul Humphreys, among others, argues that Kuhn assigns a much too limited function to thought experiments in physics and does not include that these are also able “to explore, probe and often modify the assumptions on which the scenario is constructed” (217); “Seven Theses on Thought Experiments,” in Problems of Internal and External Worlds. Essays on the Philosophy of Adolf Grünbaum, eds. John Earman et al., 205–27 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993). 8. In biology and ecology, a distinction is also made between three types of experiments (thought, controlled, and natural) and the richness of each one is demonstrated by Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther, Ryan Giodano, Michael D. Edge, and Rasmus Nielsen in “The Mind, the Lab, and the Field: Three Kinds of Populations in Scientific Practice,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 52 (August 2015), 12–21. 9. An experiment conducted in a London neighborhood during the 1854 cholera epidemic is often erroneously recorded as one the oldest natural experiments. In the span of a few days, 616 people died. Dr. John Snow created a map of the deaths and proposed that the cause was likely the contamination of a public water source located amid the various deaths on the map. Of course, we only have to read a bit of history to find discussions on natural experiments like this and other analogous experiments everywhere and throughout time. For example, Jose-Antonio Orosco reconstructs or

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conducts one of these experiments that is both natural and evaluative in “The Continental Struggle for Democracy: The American Wars of Independence as Experiments in Justice,” in Latin American and Latinx Philosophy: A Collaborative Introduction, ed. Robert Eli Sanchez, Jr., 58–76 (New York: Routledge, 2020). 10. “Tell the truth though the heavens fall,” “keep your promises though the heavens fall,” “obey all laws though the heavens fall,” and “let justice be done though the heavens fall” are domineering maxims that are only put into practice, if they are indeed practiced at all, by those who have succumbed to the fanaticism of “nothing matters anymore.” Of course, if the heavens fall, there will be no need for virtues. And, therefore, there will be no need for truth or justice. 11. Cf. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009); for example, #19: “And to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life” (11e). Rahel Jaeggi, in his book Critique of Forms of Life, trans. Ciaran Cronin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), writes: “forms of life are based on practices that develop but that, as practices, also undergo change (and can be changed)” (83). 12. If these circumstances are expected to last for a limited amount of time, then we might perhaps resort to a politics of camouflage: negative infrapolitics for times of hardship. 13. Cf. Carlos Pereda, Crítica de la razón arrogante (Critique of Arrogant Reason) (Mexico: Taurus, 1999). 14. More than a few people in modern times have fallen prey to this reason, especially if we ignore Romanticism and the subsequent defiance expressed in many forms of art. We must take inspiration from disparate sources to feed the human potentia to imagine, design, and act not only in accordance with a new ecology, but also with a fascination for nature. 15. Michael D. Doan, “Responsibility for Collective Inaction and the Knowledge Condition,” 548.

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Index

adventure, 80, 194–95, 197, 203; adventurer, 2 Akerlof, George, 51n7 Alfano, Mark, 94n23–24 Allen, Amy, 17n12 amnesty; law of, 143 Arendt, Hannah, 17n12, 174n56, 180n90 Aristotle, 16–18n11, 89n9, 91n16, 166n17 argumentation, 45, 54n28; bad reputation of, 155; forms of, 3, 32 argumentative pathologies; argumentative vertigos, 29–30, 33, 39, 42, 52n17, 58n57, 76, 83, 120, 155–56, 163, 181n49 art, 205n14 autarky; postulates of, 5; rule of, 22–23, 26, 31, 47, 49, 68, 73, 143, 188, 201 authoritarianism, 103–4, 114, 116, 167n22, 168n29, 175n61, 195; authoritarian personality, 115 authority, 115–16, 154, 167n20, 180n90, 181n95, 183n105; paradox, 114, 167n21 autonomy; of human reason, 54n28; postulates of, 5; principle of autonomy, 67–68, 72–74, 77, 79, 84–85, 101–3, 113, 116, 118, 125– 26, 139, 152–53, 192;

as self-construction, 68, 89–90n12; Kant’s formulation of, 89n6; relational, 69–70 Beauvoir, Simone de, 181n93 behavior; and habits, 92n20; generated by deliberate competencies, 64–66; generated by non-deliberative competencies, 64–66, 140, 155, 157, 196; self-destructive, 9, 17n15, 115 Bohman, James, 52n15 borders, 98n42, 138, 186, bravery, 87 Bredo, Johnsen, 15n6 Brewer, Talbot, 90n15 Brigandt, I., 89n8 Butler, Judith, 17n12 Carnap, Rudolf, 54n27 Cassam, Quassim, 19n22 categorical imperative, 88n3, 168n27, 169n31, 171n37, 173n52 centrifugal imagination, 2, 14n3, 74–75, 80, 85–86, 119, 186, 191, 201 centripetal imagination, 14n3, 21, 29, 48, 52n17, 77, 104, 109, 112, 125–26 citizenry, 34, 44, 122, 124–25, 130 civic education, 94, 122 civic ignorance, 142

217

218

Index

Clark, Andy, 89n7 coexistence; healthy, 75, 82, 85, 87, 96n36, 116, 126, 132, 138, 141, 143, 149, 151, 176n67, 186, 193, 201, 203; unhealthy, 10, 39, 45, 57n50, 59n62, 104, 117, 119, 137, 153–54, 183n105, 192, 200; collaboration, 7, 10, 26, 28, 33, 44, 63–64, 66, 73, 87, 104–5, 127, 139, 141, 146, 149, 175n61, 185, 191–92, 201; principle of, 67, 72–74, 77, 80, 101–2, 116, 126, 134 community; anti-community communities, 119–20, 126, 155 conversation; and nomadic thought, 200–201 corruption, 145, 197; and economic inefficiencies, 47–48; and loyalty, 47; and political resistance, 59n63, 60n66; and violence, 44–46, 57–58nn52–53, 60n66; assumption of social corruption, 104; characterization of, 40–42; consequences of, 43–44, 76; fight against, 40, 46, 58n54, 60–61n69; individual forms of, 42, 45; institutional forms of, 43, 45; structural corruption, 43, 45, 47 counterpoint strategies, 194, 197; principle of counterpoints, 10–11, 27, 84 Crenshaw, Kimberlé, 14n 4 cruelty, 118–20, 132, 168n30, 169n34, 170n37, 171n38, 198 culture, 195–96; cultural legacy, 6, 7; mixed culturalism, 195; nomadic cultures, 14n2; of civic virtue, 53; of corruption, 43, 133; of nonimpunity, 127, 131–32, 134–35, see also impunity of transparency, see transparency Dancy, Jonathan, 16n9 De Greiff, Pablo, 177n71 Deleuze, Gilles, 13n2

democracy, 27, 29, 31, 33, 43, 51nn12–13, 95n30, 136, 170n36; and hospitality, 95n30; and uncertainty/ precarity, 51n12, 51n13; autonomy postulate of, 63; democratic integration, 122–23, 125–26, 143, 192, 197; destruction/erosion/selfdestruction of, 22–23, 31, 44, 50 Derrida, Jacques, 97n42 Descartes, René, 172n48 despotism, 52n19, 89n12; neodespotism, 44–45, 57n50, 120, 124– 26, 164n4, 172n50, 173n51 destructions, 8, 10, 17n15, 18n16; external destructions, 8, 9; of institutions, 9; self-destructions, 8–9, 17n15, 18n16, 146 Dewey, John, 92n19, 174n57 dignity, 89n6, 101, 103 discrimination, 98n42; positive, 4; negative, 4 Doris, John, 93–94n23, 97n40 drug trafficking, 36, 48, 56–57nn45–46, 98n45 Dryzek, John, 52n15 Dworkin, Ronald, 54n28 economy; postulate of a dignified economy, 101, 103, 118, 120, 134, 151, 192–93 Edge, Michael D., 204n8 egalitarianism; collaborative, 186–87, 193, 198, 203n1 Eichmann, Adolf, 180n90 enduring, 76, 77 Enlightenment, 163, 167n19, 183n105 environment, 156, 160; postulate of environmental neutrality, 155–56 envy, 110–12, 165–166nn16–17, 197 epistemology, 60n67, 117; evolutive, 89n8; nomadic, 13n1, 18n18; static, 49, 128, 133–34 equality, 7, 10, 26, 28, 33, 63–64, 66, 70, 73, 87, 103, 127, 141, 146, 149, 167n19, 175n61, 185, 191–92, 197;

Index

economic, 164n2; legal, 74, 120; of circumstances, 73; postulate of, 73, 76–77, 85, 87, 101, 104, 118, 134, 187, 193 evil; banality of, 180n90; lesser, 76, 77; proliferation of, 119; social, 122 experiment/experimentation, 188, 190–94; controlled experiments, 188, 190; evaluative experiments, 191, 193; natural experiments/ quasi-experiments, 190–91; reflective/thought experiments, 190–91; spontaneous experiments, 188, 190–91 failure, 11–12 fanaticism, 35, 76, 205n10 fear, 104–5, 107, 108–10, 112, 142, 164n5, 164–65n7, 165n9, 180, 189, 200, 203 feminism, 36, 125 formalism; complex, 32, 36, 66–67; formal rationality, 31; simple, 32–33, 36, 53n21, 73, 148 Foucault, Michel, 17n12, 60n68, 181–82nn94–95 Frankfurt, Harry, 167n26 free will, 147 freedom, 7, 10, 26, 28, 33, 63–64, 66–67, 71, 73, 87, 104, 127, 141, 146, 149, 168n27, 175n61, 185, 191; destruction/self-destruction of, 55n31; of expression, 134–39 Fricke, Miranda, 19n22 friend/enemy opposition, 96n39, 106 friendship, 65, 80, 138 games; and culture, 196; and moral practices, 71–72, 148; types of, 71; underdetermined, 71–72, 74, 196 Garzón Valdés, Ernesto, 18n17 Gibson, E., 16n8, 88n1 Gibson, J. J., 16n8 Giodano, Ryan, 204n8 Goffman, Erving, 181n95

219

Graybiel, Ann M., 92n20 Guattari, Felix, 13n2 Habermas, Jürgen, 53n22 habits, 91nn16–17, 92–93n20, 95n33, 96n37, 155–56 Haglund, Jilliene, 174n59 hatred, 75, 109, 142; religious, 75 Hegel, G. W. F., 96n35, 173n52 Heras-Escribano, M., 16n8 hexis, 91n16 Hill, Thomas E., 88n5 Holism; definition of, 3; descriptive, 146; explicative, 146; factual holism, 4, 14n5, 196–97; motivational holism, 147; of the senses, 146; personal holism, 3–4; practical holism, 4–6, 8, 10–11, 14n6, 16n9, 21, 30–31, 40, 44, 49, 66, 71–72, 86, 88n5, 103, 112, 123, 127, 129, 139, 146–47, 149, 155–56, 163, 173nn51– 52, 175n62, 186–88, 195–97, 202 Holtman, Sarah, 88–89n5 homophobia, 4, 19n22 hospitality, 80–82, 85–86, 95nn29–30, 95n34, 98n42, 98n43, 106, 143, 194, 197, 201 human animals, 6–7, 9, 52n14, 66–69, 73, 75, 86–87, 88n5, 89n6, 93n21, 96n38, 104–5, 129, 144–47, 149, 156–57, 163, 180n87, 187, 195–97, 199–201; biological/first-nature level, 68–69; historical/second-nature level, 68–69, 119 human development, 69, 162 human faculties, 146 Humphreys, Paul, 204n7 identity, 82–83, 113; personal identity, 83, 112–13, 172n47 ignorance, 115, 144; and epistemology, 133–34, 149; civic, 142; “culpable,” 180n86 imposition; practices of, 194–95 indignation; social, 111, 128–29

220

Index

impunity, 145–46, 175n64; factual, 132; individual, 132; institutional, 133–34, 174n58; legal, 132, 145, 177n69; moral, 145; non-impunity, 127, 131, 134, 156, 193; political, 145; presumption of non-impunity, 197; structural, 133–34, 174n58; “zero impunity,” 131, 140 innatism, 69, 86, 127, 162, 195, 201 institutions; formal/informal, 55n32; mercenary, 23, 35, 40, 43, 46, 58n56, 59n63, 67, 84, 102, 118, 133–34, 193; “total,” 181n95; zombie, 23, 40, 43, 46, 59n63, 67, 84, 134, 193 intolerance, see tolerance Isaacs, Tracy, 183n102 Jaeggi, Rahel, 205n11 James, William, 91n19 jealousy, 111 Jones, Warren H., 50n2 Justice; experiences of, 197; transitional, 143–44, 177n71 Kambertel, Friedrich, 204n4 Kant, Immanuel, 18n18, 88n3, 88–89nn5–6, 90nn13–14, 95n34, 171n37, 173nn54–55, 183n105, 203n1 kingdom of ends, 88–89n5, 203n1 Korsgaard, Christine M., 90n14, 168n27, 181n94 Kruks, Sonia, 166n18 Kuhn, Thomas S., 204n7 Lara, María Pía, 14n3 Law, 32–33, 37; adherence to, 40; and magic, 46–47; constitutive objectives of, 34–37; critique of, 37; formalism in, 36; Kant’s formulation of universal law, 90n14 legal processes, 31 legal regulations; Postponement/ elimination of, 37–38 Lessa, Francesca, 174n58, 175n64

Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 181n94 Levinas, Emmanuel, 169n31, 170n35 Lewis, David, 19n25 Locke, John, 165n7 Love, A. C., 89n8 magic, 21, 50n1; resort to, 22, 24–25, 31, 36, 39, 40, 43, 50n2, 143, 155– 56, 180n90, 181n94, 191 manipulation, 12, 21, 24–25, 42, 47, 49, 50n5, 51n6, 63, 106, 117, 130; interpersonal/social, 24–25; nudges of, 25; self-manipulation, 12, 63 Marx, Karl, 171n43 means-end scheme, 40 Medina, José, 19n22 Menke, Christophe, 90n18 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 92n19 Milgram, Stanley, 180n90 Montaigne, Michel de, 18–19n21, 169– 170n34, 172n49 Montesquieu, baron de, 52–53n19 moral principles; underdetermined, 36, 71, 88n4, 102, 117, 173n52 moral reasons, 16n9, 63, 65–66, 123 moral universalism, 116, 120, 123, 146, 151, 185; dirty hands problem, 123, 172n45; postulate of, 66, 192; principles of moral universalism as constitutive conditions, 72; universal objectivism, 54n28 morality, 5, 72, 123, 144, 148, 169n33, 175n62; absolute, 148, 177n75 Morris, Stephen D., 59n63 Mozart, W. A., 167n19 nationalism, 93n21 Nielsen, Rasmus, 204n8 nomad, 2 nomadic thought, 2–3, 5–6, 10–13, 21, 37, 49, 51n10, 66, 71–72, 84–85, 95n32, 103, 112, 118, 120, 127, 140, 152, 156, 168n29, 177n73, 181n93, 187–189, 194, 200–203 normative force, 6

Index

normative theories, 185–88 “normative maps,” 186, 188 Nussbaum, Martha C., 165n9 Obedience; blind, 115, 124, 154–56, 180n92, 194 Olsen, Tricia D., 174n58 omnipotence, 22–23, 26, 30, 33, 141, 155; postulate of the omnipotence of reflection, 156 ontology; and practical holism, 15n6; atomist, 6; plural, 6 Payne, Leigh A., 174n58 Paz, Octavio, 15–16n7 Pereda, Carlos, 14n2, 88n5, 203–4n2 Pereyra, Gabriel, 174n58 perfectionism, 175n61 perpetuum mobile processes, 28–29, 31, 42–43, 52n14, 191, 201; machine, 26, 52n13; magic of, 28, 32; rule of, 22, 26–27, 32 personhood, 115, 136, 186 philosophy of science, 60n67 phronesis, 89n9 Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel, 171n42 Pick, A., 16n8, 88n1 Plato, 90n13, 171nn42–43 political resistance, 47, 59 politics, 44, 45, 193; and magic, 46–48, 172–73n51; bad reputation of, 121– 22, 132, 171n43, 172nn50–51, 201; democratic, 47, 126–27, 151; good reputation of, 193; identity politics, 166n18; infrapolitics, 48, 59n61, 124–26, 130, 144, 174n57, 192, 197, 205n12; politicking, 45, 47, 57n47, 57n50, 122, 124–26, 180n90; postulate of the good reputation of, 121–22; uses of the word, 45 potentia; abilities of human potentia, 68–69; circumstantial development of abilities, 69, 86, 127, 162, 195, 201; human, 7–8, 13, 16–17n11, 27–30, 33, 52n18, 53n21, 119,

221

144–45, 148–50, 152–53, 161–62, 172, 198, 205n14; in the public sphere, 74 power; Power-over/under, 8, 17n14, 23, 29–30, 35, 41, 43, 44, 45–46, 48, 50n4, 53n20, 56n41, 57n50, 60nn64–65, 68, 74–76, 84, 98n42, 102, 106–8, 114, 120, 123–24, 128, 132–34, 138, 141, 143, 145, 147, 156, 165n13, 166n19, 172n50, 175n60, 176n69, 182n100, 183n105, 192, 194, 200; power-to, 8, 28, 31, 52n18, 58n53, 59n62, 68, 75, 137, 144, 148–50, 152, 155, 159, 180n87; Power-with/against, 8, 17n14, 22, 31, 41, 45, 52n18, 53n20, 58n53, 74, 75, 120, 122–25, 148–49, 150, 161, 163, 201 practical atomism, 4–5 practical heterogeneity, 4–5, 12, 143–44, 173n55, 179n79, 191 practical homogeneity, 5–6, 191 precarious processes, 27, 51n10, 52n14, 152, 203; principle of, 28, 127 principle of counterpoints, 10–11, 27, 198 principle of the imperative of life, 12, 27, 203 psychosocial experiments, 153, 180n90 publicity; principle of, 129–30, 132, 173–74n54 Quine, W. V. O., 14–15n6 Rabotnikof, Nora, 173n53 racism, 4, 19n22, 92n20, 125, 134; paradox of the tolerant racist, 94n25, 95n29 Rancière, Jacques, 51n12 Rawls, John, 88n4, 165n16 Raz, Joseph, 167n21 reason; arrogant, 2, 198–201, 203; immunity to, 156; instrumental use of, 50n4; porous, 1–2, 198–201, 203 recognition, 80, 96n35

222

Index

reconciliation; national, 176n67 reductionist monism, 5 Reed-Sandoval, Amy, 203–4n2 Rehg, William, 52n15 Reiter, Andrew G., 174n58 republicanism; radical, 185–86; responsibility, 155–56, 158, 160–63, 170n35, 178–79n79, 179n84, 197; attribution of, 151–52, 158, 182n100; civic, 149, 157, 159, 202; conditions of, 150; culture of, 149, 156–60, 193; of collective actions, 158, 161, 183n102; properties of, 161; role responsibility, 159 Richards, David L., 174n59 rights, 144 rigidity, 112, 200 Robin, Corey, 164n7, 165n8 romanticism, 205n14 Rorty, Richard, 171n38

Sunstein, Cass R., 51n6

Sartre, Jean-Paul, 181n93 Scott, James C., 59n61 Seel, Martin, 98n43 sexism, 4, 19n22 Shiller, Robert J., 51n7 Shklar, Judith N., 168n30, 171nn37–38 Sittlichkeit, 173n52 situationism, 181n93 Snow, John, 204n9 sociobiology, 90n13 Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, 15n7 state; legal, 33, 40, 74, 151, 177n69, 197, 201 stereotypes, 92n20 strategy of contrasts, 194 strategy of detours, 11, 71, 90n13, 114, 134, 149, 154, 194–95 strategy of transitions, 11, 114, 132, 141, 168n29, 168n30, 174n58, 175n63, 187, 194, 202 strategy of trial and error, 11, 96n37, 120, 194 suicide, 9, 18n17; “suicide clubs,” 146– 49, 152, 178n77

values; overdetermined, 6–7, 10, 12, 26, 28, 33, 37, 38, 44, 63–64, 66, 67, 70, 73, 87, 101, 103–4, 121, 127, 141, 149, 163, 164n2, 167n19, 169n32, 175n61, 185, 191, 193, 203; underdetermined, 71, see also moral principles Vargas, Manuel, 50n5, 175n61, 183n104 Vaz Ferreira, Carlos, 19n23, 177–78nn75–76 vices, 93n23, 94–95n28, 96n37, 112; civic, 34; concealed, 86; social distrust, 104, 116, 126 Villoro, Luis, 19n22 violence; fight against, 40, 46; forms of, 41; holistic view of, 120, 197 virtues, 93n23, 94–95n28, 96n37; ability to relocate/self-relocate, 82–86, 98n43, 143; as customs, 73; civic, 34; impetus to explore, 84–86, 98n43, 143; Social trust, 75, 79 vulnerability, 51n10, 105–8

tolerance, 75, 85, 93n21, 98n43, 106; intolerable events, 145; intolerance, 78, 93n21; negative/prudence, 76–79, 81, 85–86, 114, 131, 143; positive, 76, 80; “zero tolerance,” 140 transparency; culture of transparency, 128–30, 132, 134, 156, 173n53, 174n56, 193; postulate of individual, 155–56; presumption of, 197; public, 127, 129 transphobia, 4 trust, 96n36, 143, 186; civic, 129; presumption of, 42, 44, 104, 13, 197; social, 85–86, 116, 120, 194 truth commissions; 143–44, 177n70 universality; principle of, 70–74, 78–79, 84–85, 101, 118, 126, 139, 192

Walzer, Michael, 169n33, 172n45

Index

war, 106–9, 119, 192, 197; warlike bias, 96n39, 106–11, 117, 122, 134, 154–55, 195 Wartenberg, Thomas E., 17n12 Wilkes, Kathleen V., 204n6 Williams, Bernard, 168n28 Winther, Rasmus Grønfeldt, 204n8 Wittgenstein, L., 205n11 Wood, Wendy, 92n20, 95n33

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words; “be careful with,” 1, 96n39, 106, 116, 122, 160, 202; dramatic use of, 1, 6, 8, 12, 43–44, 47, 75, 81, 122, 156, 163, 193, 195; uses of, 1, 203 Xenophobia, 92n20 Zusne, Leonard, 50n2

About the Author

Carlos Pereda (b. 1944, Uruguay) is professor emeritus at the Institute of Philosophical Investigations, National Autonomous University of Mexico. After obtaining his PhD at Konstanz University in Germany, Pereda has developed an extensive research program revolving around a contemporary theory of reason. Influential in the Ibero-American world, Pereda combines analytical acuity, intellectual independence, broad interests, and originality, not to mention a sense of urgency and materiality in all his reflections. He has been regularly invited as a visiting professor at various universities both in America and Europe. In addition to many articles in philosophical journals and other magazines, he has published fourteen books in Spanish including, among others, Reason and Uncertainty (1994), An Ethics of Dispute (1994), On Trust (2009), Pathologies of Judgement: An Essay on Literature, Morality, and Nomad Aesthetics (2018), and Thinking about Mexico and Other Claims (2021). In 2019 he published the English translation of Lessons in Exile, (Brill/ Rodopi).

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