Terça-feira, 17/9/2002
Show him what he is like
Julio Daio Borges
"I don't consider myself to be that radical a thinker. My opinions about human nature are shared by many psychologists, linguists, and biologists, not to mention philosophers and scholars going back centuries. The connections I draw between human nature and political systems in my new book, for example, were prefigured in the debates during the Enlightenment and during the framing of the American Constitution. Madison, for example, asked 'What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?' People today sometimes get uncomfortable with empirical claims that seem to clash with their political assumptions, often because they haven't given much thought to the connections. But a conception of human nature, and its connections to other fields such as politics and the arts, have been there from time immemorial."
Se você não advinhou quem é o sujeito na foto, autor das mal-traçadas acima, vale à pena visitar a entrevista completa de Steven Pinker no Edge. (E se advinhou, também.)
"One reason for the canonization of artists is a quirk of our moral sense. Many studies show that that people hallucinate moral virtue in other people who are high in status-people who are good-looking, or powerful, or well-connected, or artistically or athletically talented. Status and virtue are cross-wired in the human brain. We see it in language, where words like 'noble' and 'ugly' have two meanings. 'Noble' can mean high in status or morally virtuous; 'ugly' can mean physically unattractive or morally despicable. The deification of Princess Diana and John F. Kennedy Jr. are obvious examples. I think this confusion leads intellectuals and artists themselves to believe that the elite arts and humanities are a kind of higher, exalted form of human endeavor. Anyone else having some claim to insights into the human condition is seen as a philistine, and possibly as immoral if they are seen as debunking the pretensions of those in the arts and the humanities."
Julio Daio Borges
17/9/2002 às 10h28
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