ESSAy | ENSAIO
63
Ethics and democracy in times of crisis
Ética e democracia em tempos de crise
Sergio Rego1, Marisa Palácios2
ABSTRACT The authors discuss the idea of crisis as something regular and systematic in the
capitalist system, situating moments of acute crisis as an inherent part of the political struggle. With a historical perspective, they seek to demonstrate that the transformations and the
advances achieved in the culture of rights are still very recent and unconsolidated. They argue
that the strengthening of individualism in the consumer society is inherent in it and that the
projects of collective life need to value the policy and the search for a minimum ethics, which
enables coexistence.
KEYWORDS Ethics. Politics. Civil rights. Human rights. Democracy.
RESUMO Os autores discutem a ideia de crise como algo regular e sistemático no sistema capi-
talista, situando os momentos de crise aguda como parte inerente à luta política. Com uma perspectiva histórica, procuram demonstrar que as transformações e os avanços obtidos na cultura
dos direitos ainda são muito recentes e não consolidados. Argumentam que o fortalecimento do
individualismo na sociedade de consumo é inerente a este e que os projetos de vida coletiva precisam valorizar a política e a busca de uma ética mínima, que possibilite a convivência.
PALAVRAS-CHAVE Ética. Políticas. Direitos civis. Direitos humanos. Democracia.
Fundação Oswaldo Cruz
(Fiocruz), Escola Nacional
de Saúde Pública Sergio
Arouca (Ensp) – Rio de
Janeiro (RJ), Brasil.
[email protected]
1
2 Universidade Federal
do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ),
Instituto de Estudos de
Saúde Coletiva (Iesc) – Rio
de Janeiro (RJ), Brasil.
[email protected]
DOI: 10.1590/0103-11042016S06
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REGO, S.; PALÁCIOS, M.
The objectives of this essay are to reflect
about some of the different faces that the
current crisis in Brazil presents and to
analyze them in search of an understanding that contributes, as much as possible, to
think of political alternatives for the future.
We will not address here the economic crisis,
nor the political crisis, nor the one of representativeness, trying to restrict ourselves to
those of the moral field.
There is a common idea that we are living
an ethical crisis, or a moral crisis, or, yet, a
crisis of values in our Country. In fact, one
of the reasons for the uncertainty about the
‘crisis’ is possibly in the confusion that many
people do between ethics and morality and
in its relation with values in general. In order
to clarify this issue, we state that we understand morality as the norms imposed on us
by the social environment in which we live
in, norms that are external to us. We have,
therefore, different moral norms, that may
be religious or professional, for example. On
its turn, ethics is understood as a secondround discourse about moral problems. That
is, ethics is a critical reflection on morality.
So, it would not be correct to speak of a code
of professional ethics, but a code of professional morality. However, this distinction
is more reserved for academic discussions
themselves, since the distinction is not commonly used in society in general. Let us
retain, therefore, the distinction.
Many associate this moral crisis with a
specific political party; others, to democracy
as a whole; others, however, prefer to blame
human nature, narcissism, which is increasingly establishing itself as a characteristic of
Post-Modernity. Anyway, is there a crisis? Is
this crisis brazilian? Is a crisis of humanity,
of Post-Modernity?
Let us talk initially about the crisis. Its
meaning, sensu lato, refers to any significant change in the status quo of something.
Thus, we can talk about the growth crisis, in
general, referring to the changes that occur
in an individual as a result of their growth
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(be it physiological or not); ‘nervous breakdown’, when the emotional stability of an
individual is shaken, either because of what
it is; middle age crisis, marriage crisis and
other situations involving individuals in isolation. But, we also have social crises, that
affect communities, such as the economic
crisis, when the regular parameters of the
functioning and assessment of the economy
are significantly affected; political crisis,
when the political stability of a community
is significantly altered, and so forth. But we
can, also, refer to the ethical crisis, moral
crisis and even crisis of values. But is it pertinent and appropriate to focus our reflection
on the idea of crisis as something destabilizing and with the inherent conception of
threat that it often brings?
Strictly speaking, crisis is inherent to
life, both individual and social. We comprehend that nothing is static, but, rather,
in permanent transformation. The physical
world changes, even without the intervention of man, only by the action of elements
of nature, such as air, water, fire and physical particles. A stone is molded either by the
action of the wind, be it water or even fire. A
biological organism grows and develops and
is being transformed permanently, even after
the so-called life is extinguished.
In the same way, the social world is also
in permanent transformation. Societies
change, the ways humans relate to each other
change, how they organize, how they work,
how they have fun. Yes, and these changes
are often related to the development of
technique and knowledge, as a result of the
human development itself. Does this mean
that all crises will bring positive results? Are
changes always good or, at least, desirable?
Let’s keep this question for later on.
Previously, we must introduce the value
assessment perspective. And what is value?
We can generically say that we value what is
considered important, that is, that on which
we make an affective investment. Thus,
what we value is what we understand to be
Ethics and democracy in times of crisis
relevant and meaningful, in whatever area.
The situations in which the processes of
transformation, inherent to the individual/
social being, intensify and the possibility of
changes becomes more evident will be more
or less valued according to the expectations
we have, with our assessment of the possible
results of the process, albeit partial.
And how are values determined? Are they
fixed and immutable? Of course not. They
vary in the individual according both to their
age, maturity, experiences, as well as their
culture and social environment. How come?
Thus, the smaller the social group, the greater
the chance that the values of the members of
these subsets will be similar. That is, more
closed communities, such as orthodox religious communities, political communities,
ethnic communities, are more likely to share
their values, or, at least, those fundamental
ones. Durkheim (2013), in his classic study
about suicide, has demonstrated one of the
possible effects of this phenomenon. In military communities, where the most valued is
the fulfillment of orders, the submission of
the will and life itself to the common good,
which is expressed by its leaders, suicide is
more frequent, since self-attachment is not
the value that is stimulated and defended.
On the other side, in the world jewish community, despite the diaspora, which has a
large support network in which individual
well-being and the very survival of the community members are some of its main objectives, the suicide rate is very low (the religion
itself that many share, with their inherent
values, reinforces this valuation).
That way, we can comprehend that, although we are able to autonomously make
decisions about what is most appropriate,
fair, right, our choices are rarely independent of the social environment in which we
are inserted or in an individualistic perspective. Turiel (2002) emphasizes this issue in
conceptualizing moral autonomy, remembering Piaget, when emphasizing that individuals construct their personality and their
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values in interactions with others, in interdependent perspectives. However, these relationships would not cause individualities
to be nullified, since people do not combine
as gases, but require that they maintain their
individualities.
A few years ago, the developmental psychology group of ABRAPP (Brazilian Association
of Post-graduation in Psychology) proposed
that its members research and write articles
and reflections on the question: ‘Values are
in crisis or is there a crisis of values?’. Among
the various works produced and published in
a book, which had as its title a variant of the
original question, we would like to highlight
one, from Tognetta and Vinha (2009), from
the State University of Campinas (Unicamp).
In this study, they investigated, in a group
of high school students in Campinas, what
made them indignant. The purpose was to
identify the perception of justice they had
and in which scopes and situations they perceived injustices and manifested indignation at it. The observed results were highly
worrying, as most of these young people
expressed outrage especially in situations
where their individual interests were threatened. The perception of injustice toward the
other was far short of what one would want
or expect. Is this another indication of how
individualistic our society has become? That
the perception of others and solidarity with
them are no longer valued by our youth?
The values of our society have changed
and change over time, and not just those of
our society. If we pull away our view of the
recent facts and try to consider the changes
that have occurred in the last hundred, two
hundred or three hundred years, we will
verify that the changes are very profound.
Luc Ferry (2009), in his book ‘Facing the
Crisis’, makes a brief analysis of the transformations in western societies since the industrial revolution, in order to demonstrate
that the traditional values of western families have been deconstructed. And it is good
that this have occurred and that it occurs.
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REGO, S.; PALÁCIOS, M.
However, the changes are not so old and are
not so settled like that. As an example, he
mentions facts related to the feminine condition: until 1975, in France, the wife needed
to ask her husband’s authorization to open
a bank account; only in April 1991, the last
canton of Switzerland granted women the
right to vote! In our Country, despite having
been approved, in 2002, a new Civil Code,
replacing that which have entered into force
in 1916, several anachronisms related to,
moreover, the female condition (DIAS, 2016)
still persist. There are several social actors
in permanent clash with the purpose of
trying to consolidate achievements, while
others resist the new times. These conflicts,
however, are part of the process of social
change, they promote advances and retreats,
follow the transformations in social relations
in general. What is important in this process
is that the principles of democratic coexistence are preserved, that the policy space is
neither undermined nor minimized.
At this point of the reflection, we can
recall the thinking of Richard Sennet (1999),
in his already classic study published with
the title ‘The fall of the public man: the tyrannies of intimacy’. In it, the author defends
the idea that the emptying of public life and
the excessive valuation of personal life was
a process that began with the fall of the ‘Old
Regime’ and the formation of an urban and
capitalist culture. For Sennet, this hypertrophy of the personal life also influenced the
public life, making individual characteristics
more relevant than the perspective of the
social class itself. In this sense, Ferry seems
to agree with Sennet, in that he perceives
that there has been a real deconstruction
of the traditional values related to the Old
Regime, which culminated, at least until
now, in this overvaluation of consumption,
as the ultimate end of the economic process.
The idea that the economy must provide
the development of the common good has
been subverted in favor of consumerism and
individualism.
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Max Weber (2004) identified that capitalism was founded on its beginnings by the
calvinist influence, which advocated that
its followers would have been called by the
divine, who would have been ‘chosen’ and,
therefore, would need to be good not only
at specific ritualistic tasks, but, also, in their
personal lives and at work. Because they
have been ‘chosen’, sin would be condemned
and not forgiven with a visit to the parish
priest. Weber himself comes to the concept
of disenchantment of the world by referring
both to the demystification or desacralization of life (in the religious sense) and to
the rationalization of the social world that
the capitalist development promoted. When
capitalism operates on the basis of competition (understood both at the level of individuals, firms and even States), the need for
innovation and transformation is striking,
and competition is effectively the spring that
drives society. Whether they are the holders
of the means of production that compete for
the consumer markets and the benefits of the
State, or the workers who compete for better
conditions of survival. This context is very
serious and worrying in countries such as
ours, where social inequality reaches alarming proportions and the State, historically
connives with the overvaluation of profits
and the with exploitation of workers. Not
forgetting its patrimonialistic, that is, what
promotes a certain blurring in the lines that
separate public and private interests for the
benefit of the private interests of the rulers
and their allies.
In a period of major social distress
in Brazil, which preceded the so-called
Revolution of 1930, the then president of
Minas Gerais, Antônio Carlos de Andrada,
dissatisfied with the political movements of
the people from São Paulo, began to articulate the candidacy of Getúlio Vargas and pronounced the celebrated phrase that marked
this historical moment: “Let us make the
revolution before the people do it!” (FGV, 2016).
Thus, even if ruling elites eventually disagree
Ethics and democracy in times of crisis
with their specific interests, in general, they
do what is necessary to prevent or control
an eventual prevalence of workers’ interests.
This is a somewhat stereotyped vision, but
only seeks to glimpse a perspective in which
power is not easily ceded or divided by those
who hold it.
In order to get closer to present times,
we will appeal to the analysis that has been
developed by Jurandir Freire Costa and
that was presented in 1988, in the article
‘Narcissism in dark times’. In it, Costa uses
what Slavoj Zizek called the cynical view of
the world. This, on the other hand, took the
concept borrowed from Peter Sloterdijk, in
his classic ‘Critique of Cynical Reason’. For
Costa,
Certain patterns of social behavior in Brazil
today are sufficiently stable and recurrent, so
that we can affirm the existence of a particular form of fear and reaction to panic, which
is the ‘narcissistic culture of violence’. This
culture is nourished and nurtured by social
decadence and the discrediting of justice and
law. [...] In the culture of violence, the future
is denied or represented as a threat of annihilation or destruction. In a manner that the
output presented is the immediate fruition of
the present; Submission to the status quo and
systematic and methodical opposition to any
project of change that involves social cooperation and non-violent negotiation of particular
interests. (COSTA, 1988, S.P.).
We are, thereby, identifying some of the
bases that permeate our time and the crisis
we are experiencing: it is not only a brazilian
crisis, it is not a crisis that is simply economic, it is not a crisis of isolated values alone,
but a crisis inherent in the capitalist development and the systematic transformations
that occur in societies in general. But we
have some peculiarities or specificities when
we look at Brazil. It is a crisis in a peripheral
country, with a political and cultural development marked by poverty and the struggle
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for survival (compatible, probably, with the
development of our capitalism), with an
authoritarian, undemocratic and patrimonialistic tradition. The efficiency with which
the brazilian elite, with its traditional allies
in the mass media, controlled and controls
the access to information and the possibilities of developing the critical (and why not
political?) consciousness of the population
is undeniable. The creativity with which
they formulate and reformulate their strategies for controlling society through the
educational system is extraordinary, as expressed in the current proposals of the NoParty School and the Reform of Secondary
Education, that may result in a significant
increase of inequalities.
Thus, in the current brazilian crisis, it is
more reasonable to understand it as a reaction to a small attempt to modernize the
brazilian capitalism, expressed by the understanding that the expansion of the consumer market and the expansion of foreign
commercial partnerships in a South-South
perspective could sustain the economic development, improve the living conditions of
the population and maintain the interests
of the dominant elite preserved. It seems to
us to be a fact that the Workers’ Party (PT)
made a choice in the 2002 electoral contest,
and that was already defended by several
sectors of the brazilian left wing since the
fight against dictatorship: the formation
of a wider democratic front to conquer the
federal power and govern seeking to reconcile and negotiate the different interests. In
this perspective, the PT forged an alliance
with the Liberal Party, which ensured the
candidate for vice president, and the rest is
history, with the attraction of the one who
always tried to present himself as the core
in brazilian politics, namely, the Party of the
Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB).
But this same elite seems to prefer oligarchic
practices to liberal practices, not realizing
that deep social inequality is not good for
today’s capitalism.
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We know, today, that many of the practices adopted by segments of the PT for
some, or by its main leaders, for others, have
repeated the corrupt practices that have
always characterized much of the national
political practice. In the name of the ‘wide
societal arc’, it gave way to points and questions that would not be ethically acceptable.
Previous governments have always behaved
like that, but punishments, effectively, only
emerged when one tried to ignore the wider
political game that was being played, as in
the case of the Collor government.
But we must also ask ourselves: have the
ethically questionable behaviors of important segments of the PT been in fact the
determinants of their downfall and true
demoralization? It is still early to have a
broader understanding of the issue, but it
seems to us that objective international geopolitical issues may also be playing a central
role in this dispute: the discovery of oil in
the brazilian pre-salt layers (in a conjecture when wars are systematically declared
for energy disputes, as occurs, for example,
in Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Crimea and Ukraine,
among many others); the search for really
independence in foreign policy, as well as
in economic actions; alliance with the other
Brics countries (Russia, India, China and
South Africa) in building an alternative to
the World Bank, just to name a few. After
all, if the interests of the national elites were
in fact not being significantly affected by
the PT governments, why did they abandon
those who treated them so well for almost
ten years?
Perhaps the understanding of the concept
of coloniality will help us to better understand this situation. Coloniality was first
described by Quijano (1998) and can be understood as something that transcends colonialism itself (that is, the end of colonial
relations) and is configured to maintain
subordination relations in the interstate
capitalist system (FIORI, 2007). The model
of colonization meant not only economic
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domination, but, also, cultural domination.
As Assis (2014) pointed out:
The construction of hierarchies of race, gender and modes of appropriation of natural
resources, can be seen as contemporary for
the establishment of an international division
of labor and territories, marked by asymmetric relations between central and peripheral
economies. From the perspective of coloniality, the old colonial hierarchies, which were
grouped as european versus non-european,
remained entrenched and trapped in the international division of labor. (ASSIS, 2014, P. 614).
In this perspective, national economic
elites do not antagonize international interests, since their dependence articulates
them. In Brazil, we can understand the idea
of the ‘inferiority complex’ as an expression
of the perpetuation of colonial ideology,
which expresses as something ‘natural’ the
disqualification of miscegenation.
Costa, in the mentioned work, seeks to
explain how the cynic reason manifests in a
society such as the brazilian one. For him, if
the cultural device of a people is systematically attacked, the mechanisms of protection
of this society are finally withdrawn to face
the disorder itself. The repeated discourse
that society is not capable of repressing
crime, that the traffickers are loose, that
the corrupt are loose, that the corrupters
are loosed along with the thieves, as the socalled ‘dog-world programs’ promote daily in
the televisions of our Country. This culture
of violence is also present in the selectivity
of the action of Justice, in the trivialization
of the infractions committed by the socially
and politically powerful who can remain
protected despite the laws that they violate.
Even now, when whistle-blowing has earned
prizes, those who confess their crimes are
condemned to continue living in the enjoyment of their lives.
For José Castelo (1988), although it is necessary to distinguish in terms of proportions
Ethics and democracy in times of crisis
between the individual who parks in triple
lane to expect the child in front of the college,
the student who cheats on the test or the
teacher who plagiarizes, the assailant who
kills his victim and the man who believes
he has the right to rape whom he imagines
provokes him by being dressed sexily, all act
with the illusion that they will not be punished by their actions. This disqualification
of the law also presents an attack on politics.
A stimulus so that the citizen no longer relies
on the idea of a common good. Christopher
Lasch, in 1986, presented what he called the
‘The Minimal Self’, which would be a strategy or solution not to succumb emotionally
to the threats whose controls are outside the
governance of individuals.
In an age charged with problems, daily life
becomes an exercise in survival. you live one
day at a time. you rarely look back, for fear of
succumbing to a debilitating nostalgia; and
when you look ahead, it is to see how to ensure against the disasters that everyone is
waiting for. Under such conditions, individuality becomes a kind of luxury item, out of place
in an era of impending austerity. Individuality
supposes a personal story, friends, family, a
sense of situation. Under harassment, the
self contracts in a defensive core, on guard
against adversity. Emotional balance requires
a minimum self, not the sovereign self of the
past. [...] the concern with the individual, so
characteristic of our time, takes the form of a
concern with psychic survival. Confidence in
the future was lost. [...] The risk of individual
disintegration stimulates a sense of individuality that is not ‘sovereign’ or ‘narcissistic’ but
simply besieged. (LASCH, 1986, P. 9).
The disqualification of life in common
and the repeated attacks on the sense of collectivity contribute to the disqualification
of politics as a path and legitimate space for
the search for the necessary consensuses,
even that temporary, for common life. Our
Country, which has no democratic tradition
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and whose political consciousness is repeatedly undermined and destroyed by those in
power, easily succumbs to the destruction
of its hopes, which are, generally, perceived
as gifts of the ruling classes and not as the
conquests of the people. This action was not
only undertaken by those who are effectively
opposed to any achievements of the workers,
but, also, by those who, avid for power itself,
use government machines to win supporters and win support for the daily life of
politics through the granting of subsidies
and/or other benefits through government
structures.
Are we doomed to failure, as a collective
political project? Will the successive meetings of the World Social Forum be wrong
when they proclaim that ‘Another world is
possible’? On September 11, 2011, the XLVI
International Education Conference of the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization (Unesco), was held
in Switzerland, which generated a synthesis publication with the intriguing question:
‘Learning to live together: have we failed?’.
For us, the answers are unequivocally ‘no’.
There is a lot to do, and changes are possible and are constantly being performed.
Perhaps not at the speed we want, but they
do. We cannot lose the historical dimension
and think only of the here and now, of immediate answers and results. But we must
think or rethink the paths and strategies of
action. From the point of view of the political organization, it is needed to reinforce
and expand the discussions in civil organizations. The new social media, Facebook, and
similar included, although they seem to be
privileged spaces for the manifestation of
this narcissistic culture and, especially, of
cynical reason, have also managed the communication between people to levels never
dreamed before. Still, they also cannot be the
depositary of all hopes, as some militants of
popular causes seem to think. This does not
mean that they should be totally abandoned
because of these characteristics and because
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REGO, S.; PALÁCIOS, M.
they are used to monitor social movements
themselves (ACLU, 2016). It takes some patience
on the understanding that we do not have to
throw the child away along with the dirty
bath water. It is necessary to invest time,
intelligence, warmth and creativity in the
proposals that stimulate and promote the
critical awareness of society, in all possible
ways. Not with the granting of benefits or
other blessings only, but with the understanding that one must work for the recognition of rights, both individual, collective and
of the future generations.
The depoliticization of public actions
only contributes to the political and social
alienation of the segments of our population that most need to develop their critical
political consciousness. It is necessary to
combat everything that constrains the development of critical thinking and to seek
alternatives for this debate to be expanded,
reinforcing grassroots organizing strategies and educational actions. The political
dispute is permanent and must be maintained, because nothing is resolved at this
time. The concept of emancipation, central
in Paulo Freire (2005), seems to be the key.
Emancipation brings within itself the idea
of freedom and autonomy as government of
the self, that is, the power to give oneself the
law itself. Emancipating means understanding the individual in the center and direction of one’s own life. And, since life is to be
lived together, emancipating means liberating the human from all injustices, favoring,
that way, one’s flowering, the development
of one’s potentialities, collectively, in interaction with others, through education. As in
Marx, human emancipation is the reverse
of alienation imposed by industrial society
(MARX, 2010). To put this into the context of
our days, emancipation means resisting all
kinds of alienation that our current societies
produce, either by selling the idea of an easy
and immediate happiness, at the same time
submissive to a work explored in exchange
for individual and competitive consumption,
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or narcissistically affirming the empire of
self (and mine) against all others.
As stated earlier, it’s needed to learn how
to live together daily. No untimely action or
‘superficial’ reform will be able to transform
our society, emancipating our people. But the
daily exercise of fighting injustice, violence,
cynical reason, promoting the debate, the
dialogue in the consolidation of a minimum
ethics as a set of values that can be shared by
all members of our society, as Adela Cortina
(2009). Our society is diverse, it is plural, we
have a constitution that affirms that our
State is laic, free from the influences of religions, but at the same time intends to guarantee freedom of belief to all citizens, what
must empower us to fight against all kinds of
religious discrimination, wherever it arises.
Our society is diverse from the cultural point
of view, sexual orientations, ethnicities. We
cannot tolerate violence and discrimination. Dialogue needs to be reestablished,
since it is the only way we can reach agreements, to reverse the logic of win-lose and
to establish that of negotiation, of coexistence between different ones that respect
each other. Hannah Arendt (1985) already
stated that violence arises where conflicts
cannot be resolved through dialogue. Two
recent examples draw attention and are illustrative of what we are highlighting: the
defeat of a proposal in agreement with the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
(Farc), after a broad process of negotiation,
in a plebiscite in Colombia, can illustrate the
logic of the win-lose, overcoming the logic
of negotiation; and the other example is the
daily violence itself, from the police pages:
‘man shoots at another man in a dispute for a
table in a shopping center in Rio de Janeiro’,
assault on health professionals in emergencies etc.
So that we can closure with a further interrogation, we would like to bring some of the
reflections from neuroethics. Neurosciences
have developed very intensely in the last
decades and have provoked a new range of
Ethics and democracy in times of crisis
questions, not only in neuromarketing (including politics).
Dawkins (2007), for example, defends the
idea that survival is determined by a ‘competition’ between genes, that determine the
best possibilities of survival. Thus, we would
be biologically programmed to survive, as
genes that did not favor this better possibility would not be doomed to survive. On the
other hand, as Cortina recalls, we are, as
well, capable of performing altruistic acts.
As an explanation for this phenomenon, she
presents two alternatives: the first one, that
a strand of this selfish gene would provide
an action in favor of those who share genes
with us, that is, our relatives. Thus, the altruism so common in the care, for example, of a
mother with her children would be only an
expression of this selfish and nepotic genetic
aspect; the other explanation is based on
the idea that humans are capable, as well, of
altruistic actions beyond family boundaries
as they have the expectation or perspective
of some reciprocity. From this point of view,
there will be no pure altruistic action for
those who are not related, but only actions
that keep implicit perspectives of some type
of retribution, direct or indirect, immediate
or delayed, integral or fractional. By using, as
well, an evolutionary and naturalist perspective, Paul Rée advocates that there are altruistic impulses in humans and bases them on
the parental instinct, which is maintained
through the natural selection. Nietzsche,
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on the other hand, refutes the possibility
of the existence of the altruistic decision as
far as all decisions would ultimately be a
decision that would bring some usefulness
to the one who took it (ARALDI, 2016). So, we
must ask ourselves: is there a possibility of
us being effectively good by our own will,
or the only possibility of this happening will
be in our genetic, therefor, natural, biological characteristics? If individual freedom is
an illusion, if we are only the result of what
is determined by generations in our genes,
will political and educational actions also
have to accompany this comprehension, by
provoking, consequently, a new copernican
revolution, where the sun would be seen like
the genetic code we have and around which
our supposed liberty would circulate? Be
that as it may, respect, dialogue and freedom
are fundamental ingredients for political
democracy, the only way, albeit imperfect,
of ensuring coexistence in plural societies
(DEWEY, 1964; CORTINA, 2009). Out of politics, what
exists is barbarism. And politics cannot be
disassociated with social movements and
streets.
Contributors
Both authors took part in all phases of the
preparation of the article, from topic definition, scope, writing, to the final review. s
SAÚDE DEBATE | RIO DE JANEIRO, V. 40, N. ESPECIAL, P. 63-72, DEZ 2016
72
REGO, S.; PALÁCIOS, M.
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SAÚDE DEBATE | RIO DE JANEIRO, V. 40, N. ESPECIAL, P. 63-72, DEZ 2016
Received for publication: October 2016
Final version: October 2016
Conflict of interests: non-existent
Financial support: non-existent