Que no se pierda. Eso es lo que pretendo con esta página. Que no se pierda, de lo bueno que se hace, lo poco que yo encuentro.
AUGUST 23, 2000
These are the notes and citations of books I've read in the last years. I'll be including them here as long as I have them ready to online posting.
I begin with El cristianismo y las grandes religiones, edited by Hans Küng. There, Küng and two eminent colleagues try to ascertain the very nature of Christianism, Islamism and Hinduism while pointing out those issues which make them approach or diverge. So you can find statements like the following:
Para el cristiano, la experiencia de Dios se realiza de la manera más íntima en la eucaristía, pues en Cristo la palabra se ha hecho carne. El musulmán experimenta a Dios en la recitación del Corán, pues en el Corán la palabra se ha hecho libro. --Josef van Ess.
El Corán no habla en parábolas como los evangelios; da prescripciones concretas. El islam es una religión de la ley; no solamente orienta a los hombres hacia el más allá, sino que interviene en el más acá, configurando hasta el mínimo detalle. Es también de este mundo. No conoce separación entre lo temporal y lo espiritual; es, si se quiere, totalitario. El cristianismo nació dentro de un reino terreno; de ahí que en él se pueda y hasta se deba dar al César lo que es del César. Mas el islam se ha creado él mismo el reino terreno y sus seguidores son ante Dios responsables de cómo lo administran. --Josef van Ess.
[In regard to Hinduism]
[...] la atención a lo divergente, la insistencia en la superioridad propia, el aferrarse a 'lo mío' y 'lo tuyo' –mi religión es verdadera, la tuya falsa– todo esto son para ellos criterios bastante mezquinos. Se olvida que es necesaria una pluralidad de religiones para que, dada la multiplicidad de individuos con diversas necesidades y distinto desarrollo, puedan ofrecer a cada uno su camino, hacer posible a cada uno su acceso a la divinidad. --Heinrich von Stietencron.
[Hindus]
[...] a diferencia de muchos de nosotros, no están excitados por el implacable minutero de un tiempo que avanza mecánicamente. Les falta la presión psíquica del miedo a descuidar algo aquí y ahora. No se sienten colocados en una única vida, que pasa demasiado velozmente, en la que hay que salir airoso y que quizá decide sobre la vida eterna o la perdición eterna. La posibilidad del nuevo nacimiento da a la vida un nuevo horizonte y al hombre un diverso sentido del tiempo. --Heinrich von Stietencron.
The second book reviewed is Peter L. Berger's The Capitalist Revolution: Fifty Propositions About Prosperity, Equality, and Liberty. The book straightly follows its subtitle --Berger proposes fifty hypothesis and encourages empirical research to either falsify or accept them. Being good for itself, the fact that the essay was written in 1986 (long before the collapse of the communist world) highly increases its value. Berger insists in the concept of the 'economic culture', as a key to the understanding of the dynamics of economic systems without incurring in monocausal explanations.
You can read things like these:
[Individualism] [...] has both a cognitive and a normative aspect: It purports to make a statement about the nature of human beings --they are individuals, over and beyond any collective identifications. But it also proposes that there are moral consequences to this fact --human beings have rights as individuals, not only apart from any collectivity to which they may belong but even (indeed, especially) against this collectivity. Neither the cognitive nor the normative aspect is universally taken for granted; on the contrary, these notions are highly peculiar innovations of Western modernity. For most of human history, most human cultures held that an individual human being is his collective identifications (a member of his clan or tribe or cast and so on), and that morality (say,dharma in the Hindu context) consists precisely in acting out the performances prescribed by these identifications.
[Western civilization] ... when contrasted with other great civilizations, notably those of Asia, has always been perceived as having given unusual importance to the individual [...]. What is more, the reasons for this must almost certainly be sought in the very origins of European civilization on the two opposing littorals of the eastern Mediterranean --that is, in the world-transforming experiences of ancient Israel and ancient Greece. Here took place the two great 'leaps in being', as Eric Voegelin called them, that created the civilization of the West. These two ruptures with archaic, mythologically grounded culture were certainly different from each other in very significant ways. The first was grounded in a totally new religious experience, the second in a new discovery of the power of reason. Yet each, in its own way, made for the emergence of sharply profiled individuals. The Israelite experience of the one transcendent and personal God almost inevitably created the counterpoint of a solitary human individual engaged in a strange battle of wills with this God. [...] Socrates before his accusers may serve as a paradigmatic illustration of the other, the Hellenic experience of individual autonomy, based now not on the encounter with a terrible God but on the (perhaps equally terrible) discovery of the autonomous power of human reason. And both paradigmatic figures have much earlier antecedents
However, strong redistributional policies, operating by way of tax and transfer mechanisms, may well serve as a disincentive to productivity. If so, there would be a trade-off between equality and economic efficiency; in the long run, greater equality may lead to a lowering of the standard of living. There may also be noneconomic costs: The strongly redistributional state must become ever more intrusive, and the final trade-off may be between equality and liberty.
If one wants to improve the material condition of people, especially of the poor, one will do well to opt for capitalism. If one wants to modernize, under anyform of socioeconomic organization (capitalist or socialist), one will probably have to settle for a considerable measure of material inequality. If one wants to intervene politically to bring about greater material equality, one may eventually disrupt the economic engine of plenty and endanger the material living standards of the society.
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This in an old entry of Painful Bits. Go to the current entry at http://www.torribioblups.net/painfulbits Last updated on August 23, 2000