Encuentro una muy interesante comparación entre Platón y Darwin en un comentario de Strauss del Político de Platón. Es esta:
“De acuerdo con la división de las especies de animales llevada a cabo por el Extranjero [en el 'Político' de Platón], el parentesco próximo del hombre es incluso más bajo que en la doctrina de Darwin del origen de las especies. Pero lo que Darwin dice seria y literalmente, el extranjero lo dice medio en broma medio en serio. El hombre debe aprender a ver lo más bajo de su condición para poder volverse de lo humano a lo divino, es decir, para poder ser verdaderamente humano.”
"Es peligroso mostrarle demasiado al hombre cuánto se asemeja a los animales, sin hacerle ver al mismo tiempo su grandeza". Pascal.
ResponderEliminarEfectivamente, el hombre se puede valorar desde sus posibilidades más bajas o más altas. Las consecuencias no pueden ser más dispares. La influencia de Pascal -o quizás mejor del Pascal leído por Nietzsche- en Strauss es enorme.
EliminarThe distinction between facts and values and the denial of the possibility of rationally solving values questions is one thing. The attempt to reduce the political to the subpolitical is another thing. And it is not evident that the two things belong necessarily together. But still, in fact they do belong together, and one can roughly state the connection as follows. The basis of the fact/value distinction is a distinction between the is and the ought. With the additional premise that knowledge of the ought, i.e., of the true ought, is impossible. The is, -reality, nature, does not posses in itself any values. These values are entirely dependent on the spectator or maybe on the acting man. Values are specifically human, and, furthermore, man is a derivative; man must ultimately be understood in terms of the non human and, forgive me for saying it, in terms of the sub-human. Because from our ordinary point of view, we regard of course brutes as sub-human - lacking certain possibilities of a high order wich man posesses. This seems to be the connection between these two premises. At any rate, the fundamental premise of this kind of science, of wich the prevalent school in present day political science is a specimen, is that there is no essential difference between man and brutes. The name for that is evolution. We are now in the year 1959, and this remind us of 1859, the year in wich Darwin's The Origin of the Species appeared. Therefore we do not have to labor this point. Now this view that there is no essential difference between men and brutes rests on the broader premise thet there are not essential differences at all; there are only differences of degree, only quantitative differences. And, therefore, if this premise is accepted, all understanding must be fundamentally mathematical, quantitative, exact. This is the connection between these various points. The alternative to this view is the assertion that there are essential differences, and the classic repressentatives of this view are Plato and Aristotle.
ResponderEliminar(L.S. 6/01/1959)