Fernando Savater on Ethics (from Amador)

p21 Freedom is what distinguishes us from the termites and the tides.
(1) We are not free to choose what happens to us, but we are free to respond to what happens...
(2) Being free to try something has nothing to do with brining it off flawlessly.

p25 Unlike other beings, we humans can invent and choose the form our lives take. And since we can invent and choose, we can also make mistakes, something that does not happen to the beavers, the bees, and the termites.

p35 motives for everyday actions: rules ... habits ... whims...

Rules and habits have one thing in common: they come from the outside, and they impose themselves on you without asking your permission. Whims, on the other hand, come from the inside.

p40 invention Truly grave situations call for invention, not a simple following of habit...

In the art of living, man is both the artist and the object of his art; he is the sculptor and the marble; the physician and the patient. -Erich Fromm (Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics)

p47 Ethics is about freedom. Freedom is deciding, but it is also, don't forget, realizing what you are deciding. ... you must think at least twice about what you are going to do. The first time you think about what you are going to do, you try to answer the question "Why am I doing this?" ... If I think of what I am doing only once, perhaps I will be satisfied with a reply like "It's the custom."

p52 morals vs ethics
"Morals" denotes the cluster of standards of behavior that you, I, and most of those around us generally accept as valid.
"Ethics" refers to our reflections as to why we consider them worthwhile...

p55-7 do you know why it is not at all easy to say when a human being is good or not? Because we don't know what human beings are for.

we have established that neither rules nor customs nor impulses are enough to guide us ethically, and that there is no clear set of rules that teaches a man to be good and act as such --- how can we make ethical sense? DO WHAT YOU WANT.

p64 Sartre: "we are condemned to freedom"
From that sentence there is nov exemption.
DO WHAT YOU WANT is nothing more than a way of telling you to take very seriously the question of your own freedom.

p69 the first and most opportune thing for you to do is to stop and think deeply about what it is that you want. Many things appeal to you, often even contradictory things.

What I really want is to give myself a good life.

p72-4 A good human life is a good life among other human beings.

The process of humanization (what turns us into what we wish to be, that is, human beings) is a reciprocal process, just as language is. So that other people treat me as human, I too must treat them as human. If I see them all as objects or animals, I myself will be no more than an object or an animal. Hence, giving yourself a good life cannot in the end be very different from granting a good life. Please think about that.

p80 just what constitutes this "good life" is not so clear. Wanting a good life is not just a simple wish. Death is a great simplifier. Living, on the other hand, is always a complex business, full of complications.

p85-6 Be clear about this: from things, even the best things, can come only things.

No thing (nor animal, since the difference between its condition and ours is too great) can give us friendship, respect, love, or that essential complicity that can arise only between equals, that we as people only receive from people whom we treat in the same way.

p90 a word I think is crucial: attention, a readiness to think about what one does. No comfortable but dangerous simplifications, but instead the attempt to understand this business of living life humanly, in all its complexity.

The first and most indispensable ethical condition is that of being determined to live, not just haphazardly, but as though it matters, even though sooner or later we are all going to die.

(morality discussion)

p102 What is this "bad" be talk about? It is anything that prevents us from living the good life we are after.

p110-115 It's all a matter of taking freedom very seriously or, in other words, being responsible.

remorse is nothing more than the dissatisfaction we feel with ourselves when we have used our freedom badly, when we have acted contradictorily to what we really want as human beings.

Accepting responsibility is being truly free, for better or for worse.

The world around us is full or pretexts for shedding the weight of responsibility.

All those who want to shed responsibility believe in the irresistible nature of whatever enslaves them.

Authoritarian personalities believe firmly in the Irresistible, and consider it essential to get rid of everything that could prove addictive and enslaving. Think of the huge relief in knowing that if any loose temptation comes along, the responsibility for what happens lies with those who failed to wipe it out in time, not with those who succumb to it.

this Irresistible is nothing more than a superstition conjured up by those who are afraid of their own freedom.

A good life does not come as a gift -- nobody gets what suits him without both nerve and energy.

The essence of responsibility is not just having the grace and the decency to accept one's own blunders without looking for excuses. Being responsible is knowing that each act of mine is bringing me into being, defining me, inventing me.

p127

When you first rise in the morning, reflect that in the course of the day you may very well meet a liar, or a thief, or an adulterer, or a murderer. Remember that you must treat them as men, for they are as human as you are and hence as necessary to you as the lower jaw is to the upper. --Marcus Arelius

p129-135 Since bonds of respect and friendship with others are to me the most valuable things there are, I take great care of them.

Anyone who robs, deceives, betrays, violates, kills, or somehow abuses others does not cease to be human.

One of our main human characteristics is our ability to imitate. Hence, the example we show to our fellows is of supreme importance, since in most cases, we will almost certainly be treated by others as they themselves are treated.

A person who brings about the misfortune of someone else, and who does nothing to relieve it, is asking for it, and has no right to complain about the number of bad people in the world.

The greatest advantage we can draw from our fellows is not the acquisition of more things or power over more people to treat as things or instruments; it is the shared understanding and affection of other free spirits.

The cynic does not realize that freedom neither serves nor likes to be served; it is looking to infect others. The cynic has a slave mentality, poor fellow, however astute he may think himself.

When we do harm to others, the first person harmed is our own self.

What does it mean to treat others as human beings? The answer consists simply of trying to put yourself in the place of the other.

p142 One who lives well must be capable of sympathetic justice, or just compassion.

p148-158 All this fuss about the immorality of sex stems from one of the most secret and hidden of human fears: the fear of pleasure. Pleasure at times claims our attention so much that it could be dangerous to us, and so pleasure has always been beset by taboos and restraints.

There are also people whose greatest pleasure seems to come from depriving others of pleasure. They are so afraid that pleasure will prove irresistible, they live in such dread of the consequences if one day they should give themselves over to pleasure, that they turn into professional denouncers of pleasures. (puritans)

Nothing is bad just because practicing it gives pleasure.

A puritan believes that when someone is living well, things are going badly for him, and when someone is suffering it is because he is living right.

puritanism is about as opposite as can be to an ethical view of life.

Michel de Montaigne: We must hang on tooth and nail to all the pleasures we take in life, for the years take them from us one after the other.

When you use pleasure well, you enrich your sense of being alive, and not just the pleasure itself, but your whole life is more pleasing to you.

Distrust those pleasures whose principal attraction seems to lie in their danger. When a pleasure is killing in you all that is human (all that make your existence rich and complex, and enables you to put yourself in others' places), it is punishment disguised as pleasure, another deception practiced by our old enemy, death.

Ethics means deciding always that life is worth the trouble.

What is it that gives us the greatest gratification in life? It is the experience of joy. Joy is a spontaneous Yes to life that springs up from inside, sometimes when we least expect it.

Whoever feels joy has gained the greatest reward and lacks nothing.

Those who never feel joy, however wise or handsome or healthy or rich or powerful or saintly they may be, lack what matters most, poor things.

The art of putting pleasure in the service of joy... has been called, from time immemorial, temperance. Temperance is an intelligent friendship with all things that give us pleasure.

Before even trying to use well something that can be used badly (that is, abused), robot-minded people prefer to give it up completely and, if possible, have it banned by an outside authority, so that it does not depend on their will.

When someone enjoys feeling guilty, what that person is crying out for is punishment.

p184 Seriousness is not as a rule an unequivocal sign of wisdom, as serious people believe. Intelligence must know how to laugh.

p189 the only ethical precept I pass on to you is that you seek out and think for yourself, in full freedom, responsibly, with no tricks.

When it is a matter of choosing, try always to make those choices that will allow you the greatest number of possible options. Choose what opens things up for you, to other people, to new experiences, to a variety of joys. Keep your nerve! Have confidence in yourself!

Goodbye my friendly reader. Try not to use up your life in hating and being afraid. --Stendhal