To Affirm That Men And

If I Am A Pure Product Of Genetic, Cultural, Or Class Determination, I Have No Responsibility For My Action In The World And, Therefore, It Is Not Possible For Me To Speak Of Ethics. Of Course, This Assumption Of Responsibility Does Not Mean That We Are Not Conditioned Genetically, Culturally, And Socially. It Means That We Know Ourselves To Be Conditioned But Not Determined.

Washing One's Hands Of The Conflict Between The Powerful And The Powerless Means To Side With The Powerful, Not To Be Neutral.

No One Can Learn Tolerance In A Climate Of Irresponsibility, Which Does Not Produce Democracy. The Act Of Tolerating Requires A Climate In Which Limits May Be Established, In Which There Are Principles To Be Respected. That Is Why Tolerance Is Not Coexistence With The Intolerable. Under An Authoritarian Regime, In Which Authority Is Abused, Or A Permissive One, In Which Freedom Is Not Limited, One Can Hardly Learn Tolerance. Tolerance Requires Respect, Discipline, And Ethics.

Human Existence Cannot Be Silent, Nor Can It Be Nourished By False Words, But Only By True Words, With Which People Transform The World. To Exist, Humanly, Is To Name The World, To Change It. Once Named, The World In Its Turn Reappears To The Namers As A Problem And Requires Of Them A New Naming. People Are Not Built In Silence, But In Word, In Work, In Action-reflection.

One Of My Major Preoccupations Is The Approximation Between What I Say And What I Do, Between What I Seem To Be And What I Am Actually Becoming.