The World Upside Down
Self-Evidence
In the West, over the past few centuries, we have constructed a world that is
upside down compared to how it had always been in previous millennia. Personally,
I consider it the best of all worlds realized so far (not the best possible),
and I feel fortunate to have lived in it. The idea has also spread that these
principles are self-evident, obvious, starting with what we might consider a
foundational act, the American Declaration of Independence, which asserts that
it was "self-evident" that "all men are created equal; that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." It’s astounding that those proclaiming
man's right to freedom were people who owned slaves in a world that had
abolished slavery millennia ago. How can principles that are not recognized be
considered self-evident?
We are led to believe that our principles—freedom, the elective nature of power,
gender equality, homosexuality—are self-evident principles. BUT THEY ARE NOT,
because you can't say that something generally denied for millennia and by the
majority of people is self-evident: this, to me, seems an evident fact. It
reflects a lack of historical awareness, where the change in mentalities is not
perceived.
We cannot, in other words, reduce what is contrary to our principles to
nonsense, barbarism, or stupidity. Instead, we might show that our principles
have yielded good results while also identifying the negative ones. In any case,
it seems fundamental to me that there should be free debate, that no opinion
should be criminalized or legally or practically prohibited: this is the
foundation of democracy, bearing in mind that generally these are different
interpretations of principles.
One can say what one believes, but demonstrations must be peaceful and without
weapons (which often does not happen). But if I say (I don't say this, it's just
an example) that homosexuality is a shameful and dangerous vice for society (as
it was considered for thousands of years), am I exercising my freedom of
expression, or am I inciting hatred? I would opt for the first hypothesis.
Values and
Judgments
The distinction between factual judgments (e.g., science) and value judgments (ethical,
political, artistic) is important. Modern science recognizes that none of its
discoveries can be considered the ultimate and definitive truth; everything can
be modified by new experiments, to the extent that a proposition is defined as
scientific if it can be falsified (NOT if it is proven).
Value judgments (e.g., slavery is wrong) depend on the value we have chosen: for
example, in antiquity, it wasn’t considered wrong because they didn’t accept the
same values as we do. Consider, for example, Achilles, who takes as a sexual
slave a girl whose family he has exterminated: for us, he would be a scoundrel
worthy of every infamy, while for the ancients, he was a great hero worthy of
all honor.
Certainly, values change according to the times and places and cannot be
objective, even in the scientific sense of being relative to the state of
research.
In fact, in science, there is no democracy, which, on the other hand, has
emerged in those societies that have discovered science. Certainly, the fact
that men believed in geocentrism for millennia doesn’t mean it was true. But
this is a factual judgment, like all those in science, which are based on
observations and are true until they are falsified. They are decided by very few
experts in the field and are certainly not the subject of democracy or political
discussion.
When we talk about rights, we are in the realm of ethics, which is not deduced
from empirical data like science. Indeed, rights are never fully realized in
reality but are a model, an ideal goal to strive for, which we are aware we will
never fully achieve (perfection is not of this world).
It’s not that rights exist as black holes do: they are principles that we human beings establish, and they vary greatly according to historical contexts. As I mentioned, slavery in Roman times was considered normal, while we see it as an atrocity.
Especially in the ethical-political field,
there is no unanimity as in the sciences. There are gay pride events and family
day events, right-wingers and left-wingers, and everything in between; each has
their own idea (tot capita tot sententiae), and everyone debates everything, and
there is no unanimity at all.
What sense would democracy have if it were possible to objectively know what is
good and useful, just as we know the Earth's rotation?
To say that something is self-evident means saying that everyone believes it (even
if it might be false). For example, no one doubts that 2+2=4, that we need food
but too much can harm us, that a society always needs rules. Now, if rights were
self-evident, then they would have been acknowledged by everyone. But this is
not the case: they vary enormously over time and space, according to very
different contexts, and even today, in the West, they are not shared by everyone.