Ethical Reason
The following is an excerpt from an inspirational essay by Chaia Heller, Imagining the Impossible, about what drives and sustains the activist that stays the course over a life time. The quotes are from Murray Bookchin.
“It’s about ethical versus instrumental reason,” Murray said to me, so many times over the years. This discussion buoyed me up as I tried to cultivate my own revolutionary focus and morale. “If you are driven by instrumental reason alone,” Murray said, “you will be guided by logic of efficiency and pragmatism. You will be forever running toward the lesser-of-two evils rather than pursuing our own dreams. If you are driven instead by ethical reason, then you will be guided by logic of what ought to be, what is just and humanistic—as well as simply ‘doable’.
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