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All over the world people are dying, they are being gunned down, they are starving, do not have enough medicine, there is not even enough clean water and so on. There may still be some people who say, ‘We cannot interfere because this is a culture of its own and we must not touch any culture which has gone according to different history and so on.’ I say to this, ‘No!’ Where there is misery, there must be interference, and sometimes almost war-like interference. My limit is where people start suffering. One of the kinds of relativism I do not want to have is, ‘We have different cultures, each culture is an authentic entity in itself. You may approach it with reverence, but you should never approach it with violence.’ I say that is a very dangerous principle. The statement ‘anything goes’ was meant for the sciences, but not for everything. […] I would say there is a limit to this kind of principle, and the limit is human suffering.
All over the world people are dying, they are being gunned down, they are starving, do not have enough medicine, there is not even enough clean water and so on. There may still be some people who say, ‘We cannot interfere because this is a culture of its own and we must not touch any culture which has gone according to different history and so on.’ I say to this, ‘No!’ Where there is misery, there must be interference, and sometimes almost war-like interference. My limit is where people start suffering. One of the kinds of relativism I do not want to have is, ‘We have different cultures, each culture is an authentic entity in itself. You may approach it with reverence, but you should never approach it with violence.’ I say that is a very dangerous principle. The statement ‘anything goes’ was meant for the sciences, but not for everything. […] I would say there is a limit to this kind of principle, and the limit is human suffering.
"Three Interviews with Paul Feyerabend" (by Renato Parascandolo and Vittorio Hösle, Rome, 15 May 1992), Telos 102 (Winter 1995), pp.115-149. Quote on p.129.
Quote selected by Luiz Abrahão.
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