>>14315087Cabrera develops an ethical theory, negative ethics, that is informed by this phenomenological analysis.
He argues that there has been an unwarranted prejudice in ethics against non-being, a view he calls
"affirmativity". Because affirmative views take being as good, they always view things that threaten this
hegemony as bad; particularly things like abstention from procreation or suicide. Cabrera criticizes
affirmative ethics for asking how people should live without asking the radical question of whether people
should live tout court. He argues that, because of the structural negativity of being, there is a fundamental
"moral disqualification" of human beings due to the impossibility of nonharming and nonmanipulating others.
Nonharming and nonmanipulating others is called by him the "Minimal Ethical Articulation" ("MEA"; previously
translated into English as "Fundamental Ethical Articulation" and "FEA"). The MEA is violated by our structural
"moral impediment", by the worldly discomforts – notably pain and discouragement – imposed on us that prevent
us from acting ethically. Cabrera argues that an affirmative morality is a self-contradiction because it
accepts the MEA and conceives a human existence that precludes the possibility of not-harming or not-manipulating
others. Thus he believes that affirmative societies, through their politics, require the common suspension of the
MEA to even function.
