Arquivo para a ‘Information ethics’ Categoria
Pharisaism and Jonah
26
Jun
What the absence of spirituality consists of today,
more than the lack of God, says Byung-Chul Han is the fact that everything in life becomes transitory, but also the consequences of a strong polarization in which all moods are concentrated and limit true interiority, true spirituality outside the bubble, in the allegory explored by Sloterdijk in Spheres I, Jonah’s sign is somewhat reminiscent of the biblical passage (Luke 11:29-30): “This generation is a perverse generation: it asks a sign, but no sign will be given to him except the sign of Jonah. Just as Jonah was a sign to the inhabitants of Nineveh, so will the Son of Man be to this generation.”
Sloterdijk saw the lack of centrality in a dyad, which serves both polarization and polycentrism, that is, an absence of being situated in the world. We remember that the central point of his philosophy is what it means to be in the world, and Jonas who tries to escape his mission ends up in the belly of the whale, that is, his desire to escape the world and his mission, is the idea of taking refuge in a pure interior of which those who practice despiritualized asceticism, try not to being in the world, which is different from Being-in-the-world, a category in which Sloterdijk uses the word “vorhandensein”* to explain his controversy on humanism with Heidegger, who uses the term dasein for Being in the world.
Where was Jonah when he was in the world? Inside the whale. The whale is part of Jonas’s consciousness that provokes him to think about the outside from the inside. Heidegger had already thought about this pure interior of which we are all victims, a radical and intrinsic space, our unique and first dwelling through which all our impressions, thoughts and affections permeate.
The sign of Jonah, the only sign for this generation that seeks a “sign of God” is, therefore, finding this interiority even while being in the world and subject to its dyads (poles) or even polycentrism (half-truths of different narratives) without manage to achieve true asceticism, however Jonah leaves the whale and goes to Nineveh to fulfill his mission.
Thus, the relationship with the outside is a constant tension, and there is no way to escape it, it is not a filter for the truth, but the search for a clearing, for a space where we cultivate our interior, so in Sloterdijk’s vision that helps us, Jonah’s sign is his inner life when he was in the belly of the whale, within his “sphere” in Sloterdijk’s conception.
So it is not the one who shouts Lord, Lord nor the one who lives on external “good intentions” only, it is necessary to live this inner tension and be the Being that he is in the world.
Pharisaism is living on external appearances that do not correspond to interiority, but also “pure” interiority is staying in the belly of the Whale without experiencing external tension.
* the literal translation would be: to be available (in Jonas’ case for the mission).
Sloterdijk, P. (2016) Esferas I: bolhas (Spheres I: bubbles). Translated by José Oscar de Almeida Marques. Brazil, São Paulo: Estação Liberdade.
The Just, wrath and serenity
21
Jun
Martino Bracarense, an author from the 5th 
century AD who is little known but is one of those responsible for the days of the week in the Galician-Portuguese language Monday, Tuesday, etc., stated that “Anger transforms all things that are best and fairest into their opposite”, There are many philosophical, psychological and even poetic reflections on anger, William Shakespeare stated that: “Anger is a poison that we take waiting for the other to die” (the photo on the side is by Andre Hunder on unsplash).
In stormy times, to maintain justice and serenity, a great effort of character and temperance is necessary because the normal thing is to react to the pain of hatred with some form, even if disguised as hatred, Aristotle stated: “a desire, accompanied by pain, to perceived revenge, due to a perceived disregard towards an individual or his neighbor, coming from people from whom disregard is not expected” (Aristotle’s Rhetoric).
What does accompanied (anger) by pain mean? This requires Aristotle’s definition of pathê: “emotions are all those things because of which people change their thoughts and disagree with their judgments, being accompanied by pain and pleasure, for example anger, pity, fear and all other things similar to their opposites”, is clearly not an exhaustive definition of anger, as it would require psychological and pathological elements and a more in-depth analysis of the topic.
The important thing is to know that it: escapes justice, produces intemperance and is placed in a sequence of structural hatreds, it ends up creating a total absence of serenity, of capacity for reflection and, in the end, it produces a great source of injustice and even even psychopathologies.
Another point is to think about the antidote to this state of mind, often cultural, structural and produced by those who believe they defend peace, of course in essence these same individuals are themselves pathological cases, because disguised anger, or as the popular saying goes “distilled poison”, unlike medicine, is not antithetical, it is poison in continuous and progressive doses.
Where then to find serenity? The answer is simple in hope, the very hope that waits, that breathes and that meditates and contemplates, a theme exhaustively elaborated in Byung-Chul Han in almost all of his themes, In the swarm where he exhorts “respect” as the only form of symmetry, silence and contemplation in “Vita Contemplativa” and the concept of affective tone in his work “Heidegger’s heart: about the concept of affective tone”, although he never sites the term directly, I think that is what he ultimately intends to contribute to contemporary thought to recover its ability to think, contemplate and Be.
The religious thought of our time also needs to recover more than serenity, sobriety, because they seem to be enveloped by certain intoxications of our time, as stated by Judeo-Christian thought, the wind came and God was not there: “after the earthquake there was a fire , but the Lord was not in it. And after the fire there was the murmur of a gentle breeze” (1 Kings 12) and the storm of Jesus among the sleeping apostles and a storm happening is also famous, He wakes up and tells the sea to calm down to the astonishment of the apostles (Mk 4,39).
The Just and reconciliation
20
Jun
Justice practiced only in a legalistic way and
without any mercy is only human and does not presuppose social peace, it incites hatred between adversaries.
The social contract established in modernity, actually comes from the idea of Absolute by the first contractualist John Hobbes (1588-1679) and also from the idea of Machiavelli’s The Prince, in fact transfers all rights and justice to the State and this does not mean that he does not practice injustice, in modernity we know that he does.
Also at the height of idealism, Hegel (1770-1831) developed a teleological idea of the Absolute, which is an abstract figure even though he characterizes it as a “substantial power”, which at the moment of its subjectivity and singularity of this concept manifests itself as a universal substance, which through its abstraction If it is effective as a kind of singular self-awareness, replacing the idea of essence of Ontology, it is something abstract indeed.
The idea of justice translated in the Just by Paul Ricoeur, Habermas and other authors is the idea that it is not the singularity of a substance, but must be embodied in something concrete which is the Just, this potentially can and should develop within what is moral and ethical, in classical antiquity the philosophers, in particular Plato who sought education for citizens, he should have the virtues, aretê, which in its most precise meaning means excellence, and Aristotle develops it as phronesis, which is the politician.
It seems like a lot of abstract theory, in our view Hegelian idealism really is, but the virtues and political excellence of each person is not abstract, it means the ability of each person to exercise politics considering the rights of the other and the ethical responsibility towards social goods, in particular, the common good.
Reconciliation is always that conflict situation where it is possible to review each person’s social responsibilities and the different ethics of social positioning, if someone commits a serious or minor offense, it is always possible to find the Just, that point at which the parties involved can establish a type of private social contract, minimizing damage or loss to the parties involved.
The biblical reading says if you do not reconcile with your brother, he will take you to the judge, the judge to the court and from there you will go to prison, so it is better to reconcile first.
The Just sees the Other and is delicate
19
Jun
Paul Ricoeur in his two volumes of The Just will
dedicate himself to unveiling this relationship, which involves power relations, starting with the cry that is considered fair: “This is unfair!” he says in the preface of his book in reference to the first chapter of R.J. Lucas’s book “On the Justice” (1955) and recognizes it as a proclamation of a protest.
As in much of Paul Ricoeur’s work, it is in recognizing the face of the Other that we must understand the principle of Justice, but he makes a long analysis of John Rawls’ work “Theory of Justice” because it does not ignore power relations and their influence on the vision of current justice, even Habermas analyzed it.
The experience of injustice is made by ourselves as well as by other individuals and even more so by human groups, especially those who are at war because they consider the theft of their rights to be serious, but the experience of injustice requires deep reflection, especially in those cases where there is violence against victims and social injustice.
Ricoeur takes up Aristotle to analyze the “good life”, but it is necessary to clarify that it is not the pejorative sense of good life of scoundrels and opportunists used in common sense, in Aristotelian and ancient Greek language the good has an eminently ethical meaning, that is , the good that one seeks is inseparable from the good of the other, thus seeking peace and not conflict or the usurpation of goods as Eduardo Galeano classifies all wars, it is beyond any reprehensible selfishness, which demeans the subject, preventing him from achieving and be respected on a moral level.
In the essay truth is justice, from Justo 2, Ricoeur refers to the same expression that serves as the title of his book The other as a self, where he comments: “The formula of « Self as an other» is in this sense a primitively ethical formula, which subordinates the reflexivity of the self to the mediation of the otherness of the other.”
There is a deontological dimension that is not far from the theological in his thinking about the Just, Ricoeur’s ethics are not limited to the monologism inherent to Kantian formalism, present in John Rawls, at the same time that he refuses to appeal to feeling, let’s say to “heart” has a dimension of “delicacy” in respect for the Other.
Byung-Chul Han remembers in his book “On the exam” that only one relationship is symmetrical (we would say horizontal, without the power relationship): “respect” and it is this respect that leads us to understanding the Just in relation to the Other.
Thus, those who practice justice rarely seek the spotlight or their own shine, they know that in essence what they do is a relationship of respect for the Other, different and diverse.
Ricœur, P. (1995) Le Juste 1. Paris: Éditions Esprit.
Stories of a future life
14
Jun
There are many visions and even prophecies
about the contemporary polycrisis, it goes beyond thinking and reaches social life, politics and wars on a worrying scale, but the
The question is what are the reasons to have hope, and at the same time what Edgar Morin called “resistance of the spirit”, in the final sections of The crisis of Byung-Chul, he criticizes current politics: “political narratives offer the perspective of a new order of things, they paint possible worlds… we drag ourselves from one crisis to the next. Politics is reduced to problem solving. Today we precisely lack future narratives that give us hope.” (Han, 2023, p. 132).
The solution to specific and emergency problems is the solution to great problems, the “works” it can be visible and bring popularity to those in power, when they should have both the long-term perspective and the notion that they are short-term solutions implemented sparingly that lead to long-lasting, sustainable and effective responses and concludes Byung-Chul: “every action that transforms the world presupposes a narration” (idem) and thus there are few cases of immediate responses that are lasting.
There is a well-known narration that a young woman asks the man who was planting dates “why do you waste time planting what you are not going to harvest”, the man turned and he replied: if everyone thought like you, no one would eat dates.
The idea that things can be quick and simple is present in today’s storytelling: how to lose weight effortlessly, how to learn this or that complex job in just a few lessons, how to speak clearly and simply about a problem with a complex solution and many other “magic” formulas that have little magic and enchantment, are narratives that aim to sell and easily consume products whose effectiveness is questionable.
The first idea is to understand medium and long-term solutions, second is to be suspicious of easy solutions that are not lasting and third to admit that a complex problem it requires a longer narration and silent listening to different voices and different listenersto listen carefully.
To a biblical saying that says that the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed (one of the smallest seeds), you plant it, in years it grows and becomes a leafy tree and only it depends on its own nature and waiting time (Mark 26-27).
Says Byung-Chul Han in his final paragraph: “in the world of storytelling, everything is reduced to consumption. This blinds us to narratives, other ways of life, other perceptions and realities” (p. 132-133).
Han, Byung-Chul (2023). A crise da narração. Trad. Daniel Guilhermino. Petrópolis: ed. Vozes.
Justice, fairness and morality
13
Jun
The three words are important at a time of great crisis in thought (what is), what is an idea, and the idea of justice or the just, explored by current thinkers such as Jurgen Habermas (we mentioned in a previous post on the issue of including Outro) and we quote in passing the two volumes of Paul Ricoeur o Justo (volume two published by Martins Fontes) although the author himself says that it is an essay, he penetrates a deeper aspect, the question of truth and morals.
Reading the text, Inclusion of the Other by Habermas, clarifies that in philosophical terms, that morality in John Rawls, in Kantian terms, has differences between Kant’s original political liberalism and Kantian republicanism, which is how Rawls defends it, this would be enough, but there is a long analysis in Volume 1 by Paul Ricouer on justice in Rawls.
To understand Ricoeur’s book 2 it is necessary to understand that for the Greeks the first philosophy is that which for them, and the ontological resumption has to do with this, metaphysics as questions about Being, existence, the cause and the meaning of reality and physis (nature) must be placed prior to the second, aspects linked to logic and ethics.
Book 2 addresses what seems most essential in Ricoeur, although he confesses that it is an essay, its goal is “to justify the thesis that theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy are of equal levels; as none of it is first philosophy in relation to what Stanislas Breton characterized as the meta- function (I myself defended this reformulation of metaphysics in terms of the meta- function, in which “the maximum genres” of the dialectic of Plato’s last dialogues would be united and Aristotelian speculation on the plurality of the meaning of being or beings) “ (Ricoeur, 2008, p. 63) … but he did not speak (initially it was written in a conference) about this but rather about the two second philosophy.
His analysis is based “initially, thinking about justice and truth without each other; in a second moment, think about them in a way of reciprocal or crossed presupposition” (Ricoeur, 2008, p. 64) and this undertaking “has nothing revolutionary, it is located in the line of speculations about transcendentals…” (idem) .
When approaching the first stage of the analysis: “I thought of Rawls’ statement at the beginning of Théorie de la justice: “Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, just as truth is the first virtue of theories” (pg. 65) and There the author takes up the ethical part of another text of his: Soi-même comme um autre, to “guarantee the eminent status of justice”.
The idea developed there is that this triad leads to “equity”, it is not the dualism between the Self and the Other (the next one also uses Ricoeur), “the triad belongs to the horizontal axis and does not consist absolutely in the simple juxtaposition between the self, the near and far; it is the same dialectic of the self. The desire to live well roots the moral project of life, in desire and lack, as marked by the grammatical structure of the desire… but without the mediation of the other two terms of the triad, the desire for a good life would be lost in the darkness of the variable figures of happiness… I would say that the short circuit between wanting a good life and happiness is the result of ignorance of the dialectical constitution of the self” (pg. 66).
The author formulates the idea of distance in these terms: “fair distance, a middle ground between the very little distance typical of many dreams of emotional fusion and the excess of distance fueled by arrogance, contempt, hatred of the strange, unknown. I would see in the virtue of hospitality the closest emblematic expression of this culture of just distance” (pg. 66).
Justice on the vertical axis, that of power and norm, is seen by the author as follows: “on the vertical axis that leads to the pre-eminence of practical wisdom and, with it, justice as equity, a first observation can be made regarding the relationship between kindness and justice. The relationship is neither one of identity nor difference; goodness characterizes the goal of the deepest desire and, thus, belongs to the grammar of wanting. Justice as a fair distance between the self and the other, found as distant, is the fully developed figure of kindness. Under the sign of justice, good becomes common-good” (pg. 67).
I consider the triad to be the self, the other and the distant, if also seen as a transcendent alterity, there is another “unknown” that can be divine and a carrier of messages, in network theory for example the “weak link” is considered fundamental , Ricoeur’s essay is rich, however, when returning to the question of the Kantian categorical imperative, which justifies political idealism, I believe that Habermas is correct in stating that this is the mistake in John Rawls’ consistent and very current “A Theory of Justice”. influential.
A part of the biblical reading can expand the concept of this distant as transcendent otherness (Mt 5,20): “Unless your righteousness is greater than the righteousness of the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven”, which in the deontological sense one could say “you will not enter into the truth of justice”.
A part of the biblical reading can expand the concept of this distant as transcendent otherness (Mt 5,20): “Unless your righteousness is greater than the righteousness of the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven”, which in the deontological sense one could say “you will not enter into the truth of justice”.
Ricoeur, P. (2008) Justo 2: justiça e verdade. (Fair 2: justice and truth and other studies). Trans. Ivone C. Benedetti. Brazil, São Paulo: Martins Fontes.
Narration, digital culture and orality
06
Jun
Still in the section on Poverty and experience,
quoting Walter Benjamin, Byung-Chul wrote: “We became poor. We abandoned all the pieces of human heritage one after another, many of them had to pawn a hundredth of their value to receive in exchange the small currency of the ‘current’. The economic crisis is at the door, behind it is a shadow of the next war” (Han, 2023, pg. 37-38, citing Poverty and Experience by Benjamin), it was the threshold of the 2nd. World War.
In which modernity sums up happiness, the author explains “happiness is not a one-off event (pg. 43), today “when everything throws us into a current frenzy, when we are in the middle of the storm of contingencies, we are unhappy” ( pg. 44), recalls Marcel Proust “In Search of Lost Time” who understood the “rescue of the past as the narrator’s task” (pg. 45) and modern life as “a muscular atrophy”.
Disagreeing with Heidegger to reaffirm its contextual importance (also for today): “Being and time is not a timeless analysis of human existence, but a reflection of the temporal crisis of modernity” (pg. 45), “the being-itself of Heidegger is prior to the narrative context of life produced later. Being-a-i assures itself before telling itself a coherent story regarding the world of interiority” (pg. 47) and this explains the book we previously posted here, Heidegger’s Heart.
After a speech on some pages about new media: Phono sapiens, selfies, Facebook, it is a fixation of the author even though he recognizes Benjamin before this, even though he says correctly: “they are aligned in a syndetic way, without any narrative nexus” (pg. 51), recognizes that “Human memory always makes choices. In this aspect, it differs from a database”, a fundamental technical precision, which some people sometimes confuse with data without information, information without knowledge.
It predates even the emergence of the Gutenberg press and belongs to oral culture: “autobiographical narration presupposes a subsequent reflection on what was experienced, a work of conscious remembrance” (pg. 53) while “the quality of the data is better as they contain less consciousness” (idem), but it is necessary to remember the semantic search, the linking of data (linked data) and the use of Artificial Intelligence for narration that makes possible a consciousness beyond the “libidinal conscious” (idem) without ethics or morals.
Without mentioning oral culture, but the excerpt reminds her: “if everything that was experienced is present without distance, that is, it is available, the memory reappears” (pg. 56) and adds: “a flawless reproduction of the experience does not is a narrative, but a report or record” (ibidem) and remembers that whoever wants to narrate or remember “needs to be able to forget or let a lot of things slip” (pg. 57) and cannot be talking about anything other than the written culture, as oral culture is capable of forgetting details but will always remember what is experienced and through it remember the essentials and remember tradition.
Remembering the masters of cultures, their teachings and experiences is nothing other than oral culture, written culture is a “database”, a memory without reflection.
Han, B.C. (2023) A crise da narração (The crisis of narration). Transl. Daniel Guilhermino. Brazil: Petrópolis, Vozes.
Narratives, wars and dangers
03
Jun
In one of Byung-Chul Han’s recent essays,
while the author remembers Hyppolyte de Villemessant, founder of the French newspaper Figaro and Walter Benjamin, essayist and philosopher who died in the 40s, the author does not fail to associate the modern narrative associated with new media, with storytelling called storyselling (product that sells).
Thus, instead of provoking a reflection on the major problems of today, including the escalation of wars, the problem is old: “the reader of a modern newspaper jumps from one piece of news to another, instead of letting his gaze wander into the distance, and linger there. The long, slow and lingering look was lost” (Han, 2023, p. 17), that is, there is no reflection.
So it’s about creating a narrative favorable to this or that ideological vision, logic and humanity don’t matter, even in the face of tragedies we are more busy (not all of them fortunately) in creating a narrative to justify a certain position than to defend a principle. humanitarian, there is this or that war, but all of them kill innocent people, all of them, as Eduardo Galeano said, hide desires for power and exploitation over the nation to be dominated, but great empires have succumbed despite all the arrogance and genocides.
The resurgence of the war in Ukraine, the threats to the last stronghold of Palestinian refugees, the constant threats to Taiwan, in addition to incursions into Africa and now even South America, Venezuela is once again threatening Guyana with intense troop movements and provocations between the USA and Iran, warlike spirits ignite and even good but innocent people embark on these narratives, there is no other interest in wars: looting, deaths of innocent people and inhumanity.
There is no shortage of meetings between nations in Brazil, Europe and attempts to sensitize governments to the dangers of this war escalation around the world, but they come up against partial and partisan narratives, few minds are aware of the serious and civilizing danger of this escalation. , around the world, armaments are the only response that seems to reach the rulers, and so narratives of “heroic acts” of warlike events grow around the world that should shame those who invoke humanitarian principles, with the UN being the wars and environmental problems that have led starve more than 700 million people.
Even for a biblical or historical narration, where the intention is to build a “whole” narrative, there is a call for humanitarianism, when Cain kills his brother Abel, the divine question is “where is your brother?” (Genesis 4,9) and the narration suggested by Byung -Chul Han is that of the Egyptian king Psammenit who was captured by the Persian king Cambyses, and after the defeat makes the king humiliate when he sees his daughter turned into a slave and his son being taken to be executed (Han, pg. 21), however the Egyptian king only felt when he saw an elderly and frail servant among the prisoners and “hit his head with his fists and expressed deep sadness” (pg. 22), so the narration, says Han, “needs no explanation” (Han, pg. 22).
If we are capable of long, slow and lingering reflections, it is not difficult to understand the danger of the escalation of wars, of simple people like Psammenit’s service who suffer and die for issues that they barely understand, and that the narratives do not explain, they only try to justify the unjustifiable: death, jokes and lies.
As the philosopher Morin states, it takes resistance of the spirit, we are gradually losing the sense of love, hope and solidarity and if we read and investigate the news and facts of the wars we will see that there was nothing in them other than great genocides, robberies and In situations of hunger and misery, it is necessary to resist hatred and violence.
Han B.C. (2023) A crise da narração (The crisis of narration). Transl. Daniel Guilhermino. Brazil, Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes.
The all, the whole and the divine
29
May
After developing delicate and controversial subjects
such as pain, waiting in the very sense of hope, which Byung-Chul uses the philosophical term of “containment”, he finishes his book, which could be said to be his first philosophical writing, even though he did his doctoral thesis on Heidegger, with what must be the most controversial for today’s philosophy: the whole.
At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, physics, science and philosophy that seemed full of their “knowledge” took a reversal, the linguistic shift, but there is another one underway that is even more profound: the revenge of the sacred, After leading humanity to two wars, to the exhausting work of the “Society of Fatigue” (in English it was translated as the Burnout Society), idealistic arrogance wants to proclaim the death of God, the all or the whole is what, the last James Webb’s research appears to be unanswered.
Even the Big Bang theory is at stake, the arrow of time may not be correct, in other words, time may be a human abstraction, galaxies seen at the ends of the universe do not coincide with the physics of the Standard Model (in this case of Cosmology) and show that the concept needs to be revised, but let’s leave this to physicists and cosmologists, our biggest dilemma is still: “what are we and where did we come from”, translated into philosophical language: what is being, and what is Being of beings (or coming from particles and cosmic dust).
This is expressed in the Theory of Everything, the name of the film, based on the book by Stephen Hawking’s wife, Jane Hawking, entitled: “Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen”.
For a while we forgot this dilemma, addressed since the beginning of this series of posts about the reading of “Heidegger’s heart” by Byung-Chul Han, not just the anthropological sleep advocated by Foucault, but the idealistic sleep of the reason of our time, that which caused a forgetfulness of being.
The beginning of the chapter is a provocation, I believe, when quoting Hegel in the epigraph: “Truth is the whole”, since Heidegger and his rereading of Han return to that “turn” in which “the truth of the essence of being withdraws into the being” (pg. 337), where consciousness itself is already “the concern to distinguish between natural knowledge and real knowledge” (pg. 340), it is in the dialectical experience of pain: “the dialectical worker is a sufferer. He goes through an ordeal, exhausts himself in the power of the Absolute, and does so precisely to live” (pg. 346), the emphasis on living belongs to the author.
“Those who still speak of the whole today raise suspicions” (pg. 455) is the opening sentence of the final chapter, but idealism never abandoned the abstract notion of the Absolute, because it is an imperative of any theory to outline contours where the truth is valid, for This is the phrase in the epigraph of the final chapter, I think, but “in Heidegger’s heart beats for the totality from the beginning” (pg. 455), he expresses it in his pathos for everything: “What was said perhaps indicates that the present work intend to be philosophical, insofar as it was undertaken in the service of the ultimate totality” (pg. 456), but in contrast to the Hegelian, “the Heideggerian whole does not capitalize on the death of the particular” (pg. 457), if we want to return to physics is worth rereading by Werner Heisenberg: “The part and the whole”, where we see the thresholds of modern quantum physics, where there are several traces of well-defined philosophy.
Understanding pain, containment and anguish and identity in difference (we have already stated that it is not the idealistic difference), the Heideggerian whole is not a place of birth, not a place of origin, but a place of birth” (pg . 459), a “non-metaphysical house as a dwelling space” (pg. 459), we would say the dwelling of the Being, full and divinized.
And also, its mundane totality, is not contaminated by the climate of postmodern thought, in it one can notice the total lack: “of odor, landscape or nature” (pg. 460), “with the history of being Heidegger writes a certain metanarrative”, but it cannot be denied that “Heidegger’s thought also has metaphysical traits” (pg. 461), his philosophy “are not language games [like Derridá], nor speeches”. (pg. 463), for him there is the being of language, “language games would be an ontic phenomenon” (pg. 463).
We develop the question of the voice (see the post), but Han asks: “in what affective tone does today’s thinking place this voice”, is it not a response to that truth that dwells within every man? not following it Is it accepting pain, anguish, difference and dispute outside of conflict and war?
There is that inner voice, to those who know how to do silence and epoché, there is the Being that is the whole and that lives within us, but we have to go through pain, through donation and accept the difference.
HAN, B.C. (2023) Coração de Heidegger: sobre o conceito de tonalidade afetiva em Martin Heidegger (Heidegger’s heart: on the concept of affective tonality in Martin Heidegger). Transl. Rafael Rodrigues Garcia, Milton Camargo Mota. Brazil, Petrópolis: Vozes.
Renunciation, economy and joy
28
May
Byung-Chul theorizes that despite the difference
between Derridá and Heidegger (see our previous post) there is a structural affinity in their vision of mourning, which is characterized by the renunciation of the subject’s autonomy in Derrida: “No matter how narcissistic our subjective speculation continues to be, , it can no longer close itself to this gaze, before which we ourselves show ourselves the moment we convert it into our mourning or we can give up on it [faire de lui notre dueil], mourning, making ourselves mourn for ourselves, I mean, I mourn the loss of our autonomy, for everything that made us the measure of ourselves” (Han, p. 430 citing Derridá’s text “Krafter der Trauer”, strengthening of pain), this That is, they both have in common a vision of renouncing the autonomy of the subject, the “I” of idealism.
Here the important thing is not to let mourning work (let us remember the concept already seen in the posts about “work mourning”) it is replaced in Derridá by a game of mourning: “however, the happier the joy, the purer the sadness that sleeps in it. The deeper the sadness, the more it calls us to joy…” (Han, pg. 430-431), but Heidegger’s mourning, explains Han, does not kill death, trying to kill it results in something even worse: “ wanting to resurrect, violently and actively surpassing the limit of death would only drag them (the gods) into a false and non-divine proximity and would bring death instead of our life” (Han, pg. 431-432 quoting Heidegger).
Heidegger explains that it is “not a symptom that can be eliminated by psychoeconomic accounting. He does not have a deficient trait that involves work (of mourning).
This “withdrawn” or “saved” for which Heidegger’s “holy and mourning” heart beats is not subject to economics, this “saved” cannot be spent or capitalized, it is therefore that which is and characterizes renunciation, Han does not exemplifies, but we can think of humanitarian aid in disasters and wars, as it will characterize the identity of renunciation and gratitude as conceivable outside of economics, using Heideggerian terms “grievously bear the need to renounce” and promises the “unthinkable donation”.
A profound and wise phrase by Heidegger says, renunciation is the “highest form of possession”, it seems contrary, but we only really have what we can give because otherwise it is a commodity of exchange, and even more so renunciation becomes gratitude and “ duty of gratitude”, this pain increases and becomes joy: “the deeper the sadness, the more the joy that rests in it calls us”. (pg. 433), but it does not even become sublimation, which forces us to “work”, as it is the “inhibition of all income” and the “awareness of the emptiness and poverty of the world”.
Praise of misery one might think, is not a praise of moderate and continuous joy, different from the euphoria and ecstasy that is followed by depression, “the lack of the divine brings about mourning, goes back to an obstinate forgetfulness of being, in which Heidegger inscribes the divine” (Han, p. 433-434), but it is certainly not yet the biblical divine, but surrounds it.
The reward and joy of the Divine inscribed in the being, is that which renounces and gives, but knows that there will be a reward of receiving a hundred times more, not in goods, but in joy.
Han, Byung-Chul (2023) Coração de Heidegger: sobre o conceito de tonalidade afetiva em Martin Heidegger (Heidegger’s heart: on the concept of affective tonality in Martin Heidegger). Transl. Rafael Rodrigues Garcia, Milton Camargo Mota. Brazil, Petrópolis: Vozes.
