Arquivo para a ‘Information ethics’ Categoria
Clearing and the illumination of consciousness
23
Feb
There are different experiences of consciousness
that are different from the rational, of course they are not free from autosuggestion and in a way they all are, because some level of permission we give to an experience that goes beyond our senses, the musical is the most accepted and common cultural one, the spiritual one is the most rare and subject to fallacies and manipulations, but they all make some sense.
The clearing that Heidegger speaks of based on Plato’s myth of the cave is not tied to the rational level, since its ontology is back to Being, and the deepest experience of being will never cease to have a spiritual and cultural touch, but this clearing is strongly linked not to a collective idea, but to the inner and deep Being of each man.
Would it be possible to enlighten conscience in a collective way, what in Christian terms is called “Pentecost”, revival, rest in the spirit and other names, yes and no.
Yes, it is if it is in fact an awareness that leads to human and spiritual elevation, not if it is just self-suggestion through emotional technique and collective suggestion, there must be no falsification of true consciousness and it must not be confused with fanaticism.
The growing global political, cultural and military tension can lead to a state of fanaticism, hatred and social stress never imagined, but it is possible for minds to become alert and a new cultural and spiritual vision to evolve towards a different path, a kind of “help ”.
Walt Whitman was a poet, essayist and journalist from the 19th century, poorly understood and today read and reinterpreted by many authors, although still little understood, he says in his poems:
“As in a faint, for an instant, Another ineffable sun dazzles me,
And all orbs I knew, and brighter orbs unknown,
An instant of the future earth, earth of heaven.”
It can be read on a social level, a cultural change, on a spiritual level (new heavens and a new earth says the biblical reading) and even on a political level.
The apostles of Jesus had this moment provided by the Master himself, they climb Mount Tabor and there they see him illuminated with two other figures (the reading says: Elijah and Moses, it would not be the Trinity) and the ecstasy of consciousness is so high that the apostles Pedro, Tiago and João want to stay there.
Was the Enlightenment an enlightenment?
22
Feb
To analyze the Enlightenment in the light of
Western philosophy, it is necessary to read, of course with an open mind, ontological metaphysics, from Cassirer, his criticism and analysis from the heyday of idealism in the 18th century, “who proudly called himself ‘ Century of philosophy’” (Cassirer, 1992).
This philosophy was considered to have “opened the way to that deepest order from which springs, with pure thought, all the intellectual activity of man, and where this activity must find its foundation, according to the profound conviction of the Enlightenment” (Cassirer 1992) .
The author observes that Hegel, considered “the first to take this path” as a philosopher and historian of philosophy, made a forgotten (Cassirer calls it curious) rectification, which diverges from the verdict that “the metaphysics of Hegel himself pronounced regarding the Enlightenment ” (Cassirer, 1992), recognizing its role and making a reconciliation with it (in photo, Frontispiciul for the L’Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, .
Having Kant as his main influence, Cassirer was also influenced by Herman Cohen (great exponent of neo-Kantianism at the beginning of the 20th century) and Paul Nartop (one of the founders of the Marburg school) and thus remained trapped in the idealism of neo-Kantianism, but there was still influences on the thoughts of Heidegger, Hans Georg Gadamer and Hartmann.
The scientific question in the 18th century was to find “a determined border between the mathematical spirit and the philosophical spirit” (Cassirer, 1992, p. 34), thus beginning a doubt that would last until the beginning of the 20th century when David Hilbert in a Mathematics Conference announced 23 problems that mathematics should solve to be considered complete, among them the second problem was the consistency of the axioms of arithmetic, that is, that arithmetic could solve any problem that was enumerable.
It was Kurt Gödel who demonstrated that this problem of the finite proof of the consistency of arithmetic is demonstrably impossible, in his second Incompleteness Theorem, which became known as Gödel’s Paradox, the system is either complete or finite, never both.
To help this collapse of scientific rationalism, quantum physics also proposed through Werner Heisenberg the uncertainty principle, which announced that it was not possible to affirm the position of an atom or an atomic particle in a given situation.
Idealism is still a strong current, even in scientific circles, but its logical, physical and mathematical bases have already been dismantled by science itself, philosophers of Science such as Karl Popper, Tomas Kuhn and Imre Lakatos have already announced new postulates.
The consensus is that human thought needs a broader vision, a worldview that is not limited to the so-called exact sciences, recovers the importance of language, the study of Being and a transdisciplinary vision that releases the narrow limits of each area of knowledge. , without ceasing to admit the mysteries, beliefs and original cultures.
Cassirer, E. (1992) The philosophy of the Enlightenment. Trans. Álvaro Cabral, Campinas: Editora Unicamp.
Jonah and the resistance of the spirit
21
Feb
As we approach great tragedies, the Biblical allegory
of Jonah is interesting to remember, even the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk highlights it, even if he is not a Christian, it is good to remember that Jonah is also in the Quran and is an important character for Judaism.
The curious biblical passage in which Jonah was supposed to evangelize the city of Nineveh so that it would not perish, one of the greatest of his time, is believed that out of fear of the Assyrians, known for their cruelty, Jonah tried to flee on a ship to Tarshish, who suffered a strong storm, they discover that the reason is Jonah who is thrown into the sea.
At sea, Jonah would have spent three days and 3 nights in the belly of a whale and would then be thrown into the city of Nineveh to return to his mission. There he preached and Nineveh was converted.
Sloterdijk does not use the terms dualism or polarization, he uses it even before the current global polarization that causes bloody wars and great controversies, the philosopher uses the terms dyad, a relationship between two or more different people in which there is no center but rather polycentrism.
This is basic to understanding who Jonah is for the German philosopher, he sees him as a prophet and worshiper of the God of the Jews, whose duty is to establish the relationship between the divine and the human, and that for humans to inhabit the divine they need to know and reject the human losses in the world.
Sloterdijk’s central question in Spheres I – the bubbles, is where are we when we are in the world? And in the German language there is a specific word for being in the world and being WITH the world, the word is “vorhandensein”, which means “being-in-the-world”, which although it means something else for Heideggeer that would just be “dasein”, it takes on greater meaning.
For Sloterdijk the only bodies that are outside this dyad or this polycentrism “the only bodies that are located without duality in the world are those of the dead” (Spheres I), that is, every time you find yourself in a place you are there and with him, you see him and recognize him.
Where was Jonah when he was in the world? Inside the whale. The whale is part of Jonas’ 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 relationship with the outside is then one of “tension”, it is not only a filter of the outside, but it is also a lens to understand everything, even the inside itself, so being on the “whale” was preparation for Jonas to face it, see that beforehand there is a storm on the ship that is “in the world” and it is thrown overboard.
Our inner path must “help”, illuminate and make us aware of what we are “in the world” and be something else like the world when we have this light.
Sloterdijk, P. Bubbles: Spheres I: Microspherology. Translated by José Oscar de Almeida Marques. Brazil, Sáo Paulo: Estação Liberdade, 2016. (em english: Transl. Wieland Hoban, 2011).
Perspective of war and intoxication of the spirit
19
Feb
The tone and actions of a non-stop war are
expanding, there are few nations and voices that are not under what the century-old philosopher Edgar Morin calls “collective intoxication”, and calls for there to be resistance capable of reacting to all the lies spread .
The commander of NATO forces, Chris Cavoli, announced an army of 90 thousand men, and an exercise called Steadfast Defender 2024, which should take place in May, with 50 ships, from aircraft carriers to destroyers, 80 fighters, helicopters and drones participating. and more than 1,100 combat vehicles, including 133 tanks and 533 infantry vehicles.
Russia misleads and says it would not invade Latvia and Poland, it took the city of Avdviika (photo) once and for all, one of the strategic fronts and where the war is most violent, Zelensky minimizes the loss by stating that he retreated to “save lives”, however the war remains bloody.
In an interview this Sunday (18/02) Putin says that Ukraine “is a matter of life and death” for the country, the death of opponent Navalny had repercussions throughout the world and will be a watershed for those who clearly support a regime warlike and authoritarian.
In the Gaza strip, the city of Rafah with millions of Palestinian refugees remains under Israeli threat, a hospital was invaded because there was news that “hostages were there”, but they were not found, only weapons and with the invasion patients in the ICU died.
There are international calls for Israel not to put civilians at risk, the majority of whom are taking refuge in Rafah, and Egypt has built a huge wall so that they cannot flee to Egypt and this puts thousands of women, children and other civilians at risk. who are there and have nowhere to escape.
Negotiations become more difficult with each Israeli action and the involvement of Iran and other Arab countries becomes more inevitable every day, it will be on this front that a possible 3rd. war will occur, the resistance of the spirit claimed by the century-old philosopher and educator Edgar Morin must fight against fanaticism and hatred that only spread death and war.
In a previous interview published in the Italian newspaper La Reppublica, Morin had said: “all war embodies Manichaeism, unilateral propaganda, war hysteria, espionage, lies, the preparation of increasingly deadly weapons, errors and illusions, unexpected events and surprises”, it takes a resistance of the Spirit for Peace.
Ethical and spiritual resistance
16
Feb
Ethical resistance, or the resistance of the spirit
that Edgar Morin speaks of, is the recognition “of a return to dogmatism and fanaticism, and a crisis of morals while hatred and idolatries spread,” said the philosopher.
It is not possible to establish ethics by breaking the most elementary rules of ethics than respect for the dignity of the Other, it is not possible to strengthen morality if we spread all types of immorality from politics to customs and it is not possible to speak of spirit if what exists is only pure idolatry, in many senses, from culture to religious.
It is no longer just about wars, which in themselves are already a catastrophe, but “the qualities of our civilization have deteriorated and needs have increased, particularly in the development of selfishness and the disappearance of traditional solidarities”, said Morin in an interview with Italian newspaper La Reppublica.
The appeal to political fanaticism has polarized society, those who defended democracy attack it with the most arbitrary forms of power, in the religious field those who defend religious practices and rites forget to do good to others and to respect different faiths, everyone is right in their own way, according to their own morals and the result is moral scandals.
Like that Pharisee who practices fasting and makes shady deals and mistreats his employees, or like those who, despite knowing the religious precepts, try to justify their faults with arguments or factual and non-contextual religious reading.
An asceticism that does not include changes in attitudes and behaviors, a resistance of the spirit to everything that seems justifiably immoral and spiritually dubious, must be a path to a true asceticism that involves a true resistance of the spirit.
The temptations of Jesus in the desert, in which he was offered honor, glory and power to give in to evil, more than an allegory is a path for achievements to be made in a modest, fair way and without offending those who are for some reason dependent on us for sustenance.
Appeals to wealth, power and luxury in the name of religiosity are the clearest idolatries and the reverse of any resistance of the spirit or moral resistance to civilizational decadence.
Wars are nothing more than the temptations of power and oppression for peoples, groups or cultures that will be subjugated by brute force, humiliation and even the death of innocents.
The hope for peace, morality and ethics lies in maintaining resistance of the spirit.
Morin, E. The resistance of the Spirit, Italy: La Reppublica, 01/24/2024.
Ethics and resistance
15
Feb
Hegelian idealist formalism establishes an
ethics, since it sees a fatality in man’s finitude, in the words of many thinkers his worldliness, however the categories used in phenomenology, where the thing in itself turns, there is the essence of Being.
It was Emmanuel Levinas who opened this essence to the relationship with the Other, and calls it an ethical resistance, declaring it as an epiphany, in the philosophical sense of apparition, which is an opening to exteriority to the infinite being, where this resistance can be manifest.
Thus, different from the idea of the openness of Being or idealistic transcendence, the relationship between the subject and the object, its exteriority is that which the inner Being manifests itself before the infinite, its openness to the Other requires an examination of conscience: we love or hate, we forgive Either we resent what is different, I favor ethics and moral behavior, or we relativize it.
Brazilian professor Brüseke clarifies: “It is curious how frequently concerns or even fears are being raised that mysticism weakens social morality” (Brüseke, 2000).
Thus, Levinas’s transcendence is a true opening of the Being to the outside world and life in a broad and totalitarian way (of course not in the authoritarian sense of the word), it can give the Being a true asceticism, a reunion with itself in the face of a metanoia, a complete change of mindset.
Open to life does not mean open to pleasures and momentary circumstances, but to find a path to our “ascension”, a daily growth even with obstacles and setbacks, the falsehood of “easy” paths is that they do not perform the “exercise” of true asceticism, they just get around it with palliatives (read Byung Chul-Han’s Palliative Society).
Resistance, a category also used by Edgar Morin for the contemporary world, is more than opposing “evil”, or an inner resilience, it is a resistance of hope, of believing that an alternative path is possible, that war cannot it is a way out, and that we will have a future.
Philosophy and science are not opposed to the spiritual growth of humanity, to a certain extent they can even be healthy complements to a balanced faith and a science that is in fact humanized, it is not about dominating nature but about cooperating with it.
It must start from personal attitudes and decisions, put into reflection and lived socially.
Brüseke, F. (2000) A ética da resistência. Cadernos de pesquisa interdisciplinar em Ciências Humanas. V. 1, n. 8, Santa Catarina, Brazil.
Human fragility in the face of Infinity
14
Feb
One of the important works to understand the
linguistic shift from the point of view of ontology is the work of Emmanuel Levinas, highlighting here a work that addresses the entire issue of the impossibility of objectifying the Other and human limitation in the face of weaknesses such as vices, ethical difficulties and war.
Levinas draws part of his experience from what he experienced in the Second World War, where he was held prisoner by the Nazi regime, in addition to having his parents and brothers executed, he saw the atrocities of the so-called “enlightened reason” which proved to be violent and totalitarian, these experiences are in tension in his thinking, and are important in a context of threat of a new world war.
Ontology has its role within metaphysics according to the author, but not its primacy as that of first philosophy, the transcendence of the scope of “self” and “being”, since this movement has been unveiled (the categories of reality) veiling is a new veiling) returning the movement to the self, to the identical, to being and its preservation, not to the recognition of the Other.
In contrast to Heidegger, for whom the relationship between being and others is subordinated to a relationship with being in general and nothing interferes with the emergence of the self, Levinas understands that the self is not due to being, but to the Other, and thus this relationship It is fundamental as in Paul Ricoeur.
The author proposes in Totality and Infinity a new choice for understanding being in which exteriority is not sacrificed, thus the relationship with the Other and with the exterior “world” is a reflection and path to interiority, in which it finds a relationship with the all and infinite.
This relationship between the self and the face of the Other that presents ethical resistance, for the author, is through its epiphany, through its “appearance” (a fundamental category in phenomenology), that the exteriority of infinite being can manifest itself as resistance.
His thinking is more complex, but we can understand that the weakness and limitation of the self, if kept in tension with exteriority and with the Other, reveals the infinite and our relationship with it, which cannot be other than the recognition of its “ transcendence”.
Levinas, E. (1969) Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, London: Kluwer Academic Pub.
Russian and Israeli strategy
12
Feb
On the one hand, a power on the left, which
does not negotiate with opponents and does not give up power, on the other, a Western power where war can help keep right-wing forces in coalition in power.
Wars are political and we cannot see them only from the perspective of dictators and genocides, even though any war is based on the illegitimate killing of civilians and even within the parameters of international agreements on war, they are exceeded.
Any narrative that exists hides hatred and revenge against opponents, anger and violence as a foundation, using discourses of virility, ideologies of single thinking and even humanistic appeals that are outdated after the first battle.
The critical analysis is that is there will be no setbacks, in a recent speech Putin declared that there is no possibility of defeat in Ukraine, that is, he would use catastrophic nuclear weapons or resources close to this, but mitigates this by saying that there is no interest in Poland and Latvia.
Despite having elections coming up, the only Russian opponent that Putin respects, others are already in prison or disappear in prison or dead, there is no possibility of any change in power.
In Israel, President Netanyahu threatens to send troops to Rafah, a refugee camp on the border with Egypt, which has had a peace treaty with Israel for 45 years. American President Biden also asked that no troops be sent there, but the proximity of the Israeli elections demands a nod to the more radical right in Israel.
UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russel said civilians in Rafah must be protected as they have nowhere to go: “Some 1.3 million civilians are trapped, living on the streets or in shelters. They need to be protected. They have no safe place to go,” he said according to the international press.
The logic of war is that it favors dictators and does not allow any more humane and democratic principle to be respected, it is the absence of serenity and tolerance towards opponents.
Healing minds and hearts
09
Feb
It is increasingly common to appeal to material
goods, as we close in on ourselves and have a false idea about what happiness is, wounded souls and hearts that seek happiness where it is not found, it may be a temporary consolation, but it is not happiness, happiness balanced.
Another book by Seneca that is quite fundamental to his thinking is about the tranquility of the soul, modern man lives in exteriority, mistakenly called objectivity or materiality, because things (beings) are part of ontological aspects and must be thought of and cultivated appropriately in interiority. , which is not subjectivity, but soul.
Said the Roman philosopher, who we posted yesterday about Wrath, now about the soul:
“If man had the opportunity to look inside himself, how he would torture himself, he would confess the truth and say: “Everything I have done up to now, I would prefer if it had not been done; When I think about everything I said, I envy the dumb; everything I desired, the curse of my enemies; everything I feared. O righteous gods! Better not to have wanted to. I made many enemies, and hatred replaced friendship (if there is friendship between evil people), and I’m not even friends with myself.
Although written at the beginning of the Christian era, the author Of the tranquility of the soul, reflects the difficulty it is for the common man and also for the wise man to maintain his serenity, faced with a spectacle of injustice and baseness (see how old this is), which he witnesses every day, is precisely the counterpoint to Anger, hatred and confrontation.
The text begins with an imaginary letter written by Sereno (of course the name is on purpose): “I will tell you what is happening to me, and you will find a name for this illness”, and at the end he states: “Sometimes, my soul rises with the magnitude of thought, becomes greedy for words and aspires to heights. So the speech is no longer mine [emphasis added]. Forgetting about the norms and rigorous criteria, I stand up and speak with a mouth that is no longer mine.”
From then on, he will reflect on how to overcome obstacles that prevent peace.
Although the discourse is moralistic and ethical, and it is no less important for this reason, the elevation that Seneca sought cannot find any other place than in a spiritual asceticism, it is also found in other cultures, Buddhism is an elevation on the path of virtues, Ghandi used the peace as a political exercise to lead India, and in the case of Christianity it is the “cures” of Jesus.
The Biblical text says, when they see the healing of a deaf-mute (Mc 7,37): “He does all things well. He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak”, and he also cured “unclean” lepers.
Sêneca. (2009) Da Tranquilidade da Alma (wordpress.com) (portuguese). transl. Lucia Sá Rebello e Ellen Itanajara Neves Vranas. Brazil, Porto Alegre: LP&M Pocket.
About Wrath and Hope
08
Feb
The ancient Roman philosopher Seneca 
(4 BC – 65 AD) wrote a beautiful essay On Wrath which, although it is in three books, can be divided into two parts, it is addressed to his older brother Gallio, the first part deals with a theoretical issue ( I-II.17) and talks about the horrors of Wrath and its definitions, the second part gives tips on how to calm people, both children and adults, using real cases as examples.
Although the texts are very interesting and intelligent, there is an essential gap that cannot be achieved through spiritual asceticism, the hope that the context will be changed by actions that go beyond the personal, social or group level, raising the level of spiritual health of a person. group.
According to the philosopher, a great man should never become angry and, when it is not possible to avoid anger, he should try to calm down as soon as possible, his famous phrase is:
“No man becomes more courageous through anger, except one who, without anger, would not have been courageous: anger, therefore, does not come to help courage, but to take its place” (I.13).
However, in social life there are situations in which good and fair men are subject to the power of authoritarian, presumptuous and arrogant men who humiliate, exploit and mistreat humble people.
To this the Stoic responds with another sentence; “Let nothing be allowed to you while you are angry. For what reason? Because he will want everything to be allowed.” (III.12), said in a modern way, if we lose our calm when pointing out a mistake, we can lose our reason in reacting to the error.
Hope is fundamental when an entire social, political or even religious situation becomes difficult and points to a path that seems to be without that of destruction, error and fear, it is not about being in conformity, we wrote in the previous post about the disposition which precedes the intention, but the intention to calm propagate peace and avoid anger becomes both hope and the possibility of viable course correction, anger does not, initiates or expands the confrontation.
It is necessary to believe that the union of forces that desire positive change has a light that is superior to the set of human forces, because they can improve the “disposition”, the climate in favor of sensible and constructive attitudes and raise the moral standard in a virtuous circle .
