Arquivo para a ‘Linguagens’ Categoria
The narrative and its sunset
31
May
Modern thinking lacks a model for the Whole,
I would say that it even lacks systematic thinking, Peter Sloterdijk even states that it is not a time for thinking, it is a time of trends dictated by hashtags, Stories, blogs and reels (mass diffusion mechanisms using social media).
Byung-Chul Han states that despite the “inflationary use of narratives reveals a crisis of narrative”, paradoxical, however “there is a narrative vacuum that manifests itself as a void of meaning and as disorientation” (Han, pg. 9), before the narrations anchored us: “they assigned us a place and transformed being-in-the-world into being-at-home, giving life meaning, support and guidance, that is, life itself was a narration…” (idem, pg . 9), is at the same time deterritorialization and uprooting.
However, Byung-Chul himself lets slip, through reading The Narrator by Walter Benjamin (died in 1940) that this is before the new media, citing it as “knowledge that comes from far away finds fewer listeners today than information about the upcoming events” (Han, p. 17 quoting him), the reader jumps from one piece of news to another, he doesn’t linger there, “the long, slow and lingering look was lost. “(pg. 17).
Still quoting Walter Benjamin, he differentiates information more clearly from knowledge: “information only has value when it is new.
She only lives in that moment, she needs to give herself entirely to it and, without wasting time, she has to explain herself in it” (Han, pg. 18), curiously a thought prior to the 40s. He will go into the concept of information, so important in certain areas such as Information Science, saying that it [today] is “the means of the reporter, who scours the world in search of news” (pg. 19), there is no necessary distance from the fact that digests it and makes it knowledge, “the information withheld, that is, the explanations avoided, increase the narrative tension” (pg. 19).
The narrative crisis is not due to the new media that have enhanced them, but to the fact “that the world is flooded with information. The spirit of narration is being suffocated by the flood of information” (pg. 20), but what then is narration? Han quoting Walter Benjamin invokes Herodotus, narrating the defeat of the Egyptian king Psamenit to the Persian king Cambyses, after his defeat.
The Persian king humiliates him by making him see his daughter becoming a servant and his son being executed, but the Egyptian king remained motionless looking at the ground, but when he saw his slaves as prisoners, “he hit his head with his fists and expressed deeply sadness” (pg. 22), because by lamenting for the servants “they destroy the narrative tension” (pg. 22).
He mentions that for Benjamin, the first sign of the decline of narration is the emergence of the novel at the beginning of the modern era (pg. 23), with its condition of experience and wisdom, narration knows how to give advice “about life” (pg. 24), the narrative community is a “community of attentive listeners” (pg. 25), there is careful listening in it.
Modern political and ideological narratives are after curious, picturesque and spicy facts, there is nothing of wisdom in them, they move the public through the impact and rush of “hot” and summarized information, there is no narration, there is no attentive listening and when there is it is due to the ecstasy or the spectacle promoted, it is removed from the context of a narration.
Those who still exist in legalism and moralism, contradictorily with the daily life they live, present in the modern religious narrative, should remember facts such as the non-judgment of the adulterous woman (who should be stoned according to the Jewish custom of the time) and Jesus “does not judge her ” (John 8:3), the testimony of the sinner who sits in the back while the Pharisee sits in front and feels proud because “I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust and adulterers” (Luke 18, 11-13), and also Jesus’ challenge when healing a man with a dry hand on the Sabbath (Mc 2,4): “And he asked them: “Is it permissible on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil? Save a life or let it die?” But they said nothing”, the biblical narrative always makes this distancing a way of thinking and rethinking values, it is not Manichaeism and modern moralism.
The stories of pirates and the impressive stories of the Vikings, prior to the period of navigation and mercantilism and even of tax havens on islands spread across the globe, with the complacency of “legal and moral states”, where the deposit is deposited, are also narrated. public money stolen from nations and the people themselves by politicians.
Han, Byung-Chul. (2023) A crise da narração, transl. Daniel Guilhermino. Brazil, Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes.
What is the universe made of and what is its origin?
30
May
Greek philosophers from the 6th century BC
believed that the four elements of all nature were: fire, earth, water and air, Pythagoras proposed a practically religious school that everything was numbers while Democritus proposed the atom and that they would have rounded, smooth, irregular shapes and smooth, being able to form an infinity of elements, but until the end of the Middle Ages it was believed that fire was composed of one of these particles: the firegist, we owe the chemical table to Dimitri Mendelev who in 1869 organized his chemical elements, previously the alchemist Henning Brad discovered that phosphorus heated with urine residue caused flames and Antoine Lavoisier in 1789 organized some elements into simple, metallic, non-metallic and non-metallic.
Current standard physics has established 7 elements: neutrinos, electron, quarks, photon, graviton, gluon and weak force boson, but there is a more mysterious quantum world that of superstrings, it seems frightening or using the physicists’ word ghostly (Einstein used it the first time realizing that there is a third state in quantum physics in which the element is neither nor is it, later called the Included Third).
The most convincing theory of the universe until recently was that of the Big Bang and an expanding universe, entropy, Stephen Hawking was its great theorist, although this theory already existed before, and thus proposed an “arrow of time” in his most important book. famous “A brief history of time” (1988), but James Webb’s discoveries called into question when he found galaxies and celestial bodies at the edge of the universe that shouldn’t be there, now even the arrow of time is questioned.
The important thing when looking at the universe is to understand where everything came from and whether this whole thing and intelligent life, which for now we only find on our planet Earth, had a beginning and more importantly, had an intention.
The biblical “fiat lux” seems to agree so much with the Big Bang theory, before atoms there were waves or “strings” created in the first 10−44 seconds (Planck time) and then subatomic elements were created, in the case of strings, everything It is initially formed by one-dimensional strings that would be divided into “open” strings (linear) and “closed” strings (in loop strength), vibrating at different frequencies that would give rise not only to the 7 elements, but also the molecules that initiate life.
Be that as it may, there was an initial moment, and the form of this “being” must have been preceded by a creative “being”, the paleontologist and Christian theologian Teilhard Chardin proposed that the entire universe would be the body of this supreme “Being” of the “being”, thus he should have a divine and a material (human) reality, thus he proposed that the universe is Christocentric.
It is not possible for the All to have emerged from nothing, and if there is an original form of the All, of some “element” the physical world is composed, thus there is a “Corpus” of this All, with the difference that He is the creator and all the rest created, but created with some substrate of its own Supreme Being, of course the theory for this is more elaborate, but its understanding is simple, we are part of a body, of a group that communicates, the idea of the individuation of the universe is not plausible, because at the beginning we were one thing: a small cosmic corpuscle, a set of vibrating strings (we could even think of a choir making a song), but there was a moment of creation. and Someone created it.
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.
Pain and Being
23
May
We said previously that the chapter on the topic
of the Voice could be the final one, but as Heidegger saw it, and Byung-Chul Han was faithful, it is part of the development of the Being, when talking about pain, a subject that Han also dealt with in the “Palliative Society: pain today” and we have already made some posts, the way we treat the pandemic and now the floods that affected thousands of lives in Rio Grande do Sul, should be a point of analysis and understanding, in a society that does not want to look at this side of life: suffering and pain.
Not by chance, Heidegger addresses this when elaborating on Parmenides, where ontology is reduced to Being is and non-Being is not, to a logic A and not-A, with no third hypothesis, there Heidegger speaks of “a certain death (sacrificial ) of the human being: “But the supreme form of pain is the dying of death, which sacrifices the human being for the preservation of the truth of being” (pg. 321), so the sacrifice is not here, as “the sacrifice has in itself its own essence and does not need objectives or benefits? ” (idem).
In the previous post we discussed idealistic sleep, here Han quotes Foucault asking “is it a matter of a certain agony to awaken the thought of an “anthropological awakening”?” (idem), perhaps an anthropotechnical awake or even as we prefer an onto-anthropotechnical sleep, since the forgetfulness of being is not just a philosophical category.
When addressing the emptiness of modern man, also based on the reading of Foucault, Han recalls that Heidegger, when resuming the metaphysical category “subjectum”, which in “its essence is modern man is the “subject” and it is exactly here that Heidegger “criticizes implicitly anthropological thought” (pg. 322), it is according to Heidegger: “the continuation of Cartesianism”, Han quoting him: “With the interpretation of man as subjectum. Descartes creates the metaphysical presupposition for future anthropology of every type and orientation” (pg. 323).
Thus it is not man’s opposition to beings, but modernity’s mistaken opposition to language: “concern for language would be concern for death. Giving language back to man would therefore mean giving him back death, his mortality” (pg. 324), and it is also not about the ‘being’ or ‘non-being’ of the human being” (pg. 325-326 ).
It is important to highlight the calculating economy seen by Heidegger: “Pain is from ‘because’, not from ‘due to’… mourning does not lament, it does not seek to fill the place that was left empty… mourning without mourning is only conceivable outside of economics (VIII.3)” (pg. 328).
Pain is not the resignation of absolute interiority: “the subject who works on identity, returning to himself in his interiority, assimilating the world, is incapable of pain” (pg. 329), while other thinkers stopped in anguish or in the search through difference or even through the subject destined for an “absolute spirit”, Heidegger sees in pain a “fundamental affective tone of melancholy” (pg. 329), it is the tone of being… of finitude… of finite thought, “ it is the identical feature that, as the basis of a certain formal manner, supports every fundamental tonality occupied by some content, the main feature that, as the same, is the basis of the mode as the respective tuning” (pg. 330).
So pain, for Heidegger and I suppose for Han (he treats it a little differently in the palliative society), !pain is not the eye that cries, or the face contorted by hunger or torture”, pain opens a space in which thinking becomes possible for the first time… a space without anthropological traces, and from which the subject disappeared… thinking would be, a gift of pain” (pg. 331).
The conclusion of this topic: “the rift of pain drags the veiled march of grace until an unused advent of clemency” (pg. 332), which is why we venerate power, violence and the lack of vision of true peace, love outside the bubbles, selfishness and ultimately a lack of “clemency”, it may seem like a religious matter only, but it is the search for the essence of Being.
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.
Waiting for hope greater than the rush
22
May
Someone wrote that hope would not be the verb
wait, but Alexandre Dumas wrote: “all human wisdom is summed up in two words: wait and hope”, so hope is articulated with wait as trust with confidence, synonymous with hope, as we have already said in another post she opposes the fear, anguish and emptiness of modern nihilism, themes already developed in Byung-Chul’s reading of Heidegger.
We want to reread Han’s reinterpretation of Waiting or Containment, VII 2.3 which begins on page 302, as we said previously this is the author’s longest essay and perhaps (I think so) his first truly philosophical writings, since it combines Heidegger with his vision of Kant, Hegel, Derridá and Lévinas, the latter seems to the author’s taste.
Chul-Han states that this is the author’s initial affective tone, when writing his youthful poem, in 1910: “in front of the gate of the spring garden / we wait and listen / until the larks fly / until the songs and the violins / the murmur of the fountains / the silver / bells of the flocks / become a universal chorus of joy” (Han, pg. 302 quoting Heidegger), as the author says it seems “sung in naive images” but late Heidegger seems to wait for “the day of Being” which also resonates naively, but “waiting in Heidegger is not linked to a chronological date nor to an empirical event” … it is “a singular movement, in a flat (non) intentionality, in a (non-) peculiar economy” (page 303), “does not wait for a deficiency to be repaired” (idem).
In the seminar on Heraclitus, Byung-Chul wrote, he makes the difference between waiting and having hope: “having hope always includes counting on something, while waiting – if we stick to the word – is an attitude of conformity […] Having hope it means “to be firmly occupied with something”, while in waiting there is resignation, reserve” (pg. 304) so I think, in hope there is a confidence in what I am occupied with.
However, he completes the idea of waiting with restraint, he will write: patience and waiting are “basic traits of restraint” (pg. 305), thus it articulates in the face of the “infinite absence of a tangible counterpart”, “it is the basic trait of serenity” , the lack of contemporary serenity is largely due to a lack of waiting, restraint and patience.
There is thus an articulation between the “not yet” and the “already”, so “Heidegger’s waiting cannot be described as the intentionality of waiting until the end” (pg. 306), “nothing happens only in waiting, which distances itself from the impatient putting-in-front-of-itself, from the intentionality of representation” (pg. 307), in this Heidegger will explain how “renunciation is a counter-economic measure”, he states quoted by Han: “True renunciation – that is , sustained and achieved by a genuinely expansive fundamental affective tone – is creative and generating. By allowing her former possession to go, she receives, and not later as a reward; Bearing in mourning the need to renounce giving in is in itself a reception” (Han, pg. 307, citing Heidegger).
Thinking learns to be grateful by learning to renounce, wrote Han and quoting Heidegger: “Renunciation is a gratitude in not denying oneself, that is where renunciation lies. Renunciation is having to be grateful and, therefore, gratitude” (pg. 308), we theorize here in countless posts the issue of power, renunciation is its position and opposite, “only the gift, which is only possible beyond the economy, makes conceivable gratitude” (pg. 309) and thus it is a “symbolic retribution” “a non-economic thought, which distances itself from the “calculative understanding” (pg. 309), “grateful thinking radically questions the autonomy of the subject without installing a trans-objective instance of power” (idem) and concludes that the “autonomous and trans-objective” “structure would restore the economy” (pg. 309).
Trusting is thus an articulation of the containment of waiting with patience in hope, whoever trusts is capable of renouncing and being grateful, and has his payment in these gifts.
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.
Ukraine may be just one step in the war
20
May
Fears are growing that the Russian advance in
northern Ukraine will be able to reach and capture the city of Kharkiv, the second largest in Ukraine and of undisputed industrial and military importance, the scenario could be more serious than one thinks.
There is no ideological connection, but a tactical analysis of the second war, Germany, before invading Poland, annexed Austria, a country with many common traditions and a very similar linguistic structure, the event known as Anschluss (connection or annexation) occurred in May 11-13, 1938, the invasion of Poland took place on the 1st. from E
The basis of conflicts is always this: a certain culture, ethnicity or people considers themselves entitled to dominate other peoples due to their “superiority” by any criteria.
The signs that Russia would not stop there are in several speeches from the Kremlin, recently Putin said that NATO “is messing with fire”, and also claims possession of the Svalbart islands (map) currently owned by Norway, which has already been challenged by Putin who declared: “The Russia’s right to Svalbard cannot be challenged!”
On the NATO side, France had already declared the possibility of a direct NATO confrontation, financial aid continues to be sent, recently Estonia declared that it could send “rearguard” troops to assist Ukraine, however the country’s Defense Minister, Hanno Pevkur, told the European media outlet ERR on May 14 that such talks “got nowhere” in Tallin, and that Estonia would not make a decision alone, but this reveals that there were “talks”.
The US continues to send millions of dollars in aid to Ukraine, but with the elections approaching this weakens the Biden government, the elections will take place in early November.
Another worrying news these days is that a helicopter carrying the President of Iran Ebrahim Raisi and the country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs crashed this Sunday (19) while crossing a mountainous area in heavy fog upon returning from a visit to the Azerbaijan border, the information originated from the Iranian authority.]
Apparently the accident was due to fog, Raisi since being elected in 2021 is known for violent repression of anti-government protests and pushed nuclear negotiations with world powers, Iran is also an important player for its opposition to Israeli attacks in the Gaza region, now in its last stronghold, which is the Rafah region.
There is always hope when people show solidarity with the suffering, the floods in the south awaken the Brazilian people, but we cannot stop there as there are serious rates of illness in addition to the Zika virus that is taking over the country, CNN being the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has been alerted to the outbreak.
There is a voice of truth
17
May
Although it is a preceding chapter in the book “The Heart of Heidegger”, chapter
IV “Voice” could be a conclusion by Byung-Chul, however this is correct as it would not be a Heideggerian conclusion, the epigraph which is a quote from the book of Kings to the prophet Isaiah is symbolic: “Go out and stand on this mountain before the face of the Lord… and it came to pass, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his face […]” (Han, pg. 107 ).
He searches the “series of indications” in Heidegger’s “Four Seminars”, the first is listening than writing, he proposes that there is a connection with metaphysics, while writing is fixed in “logocentrism”, he puts the listener in an affective tone of the appropriating event? And he responds with Plato’s speech about writing as “betrays the living and animated speech of the wise man” (Han, pg. 110), as it withdraws into interiority in time, differs from Hegel who sees “the truth of space” , interestingly the one who claims the story.
“The voice also fulfills the need for an unobstructed interiority, undisturbed by an exteriority” (Han, pg. 111) and it is important that “It creates the appearance of an absolute unworldly interiority” (pg. 111) and it is not about of the egocentrism of Cartesian reason, and of idealism: “hearing-oneself-speak, the fundamental formula of subjectivity, does not do justice to all the phenomenality of the voice” (pg. 113), it questions the narcissistic economy of the mirror.
The flute and the voice for Plato and also in Aristotle are very similar to the human voice, Aristotle wrote: “Now, the singing and the sound of the flute mix as a result of their similarity […]. Furthermore, the flute, due to its sound and its similarity (with the voice), can hide many errors in singing […]” (Aristotle apud Han, pg. 116).
The Being-there of Being and Time (Heidegger) “certainly cannot be suspected of narcissistic blindness. Being-there does not settle inside without windows. Existence means being-outside” and goes beyond “Being-there is at home outside the world” (Han, pg. 118), but neither Heidegger nor Han go all the way in this elaboration, that is, being at home and outside the world world what they really are.
They identify that “being-there relies on the voice that propagates”, and that the “strange voice” reveals itself as belonging to being-there (Han, pg. 119), and who is “the one who calls and the listener are identical” (pg. 119), and who is “the one who calls and the listener are identical” (pg. 119) since “this voice does not carry any meaning, any concept” (pg. 120).
This unity of Being and Being-with-Other cannot be achieved without this true non-egocentric, non-polarizing and non-individual spirituality, a trinitarian concept is needed, that is, there is a third Person who unites the ear and the listener in one thing There is only one final point missing in this conversation between Heidegger and Byung-Chul (in the image the painting by Tsherin Sherpa (Nepal), Lost Spirits, 2014.).
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.
Reason and division
16
May
As said in the previous post, the subject of idealism
“has no fear”, says Byung-Chul “in this space without shadows of transparency, evacuated by the ray of certainty, there is neither surprise nor fear” (pg. 263), the author also rereads Descartes who “projected from his insatiable need for security is sterile, ghostly and uninhabitable” (pg. 263) and this “compulsion for security” leads to the dark, and even Kant’s correction that is saved by “repelling” and “ reinterpret” the imagination (pg. 266).
But reminds Byung-Chul that Kant in his Foundation of Metaphysics looked at the unknown dimension of human existence, the “disquieting unknown” although he is trapped in the “subjective deduction” that leads to the obscure, and recognizes “that it tunes us with the terrors of the abyss ” (Han citing Kant, pg. 267) and that in the “inner horror” “that every mystery carries with it” (pg. 267) and that it is in this “nakedness of anguish” that transforms the subject’s vulnerability.
In Being and Time, Han explains, “anxiety does not bring being-there to the proximity of the ecstatic amplitude that he sees in the late Heidegger”, nor to the proximity of “alienation” from “courage towards the abyss”, and Han concludes: “anxiety wrests the existence of the domestic order from “relational completeness”, taking it to the “region”, to the “world as such”, but at its center resides the self” and here explains the anguish: “Anguish it only leads to hypertrophy of the self” (Han, pg. 268).
Heidegger made an essential ontological discovery, where the rupture of the subject is “the being-there is what calls and the called at the same time […] what calls is the being-there that […] is distressed by its power to be” (Han citing Heidegger, pg. 269), in this “a negotiator’s soliloquy” takes place, but it is conducted between two selves, that is, between the impersonal self and the authentic self” (pg. 269), This division occurs both within the being-there and in the reaction with others, “out of anguish at the voice of the other, the being-there covers its ears” (pg. 269).
Thus this division or disunity arises within man, and it is in this “strangeness of being in suspension, in which being-there can approach a growing lack of foundation” (Han citing Heidegger, pg. 270), it is “in anguish that a certain epoché occurs”, the suspension of phenomenological judgment of Husserl, professor of Heidegger, in it the network of references, woven by the purpose of “for what”, the totality relates and its intersubjective implication collapse, in my conclusion here, unity is born and lives in it.
This conclusion, which is neither Heidegger’s nor Byung-Chul’s, is possible because the latter writes: “they are in a certain way “bracketed”, the “neutral” Impersonal and its “dictatorship” are “inhibited”, this “collapse of the world” (Han, pg. 270), reduce “being-there to a solipsistic sphere of being, a sphere of the “pure ‘fact that…” of one’s own isolated condition of being thrown” (pg. 270), it is “the residue of the epoché, the authentic self, marks the center of gravity of the ‘there, from which the world that has slipped away must be recovered from nothingness or must be filled explicitly with the “stability of the self” (Han, pg. 271) .
This division resulting from reason prevents a true ontology, see that Heidegger even uses the word “dictatorship” of certainty, of the self, of the empire of pure reason where there is no room for the enigma, the doubt, the mystery and the completeness of the being, then it is reduced to “anguish”, part of life, but in which being-there must not stop, nor “collapse”.
Reason, or the criticism of pure reason, is not exhausted in itself, it contains anguish, it needs uncertainty, mystery and full “inner” life.
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.
Resistance of the spirit: overcoming anguish
15
May
Despite being written well before the current
crisis, Byung-Chul’s reading of Heidegger shows an extraordinary knowledge of current affairs and proves that in fact this crisis was born from a profound crisis of thought, the central chapter on “Heidegger’s Heart” points out for anguish and terror, speaking in advance of the current polycrisis.
It starts with what is the current central focus: “a basic principle of the economy is security” (pg. 257), and as it should be, it goes to the heart of current thought, which is idealism and its poly-ideological ideologue Hegel, quoting Bataille: “Hegel, I imagine, reached the extreme. He was still young and thought he was going crazy. I even imagine that he invented the system to escape. […] Finally, Hegel returns to the seen abyss to annul it. The system is cancellation” (Bataille, apud Han, pg. 258).
“The Hegelian subject longs for the position of power of the conscious author, who is troubled by no uncertainty, nor threatened by any destiny” (pg. 260), the idea of hope and spiritual resistance (his spirit is the taste for power), “it is not bowed by the rigid and indeclinable presence”, “negativity is welcome as a leaven of truth” (pg. 261) and thus it is more about destroying it than affirming it as hope and vision of the future.
In it, the negative is articulated as the “feeling of violence” (Han citing Hegel), which drags consciousness from one death to another (Han, 261), and war is inevitable.
It was not the owners of power and its imperial articulation who created feelings of war, the idea of violence is inherent to idealist thought, in it the “subjective interiority, which suggests absolute knowledge” (pg. 260), Hegel finds salvation in system, “kills” the “insistent plea” and becomes “modern man” (pg. 261).
Apparently the “subject is not afraid”, “the enigma gives way to the rule” so there is no place for mystery, for the divine and for eternal life, being in the world means being under the rules of violence, indifference and death.
The resistance of hope is being in coexistence with idealistic reality, having a true asceticism that longs for true joy.
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.
Asceticism and social ascension
14
May
The idea of ascension is linked to growth on the
social scale, but this type of ascension does not refer to asceticism, that which morally and virtually (in terms of virtue) someone elevates.
The idea of access to social goods and public visibility is also not linked to asceticism, we live in a time in which social notoriety through modern digital media resources, advertising and the cultural industry have existed since the beginning of the last century, does not indicate a spiritual and moral asceticism, often being exactly the opposite (in the photo Philosopher in Meditation by Rembrandt, 1632).
The times of education for sociability, empathy and the common good are distant, now there is a confusing scenario where public visibility is mixed with sociability, empathy with modern mythology, there is no space for depth of thinking, or for astonishment. If faced with dark facts, everything seems to become a meme and reason for bad politics and bad social practices of polarization often justified only by “us against them”.
It is almost impossible to talk about asceticism in such a strange and exotic universe, not to say something more serious, it is not a question of returning to children’s stories with moral lessons or fantasy stories of kindness and innocence in a difficult and competitive world, this is also harmless However, if we do not rise spiritually we become worse and less humanized every day. An asceticism that takes us to a higher level of civilization is not only desirable but also makes the civilizing process possible and more fruitful for everyone.
When talking about a despiritualized asceticism, Peter Sloterdijk highlights the “exercise society” that is more destined for tension and competition than for leisure and human and social progress for all, also Edgar Morin when talking about resistance of the spirit, talks about a stance of hope contrary to the social polycrisis we are experiencing.
The reading we are doing of Heidegger read by Byung-Chul Han, penetrates this spirit: “Modern man”, the consumer of beings, staggers because of his “drunkenness of experiences” (pg. 243) from one unusual thing to another , it lacks the ascetic look of “astonishment” (pg. 244), that is, not acquiring anything unusual as fact.
This look of amazement that comes from Aristotle’s philosophy, capable of capturing our attention in the “untrodden space between” (pg. 246) that is capable of reviewing the “middle”.
There is a “suffering” in this that is an imprisonment of “not knowing how to get in or out” (pg. 247) and in such suffering there is a correspondence with what must be captured, what must be learned where “thinking is a capturing that suffers” worked by Heidegger to allow man to think between beings, which takes the affective tone.
When also criticizing the child’s astonishment, which he calls the first beginning, he emphasizes that he is not in this first house: “sustained breathing can mean the trans-epochal a priori of thinking”, (pg. 249).
Byung-Chul remembers that Lévinas dedicates his “main work” (as he considers it): autrement qu’etre or au-delà de essence (beyond being or beyond essence) to astonishment, which frees the imprisonment of the self to the in-itself (a category dear to Hegel), which places the self in “a passivity that is more passive than the passivity of matter” (pg. 250, citing Lévinas).
Although he recognizes that there is this astonishment in postmodernism, Lyotard reminds us (Das inhumane, pg. 163) quoting Boileau in “The sublime and the avant-garde”, the “sublime is, strictly speaking, nothing that can be proven or shown, but something wonderful that grabs, that shakes and that moves with sensitivity”.
He concludes this chapter, which he called “The Sustained Breath”, that “astonishment imposes silence on the subject and his work of synthesis”, and concludes: “It is a breath of thought that perseveres before synthesis, without stopping thinking” ( p. 252).
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.
