Arquivo para a ‘Linguagens’ Categoria
Beyond pain and agony
06
Nov
Both personal and humanitarian crises must bring
about a new dawn and a greater glory than the civilizing process has allowed.
Edgar Morin, when analyzing the polycrisis we are experiencing, makes an analysis of a certain agony:
“If we consider globally the two critical cyclones of the world wars of the twentieth century and the unknown cyclone in formation, if we consider the mortal threats to humanity coming from humanity itself, if we consider finally and above all the current situation of entangled and inseparable polycrises, then the planetary crisis of a humanity still incapable of realizing itself as humanity can be called agony, that is, a tragic and uncertain state in which the symptoms of death and birth struggle and confuse each other” (Morin, 2003, p. 97).
And he concludes: “A dead past does not die, a nascent future cannot be born” (idem).
He seeks to save here what is beyond these pains and difficulties: “There is a global advance of blind forces, of positive feedback, of suicidal madness, but there is also a globalization of the demand for peace, democracy, freedom, tolerance…” (Morin, idem) maintaining hope.
But the scenario was already difficult when he wrote the book: “The struggle between the forces of integration and those of disintegration is not only located in relations between societies, nations, ethnicities, religions, it is also located within each society, within each individual” (idem) it is an inner struggle…” (idem).
Are we doomed to this,” he writes: ”Are we hopelessly compromised in the race towards generalized cataclysm? From which birth do we hope to emerge? Or will we continue, by leaps and bounds, towards a planetary Middle Ages of regional conflicts, successive crises, disorders, regressions – with only a few islets preserved?” (p. 98).
This way out is the rediscovery of our earthly purposes, which is the subject of the following pages and which we have already touched on, this path requires reflection and a return to balance and peace.
MORIN, E. and Kern, Anne-Brigitte. (2003) Terra-Pátria, transl. by Paulo Azevedo Neves da Silva. Brazil, Porto Alegre: Sulina.
Querela pacis and the true life of peace
01
Nov
Although a philosopher with many limitations,
Erasmus of Rotterdam, more than 500 years ago, wrote Querela Pacis, a lament for Peace, which spoke in the first person about Peace and said “peace always needs someone to give it a voice”, it is rather an attitude from within the Being.
Byung-Chul Han’s texts, three of which I would highlight: The Society of Tiredness, The Crisis of Narrative and Vita Contemplativa, may seem alienating in a world on the brink of war, but it is a text that also points to this path, an inner peace that gives voice to the world of pure externality.
He says in The Crisis of Narrative: “Philosophy as ‘poetry’ (mythos) is a risk, a beautiful risk. It narrates, even dares, a new way of living and being” (Han, 2023, p. 106), italic highlights by the author, he even points to the Enlightenment and Kant’s conception of the soul as ‘daring’, but they are narratives and later recalls that Nietzsche points to a ‘transnarrated’ world.
It is from this author that he points to a world where “a narrative of the future, based on a ‘hope’, on a ‘faith’ in tomorrow and the day after tomorrow” (Han, 2023, p. 108) is the same one that the author points to in another text as the “already” but not “yet”.
What has happened to philosophy today, and this has spilled over to the other sciences, is that “the moment philosophy claims to be a science, to be an exact science, its decline begins. Philosophy as a science denies its imaginary narrative character” (p. 108).
As the author says, “it deprives itself of its language. It becomes mute” (idem), exhausted in the administration of history, and incapable of narrating (p. 109), hence all the modern narratives.
Then the author points to narration as a cure, from pages 111 to 129, to end in the next chapter “the narrative community”, which recovers the ability to narrate and imagines “a world family” (p. 125), beyond nation and identity, the desired peace.
The pax romana and even eternal peace (Kant) do not leave the confines of personal narratives or group-restricted identity; this narration of the citizen of the world must come from voices that have the capacity to see humanity as a family, as a whole in diversity.
This is the paradigm of complexity developed in this week’s posts: “the individual lives in the whole and the whole in the individual. It is through poetry that the highest sympathy and coactivity originate, from the most intimate community” (Han, p. 125, recalling a text from Schriften Novalis), this peace comes from the inner voice, but points to the collective, to humanity.
It is this beatific, divine and true peace that can give voice to effective and lasting peace.
Han, Byung-Chul. (2023) A crise da narração. Transl. Daniel Guilhermino. Brazil, Petrópolis: Vozes.
If the night of humanity comes
31
Oct
What to do if the crisis of civilization reaches
its human limits and continues to humanize itself? In previous posts, we discussed Edgar Morin’s awareness of “our earthly purposes” in chapter 4 of his book Earth and Homeland
It is here that the author also addresses the apparent paradox: conversation/revolution, it is about understanding change without abandoning the main humanitarian principles: “Awareness of our terrestrial roots and our planetary destiny is a necessary condition for realizing humanity and civilizing the Earth” (Morin, 2003, p. 99) because the adjective “revolutionary” has become reactionary and heavily tainted with barbarism” (idem).
The author goes on to say: “Another problem arises here: is there a power of ideas over reality, which would presuppose a reality and a power of ideas? As we have already shown, ideas and myths acquire reality, impose themselves on spirits and can even impose themselves on historical reality, violating it, diverting it” (Morin, 2003, p. 126) and this is very relevant in the current context.
This is complemented by Morin when he points out that “conserving/revolutionizing: it is the paradox of progressing/resisting”, where resisting is “being on the defensive on all fronts against the returns and manifestations of the great barbarism, written before the new millennium, this is very current in the face of the possibility of war.
Morin wrote at that time, which today is the fulfillment of a prophecy: “The spring of the people of 1989-1990 suffered a freeze. All its seeds of freedom are on the verge of destruction. The great barbarism makes a great return” (Morin, 2003, p.100).
Resisting now then means not abandoning humanitarian values, also nowadays Morin spoke about “resistance of the spirit” which is preserving within ourselves the most cherished values of life, humanism and belief in truly “divine” values.
Not believing that we were made for war, for barbarism and have a cruel destiny, although the world outlook is bleak, we must resist with the armor of peace.
Morin, Edgar & Kern, Anne-Brigitte (2003). Terra-Pátria. Transl. Paulo Azevedo Neves da Silva. Brazil, Porto Alegre: Sulina.
The crisis of simplistic thinking and the complex
30
Oct
The epistemology of complexity is a branch
of epistemology that studies complex systems and associated emergent phenomena. In some environments, such as mechanics and physics, there has been a tendency to delve deeper into what until then had only been called dynamic systems, and now non-linear or chaotic systems.
The process of industrialization provided great support for a hitherto unthinkable development of the natural sciences, then the generation of technologies: steam and combustion, then electricity, and everything seemed to move in perfect gear.
Until a certain moment, everything was characterized by a movement that Edgar Morin called breaker-and-reducer, both in the sciences and in the arts, the idea of reducing what is complex to the simple (for example, looking for a reality in the smallest part of physics until then, the atoms) that gradually became complex (sub-particles in increasingly microscopic dimensions until reaching the quantum universe).
The particularities of subatomic physics introduced uncertainties and showed the limits of reductionism, which was leading to a distorted view of reality, showing its uncertainties and naivety, the pretension of capturing an objective reality that could be independent of the observer, when the observer himself is part of the phenomenon.
So this reductionist logic of physics was extended to the social and personal universe, and apparently simple mechanisms could solve problems that are complex, and all the problematization resulting from this reality was not observed.
Complex thinking is not limited to the academic world, it overflows and is present in various sectors of society, as well as simplistic reasoning that does not take into account the complexity and diversity of social life.
Even in the spiritual world (or subjective, as you might think, when we see objects outside the reality of the subject) this misunderstanding leads us to a wide door, where the basic values of humanism can be ignored and life fragmented.
Thus the door through which simplistic and trivial logics pass leads to great and problematic mistakes, while the complexity of a socially just and true path is not reduced to simplistic and unhuman ideological forms.
Passing through the narrow door will never be an easy path, but it is the only one that can lead humanity to a sustainable and truly human future of peace, fraternity and social values that respect human dignity.
Beyond “generous” fraternity
29
Oct
Edgar Morin’s book, in chapter 3, explores the
“biological sources of fraternity: mutual aid”, addresses the misinterpretation of social Darwinism, “The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection” (1859-1860), as well as other authors in his book Method 2 “The Life of Life”, where he points out that there is a solution to the problem between cooperation and conflict, in order to understand societies as well.
Thus, he responds to this “complex relationship”, present in all societies, there is a “complementary and antagonistic (dialogical) relationship between solidarity and conflict.
The fourth chapter opens with the philosophy of Heraclius (540-470 B.C.) “Concord and discord: father and mother and all things”. The author uses the idea of the universe itself: its formation, development, dispersion and death, further supported by the discoveries of the James Webb mega telescope (the book is older) and today with the expansion of the worldview it is confirmed.
The fifth chapter finally arrives at a more complex conception of fraternity, for Morin the three notions: paternity, maternity and fraternity, argues that, unlike what patriarchal society has shown, the concept of father is late in the history of humanity.
He recalls that the idea of male (father) and female (mother) is not a universal concept for all of nature, and with this the relationship of brotherhood (a more horizontal concept of fraternity) is what should prevail, but he recalls that the concepts of birth and dependence are very important for mutualism and cooperation, which are present in all forms of life.
To develop the sixth chapter, he draws on personal experiences, and recalls that the spheres of fraternity within a family are the origin of the external fraternities that we find in social relationships throughout life.
The author’s experiences will become more explicit in Chapter 7 “My Fraternities”, which are the author’s experiences and a short, inspiring chapter that clarifies the author’s position on such an important topic in the dramatic context of civilization in which we live.
The author thus presents what he calls, in chapter 10, an “Oasis of Fraternity”, where modern society, of globalization, opposes the reduction of human life to only a “techno-economic” dimension that reduces the human to a particular, more material dimension of life.
Long before the current crisis, which Morin seemed to anticipate, he will write in the final chapters “Changing paths?” where our social environmental problems are a response to Sapiens demens (linked only to technology, transhumanism and now artificial intelligence), only a radical change of path can we recover serenity, peace and a return to the civilizing process.
Morin, E. (2019) Fraternidade: para resistir à crueldade do mundo, trad. Edgar de Assis Carvalho, Brazil, SP: São Paulo, Ed. Palas Athena.
Conserving/revolutionizing and resisting
25
Oct
What to do if the crisis of civilization reaches
human limits and continues to humanize itself ?
Edgar Morin’s answer can be found in chapter 4 of the book Earth-Land when he sets out “Our terrestrial goals”, where he states: “Awareness of our terrestrial roots and our planetary destiny is a necessary condition for realizing humanity and civilizing the Earth” (Morin, 2003, p. 99), and stresses that the former is conservative and neglects “deliberately here the adjective ‘revolutionary’, which has become reactionary and very tainted with barbarism” (idem) and it is enough to see the atrocities of the escalation of current wars.
Conservative because “it is a question of preserving, of safeguarding not only the cultural and natural diversities degraded by inexorable processes of standardization and destruction, not only the civilizational conquests threatened by the returns and manifestations of barbarism” (idem p. 99) we cannot regress in the civilizational milestones we have already reached, but we must evolve.
It’s a paradox, but a justifiable one: “Conservation needs the revolution that would ensure the pursuit of hominization” (Morin, 2003, p. 100) where the paradox “apparently contradictory, conserve/revolutionize: it is the paradox progress/resist” (idem), where resisting is “being on the defensive on all fronts against the returns and manifestations of the great barbarism, written before the new millennium, this is very current in the face of the possibility of war.
To resist, for the author, is to oppose two growing barbarities: the “hateful cruelty” that expresses itself “in murder, torture, individual and collective rages” and the “anonymous cruelty that comes from the techno-bureaucratic barbarity” of assumed or presumed totalitarian states.
Thus, the author, who speaks of “hyper-specialization”, “anonymization, abstraction, commodification, which together lead to the loss not only of the global”, sees the imperative need to resist this mentality, which necessarily leads to barbarism and the process of degradation.
Thus the search “for hominization must be conceived as the development of our psychic, spiritual, ethical, cultural and social potentialities” (p. 101) is part of this paradox of resisting/revolutionizing, so development must be conceived in an anthropological way, i.e. “breaking with the conception of progress as a historical certainty in order to make it an uncertain possibility…” (p. 102).
And he adds that he must “understand that no development is acquired forever: like all living and human things, it suffers the attack of the principle of degradation and needs to be constantly regenerated” (p. 102) and points out the false idea of development, because “: the underdevelopment of the developed increases precisely with their techno-economic development” (p. 104), war and conflict are precisely the “developed”.
Thus the notion of underdevelopment: “however barbaric it may be, it establishes an anthropological link between the so-called developed and the so-called underdeveloped; it encourages useful technical and medical aid – drilling wells, developing energy sources, fighting endemic diseases and nutritional deficiencies – even though it is carried out under conditions of economic exploitation, natural degradation and miserable urbanization that cause new evils” (p. 105).
It is therefore necessary to “tolerate” differences and even establish advantages over them, to no longer ignore or demonize different cultures, to establish aid and agreements for global development and the process of broad humanization, which the author calls “hominization”.
Morin, Edgar Morin & Kern, Anne-Brigitte. (2003) Terra-Patria. Transl. Paulo Azevedo Neves da Silva. Brazil, Porto Alegre : Sulina.
A new Copernican revolution
24
Oct
The center of our universe is no longer the sun,
at the center of our galaxy there is a black hole, although the name seems to be negative, according to new theories after the James Webb super telescope it is just a new reality beyond current physical thinking, called Sagittarius A* it has a diameter of 35 million kilometers and is the most massive object in the galaxy (first photo taken in 2017 by the Event Horizon telescope, Feryal Ozel).
Edgar Morin points out that this and other scientific changes of our century are more “formidable” than the apparently revolutionary ideas of our time, which have changed little or nothing in the social, human and world conception we still have.
Morin wrote: “We have had to abandon an ordered, perfect, eternal universe for a universe in dispersive becoming, born in irradiation, in which order, disorder and organization act dialogically, that is, in a complementary, competing and antagonistic way” (Morin, 2003, p. 62), and also: “we are in a universe that is neither banal, nor normal, nor evident” (p. 63) and we should also think of human and social life in this way.
Thus, our tiny home in an almost infinite universe is “… a small cosmic wastebasket transformed in an improbable way not only into a very complex star, but also into a garden, our garden” (p. 64) and this is how we should think and not about conflicts.
“Our terrestrial family tree and our terrestrial identity card can now finally be known” (p. 64) and points to this as evidence of our problems.
The first piece of evidence he points to is economic unruliness: “We cannot consider the economy as a closed entity. It is an autonomous instance dependent on other instances (sociological, cultural, political), which are also autonomous/dependent in relation to each other” (p. 65), so the current wars are nothing more than a dispute over markets where we could recognize the interdependence and autonomy of each economy.
The second is the ecological crisis: the Meadows report commissioned by the Club of Rome in 1972, but also: “the great local catastrophes with far-reaching consequences: Seveso, Bhopal, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, drying up of the Sea of Arai, pollution of Lake Baikal, cities on the verge of suffocation (Mexico, Athens)” and now more recently Fukushima and natural disasters.
He also pointed to the crisis of development and the universal crisis of the future, the one we are in today, with hatreds and world wars escalating where love and fraternity are suffocated.
“Thus, everywhere, the development of the science/technology/industry triad loses its providential character. The idea of modernity remains all-conquering and full of promise wherever there are dreams of well-being and liberating technical means” (p. 76).
Without a return to common sense, global cooperation, fraternity the crisis is inevitable.
MORIN, Edgar e Kern, Anne-Brigitte. (2003) Terra-Patria. Transl. Paulo Azevedo Neves da Silva. Brazil, Porto Alegre.
Identity and the human family
22
Oct
We have regional identities and cultures, linked
to nations. The fact that nationalities exist should not be contrary to the existence and vision of a human family, not just because of our genetic and animal identity, but mainly because of our common life and relationships.
Edgar Morin, in his book Terra-Pátria (Editora Sulina, 2003) traces the origins of a vision of man linked to nature (and consequently to the Cosmos), which will unfold in the visions of Bacon, Descartes, Buffon and Marx (Morin, 2003, p. 54) who made man “an almost supernatural being who progressively assumes the empty place of God” (idem), but this triggered an arrogant and authoritarian vision before the Cosmos and the Other.
As a result, we have regressed in our planetary vision: “The identity of man, that is, his complex unity/diversity, has been concealed and betrayed, at the very heart of the planetary era, by the specialized/compartmentalized development of the sciences” (p. 61), a xenophobic vision of nationalism and identity now explodes, inhibiting a vision of the human family.
Morin writes: “Nation and ideology have built new barriers, aroused new hatreds. The Islamist, the capitalist, the communist, the fascist are no longer human. “ (p. 60), note that this was written in 1993 (the original first edition in French).
Our vision of man has narrowed, Morin points out: “Philosophy, locked in its higher abstractions, has only been able to communicate with the human in experiences and existential tensions such as those of Pascal, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, without, however, ever being able to link the experience of subjectivity to anthropological knowledge” (idem, p. 61), the vision of these authors seems ethereal.
This has also happened in the humanities: “Anthropology, a multi-dimensional science (articulating within it the biological, the sociological, the economic, the historical, the psychological) that would reveal the complex unity/diversity of man, cannot really be built unless it is correlated with the meeting of disciplines … “ (pg. 62), and so the human fragment is translated into fragmented thought.
It is this fragmentation translated into war and hatred that demands an unveiling of Being, called for by Heidegger and thinkers who followed him (Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hannah Arendt and others), and which is also thought of by Morin: “Hence the primordial need to unveil, to reveal, in and through its diversity, the unity of the species, human identity, anthropological universals” (p. 60), to unveil (rather than re-veil, which is to veil again) as modern ontology says.
The human family can be unveiled in its common interests: ecology, economic balance and, above all, peace.
Morin, Edgar Morin & Kern, Anne-Brigitte. (2003) Terra-Patria. Transl. Paulo Azevedo Neves da Silva. Brazil, Porto Alegre : Sulina.
Power, Anger and Time
18
Oct
At a time of threats and hatreds that call into
question not only peoples, nations and cultures, but even the process of civilization, it is good to review what we think of power and anger.
Sloterdijk (2006) had developed the question of Anger in current times, in a context of political psychology, values such as pride, ambition and vanity contribute to what can be called, in times of networks, a verticalization of social life.
The author explains that the social theories of “social stratification based on domination, regression and privilege” have been replaced by ideas of individual disciplining (asceticism, virtuosity and performance), which are seen as the causes of vertical differentiation.
This seemed obvious both to Michel Foucault, the sponsor of this interpretative approach, who in the 1970s denounced the intimate relationship between discourse and discipline, and to the vision of the linguistic turn, in his famous language games, which linked the latter to behavioral figures and opened up to sociology (and some half-philosophies) the understanding of latent rituals, typical of communicative games.
Half-philosophies because Sloterdijk will contest this reading and also various strands of Anglo-American analytical philosophy, which see language games as egalitarian and relativist, which they are not.
The so-called vertical tension in Sloterdijk’s work has great relevance for ethics and pedagogy, as it establishes a hierarchy between values, without which ethics is sabotaged, and the educator, in pursuing something higher than the student, must have something more in his soul and body, and this is his discourse on “the exercise society”.
What these authors draw attention to is the contemporary destruction of interiority, a theme that Byung-Chul Han goes to the root of, but which Heidegger, Hannah Arendt and now Sloterdijk have already drawn attention to: being-in-the-world has destroyed what was considered for thousands of years to be the most important thing: radically distinguishing oneself from this world.
In Heidegger this discourse is already present, pointing out that man as someone who no longer has an interiority that can serve as a shelter, for the fugitive from the world that he would eventually choose to be, modern conditions, opposes the certainty of a more than true life on the horizon of reality or in a hypothetical “end of the world”, this was written long before today’s apocalyptic and pseudo-prophetic visions, without seeing the absence of asceticism.
Hans Jonas wrote: “act in such a way that the effects of your action do not endanger the permanence of authentic human life on earth!” (Jonas, 2006) and Edgar Morin calls for a (re)humanized humanity, finally reversing the process of violent power, hatred and war.
JONAS, Hans. (2006) Das Prinzip Verantwortung: Versuch einer Ethik für die technologische Zivilisation. Frankfurt Suhrkamp.
SLOTERDIJK, P. (2006) Zorn und Zeit. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Ontology, idealism and truth
16
Oct
Heidegger’s thought must start from the question
of Spirit in Hegel, read by Byung-Chul in Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit “in terms of the forgetfulness of being” (Heidegger’s central question), he sees it as an “arid self” that finds “its limitation in the being that meets it” (Han, p. 334 quoting Hegel).
Although he recovers Hegel, in part, in the epigraph to the last chapter: “truth is the whole”, he re-discusses dialectics and its metaphysics in idealism: “in relation to ‘just being’, which empties it to a name ‘that no longer names anything’, natural consciousness … when it becomes aware of being, assures itself that it is something abstract. “ (Han, 2023, pg 336).
Natural consciousness (seen in this way) “dwells on ‘perversities’ … “it tries to eliminate one perversity by organizing another, without remembering the authentic inversion” where ‘the truth of the essence of being is gathered into being’ (pg. 336 with quotes from Heidegger), which sees this as a step backwards and the forgotten, misunderstood ‘already’ (pg. 337), does not appear completely negated, it appears in the form of ‘not yet’ which is not a negation, nor a barricade, placed ‘next to the already prevents it from appearing’ (pg. 337).
There is a whole development in contrast to Hegel’s dialectic, more than a topic, it could well be a book, but the dialogue he engages in with Derridá and Adorno in the chapter on Mourning and the work of mourning, leads to his vision of the whole outside of dialectical abstraction, he says the concern with immortality, with death and with the work of mourning.
The “cardiographic” archive of the history of philosophy, in which the philosopher “works” to reverse the negative of being, is not the only secret in the heart of Plato or Hegel (p. 384).
This is what will form the basis of his “work of mourning”: “to be capable of death as death”, that is, to be capable of mourning, this “tragedy” “differs radically from the noisy work of mourning of the Hegelian dialectic” (Han, 2023, p. 385).
“Tears free the subject from his narcissistic interiority … they are the spell that the subject casts over nature“ (Han, p. 394) now quoting Adorno, and the author states that ‘Aesthetic Theory is the book of tears (idem) and that contrary to Kant, and that ’the spirit perceives, in the face of nature, less its own superiority than its own naturalness” (p. 395).
“The aesthetic experience shakes the narcissistic subject who thinks he is sovereign and causes the hardened principle of the ‘I’ to crumble … the tear of the shaken and moved subject proves to be capable of truth” (p. 395).
Capable of truth, of the infinite and for those who believe in God, not a God of passing goods and false joy, but that of the already, but not yet, that beyond the pain and transience of temporal things.
Han, B.C. (2023) Coração de Heidegger: sobre o conceito de tonalidade afetiva em Martin Heidegger. Transl. Rafael Rodrigues Garcia, Milton Camargo Mota. Brazil, Petrópolis: Vozes.
