Arquivo para a ‘Linguagens’ Categoria
Serenity, originality and peace
19
May
Serenity refers to the idea of a super quality of Being, it comes
from the Latin serenus, which is different from patience which comes from patientia, “resistance and submission” and is rather confused with serene.
Three qualities of the Self can be directly linked to serenity: peaceful, which means solving problems with peace, calm, which means keeping your inner peace at peace, and clear, which means expressing and communicating peace with clarity.
Heideger wrote a booklet on Serenity, at the initial chapter end it with a sentence that expresses in philosophy a synthesis of serenity: “when serenity towards things and openness to mystery awaken in us, we should reach a path that leads to a new ground. On this soil the creation of immortal works could put down new roots” (Heidegger, 1959, p. 27).
We are lacking in the conception of Being and that Heidegger highlights in his idea about the originary the idea of Region, as it was translated from German, but a nation could be the locus of belonging as Being in its true originary identity, Heidegger wrote:
“We are not and never are outside the Region, since as thinking beings […] we remain on the horizon […] The horizon is, however, the side of the Region facing our power of representation (Vor -stellen). The region surrounds us and shows itself to us as a horizon” (HEIDEGGER, 1959, p. 48).
Here it is necessary to return to a dilemma in Heidegger’s thinking, considering that being in the midst of the Region is to remain on the horizon: to be, but not to be, on this original path, means that it is a revelation of the Region, which becomes visible to the being, in it his Being is.
The philosopher states that serenity presupposes being free (Gelassensein) and the Region itself (Ge-eignet) and entrusts to the serene entity (gelassen) the guard of serenity. Now, if waiting is fundamental and decisive, what we are talking about is the appropriation to which “we belong to what we wait for” (Heidegger, 1959, p. 50)
The author does not ignore the absence of this concept in the West, a historical lack of knowledge: “the essence of thought cannot be determined from thought, that is, from waiting as such, but from the other of oneself (Anderer seiner selbst), that is, from the Region, which is insofar as it is religionalized” (Heidegger, 1959, P. 51).
This is where contemporary wars are based, without forgetting that many of them had their origin in the dispute over the territories of native peoples where their Being was completely ignored.
HEIDEGGER, M. (1959) Serenidade (Serenity). Lisboa: Instituto Piaget.
The Mapuche, ontology and peace
18
May
One of the most resilient native peoples of the colonization of the
Americas is the Mapuche people, there are more than a million people who study in the south of Chile and Argentina, and find themselves once again betrayed by governments that promise freedom to live as a nation and be respected.
But the truest interpretation, which refers to a kind of original ontology, is Mapúmche, which means all beings that inhabit the cosmos: living beings, trees, stones, water, wind, etc. it is likely that the arrival of the Spaniards reduced the word to Mapuche, which simply means peoples of the land.
I read with sadness that the new Boric government, which promised in a campaign to suspend restrictive measures in the region that receives the colonized name of “La Araucanía” (name given by the Spanish colonizers) has returned to be militarized because of claims to indigenous lands.
The Minister of the Interior, Izkia Siches, said when sending soldiers to the region: “We decided to make use of all the tools to provide security” to the region and the long saga of the Mapuche continues.
The Mapuche have always known that language unifies them, Western ontology says that language is the abode of being, and they rejected the name Araucanos, which resembles the Araucaria and transforms them into aboriginal peoples, also the exotic idea that Mapuche would be derived from the Greek, of a historian Kilapan Lonko, who wrote “El origen greco de los Araucanos”, a falsification of history.
Many Mapuche words entered the Chilean language, choclo (corn), huacho (illegitimate child), laucha (small mouse), quiltro (dog), ruca (house), etc. and a popular interpretation of mapuche is mapu (land), che (people in the sense of people), thus several places and cities in chile have the prefix hue: Carahue, Colhue, Pencahue and others.
The extract from the documentary “Los Araucanos”, entitled “Mapuches: idioma o mirror da alma” from 1978, which mistakenly calls them Araucanian peoples, shows the importance of the language that the Mapuche have always had, which refers to the ontology of the native peoples.
The historian and professor at the University of Chile, the Mapuche Rodrigo Huenchún, also explains that culture has been increasingly appropriated as a political manifestation since the Pinochet dictatorship. Elisa Loncon and many others.
The recognition of the culture of peoples, if its original roots are at the root of true peace, this is the drama of modern man, of forgetting being, his experiences and his roots.
A reading of Ulysses´s Joyce
12
May
It may seem complicated for an unsuspecting reader to
read James Joyce’s Ulysses, first its division that claims to have connections with Homer’s Ulysses, so for example Telemachy (part 1, chapters 1 to 3) focuses on characters (Telêmachus was the son of Ulysses) and Odyssey (part II, chapters 4 to 15) is the development of the action that takes place all of it on June 16, 1904, as we already posted after a friends party with Joyce became Bloomsday .
In part I, it’s eight o’clock in the morning at the Hammer Tower, where Stephen (Bloom’s son) lives with Buck Molligan, an Englishman Haines friend of Mulligan is present, they discuss the art, which is the backdrop for their ethical positions. : the tension between the two is because Stephen of an art integrates and that despises the (social) concessions for recognition, while Mulligan sees an art that gives in to social pressure supported by Haines who intends to study the renaissance in Irish Literature and admires the folklore , however it turns out to be anti-Semitic, part of the xenophobia that the Blooms suffer from the origin of their father Leopold Bloom, who is a Jewish-Hungarian immigrant.
Stephen sees Haines as the colonizer as Irish-England unionism dominates the conservative Irish landscape of the early 20th century, while Stephen defends independence although he sees Irish provincialism as small and is also critical of his Catholicism.
Proteus (god of the seas and son of Ocean in Greek mythology) reveals Stephen’s reflection on the visible and the invisible, the objective world as signs that require interpretation (and contextualization), the transformation of everything in time and space, in mind. It develops here subliminally the themes of mother, woman and fertility, Amor Filia.
In Calypso the novel goes to Rua Eccles, n. 7 where Leopold Bloom has his breakfast and prepares it for himself, his wife and the cat, he decides to eat pork kidney and goes to the butcher shop to buy it, on the way he sees a woman who awakens daydreams, returns home collects the mail and sees a letter from daughter Milly, another from Blazes Boylan addressed to Molly.
Blazes had organized a concert tour for Molly and he suspects that the woman is cheating on him with Blazes, eats the roasted kidney, goes to the bathroom and outside the house reads a newspaper. This chapter prepares an incarnation and Odysseus, Stephen’s spiritual father, the inner monologue prevails, but now the daydream goes to the problems of Zionism and eroticism, on the whole, is a space of Eros Love.
Bloom reads a letter addressed to Henry Flower, his pseudonym, the name refers to the flowering of the sexual desire that emerges (the direct correspondence in Homer is with the lotophagous (picture), the people who eat lotus and who are a region of danger in the Odyssey), finally reveals Bloom’s moral strain.
At the end of this topic is Molly in bed, reflecting on her husband, her meeting with Boylan, her past, her hopes, she too suspects a lover of her husband, aspires to a great future, is interrupted twice by the train whistle (a kind of time passing) and another for a start of menstruation, she thinks of the doctor, her children Stephen and the deceased, she remembers the first sex with Bloom.
There are ethical and aesthetic concerns, especially with Stephen in the book, which sets the stage for early 20th century Ireland, but there is an absence of Agape Love, except in Stephen’s conception of art, and this is the connection that James Joyce tries to make. between his Ulysses and Homer’s.
Joyce, J. (1983) Ulysses, Trad. António Houaiss. Portugal: Difel. (pdf)
Ulysses, Modern Novel and War
11
May
The whole structure of the modern novel almost always unfolds
around the modern romantic hero, so it is necessary that in the end he is realized within his personal objective and that has the appearance of universal, the Kantian aphorism of ethics: “Acts as if the maxim of your action should become, through your will, a universal law”, but it starts from the individual and not from the whole.
The whole is for the holistic, and in a certain way for the mystical, as they must be understood from the mythical characters of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey (928 BC-898 BC) to the characters of James Joyce’s Odysseus (1882-1941) .
In both there is a hero, Homer’s Ulysses and Joyce’s Leopold Bloom, a woman Penelope from Homer and Molly Bloom from Joyce, a son Telemachus from Homer’s Ulysses and Stephen Dedalus in Joyce’s novel, who goes to study in Paris and when he returns living in a circular fort called the Hammer Tower, with a rival Malachi and Buck Bullighan, the novel is written in the war period between 1914 and 1921 and a vision of the end of the world is a setting for Joyce.
In the Odyssey Ulisses will be away from home for 10 years, leaving Penelope and Telemaco, in Joyce’s novel, he puts Leopold Bloom in crisis with his wife’s betrayal and his son’s distance, updating filial (philia) and erotic (eros) love, but the The problem of agápe love is placed at the center of the crisis, which can be a common thread between the classical and the modern novel.
Another thread is the type of hero, the epic hero is a warrior who goes to war for the love of his people while the modern one faces war individually, in the fashion of Don Quixote and in the face of Kantian ethics, last week were made post of Kant’s Perpetual Peace and its limitations, but the root is in the distance from agape, a world of conquests and power where the interest prevails over the common good.
Agape love is not just religious or even altruistic, it exists in institutions for the poor, exiles, drug addicts, emigrants and efforts in the Pandemic, without them the number of dead and excluded in society would have already caused greater social crises than and would leave civilization without a perspective and without hope.
Joyce, James. (1983) Ulysses, Transl. António Houaiss. Portugal: Difel. (pdf) *in portuguese.
HOMERO. (2015) Ilíada e Odisseia, transl. Carlos Alberto Nunes. Brazil: Editora Nova Fronteira. (pdf) *in portuguese.
Being and listening in hermeneutics
06
May
Anyone who has hearing can hear, but it is less and less
common to listen carefully to the Other, this depends on the conception of Being that we intuitively have, which in more general terms means listening with the soul and the heart to what is being said.
The whole perspective of hermeneutical philosophy goes in this direction and it is not by chance that it has as a reference the work Being and Time by Heidegger, which among other things identifies language as the “house of being”, so to listen is to listen carefully to the Other, or in this case of hermeneutics: the text.
This development when it comes to text interpretation (but it can also be used more broadly for oral communication) is expressed as a hermeneutic circle and was more fully explained by Gadamer in his work “Truth and Method”.
Among the steps of hermeneutic “dialogue” is the recognition of preconceptions, not in the negative sense that is used in everyday life, but in the sense that we have a set of pre-established concepts when we start a reading or a conversation, the reading it is a listening of the author by the reader.
The immediacy and vicious circles of new media impede this circulation and accelerate the process that is called “swarm” by Byung-Chull Han or by “herd effect” in several authors who do not speak specifically of new media, but of dangers arising from processes such as war and denialism in the face of a Pandemic or dangers of various contaminations.
In the biblical perspective this means “my people listen to my voice and follow me” (Jn 10:27), in the current sense it is exactly the reading and interpretation of a text, and the hermeneutic methodology applies to this, it was even used in its beginning by Scheiermacher, even before Husserl.
In the biblical case, it is necessary to pay attention to the final part of the text (Jn, 10, 29) where we read that the Father (God) is the one who will snatch them and “no one will snatch them from the Father’s hand”, in this sense listen to it is also listening to the Holy Spirit through which we better understand decisions and paths adopted.
Being, interpretation and dialogue
05
May
The essential concept of philosophical hermeneutics
developed by Hans-Georg Gadamer criticizes the model of knowledge both of the romantic historical interpretation, which aims only to criticize or adhere to a reconstruction of the author’s intention (it is made mainly relative to the text) and has both a normative function when theological, when one looks at Being as language.
Thus, it corresponds to a requirement of meaning of the text, accepts the link with its content, does not aim to explain the theme or content of a text, accepts the binding character of the content, that is, it has an essential orientation to the human way of inhabiting the world , linked to culture.
To understand is, in this perspective, to apply, not in a mechanical or logical way (in the dual sense), but to translate the text into the very language of its concrete situation, in its entirety.
Understanding is like this, first of all, the act understood, applied to that situation or that something and thus has nothing to do with a doing and a technical knowledge, that is, the latter adds nothing to the way of being and the situation of the interpreter, which is mere automatic ability and cause-effect.
The rules of one’s own prejudices must then be put into play, opening the dialogue that they provide, thus a fusion of horizons occurs, then a new step of listening to the text, and only then is it possible to apply a meaning to the text and question up.
In this context, dialogue is possible, otherwise there is a dogmatic closure without the ability to listen to the Other beyond the preconceptions and intentions of readers and/or authors.
It is necessary to emphasize the need for mediation that is done through common ideas that are transmitted by the historical or literary tradition, for Gadamer, such mediation is what makes thinking and transmitting practices of relationship and communication, and without them there is difficulty in dialogue.
Phenomenology as a method for dialogue
04
May
Phenomenology is essential for a true dialogue because it
presupposes a “starting point” philosophically said, it presupposes an epoché (a suspension of judgment in the Greek sense) but the phenomenological epoché is a putting in parentheses, that is, it admits the dialogue with tradition or with the reader or interpreter of the text.
It emerged as a method in opposition to positivist thinking, through the studies of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), and as a method of philosophical investigation it will capture the essence and meaning of a certain thing, said by Husserl: “there is no consciousness, only consciousness. of something”, and this comes from a subcategory that is intentionality, Franz Brentano and Tomás de Aquino had worked this but only with a psychological or mental sense.
Said by Husserl it is: “the description of what appears or science that has as objective or project this description”, thus part of the idea that we project our intentionality when describing.
Heidegger will place it, retaking ontology now on a different plane from the psychological and placing it as a method: “the expression ‘phenomenology’ means, above all, a concept of method”, in this sense it will also be a break with idealism and traditional rationalism.
“One of the contributions of phenomenology to philosophy is in the way it treats judgments and meanings. Martín Heidegger does not separate reason from emotion, nor the subject from the object”.
The question of the existence of Being turns to the concern with the way of human experience, or our preconceptions or even our rationalizations, it cannot be isolated from the relationship with the world and with the Others, all contemporary philosophy seeks a a way of being objectified, isolated, whether objective or subjective, because this deviation is also observed in the field of poetics, subjectivity and religion.
The Being must represent a presence, a manifesto, or a relationship with the Other, and a requirement is the symmetry of this relationship, where each one is able to make a “void” to contain the Other, an epoché of their preconceptions, without which there is no dialogue.
A first look at this dialogue is the hermeneutic circle proposed in the figure above.
Perpetual Peace concept
28
Apr
Perpetual Peace was Kant’s political proposal, in a way it is expressed in the liberal view of thought about peace, with some nuances in countries from the Soviet period, but as a rule, the normal there is the Roman vision of the pax romana that was the submission of enemies.
As we saw in the previous post, for Kant, smart as snakes and false as doves, Machiavelli, in a very different way in his “Prince”, also spoke of dividing and ruling, a principle that is analyzed by Kant ( Divide et impera, p. 39), in this case it stops as a false freedom of opposing ideas when the supreme chief “disunites them and isolates them from the people”.
The work To perpetual peace was written by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, in 1795. The uniqueness of Kant’s contribution lies in his faith in a perpetual peace that is built because reason has more strength than power, “… reason, from the seat of the highest moral legislative power, condemns war as a juridical way and, on the other hand, makes the state of peace an immediate duty, which, however, cannot be established or guaranteed without a pact between peoples: – there must therefore be a federation of a special type, which can be called the federation of peace (foedus pacificum), which would be distinguished from the peace pact (pactum pacis), since the latter would try to end a war …” (KANT, 2008, p. 17-18).
But when would it then be fair to make war? What would be the limit of reason? Kant speaks first of revolt within a nation subjected to a tyrant: “Is revolt the legitimate means for a people to reject the oppressive power of the so-called tyrant [non titulo, sed exercitio talis (‘tyrant in the exercise of power, not in your denomination’)]? The rights of the people are forfeited and no injustice is done to them (the tyrant) through dethronement; in this respect there is no doubt. However, it is most unjust on the part of subjects to claim their right in this way, and they cannot complain of injustice if they are defeated in this struggle and then have to endure the most severe punishments” (Kant, 2008, p. 47).
As we saw in the previous post, for Kant, smart as snakes and false as doves, Machiavelli, in a very different way in his “Prince”, also spoke of dividing and ruling, a principle that is analyzed by Kant (. Divide et impera, p. 39, in this case it stops as a false freedom of opposing ideas when the supreme chief “disunites them and isolates them from the people”.
There are interesting points in his proposal divided into articles: a republican civil constitution (today there are peoples with other forms of government and which are not always tyrannies), a “federation of free nations” as the principle of hospitality (the problem of migrants today) and then he makes a series of “supplements” to perpetual peace, but basically it’s a defense of reason.
It also touches on the interesting point, as we have already said with regard to world wars, that peace must not be based on possibilities that can open new future wars.
Today, it is necessary to analyze the light of the original culture of the peoples, not only indigenous and various pre or post-enlightenment nations (where a certain form of reason prevails, remember the Greek State and Roman law), and also the economic, war and now also cyber.
Perpetual peace isn´t or any other form of lasting peace must look to a more humane and fraternal civilization, without which any argument for war is possible.
KANT, I. A paz perpétua. Trad. Artur Mourão. Portugal: Universidade da Beira Interior Covilhã, 2008
Reason, Belief and War 2
22
Apr
The relationship of science and belief in Bourdieu’s lesson: “The paradoxical
enterprise that consists in using a position of authority to speak with authority, to teach a lesson, but a lesson of freedom … would be simply inconsequential, or even self-destructive , if the very ambition to make a science of belief did not presuppose belief in science” (Bourdieu, 1994, p. 62), can be better expressed by the principle of transdisciplinarity.
Establishes the Arrábida Transdisciplinarity Charter in one of its principles: “Considering that the contemporary rupture between an increasingly cumulative knowledge and an increasingly impoverished inner being leads to the rise of a new obscurantism, whose consequences, at the individual and social level, are incalculable”. (Freitas, Morin and Barsarab, 1994)
The idea of science based on calculus (including economics) or the physics that makes it possible to advance in the mystery of the infinite universe, with wormholes, black holes and dark matter, cannot do without the mystery that is beyond what man has already conquered.
On the political side, the belief in the modern state that would replace God and could establish perpetual peace (Kant’s philosophical project) as well as science as the summit of “reason” has already shown its limits, as has the fundamentalist faith, which already was with the Pharisees in the time of life, land of Jesus, has limits of ignoring science, even wanting a science of belief, the paradox presented by Bourdieu.
Neither Kant’s perpetual peace nor advanced scientific studies made it possible to avoid war and the world is once again on the verge of a new humanitarian catastrophe, and it is also worth noting that religious fundamentalism cannot abolish it like the “Decalogue of Assisi for Peace” signed in Assisi on March 4, 2002, although they still defend it today.
The Pharisees wanted Jesus to be involved in the war against Rome, which will take place in the 70s of the Christian d.C., with the destruction of Jerusalem and its Holy Temple as predicted in the prophecies, not because Jesus wanted it, but because of the war that men wished.
After the Jewish Passover, and the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus which was our Passover, Jesus appears to the disciples and the apostle who did not believe Thomas was with them, the first greeting of Jesus is: “Peace be with you” (Mt 20, 21), breathes the Holy Spirit on them and told Thomas that he wanted material proofs of his resurrection: “Put your finger here and look at my hands. Reach out your hand and place it in my side. And do not disbelieve, but be faithful” (Mt 20,27) and happy will say those who believe without having seen.
Kant, I. (2008) Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Project. trans. Arthur Mourao. Ed. University of Beira Interior. Portugal: Covilhã.
Freitas, L., Nicolescu, B. and Morin, E. (1994)Letter of Transdisciplinarity. Convent of Arrábida.
Reason, Belief and War
21
Apr
The evidence of two world wars, where rationality was challenged by the
barbarities of the concentration camps, the atrocities committed, and the Hiroshima bomb is also included, give evidence that it is necessary to examine in depth what built what was called the reason passing through Kant’s critique of pure reason and the critique of practical reason.
At the opening of the book “Disenchantment of the World”, Pierre Bourdieu introduces his analysis of economic and temporal structures as follows: “Those who pose the ritual question of cultural obstacles to economic development are exclusively (i.e., abstractly) interested in “rationalization”. “of conducts, economics and describe as resistances, attributable only to cultural heritage (or, worse still, to one or another of its aspects, Islam for example), all omissions towards the abstract model of “rationality” such as defines economic theory.” (Bourdieu, 1979, pp. 11).
The recent history of our civilizational process develops the physical (and therefore only material) aspect and mathematical calculation, in particular the rationalizations of economic structures, when quoting Max Weber, the author explains: “the very character of the capitalist epoch [writes Max Weber] and – one at the root of the other – the importance of the theory of marginal utility (as well as of the whole theory of value) for the understanding of this epoch consists in that. just as the economic history of countless epochs in the past) has rightly been called “the history of the non-economic”. In the present conditions of life, the approximation of this theory and life was, is, and asks to judge, it will be bigger and bigger and will have to determine the destiny of more and more ample strata of humanity.” (Bourdieu, 1979, pp. 17).
His analysis is too extensive and almost complete (I will explain later) to be summarized here, but the aspect that interests us of the “non-economic” cultural cosmovision, which is that of belief and can be explained in a sentence of his about how he sees the relationship of science and belief: “The paradoxical enterprise that consists in using a position of authority to speak with authority, to teach a lesson, but a lesson in freedom … would be simply inconsequential, or even self-destructive, if ambition itself of making a science of belief did not presuppose belief in science” (Bourdieu, (1994, p. 62), which means that it is necessary to combine reason and belief.
The current war involves these economic (and ideological beliefs, which include religious beliefs), and it is thus neither a practical nor a theoretical reason, peace is possible if we limit beliefs to the common principle of defending peace for the civilizing process (already that the concept of progress is also a belief in a certain sense of “economic history”).
Bourdieu, P. (1979) O desencantamento do mundo: as estruturas econômicas e estruturas temporais. Trad. Silvia Mazza. Brazil, São Paulo: Editora perspectiva.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1994). Lições de aula. (Lessons from the class). Brazil_ São Paulo: Ática, 1994.
