Arquivo para a ‘Linguagens’ Categoria
Language, speaking and native culture
19
Jan
In the work of Heidegger: Hölderlin and the essence of poetry, 
read in Heidegger (1992) speaks of the essence of poetry as a type of primordial language, an original speech that precedes and makes possible the common language, the communication, this refers to an unprecedented fusion of horizons in language and language, classically defines language as: “it is an organized set of elements (sounds and gestures) that enable the communication of a given nation or culture”, while language would encompass a broader set that includes the ability of human beings to develop and understand the language, as if it were possible to dissociate it from contexts, cultures and forms of communication linked to culture.
The common language in which a certain original culture is communicated, keeps its own forms of a linguistic code that is necessary for each original language and develops in a creative way in order to preserve it, this speech (or word) is said to be that one. who names the gods, and does so to respond to a cultural appeal.
If in the past narratives included myths, symbols and poetic hooks to connect the narrative, today it is no different, there is always in speech some belief and some fantasy, without which poetic language would be a mere exercise in rhetoric, and it is not, and this appeal to fantasy, imagination and the transcendent is part of the human and the divine.
Wanting all speech to be pragmatic and objective is to reduce it to the context of pure formal logic, scientific exercise also often needs some exercise in the beyond, in the imagination to find answers that are not just there as a logical equation.
It is not pure daydreaming, beliefs and imaginaries have always been part of human history, it is a just desire to go further, to seek higher flights and to imagine as possible something beyond the boring and heavy day to day, even though it may contain joys. and flavors, the threshold of openness to different original cultures cannot be linked only to objective and simple realism.
In the photo above, a syncretic church built in Kazan, started in 1992, therefore, in the post-Soviet period, capital of Tatarstan (Russian Republic, but with a totally different culture) where, even with the predominance of Islam followed by the Orthodox Church, it is at the same time a symbol of resistance to the Russian linguistic complex and capable of building a work of such great significance where different religions can express themselves, an eclectic work by the architect Ildar Khanov.
HEIDEGGER, M. (1992) Arte y poesía. Argentina, Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Truth and language
18
Jan
Is it possible to really speak? or to ask a more contemporary
question, is it possible to deny the truth without falling into relativism? Only the logical truth that comes from Parmenides “being is and non-being is not”, was expressed until very recently as the only truth, but it is the foundation of positivism and dualistic logic, the idea of considering historicity and the hermeneutic circularity places subject and object within a relationship with language.
In this scope of the language of language, truth is re-signified, no longer conceived as unique, as a faithful description, and starting to be seen as a partial, creative but limited redescription of things, as a possible interpretation in a given context and cultural situation determination. , for this it is necessary to understand language as something prior to everyday language, what Heidegger called attention to in Hölderlin’s poetics as the essence of poetry as a type of primordial language, an originary speech that precedes and makes possible the common language, the Communication.
How then is it possible to speak of the truth? It is only possible to speak of the truth taking into account the historicity and hermeneutic circularity of subject and object, which are within the scope of language. Thus, the truth is re-signified, no longer conceived as unique, as a faithful description, starting to be seen as a partial, creative and limited redescription of things, as an interpretation among other possible ones. One possibility of speaking in truth is through language. But for that, it is necessary to resort to an understanding of language that is prior to the language of everyday life, of communication. In Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry, Heidegger (1992, p. 125-148) speaks of the essence of poetry as a type of primordial language, an originary speech that precedes and makes possible the common language, the communication;
Since language is the mediation of our relationship with being, it is what establishes this relationship, more clearly what is said in Heidegger: “where does man assume the requirement to enter the essence of something? Man can only assume this demand from where he receives it. It receives it in the appeal of language … it is language that, first and ultimately, beckons us to the essence of something” (HEIDEGGER, 2002, P. 167-168).
Thus, the truth must be understood in the context of the linguistic turn (or reversal), the contemporary rediscovery of the importance of language and it cannot be separated from the original historicity, the one that refers to the culture of the peoples and religions of the past and the present.
HEIDEGGER, M. (2002). Ensaios e leituras (Essays and lectures). Brazil, Petrópolis: ed. Vozes.
Empathy: from water to wine
14
Jan
After clarified pathological situations, where empathy is just an
instrumentation or a disguise for actions that do not contemplate the Suffering of the Other, we can affirm situations in which it is really effective and can change the situation practically as a miracle, not only in the extraordinary sense but also with high probability.
We have already said that outside the ideological, cultural and social constraints, human nature destined to live in a collective situation tends to empathize for a good social life, it is enough to observe children when they are not yet contaminated by aggressive or toxic environments, to use a very current term.
Also social situations: work environments, neighbourhoods, small communities there is always a tendency where empathy reigns (or Love in a sense that is now forgotten) the greater tendency is that phronesis (in the sense that today they call emotional intelligence) and empathy, and this is not new, just an update is needed.
Many environments can change from water to wine if they are fully enriched and purified by empathy, there is always a greater tendency towards solidarity and tolerance than conflict and personal or group selfishness, in environments that are not enriched by a spirituality. it also weakens and tends not to prosper, because there is social pressure from outside where the environment is one of conflict and polarization.
Pandemic suffering was a great opportunity to recognize the Suffering of others, the pain of the Other, or just the face of the Other and its inclinations and concepts, what can be observed contextually is that conflicts increased and the opportunity was not properly seized, but not invalidity of joint efforts in regions and situations.
There are examples of these efforts in many places, right now the flooding situation in Bahia is a new opportunity in which many communities have joined the scourge of the region, donations and aid have come from various places in Brazil, although the central authorities have been somewhat negligent.
These are choices that we make of actions, habits and that become a “social character” if we change from water to wine, it is possible, as in that biblical passage where the wine was missing at the party, and Jesus being present receives the mother’s request to to intervene and his first public miracle happens only to give wine and improve the joy of that party, he orders three vats of 100 liters each to be filled with wine and then asks them to take it to the master of the party to taste (Jn 2,7), and he says the best wine was left for last.
So it is not the end we are living, but the beginning of a new reality, even if empathy has not arrived after so much suffering, it will come and a new clearing will open, like that of the paralytic’s passage through the ceiling that reaches Jesus to heal him. Rather, He heals him of his sins (Mk 1:5) so that he may have a more “empathetic” soul.
Empathy and spirituality
13
Jan
We did not point out in the previous post that phronesis is not
a moral virtue, but an intellectual virtue in Aristotle’s theory, so empathy can be according to the feeling of the phronesis, a better component according to the feeling of the phronesis, the best example to explain this is that of akrasia, or the feeling and phronosis of a psychopath.
Although akrasia can be projected literally because it “has no command over itself”, it is described in Plato’s speech in Protagoras, in fact it is a situation of psychopathy where he is aware of a certain actions, but does not have exactly the same a normal person’s feeling towards someone.
Something that is wrong in this counter-argument to explain phronesis is that the desire to alleviate the pain of the other in the face of suffering must be somehow protected, however it does not prevent the psychopath from cultivating some feeling for the other person’s situation and makes of attitudes in the sense of their habits and that are not defined in terms of such we have already said that this comes from thoughts become actions), if we include people who have knowledge or mercy for the suffering of others, then it can be explained.
So it is, therefore, the moral or ethical attitude, although it is, but some attitude of spiritual virtue, that is, the practice of resistance is also only in an action that is not oriented towards a. willingness to act in a moral way that can provide the means to discern about suffering along with Empathy, so one has to expand on that of moral attitudes by Aristotle.
To people who cannot be basic, but can also be able to offer in basic moral virtues, and people who can be basic, but can also be complementary, but can offer a moral virtue, many people who are basic, but who can complement the lack of a virtue. attitude your action, and this is impossible without some exercise in complete to become a habit to feel the Suffering of Others, this exercise that becomes a habit is called here Spirituality.
The phronesis cannot be exercised without basic moral virtues and thus cannot be initiated without empathy, it can be admitted that a psychopath even has empathy, many are charismatic and can influence many people, but he will lack a basic moral virtue that complements your action, and this is impossible without some an exercise to become a habit the full empathic attitude of feeling the suffering of others, this exercise that becomes a habit is called here Spirituality.
While it is not a habit, it can be an exercise in asceticism, a simulation or simply a disguise that at some point will be unveiled.
It is good to point out that there can be asceticism (elevation of the spirit partially) without true spirituality, I call it using Peter Sloterdijk’s term of “despiritualized asceticism”, that is, without a deep root that leads to the broad knowledge of what pain is. of the Other, if we want to give a name to an empathetic phronesis.
Spirituality is, therefore, an exercise that leads to an asceticism, but what is asceticism does not depend only on the belief of each one, but what during life becomes habit and character, those who do not have it can practice it for a long time. a few days, or even a few years, but without deep root it will soon leave it, like losing weight, dieting, diets and other attempts at habits that are not always maintained, to make them life they must integrate our character, our personality.
Empathy and phronesis
11
Jan
Frônesis (phrónesis, from ancient Greek: φρόνησις), in Aristotle’s
Nicomachean Ethics, book IV, is distinguished from both theory and practice because it is a virtue of the wisdom of practical thinking, however a modern adaptation of Hans -Georg Gadamer is situated between logos and ethos, this relationship can thus bring “theoretical” love closer to an empathic practical action.
Thus, phronesis is inserted in human actions as phenomena through a hermeneutic examination of opinions, not only to reveal the immutable principles of the causes of this action, but above all to understand that from the mere opinion (the doxa) of the Other, it is possible to help it through empathy to reach knowledge (episteme).
It works as a true action of attraction that leads the Other to reflect. within the hermeneutic circle, it is a matter of allowing a reading of the Other’s preconceptions and paying attention to one’s own, so the actions that result from it can be more empathic, explaining in a phrectic (practical) way: reading what the Other actually wants and think.
This knowledge leads to a new episteme (theoretical conception of new horizons) in which it is possible to think of a joint or at least convergent action, as we have said before, empathy is an originally natural relationship, while disempathy (it is different from the antipathy that is opposed to sympathy) is the rejection of the Other, rather something that has become naturalized, due to hermetic ideologies and preconceptions that are impossible to reread.
The real law of attraction is empathy, since it can reinforce positive, collaborative and socially collective actions, while simple opposition leads to the repulsion of the Other and the creation of non-converging poles of opinion (doxa) and knowledge (episteme). and non-humans, it is not about simple logic, but onto-logic, the logic of Being.
Because this has become so widespread and widespread is simple, a strong non-humanist system of thought developed with the aim of power and enrichment, not only colonizing and xenophobic, but above all non-ontological, unbecoming of being.
The idea of simple rejection may seem natural, however it can lead to another system of domination polarized and structurally authoritarian and thus non-empathetic and non-frenetic, again simple theories that in practice prove to be disastrous.
Empathy and the Truth
07
Jan
The construction of the concept of truth can roughly be divided
into three stages as having an elaboration or a narrative, I exclude the period of natural evolution of man because I consider the beginning of oral language elaborated by oracles/prophets/masters an important milestone, rather what existed was the natural man and his “search”, the three stages are: mythical, mixed orality (rhetoric and written) and written language based on Gutenberg’s press.
We are in a fourth stage that is called post-truth, therefore not its overcoming, but its crisis, the Enlightenment combined experience and Cartesian logic (Kantian is just the one that shows the limits of pure reason) and now we understand, it is one of the possibilities only philosophical phenomenology, the last step after Husserl, Heidegger and Gadamer.
The hermeneutic circle presupposes what we argue in this week’s posts, a relationship with the Other, it proposes that there are always prejudices, that is, there are truths that may even have conventions, and recognize them even if they are different, being possible after these views a fusion of horizons, it is important and not secondary that Gadamer and Heidegger presuppose the existence of the text, that is, a written language which is a reference for the next step, which is listening to the Text, in orality however, it would be listening to the Other.
What we call post-truth then is the simple closure in an egoic truth, the transcendental ego, as developed in topic V of Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations, and which we summarized in the previous post, so it is impossible to merge horizons, logic prevails dualist and/or the idea of experience to establish a fact.
Ancient philosophy also had these embryonic ideas, Socrates affirmed (according to Plato): “The truth is not with men, but among men” and Aristotle affirmed that the truth is elaborated in the relation of the thing with its causes: Material cause: de what is the thing done? for example a built house. Efficient cause: what did the thing? Building with materials. Formal cause: what gives it form? The house itself. Final cause: what gave it shape? or the initial intention of the builder or architect
The difference between the phenomenological principle of addressing the “thing” and Aristotle is that its logic is dual: there is only A or no A, and from A to B it is necessary to go through intermediate C, in the fusion of origin a T is possible (The included third theory and quantum physics also admit this) that it is not A and not A, and one can go directly from A to B.
The Christian worldview establishes as truth the existence of a supernatural reality, above the dogmas and mysteries of science (they are themselves discovered are provisional truths) and there is an ontological criterion for the truth, a person, who is the earthly God its manifestation (epiphany), the man-God: Jesus.
John the Baptist, the last and greatest of the prophets, there are no prophets today unless a direct revelation from God Himself (thus all the prophets today are false) and John the Baptist when questioned in his time affirmed (Lk 3:16): “Hence, John declared to everyone: “I am baptizing you with water, but he who is stronger than I will come. I am not worthy of untying the strap of your sandals. He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and in fire” ” and this is the truth of the Christian worldview.
Empathy seen by philosophy
06
Jan
A disciple of Edmund Husserl, it was Edith Stein who worked more 
deeply on the theme of empathy, however the master dealt with the theme in his famous Paris Conferences or Cartesian Meditations in which the Cartesian method is reviewed, it can be said that part of this review is the discovery of empathy, or the relationship with the Other.
As in every philosophy there must be a fundamental question to be investigated and in this case it is the question: “how can I clarify this, if the principle that everything that is for me only in intentional life can acquire meaning and intentional confirmation remains untouchable? ”, it is in the solution of this question that the theme empathy appears, put in this way:
“We lack here an authentic phenomenological explanation of the transcendental operativeness of intropathy and, to this end, as it is in question, of putting-out-of-the-value abstractly of others and of all the strata of meaning of my surrounding world that grow for me from the validity of the experience of others” (HUSSERL, 2013, p. 33).
Intentionality is a fundamental category of the phenomenological method, it is very broad as it is a characteristic of consciousness, it means the aspect of being aware of something.
The term intropathy is a first incursion outside the ego, it means to introject a sense or feeling that the other might like, in this sense it breaks with the sense of the Cartesian transcendental ego, validating the experience of the other, as said by Husserl:
“Precisely for this reason it separates itself in the realm of the transcendental ego, that is, in its realm of consciousness, together with its specifically proved ego-being, my concrete peculiarity, as the one from which, from the motivations of my ego, I grasp my analogue in intropathy” (Husserl, 2013, p. 34).
Thus, it can be said that this term is still among the intersubjective experiences, that is, the appreciation of the subjective experiences and relationships of subjects in social or community life, but empathy is a step further, in this sense it is important to understand the phenomenological epoché, that puts our senses, our knowledge “in parentheses”:
“If I, the meditating self, see myself reduced by epoché to my absolute ego and to what is constituted there, then I have not become solus ipse, and this whole philosophy of self-reflection will not be like that a pure solipsism, albeit phenomenological -transcendental?” (Husserl, 2013, p. 34) so it is not a Cartesian solipsism, but a reflection with intentionality.
How does this become clear, then, does it remain “unapprehensible that everything that is for me can only obtain meaning and proof in my intentional life?” (Husserl, 2013, p. 35) here the philosopher clarifies that a phenomenological understanding of empathy is necessary and a penetration into the experience of the Other, outside its egoic scope.
Thus, this overcoming of transcendental subjectivity extended in intersubjectivity is only “co-experienced in myself, therefore indicted, in a secondary sense, in the way of a peculiar perception of similarity, proving itself there in a consensual way” (Husserl, 2013, idem) and it is curious that there Husserl speaks of “mirroring the alter ego” (idem) long before the discovery of the mirror neuron (see previous post).
Stein’s connection with Husserl in the phenomenological tradition is enormous, having even been his assistant, when presenting her thesis with the theme: “The problem of Empathy” suggests that this was a gap in the phenomenological approach, wrote Stein:
“In his course on nature and spirit, Husserl had spoken that an external objective world could only be experienced intersubjectively, that is, by a plurality of knowing individuals, who are situated in a position of cognitive interchange. … this peculiar experience, Husserl, following the works of Theodor Lipps, called “empathy” (Einfühlung); however, I had not specified what it consisted of” (STEIN, 2017, p. 360, free translation).
Stein’s work is enormous and still very little known.
STEIN, E. (2017) Zum Problem der Einfühlung. Dissertation zur Erlanugng der Doktorowürde. Breslau: Bruchdruckercides Waisenhaauses.
HUSSERL, E. (2013) Meditações Cartesianas e Conferências de Paris. Ed. por Stephan Strasser, trans. Pedro M. S. Alve. Brazil, Rio de Janeiro: Forense.
New paths and new christmas
10
Dec
Man has gone through many historical stages, each with its 
drama and its mystique, like the one revealed in the Neolithic monument Stonehenge (photo).
The times of pandemic made us more withdrawn both in the proximity of family members and in the interior life (which Western thought calls subjectivity), but where are we heading, what kind of Christmas this year will be, the end-of-the-year festivities we already know by the new pandemic wave will be reduced.
Anyway, we celebrate a passage, whether for Christians waiting for the parousia (the first two weeks) or from here to Christmas the intervention of God in history through the birth of the God-child in Bethlehem, which is gradually being erased from the party and replaced by consumerism, snow and other rites alien to the historical fact.
Yes historical, because Mary and Joseph go to Bethlehem precisely for a census, that is, to be counted among men and registered they should go to Joseph’s hometown and by a whim and divine care Jesus is born and is already registered among men, this is therefore not symbolic, but recorded historical data.
What to expect this Christmas, the atmosphere of “party” is reduced, we are still involved with the pandemic, there is a climate of apprehension and already a certain discouragement, for some it involves anxiety and some kind of anguish, nothing better than believing in a New weather, the popular saying goes: after the storm comes the calm, it will come.
Perhaps not as we expected, for example, a huge euphoria or an explosion of joy, but the feeling that we must rebuild life with struggle and behind the rubble, the Christmas season at its root is this, something divine intervened in human history to change it forever, it is certain that they want to erase Christmas and with it the hope of a new world, however precisely because of the suffering we have been through, we do not know how long it can last and how far it can go, it is a harbinger of a new time, a calm.
John the Baptist, who was Jesus’ cousin, baptized people with water (Baptist because of this), and the people thought he was the Messiah, but he explained that the type of baptism that would make Jesus would be much stronger: “He will baptize you in Holy Spirit and on fire. He will come with a shovel in his hand: he will clean his threshing floor and gather the wheat in the barn, but he will burn the straw in the photo that does not go out” says the evangelist Luke (Lk 3,16-18) and John “proclaimed a lot other ways” the Good News.
We can expect this in the near future, certainly yes, there is also this expectation in our theme, in many ways, and it will certainly be something unpredictable
History, the great clearing and parousia
03
Dec
Christmas is near and the birth of Jesus is a historical fact because
the Census ordered by the emperor of Rome Caesar Augustus, regarding the date there is controversy for it would be between 4-5 BC, when Quininus was Governor of Syria as described in the Bible (Lc 2.2), but it is certain that the census was carried out and this was precisely the reason why Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem, where the prophecy said that from there the savior would be born, and thus he “was numbered among men”.
History is also punctuated by divine interventions, in the decadence of Rome the monasteries were born, where the culinary culture, the first guilds and offices and also an earlier stage of printed writing is carried out, through the copyists, the first schools and later the first universities, with a strong theological influence as it could not be otherwise, but this is all history, also in the renaissance art and culture had a strong influence (theological).
We enter modernity, the work that we read punctually in this week’s posts “all in the same boat” by Sloterdijk, mentions an important fact, in addition to citing the classic work of the Decamerão by Boccaccio as “small community in the midst of the big disaster” ( Sloterdijk, 1999, p. 75), makes an analysis of the Black Death (which happened in the 130’s) and which devastated Europe with more than 100 million people dead when the population was much smaller than today, and its political influence.
In a footnote he cites the work of Henrik Siewierki (translated by Estação Liberdade in 2001) “A mass for the city of Arras” where he analyzes the psychological and political consequences of the plague, also the psychologist Franz Renggli, in his book Self-destruction by abandonment , developed the hypothesis of the influence on modernity of the plague, and also of the degradation of the mother-child relationship that would have caused a kind of immunological, collective and psychosomatic weakness that favored the virus of that plague.
All this analysis is interesting in the midst of the Pandemic’s return to Europe, while it is undoubtedly a scourge, it can fuel a new clearing on our community, that is, the idea of a mutual and solidary defense in view of a catastrophe even greater than the one we’ve already encountered.
All this analysis is interesting in the midst of the Pandemic’s return to Europe, while it is undoubtedly a scourge, it can fuel a new clearing on our coimmunity (category of Sloterdijk), that is, the idea of a mutual and solidary defense in view of a catastrophe even greater than we have already encountered.
It serves to “make the paths smooth”, as the biblical reading says when John, the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, announced in the desert using the words of the prophet Isaiah: “this is the voice of the one who cries out in the desert: ‘prepare the way of the Lord , make your paths straight’” (Lk 3,4) and it seems favorable to our time of scourge and desert.
It is important to remember that the first two weeks of Christmas celebrate not the coming of Jesus in Bethlehem, but the Parusia, that is, the preparation for his second coming.
The desert without inner life
30
Nov
Living only on the outside, projected onto the world, led to a
special kind of anguish, anguish is an aspect of philosophy, one that is linked to the concept of emptiness, a certain type of philosophy and some forms of the concept “God is dead”, yes because there is another one, one of them is men try in vain to kill Him as if it were possible, as if it were possible to deny some intentionality in the creation of the universe, yes it can be multiverse, but also for it there must be an intentionality.
The philosophical movement that gave voice to the feeling of “alienation and despair” came precisely from “man’s recognition of his fundamental loneliness in an indifferent universe”, the highlighted sentences are by Anthony Downs, an American political economist, who died in October of this year .
The reason why we must know the origin and development of certain concepts that seem just straw and without substance (because they are not observed in depth), is that they come to dominate a large part of contemporary life, such as the idealism that almost dominated all the isms of our time, including socialism and a certain type of Christianity (in picture the work of de Albert György).
The isms of our time are nothing but the rationalization of some form of idealism present in Descartes’ Western culture, passing through Kant to Hegel, his rejection based on the existentialism of Kierkegaard who insisted on the irreducibility of the subjective and personal dimension of human life, the existentialism took several forms, but it is the return to the question of Being and ontology that I consider an essential part of rediscovering the golden thread of the human spirit, or of the personal and subjective dimension as thought by Kierkegaard, part of an essential question that is “ because there is everything and not nothing”, and the nothing is clear is emptiness.
However, Kierkegaard also worked on the issue of anguish, which can be associated with emptiness or with the modern feeling of a form of alienation, his concept is different, it is the vertigo of freedom, advocated by modern man, it is through it that man feels repulsion and attraction, you can do anything, but not everything is convenient.
In “The concept of anguish”, Kierkegaard writes: “”a determination of the dreaming spirit (…) is the reality of freedom as pure as possible” (KIERKEGAARD, 1968, p. 45).
Soren Kierkegaard was born in Denmark in 1813 and had a life full of personal and family problems, in a space of twenty years he saw the death of two brothers and three sisters and then his mother, the disappointment in love with his fiancee Regina Olsen culminates in his own life what it expressed in philosophy.
The concept of anxiety became central in the development of existentialist philosophy, it is present in Heidegger, Jaspers and Sartre, but it has not been left out in previous philosophies such as Husserl’s phenomenology and rather in Franz-Brentano’s social psychology.
It is Heidegger who makes the issue of anguish a problem of everyday life, writes: “The being-to-death is, essentially, anguish. This is undoubtedly witnessed, although “only” indirectly, by the already-characterized para-to-death being, at the moment when anguish becomes a cowardly fear and, overcoming it, denounces the cowardice of anguish. (HEIDEGGER, 1998, p. 50).
Therefore, for Heidegger, anguish is an existential determinant and it manifests itself in the daily life of being-in-the-world, in the words of Hanna Arendt, it is a “human condition”.
The issue comes up again because of the pathological form it took in the Pandemic, precisely the deprivation of freedom, see that Kierkegaard’s concept makes sense.
Heidegger, M. The Origin of the Work of Art. In: Forest paths (Holzwege). Lisbon: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 1998 (in portuguese).
Kierkegaard, Soren. The Concept of Anguish. Lisbon: Hemus editora, 1968 (in portuguese).
