Arquivo para a ‘Linguagens’ Categoria
Powers and the Other
28
Feb
There is something beyond the will to power, yes there is a non-being, which does
not depersonalize or imply a loss of identity, but in dialogue with the Other, with the one who is not my mirror.
The affirmation, the empowerment of people and groups in logical closings of identity, are neither original in the sense of preserving the dialogue with cultural traditions, nor are they in fact power because it implies submitting the Other that is one to some identity that is not his.
Thus, the true ontological identity, contrary to the logic that is individualistic or closed in groups, we often criticize the individualism of the Other because we do not admit its original identity (that which comes from races, cultures and traditions) and ultimately we do not admit the your Being, and to admit it you need a non-Being, that is, to see the Other as he is.
The powers in modernity have grown because of the impositions that the laws of the State, the rules of conduct and what has historically been called “Contract” which is nothing but making the right to conscience something that is subject to the rules and laws of the State. It is not about anarchy, rules of social coexistence that existed since the primitive man who was already known originally lived in groups: in caves, nomads or established in territories.
What leads to violence is to always submit the Other to our own will, our cultures, looking at the Other as less, less cultured, less “evolved” or another justification for not understanding and respecting different cultures, beliefs and ethnicities, so violence arrives.
The cult of the State, Hegel went so far as to say that it was eternal and it is not, many have changed throughout history from the Greek City-State to modern democratic societies, now in a new turmoil.
The biblical passage that the “devil” offers Jesus earthly powers and he rejects is this (Mark 4: 8-10): “again the devil took Jesus to a very high mountain. He showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and said to him, “I would give you all this, if you kneel before me, to worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Go away, Satan, because it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and you will worship Him alone´”.
Will to or power
24
Feb
A little-known concept of Nietzsche is the will to power, as a “natural” driving
force of man, in fact this led people to expand from the primitive world, the wars and empires of Alexander the Great, of which Aristotle was the tutor and then the Roman Empire, and the empires of modernity: Portuguese, French, Russian and American.
There are other great empires little mentioned in history: the great Manchu Qing dynasty of northern China invaded and defeated the Ming dynasty, was a minority ethnic group but dominated the whole of China and even had a brief restoration in 1917 and the great Mongol Empire was one of the largest in area, reaching Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries.
But power also refers to the individual’s desire for influence and power, today it is digital influencers, who are even financed and receive respect and credibility and many of them are unknown to the mainstream media, for example, the American PewDiePie is the youtuber with greater number of followers, we will return to the subject.
One can think of potency as an act and potency, so power would be the objective reached by potency, but Nietzsche himself warns that its meaning is different: “the will to power is neither a being nor a becoming, it is a pathos”, thus it must be analyzed in the triad ethos, pathos and logos.
Pathos is, therefore, that sense also used by Descartes, although Nietzsche denies reason as a principle, where the idea of pathology comes from, which moves in imperfection.
Thus, one can think of the will to power (in the sense of Nietzsche) in three concepts, the cosmogonic, the historical or the psychological, each one establishes a special relationship with the diverse proposals present in modern society, the cosmogonic using Nietzsche’s terminology is a original law, without exception, that comes from the very reality of things.
Thus, its historical law is never deterministic nor has anything hidden, “… this Dionysian world of eternally-creating-myself-of, eternally-destroying-myself, without target, without will. .. ”, said in a fragment written in 1885, means that a set of forces that act in a diffuse way results in a state of eternal return, and therefore without an end.
Thus the will to be can also be understood as the insatiable desire to be more than what one is, if seen without an end, one can understand the psychological aspect more clearly.
It may seem distant from modern thought, but just look at reality and it will be realized that outside historical determinism, religious fundamentalism, the remaining proposal seems to be this, but Nietzsche himself can help us organize this, if it is possible to think something out of this state of “eternal return” that the will to power created.
An incomplete ontology: the affirmation of Being
21
Feb
The Wheel of Fortune is chance because the logic of laissez faire, chance brought to
the economy, is also the logic of the affirmation of Being, in the classic sense; Being is and Non-Being is not, there is no becoming.
Non-Being is also Being, the affirmation, the will to Power, takes with it the logic of war, dualism, Manichaeism and its destiny is war, the difficulty of understanding the Other, the dialogue made as a form of hypocrisy , because in the end, it is the negation of the Other and the affirmation of Being, in the logic “we have the truth”, even if it is said in a religious way, it is its negation.
The impossibility of coexistence, from where physical violence arises, even psychological and moral violence, the unconscious desire to demoralize and undermine the Other, which is in this non-Being logic, and thus the moment that passes is lived in a false way, as fleeting and with the sense of maximum affirmation of the Being.
It seems crazy to say that non-Being is also, but it is precisely in its exercise that we deny war, we deny conflict as necessary, we make dualism become sincere dialogue and we can enter the logic of the Other and discover a complement of Being, while not-Being.
To affirm that the Non-Being is destroys the logic of power, exclusion, conflict, because it allows the Other to exist, denies psychopolitics because there is no need for the “psychic” oppression of the Other, to affirm the Same, the mirror, even which exercised collectively, is a selfish knot and tied exclusively to its own power and pleasure.
So say contemporary speeches about philosophy, which fill audiences and praise philosophers and eloquent religious: “you came to win, assert yourself, say you are the best”, etc.
The complete ontology is also opposed to religious fundamentalism and the Pharisaic, because it is also exercised as a non-Being, says the evangelist Mateus on the Master’s teaching to his disciples (Mt 5.38): “You have heard what has been said (yet the it is in our day): I look for another and tooth for tooth !, But I say to you: “do not face that it is evil” On the contrary, if someone slaps you on the right face, it also offers you the left! ”, here it is the “hidden” logic of non-Being.
Joy or happiness, gaudio and euphoria
20
Feb
Joy and happiness are not the same thing, although one can lead to the other
and vice versa, joy is a feeling of satisfaction, of completeness or even fullness in its extreme, what I call gaudio, while happiness is the greatest good desired by the human being, so stated Aristotle, and although it may have nuances of values it is the best definition.
In this sense, happiness is to live the moment well, even media and mystical philosophers agree, but the “virtuous” effort that makes conquest one of these moments, but it is clear that each one of this virtuous path can be lived with greatness and effort.
That struggle for which every moment can be lived with dignity and even joy, but the joy and true happiness is conquered with effort, virtuous exercise of a dignified path, while euphoria can be won in a fleeting moment, the joy and true happiness do not.
Joy is therefore an exercise beyond the obstacle and everyday problems, happiness is the possible achievement after a long journey in which reaching the summit depends on the last and decisive steps, often without breath and without clarity that the summit can be reached.
The Greeks said that “eudemonia” (“good”-eu from “spirit”-daimon) was conquered by arete, which can be seen both as “virtue” (the repeated practice of the virtuos, the virtual) as “excellence”.
It is also not fortune, in the Greek sense of the word it is not just money, but chance or luck, the goddess Fortuna became an iconographic image from the illuminations of medieval manuscripts to the stained glass windows of the churches (photo *), it was like that a luck cast at random, but it would be determined predestined.
Joy is joy when achieved by small daily efforts and it is not fleeting, while euphoria is not only escapes but can become deep sadness or even depression, for elaborate speeches living the moment that is wise, can be lived with joy or euphoria.
* The blindfolded goddess Fortuna, called the “wheel of Fortuna” was painted by Tadeuz Kuntze in 1754, oil on canvas in National Museum of Warsaw.
Between fantasy and imaginary
19
Feb
The imaginary is part of popular culture and tradition, countless cultures express 
themselves, seem myths and fantasies were from reality, but it differs from this in having an original source, that is, being part of a culture and expression of desires and perspectives cultural aspects of a people.
What Droysen, Heidegger and Gadamer speculated about romantic historicism, which Dilthey elaborated, is nothing but fantasy historicism, the future as a pure unrealizable dream while the future to come is part of the cultural tradition and that is why dialogue with tradition is necessary.
Fantasy is initially an attempt to escape, the absence of dialogue not in the prosaic sense of listening to the Other, of accepting difference, but of truly understanding and dialoguing by entering into the concepts and perspectives present in tradition, without understanding it, we listen and not the dialogue, the dialogue that Martin Buber, Paulo Freire and even Bakhtin spoke about.
The fantasies represent delusions of the soul, uncontrollable compulsive desires, and which often reach pathologies, it is not a childish fantasy of fairy tales or superheroes, these belong to the imaginary because the child still sees the future world as a possibility. The epic imaginary, both as historicism and as literature, highlights the deeds and glories, where the present appears as a result of a mythical past, but which is projected into the future, expresses the factual exaltation of memorable or extraordinary events.
The romantic imaginary is that of a lonely hero displaced in time, Don Quixote is a good expression of this imaginary, it represents a reaction to the philosophical saturation of determinism and rationalism, but he is stuck with the empirical sensory or the metaphors of the real.
These fantasies in general appeal to creativity, but say little about reality
Happiness and idealism, between subjects and objects
18
Feb
The development of idealistic thinking, the strongest and most profound of
modernity, gave man a sense of dominance not only over nature, but also over his own possibilities and the reach of his will.
So the exploitation of natural resources, now with signs of exhaustion, also the exploitation of peoples and labor forces made human undertakings take off and now intending to conquer planets and the universe, but we discovered the human limits: desires, powers and wars.
The first and the main one is the finitude of life, even the oldest cultures always elaborated some eschatology about the previous and future life of humanity, modernity meanwhile tried to exploit its finitude to the fullest, what counts is the maximum happiness in short life for all of us, exploring it to the fullest is enough.
But idealism pointed out limits, if it is an unfinished project or if we have already plunged into another project, late modernity or postmodernity does not matter, the essence of this project was finitude, and what was called enlightenment, happiness, will and freedom it showed not only finitude, but also the monstrous aspects of this conception: absence of imagination (the subjectivity said of this way of thinking), the human and natural unbalance of forces, and the absence of peace.
The idealistic building built a society full of objectivity, of wonderful constructions, from the reach of the productive forces almost until their exhaustion, but war and cultural, religious and mainly ideological hatred, a fundamental part of this building.
Separating the human into two pieces, to later search him, subjectivity and objectivity, was nothing but a monumental building that disregarded the human essential: the absence of forms of happiness that contemplate everyone and the search for solidary means of power.
It is not that God died, but that we killed him, if there is no divine bond between men, he can never exist transcendently, in fact, idealistic transcendence is nothing other than the separation between subject and objects, unified by this fallacy of objectivity.
Without recovering real dreams, real happiness, and the social means for this, we sleepwalk in the dark, as stated by Edgar Morin.
The form of the in-formation
11
Feb
Western philosophy was built along a path that was not necessarily the only 
one available, so there is neither determinism nor thought and consequently neither history, this because of the fact that some categories were privileged over others.
Although it was possible to think of a single model of thought, socially it is impossible to think by a single method or a single path, this may seem contradictory to the previous thought, but it does not mean that in the midst of a set of thoughts and categories from certain times it was done for several reasons, including political, economic and cultural, the option for certain forms of thought was made.
The form of information is eveloped thus from the thoughts and visions of the world that influenced Western culture.
The aim of this post is not to exhaust this thought, but to travel with the help of some special readers, such as Aristotle and Plato, Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, René Descartes, Imanuel Kant, David Hume, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger , Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Emanuel Lévinas, Peter Sloterdijk, Byung Chull Han, just to name a few that I consider fundamental, but without claiming to exhaust the thought of any of them.
It is possible by analyzing the penetration of these thinkers in daily life as well as in the structural ones of governments, states and world policies, how these influences happened and happen to determine our thinking, although we can naively imagine that what we think is original, or because of pragmatism that what exists is practical life and the need.
Moreover, even though they deny these are forms of thought linked to certain forms of thought, such as empiricism, skepticism and pragmatism.
Thus, through culture, education and, mainly, forms of social intervention by means of communication and advertising, there is an action-form of implanting these ideas within society and once constituted as an organized set of knowledge (an episteme) to implant in the within society, in-formation, that is, to implant ideas within society.
From Socrates, who in essence wanted to “instruct” men, through Plato and Aristoteles, to the modern state, citizens’ form of action through information is how ideas are formed and disseminated in the social fabric, specialy in XIX century, in XX there were any changes.
The Oscar of the Parasite
10
Feb
I was convinced that the Academy would give this year the Oscar to the Joker, although
it never admits for political reasons, it seems that some foundation (or several) lost has made us return to nationalist and authoritarian values that generally lead to autocracies and dictatorships .
Differentiating autocracy differs from dictatorship, when power (Kratos) is exercise by itself (self) means power by power, while dictatorship is the denial of democracy, and what emerged in the contemporary world is a mixture of the two people, in free elections .
The award-winning Joker is a good image, it is reasonable to give the Oscar for best actor, although the character is a pathological mixture of mean ingredients, with the nomination of 14 categories was already a sign of a certain “veneration” for the film, that not is to resulted.
I remember that The Wicked (1950) and Titanic, in addition to the recent La la Land had 14 nominations.
Two awards given, either by exclusively artistic criterion (forgetting ethics and politics), would be only an actor but also won more 2 categories.
I had decided not to comment, but the nomination of Dois Papas (by Brazilian Fernando Meirelles) and the controversial documentary Democracy in vertigo, about what I say here, went from the opposite hand of the Joker, Two Popes received the consolation prize for adapted script.
I leave my protest, no doubt 1917 (3 figurines) has great qualities, who watched Parasite (won 4) the film almost hypnotizes us and Once upon a time in Hollywood (3 figurines) deserved more, I am surprise for better actress Renée Zellweger.
Last as animation the statuette went to Toy Stories which I think is deserved.
Make the difference
07
Feb
Making a difference does not and therefore lose 
identity, only the idealistic concept of self-identity sees it that way, that is why we created a world of sameness in which everything is very similar, before being an element of culture it was an element of thought, the imperative Kantian categorical: “act in such a way as to be a model for others”.
Then the cultural industry, the mass media radio and television developed this, created standards of beauty, consumption and even morality, the morality of the state before being an individual morality, it is a “collective” morality of values and customs, that do not mean an ethics and a “solid” identity, this includes the love of homeland symbols and patrimonial values.
Making a difference does mean having an identity with an ethical and moral principle, which includes beliefs and even behavior (see previous post), but which allows dialogue and cultural customs different from ours, so that you can indicate to others a behavior and an action capable of including them and showing human and social dignity thus influencing culturally by showing the “difference” of true and eternal values that benefit the whole society.
True cultures and philosophies must encourage this, they must make a difference not in order to impose opinions and customs, but in a way that includes the Other, that is why it never accompanies the superior air, arrogance and the idea that what is different is wrong, this is Manichaeism and never love.
The Bible idea that the culture of Love should make a difference, that is to say “salt and yeast”, brings together the idea that to make a difference it takes little, but the salt and yeast cannot be spoiled because the effect on the food will not be noticed.
The true Christian culture establishes in Matthew (Mt 5:13): “You are the salt of the earth. Now, if the salt becomes tasteless, how will we salt it? It will serve no more than to be trampled on by men and to be thrown away. ”
Identity as self-assertion, as arrogance is nothing but tasteless salt
Identity and making a difference
06
Feb
Identity and difference seem contradictory, we
have already stated that the problem is not logical, but onto-logical, this relative to Being, and in modern ontology the contradiction is possible and therefore non-Being can also be, and this gives rise to Becoming , breaking static barriers.
The capacity and integrity of the Being means that we know ourselves as we are, we understand our worldview and the limitations it has, even the most advanced science has limits, absolute knowledge is possible with a true spirituality, where the soul is.
We improperly say that where the heart is, our desires, desires and projections about who we are, most illnesses, especially psychological ones, come from these projections when they are false, unreal or real experiences that hurt us.
The non-Being means that we understand what we are and are prepared to not be, to receive the Other, the different and the cultural and political diversity of the world, the radicalism of defending one’s own identity and being too attached to the worldview , we have already said it is not identity, but self-identity, many who criticize individualism worship self-identity.
Not being is the openness to the other to dialogue, from where the becoming comes from necessarily passes through a non-Being, much of the extremism of the current world, with bad reflexes in politics is the exercise of the cult of “identity” collectively, false collectives and false “Nodes” that are closed and authoritarian structures.
Within this radicalism there is a seed of the Other, of the acceptance of difference and true spirituality, it is necessary that this “exacerbated” identity is open to the different, or contradictory and mainly changes its form of “thought”, and its closed “culture”.
From thinking, two tendencies emerge: simplism, which reinforces self-identity and complexity, as proposed by Edgar Morin, which facilitates and expands the vision of the world and of Being
