Arquivo para a ‘Linguagens’ Categoria
Clarify the clearing
03
May
Man always wanted the light, he always went in 
search of the “clearing”, the Myth of the Cave of Plato is nothing else, the light in the medieval chapels and arts, the clarification (Aufklärung) that Kant pointed out as the man’s exit from his minority and the current “clearings” of Heidegger and “clarifying” Sloterdijk glades, the plural is on my own.
In medieval art the “light” must be associated with art, although the texts of Boethius, Thomas Aquinas, Averrois and many others are worthy of reading and analysis, it was in the arts that the idea of luminosity was more present, an example, is the church Saint-Chapelle (photo) consecrated in 1248 AD, with example of the dematerialization of the walls and substitution by stained glass.
What should be the exercise of full freedom, the great bet of modernity, actually confined humanism to a dead end, enough to ask the question if we live in an enlightened age, opinions of all philosophical nuances will answer: it is not an enlightened time, so the pretense of enlightenment gave blindness and civilization crisis.
Heidegger’s answers about the “clearing” in the midst of this forest of questions (some think it is only information) was the resumption of being, certainly important, but Sloterdijk’s response to the letters on humanism puts it in question: that is “clearing.”
I do not have a definitive answer, as Sloterdijk is not, even if he points “the spheres” as the circles of imprisonment of being, of thought and I would say here, even religion.
My response contemplates Byung-Chul Han’s book “Expulsion from the Other,” the option for a massified, uniformed society and for that without values would destroy the human wealth of diversity, but it is precisely this diversity that seems to rebel, and may give fruits. Clarifying the clearing, in the face of the civilizing crisis of our time, can not find more answer, as in the past, in the idea of single thinking, diversity is now necessary.
The century of the Kantian lights
30
Apr
The eighteenth century was celebrated by many philosophers
as a century of Philosophy, it seemed that the Enlightenment had triumphed irreversibly, its idea of state, science as a way to remove man from darkness, at last everything seemed to go from strength to strength. First of all what was clarification for Kant, no doubt the greatest precursor, as Hegel was the synthesis of all idealistic philosophy of the Enlightenment.
Clarification (Aufklarung) would be the departure of man from his minority, of which he himself would be guilty, see that guilt here is not the Christian concept of deviation, but that of which the state would be the guardian.
So the minority is the inability to make use of his understanding without the direction of another individual, it is the perfect individualism, the man without the direction of any other individual, therefore only he is guilty of this “minority”, to depend on the other.
This is accomplished in the maxim of the categorical imperative: “he acts in such a way that his action can be universal”, and should not be confused with the golden rule: “do to others what you would like done to you”, because this includes the Other.
The idea that idealism has a golden thread leading to Platonism, which in turn can not be isolated from Aristotle’s “materialism”, is also mistaken in Gadamer: “The problem of historical consciousness,” whose The central point is precisely to separate idealistic and romantic consciousness from history, to reality.
The text of Plato’s Seventh Letter favors dialogue with the Other, the dialectical dialectic of facing opposites and knowing how to complete the so-called hermeneutical circle, where preconceptions can pass through a fusion of horizons and a later enlightenment that leads to new reformulation. Plato affirms in the Seventh Letter: “… only after rubbing so to speak, in each other, …. in these friendly colloquies of questions and answers … is that wisdom and understanding shine on each object … “(Plato 344 b-c).
For Gadamer, the Hermeneutic Circle, a true method of philosophizing, is a-Latvian, for: “Whatever Insight we may possess emerges in a finite human discourse, and therefore only partially … Our insights, in other words, are marked by our discursiveness. What is given to us is given from the concealment [léthe] and in a lapse of time back to it. Hence our human truth is a-letheia, never absolute. ” (GADAMER, 1980, pp. 103-104)
PLATO, Letter VII (Trad. Of the Greek and notes of Jose Trindade Santos and Juvino Maia Jr). Rio de Janeiro: PUC-Rio / Loyola, 2008.
GADAMER, H.G. Dialogue and Dialectic, eight hermeneutical studies on Plato, Binghamton, NY: Yale University, 1980, p. 91-123.
Life: origin and destiny
26
Apr
To exist life is essential water and some other elements
in abundance: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, sulfur, potassium, sodium, chlorine and magnesium, so the search for inhabited or inhabited planets, scientist Arthur C. Clarke said, “Whether we’re alone in the universe or we’re not, either scenario is scary.”
As important as the origin of life, which is still an enigma, is to investigate the original societies that are submerged in the underground layers of our society, some are able to see these traits and understand that modernity is not the eternal destiny of men, others immersed in the conflicts of our time want to eternalize it as if it were the last human civilizing stage.
To understand what life is, it is also to understand where we came from, whether in the scientistic perspective of modernity we have to know whether we come from matter or not, and for this question I recommend Terrence Deacon’s book “Incomplete Nature: how mind emerged fom matter” (see our post), precisely because it unites the anthropological perspective with the cosmological word, in a broader sense that includes the cosmogonies of the diverse cultures and civilizations.
The subject is too broad for a post, so I tell an experience being in Portugal, I went to visit one of these small Portuguese towns Coruche, it is not the villages that are even smaller, and there I came across vestiges of the prehistoric men in the region, the first signs of Western civilization: Roman columns, the one believed to be the first bell of Portugal and also the beginning of Christian evangelization in the region, the Church of Our Lady of the Castle has this name because it was made on the ruins of a castle.
So one civilization buries the other, the city also lies in a border region between the Kingdom of Portugal and that of Al-Andaluz, where Arab Muslims lived and where the origin of the Portuguese tile designs is.
I felt that all this was composed in a civilization originating from unknown Portugal, and we grandchildren of this original civilization. It does not fail to have, as in all Portugal the fields of vines, almost every place has one. As it is written in the museum of Coruche on the city: “The sky, the earth and the men”.
About the essence of life
25
Apr
What is finite or temporary is entity, but everything that exists has not
always existed, then it is entity.
We do not speak of essence without speaking of Being, for the essence without e-sistance is a being for Nothing, the nihilism that has already explored a little, now we go to this existence, finite in the now, but ephemeral because in a second she it will only be a fleeting “memory”.
We assume as Camus, who are only beings, the myth of Sifico to push the stone of life while in this life that is finite and absurd, but that does not admit not being.
As beings, always finite, it is inevitable that we move only in the plane of the beings, that is, only of what it always is, avoiding as far as possible the virtual “being”.
It seems sensible and rational to be only in what is, but also when in the movements for a greater understanding of the Being, if it is not, by the logic of the essences, it is nihilism, since starting only from the plane of the is, everything that is not is nothing, falling and falling on the plane of nihilism.
It is possible, remaining on this plane of existence to find meaning for life and also reap the fruits of a look at the infinite within the existential plane, a film seen in my youth marked me.
Akira Kurosawa Living’s film (Ikiru, 1952), an icon of his still little-known work, tells of a bureaucrat from a public office who discovers stomach cancer and lives the drama of rethinking his life, finds out in ladies who were going to complain of the mud in a peripheral neighborhood a reason for its existence.
Before dying the public servant of a miserable existence discovers in the complaint of those ladies a meaning for their existence and will fight with all the forces to create a park for children where before it was a mall, where he will die on a cold winter day in a chair of swing that square.
It is possible to be as a person, although it is necessary to reach some transcendent objective, to discover in fact what life is, when I went to see the film I thought to myself: I think now Kurosawa will fall into my concept, for me it will always be a myth of cinema not Japanese, but universal.
I also remember that today is the Day of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, which overthrew fascism.
Abandonment in the literature
16
Apr
The subject seems hidden in the literature, but it is not, I began to read 
the author’s Abandon trilogy Meg Cabot because there was reference to the myths of Hades and Persephone.
But the climate of excessive suspense, in my view of course, made me uninterested in the book and unlike many others that I return to and understand the author’s purpose, in this I did not do it. For those who do not know the mythology Persephone is Zeus’s daughter with Demeter, was a goddess concerned with picking flowers, and gradually when he grew up he enchanted the god Hades, lord of the dead who asked his daughter to marry him, but Demeter did not want them to get married .
They end up getting married, but Demeter asks Zeus to bring her back at the end of a complicated plot, Persephone ends up with a period with Hades, which is winter on Olympus, and a period with Demeter, which is spring in the realm of Greek gods. Anyway, the trilogy does not seem to me at the beginning any of this, it was just a “cult” touch.
Another more realistic book caught my attention, I find the Italian author Elena Ferrante, who has been writing since January in The Guardian, about family, childhood, gender and aging.
While I was waiting for a friend in a bookstore in Lisbon, I began to leaf through the book “Days of Abandonment” by Elena Ferrante, which tells the story (I do not know if it is true) of Olga, who is abandoned by Mario and finds herself trapped in a shattered daily life with two children, a dog and no job, but will fight against the feeling of a poor abandoned woman. I did not go to the end, of course, and I did not buy the book to resist the temptation to deviate from my compulsory readings, which at this moment are many and the pile is huge, I quickly saw on the Internet that 90% of the people who read it liked it.
Your book “A genial friend” is going to the TVs, in Portugal there will be a series.
See and believe: feeling the real
06
Apr
Contrary to common sense thinking, the virtual does not oppose
the real, but it points to a path, digital technologies already under development as augmented reality, virtual reality and holograms are virtual not in the sense of unreality, but of potentialities. What may come out of them still depends on some technological advances, but the development of these artifacts, such as to create 3D holograms tested at Brigham Young
Researchers of Bringham Young University (see our post) published in the January issue of Nature, will still depend on technological advances to market in the near future, this is its virtuality. In an information society, reading plays a central role, not incidentally it is linked to the printed artifact, the so-called Gutenberg Galaxy, however one can imagine that oral culture has little to do with it, or only compose with it , but this is not a fact.
Oral culture, seeing is linked to listening, may seem curious or strange in this culture is essential to listen, and speaking means a certain authority, were thus with the oracles, prophets and masters in Afro cultures, one must have the gift to tell in them the myths occupy a prominent place, that is why we develop here: seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not listen. It might be the opposite, if we think of photography, TV and the Cinema, but the so-called “society of the spectacle”, which Guy Debord defined the spectacle as the set of social relations mediated by the images, but these are only modern artifacts; cave paintings would then be what?
The line of analysis that although it criticizes seems more coherent is that of Paul Virilio, that the modern society walks with “speed” for the new media, and the dance and the theater would be the real resistances to this speed, But Virilio surrenders to the claim that technological innovations transform, modify, alter geographical space at all scales (local, national and global), does not say this, however, it is necessary to humanize them, and this process will be increasingly is inherent in these media. An example of oral culture is in Thomas’s famous passage, which is interpreted in the culture of information as saying that it is seeing to believe, it is wrong, it is to feel to believe, reread the passage of John 20: 25-27.
“Then the other disciples told him,” We have seen the Lord. “But Thomas said to them,” If I do not see the nail-mark in your hands, if I do not put my finger on the nail-marks, your side, I will not believe “…. and Jesus said, Put your finger here and look at my hands.”
Jesus appeared and asked that he also touch other passages Jesus appears and only when he speaks, and breaks bread is “seen,” modern man must touch and feel.
Seeing do not see
05
Apr
Listening already wrote here, is the fact of owning the hearing aid,
listening is something for mental processing. what you have heard, you can not do it without some attention and some knowledge, at least of the language in which you are listening.
I imagined in Portugal, that in all the Iberian Peninsula, had already seen in Spain, there is some culture linked to the vision, something similar to oral tradition, even more primitive, yes because the cave paintings are previous to writing and probably originating from oral culture .
I discover asking about the cultural importance of the Caldas da Rainha City, relatively close to Lisbon, the figure of Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro (1846-1905), inventor of Zé-Povinho (in certain sense: little person), also a journalist of the engraving, a pencil leaflet, a graphic chronicler, a failed ceramista, cartoonist, ahed of time, Republican (in Portugal it happen in 1910), one of pionnering in satirical cartoons, and it may have convulsed his country in the late nineteenth century, still a monarchist, but already strong republican ideias. ,
His ceramics that did not avenge in his time, today are works of art spread in the interior world, in Brazil we have already seen those pots shaped like pine, cups (Portugal cups) and other crockery (utensils in the terrinha), made in format fruits and decoration, made much more like the “zé povinho” than the royal dishes of the Portuguese aristocracy.
Just as listening requires a training, the look requires a double training, because the artist wants to give the public something beyond the conventional and for this reason does this or that nuance in its artifacts,
Perhaps the very expression of Zé Povinho, also used in Brazil, owes to him, also here as here the expression can denote a pejorative sense.
The fact of the vision in the artistic sense, so much can resort to mythical figures, winged horses and onicorns, mule without head and saci Pererê in popular legends, with mystics in the sense even of anticipation of the reality, many artists were ahead of its time.
A visionary of our time can not refuse the media and social networks, being redundant, it is lack of vision.
Codified: For a Design Philosophy
22
Mar
Vilém Flusser was a Czech, brazilian citizen naturalized, died in 1991, who worked for about 20 years as professor of philosophy, journalist, lecturer and writer in Brazil and then back in his country of birth to the Czech
Republic.
His books are being republished in Brazil, including all his writings, and I began rereading The Coded World – for a philosophy of Design.
His work goes beyond the influences he received from Roland Barthes, Marshall McLuhan, because his philosophy is itself with elements of phenomenology and existentialism.
Rafael Cardoso’s introduction to the book highlights his change of thinking about the modern media he just saw born: “unlike most modern philosophers, who tend to focus their analysis on verbal language or mathematical codes, Flusser part of its gigantic power of reflection to images and artifacts, laying the foundation for a legitimate philosophy of design and communication. “(Flusser, 2017, p.10)
He asked deep questions about the virtual world: “If a tree falls into virtual space, and there is no one online, does it generate a warning message?” Returning to the famous question of the tree falling in the forest, the difference between the material and the immaterial? Can we exchange things for not things? “(Ibid.) And concludes with an even more fundamental question:” What destination should we reserve for the detritus generated by our frantic activity of transforming nature into culture? “(FLUSSER, 2017)
It approaches the paradigm of information, an essential basis for knowledge and education, “the end of history seems to be the end of our collective ability to fight against entropy, against the breakdown of meaning and form. If the basis of what we understand by culture resides in the action of in + form, then is not it paradoxical that the excess of information leads us to the breakdown of meaning? “(Idem)
The importance of the “concept of virtuality is perhaps the best and most elegant proof of how well Flusser was right.” (Ibid.), And can no longer escape this question, use in various forms of information, communication and the arts requires opening of this “black box”, the name of an essay published in the year 1985.
Flusser, unlike apocalyptics, admits that “at least in thesis,” which should become human well-being, becomes a slave to the forces of another “nature” which it helped to artificially generate. ”
Aspects of virtuality and a codified world are uniquely developed by the author and contribute to a more serene debate on new media.
FLUSSER, V. (2013) Shape of Things: A philosophy of Design, Reaktion Books, 2013. (pages and year em Brazilian edition).
Anthropology and Ontology
19
Mar
This is a hidden relation in many texts of contemporary thought, we now turn to the history of
this Being-in-the-world (we already use another translation as pre-sence), or we delve into the “hidden” side of Being.
Some readings by Paul Ricoeur are important to clarify this question, for example reading Time and Narrative, we find the passage: however, it recognizes an anthropological dimension of the ontological-existential categories of Being and Time. According to him, Heidegger’s analysis must “have a certain consistency in the plan of a philosophical anthropology to exercise the ontological opening function that is assigned to it.” (Ricoeur, 1994, p.97).
Of course, the essential aspect of Heidegger’s Work is the question of Being, for which he is forgotten by traditional metaphysics because ontology has become an ontology of substance, which sees everything as the primacy of “thing.”
But his work is not displaced or forgotten by the anthropological dimension, this consistency is constructed as Ricoeur explains, by his existential analytic “it is before all psychology, anthropology and, above all, biology.” (Heidegger 1995, 81).
But it is not an opening of an a priori to the idealistic mode, it is not a simple “aprioristic construction” (Heidegger, 1995, p.87), that is to say, detached from any “empiria” or practical aspect, that the unrelated their objectivity.
Thus, with a correct method, all scientific research and ontological research may even converge, the latter always tending towards a greater “purification” and transparency of what was discovered ontologically, doing what Husserl called “returning the thing itself” is to abandon speculation and enter into the aspect of the relationship with knowledge, which is to give the world intelligible character.
Research that follows a “fixation of the sectors of objects,” and does so only from the original opening to the beings’ way of being by which the sensory experience of the world is responsible, but no responsible research will fail to present questions that are “subjective “Of the empirical data, hence inseparable from them.
If scientific inquiry approaches a particular region of entities, it enters a region beyond the horizon of the original experience: the horizon of the fundamental relation of the entity investigated and the world questioned of its relation.
In the anthropological plane this is essential, to collect data of a culture, without penetrating the “being” of it is to make an objective abstraction, to ignore subjective aspects of it.
Heidegger, M. Being and Time (part I). Petrópolis: Vozes, 1995. (brazilian edition)
Ricoeur, P. Time and Narrative (volume I). São Paulo: Papirus, 1994. (brazilian edition)
The Ontological Resumption
16
Mar
Heidegger shows in his work that a question never touched (at least in depth) in philosophy is 
the “sense of being,” and this was due to the fact that in traditional metaphysics all ontology has become an ontology of substance, Thomas Aquinas’s thought is important, for it has been separated from being of essence.
The primacy of the “thing” which we have made a relation to being-of-beings, is how the “thing” became represented for all that “is,” but rejecting its ontology, not only rejecting the thing abstract, but from the existential point of view, the question of being is eminently concrete, because “being is always the being of an entity.”
But what are the questions for modernity imposed on the Being? the essential determinations of being of beings?
It is a way which must lie below the empirical or ontic plane (of beings) and constitute the condition of possibility of the same, and these ontological structures explicit in the analysis of dasein (such as occupation, disposition, understanding, discourse) should not be confused with those who would be their ontological or empirical correlates (affection, desire, knowledge, language).
It is a matter of precedence, for they are neither unreal nor correlate, for every existential analytic “is before all psychology, anthropology and, above all, biology.” (Heidegger 1995, pp. 81)
In Heidegger in the being of man there is a pre-sence -, a fundamental ontological dimension. Indeed, in Heidegger’s text, the status of the claim is ambiguous.
The translation of Dasein was preferred as such, so that it is not understood as synonymous with “man” (the being-there has this ambiguity), in the ontological determination, what corresponds to the being of this being is his pre-sence and this is the question.
Their relationship may seem paradoxical, as many authors think, in the relation of being to being, but it is not, it is possible to live divinely this pre-sence, not nihil.
A biblical passage almost unexplored by scholars of the sacred text, is when approaching the Passover of Jesus, he says he is distressed and also sees himself before a “void”, in John in 27-28 it is written thus:
“Now I feel distressed. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour?’ But it was precisely for this hour that I came. Pai, glorify thy name! ” and the crowd, which was there and heard, said that it had been thunder. “I glorify him!”.
This question is not “nihil” but it is the Easter, pass to dead for live, not dead only.
—
Note: – This is translation from Márcia de Sá Cavalcante for “dasein”.
Heidegger, M. (1995) Ser e Tempo (parte I). Petrópolis: Vozes. (Brazil)
