Arquivo para a ‘Linguagens’ Categoria
War and the illusion of power
23
Aug
Whatever form we define with power, and this
does not exclude the empowerment of the weak, it is always a form of domination of one being over another, there would then be some form of balance, or in the words of philosophy, some form of symmetry or horizontality ?
Byung-Chul Han’s answer in the book In the Swarm seems direct and simple: respect, all other forms, presuppose some hierarchy or asymmetry of power.
It is sad to note that many contemporary philosophies and spiritualities also point to forms of power: be more, be first, how to achieve things ahead of others and thousands of “magical” ways to deceive and deceive innocent people who embark on these false promises.
We are finite and limited beings, balance and social life depend on everyone, and hatred and wars are the cruelest manifestation of forms of imbalance and asymmetry.
Egalitarianism is also an illusion, we are different and with different skills and this does not harm us, human complementarity helps us to carry out different tasks and in different contexts, some with more talent and others with more difficulties, but there is no need to discard anyone, social life is made up of a set of individual actions.
However, the set of values and stimuli that we have internally depend on a human and spiritual asceticism, not an idealistic altruism, but a good sense of respect and dignity of which we are all bearers.
Modern society, since the Enlightenment and idealism, has decided that these “subjective” factors (in fact, human interiority, real and imaginary) should be discarded, and the result is a violent society, without balance and which depends on brute force to balance, in this the State and the police force end up playing a preponderant role.
It is a shame to opt for non-violence, respect for others and moral values, all of this seems harsh and seems to restrict freedom, but it is a guarantee of balance and serenity.
In the Bible, the disciples said to the master Jesus: “your words are harsh” (John 6:60) and He replied: “this causes you to stumble”, “the Spirit is what gives life, the flesh is of no use” and some decided not to walk more with Him, what we put in our minds is what guides our life.
The logic of productivism and its inverse
21
Aug
Several authors argue about the logic of
modern society regarding productivism, this logic is not specific to a mode of production, but characterizes a society where values are all placed around the power and productivity of each individual, thus excluding, for example , the elderly, children, domestic workers and those with special needs.
According to the literature (A. Giddens and others): productivism is the logic that guides the lives of a group of individuals (the so-called “adequate consumers”) while another group (called “failed consumers”) are adrift in economic life , political and social.
For this reason, more critical social analysts place the allocation of work to directed groups as a factor of crisis in contemporary society, also in the academic, political and even spiritual world, a certain profile of a person with some “performance” is required.
Saying that these people take actions according to their abilities or choices is a farce, even if we find some rebellion among young people who opt for jobs such as cooking, sports or leisure sectors, the majority live on projects manipulated by the society of performance and consumption. .
How to reverse this logic, looking at the excluded sectors of society, it is increasingly common for people with special needs, people with certain types of diseases or syndromes to fit into a restricted market full of productivity demands.
The biblical parable of last-minute workers is a well-placed metaphor, where workers who are sitting in the square (discarded from productive spaces) are called to work and although they arrive at the final hour they will receive the same amount as other workers, not to be confused with Misguided projects (in Brazil) that place young people in work without having the remuneration corresponding to the same function performed by “experienced” workers.
The parable, also called “workers in the vineyard” or “generous employer” (Mt 20:1-16), could be the opposite of the productivist vision of the modern labor market.
Giddens, A. (2013) Consequencies of Modernity. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
The Sophists’ Justification of Power
20
Aug
The sophists were intelligent men who educated
and influenced young people in Classical Antiquity, using oratory and rhetoric, to use speech to justify power, regardless of moral aspects.
They were fought first by Socrates, we only know about him through Plato, and then by Plato (428 BC – 347 BC) and Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) who defended education for true citizenship, considering the sophists merely mercenaries of the powerful.
As we read in Plato, Protagoras was one of these sophists, he was born in 490 BC and thus can be considered the first sophist, another famous one was Hippias who would have debated with Socrates about natural and conventional laws, he was versed in astronomy, mathematics, painting and poetry which gave him great “authority”.
They have their origins in the pre-Socratics: Protagoras would be a disciple of Democritus (the famous phrase “man is the measure of all things”), Thrasymachus, the main figure in the beginning of Plato’s Republic, argued that “justice would be only the advantage of stronger”, and Gorgias, who is not considered a sophist by Socrates, creates a controversy with Parmenides (being is and non-being is not), according to this “sophist” one cannot communicate what is not known.
Two criticisms can be considered fundamental to the sophists, creating relative truths and this has a strong relationship with modern narratives, and the fact that they considered that virtues were not things that could be taught, thus dismissing moral values.
They, however, did not ignore the questions of the “soul” (what idealism calls subjectivity) in Gorgias’ speech we can read:
“[T]here is the same relationship between the power of speech and the disposition of the soul, the device of drugs and the nature of bodies: just as such a drug causes such a mood to leave the body, and that some cause illness to cease, others life, so Also, among the speeches, some afflict, others enchant, make fear, inflame the listeners, and some, due to some bad persuasion, drug the soul and bewitch it.”
Modern sophists go beyond disregarding the soul, as they praise drugs, drunkenness and temporal pleasures, education for citizenship and replaced by pure ideologisms, today little thought out and organized, are vague promises of a better future.
Thus the logic of power is inverted, Thrasymachus’s “strongest” speech makes sense again, the lack of reasonable moral values has been extinguished in exchange for momentary and fleeting happiness, and rhetoric and oratory are used to convince of many, but true moral discourse says: “the last will be first and the first will be last” (Mt 19:30) because this logic only leads to destruction and empty promises.
Plato. A república (The republic). Trans. And notes Maria da Rocha Pereira, 9th. ed. Colouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, s/d.
The limits of logical thinking
16
Aug
The full development of modern science and
technology was the realization of a program dreamed of by Francis Bacon, René Descartes and Immanuel Kant as a total domination of man over nature on a dangerous ethical threshold, manufacturing what is natural, but this comes up against two dilemmas: the natural was and (in my opinion) will always be the “unmanufactured” and by making the substance manipulable it continues to be in fact what it was naturally.
In excerpts from Heidegger’s notes between 1936 and 1946 (therefore in the final stage of the 2nd world war), the author wrote an essay called Overcoming Metaphysics, and with all his genius describes what would result in the technical and industrial production of life, wrote: “Since man is the most important raw material, one can count on the fact that, based on current chemical research [of course at the time], factories for the artificial production of human material will one day be installed. The research of the chemist Kuhn, distinguishing from planned directing the production of male and female living beings, according to their respective demands” (Heidegger, Uberwindung der Metaphysik, paragraph 26).
Adono and Horkheimer also expressed in the famous Dialectic of Enlightenment, that this “has always, in the most comprehensive sense of thought in progress, pursued the goal of removing fear from man and establishing him as master. However, the completely enlightened earth sparkles under the sign of triumphal misfortune.” (Adorno, Horkheimer, 1987, p. 25).
Habermas also spoke of this extravaganza of bad science fiction, experimental production of embryos, even a convinced atheist, in his work “Die Zukunft der menschlichen Natur. Auf dem Weg zu einer liberalen Eugenik?” complains about this vision of “partners in evolution” or even “playing God” as metaphors for the self-transformation of the species.
It is not about opposing the advancement of science, a retrograde thought present in all social circles, but about opposing bad science, bad progress that result in scourges for humanity itself.
The sense of fully recovering life, of opposing growing authoritarianism and warmongering, of proclaiming peace, sustainable development and the divine origin of human life is not just a proclamation of faith or serious and sincere humanism, it is a resistance of spirit, hope and a rationality above instrumental and agnostic logic.
Temporal power and forgiveness
15
Aug
Temporal power rarely finds space for forgiveness,
but this does not mean that it never passes through human thought and philosophy, even though in essence, forgiving is divine, and this means going beyond what is humanly thinkable.
For the philosopher Jacques Derrida: “when forgiveness is in the service of a purpose, be it noble or spiritual, such as redemption or reconciliation, that is, every time it intends to reestablish normality, social, national, political or psychological, through mourning work or therapy, it is not pure […] Forgiveness should remain exceptional and extraordinary, putting the impossible to the test, as if it interrupted the ordinary course of human temporality”, thus it remained within human limits.
There is no doubt that crimes against humanity, atrocities and barbarities are beyond the limit of “human temporality” and so is earthly power, since it is temporal, even dictators who remained in power all their lives had a tragic or disastrous end. temporal death, and some were forgotten, others even banished from popular memory.
Therefore, forgiveness must be considered as something fundamental in addition to temporal power, and it could be a regulator for periods of crises and wars, in almost all of which it is not possible to measure the degree of atrocities committed, both on the part of the “winners” and “losers” and the rational (and divine) thing would be to consider that they got themselves into a fight that they should never have entered into.
Likewise, our personal and social sorrows and disagreements, how useful and healthy a moment of serenity would be and to sit at the table of dialogue and be able to discuss unthinkable solutions, or in Derrida’s words “putting the impossible to the test”, the moment looks like this.
If we have the courage to listen to that “enemy” that we would never listen to, to give a hand to someone whose hurt or disagreement is very great, we could return to a destructive path that seems to have no return, and whose overcoming depends only on one attitude: forgiving.
Even those who will never ask us for forgiveness have lost the serenity and humanity of seeing the other beyond judgments and disagreements, there is always another being there, ontologically we only deny the Being if we refuse to listen to it and give it some credit, maybe you need this.
Forgiving is divine, whoever takes this step understands that there is another reality beyond what we imagine to be real and possible, the impossible is also within the reach of those who forgive.
Love and beyond pain
09
Aug
Pain is not the resignation of absolute
interiority: “the subject who works on identity, returning to himself in his interiority, assimilating the world, is incapable of pain” (pg. 329), while other thinkers stopped in anguish or in the search through difference or even through the subject destined for an “absolute spirit”, Heidegger sees in pain a “fundamental affective tone of melancholy” (Han, 2023, pg. 329), it is the tone of being… of finitude… of finite thought, “is the identical feature that, as the basis of a certain formal manner, supports every fundamental tonality occupied by some content, the main feature that, as the same, is the basis of the respective tuning mode” (Han, 2023, pg. 330).
There is no reason for pain other than a separation from something that transcends it, says a Brazilian song “those who did not suffer for love, did not love”, but this relationship can be reversed if we can see the divine as Pure Love, He also through pain loves us out of love, perhaps it is its ultimate essence, like the Christian symbol of the cross.
All philosophy tells us about being separated from something, a search for something, the desire for infinity and agape happiness (those that are not lasting are only palliative), thus the name of Han’s book “The palliative society”, speaks of pain today.
There is an attraction in this type of essence, the relationship between pain and love, not because of a suffering or masochistic spirit, but precisely because of the separation of infinity, plenitude and pure Being, and only the existence of Pure Being can attract us to this kind of love.
A striking quote from Han is: “The modern loss of faith, which concerns not only God and the afterlife, but reality itself, makes human life radically transitory.”, the Korean-German philosopher is much closer of Buddhism than of Christianity, but understands an essential relationship that exists in this Love/Pain, in this Being/Non-Being, not in a dualistic way, but in an intimate relationship like true Love.
So if there is a precedence in the relationship, it is Pain and Love, but not as a denial of life but as its maximum affirmation.
Han, B.C. (2023) Coração de Heidegger: sobre o conceito de tonalidade afetiva em Martin Heidegger. Transl. Rafael Rodrigues Garcia, Milton Camargo Mota. Brazil, Petrópolis: Vozes.
Pain and the divine
08
Aug
The book chapter on the Voice in Byung-Chul
Han’s “Heidegger’s Heart: On the Concept of Affective Tonality”, this Voice could be final (the chapter too), but as Heidegger saw it it was more of an inner Voice than a relationship with the divine, and Han was faithful to him, for him it is part of the development of the Being, also when talking about pain, a subject that Han dealt with in the “Palliative Society: pain today” (we made some posts), remembering the way we treat the pandemic and other scourges in a society that does not want to look at this side of life: suffering and pain.
Not by chance, Heidegger addresses this when elaborating on Parmenides, where ontology is reduced to Being is and non-Being is not, to a logic A and not-A, with no third hypothesis, there Heidegger speaks of “a certain death (sacrificial ) of the human being: “But the supreme form of pain is the dying of death, which sacrifices the human being for the preservation of the truth of being” (Han, 2013, pg. 321), so the sacrifice is not here, as “Does sacrifice have its own essence and does not need objectives or benefits? ” (idem) and so this should be guided by something beyond the earthly, the merely human.
Han, quoting Foucault, asks that “is it a matter of a certain agony to awaken thought from an “anthropological sleep”?” (idem), perhaps an anthropotechnical awakening or even as we chose an onto-anthropotechnical awakening, since the forgetfulness of being is not just a philosophical category, there is something transitory in it, not infinite and not open.
When addressing the emptiness of modern man, also based on the reading of Foucault, Han recalls that Heidegger, when resuming the metaphysical category “subjectum”, which in “its essence is modern man is the “subject” and it is exactly here that Heidegger “criticizes implicitly anthropological thought” (pg. 322), it is according to Heidegger: “the continuation of Cartesianism”, Han quoting him: “With the interpretation of man as subjectum. Descartes creates the metaphysical assumption for future anthropology of all types and orientations” (pg. 323), the categories subject and object are characteristic of modernity.
Thus it is not man’s opposition to beings, but modernity’s mistaken opposition to language: “concern for language would be concern for death. Giving language back to man would therefore mean giving him back death, his mortality” (pg. 324), and it is also not about the ‘being’ or ‘non-being’ of the human being” (pg. 325-326 ).
For Heidegger, the subject is reflected in the world; “the image of the world is in a way its own mirror image” (pg. 326), which is why it hides the being, whereas pain “tears apart subjective interiority. It is not completely lost. Pain is associated with a peculiar concentration, which, however, is not established as a subjective interiority” (pg. 327).
Although the author and Heidegger do not say so, this is why “idealistic sleep” exists, where subjectum and being are divided, and “in pain, thinking is concentrated on what gives thought… in the concentrated dispersion of pain, the thinking by turning outward learns the exterior by heart – this side of knowledge and science, which would enable assimilating internalizing learning” (pg. 327).
It is important to highlight the calculating economy seen by Heidegger: “Pain is from ‘because’, not from ‘due to’… mourning does not lament, it does not seek to fill the place that was left empty… mourning without mourning is only conceivable outside of economics (VIII.3)” (quoted in Han, pg. 328).
Han B.C. (2023) Heidegger’s Heart: on the concept of affective tonality in Martin Heidegger. Trans. Rafael Rodrigues Garcia, Milton Camargo Mota. Brazil, Petrópolis: Vozes.
What is love after all
07
Aug
In a polarized world and now on the verge of 
regional wars that can escalate, talking about love seems innocuous and has no reflection on reality, but there are good works produced by humanity.
Paul Ricoeur wrote and we have already posted about this a few times about Le socius e le prochain (The partner and the neighbor), separating interests from true love for others.
However, Hannah Arendt’s work, although not definitive regarding love, the advisor Karl Jaspers himself expressed this about his doctorate “Love in Saint Augustine”, developed and appropriated some fundamental categories on the subject, of course we are not talking about erotic nor familial love.
According to author George McKenna, in a review of her thesis, Arendt tried to include a revision in her “The Human Condition”, but it is not very clear in Arendt’s book that, despite this, it has good development.
If this love can also be expressed in ancient Greek literature, such as agape love, which differs from eros and philia in this literature, from a Christian point of view the best development made is in fact that of Saint Augustine.
First because he separated this concept from good x evil Manichaeism, a dualism still present in almost all Western philosophy due to idealism and puritanism, then because he was in fact raptured upon discovering divine love, he wrote: “Late I loved you, O beauty so ancient and so young! Too late I loved you! Behold, you lived within me and I was looking for you outside!” (Confessions of Saint Augustine).
Then man must love his neighbor as God’s creation: […] man loves the world as God’s creation; in the world the creature loves the world just as God loves it. This is the realization of a self-denial in which everyone, including yourself, simultaneously reclaims your God-given importance. This achievement is love for others (ARENDT, 1996, p. 93).
Man can love his neighbor as a creation by returning to his origin: “It is only where I can be certain of my own being that I can love my neighbor in his true being, which is in his createdness.” (ARENDT, 1996, p. 95)
In this type of love, man loves the divine essence that exists in himself, in others, in the world, man “loves God in them” (ARENDT, 1996, 9
The biblical reading also summarizes the law and the Christian prophets like this (Mt 22, 38-40): “This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is similar to this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’. All the Law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”
Love contains all the virtues: it does not become conceited or angry, it knows how to see where the true signs of happiness, balance and hope are found, even in a troubled world.
ARENDT, Hannah. Love and Saint Augustine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
The heart and beliefs
02
Aug
The heart is a vital organ, it irrigates blood
throughout the organism reaching all the cells of the human body, when we talk about beliefs (they are also hidden in objects of human knowledge, we believe that something is a certain “way”) we do not we just talk about faith.
Byung-Chul Han, when carrying out his analysis based on the classic authors of Western philosophy, approaches a perspective of what he will call “affective tone”, focusing mainly on Heidegger.
His book, unlike others that are just essays, has “Heidegger’s heart: on the concept of affective tonality in Martin Heidegger” (Ed. Vozes, 2023), his first book in my opinion, with a new, human and spiritual analysis. even spiritual at the core of Western philosophy.
Part of a concept dear to Judeo-Christian civilization, which is that of circumcision, but circumcision of the heart and not of the failed organ (the skin attached to the beginning of the penis), it is necessary to remember that although it is a male organ, it is an emblem of power, of authority and desire, was culturally a warlike culture.
The part of his vision with his eastern vision and that has a spiritual sense for his entire philosophical question, Han will develop that it is the circumcision of the heart, that which modulates and governs affection, circumcision has a different meaning than what is commonly spoken, the controversy between Christians and Jews at the beginning of the Christian era, is the circumcision of the heart.
Circumcision is the act of removing the skin of the male sexual organ, but even in the biblical sense it was the skin of the heart, in Deuteronomy it reads: “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and no longer stiffen your neck” (Dt 10,6), citing in the epigraph of the first chapter of the book: “Circumcision of the heart” (Han, 2023, p. 7).
Thus, “this circumcision frees the heart from subjective interiority” (Han, 2023, p. 11), and there is a surprising preliminary conclusion in Heidegger: “Heidegger’s heart, on the other hand [confronts with Derrida], listens to one voice , follows the tonality and gravity of the “one, the only one that unifies” (Han, 2023, p. 14-15), for him it is an “ear of his heart” and thus there is something strong spiritual in this.
It is there that the human being finds his essence: “he remains in tune with that from which his essence is determined. In the tuning determination, man is affected and called by a voice that sounds all the purer the more silently it resonates through the sonant” (Han, 2023, p. 15) literally quoting Heidegger.
He will not say that it is faith, and it reveals the Buddhist influence of his thought, the author’s only link, in my opinion, with idealism, because in Buddhism there is only a personal elevation, there is no Person on the other side, who resonates through the resounding, that voice of the Holy Spirit.
The author clarifies the disagreement between Derridá and |Heidegger: “The ‘polyphony’ that Derrida opposes to totality does not exclude tonality” (pg. 16) we would say if these authors: Han, Derrida and Heidegger were Christians, that Heidegger and Han would be monotheists and Derrida would be polytheist, but it is clear that this “resounding voice” is not that of God, but from within.
Han, B.C. (2023) Heidegger’s Heart: on the concept of affective tone in Martin Heidegger. Trans. Rafael Rodrigues Garcia, Milton Camargo Mota. Brazil, Petrópolis: Vozes.
Form and content
01
Aug
Modern philosophy has separated the form from
the content, just as a label is separated from an ingredient that exists in a bottle, but this comes from the reduced understanding of what matter is, the hylé of the Greeks, whose thought in Aristotelian terminology interconnects them in hylemorphism (ὕλη, hýle = “matter”; μορφή, morphé = “form”).
For this to have an anthropological scope, necessary for the discourse on cultural diversity, it is necessary to link act and power, as Thomas Aquinas did, where matter is not what we today designate (like substance, for example), but rather what is as a possibility or in potential, written like this by Thomas: “matter est id quod est in potentia” (matter is that which is in potential) (THOMAS, ST I q.3 a.2 c), in current terms, while It’s not an act, it’s just a given.
Thus the act is the existence of fact, or the action itself, that is, “forma est actus (form is act) (ST I q.50, a.2, obi.3), so we let ourselves be shaped by ideas, actions and thoughts that can be deeper or shallower, based on just a few words.
Thus the articulation of the binomials power x act and matter x form is in this way, “matter is nothing but power, form is that through which something is, as it is the act” (THOMAS, ScG II, c.43), these Categories give a distinction from fundamental metaphysics, and anthropologically mean that one thing is the possibility of existing or acting: power or matter, another thing is actually existing or acting: act or form.
Some modern theologies want to separate body and soul, this is without eschatological and biblical foundation, otherwise the human figure of Jesus would be divided into two: the divine and the human, which would be in opposition and would fight against each other, and this is why the Christian anthropology must be rigorously unitary, as it is in Thomas Aquinas.
M matter and form (seen in this new aspect linked to content and essence), without its actual existence (form) the body would not even exist, but only the possibility of existing (potentially) makes it exist in act, this unity is radical, since the necessary condition for its existence is the body, so spirituality is not just “body” there is an essence in it.
It is fundamental to understanding Christian anthropology, written clearly by Thomas: “The human being is not just a soul, but something composed of soul and body” (THOMAS, ST I q. 75 a 4c), if on the one hand not all materialism (which is not hylemorphism) denies the existence of the soul, much bad theology seeks to deny the existence of the body, it is the modern dualistic relationship, crystallized in objectivity and subjectivity, in which both are mutilated, so they were not “shaped” with a spirit new.
According to Thomas Aquinas, human living bodies and their actual existence (form, also called by him the intellective soul) is immortal, unlike other non-human living bodies, whose existence has a beginning and an end, not the eschatological end, but the finalist end of an interruption, as all humans die, and for him death is explained as a provisional disability through which we pass into an immortal existence and overcome the radical disability of the living body through death.
The metaphor of the potter that transcends the simplistic analysis of simple adherence (Jer 18, 3-4): “I went to the potter’s house, and behold, he was working at the wheel; When the vase he was molding with clay broke down in his hands, he was once again making another vase out of that material, as seemed best to his eyes.”
AQUINAS, T. (2001-2006) Suma Teológica. Brazil São Paulo: Loyolla, 8 v.
