Arquivo para a ‘Museology’ Categoria
What is sense and signal for Augustine of Hippo
16
May
In his epistemology, Augustine reveals that he can see and has a sense of
things, but there can be shadows, he says: “Therefore, we cannot say that the object that is seen generates sense; but it generates a form or its likeness, which is produced in the sense of sight when we feel something by seeing it.” (Augustine, 2008, p. 88), so knowledge is not innate.
Augustine’s example is interesting because he uses the idea of the signet (an imprimatur with a seal, for example), the image it produces: “when a signet is imprinted in wax, the image does not cease to be produced because it is only seen after separation. But because, after the wax has been separated, what has been produced remains, so that it can be seen, it is therefore easy to be persuaded that the form imprinted on the wax from the signet already existed, even before it was separated from it.” (Augustine, 2008, p. 88-89), but if it were liquid it would not remain.
This is how he explains the three forms of vision we can have: “The first of these, that is, the thing itself that is seen, does not belong to the nature of the living being, except when we look at our body. The second belongs to it in such a way that it is formed in the body and, through the body, is formed in the soul; it is formed in the sense of sight, which exists neither without the body nor without the soul. The third is the soul’s alone, since it is the will.” (Augustine, 2008, p. 90), which explains his view of the soul.
Thus, in the metaphor of the signet, a message is only engraved if the Soul is predisposed and thus receives the message (photo above).
Although these three forms of vision coexist, they need all three stages and are concretized in the will, seen as: “the will has such force to unite them both that it not only directs the sense that is to receive the form towards the object that is seen, but, after receiving the form, keeps it fixed on it” (Augustine, 2008, p. 91).
The forms that vision makes concrete on the outside help us not to see the shadows that degrade them, as Augustine puts it: “when he lives according to the trinity of the external man, that is, when he devotes to the things that form the sense of the body from the outside not a praiseworthy will by which he refers to them for something useful, but an unworthy concupiscence by which he attaches himself to them”. (Augustine, 2008, p. 91), so we tend to see shadows.
This is how I can understand the “illumination” of consciousness (Augustine would say divine), where: “… this is how that trinity is formed from memory and inner vision, and from the will which unites them both; the coming together* of these three things into one is called ‘thought’** from ‘coming together’*** .And in all three, not even the substance is different” ¬ (Augustine, 2008, p. 92).
Thus, Augustinian linguistics is not dualistic, neither immanent nor transcendent.
AUGUSTINE, St. (2008) De trinitate, livros IX e XIII, Transl. : Arnaldo do Espírito Santo / Domingos Lucas Dias / João Beato / Maria Cristina Castro-Maia de Sousa Pimentel, Portugal: LusoSofia:press, Portugal, Covilhã.
¬The notes of the Portuguese translation explain: “coguntur.* cogitatio.** coactus**. The verb cogito, ‘to think’, is formed from the verb ago, ‘to take’, from which derives the verb coagere > cogere, ‘to join’, and the noun coactus, the result of the action of joining: ‘meeting’. Hence Augustine’s conceptual association between thought and gathering.
Oriental absence beyond functional calculus
06
May
Byung-Chul the void (xu, 虛) as absence does not allow a purely
functional interpretation (Han, 2024, p. 16), quoting the book 15 Zhuang Zhou “note: ‘stillness, serenity, absence, emptiness and inaction: this is the balance between heaven and earth’ (tian dan ji mo, xu wu wei, ci tian di zhi ping, 恬淡寂寞, 虛无无为, 此天地之平). The void xu, in the expression xu vu (虚无无), has no functional meaning” (Han, 2024, p. 26).
He gives several examples noted by Byung-Chul in a footnote, the emptiness of the spokes of a wagon wheel, the emptiness in clay to become a vase, doors and windows of rooms, and criticizes François Julien who interprets according to a functional analysis:
“stripped of all mysticism (since it has no metaphysical orientation), Laozi’s famous return to emptiness is a demand to dissolve the blockages to which the real is subject as soon as it no longer finds any gaps and becomes saturated. When everything is filled, there is no more room for action. When all emptiness is abolished, the margin that allowed the effects to unfold freely is also destroyed” (Han, 2024, p. 27 quoting Julien F.).
He recalls from the story the “frightening appearance of the cripple” who doesn’t have to go to war, and receives “abundant” aid from the state, and also the anecdote of the cook who carves the animal with ease, instead of resolutely cutting, he passes the knife through the cavities already present in the joints.
According to both stories, the interpretation works by suggesting that it increases the effectiveness of the action, also allows for a utilitarian interpretation, but the fact that there are so many cripples and so many useless things in Zhuang’s stories, leads functionality itself into emptiness, these characters appear precisely against utility and efficiency (pg. 28).
I’m also reminded of Western mysticism, where it still exists, that the search for bread, health and social assistance is often also motivated by an existential emptiness, even those who have some social condition are looking for something in a “void” that is not functional, but spiritual.
When someone asks for bread, they are also asking for dignity, citizenship, respect and many others beyond the functional void, the principle of inclusion is not merely rhetorical and should not be functional, it should be ontological as Being-there, but beyond the in Portuguese pre-sente and au-sente (abwesend in German or absent in English), it is just a feel (wow feel in English or Wow Gefühl in German), the word wow in both languages is an expression for wow!), but of course translations are always imperfect.
In Portuguese it would be better to use “sendo” (Portuguese) in the sense of feeling, sein in German and being in English where the verb to be has a stricter meaning than in other languages, here in the sense of existing or subsisting in life, mystically the functional bread is also a mystical bread in Christianity.
Han, B.-C. (2024) Ausência: sobre a cultura e a filosofia do extremo oriente. Transl. Rafael Zambonelli, Petrópolis, RJ, Brazil: Vozes.
* Albert György’s sculpture entitled “Melancholy” (Lake Geneva) represents “emptiness of a soul” (photo).
On being and essence: scholastic ontology
24
Apr
Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) predates Thomas Aquinas (1223-1274)
and was influenced by Boethius (480-534). The path from Plotinus to Boethius has already been traced in previous posts, passing through Porphyry (234-304 AD), and his real name was Malco or Telec, he translated the Aeneid.
The influence of Aristotle and Plato is great, but the attempt to synthesize Aristotle and Plato in Porphyry’s Isagoge, which was translated into Latin by Boethius and attributed to Thomas Aquinas and consequently to the Catholic Church, is a misconception; it was Anselm of Canterbury who was in fact the founder of scholastic philosophy, with his onto-theology and his “ontological argument” for God.
Boethius is credited with the “quarrel about universals”, whether they exist or are just names, which divided nominalism and realism in the Lower Middle Ages and early Renaissance.
As a teenager, Anselm did not receive his father’s approval to become a monk. After falling ill, he left home and went to Normandy, where his fellow countryman Lanfranco received him as a novice at the Abbey of Le Bec in 1059, and in 1063 he became prior, when he wrote the works Monologion and Proslogion.
Le Bec was a center of study during this period, but was initially protected by William II, receiving lands that were later taken over. It was during this period that the kings first investigated the appointments of bishops and even popes (that’s a separate story), but he was appointed Bishop of Canterbury (Canterbury, which is still the seat of the Anglican bishopric today),
He submits to Pope Urban II (at the same time there was Clement III, considered an antipope), and was even the first to speak out against the slave trade in 1102, at a council in Westminster (reviewing the facts), did not submit to the English monarchy, and was exiled twice.
In Proslogium, the existence of God is an “a priori”, that is, through reason, without recourse to experience, he starts from the concept that “a being of which nothing greater can be thought” (God) and argues that*, in order to be the most perfect being, God must exist both in the mind and in reality.
Thomas Aquinas was influenced by Saint Anselm, and in his youthful work “Being and Essence” he describes the question of being and reality, distinguishing between being (that which is, being) and essence (what something is), in which he clarifies how the intellect initially perceives being and its essence, exploring the relationship between simple and composite substances.
For Duns Scotus (1265/1266-1308), a moderate realist to some, a nominalist in my view, universals exist as entities “in rebus” (in things), but are not separated from them like Platonist ideas, but rather as a “ratio” (reason) of the intellect.
His main thesis (described in Ordinatio I, part 1, qq. 1-2) is that “if there is a currently existing infinite being among the entities”, for him the universals “goodness” and ‘truth’ will be real, this is expressed biblically: “the way, the truth and the life” (Jn 14-6) and “only one is good” (Lk 18:19).
Anselm, St. Proslógio (1988). Transl.: Ângelo Ricci, Ruy Afonso da Costa Nunes. Brazil, São Paulo, SP; Nova Cutlural ed., 1988. (Coleção os Pensadores, Anselmo/Abelardo). (4ª. edição)
Aquinas, S. T. (1981). O Ente e a Essência, Brazil, R.J.: Mosteiro de São Bento, Editorial Presença.
Scotus, John Duns. (1973). Seleção de Textos. In: Coleção Os Pensadores. São Paulo: Abril Cultural.
* “We therefore firmly believe that you are a being of whom nothing greater can be thought. Or does such a being not exist because “the unseeing said in his heart, ‘There is no God’?”4 But the unseeing, when I say, “The being of whom nothing greater can be thought,” hears what I say and understands it.” (4 Psalm 13:1). Text in the “Coleção Pensadores” Thinkers Collection.
Silence, an essential part of language
02
Apr
The question of silence is fundamental
in the appreciation of language, the spoken word presupposes that there is an interlocutor capable of silence, if it is profound, the epoché (emptiness) occurs, which all philosophers in a certain way impose so that the word can be articulated in thought, it is before and complementary to action, Foucault was one of the philosophers who realized this gap back in the 19th century.
In the hermeneutic circle, it precedes the process of interpretation and is necessary for dialog and the “fusion of horizons” that philosophical hermeneutics demands. This mere acting on the impulse of language omits an essential part, which is reflection, meditation or, for minds that really seek the truth, contemplation.
Hans-Georg Gadamer was the great philosopher of hermeneutics. He argues that there is not only meaningful knowledge in the humanities that can be reduced to that of the natural sciences, a logic and a language that is only grammatical; there is a deeper truth than the scientific method.
It is not a simple return to metaphysics, it is acting according to thinking, according to an articulation of human and collective consciousness, capable of seeing the other and their hermeneutics, capable of reviewing the humanism of every man, without a vertical reading, of the simple authority of power.
Agamben in “The Language of Silence” also speaks of this false articulation as a field that seeks to apprehend with reason alone, it is an “experience of language that goes towards thought without ever reaching it; it is the tension and infinite nostalgia that never understands what it wants to apprehend and never reaches where it wants to go” (Agamben, 2013, Brazil, São Paulo, Magazine Fronteira Z, p. 293).
The famous song of the sirens that lured the sailors to their deaths in Homer’s Odyssey (photo mosaic from the 3rd century, National Museum of the Bardo, Tunis) is also the lack of silence that Ulysses saw in his subordinates (Ulysses covers his ears and ties the sailors to the ship’s mast), which became a metaphor for the chatter that enchants his followers; the greatest dictators were always good orators.
So putting contemplation into action requires true contemplation, the word read is a guide whenever it is purified by an “art of loving”, of showing solidarity, of humanizing action.
Language, truth and the eternal
27
Mar
Leibniz (1646-1716) theorized that truth is
related to reason: “I understand by reason, not the faculty of reasoning, which can be used well or badly, but the chain of truths which can only produce truths, and one truth cannot be contrary to another”, so from a half-truth a truth cannot emerge, this is the problem with contemporary narratives and truth is linked to Being through language.
Leibniz’s philosophical project included a “symbolic language” that would be the very language of philosophy, he called it “characterística universalis” through which we could express truth, but in his time the division between realism and nominalism led to a victory for Enlightenment realism, and Leibniz and his disciple Christian Wolff (1679-1754) were rejected (picture).
Leibniz thought of three principles for his project: Identifying and structuring simple ideas hierarchically, stipulating a suitable system of signs and establishing logical rules for composing complex ideas.
Christian Wolf goes so far as to elaborate a system of concepts, different from Porphyry’s tree of knowledge, but also based on Aristotelian thought (Isagoge). It is from Porphyry (232-304) that Boethius takes the famous quarrel about universals: whether universals are things or just words (categories of Aristotle) that we attribute as names to things.
Modern ontology, especially in Hannah Arendt and her interpreter Byung-Chul Han, creates new concepts that link this dualism in thinking about the Vita Activa and the Vita Contemplativa: “the quest for immortality, for immortal glory, is, according to Arendt, ”the source and center of the vita activa“ (Han, 2023, p. 145), but ”he must return to his surrounding world” (idem).
One thus lives in a paradox between the eternal and the temporal: “as soon, however, as a thinker abandons the experience of the eternal and begins to write, he surrenders to the vita activa, whose ultimate goal is immortality” (pgs. 145-146).
Arendt “marvels at Socrates who doesn’t write, who voluntarily renounces immortality” (Han, 2023, p. 146), even though writing “can be a contemplation that has nothing to do with the quest for immortality” (Han, 2023, p. 146), one can also think of the experience of Jesus who didn’t write at all, so one should follow his word and his example and not his writing, thus orality has “vita activa” (actions life) while writing seeks potency.
Arendt also recalls Plato, but Han thinks that this “distorts” Plato’s allegory, “it is the story of a philosopher who frees himself from the chains that bind him and his companions” (pp. 147-148), he acts when he returns to the cave “with its shadows, to a regime of truth”.
To put words into the vita activa is therefore to imitate them, neither proclaiming them nor quoting them, says Han: “The vita activa without the vita contemplativa is blind” (Han, 2023, p. 149).
Han, B.-C. (2023). Vita Contemplativa: ou sobre a inatividade. Trad. Lucas Machado, Brazil, Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes.
Work, action and contemplation
19
Mar
Hannah Arendt considered that labor, work and
action are the three spheres of human life that make up the “vita activa”, a thought that we have placed around Byung-Chul Han’s essay, which Arendt also uses to complement the Vita Contemplativa.
It is not characteristic of modern man to think in this way, and this has put human thought and even scientific and religious thought at a standstill. Narratives arise as a consequence and not as a cause of this, it is through the fragmentation of human activities that the interpretation of reality becomes subject to a limited worldview.
Labor ensures the biological survival of the individual and the species (Arendt, 1995) while work, although it doesn’t individualize man, establishes a relationship with objects and with the transformation of nature, and allows him, and this is important, to demonstrate his craftsmanship and inventiveness (Arendt, 1995), but craftsmanship and inventiveness are not separate from thought, because there man conceives of his relationship with nature as a whole.
It was industrial work that destroyed this idea of the whole between work, labor and action, but noticing that artisanal work already included a contemplative vision, “Perché non parli?” said Michelangelo when completing his work “Moses”, meaning “why not speak?” (photo).
A little noticed detail, but certainly conceived by Michelangelo when he made his work, is the support of his right arm on the tablets of the law, we would say a first biblical codex, since the Torah was a scroll, and if compared to the statue of the Greek thinker, he is resting his head on his right arm, Auguste Rodin made his version around 1880.
Thus, work, labor and action can be united with the idea of contemplation, if we think of it as the conception of a previous thinker and included in the object, in this way we reunite and re-signify work and labor, no longer as an alienated attitude, but as an ontic Being.
Therefore, human work and its labor must be united with the ontological idea of Being, and it also means an act of love for humanity, for the Other and for the one who will use, conceive or just contemplate the action of labor.
Arendt, H. (1995). A condição humana. 7th. ed. Brazil, Rio de Janeiro: Forense Universitária.
Language, being and reconciliation
14
Mar
Since ancient philosophy, language has
been considered ontologically linked to Being, Plato’s World of Ideas (eidos) is nothing other than this, for Aristotle language is a “tool” of thought that allows us to represent reality.
However, modernity, under the pretense of realist objectivity, has ignored this simple reality where any action begins with thought and is transformed into language, in the words of contemporary thinker Heidegger, language is the “dwelling place of being”.
The “language of machines” or the codification of thought already expressed in a human “message” and transformed into codes, is not exactly what should be thought of in ontology, all of Heidegger’s texts and also those of the philosopher Byung-Chul Han complain about this technical view of language, but the 20th century began with the so-called linguistic turn.
Thus, the language thought of by Alan Turing and Claude Shannon is confined to the universe of machines, while language thought of ontologically is the “opening up of being” and the search for a universe of fulfillment and reconciliation, as Rainer Rilke (1875-1926) says: “We, the violent, last longer. But when, in which life, will we be finally open and welcoming?”
Byung-Chul Han recalls that the epic poem Iliad begins with the phrase: “Aira, Goddess, celebrates Achilles’ wrathful rage, which brought so many sorrows to the Achaeans, and cast countless souls into Hades.” We’ve already written several posts about the myth of Hades, the god of the underworld where souls go, and violence still marks our civilizing process.
Language as an expression of our thoughts and our interiority cannot be separated from active life (Hannah Arendt and Byun-Chul Han). Heidegger, who had a strong influence on both of them, sees it as a bridge linking the inside and outside of man, in such a way that speaking is thought of as an activity that takes place through man and is thus an ontological act (photo – A mural in Teotihuacan, Mexico, c. 2nd century).
This vision of language “through man” thus precedes its dissemination by the media and cannot be thought of as mere transmitters and receivers, since whatever the medium, it is preceded by human thought and language and in it the being “opens up”.
It can therefore be said that violence is an aspect of the lack of openness of being, motivated by thought and this is constructed by methodologies and ways of understanding reality as having a single path to violence where reconciliation may seem impossible.
Man and reality itself are not binary: Being and Non-Being, affirmative and negative, in man because he has sensitive and cognitive inner stages where the engines of thought are activated, and in reality because of the discoveries of quantum physics and the complex universe that astrophysics has created.
What wasn’t said about Jesus’ birth
27
Dec
It’s not part of the biblical narrative, but
apart from the Roman census, Herod’s persecution (historical data) when he placed Jesus in a manger wrapped in cloths and the coming of the “magi”, it can be clarified in the light of stories from the time.
It was Jewish custom to separate a newborn lamb for the Jewish Passover sacrifice, recalling the sacrifice that Abram would make with his son and that an angel interceded by offering a lamb, the fact that Jesus was wrapped in swaddling clothes also recalls a Jewish custom of the time to separate the lamb, wrap it in swaddling clothes and place it in a manger, with special care.
So this is already a preparation for Easter, since he was born and made small to be like earthly man, even though he was a God, an Emmanuel, the divine among us.
But remembering yesterday’s astronomical events, we also want to remember the “magi”, who may have been kings and not magi, because they had gifts of prophecy and were informed about a star “And when they saw the star, they rejoiced with great and intense joy” (Mt 2:10-11) and so they followed it and found the child in Bethlehem as the Jews had expected.
The star that announces a cosmic event that predicts the arrival of the “king of the universe” and not just the “god of the Jews” could be the passing of a comet, an event that was already known at the time, although it was mistaken for a “shooting star“, if It had to choose (see the previous post), I’d choose the nova, which is the birth of a star. In short, the famous “guiding star” could be one of these phenomena.
The image of the Adoration of the Magi, in a stone painting dating from the 3rd century AD (photo) shows only a star, without the typical cometary tail, so it could be any of the celestial phenomena that cause great brilliance.
It’s worth remembering that the kings who came to worship Jesus weren’t Jewish, and yet they had a sign and followed their vision (it wasn’t magic, of course) and worshipped him.
Wars and narratives
08
Oct
Aeschylus, writing from ancient Greece, is the
author of the phrase: “truth is the first victim of war”, retired Russian general Andrey Gurulyov, spoke on the Russia-1 channel, pointing out what Russia’s targets would be, that it was preparing for a major war, Islamic Jihad is a group with strong influence in Iran and which preaches the end of Israel, its discourse is theocentric and not geopolitical.
These are just a few half-truths about the war. Of course, Israel and Ukraine are allies of the West in the economic geopolitical struggle to preserve the rights of companies and big capital, which is why both sides find it difficult to understand “civilizational” peace.
In Plato’s dialogue Theaetetus, regarded as one of the first in history on relativism, the ideas of appearance, truth and soul are combined; Socrates’ first demand to start the dialogue is that Theaetetetus abandon his initial ideas, and when he asks what knowledge is and gets an answer about geometry and other arts, Socrates replies ironically: “You are noble and generous, friend, for they ask you for something simple and you offer multiple and diverse things.” The second question is how to reach knowledge.
The second question is how to arrive at knowledge, and Theaetetetus’ answer is “sensation” (or perception). Socrates indicates that we must abandon the “familiarity” we have of things, he says in the dialogue: “It seems to me that he who knows something perceives what he knows, and to say the thing as it now manifests itself, knowledge is nothing more than sensation.”
The second answer is an advance on the first, because this is how the Greeks considered them: “On this all the wise men, one after the other, except Parmenides, must agree: Protagoras, Heraclitus, Empedocles and, among the poets, those who are at the top of each of the compositions, Epicarmo, in comedy, and Homer, in tragedy…”, quoting the Greeks up until that period, the so-called pre-Socratics.
Thus, until then, truth was confined to sensation. When he begins his dialogue with Protagoras, he arrives at the idea of the first misconception of relative truth: “The man who is the measure of all things would not, in the end, be a man confined to the restricted circle of his most immediate experience and of what seems true to him alone,” and this refers to appearance.
Using this idea of “familiarity” with things, Plato opens up a crisis in the Greeks’ idea of knowledge, and thus opens up a new ontological path about the soul, starting from Homer’s “heart of the soul” (194c), there would hardly be any occasion for error, because it (the soul) would promptly make the correct identification of the current impression, breaking down prejudices.
Plato. (2010) Teeteto. Trad. Adriana Manuela Nogueira e Marcelo Boeri. LisboN: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.
The difference of the divine Love
19
Sep
Hannah Arendt’s reading of Saint Augustine
in her doctoral thesis remains between these two interpretations of human and divine love.
To analyze this, Arendt interprets Augustine’s work as governed by three principles that appear without apparent contradiction. She increased Augustine’s dogmatic rigidity to the extent that Christianity was inserted into his thinking, this consisting of his passage from pre-theological, philosophical thinking to theological thinking, according to the author.
Thus the first part of the author’s thesis, entitled “Love as desire: the anticipated future”, approaches love from a philosophical perspective of continuity with Hellenic thought, in which love is seen as a disposition that is always driven by lack, by something that is not possessed, but which one hopes to have, as a means of achieving happiness, thus desire is something not yet achieved while Love is the desire obtained, and this is philosophical.
These two types of love are given two names by Augustine: caritas and cupiditas. They differ in their love for the object they love, “but both right and wrong love (caritas and cupiditas) have this in common – desirous longing, that is, appetitus”, writes the author.
Caritas is pure, true love, because it desires God, eternity and the absolute future, while cupiditas loves the world, the things of the world, here it is pre-theological, because charity is not just a passing love, or desire for a passing good, but for the eternal.
Whether we are religious or not, we are between desire and possession, after we have obtained the desired object in general, and enjoyed the pleasure of this possession, cupiditas passes and something eternal remains if there is caritas in it, that is an Eternal Love, which gives an eternal possession and then does not pass away.
So the man who has this quest must withdraw into himself, and within himself, isolating himself from the world, he penetrates the Augustinian “quaestio”, the guiding thread that Arendt pursues: “for the more he withdrew into himself and collected himself in the dispersion and distraction of the world, the more he became a ‘question for himself’,” wrote the author.
Every philosophy has a basic question, and Augustine’s becomes theological: “What do I love when I love my God?” (Confessions X, 7, 11 apud Arendt p. 25), even if it is “in the world”.
Thus the second part of her thesis is called “and ‘Creature and Creator: the remembered past’, in book X of Confessions. “Memory, then, opens the way to a transmundane past as the original source of the very notion of a happy life,” the author wrote about Augustine.
In proposing a relationship with the Creator, man does not lose himself, but finds himself, and this is different from any kind of worldly attachment, the god of money, consumption or desire.
Arendt, Hannah. (1996) Love and Saint Augustine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
