Arquivo para a ‘Museology’ Categoria
What is Love after all
27
Oct
Although Hannah Arendt’s work is not definitive
regarding love, the advisor Karl Jaspers himself expressed this, developed and appropriated some fundamental categories in his doctoral thesis “Love in Saint Augustine”.
According to author George McKenna, in a review of her dissertation, Arendt tried to include a revision in her “The Human Condition”, but it is not very clear in the book (of the Arendt), which is excellent.
If we can also express an expression of this love in ancient Greek literature, such as agape love, the one that 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, 95).
The biblical reading also summarizes the law and the Christian prophets as follows (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, it knows how to see where the true signs of happiness, balance and hope are found.
ARENDT, Hannah. (1996) Love and Saint Augustine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Love in western literature
26
Oct
In the previous post we commented on an unusual example in literature which is human love seen from a Christian narrative point of view, there are others of course, but this one is due to the repercussion of Francine Rivers’ work and its recent transformation into a film (2022) and the critics applauded.
In history we can remember some works that marked literature: The Banquet by Plato, The art of loving by Ovid and Sobre el Amor by Plutarco, highlighting in the medieval period The Romance of Tristan and Isolde and Correspondences of Abelard and Heloise.
The philosophical style of the Banquet where there is a predominance of mythological elements that explain or denote love, perhaps hence the idea of platonic love, but which has nothing sublime or non-carnal, what commentators say is that there are homoerotic relationships that are part of the dialogue between partners in relationships.
If there is something elevated, it is in Socrates’ dialogue that defines the so-called philosophical love, which is outside the sentimental sphere and inserted in an idealism (I always remember here that it is for the Greeks to remember Being in its essence, and not something that lives only in mind), is a love that is related to beauty and good.
Ovid (45 BC – 18 AD) is not interested in achieving this asceticism towards a deified love, he seeks to find the necessary tools to realize a more sensual love in a carnal world.
Ovid does not restrict love to the conjugal sphere, Plutarch (45 – 120 AD) sees it within a social and political institution, it is a “path” within marriage towards happiness, like an asceticism of the type that the Greeks considered conceived, this is not a spiritual asceticism.
The romance of Tristan and Isolde and the Correspondences of Abelard and Heloise must be understood in a reality dominated by Christian philosophy in medieval Europe, where the Love of God is indisputable, but love as a union of two bodies is still subject to debate.
This type of romance, inserted in the troubadour tradition, is imbued with a “courtly” element; we find an interesting description of this love in the work of Denis de Rougemont:
What they love is love, it is the very fact of loving. And they act as if they had understood that what opposes love guarantees it and consecrates it in their hearts, to exalt it to infinity in the instant of the absolute obstacle that is death. Tristan likes to feel love, much more than he loves Isolde, the blonde. And Isolde does nothing to keep him close to her: a passionate dream is enough for her.
Among modern novels, I would highlight among the most characteristic: Eugénie Glandet by Honoré de Balzac, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, while Eugénie Grandet shows the reality of the material interest surrounding the novel, Madame Bovary will show the lack of lucidity, excess and human selfishness, Anna Karenina shows the tragic colors of her infidelity with her husband Vronsky, but there are two other marriages: a happy marriage (Levin and Kitty) and another that only supports each other (Stiva and Dolly).
ROUGEMONT, Denis de. (1983) Love in the Western World. Transl. Montgomery Belgion. USA: Princeton University Press.
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The concept of Love in Augustine of Hippona
24
Oct
Hanna Arendt’s thesis was a milestone in her 
philosophical development, from a foundational aspect, it is the first of her works and marks an involvement with Heidegger, her first advisor with whom she became emotionally involved, and Karl Jaspers, who influenced the choice of the theme.
The work can be divided into three thematic axes: love for others, or life in society, love in the relationship between man and God the creator and love as desire, called appetitus.
The author also states that the bishop never completely excluded the philosophical ideas of antiquity, notably Cicero, Plato and Plotinus in his thinking, and no matter how faithful and Christian he became, “he never completely lost the impulse to question philosophical.” (ARENDT, 1996, p. 3).
The first part of the author’s dissertation called “Love as desire: the anticipated future”, within a philosophical perspective and in continuity with Hellenic thought, could not have a better title, since it is not love in the present, but “ anticipated future”, something that one hopes to have as a means of achieving happiness.
This love called cupiditas is shaped by a “desirous desire, that is, appetitus”, but caritas also has this aspect of “future” desire, but it is a free love.
Augustine asks in Confessions: “What do I love when I love my God?” (Confessions own essence, finally finds eternal love in his own Being.
Love for others, or social love, was developed by the author: 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 as how God loves. This is the realization of a self-denial in which everyone, including yourself, simultaneously reclaims your God-given importance. This fulfillment is love for others.” (ARENDT, 1996, p. 93)
Augustine differentiates the polis from the city of God, the name of another of his works, and clarifies Arendt: “This defense is the foundation of the new city, the city of God. […] This new social life, which is based on Christ, is defined by mutual love (diligire invicem)” (ARENDT, 1996, p. 108).
Thus, Augustine’s work is philosophical, theological and political, although this aspect is ignored.
ARENDT, Hannah. Love and Saint Augustine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Your fathers rejected the prophets
20
Oct
After the period of the Judges, which was a
truly theocratic period, ended, the people of Israel began to ask for Kings (Samuel 8,6-8), the kings ruled from 928 BC until the destruction of the first temple in Jerusalem (586 BC), but the people had already gone into captivity in Babylon in 722 BC, more than 100 years later the kingdom of Judah was destroyed.
Already in the last period of the judges, Samuel, who was also a prophet, saw the people going astray, and even his children no longer followed divine laws, the very division between Israel and Judah (it must be said that this is where the name of Jews), and was the second king of Israel, David, who unites the two kingdoms and names the capital Jerusalem, where his son Solomon will build the first temple.
It was the prophet Ezekiel who lived in Babylonian exile, between 593 BC and 571 BC, who prophesied the destruction of the temple and spoke of the infidelities of the Hebrew people, the prophet Isaiah had also preached that sin had reached Israel and Judah in such a way that the curse would hit the Hebrew people, the biggest of which, of course, was the exile from Babylon.
When Cyrus becomes king of Persia and takes Babylon in 538 BC, he allows the Hebrew people to return to their land and the possibility of rebuilding their temple, the second, but the people’s deviations continue to occur until the last and greatest of the prophets John the Baptist , the one whose head Herod asked for in exchange for Salome’s dance, which he asks for at his mother’s suggestion.
Jesus was rejected for challenging the Pharisees and teachers of the law of his time, there were also those who wanted a leading position in the war against the Roman empire, after the death and resurrection of Jesus in the year 70 AD, the second temple was destroyed by the general Roman Titus and only the wailing wall remained (photo).
Jerusalem was burned and the Jewish people were dispersed, the Jews who settled in Eastern Europe were called Ashkenazi and those from the Iberian Peninsula Sephardim.
Jesus’ position on the Roman empire was clear, since the Romans also feared him, Herod especially, and Pilate washed his hands at his crucifixion, when the Pharisees set a trap asking if it was fair to pay taxes, Jesus takes a coin and upon seeing the figure of Caesar he says: “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s” (Mt 22,34-40) this trap remains in religious circles to this day.
Israel’s first disputes
19
Oct
So Abram, who was a Chaldean, from the city of
Ur in the south of Mesopotamia, under divine inspiration under the river Euphrates and goes to Haran, and then goes down to Canaan, passing through Sodom, where he separates from his nephew Lot, and leaving from there they should not look back, Lot’s wife looks and becomes a pillar of salt.
They arrive in Canaan and there were already inhabitants there (the Canaanites), there was a divine promise to give him a son, but with the consent of his wife Sarah (the original name Sarai was changed by God), Abram fathers the son Ishmael from the slave Hagar. , but later Sarah will also have her son Isaac.
God asks him for his son as a sacrifice, but when he is ready to do so, an angel appears to him and asks him to sacrifice a lamb instead, and then promises him infinite descendants and becomes called Abraham.
The site of this sacrifice is today a mosque, but there is an agreement between Muslims, Christians and Jews to be able to visit the place, today called Dome of the Rock (photo).
The family issue was important at the time, after all Abram was supposed to be the patriarch of the people chosen by God, so he wanted a woman from his lineage and not a Canaanite, he found Rebekah, daughter of Bethuel, sister of Laban, this one from a branch of the family who remained in Haran.
New drama, Rebeca has difficulty having children, but ends up having twins, Esau and Jacob, this one is born later and would lose his right to birthright, if it weren’t for a bad trick with his mother to prepare a supper to the liking of Isaac who was almost blind, and dressing his son in furs because his brother born minutes earlier, therefore older, was hairier, and Isaac blesses Jacob.
But Jacob knows that he needs God’s blessing, so going to meet his brother, one night he fights with an angel to obtain divine blessing, after that he will be called Israel, the suffix el in the bible means God, so he who fought with God, in fact, with a year Gabriel, “fortress of God” or Michael, which means “no one like God”, leader of the “armies”.
Jacob will have as his sons those who will give their name to the twelve tribes of Israel (see previous topic) and Joseph, sold as a slave to the Egyptians, having gifts of revelation, reveals to the Egyptian king what his dreams about “fat cows and lean cows” meant. ”, that a time of scarcity would come and receives a role from Pharaoh precisely to take care of the kingdom’s dispensations.
The brothers who sold him then leave Canaan and go to Egypt, where Joseph, after expressing his discontent (a scream was heard throughout the palace), welcomes the brothers, so Israel no longer has the lands and other peoples take their place. .
However, the next pharaoh, apparently Sethi, is not a friend of the Jews and wants all newborn babies to be killed, but Moses’ mother, Jochebed, throws him into a basket in the Nile River and he is welcomed by a princess and she takes him to reign in her care.
Moses is trained as a nobleman, but he wants to free his people who live as slaves, and in a certain mystical event, called the “burning bush”, God reveals his destiny and asks him to command his people back to Canaan, after several battles the kingdom of Israel is revived, but divided with Judah to the South, judges are appointed, rulers who were called by God.
This is the only true theocratic period of the Bible, the judges were appointed by divine inspiration, some were simple people, like Gideon (woodcutter) and Deborah, there were 14 judges, but the people later asked for kings “like other peoples” and they depended on the prophets
Religious and historical origins of Israel and Palestine
17
Oct
Although Noah is not a recorded figure in
history, his sons Ham and Shem are recorded as they are the origin of the Hamite and Semitic peoples, the latter stand out for being Hebrews and Arabs and thus share both cultural and religious origins.
Abraham, who was a Chaldean, a people who lived south of the Euphrates River, was the son of, in the lineage of Shem, comes from his son Arphaxad, who fathered Shelah, who fathered Heber, who fathered Peleg, who fathered Reu, who fathered Serug , who fathered Nahor, who fathered Terah, father of Abram (only later will he be called Abraham due to his descendants).
Abram’s father and brother die in Chaldea, and his nephew Lot, who will travel to Canaan, meanwhile going up the Euphrates River and then down through the north of the Middle East, before separating, dividing the lands, leaving Lot with the most fertile to the west and Abram with the southern lands.
Lot’s descendants became people known as Ammonites, due to the god Amon, and who are children of Lot’s incest with his youngest daughter. Lot looks and turns into salt.
To the east to the Mediterranean lies Abraham, now called that by God, after having his Son Isaac (promised by God) with his wife Sarah, and Ishmael with Hagar, his slave.
While Isaac will be the “son of promise” and through him the twelve tribes of Israel will be born, the Quran can be read: “In the Quran; “God gave gifts to all Ishmael, Elisha, Jonah and Lot favor above the nations”, so Ishmael is not passed over.
From Isaac the twins Esau and Jacob were born, Esau is born first, but through a disguise, Jacob dresses in animal skins, helped by his mother Rebekah, as his brother was hairier and his father Isaac was almost blind, he notices the voice different, but blesses the son, in Hebrew tradition the eldest son, the firstborn, had priority in leading the family.
Jacob will fight with an angel to obtain divine blessing, before a confrontation with his brother, and in the biblical narrative it is there that he receives the name Israel, which means “he who fought with God” (every suffix el in Hebrew means God), Gabriel (God’s fortress) and Michael (no one like God) are two possible hypotheses of Jacob’s struggle, now Israel.
The children of Israel will form the 12 tribes: from Helena: from Joseph (who was sold to the Egyptians by his brothers) will be his grandchildren Benjamin and Manasseh, from Leah (first wife): Reuben, Simeon, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun and Levi (who were priests and had no lands), from the slave Bilhah: Dan and Naphtali, and from the slave Zilpah: Gad and Asser.
In fact, there would be thirteen tribes,
but the tribes of Benjamin and Manasseh, sons of Joseph, formed one tribe.
Eclipse, the Theory of Relativity and town Sobral
11
Oct
In addition to mystical and historical factors,
the eclipse helped the development of both physics and astronomy, there is a curious relationship between an eclipse, the Theory of Relativity and the Brazilian city in the State of Ceará: Sobral.
On May 29, 1919, the sky over the city of Sobral, a city in the interior of State Ceará, Brazil, dawned cloudy (photo taken by the National Observatory in 1919) and the effort of the delegation of astronomers who went there to observe the eclipse and prove their ideas Albert Einstein’s revolutionary ideas would be in vain.
Fortunately, at nine o’clock in the morning a space opened between the clouds and it was possible to make the desired observations.
Einstein’s ideas were that there would be a distortion in the space-time dimensions and that this would be linked to the proximity of massive bodies, stated as follows:
“The trajectory of light can be distorted if there is a massive body distorting space-time in its trajectory, so it appears that the source that emitted that light is in a different position.”
With sensitive equipment, it was possible to make this comparison in the positions during the eclipse and after it, which occurred in May 1919. In December, after months of studying the observations, it was announced that Einstein’s theory was correct, and this is a fact which made the theory of absolute space and time obsolete.
The observation took place thanks to intense collaboration between Brazil and England, including the famous English astronomer Arthur Eddington, from the Royal Astronomical Society and the Brazilian Henrique Morize, then director of the National Observatory (ON), and Sobral was chosen because it had better visibility. of the eclipse.
One hundred years after the event, in 2019 the Brazil-United Kingdom partnership in Science and Innovation was celebrated, Brazilian physicist Anelise Pacheco, director of MAST (Brazilian Astronomical and Sciences Related Museum) declared at the time: “Without cooperation, there is no science”, this also applies to the days of today.
Annular eclipse: historical and mystical data
10
Oct
On October 14th, an annular eclipse should
take place, one in which the moon leaves a small ring with southern light and settles in the center of the king star, and which has curious historical and mystical data.
The first historically narrated eclipse, by Herodotus, describes the battle of the Medes and Lydians (590-585 BC) which ended with an agreement after they realized that the day turned into night and in their understanding the darkness should cease for peace, Herodotus describes it like this:
“In the sixth year of the war, a battle took place, and when the fighting had begun, suddenly the day turned into night. (…) The Lydians and the Medes, when they saw that the night had replaced the day, ceased their fight, anxious for peace to be established between them.” Herodotus (1.74).
Before calculating the date of the eclipse, it was believed that the battle would have been fought on September 30, 610 BC (according to William Smith’s Dictionary of the Greeks and Romans), but modern astronomical calculations have established the date as May 28 from 585 BC
The second data was established with the help of the biblical reading of the battles in Israel of Ajailon and Gibeon, which helped, according to the BBC, to reveal the date of an even earlier eclipse, at the time of the retaking of Israel by the Jews returning from Egyptian exile. , the reading that helped reveal this date, also known as Joshua’s prayer, is this (Joshua 10:12-14): “Sun, stand over Gibeon, and you, Moon, over the Valley of Aijalon”.
The BBC report, physicist Colin Humphreys, director of research at the University of Cambridge in England, and astrophysicist Graeme Waddington using this passage calculated the date of the annular eclipse and found October 30, 1207 BC.
The report also mentions that the first person to suggest such a date was the linguist Robert Wilson (1918) and that he even suggests a re-reading of the biblical text:
‘Eclipse, O Sun, in Gibeon,
And the Moon in the Valley of Aijalom´.
Since today we know that there will be a band where the eclipse is total (image) and bands next to it where the eclipse gives a partial shadow.
Heródoto, Histórias, Livro I, Clio, 74.
The wrath and tranquility of the soul
13
Sep
The Stoic Seneca not only wrote Wrath but
Brian Wildsmith’s sun
also about the Tranquility of the soul, you can find a current edition with his other book “the tranquility of the soul”, does not mean the absence of restlessness, pain or errors.
He writes in his book I, still about Anger: “Thus, some wise men said that anger is a brief insanity. She is equally unrestrained, alien to decorum, forgetful of emotional ties, persistent and clinging to what she started, closed to reason and advice, incited by vain reasons, incapable of discerning what is just and what is true, very similar to something that collapses and collapses. it shatters on top of what it has crushed.” (Seneca, 2014, p 91).
Although we can hide feelings, Wrath strips us bare, animal ferocity is even shown in appearance, since its “control” argued by some authors is uncertain: “But to prove the insanity of those in the power of wrath, observe the wrath itself. their appearance, as clear symptoms of madmen are the bold and threatening appearance, the sinister countenance, the slanted face, the hurried step, the restless hands, the changed color, the successive sighs…” (Seneca, 2014, p 91).
He is not unaware that other passions can also expose us: “I am not unaware that other passions are also difficult to hide; that lust, fear and audacity give signs of themselves and can be sensed.” (p. 92), but these also emerge amid widespread anger.
He does not ignore Aristotle’s vision, as some authors hastily assume: “To be harmful, we are all powerful. Aristotle’s definition is not far from ours. For he states that anger is the desire to return pain. Finding the difference between this definition and ours would require a long explanation” (p. 94), so he also knows that there are differences.
Without going into exaggerated altruism, he knows that we are irascible, subject to some anger, but he explains it like this: “It has been sufficiently explained what anger is. How it differs from irascibility is evident: as a drunkard differs from someone who is intoxicated, and a fearful person from someone who is afraid” (p. 95), so there is an angry person, who may sometimes not be angry.
It examines whether anger is our nature, and thus in some way necessary, for example for correction, differentiates it: “But this without anger, based on reason, for it is not harmful, but it heals under the appearance of being harmful” (p. 97), it is the doctor who cures, not how to take revenge.
But was it sometimes useful? Remember that “The beginning of certain things is in our power, their subsequent stages overwhelm us with their strength and do not allow for return” (p. 98) and this is also the cause of injustices that awakens new anger and new furies, so it does not cure. Brian Wildsmith’s sun is powerful but benevolent (his drawing above).
Seneca. (2014) Sobre a ira. Sobre a tranquilidade da alma diálogo, transl. José Eduardo S. Lohner, 1a ed. São Paulo, Brazil: Penguin Classics, Companhia das Letras. (pdf in portuguese)
Religion, anthropology and philosophy
30
Aug
Enlightenment and modern philosophy, on the
assumption of abolishing all “superstition” and establishing an age of knowledge and reason, divided the system of knowledge into subject and objects, medieval philosophy was not very far from this, there were realists and nominalists and none won, all changed, and everything that was considered “metaphysical” including the Being was left aside.
However, the ideas of concepts, structures that should develop knowledge were already present in an author little read, but important: Boethius (400 – 524 AD), a philosopher, poet, statesman and Roman theologian, whose works had a profound influence on Christian philosophy. from the Medieval.
His main work is the “Consolation of Philosophy”, but his is the “wheel of fortune” and a fragment finds what became known as “the quarrel of the universals”, if the universals (concepts would be today) would be today “if the universals are things or mere words”, hence the division between realists who see things and nominalists who defended “names”, words.
But both Boethius and later Thomas Aquinas who studied and translated Greek works, with their own interpretations, the question of Being was present and the question of history and truth as well.
His humanistic contribution lies in the conception of what we now call “human dignity”, for his Philosophical Anthropology the human person on the horizon of rationality considering his singularity data, a new humanism cannot do without its new and still little understood prism, for Boethius was a staunch defender of the faith for Christians and for humanists his De Consolationes Philosophiae brings essential collaborations.
Even today, his ideas may seem controversial, when he defends that man is also nature, but that he must subsist and achieve it as an extension of “nature”, he says in another work:
“Or, if ‘person’ does not equate to ‘nature’, but if ‘person’ subsists under the reach and extension of ‘nature’, it is difficult to say to what natures it always occurs, that is, to what natures it is fitting to contain ‘person’ and which of them should not be separated from the word ‘person’. Indeed, this is clear: ‘nature’ underlies ‘person’ and ‘person’ cannot be predicated beyond ‘nature'” (Boethius, Against Eutyches and Nestorius, 2005, p. 163).
At a time when anthropocentrism is questioned and the relationship with nature is reviewed, it is important to read this medieval philosopher, theologian and humanist.
Boécio. (2005) Escritos (OPUSCULA SACRA). Tradução, introdução, estudos introdutórios e notas Juvenal Savian Filho. Prefácio de Marilena Chauí. São Paulo, Brazil: Martins Fontes.
