Arquivo para a ‘Museology’ Categoria
The current debate on justice
26
Aug
Heir of John Rawls, Michael Sandel is successful, he says what 
he says to many others who are successful: “Those who are successful tend to think it’s thanks to themselves”, certainly if they weren’t a professor at Harvard, they wouldn’t give assisted lectures by thousands of people, and could not speak of polarization without a clearer definition of its own position.
His book A tyranny of merit (Editora Civilização Brasileira, released in September 2020), drew the attention of progressive sectors, but there is a veiled criticism of these sectors, accused of “embracing, in response to the challenges of globalization, a culture of merit that led to a legitimate resentment of the working classes, of disastrous consequences that were manifested, even in the management of this pandemic” (Daily El País, September 2020).
It has the merit (making a paradox) of saying what is obvious, that without a policy of quotas and breaking the barriers of inequalities (including the cultural one that he points out) there is no possibility of mobility for the underprivileged, but the line of thought de Sandel is rooted in the readings of John Rawls, and his work “Liberalism and the Limits of Justice” (Gulbenkian, 2005) is proof of this, and both were colleagues at Harvard.
In the early 1980s, Rawls himself cited Sandel’s communitarian critique as “the most scathing of all” and although he called into question “deontology with a human face” (see the roots of this thought in the previous post), it was an inherent thought. to the Rawlsian theory of a “deontological liberalism” combined with a “reasonable empiricism”, the terms can be found in Sandel’s work.
In order to obtain a “liberal policy without metaphysical constraints”, Sandel called on his colleague Rawls, ultimately, to abandon the deontological argumentation of an “unencumbered self”, “incapable of self-respect” and “self-knowledge, in any morally serious sense”, see that there is an objectivism within what Hegel calls ethics.
Rawls himself had already been led to reformulate his political liberalism, starting from the context of reasonable pluralism and moving away from a comprehensive moral theory of justice.
Sandel’s lectures are successful in the US and now also abroad, and also in his case it is nothing other than the fruit of meritocracy (Harvard in this case), but his works must be read carefully.
SANDEL, Michael. (1982) Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. In Portuguese (2005): Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. Trans. C.P. Amaral. Lisbon: Gulbenkian.
It is only Trinitarian if there are three people
28
May
In the 3rd century Christians began to use the word prosopon 
which means the one in three persons, the first Christian council of Nicaea (325) was the divinity of Jesus discussed, because it was even easier, due to the dualism Being and non-Being, believe two than three.
To subsist the dualistic idea, some pseudo-theologians resorted to the idea that God the Father is the source and origin of all divinity, so the other two people were generated by the Father, creating a new way to deny the Trinitarian pericoresis, or if you prefer “ the dance ”in the internal divine relationship.
It was the Cappadocian priests, Gregório Magno, Gregório de Nissa and Basilio de Nissa who saw this contradiction, which comes in a new guise, from the exchange of the word prosopon (persona) for hypostasis and this in turn confused with boldness.
Basilio used the formula of Mt 28,19 which affirms that the communication of the Three in baptism manifests the Holy Spirit in the union of the Father with the son, in the same dignity, and manifests to man in baptism, that is why valid baptism is in the name of Three people.
Basilio classified the expression of faith, on the Trinitarian mystery, transforming and codifying the confused idea in the following formula: “Mia Ousía” and treis hypóstasis ”, presenting a distinction between ousia and hypostasis in the Trinity.
Hearing indicates what is common and unique to the three people, nature and substance. Hypostasis constitutes the particularity that each person of the Trinity constitutes, with no prevalence among them.
Gregório de Nazianzo was the first to apply the term perichoresis in the relationship between the two natures of Christ (Perichoresis cristológica).
Gregório of Nissa states that in the Holy Trinity there is no difference in honor and that the structure that differentiates the servant cannot apply to divine persons, since the divine nature is unknowable and eternal.
Its was John Damasceno in the seventh century (+749) who did further and a synthesis of the doctrine of Cappadocian priests, a new opening developing perichoresis, using it as a technical term designating, both the interpenetration of the two natures in Christ and the interpenetration of each other of the Three Divine People, will define what is co-substantiality.
The key to reading understanding the Trinitarian, who passes by God-son (Jesus) who abandons himself in the hands of the Father, to the point of calling him as any man would call him God and no longer a Father, is a crucial point for a theology contemporary, where the division, the pain, the injustice, the evil that man causes himself and humanity, lives, there is a face of this “Abandoned Jesus” (the figure above was found by chance on a table).
Together with Him we find dialogue, we overcome radicalisms, misunderstandings and errors.
Human-only eschatology
08
Dec
Two misconceptions about Christmas are that it is only the birth
of Jesus, at least the historical Jesus must be admitted as a man who exists because there was a census when he was born, the second is what came and what will come, the advent is like that that (or that) that comes and will come.
Rereading the work Homo sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari presents a Darwinian evolutionary perspective showing how man imposed his life on the planet, contemplating three phases: the collector, the agricultural (and sedentary), the industrial and the modern phase of information intensive, and search align the structural elements that connect with the cultural order and its foundations.
In terms of its culture, the general beliefs shared in each phase, which he calls fictional myths, to which he attributes the indispensable social cohesion and the undertakings of each period.
Even though he is a Jew, who has a strong abramic eschatology, he refuses the existence of the soul, conscience and individuality, considering that science has not detected this, and that the remarkable achievements of contemporary science dispense with these existences.
His long and elaborate work which, in denying these metaphysical existential facts, takes the same path as the neologicists, of algorithms that would regulate even biological life, but consciousness is something so disconnected from intelligence and is that organisms are just algorithms.
The classic sense of the cosmos, explored since Plato, the energy required to trigger an algorithm of creation, the energy without which the very idea of an algorithm cannot be sustained, is something that already pre-existed before the hominization of the cosmos (nature became himself) and what will be the future of this process about which Harari himself asks, without soul and awareness of this end.
These questions point to an eschatology, beginning and end, and we do not have a bet on a distant or near end if we do not have answers on a principle, the eschatological logic of Being.
Although Harari’s eschatology is not complete, there is no transcendence, he realizes that we are close to a very dangerous civilizing threshold, both in the human aspect and in the balance of nature, and that man will be able to accomplish this task alone without something superior.
Native culture networks and post-colonialism
23
Nov
Archaeological and paleontological research indicates that Africa
is the probable continent that gave rise to the human species, fossils of hominids found in Africa (for example, in Tanzania and Kenya) indicate that the primitive species inhabited that region about five million years ago .
However. in historical literature, when speaking of originating cultures, there is talk mainly of ancient cultures such as the Maya in Mexico, the Incas in the Andean region, the indigenous people mainly from the Brazilian Amazon region, in Colombia the population is almost two million inhabitants, 4 , 4% that has the Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC), which are organizing according to covid-19.
In the Amazon, the Sahu-Apé indigenous community is only 80 km from Manaus, and organizational data (such as Terra Viva) show that 65% of the indigenous population is in poverty and 30% in extreme poverty.
In Peru, a large number of indigenous cultures are returning to the mountains due to food scarcity and fear of covid-19, often only with the clothes of the body, in Chile and Bolivia the influence of indigenous culture is very strong to dominate the colonial.
Thus, these peoples form communication networks for the preservation of their culture and the self-defense of their cultural values, and it is necessary to think about sustainable development, not massacres, as savage colonialism did, not only with violence, but also with their cultural values.
Modern electronic networks, which are social media, do not eliminate or overlap existing cultural networks, it is necessary not to ignore them and respect their values and culture.
The question of Being also involves the sociability and networking of native cultures, a good part of contemporary culture in crisis ignores or quibbles about the ontological values that are at the root of many works around native cultures, it is necessary to think post- colonial that does not see the civilizing process only from the Eurocentric and colonial point of view.
See my interview in USP Radio, University of São Paulo, at 10 h (in New York) at link: www.radio.usp.br/?page_id=5404 .
Bliss and beatitude
27
Oct
Although the term is associated with Christian holiness, and is also one of its aspects, the term in classical antiquity had a more generic meaning, a permanent state of perfect satisfaction and fullness that only a wise man could achieve, so thought Aristotle, but today it is conditioned only to the religious sense, it is intended here to show that they can be closer than we think.
The religious meaning is also that of happiness, but in the sense of joy of balanced pleasure of the soul, which can only reach those who enjoy the presence of God, that its fullness can be achieved only in eternal life, but does not mean discarding earthly life, 
“I have come that everyone may have life, and life in abundance” (John 10:10), so proclaims the evangelist, but what is different between the two proposals for happiness.
Aristotle in the book “Of the causes” will say that the end of beatitude is relative to its desire, so the ultimate nature of this end moves mainly by desire and this is pleasure, so much so that it absorbs man’s will and reason to the point of make other goods despise.
Both Boethius, that the church also beatified him (that is, he proclaimed him happy, blessed and holy), and Aristotle dealt with the theme, and their question is what if pleasure is really the ultimate end of happiness, of beatitude and that it also Tomás de Aquino will argue the contrary.
What Boethius says is that the consequences of pleasures are sad, all those who want to remember their sensualities know it, because, if these could make them happy, there would be no reason why the brutes too would not be considered such, and this is very reminiscent of current cases of abuse and objectionable violence.
For Boethius: “The beatitude is the perfect state of the union of all goods”, and so it seems that through money you can acquire all things, because the Philosopher, in book V of Ethics, says that money was invented for to be the guarantor of everything that man wanted to possess, which today can be translated as money buys everything.
In addition, Boethius also says: “Riches shine more when they are distributed than when they are conserved. For this reason, greed makes men hateful, generosity makes them illustrious ”, and so wealth is not condemned, but its bad distribution.
In the representation above the painting “The cheerful violinist with a glass of wine” (1624) by Gerard van Honthorst (1590-1656).
Love in Saint Augustine
20
Oct
This was Hannah Arendt’s doctoral thesis with direct influences
from Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, initially his supervisor, who later passed the guidance to Karl Jaspers due to his personal involvement with Arendt, so some understanding of phenomenology and existential ontology is needed.
We ended last week with a reflection on politics and religion precisely from the compilation of Posthumous Works by Arendt herself, and what we want to point out is the possibility of a civilization based on the principles of Love, in the sense of charity (theological virtue) and as Augustine saw it.
Far from being an apology for this elevated form of Love, it sees contradictions and will develop the question of love for God, love for one’s neighbor and oneself, and uses phenomenology to deepen this theme, but it is a hasty conclusion to say that phenomenology opposes or even favors these feelings, which in themselves are rather contradictory, for example, love for one’s neighbor and oneself has different nuances for the vast majority of people.
His conclusion is that it is not possible to form a human society based only on charitable love (always remembering that it is a theological virtue and not simple generosity) and the central point is to analyze Augustine only from a philosophical point of view, since Arendt he had no interest in the theological aspects.
Arendt for dividing his dissertation into three parts is due to a desire to do justice to Augustinian thoughts and theories that run in parallel. Thus, each part “will serve to show three conceptual contexts in which the problem of love plays a decisive role” (this quote is taken from an English translation that Hannah Arendt herself works with and differs from Portuguese).
The first part Arendt will analyze “What do I love, when I love my God?” (Confessions X, 7, 11 apud Arendt p. 25), in the second part she discusses the relationship between the creature and the creator, she titled the chapter “Creature and Creator: the remembered past”, and in the third part she discusses social charity.
In the first part, the author discovers that God is the quintessence of his inner self, God is the essence of his existence, and when he finds God in himself, man finds what he lacked: his eternal essence. Here, love for God can relate to self-love, for man can love himself in the right way by loving his own essence.
In the end, the second part will discuss the relationship with others, how to love them as God’s creation: “[…] man loves the world as God’s creation; in the world the creature loves the world as God loves. This is the realization of a self-denial in which everyone, including yourself, simultaneously regains its God-given importance. This achievement is love of neighbor. ”
In the third part of the dissertation, entitled “Social Life”, which Arendt dedicates to what she calls “social caritas”, the relevance of the neighbor, and the love for neighbor gain new justification, will discuss the adamic principle of sin and will say that this is the principle that will link us to Christ, who comes to redeem us from this sin.
Here the contradiction with Augustine appears: “It is because all men share this past that they must love each other:“ the reason why one must love one’s neighbor is because their neighbor is fundamentally their equal and both share the same sinful past ”, so it is not the foundation of Love, but of sin that makes us equal to others nearby. ”
By choice, man must deny the world and found a new society in Christ. “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) ”, there is a work by Augustine dedicated to this:“ city of God ”, and the thesis that is only so philosophical it focuses only on the mundane (or human, as you wish) relationship, it does not see man as having a divine origin and made for Love.
For Arendt what makes us brothers and I can love them in caritas, in true love, and this is expressed in Augustine, according to Arendt, reconciles the isolation generated by the commandment to love God with the commandment that says to love your neighbor, ending the dissertation.
According to Kurt Blumenfeld, a friend of Arendt who had great importance in his involvement with Judaism and politics, the answer to the question was Zionism and a return to Palestine, but emigration there was never part of Arendt’s plans. vita socialis your answer about Love, did not understand caritas.
Arendt, Hannah. (1929) On the concept of love in the thought of Saint Augustine: Attempt at a philosophical interpretation] (PDF) (Doctoral thesis, Department of Philosophy, University of Heidelberg) (in German). Berlin: Springer.
The party and the guests
09
Oct
Babette’s party is an allegory to a divine party, and the mysterious 
cook who humbly works for a long time in a house until she can announce and hold the party, although suspicious guests accept and feel their lives renewed.
What we live in pandemic times is the absence of the party, but the real party to which we have all been invited is that of fraternity for all and a greater balance in the distribution of incomes, in the treatment of different cultures and respect for human dignity. far from being a party.
Who were the guests, primarily those who claim to have these principles and who are not always practiced, that is, they participate more in the parties of wealth, power and their benefits than promote the party that everyone could participate.
The pandemic should be an awareness, deprived of the party, we should think about those who have always been deprived, and not try to promote even in the pandemic our private party where friends participate.
The biblical parable (Mt, 22,1-14) of the wedding feast in which a king calls the guests and they make excuses for not attending, is a good explanation for what happens to those who were invited and who were not and the excluded who are called to the party and they go, we would say one last awareness.
The guests, we would say in biblical terms the elect, were not, so the king sends his servants to go to the squares, at the crossroads of the paths and call as many as they find for the party, but at the party he still notices someone who is not wearing the right clothes (picture is engraved of Jan Luyken).
The biblical allegory is to say that among those who are not invited there are also those who are not worthy to participate in the divine feast
Babette’s feast
08
Oct
Babette´s feast is one of Karen Blixen’s most celebrated tales 
(1885–1962), tells the story of two puritanical ladies, daughters of a Protestant pastor, who live a very oppressive life until her father dies, the tale became famous after being filmed by the Danish director, being the first Blixen film to be filmed by the Danish Film Institute , and the first to win an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
The script was adapted by Just Betzer, Bo Christensen and Benni Korzen, in it Filippa (Bodil Kjer) and Martine (Birgitte Federspiel) are daughters of the strict Lutheran shepherd, who after his death, appears in the village Babette (Stéphane Audran), a Parisian who offers to be the cook and cleaning lady of the family.
Many years after working in the house, she receives the news that she won a big lottery prize and offers to prepare a French gala dinner in celebration of the pastor’s 100th birthday, the parishioners initially fearful, accept babette’s banquet.
The symbolism of the film is strong, the shades of blue slightly contrasted, are on the border between heaven and earth is almost imperceptible, amid the gray landscape of Denmark, a first image foreshadows a different communion in a place between earthly and heavenly things.
Another aspect of symbology is the fish, very influential in early Christianity, but it is the table that was able to re-connect those people with a true self, and awaken them again a sense for the life they had lost some time ago.
The dance of the participants around the people (photo), also a religious symbology, is a high point of this resumption of meaning of the lives of those people.
What Babette’s art, the food made with love and art, was to create on the table a “kind of loving involvement”, but “in a loving involvement of that noble and romantic category in which the person no longer distinguishes between appetite or satiety, bodily and spiritual!”, as the author of the original play herself describes, Blixen thus expresses the deepest of his expression in this tale.
Eça de Queirós and the eating table
06
Oct
Being in Portugal in 2018, and the Uab (Universidade Aberta) being
very close to Confeitaria Cister, where Eça de Queiroz attended, there is even a drawing of the song he liked to stay and write there (photo), I remember the Portuguese table remembering this corner of Lisbon, and Eça’s writings on the dining table.
One of the most common texts on the subject is an article known as “Archaeological cuisine”, published in 1893, in Gazeta de Notícias, Lisbon, Portugal. In it Eça stated: “the table has always been one of the strongest, if not the strongest foundation of human societies” and also “the character of a race can be deduced simply from its method of roasting the meat” (III, p. 1226)
Eça anticipated the reflections of historians such as Jean François-Revel (1996) and Massimo Montanari (2004), for whom the values of the food system are the result of the representation of cultural processes and relationships develop according to economic, nutritional and symbolic criteria.
The author not only proposed observations of cuisine in classical societies, but also considered that gastronomy has an arché, a basic element of the representations of Portuguese society, which was noticed by several of its readers and critics, the food awoke, for example, Machado de Assis’s attention as early as 1878.
The Brazilian fashion, Machado de Assis saw there in Eça an unnecessary abundance, the argument about this type of excess is opposed to the gastronomic coherence that is constituted throughout the work, the food is related to the excess of this literary school, if Eça had not continued to be careful with this theme, care should increase both in quantity and in quality in the following works and versions, reinforcing for example that the author of “Os Maias” may have found in the kitchen the fundamental elements of his project of represent Portugal through its most characteristic features.
What is certain is that the table expands to cultural and social values, as well as literary schools, the times of development of societies and cultures reflect them.
ASSIS, Machado. Eça de Queirós: O Primo Basílio. In: Obra Completa. V. III. Rio de Janeiro: Aguillar, 1997.
Plato’s banquet
06
Oct
At banquets, tables and food sharing celebrate many things,
including dialogue on essential topics.
Occurring around 380 BC it is a dialogue, and there are some who prefer the translation of Greek as Symposium (in ancient Greek sympotein means “to drink together”), and the central theme is Love, between eros and agape, and the central character as in most of his dialogues are Socrates.
Also in the dialogue Aristophanes and Ágaton (or Agatão), in his house there had been a previous banquet in celebration of the literary prize he had won, in this banquet Socrates and other participants spoke about “love”, Apolodoro and Glaucon, Aristodemo and Agaton himself.
Glaucon considers Apolodoro as crazy because he despises the material, Ágaton means “good” in Greek, good things and love lead to the practice of good and beautiful, and if we knew the practice of love the good it does, men would make an army of lovers, reminiscent of the army of banos, whose front was Pelopidas and Epaminondas in 371 BC
Phaedrus’ speech is that the love worshiped by men reveals them to be more virtuous and happier during life and after death, but it is in cosmogony that the speeches will oppose, while Phaedrus sees the origin of Eros as a very ancient god, without mention of parents, he was born next to Geia (land) after Chaos.
Pausanias the second to speak, contrary to Phaedrus, there are several Eros, he was the son of Aphrodite, and two Aphrodites, a daughter of Uranus and another of Zeus, that of Zeus generates vulgar eros and that of Uranus a heavenly Eros.
Eriximaco approves the distinction of Pausânias on the duplicity of Love and, universalist, extends it to every cosmos: “great and admirable, and it extends to everything, both in the order of human and divine things”, being a doctor says that the love and concord provide harmony, combining opposites (the healthy and the morbid) that extend throughout the universe: “one must keep one love and the other…”.
Aristophanes will insist on the power that love has over historical nature, using the myth of the androgens, legitimizing homo-affection and the unbridled search for what we now call “soul mates”, which is a search for perfectionism and in a way narcissism . Socrates praises the fact that Agaton began to show nature and what are the works of Love, but then follows his classic Question method: “Is Love such that it is Love of something or nothing?”, Ágaton confirms that Love is Love of something. Which “something” is Love from and continues with the question: “Does Love, what it is love, does it want it or not?” and the banquet follows the fashion of the Greek classics.
The banquet, the table at which everyone sits is the important part of this dialogue, seems so classic and so present, but we would add a question and Francisco de Assis, remembered these days, he said with conviction: “Love is not loved”, so before to be an instrument as stated by Agaton is itself something to be used as an instrument, at a time of so much pain in humanity, or else the Socratic way of asking: “Is Love loved?”
Plato, (2003). The Symposium, trans. by Christopher Gill. London: Penguin.
