Arquivo para a ‘Noosfera’ Categoria
The linguistic turn and the return to Being
26
Apr
Completing the introductory journey of the ideas of modernity, which,
as we’ve said, comes from the questions of universals vs. particulars (medieval quarrel), then nominalism vs. realism (philosophy of the late Middle Ages) and finally the question of modern reason.
The philosophical realism of modernity saw itself as independent of the ontology of reality in relation to conceptual schemes, beliefs or even points of view, with truth typically being a question of correspondence between our beliefs and reality.
However, at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, both through phenomenology and hermeneutics, these concepts came back into question, and both the resurgence of ontology and the linguistic turn (which can be connected to nominalism) are two new phenomena in philosophy where the “illusion of meaning” and the “interpretative task” presupposed by the “linguistic turn” and phenomenology are questioned.
Philosophers such as M. Heidegger (1889-1976) and L. Wittgenstein (1889-1951), taking this linguistic turn to its ultimate consequences, question issues such as the subject (the question of Being), truth (beyond formal logic) and rationality through epoché phenomenology (putting into brackets) and eidetic reduction, the search for the essence as the invariable structure of a phenomenon.
Philosophers such as M. Heidegger (1889-1976) and L. Wittgenstein (1889-1951), taking this linguistic turn to its ultimate consequences, questioned issues such as the subject (the question of Being), truth (beyond formal logic) and rationality through epoché phenomenology (bracketing) and eidetic reduction, the search for the essence as the invariable structure of a phenomenon.
For this reason, the entire course of thought was necessary, and also its unraveling with modern idealism (Greek eidos with a rationalist vision), the resumption of Being or reintegration.
Philosophers such as Duns Scotto (1266-1308) are recovered and it is possible to trace his influence on both René Descartes and Heidegger. For him, “the human being has lost the direct intuition of the essence of entities” and this makes his philosophy very current, seeing the direct intuition of essence in the entity.
This essence is interpreted in the context in which the work was written and not in the context in which it is read, as Paul Ricoeur (2010, p. 24) pointed out: it is the identification of what “once was”, the re-effacement of what is a dis-distancing, and not pure distancing assuming it to be neutral.
Thus, the interpreter must be seen in his context as an Other, together with his essence.
Only by emptying the rationalist ego and recovering our miseri–cordis (humility of heart) can modern man emerge from the dualistic and false opposition of modern realism, giving him back the dignity of his culture and his being, outside the idealist vision.
Heidegger, Martin. (2012) Ser e tempo/Sein und Zeit. Brazil, Petrópolis: Vozes.
Ricoeur, Paul. (2010) Tempo e narrativa. Brazil, São Paulo: Martins Fontes.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. (1979) Investigações filosóficas. Brazil, São Paulo: Abril Cultural.
The age of reason and the ontology of the thing
25
Apr
The end of the Middle Ages meant the revival of Greek humanism, 
but it returned to the idea of intuition, based only on the intellect of reason. For René Descartes (1596-1650), it was the only thing capable of distinguishing the true from the false, and it was the only thing that made it possible to obtain knowledge of the world.
This path consisting of doubt, experimentation (empiricism was born) and the formulation of laws were the influences that would come to dominate the rationalist precepts of the Enlightenment.
In his Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) re-elaborates empiricist and rationalist ideas, and it is this path that will elaborate the Enlightenment doctrines of the 16th and 17th centuries in the West. He states that “All our intuition is nothing more than the representation of a phenomenon; the things we intuit are not in themselves as we intuit them, nor are the relations between them in themselves as they appear to us.” This is a central point in his philosophy, particularly in his Transcendental Idealism.
For Kant, through this intuition, objects are given to us and the doctrine that studies this data is Transcendental Aesthetics, which orders and classifies things according to a series of categories that are not only intuited, but deduced by the intellect.
The world of the subject and its elaborations is reduced to its “subjectivity”, the way in which each individual experience and constructs the world, is no longer a divine transcendence, but the fruit of practical reason in a moral order.
The pinnacle of idealism, especially in Germany, was the idealism of Hegel and his disciples, and after his death they were divided between the old Hegelians, stuck in the world of transcendence and its dualistic contradictions, and a re-elaboration of the idealist religious spirit, including David Frederic Strauss (1808-1874), his brothers Bruno Bauer (1809-1882) and Edgar Bauer (1820-1886), and Max Stirner (1806-1956).
Among the young Hegelians, in Karl Marx’s view, were he and his companion Frederic Engels, who criticized Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872), for them the only one to have moved on from Hegel’s idealism to an objectivist materialism, and thus Marxism was born.
This is what Engels wrote: he [Feuerbach] “…pulverized contradiction at a stroke, restoring materialism to its throne without further ado. Nature exists independently of all philosophy and is the basis on which men grow and develop, who are also themselves natural products; outside of nature and men nothing exists…” (Engels, 1941).
However, Feuerbach relied on nature and little on politics, and this is where the Marxist critique comes in.
The idea of being is reduced to a historical and materialist conception, related to production, economics and politics, while the contemplative, moral and ethical vision of Being is subject to the “thing”.
The idea that there was a moment when the universe was created is subject to mathematics and physics.
Engels, F. Ludwig Feuerbach. Spanich Version, p. 14, Moscow, p. 13, Moscou 1941.
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.
Being: Unknown ontologies and epistemes
23
Apr
Augustine of Hippo, after having abandoned Manichaeism, dualism
between good and evil, elaborates an ontology that is little known and cited, even by theologians; it is a Trinitarian ontology and a complex gnosis (or episteme) of truth.
When reading a passage from Genesis (Gen 1:26), which is that man is made in the image of God (imago Dei), he ponders that the correct expression is: “let us make man in our image and likeness, let us and ours were said in the plural, and cannot be understood except as a relation” (Augustine, De trinitate, VII,6,1), where the plural “let us” and “ours” are there.
This anthropological vision could not go unnoticed, but the philosophical vision of being and being are submerged and implied in the text, man as a created being and being, is at the same time Imago Dei and perishable nature, but the image means Trinitarian, and on the other hand perishable means finite as being and not as Being.
Augustine does not use ontological categories, but onto-theological ones, so man has an immortal soul and a perishable body. In order to respond to this apparent creationist paradox, Augustine uses Neoplatonic knowledge, that the human being is made up of a corporeal/material portion and a spiritual portion, which is different from the dualism that dismisses the body.
For Augustine, the soul knows and lives in the body, so “just as the mind gathers knowledge of corporeal things through the bodily senses, it is by itself that it [gathers knowledge] of incorporeal things. Therefore, since it itself is incorporeal, it is by itself that it knows itself” (De Trinitate, XI,3,3 ), and thus formulates its episteme inseparable from the soul.
In other words, underlying the self-centeredness of the mind, knowing and loving itself, there is the concurrence of memory, intelligence and will. This will be further developed in Porphyry and then in Boethius (480-524 AD).
A disciple of Plotinus, Porphyry (c. 234-305 AD) was a Neoplatonic philosopher and his work systematized and disseminated Neoplatonic thought. His contributions covered various areas, including logic, metaphysics, ethics and theology, but his tree of knowledge, called the Porphyry Tree (imave above), is famous.
Boethius, his disciple and translator, advanced the contribution that Porphyry intended to leave behind in unifying Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, the so-called henology (the doctrine of divine unity). His work Philosophical Consolations brings part of the questioning of particular and universal concepts, which will be a controversial topic among the nominalists and realists of the lower middle ages.
A period characterized by feudalism and trade routes prepared the Renaissance.
AUGUSTINE, St. DE TRINITATE. Monergism.com (pdf).
Principles of the history of Being and eternity
22
Apr
In philosophy, there is no way of referring to Being without addressing
being and essence, which philosophers have said in different ways during the process of civilization and the construction of knowledge.
For the Greeks, starting with Socrates, being (seen as what constitutes being human) resides in the soul or reason, which is not separate, and conscience is the source of both intellect and morality, and man is capable of transcending the material world and seeking truth and virtue. For him, the soul is essence and is not separate from the body (being or form), it is an obstacle to virtue.
Plato elaborates that “being” is that which exists, while “essence” (form) is the fundamental and immutable nature that defines that being, while Aristotle’s essence of a being is its fundamental nature, what defines it and makes it what it is, it is the form that unites with matter to form a substance, which is the individual being.
So Socrates’ transcendence disappears, Plato then elaborates the High Good as the essence of what is good, just and true, while Aristotle defines it as the pursuit of happiness, the highest good that human beings seek, he also creates the idea of the immovable motor, the first cause of everything that exists and of the universe, Plato defends the immortality of the soul, while Aristotle is stuck with the idea of human finitude where everything is mortal.
The Neoplatonist Plotinus (204-270 AD), saw the soul as a bridge between the intelligible world (the One and the Intellect) and the sensible world, it is the image of the Intellect and of the vital force that drives life and motive, in his book Ennead VI:
“And what are we? Are we that, or are we that which is associated and exists in time? In fact, before birth, we were there [in the intelligible], being other men and, some, also gods: pure souls and intellects united to the totality of essence, parts of the intelligible, without separation, without division, but being of the whole (and even now we are not separate). But now, another man has approached that man, wanting to be. And finding us, since we were not separated from the whole, he clothed himself with us and added to himself that man, which each of us was then” (Plotinus, VI, 4, 14, 16-25).
Plotinus sees the Soul in various “stages”, it is what connects Spirit and Body, the higher nature and its materiality), it is a creature of God, created in his image and likeness, composed of body and immortal soul, Augustine of Hippo reworks this as the Being is a creature of God, created in his image and likeness, composed of body and immortal soul, thus seeing it outside its bodily finitude.
In Saint Augustine’s view, the body has a dual nature, the first physical and material, like his body in which he lived, and the second refers to the church as a metaphor for the body of Christ.
I think of this metaphor in the sense of a worldview, as the 20th century theologian Teilhard de Chardin also saw it this way: the whole universe is Christ’s body, that is, not the itinerant church, but the eternal and living one in the immensity of the universe, so his body is eternal, and this is the greatest meaning of the resurrection, Jesus had a temporal experience, an ex-sistence, but he is eternal.
Peace and the death of the pope
21
Apr
The truce talks between Russia and Ukraine, between Israel and the Hamas and Trump’s tariff-only war put the world on alert for a serious period of civilizational instability.
The death of Pope Francis this morning in Brazil and Italy also means the loss of a tireless defender of peace and has repercussions throughout in all world.
In an official statement this afternoon (21/04) the Vatican clarified that Pope Francis’ death occurred at 7:35 am (Italian time), therefore 2:35 am in Brazil, caused by:
– Stroke
– COMA
– IRREVERSIBLE CARDIOCIRCULATORY COLLAPSE
I leave you with a personal video where I reflect on the Pope’s true thinking on controversial issues expressed in chapter 3 of his encyclical Fratelli Tutti (all brothers), as follows:
Pain, Being and Easter
18
Apr
This is a time that has tried to abolish pain and exalt pleasure and joy at
any price, but it is a time of depression, panic, intolerance and no empathetic life, writes Byung-Chul Han: “Just in the palliative society hostile to pain, silent pains multiply, crowded on the margins, which persist in the absence of meaning, speech and image” (Han, 2021, p. 57).
Nothing could be more paradoxical in this time which shows that pain is an essential part of existence. Who can accept this if not those who have overcome the desire for immortality and pursue the desire for eternity, Han who has Buddhist leanings and Hannah Arendt who has Jewish roots wrote this.
Walter Benjamin, who had strong roots in the Frankfurt School, wrote: “Pain alone, among all bodily feelings, is for the human being a navigable stream, with waters that never run out and that leads him to the sea”.
The lack of understanding of this feeling proper to Being leads to difficulties in dealing with frustration, loss and the twists and turns of existence, making us weaker and less resilient to any contradiction, often unable to deal with them.
Understanding pain also helps us to understand human finitude, death not as an end in itself, which makes life limited and small, but believing that there is something beyond it, that there is a “passage” to eternity, and that without it life seems ephemeral.
We live by consumption, by what is “available”, where “the world that consists of what is available can only be consumed. The world, however, is more than the sum of what is available. The available world loses its aura, its aroma. It allows no lingering” (Han, 2021, p. 94).
It is also a world without “otherness”, as described by Han: “It protects it from being degraded into an object of consumption. Without the original distance, the other is no you. He is not summoned in his otherness, but appropriated” (idem, p. 94), here Han is recalling a text by another thinker and educator, Martin Buber.
Only those who have already moved on from the finitude of the world, from immediate consumption and passing life, to a true desire for eternity, already here, can understand pain, and extreme pain such as Jesus’ death on the cross, but as Han emphasizes, it then returns to the surrounding world, which is reality, but does not cancel out the desire and reach beyond the finite Being.
Han, B.-C. (2021) A sociedade paliativa: a dor hoje. Transl. Lucas Machado. Brazil, Petrópolis, RJ: Editora Vozes.
Serenity: choosing what is good
07
Mar
There is no serenity without reasonable choices
about personal, social and spiritual life, even worse is the one who tries to eliminate one of the three. Without personal life there is no being-there (Heidegger’s Dasein), without social life we live in a bubble, and without spiritual life we do not develop our essence.
Among the choices we have to make in life, they cannot involve only one of the three aspects: the personal only makes us selfish and narcissistic, without the social we become alienated and have difficulty understanding reality, and without the spiritual we do not have a true asceticism that elevates us as human beings.
On the occasion of the centenary of his fellow countryman, the great musician Conradin Kreutzer, in a 1949 conference in his hometown of Meßkirch, Germany, wrote the text on Serenity.
Heidegger questions the difficulty of thinking even at that time, and asks if it is not through music and singing: “is not music distinguished by the fact that it ‘speaks’ through the mere resounding of its notes and does not need everyday language, the language of words?” and: “is it already a commemoration, which involves the act of thinking?” (Heidegger, 2008, p. 10).
Heidegger questions the difficulty of thinking even at that time, and asks whether it is not through music and song: “isn’t music distinguished by the fact that it ‘speaks’ through the mere resonation of its notes and does not need everyday language, the language of words?” and: “is it already a commemoration, which involves the act of thinking?” (Heidegger, 2008, p. 10).
When remembering his hometown, he recalls that [due to the war]: “they had to abandon their villages and cities, expelled from their native soil… they became strangers… and those who remained? They are often even more uprooted (heimatloser) than those who were expelled. Every hour and every day they are tied to radio and television… the cinema transports them weekly to the unusual domains, of representation that simulates a world that is not.” (Heidegger, 2008, p. 16), showing the relationship with technology. If you lived in our day and age, you would see how visible the relationship that is maintained is, now not transporting you to other realities, but to unrealities that transport your mind to the vulgar.
Thus, the choices that must be made become more radical. More than ever, it is necessary not only to choose what is good and healthy, but to fight so that this awareness is not lost in illusions.
Heidegger, M. (2008) Serenidade (Serenity). Lisbon: Instituto Piaget.
Beyond pain: choosing life
06
Mar
No to war, hatred and indifference means
going beyond pain. It is often difficult to go through differences of opinion, conflicts of culture and even ideologies, but this is exactly what pain implies as a normal contingency of life.
Byung-Chul Han, in his analysis of painkillers, describes permanent anesthesia as one that limits not only feelings: “Pain is stopped before it can set a narrative in motion” (p. 72), and also: “Hell is just like a palliative well-being zone” (p. 73).
“Today, we are not willing to expose ourselves to pain. Pain, however, is a midwife to the new, a midwife to the entirely other” (p. 73), so it leads to an encounter and to life, ‘it allows only the prose of well-being, that is, writing in the sunlight’ (idem).
In the inability to understand pain as a process of change, it is often replaced by resilience, which can make sense with great obstacles or a great effort to overcome a certain circumstance of pain, but in many cases, it is just a stubbornness with situations that lead to true happiness, what Sloterdijk calls a “society of exercises”, efforts that do not lead to overcoming.
The Greeks had the myth of Sisyphus (we’ve already posted about this, see the image), a cunning king who defied Death and Hades, resulting in his being condemned to eternally push a stone to the top of the hill, Albert Camus has a book that talks about this and updates the theme.
True resilience understands that there is a new path, a pain that “midwives the new”.
When the people complained about the passage from Egypt to the promised land, saying that they missed the onions and leftovers they ate as slaves to Pharaoh, Moses rebuked them and said (Deuteronomy 30:19): “I take heaven and earth as witnesses against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Choose life, that you and your descendants may live…”, indicating the path to freedom and the building of their nation.
Facing difficulties, pain and even afflictions in difficult times certainly requires resilience, but it cannot be confused with error, sheer stubbornness or “exercises” that lead to nothing and do not favor finding happiness.
Han, B. C. (2021) Paliative Society: pain today. Transl. Lucas Machado, Brazil, Petrópolis: Ed. Vozes.
Pain and ashes
05
Mar
The period of Lent is the 40 days after Carnival,
as it was already part of the early church, coming from the Easter of the Jews, it is before Carnival, it recalls the Jewish Easter (Pesach), which has the meaning of passage or liberation, remembering the period when they were slaves in Egypt.
Christian Easter is a renewal, it recalls the death and resurrection of Jesus. We are reading and remembering the book by Byung-Chul Han (who is not a Christian) where he talks about the ontological meaning of pain and its current erasure, clarifying: “we live in a society with increasing loneliness and isolation” (Han, 2021, p. 59).
The author quotes Viktor von Weizsäcker in his essay “The Pains”, where he characterizes pain as a “truth that has become flesh”, as a “becoming flesh of truth” (p. 61), and also “Everything that is true is painful” (idem).
Society without truths, says the author in the following passage, is “an unparalleled hell”, and “pain can only arise where true belonging is threatened. Without pain, then, we are blind, incapable of truth and knowledge” (p. 62).
So in Christianity and Judaism, the ashes and Passover as a way of of 40 days, appear to remind us of the dust we are and the path of salvation and belonging we must follow: “pain is distinction [Unterschied]. It articulates life” (pg. 63), ‘it marks boundaries’.
“Pain is reality. It has a reality effect. We first perceive reality in the resistance that hurts. The permanent anaesthesia of the palliative society derealizes [entwirklicht] the world” (p. 64) and ‘reality returns in the form of a viral counter-body’ (p. 65) wrote the author because it was the period of the pandemic.
So the ashes and the period of Lent for Christians is to renew the period of Jesus’ passion as its apex in Holy Week, where there is the apex of the pain of crucifixion and the apex of renewal that is his resurrection, Christians or not, this is the true and real logic of life.
If we don’t understand this, we become paralyzed by the pain of hatred, wars, indifference, various types of injustice, the exclusion of the Other, in short, the non-life that all this senselessness of pain causes, and so it is necessary to remember the dust of ashes, everything that passes and that only makes sense if we understand pain not as an end, but as a passage to life.
Han, B. C. (2021) Paliative Society: pain today. Transl. Lucas Machado, Brazil, Petrópolis: Ed. Vozes.
