Arquivo para a ‘Noosfera’ Categoria
The Civilization Crisis and Thought
It is not a propitious time for thought, said Peter Sloterdijk, in other words Edgar Morin asked for a revolution in thought through education, what is observed are increasingly dogmatic currents (different from orthodox) in duel, without a understand or argue in terms of the universe of the other.
The outline of this crisis has its origins in the inability to move forward, the proposed models show signs of exhaustion, the media and common sense appeal to superficial arguments, without a clear reference and sometimes appealing, this has reached the social body and politics.
They blame the new media, they are just vehicles of thought, their cognitive basis is in education and in what is digested in people’s daily lives, and since the beginning of the last century it was already showing signs of exhaustion, not a few serious thinkers comment on this, from Nietzsche to Freud, through conservative writers on the right and left, because both returned to their origins.
There is a social crisis, no doubt, but it exists due to the absence of consistent responses that mobilize everyone, thinking is segmented, the great models and theories have failed and the sign of this is its radicalization to irrational levels, and the horizon of war emerges.
In A well-made head, a book by Edgar Morin, he states that the reform of thought would allow the full use of intelligence to respond to these challenges and a link between cultures that are dissociated, it is not a programmatic reform, but a paradigmatic one, that is, with regard to our ability to organize knowledge.
Putting everything together, exercising a transdisciplinary approach, as described in the opening remarks of Arrábida’s letter (Morin, Barsarab Nicolescu and Lima de Freitas subscribed to it): “Considering that the contemporary rupture between an increasingly cumulative knowledge and an increasingly impoverished leads to the rise of a new obscurantism, whose consequences, at the individual and social level, are incalculable.” (Feitas, Nicolescu, Morin, 1994).
This letter establishes a new ethics: “Transdisciplinary ethics rejects any attitude that rejects dialogue and discussion, whatever their origin – ideological, scientific, religious, economic, political, philosophical” (Freitass, Nicolescu, Morin, 1994).
Freitas, Lima; Morin, Edgar; Nicolescu, Basarab . (1994) Carta da Transdisciplinaridade de Arrábida, Portugal Convento de Arrábida.
Post-God or the Theocide attempt
More than the reading of Nietzsche on the “death of God”, understanding religious radicalism, in addition to the evangelical, there is the Semitic, the Islamic and neo-Pentecostal currents, the reading of Post-God is actually a re-reading of the issue of evil or more correctly “God is dead, and we killed him”, what I call the attempt at Theocide, impossible, whether it exists or not.
If God exists, he cannot be killed, just erased from the human mind, in the logic of Ludwig Feuerbach’s Hegelianism he exists only in the human mind and in this case he would not exist in fact and if he exists, we cannot kill him since he is immortal and precedes everyone and to everything.
Peter Sloterdijk in part of the proposition and of course of the hypothesis that it only exists in the human mind, a delusional fantasy of men, say many convinced atheists, since the Gnostics do not consider the hypothesis, the most important living German philosopher (I consider the pope emeritus also important), will analyze, in addition to Nietzsche and Cioran, Luther’s intermezzo.
Luther is particularly important because he is the undeclared root of Nietzsche’s thought, son of Lutheran parents and relatives, some pastors, the Protestant Reformation is fundamental to understand the religious phenomenon or the so-called “revenge of the sacred”, it entered the political scene .
The book, with this name will attract few Christians, has an interesting dialogue path that goes through Hans Jonas (The Gnostic Religion), Harold Bloom (Omens of the millennium), Franco Volpi (Nihilism), Sergio Givone (Storia della nulla), Ioan Culianu (The Tree of Gnosis) and Sylvie Jaudeau (Cioran or le deernier homme), all authors and exegetes of Cioran, who had a “disfigured” mystical experience of an atheistic, disenchanting and nihilistic nature.
Who was Emil Cioran (1911-1995), author who wrote from Nag Hammadi, a series of manuscripts found after World War II that killed more than 40 million lives in Africa 50 km from Luxor, in a large container of clay, numerous papyrus codices written in Coptic language and in great condition.
The great “Gnostic” library quickly spread among intellectuals, dating from about seventeen hundred years ago, therefore during the western emergence of Christianity, the author projects a mystical message for our current state.
This aura of “discovery” of Nag Hammadi remains until today, in fact it gave wings to what I call Theocide, taking it not only from minds but building a nihilistic “mystic” without God, but it does not escape what it is, a exotic nihilism.
Sloterdijk talks about despiralized asceticism, Cioran is also, the search for an asceticism without all this false diffuse radicalism, does not resist the slightest idea of practiced principles, confuses everyone, and politics is also contaminated by it, the only possible way to everyone seems to be hate.
Hatred is the most vehement and efficient Theocide, where it entered, any possible asceticism left.
SLOTERDIJK, Peter. (2015) Post-God. trans. portuguese by Markus A. Hediger, Brazil, Petropolis: ed. Vozes.
Repentance, Grace and Gratitude
When we are able to meet the Other, forgive him and also repent for what did not go well in this meeting, we find space in life for grace and gratitude, not by chance one is derivative of the other.
Gratitude does not exclude but overcomes bad feelings from our lives, excess positivity can also lead to demands and perfectionism that do not lead to an encounter, but the exclusion of the Other, tolerating small faults, which are often just differences, is necessary to attain grace, and grace when it comes to us must find gratitude.]
Many remember to ask for graces, when they don’t ask God, they ask some form of false mysticism or false gods, to find cosmic energies, which in fact exist, but will only have an ex-sistence if they are in front of the Being, the one who is and the one which has always been, after all, the most current theory in physics is that before the Big Bang there was already something, so something beyond this ex-sistence, a pure Being.
So a true philosophy of grace must lead to gratitude, it’s not just the Universe and luck that conspire, or even some “secret” that would be pure positivity, it can be illusory.
So gratitude removes feelings of evil and intolerance from our lives, includes people who are actually good and increases our potential for good virtues.
In the biblical passage where 10 lepers are healed, only one returns to thank Jesus,
When Jesus saw him, he asked where the others were (Lk 17:17-19): “Were not ten healed? And the other nine, where are they? 18 Has anyone returned to give glory to God except this foreigner?” 19And he said to him, “Get up and go! Your faith has saved you.”
Ingratitude not only drives away grace, but explains its absence and the difficulty of living in environments of harmony, sincerity and peace.
Repentance, start over and grace
Repentance is not the same as remorse, it is linked to the pastand prevents a positive start, there is no awareness of guilt and a new state of grace is not achieved.
Grace is living life to the full, with the limits that life imposes on everyone, however repentant, you can compress the past strictly to what it was: a mistake, and live well the present and the future by overcoming an anguish that is inalienable responsibility for the fault or error committed.
To repent is to live intensely and truly in the present, even if some suffering or mark remains from the past, whoever took a step after that managed to start over.
Ludwig Feuerbach, best known for Marx’s Theses against his Hegelianism, called old Hegelianism, in his maturity wrote about remorse, his reading is important for the confrontation he makes both with Schopenhauer and with Kant.
Feuerbach recognizes the originality of the subject and proposes it in a broader scope of freedom, examining remorse and regret as conditions of imputability of an act,
In opposition to Schopenhauer, Feuerbach will affirm that the character of a man is not innate, nor unchangeable, that is why the death penalty is wrong, and here too, the discussion about the right of the Modern State on human life, an always controversial topic is important.
Against Schopenhauer, Feuerbach argues that man’s character is neither innate nor unchangeable, so the death penalty is mistaken.
The foundation of freedom is the self that acts in the game of passions and is essentially the relationship with the Other, which is widely explored in modern literature by Paul Ricoeur, Lèvinas and other authors, there is a phenomenological resumption of this issue.
The suggestions in the moral and legal field are essentially in relation to this relationship with others, and the suggestions in these fields are particularly interesting, but ethical questions remain, such as that of the absolute foundation of moral obligation, which is posed in Kant in the explanation of the which is moral conscience.
This discussion expands in some authors to the field of sensitivity (SERRAO, 2007) and mysticism (TOMASONI, 2010), where the issue of grace can be included more broadly, adding the recognition of grace where there is repentance and a new beginning.
References:
Adriana Veríssimo SERRÃO (2007). Pensar a sensibilidade. Baumgarten – Kant – Feuerbach, Lisboa, Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa, PT: Lisbon.
TOMASONI, Francesco (2010). Tra misticismo e scienza: l’uomo e la sua ‘sensibilità’ nell’Eklektik, in: L’umanesimo scientifico dal Rinascimento all’Illuminismo, a cura di Lorenzo Bianchi e Gianni Paganini, IT: Napoli.
Wisdom from above, civilization malaise
The Tiredness Society is also a society that led adults, young people and adolescents to psychiatrists and alternative methods, those with few resources led to closed groups and dubious social conscience.
It is not by chance that Freud wrote at the beginning of the last century about this “Civilization Discontents” (Freud, 1930) the author will not discuss the psychiatrist question itself, but the distance between instinctual impulses and civilization, that is, contemporary culture. which leads man to his opposite as much as nature does to his well-being.
Intolerance to errors, even scientific misunderstanding, the demand for effectiveness in all fields, the lack of empathy and love in everyday life and, in particular, of values that are natural and lead to a true human asceticism, leads to emotional and society to dangerous limits.
In detecting this evil, Freud himself, the founder of psychiatry, did not take humanity to the couch, and I feel he pointed out that there are cultural evils and these must be remedied first, this is not what was done, in this sense Sloterdijk is right, it is not possible to “ human domestication.
Even if religions themselves live on this civilizational evil, the true asceticism that is to climb the mountain of wisdom with values that support this asceticism on your feet is necessary to reach a true stage of civilization, it is necessary to “love in absence” it is necessary to intend the true values that lead to wholeness and to the true and unique comfort, empathy and love.
When we remove this from society, it begins to move towards isolation, hatred and conflicts and “discontent” are just the consequences of the absence of this “natural” state, but a plant only evolves if cared for in its natural conditions: fertilizer , adequate water and sun.
When the disciples go to ask Jesus that they want to believe more and do a true asceticism, he remembers the mustard seed, a tiny seed that grows into a leafy tree (Lk, 1,6): “if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, pull yourself out of here and plant yourself in the sea: and it would obey you”, like love in absence, faith is believing without seeing and walking towards a true asceticism.
FREUD, S. O mal-estar na civilização (1930 [1929]). In: ______. O futuro de uma ilusão, o mal-estar na civilização e outros trabalhos (1927-1931). Direção geral da tradução: Jayme Salomão. Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1974. p. 73-171. (Edição standard brasileira das obras psicológicas completas de Sigmund Freud, 21)
Doctors are for the sick
The society of the beginnings of Christianity, not only religious Pharisaism but also the whole culture was that society was for the healthy, the Greek saying “healthy mind in healthy body” is a way of expressing this, the sick should live on the margins society, often outside the city walls.
Diseases were little known and medicine at the time was too expensive to have no purchasing power, even the fact that a paralytic was placed in the presence of Jesus descending through the ceiling, has a mistaken interpretation, they would not let him pass.
It is a fact that we already have chairs and seats in the queues for elders, pregnant women and the sick, but there is still a mentality of the community of the pure, the saints or the perfect, after all, efficiency cannot come from those who are not physically prepared for it.
This was how the pandemic was dealt with, many said that the sick isolate themselves and society will continue its rhythm, but what we saw was society as a whole losing its rhythm, and the result of this pressure gradually turned into many psychic diseases. , even for those who made them.
Treating and working with imperfection, illness and purity is only to promote the social integration of people, the idea of being a “model” for others is a Kantian idea of ethics, which can lead to an ethics and a partial view of sociability and what is imperfect.
In terms of religious culture, it leads to isolation, the formation of a bubble in which values are reaffirmed, but many are excluded and are not invited to participate and live with differences, this is one of the main religious paradigms that Jesus broke in his time.
Talking to women, leaving space for children, healing lepers and cripples broke the Pharisaic concept of what was considered “unclean”, went against sinners and the sick.
It is true that the blind cannot guide the blind, but doctors are for the sick, says the biblical passage (Lk 15:1-3): “At that time, publicans and sinners came to Jesus to listen to him. The Pharisees, however, and the teachers of the Law criticized Jesus. “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” , then Jesus tells the parable of the lost sheep and then the prodigal son.
The Pharisaic mentality not only does not cure the sick, it becomes a social disease itself.
The idolatry of perfection
Myths and idols were created precisely to divert the understanding of human nature, they change according to the contexts and the evolution of languages, but they have always been present in the history of humanity and thus they themselves must have human considerations.
Nietzsche warned us about the risks of living fed by idols (or ideas, which for him were synonymous), showed that by dominating our mind and conditioning our thinking, feeling and acting in the world, we become strict with our life and that of others, claimed to be a monstrous force, as a myth it can be said that its maximum expression is Narcissus (image) and this led to sameness, the lack of originality and diversity, the demand for the same.
In the name of some idealism, and in modernity it itself became a philosophy after Kant, people are capable of hurting and reaching the other who is outside their model, and even not allowing to build in life what they allowed themselves to be conquered by Is it over there.
The model of efficiency, productivity and social rigor is also a model of perfection.
This happens because the idealist model formulates that there is an ideal model to follow and reality is always imperfect and thus they prefer to follow the perfection of ideas and reach the absurdity of submitting others to their model of perfection, they believe that there is a top to be hit.
So it is not possible to formulate a human model to be followed, of course it is possible if we understand human imperfection as part of a process of hominization and civilization in which all other humans must have the same possibility of living and sharing the common environment.
Edgar Morin called this “planetary citizenship”, many political and religious models speak of solidarity, of rejection of hatred, but it is necessary to observe if they do not build something that excludes.
Today is the day of the Brazilian nation, so diverse and rich in races and ethnicities, any model that does not support the other is the type of idolatry of perfection that must be rejected, does not lead to solidarity.
Spinozian Ethics, a strong counterpoint to idealist ethics, formulated that reality is always equal to perfection, because perfection only makes sense when it is reality not something imagined or thought, so perfection is reality to the same extent that reality is perfect.
Without love and respect for the Other, for diversity and tolerance, every ideal model is imperfect.
The peace and salvation
Contrary to what common sense thinks, the afflicted are not among the unfortunate, but among the wronged, so it is necessary to think about the life of the just and their salvation.
As we wrote earlier: “Blessed are the afflicted, for they shall be comforted, blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth”, and verse 9: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God” and these are the righteous and suffer affliction.
But Kierkegaard’s fundamental help is on the question of identity, definitions as being-in-itself and being-in-the-world, and, the concept of the eternal, which is a launching into the “infinite” which is where salvation is.
So it must be that the calculation we make when we face injustice is between an account that only in the face of infinity and consequences can it be defined, and as we put the fall in reverse, we could place the biblical passages of the new testament the beatitudes in Mt. 5:1-12, verse 5: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God”.
Thus it must be understood that this calculation is made when referring to the calculation of salvation made in Luke 14:28-30: “For which of you, wanting to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost, to see if have enough to finish? Otherwise, he will lay the foundation and will not be able to finish. And everyone who sees it will begin to mock, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish!’
This peace is different from the “perpetual peace” proposed by Kant and by idealism, it resulted in two big wars and in the belief in the state as a mediator of conflicts.
Between affliction and peace, the infinite and the eternal
Many seek happiness at any price, so we reflect empathy early in the week, then reflect on the anguish and distress that are axes of growth and suffering, but it is they that understandably lead us to real happiness, built peace.
Kierkegaard’s “Concept of Anguish” (1884) shows multiple forms: the anguish of freedom or nothingness, there is a personal choice of this that the author calls the choice of oneself, the anguish of goodness and obstinacy, the anguish of sexuality, that of tomorrow and that of the finite, it is prior to faith.
At this point it is possible to link to a phenomenological view, and still to link it to the interpretation of the biblical passage of man’s fall into sin (Genesis 3), ignoring the Enlightenment / Idealist culture, which is the anguish of freedom or choice that occupies a essential role for the Self.
According to Kierkegaard man is called, as spirit (addition and mind), to place the relation between the elements that characterize him structurally, likewise those that can conflict with each other (body and soul, temporality and eternity), choosing a form of existence among the innumerable ones historically presented to him, here the phenomenology.
Although innumerable, Kierkegaard pedagogically lists some choices that are choices in three life styles (or “stages”): the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious, is reductive but interesting.
The openness I see (in it is only existence but could be essence as Being) is that anguish is therefore “nothingness” that each person in his indeterminacy “is” at the moment of establishing synthesis to the point of being. give yourself an “identity”, a controversial theme in idealism, here that I think is possible to connect it to Heidegger’s “being in the world”, although different concepts.
Contrary to the fall the biblical passages of the New Testament could be placed on the beatitudes in Mt 5: 1-12, we highlight two that were dealt with in these days, verses 4 and 5: “Blessed are the afflicted, for they shall be comforted, blessed. the meek, for they shall possess the earth, ”and verse 9,” Blessed are they that bring peace, for they shall be called the children of God.”
But Kierkegaard’s fundamental help is on the question of identity, definitions as being-in-itself and being-in-the-world, and the concept of the eternal which is a launch into the “infinite.”
Dark times and virtues
Dark time of politics, threats of war and pandemic do not completely hide the paths of the clearing, although its true meaning is debatable, neither the Renaissance nor the Enlightenment were in fact “clearings” and Sloterdijk has revised Heidegger’s clearing, it is possible in times of anger to see virtues that lead to the clearing.
Sloterdijk, in his book/essay “Time and Ira”, points out the exhaustion of traditional models of political processes, I argue from a historical review of the great global political impacts, inverting the biopolitics advocated by Foucault to a social psycho-politics.
He points to affections that he calls “thymotic”, especially anger, as well as its degenerate derivatives, resentment and the desire for revenge, for example (but there may be others such as incitement to hatred), become the fundamental driving force of history and politics, so it’s about mobilizing these forces, and the populists do it well, to mobilize the population.
Virtue, good proposals and the call for dialogue seem to lose strength, however, the author himself points out that psychic ecosystems (among them moral) can produce these “affections”.
Written in 2006, the author already showed that anger, whose capital is precisely the dispersed and globalized world anger, produces a cultural omnipresence that he calls the “metaphysics of revenge”, but does not develop that the types of moral “affections” can be an opposing force.
It was not without this force that the Greeks developed the concepts of the citizen of the polis, it was not without the encounter with the human (excessively anthropocentric, it is true) that the renaissance made a re-encounter with humanism, after its modern development, now check me out.
The virtues seem heroic, impossible and almost despicable, the theft of the public thing, dialogue and the de facto respect for democracy (polarization favors dictators), seem to have no other way out, but the virtues exist and they are subject to our humanity (Picture: Giotto: The Allegories of Virtues, 1303-5).
It is not just about the female figure, racial forces and the countless forgotten people in politics, the important thing is to highlight that a social turn must be composed of moral and social virtues.
The figure of the mother was even developed by the writer Máximo Gorki in his historic book “The mother”, which does not mean anything other than the generation of good virtues, also those that generate social justice and peace between men, the Greek Maieutics , Sloterdijk perhaps alludes to the “matrix in grêmio” (in the mother’s lap) in her spheres.
In biblical terms, the figure of Mary, forgotten by some and even despised by Christians, is nothing other than the memory that from her “birth” comes a redemption, a salvation and it is not by chance that she is seen as all virtuous.
The biblical passage in which Mary tells her cousin Elizabeth that she was pregnant with Jesus is clear in her cousin’s greeting (Mt 1:42-43): “With a loud cry, she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit from your belly! How can I deserve to have the mother of my Lord come to visit me? , being human (and divine through participation in childbirth) is within our reach.
SLOTERDIJK, P. Time and Wrath (Tempo e Ira), Brazilian edition: Estação Liberdade, 2006.
SLOTERDIJK, P. Spheres I: bubles (Esferas I: bolhas). São Paulo, Brazil: Estação Liberdade, 2016