Arquivo para a ‘Noosfera’ Categoria
Between spirit and spirituality
28
Jul
Henri Bergson was looking for a new philosophy of life, one
that goes beyond what intelligence can meet, the psychological and creative dimension of evolution, complementing this philosophy with Teilhard Chardin’s idea of the noosphere, it is not a simple collage, but convergence between philosophy, religion and a spirituality that fosters a dialogue with cultural worldviews.
The different theories of life intend to reach knowledge through categories developed by intelligence, wisdom and intuition can go further, what Bergson says, intelligence itself is a product of evolution, we know more than primitive man knew.
The intelligence created by the needs of life to act on objects, nature, acting itself and the wisdom necessary for this, was initially based on matter, but when replacing the whole with the part, it became illegitimate, to understand life and the direction of evolution, a new method of thinking is needed that understands the natural sense of intelligence, with the help of intuition, is not contradictory with the wisdom present in various worldviews.
For Bergson, what characterizes intelligence is what he calls “duration”, starting from their own existence as living beings, to learn what life is as a perpetual and continuous variation of our spirit, then raises the duration of the universe that is formed incessantly, and in every minimal form that he reveals his creative impulse, this state of change goes beyond mathematics and physics that can only model each change in a short “duration”.
Teilhard de Chardin, when characterizing the “human phenomenon” sees it as a complexification of matter, then unlike Bergson he will not separate what he calls inert “matter”, and for Teilhard de Chardin it is a “living” body of everything that exists , for which he was accused of pantheism, and sees in the existence of the Universe like Bergson something that cannot be separated from a creative evolution, which changes forms and mechanisms of interaction, “wisdom” also evolves.
Also the problem of duration here Bergson distances himself from science, at least from the current one that sees time not as a “duration” but as a “fold”, Chardin is closer to Science when he sees in evolution the approximation of creation and the complexity of the universe, nature and man the approximation of the Creator and eternity.
Bergson’s evolution then moves towards the evolution of the life of consciousness, thus returning to subjectivism and the abstract consciousness of the idealists, for Chardin, when he called man a “human phenomenon” (it is not contradictory with the fact that the “likeness” of God goes along for eternity), says what kind of consciousness is the human, the consciousness of its physical existence that does not separate from the spiritual.
BERGSON, Henri. (2005) A evolução criativa (The Creative Evolution). Brazil: SP: Martins Fontes.
CHARDIN, Teilhard. (2001) O fenômeno humano (The human phenomenon). Trans. Armando Pereira da Silva. Brazil,SP: Cultrix.
Spirituality and Worldview
27
Jul
Spirituality is the search for meaning in life, it can stop at
the physis, which for the Greeks was nature, or it can go beyond and contemplate the meta-physis, which means μετα (metà) = after, beyond all; and Φυσις [physis], that is, beyond nature and physics.
Thus, a spirituality that stops in nature, the explanation for example of the origin of the universe, even if it is a physical worldview, lacks an eschatological worldview that explains the origin and end of everything, will at some point fall into sophistry and nihilism, as the sophist Gorgias (485-380 BC) nothing exists.
If nothing exists, the meaning of life is meaningless, much is superficially explored the meaning of life, for many it is just being happy, it is still a limited worldview, pain and suffering are part of life, so it is necessary to go through them for the life actually makes sense.
Spirituality needs a worldview, or if you prefer the more philosophical term, a worldview (Weltanschauung), used in an almost opposite way by Kant and Heidegger, while Kant uses it as idealistic transcendence (from subject to object), Heidegger it returns to the metaphysical tradition, with the purpose of distancing itself from it.
The concept of eidos (in Greek is form and essence) transformed into an idea, and the separation of the subject from the object, relegated the questions of the spirit (not even spirituality can be called) to the field of subjectivity, the starting point of the philosophical movement called German idealism it was the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781 by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), ending fifty years later with the death of Hegel (1770-1831).
Martin Heidegger starts by questioning the meaning of being of being-there. This is because “this term does not mean only the conception of the connection between natural things, but, at the same time, an interpretation of the meaning and purpose of the human being there and, therefore, of history [Geschichte]” (HEIDEGGER, 2012, p. 13).
Much of what is called spirituality is actually just a search for meaning in life, a mental exercise that is different from the spiritual, lacks an ascesis, a true “ascension”, so it always returns to physis, nature or to the ground.
A complete worldview must go beyond the fact and reach intentionality, everything exists with an intention, to be aware is “to be aware of something”, as Husserl’s phenomenology thinks, so awareness of the “universe” therefore has an intention of the existence of the universe , which is part metaphysical and part spirituality, something or someone has (and didn’t have) a primary intention, something big, infinite, superior to nature, the universe and everything we know, something ineffable.
HEIDEGGER, Martin. (2012) O problema fundamental da fenomenologia. (The fundamental problems of phenomenology(. Trans.: Marco Antônio Casanova. Petrópolis, Brazil: Vozes.
The ineffable and the interpretation
23
Jul
Before making today’s post, we can’t fail to register the 
Tokyo Olympics, whose opening takes place today and some protests: five teams: United States, Sweden, Chile, New Zealand and, surprisingly, the United Kingdom, knelt before their football matches in anti-racist protest, Australia’s women’s players have embraced, remembering the Aboriginal nation that lives there and signifying national unity.
But perhaps the most important demonstration was relegated to the background, the protesters are called “ultranationalists”, which is not true, as 43% of the population was in favor of postponing the Olympics, 40% were against it and only 14% are favorable.
The Pandemic was ineffable and it is there still showing signs of resistance despite the struggle of science for vaccines and their overcoming, exactly the most resilient people did not renounce an event, and this is also of course a problem of interpretation of what actually occurs right now.
Something ineffable that is not subject to interpretation and even metaphors would be little to try to explain them are the great questions of humanity: what we are in the universe, where we are going and now more than ever: where we are going.
There are many cosmogonies that try to give an eschatological interpretation to these issues, what is certain is that we exist and not because we think (I think, therefore I am), but we exist and this allows us to think and language (I am, therefore I think) and with it interpretation is possible.
Christian cosmogony, there are many others in different cultures, is the one whose metaphor of the seed grain transforms into life: the seed that falls among thorns, that falls on shallow soil and that falls by the wayside, the good soil will make it germinate and bear fruit, is an interpretation of the ineffable.
The biblical text of the multiplication of the loaves, whose earthly interpretation only sees the distribution of goods (Mk 6,1-15), does not observe the ineffable interpretation because it is Jesus who asks Philip (Mk 6,5): “Jesus told Philip : “Where are we going to buy bread so they can eat?”, and after multiplying the 5 barley loaves and two fish.
The ineffable divine, men wanted to give him an earthly power and the reading says (Mk 6,15) : “But when he noticed that they were trying to take him to proclaim him king, Jesus withdrew again, alone, to the mountain.”, is a divine interpretation made by the Master himself.
Interiority and the social relationship
16
Jul
If today’s society “isolates” the individual, and the pandemic 
has done so in greater depth, this does not mean that some isolation is not necessary in an increasingly hectic urban life.
The cultural drama of our time is when “it presupposes exactly the non-satisfaction (by oppression, repression or some other means) of powerful instincts explained Freud (see the post on Civilization and its Discontents), he exposes this as a “cultural frustration ” that dominates the field of social relationships between human beings, but Byung Chul Hang goes deeper when analyzing what pain is.
Byung-Chul Han’s new book “The Palliative Society” will describe the medieval society as the society of martyrdom in the face of pain, and the current one as the Survival Society, and because of the attempt to avoid pain, as a Palliative Society, so many antidepressants, anxiolytics and “analgesics, prescribed en masse, hide relationships that lead to pain” (Han, 2021, p.29).
In a curious analysis for a Buddhist, but perhaps aware that Easter means a “passage” through pain to eternal life, the author describes: “in view of the pandemic, the survival society even prohibits the Easter Mass. Also priests practically “social distancing” and wear protective masks. They sacrifice faith entirely to survival… Virology espouses theology.” (Han, 2021, p. 35).
Everyone listens to the virologists, says the author, the beautiful narrative of the resurrection “gives place entirely to the ideology of health and survival” (Han, 2021, p. 35), it is not about life but: “Death empties life into survival”.
Using Hegel, the author explains the true meaning of pain: “Pain is the engine of the dialectical formation of the spirit” (p. 75), the formative path is “a painful life: The other, the negative, the contradiction, the split belong, therefore, to the Nature of the spirit” (p. 76) and so interiority.
Jesus, always after some intense moment of preaching or participating in some social event, would leave with the disciples, it was the moment of interiority, but often situations forced him to leave his rest aside and go back to seeing the people (Mk 6 , 31-34):
“He said to them: ‘Come alone to a desert place and rest awhile’… When he disembarked, Jesus saw a large crowd and had compassion, because they were like sheep without a shepherd” and Jesus came back and taught them other things.
He also had moments of pain prior to Easter, when he drank the cup, and little rest.
HAN, Byung-Chul. Sociedade Paliativa: a dor hoje. (Palliative society: pain today). trans. Lucas Machado, Petrópolis: RJ: Ed.Vozes, 2021.
Being aware of Being and living with the essential
07
Jul
Philosopher Socrates’ phrase “the life that is not examined
is not worth living” would not be a great success today, frivolity has given rise to what is not essential as a false need for happiness and an environment of pain and resilience clashes with this mindset.
One must examine in this context what consciousness is, and as hermeneutics asks, there is no consciousness, other than the consciousness of something, the phenomenological consciousness there is no dualism between subject and object, Being is seeking to examine the consciousness of something, whether it is concrete or abstract.
Social life requires some form of mutualism, being well and the Being does not deny its sociability, personal life requires examination of the Being, balance with nature, also with its own implies health, balance and this is not separate from interiority and capacity for personal reflection.
Pure exteriority leads to the unessential, performance, public image and personal self-worth are forms of exteriority that can lead to consumerism and exaggerated individualism.
Life and “examined the life” is complex, but living in essential change to simple style.
The essentials to live require few things: modest clothing, food and possessions can lead to a balanced and happy life, the opposite can lead to an excess of worry and stress.
At the other extreme, not having the essential can also lead to despair, there are the biggest and most unfair social situations, a society that does not care about this is out of balance and leads everyone to imbalance, even those who accumulate and become selfish and consumerist.
The consciousness of Being in the Hegelian view would be linked to Being-in-itself and for-itself is only in the form of perception, it is in the imagination, the intentionality of phenomena that denies other objects (external) or of itself (internal) and so this type of awareness is related to nothingness.
Consciousness cannot be achieved without identifying itself with any being-in-itself (something in phenomenology) it is in it that it approaches in relation to another consciousness, this is because an action or choice as consciousness perceives in this relation the contingency and gratuitousness of existence.
Thus, this awareness leads to reciprocity, mutualism and an existence that is worthwhile, in the words of the philosopher Socrates “because it examines itself” and this vivifies it and moves towards fullness.
Pure exteriority is voluntarism and pure interiority is false essentiality and can be an escape.
There will be no return to frivolity
06
Jul
Although media philosophers and optimists out of context want
some return to some kind of normality, we already have two irreversible structural changes, the need to understand total interdependence, no one is isolated and the restructuring of social and urban life.
England about to return to normality and the United States, which celebrated its Independence Day, thinking of celebrating the independence of the coronavirus, admit failure, in both countries the authorities declared that we must live with this difficulty, in UK the same.
The concept of co–immunity was developed by Peter Sloterdijk in another context, a kind of mutualism in which everyone is responsible for everyone, finding scapegoats either in the creation of the virus or in ineffective combat became difficult to accept conspiracy theories, in both cases political opportunism is present, even though it is possible to perceive a fight that is not always effective.
On the individual commitment aimed at mutual protection, Peter Sloterdijk thinks that neither is the time for national withdrawal nor has the world become small for everyone, consumption exists thanks to frivolity, there is no public consumption if there is no appeal to it.
What should happen is a new requirement of mutualism, it is still just a trend, but the idea that we will not easily get out of living with the danger of the virus and new mutations leads us to the need for a new community consciousness, in addition to the one mentioned and not practiced.
What Sloterdijk calls mutualism could become something even broader, he said in an interview with the newspaper El País: “The need for a universal shield that protects all members of the human community is no longer a utopian thing. The huge medical interaction around the world is proving that this already works”, the problem is that disputes and nationalism prevent this.
Sloterdijk’s answer is quite interesting: “these movements are not operational, they have impractical attitudes, they express dissatisfaction, but they are in no way capable of solving problems. I think they will be the losers of the crisis”, I agree with him.
The only caveat is that these disputes can lead to irreversible clashes, which would be catastrophic for all of humanity and, moreover, a topic that he also touches, democracies are at risk.
His answer is: “in the future, the general public and the political class will have the task of monitoring a clear return to our democratic freedoms”, the desire to suppress them is on the agenda every day.
The whole, the part and the Being
02
Jul
It was from this theorization of the whole that Werner Heisenberg
started the quantum principle, when he formulated his theory there was no answer from scientific experience, which in itself already contests empiricism, and it was a “theory” which in itself contests that reality is practical, but it was the first attempt, happy because later Physics and Science would come to their rescue, starting from the whole and not from the parts, as proposed by the Cartesian method.
The truth of physics, however, changes over time, new discoveries about new discoveries of subparticles (among them the Higgs boson), the 7 states of matter (it joins the three widely known, the plasma (light liquid), Bose-Einstein states, fermionic gas and polarations superfluid, and there may be an eighth, so there is already a paraphysics.
But there is already, and there always was, metaphysics (later physics), modernity wanted to reduce it to subjectivity (something proper to the subject, but only stuck in his mind), the current ontology, the result of hermeneutics and phenomenology, it recovers by questioning the “veiling” of being, and proposes a clearing, the crisis of humanism is nothing other than this crisis.
The philosophical question about everything is “because there is everything and not nothing” and this supposes ex-sistence, as the question about the whole could be, it is not asked philosophically but only theologically, if there is “everything” which it is the intention that justifies the ex-sistence of everything ?.
Phenomenology recovers intentionality, a subcategory of consciousness in medieval philosophy, with a sense of being directed at something, or of being about something, thus ontological.
Husserl recovered it by directing it to an object, an essential category in modern idealism, but directing it to something that can be imaginary or real, thus including metaphysics and Being.
So the fantastic thing about the existence of everything is not just its existence, but the intention for the Whole.
What is the whole and if it exists is Being, so only He can Be beyond the whole universe that is locus, since in modern physics time is an abstraction, says Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli, who is among the most respected.
F or Christians, the entrance of God into the physis happens with Jesus, says the passage that Jesus asks who they say is “the son of man” (He thus speaks of one of his two natures: divine and human), and he goes to ask the apostles the who they say He is.
The apostles respond (Mt 16:14-16), they replied: “Some say it is John the Baptist; others that it is Elijah; still others, that it is Jeremiah or one of the prophets”. Then Jesus asked them, “And you, who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” and Jesus says he is happy because it was God who revealed him.
The possible clearing
30
Jun
To scrutinize and investigate the unfathomable is man’s own,
but there is always the possibility of daydreaming and well-constructed schemes of thought that do not lead to the clearing, just like an explorer in the forest, the risk of walking in circles without a compass, a river of guide or celestial stars are essential.
This has been happening since the beginning, warned Heraclitus in a fragment “The φύσις likes to hide herself”.
The φύσις (“Physis kryptesthai philei”) was left untranslated because literally it would be physis, but this was for the Greeks nature itself and what is now separated from it as Being, the dichotomy between subject and object.
In Heidegger, the truth is this abyssal foundation, hidden but possible to be unveiled, this is linked in this author by the link between being and truth as bottomless, abyssal foundation, the unfathomable, that’s why we explore in last week’s posts the metaphor , when contemplating being, this becomes ineffable.
What could be called ontological excess is nothing more than the mystery of being, its unfounded eschatology, it is neither a fragment of the universe, nor is it itself, part of it and incognito like it.
Truth is generally thought of as correction, agreement of a statement with what it says, or of a thing with what was previously thought of it, a hypothesis that seeks to make it true.
One can think of relativism, but it is exactly the opposite, for Heidegger the truth is always the truth, the experience of truth, from Plato to Husserl, was always an adaptation of representations, trying to escape from metaphors, with the essence of things themselves .
So truth is not being discoverer, but being discovered, Dasein (being there) is open to itself and to the world, and only in it can the originality of the phenomenon of truth be reached, what the Greeks called Aletheia , and that Heidegger goes further by proposing to be the institutor of the belonging of Being-Man.
This is the sense of the originality of Being, the being thinks in its primordial sense as “present”, Being is being in the present, it unveils itself in it,
Thus, the only sense that one could think of dialectics as ontology is the one in which the “basic feature of presenting itself is determined by remaining veiled and unveiled”, is Being in motion.
The reason we are trapped in the veiling of Being (its forgetfulness as Heidegger used to say) is the prison to logical-rational schemes to which the truth is tied to the entity and disconnected from Being.
HEIDEGGER, Martin. (1985) Alétheia. Os pensadores. Brazil, São Paulo : Abril Cultural, 1985.
From language to being
29
Jun
Language as speech and rhetoric is just what is externalized, but if
thought of as ontology, it is the opening (Erschlossenheit) from the silent appropriation of the self, as Heidegger thought of Being and Time, whether the opening (offenheit) is thought of as clearing of being (lichtung des Seins), the one used by thinkers and poets, and which shows itself in the measure of its silent correspondence as being, expressed in Letter on Humanism.
In this text, he writes: “Destiny appropriates itself as a clearing of the Being, which it is, as a clearing. It is the clearing that grants the being’s proximity. In this proximity, in the clearing of Da Lugar, the man lives as a former caretaker, without him being able to experience and assume that dwelling today” (Heidegger, 1967, p. 61)
In general terms, language is a vehicle for the expression of something internal to man, that is, a bridge that links the inside and outside of man, such a way of speaking is thought of as an activity that takes place in which man is the very medium, that’s why there is silence before.
But according to the ontological conception of language, it is not language that belongs to man, but rather man himself conceived ontologically as a resolute being-toward-death or ontologically being that responds as mortal to the silent request of Being.
In more simplistic terms, this is the difference between the being that “has” a language, in the sense of the ability to speak, and the ontological conception that thinks man as “being” through being possessed of the ability to speak, the language here is not just the transmission of information, but the way in which human existence itself manifests.
In this context, communication begins with silence, an emptiness is needed, an epoché in communication, which presupposes an Other who will be a recipient, is not thus a receiver, but a destination of his speech, and this is the way in which human existence itself manifests. .
Thus for Heidegger, but also for Niklas Luhmann, it would be necessary to review the entire theory of Communication, since receiver and transmitter are themselves the non-human environment, and do not “replace” man, they cannot exist or have a relationship as if If man were something accessory, there is all the hallucination of the current Artificial Intelligence, putting receiver and transmitter in the place of source and destination, it would be necessary to foresee a “clearing” of the being “outside” of Being
For this reason, the clearing is internal, we have already posted in another opportunity what Heidegger affirms in his magnum work Being and Time: “Insofar as the being is in force from the aletheia, the self-unveiling emerging belongs to him. We call this the action of self-enlightenment and enlightenment, the clearing” (cf. Being and Time).
HEIDEGGER, Martin. Carta sobre o Humanismo (Letter on humanism). Brazil, Rio de Janeiro: Tempo Brasileiro, 1967, p. 61.
The hermeneutic circle and the metaphor
25
Jun
We are betrayed when we think we know and we are still in the
initial stage of interpretation, the one that has not yet started a period process, to put our preconceptions in parentheses and start a real dialogue.
Metaphor helps us to bring, using poetic language, a relationship of belonging, to bring the world to poetry and to bring poetry to the world, because the poem projects a world in its ontological dimension, a reality that lies between the seeing as of the metaphor itself to be.
In addition to this function in the scope of semantic innovation, the unveiling of deeper reality, for example, explaining issues that are complex in order to allow this belonging, this proximity, is the function, for example, of parables, metonymy and synecdoche.
Examples of more marked parables are the biblical ones, associating the Kingdom of God with seeds that grow unnoticed, or with the mustard seed, a tiny seed that becomes a tree, this to say that there is a life-giving force in man, and in all men.
However, metaphor, through the use of figurative language, always runs the risk of remaining on the surface.
We exemplified last week the biblical passage in which Jesus went to the seaside work of Galilee and a threat threatens the boat and Jesus calms the storm (Mark 4: 35-41), but the subtlety of this passage is the metaphorical meanings of going the other bank and the storm itself.
Needed to explain deeper things and questioned the disciples fear of storms, and goes to the other side, meaning a more direct moment with the apostles, much of the analytical exegesis (see previous post) is fixed on an immediate understanding that go to the other shore means changing the route, when in fact beyond resting (Jesus slept in the storm), as deeper realities were explained directly to the apostles.
This is proven if we verify that later Jesus returns “to the other bank” where he again encounters a crowd (Mk 5:21-43), and in this crowd he is beyond an unknown woman who touches the master’s robe and is cured of a hemorrhage of 12 years old, there is a synagogue chief named Jairus.
Jairus had the daughter in the last few years, and while he was with Jesus he asked him to lay hands on his daughter, friends of Jairus arrived, who said that she died and Jesus says that she “only sleeps”, goes to Jairus’ house and performs the miracle pronouncing the words “Talitá cum”, the girl gets up.
This subtlety, an ordinary person and a synagogue leader, shows very clearly that in the “crowd” there are also religious authorities who want signs (the Jews want signs and the Greeks wisdom) and so the metaphor is complemented with “signs” and a “wisdom” inherent in Jesus.
