Arquivo para a ‘Noosfera’ Categoria
The Trinity and the Cappadocian Fathers
04
Jun
The Korean-German philosopher Byung Chul Han
of “The society of fatigue”, started from the analysis of Vita Activa by Hanna Arendt (we translate Vita from Latin, for life until now), explaining that it starts from the prevalence in the Christian life of the contemplative life, clarifies in a note that she seeks “a mediation between vita active and contemplative life”, and even though she is not a Christian she uses the passage described by São Gregório: “we have to know: when we demand a good life program, that we move from vita active to vita contemplativa, then, it is often useful if the soul returns from the contemplative life to the active one, in such a way that it is called the contemplation that has been lit in the heart and transmits all its perfection to the activity. ” (HAN, 2015, p. 39)
The rush runs from day to day does not allow this balance, but in times of pandemic we were called to rethink our social life, our relationship with the people of our home and also consumption and solidarity with those who in these times lost jobs, spend limitations and are vulnerable.
However St. Gregory has another bias in his thinking about the trinity, with his friends also cappadocians, these priests were forced to make a self-defense of the charge of Tritheism (3 gods) that weighed on them and then three great theologians of Cappadocia (Asia Minor): St. Basil the Great (330-379), his blood brother Gregory of Nissa (+349), resolved the issue.
Seen by Greek philosophy, which dominated Western culture, “Mia Ousia treis hypostasis”, means that ousia guarantees unity while substantia et tres persone ensures that each of the three people is unique, and perhaps the most difficult to understand that there are in fact three distinct people.
Saint Basil was the first to establish the distinction by saying that in God there are three people or three hypostases, as we have already written, means the prosopon, which is what for the Greeks the person.
As we wrote last week there was a neglect of the Trinitarian relationship, in philosophical terms it is the dualism of thought, the inability to understand situations that are always from different worldviews, but that must maintain unity.
In religious terms, it means the loss of relational capacity, solidarity and fraternity with the other, seeking a religion that is sometimes Manichaean, sometimes fundamentalist, without any appeal to unity (ousia) and respect for the dignity of the person (hypostases), in short, the relationship Trinitarian.
Trinitarian forgetfulness and ontological resumption
29
May
The idea of an absolute, infinite, unique and eternal spiritual substance (see the post)
far from being an idea of God, far from being the unveiling of the Holy Trinity, is an idealistic scheme of rationality for an abstract God, yet compatible with the Hegelianism, the idealistic god.
Sloterdijk’s severe criticism of humanism now makes even more sense with the post-pandemic perspectives, placing the “will to power” of the two wars and a possible future scenario, as “a synthesis of humanism and bestialism” (Sloterdijk, 2000) , of course we have other possibilities, the varied ideological thesis that many expect or a third excluded: the fraternal option planetary.
Just as the ontological resumption proposed a new logic and epistemology, which comes from the Husserlian epoché (put all concepts in parentheses), along with a new theology, this Trinitarian, where there is a third person in the Trinity, which is the Holy Spirit, but it is not simple.
Christian and Catholic theologian Karl Kahner wrote about “Trinitarian oblivion” (1962), even before the Second Vatican Council, which marked a turning point in Catholic thought, the first ecumenical council that generated some controversy and which is not yet fully applied,
The Second Vatican Council marked a profound change in the relationship of the church with society, it should open a new perspective of the participation of the popular (of the laity), a new vision of the mission of the church and in special presentation of the updating and insertion of the church in its time. with various liturgical and pastoral aspects.
Many Christians in general understand the Father and the Son well, but the Holy Spirit is a mystery, not a synthesis and not only the relationship with God the Father (the One that no one has seen) and neither the Jesus, the incarnate God alive, historical, but without leave divine.
Classical theology treated the “mystery” of the Trinity with the idea of an “absolute, infinite, unique and eternal spiritual substance”, see the previous post of Hegelianism, so God is a single substance, essence or nature, explained as three sub- distinct systems and people: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in these ideas the Hegelian system (among them even the Marxist) fit well.
The understanding of Being as an act and potency (typical of Tomás de Aquino), and potency is similar to the virtual, places divine people as a relationship and is integrated in a new synthesis that sees God as a pericoretic communion* of love, theologians of different tendencies as von Balthasar, Rahner and Kasper moved in this direction and the ontological issue is a common one. (*more that relationship, inter-pretenetration)
The second Vatican Council already reflected the turning of a metaphysical perspective of a theology that prioritizes a more historical, phenomenological, hermeneutic and existential understanding of reality, more in tune with the current worldview and culture.
The understanding of being as an act (so characteristic of Aquinate) and of divine persons as a relationship, are part of a new synthesis that understands God as a pericoretic communion of love.
The understanding on the other hand of potency as virtus, virtuous possibility of Love that is essential to understand that sin is non-love and not a mere Manichean opposition from evil.
The ontological recovery and the dynamic Being
28
May
If there is an ontology in Hegel, it is static, although between being and not being
there is becoming it is an affirmation of being and not its poietic or noietic negation (noesis here in the sense of Husserlian phenomenology), it is a feeling or capture at the present moment of change or fusion of horizons, and poiésis in the sense of a mediation or a language of Being.
The ontological resumption that, although static, is present to some extent in Hegel, it is static when it sees being in opposition to non-being, while as a moment of interiority in life and being, it is precisely becoming, which is externalized in a relationship with the Other, the diverse.
However, Peter Sloterdijk’s interpellation to Heidegger in his Rules for the Human Park cannot be overlooked, as well as the crisis of scientific thought in Europe pointed out by Husserl in his work of maturity in which both physicalist and transcendental subjectivism challenges, resuming his Lebenswelt, the world-of-life.
The question of Sloterdijk makes sense when thinking about the dire times of the end of World War II, after the concentration camp but also the Hiroshima bomb of the allies, and in this new “war” against the pandemic it seems to make sense to ask us about the Humanism.
In Heidegger it is like Da-sein, “being-ai” (or being-being), that the human takes on the task of shepherding the being, and it is in the sense of place-time (using the new quantum dimension) that inhabits Man, since the place is now the whole planet, but nationalisms persist, not as an affirmation of peoples that is just and real, but as a delimitation of grazing and interests.
Sloterdijk seems to be right in pointing out that the “unveiling” of political destructiveness has been reduced to its most explicit and encouraged form of being like the formula “will to power” (Sloterdijk, 2012, p. 284) in a “synthesis of humanism and bestialism ”(Sloterdijk, 2000, p. 31), and which seems to remain equally ambiguous as a movement, and it is not possible to avoid mentioning some forms of neo-nationalism that have taken up with great force.
In Heidegger it is like Da-sein, “being-there” (or being-being), that the human takes on the task of shepherding the being, and it is in the sense of place-time (using the new quantum dimension) that inhabits Man, since the place is now the whole planet, but nationalisms persist, not as an affirmation of peoples that is just and real, but as a delimitation of grazing and interests.
Sloterdijk seems to be right in pointing out that the “unveiling” of political destructiveness has been reduced to its most explicit and encouraged form of being like the formula “will to power” (Sloterdijk, 2012, p. 284) in a “synthesis of humanism and bestialism ”(Sloterdijk, 2000, p. 31), and which seems to remain equally ambiguous as a movement, and it is not possible to avoid mentioning some forms of neo-nationalism that have taken up with great force.
SLOTERDIJK, Peter (2000). Regras para o parquet humano: uma resposta à carta sobre o humanismo. Trad. José Oscar de Almeida Marques. São Paulo: Estação Liberdade, 2000.
Sloterdijk, Peter (2014). Regeln für den Menschenpark: ein Antwortschreiben zu Heideggers Brief über den Humanismus. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2014.
Between the essence and the Being
21
May
Although dualism remains present, the essence is conceived by analogy to
Being, and this was also the Thomist doctrine, it remained an onto-theology until the 20th century, it took a whole path of phenomenology to encounter the Other, the non – Being not as a contradiction, and the end of the dualism between Being and essence.
The long discussion of the medieval period between realists and nominalists was based on a term now unknown which was quididade, which means that thing is, from Greek hylé to modern models of Heidegger’s metaphysics, where the thing that can be material or not, and also what we think about it, in Husserl’s line there is only awareness of something, or of the thing.
But there was a philosopher in the Middle Ages, Duns Scotto (1266-1308) who did not distinguish between the thing that exists (si est) and what it is (quid est), and theologically it was complicated because the thesis of Santo Tomás de Aquino it was by analogy, that is, the meaning of similarity between things or facts (Houaiss dictionary, 2009, p. 117), and the religious were always in a hurry because in the 20th century Duns Scotto was accepted within the Catholic Christian doctrine, becoming blessed (John Paul II declared it).
His theory of knowledge used the two known distinctions distinctio realis (real distinction) and exists between two beings of nature, and the distinction rationalis (distinction of reason) that occurs between two beings, but in the mind of the subject who knows, but breaks dualism in creating a third possibility to distinctio formalis (formal distinction) that occurs in the perceived entity and is neither real nor in the mind.
So in addition to his disciple William de Ockham, famous for the simplification principle called Ockham’s Razor, but in a way Descartes, Leibniz, Hobbes and Kant had their influence.
However, the recovery of Duns Scotto is essential to overcome the dualism of nominalism / realism and the overcoming of pure realism by philosophical hermeneutics, and thus also the modern correspondent of nominalism, which is the linguistic turn, makes sense and opens up dialogue.
Balance and calm in times of crisis
08
May
Given the worsening of the pandemic crisis in Brazil and some countries in
the Americas, the arrival of the cold in this hemisphere and the exhaustion of the Health System, without the preventive #LockOut (in Brazil), we will now have to make an emergency intervention, with the consequences that it brings.
In this situation, we need a discipline that we do not have culturally, an awareness that is not always well understood, there is only awareness of something, and in this case it is public health and the extremely necessary and urgent care for the curve to start a retreat process.
Those people who have some spirituality, who achieve balance in this situation need to help the population as a whole, defend the doctors, nurses and support staff working in health (drivers, secretaries, rescuers, etc.) to have working conditions.
There are several ways to find personal balance, physical and breathing exercises, reading, music and relaxation, but it is the state of the soul that counts most, and in the turbulence of the danger of a pandemic, it is essential to find a form of spirituality, thoughts and to be.
For Christians who believe in the existence of an omnipotent and sovereign God over all the things that govern their lives, he knows that the inner attitude is one of passivity, tolerance and a deep Love for all those around him, and in this pandemic having attitudes of protection for all.
The comfort of their souls, for true Christian spiritualities, is the belief in the Love of God. It is written by the evangelist John (Jn 14,1-2): “Do not let your heart be disturbed. You have faith in God, have faith in me too [Jesus]. In my Father’s house there are many addresses. If not, I would have told you. I will prepare a place for you ”, and his earthly #StayAthome is now a refuge.
Between the passage and the door
01
May
Every passage is about some danger: a precipice, a narrow path with ferocious
animals around, at Easter, death and resurrection, in the current pandemic: deaths and deprivations of liberty, and an uncertain future, but which should open a fusion of “ new horizons ”, but because the dialogue must be between cultures and civilizations with different worldviews and not in closed groups.
The door and the “path” (one can think of science as a method) through which we can and must pass to enter a new reality, which may well be the common home, the harmony between men and these with nature and going further away with the cosmos, which we know has laws even less known to us.
The complexity that this future will involve must have a basic assumption, or we emerge from a sad crisis together, or we deepen it and we will have an even tougher reality in the next worldwide virus (it may be a new crisis or not), the passage must have a door and we opened it together.
We will be poorer at first, this is absolutely true, conspiracy theories that this or that will do better is mere speculation, even for the wealthy, the bags plummet, I saw an owner of a chain of Brazilian stores raging, even the doors of churches then closed, so whoever will pass through the door is the one who learned solidarity.
We will only make the transition after the end of the pandemic if we continue to dream and seek a door. The truth and the complexity of the existence of God are many biblical passages, the prophets before the coming of Jesus had mysterious revelations in dreams, Isaiah predicted the captivity in Babylon, in Babylon Daniel unveiled the dream of King Nebuchadnezzar, among several others until Joseph when he heard that Mary was pregnant he fled and in a dream the angel warned him of the truth.
Historical truth (in Gadamer´s sense) precedes mystical truth, John the Baptist was the last and greatest of the prophets, and Jesus repeatedly pronounced “in truth, in truth I tell you” usually when he told a parable, in one of the passages he says he is the “door” and states (Jn 10, 10): “The thief only comes to steal, kill and destroy. I came so that everyone can have life and have it in abundance ”, but is imperative the door truth.
May this time of harsh test of the pandemic serve us to open our souls and recreate a more fraternal world, where life is full for all citizens, but this will have to be built.
Simplification, idealism and pandemic
28
Apr
The idea that we can simplify phenomena that are complex seems a good way,
but to simplify what is by nature complex is to ignore the set of phenomena and interpretations that are within the phenomenon you want to analyze, whatever the nature.
It is very different from the search for essence, the pre-Socratics sought to define what was the essential element of nature: fire, air, atoms, numbers, the Being, and thus defined the main pre-Socratic schools, when realizing that it was a broader phenomenon Socrates, which is read by Plato divides into two worlds: the world of Ideas and the sensitive world, however any attentive reader will not say that his school has simplified, it only paved the way for greater complexity.
The eidos of Plato and the pre-Socratic Parmenides is different from modern idealism, because in it there is so much the concept of form, for example, a chair whatever form it has its Being as being made to sit.
The Greek eidos from which the etymology of the word idea comes, has two accepted meanings, one that is a synonym for concept, but in a broader sense it is thought of as an expression, with the implicit principle of the idea of intentionality (*), and this concept it was only taken up in modern philosophy by Franz Brentano and later in Husserl’s phenomenology, who was his student.
Modern idealism, whose fundamental basis is Kant, although it has a common part to the Greek eidos, which is the idea that when studying the thing we have a projection of knowledge on it, reducing the idea that this study would be what characterizes the object of study (objectivity), and thus introduces a specific type of subjectivity, abstracting it from Being, this abstraction has in Hegel the apex.
Kant came to think that it would be possible to reduce all thought to a few concepts, it would be a great facilitator for study and thought, but his thinking resulted in an even greater complexity, and his simplicity fell into the subject x object dualism, which we suffer.
Every simplification leads to some kind of subjectivism or objectivism, even in religious terms, when studying The Human Phenomenon, Teilhard Chardin declared that Man is the complexification of nature, difficult for theologians and exegetes to accept, but I ask you the question: why did Jesus use of parables to explain things that apparently could be simple¬, because it isn’t.
Idealism is basically a “doctrine” that contains the belief that it is thought and not the physical world that is at the origin of all things, that is, the objective world, which we discover with the pandemic, and physics quantum already knew and actual cosmology is deepening, is that uncertainty is part of knowledge, and we are faced every day with a new phenomenon.
After all, one of the assumptions of Kantian idealism was the submission of nature, she rebelled.
This is the original novelty that idealists do not accept, and this novelty should give us back the humility, proclaimed by all, but as idealism gets stuck in duality, the error is the others, we knew the truth, not even science, nor faith could imagine the complexity of the phenomenon that all humanity lives, the first step to face the pandemic is this: I depend on the step of the Other, and that we can take steps together, it still seems difficult.
*Encyclopædia Britannica, Available in: https://www.britannica.com/topic/idea , Access in: 04/26/2020.
The pandemic in Brazil and a hope
27
Apr
We started the week with a scenario not only of suffering, it has been happening
since the beginning of the world pandemic, but of political turbulence and misinformation about the pandemic.
Through graphics and hard numbers we tried to show, even to a lay audience and except for those who are in health, we are all a little lay, we showed the rise of the curve and that showed no signs of easing (which would be starting a less steep climb) nor of cooling.
The information and intervention policy of the Minister of Health that came out was encouraging, but the current policy, in addition to showing a cold´s numbers and “betting” on an easing of the curve, there is still no clear intervention in the disease, which is treated as a fatality.
We continue to defend #LockDown for Brazil, but the policy is to bet that the peak will be in May, without any convincing analysis for this.
There are signs in Europe that the peak has passed, the leader of Brexit (leaving England from the European community), British Prime Minister Boris Johnson infected with invite-19 thanked two foreign doctors who, in his own words, “saved my life” .
The pandemic has already changed the way and culture of how we think, media leaders and thinkers do not change, they are defending their establishment discourse that yield expensive lectures and the cultural and social misinformation we live in, I have already mentioned two thinkers, Edgar Morin who he told L´Obs that our “toxic” way of life is changing, and Byung Chul Han (in daily El Pais), who showed why the oriental culture that is disciplining (do not confuse with the authoritarian) favors the fight against the pandemic.
We must always have hope, and the greatest thing we can have in these pandemic times is what humanity has always dreamed of, a homeland for all, care for the “common home” and the gathering of religious leaders: Muslims, Christians, Druze and Jews in Jerusalem (photo above) is a sign that there is something changing and that the change deepens.
The road to Emmaus: from intelligence to the heart
24
Apr
The Part 2 of the book How to Live in a Time of Crisis is written by Patrick 
Viveret and in addition to a look of admiration for the work of Morin, the co-author, he has an even more generous look at humanity, despite the serious question of the chapter title : What will we do with our life?.
Viveret will link wisdom to love, quoting Martin Luther King: “We must prepare to live as brothers and sisters, or prepare to die as imbeciles” (p. 55), and complete it with “collective” emotional intelligence (it is an important differential) which is not psychologism. The author states “if we do not deal with the relationship between reason and heart, of the reasons of the heart that Pascal spoke of, purely mental intelligence, the famous science without conscience that is nothing more than ‘soul ruin’ as Rebelais said, it can build worse monstrosities ”(Pages 55-56). He said about the previous crisis what is much more appropriate for the current crisis: “humanity is in danger of prematurely ending its own history, but it can also take advantage of this crucial moment to experience a qualitative leap. “(P. 56) We cannot look at millions of deaths and say, thankfully it was not with me, or a little more humanly, we cannot even mourn the lost ones.
Numbers parade coldly without authorities touching each other, there will probably be 3,000 dead at the peak of the curve in São Paulo, but we can think of opening the trade little by little, in Wuhan where the crisis began they hoped there would be no death to open, but here we think that there is no way to save lives, they say the economic cost can be high, but how much does a life cost?
The crisis may be worse than we imagined, yesterday Wuhan’s patients tested positive again, I think we will not come out of this crisis if we do not give what Morin said and Viveret reaffirms: “We can only reach this if we face the issue of inner barbarism ”(P. 57), what Peter Sloterijk used as a metaphor talking about co-immunity, is now an embodiment, are we ready to help the Other to protect ourselves?
We need to produce wealth even if it costs lives, it wasn’t exactly a parable and yet that’s how it happened in history, but now it’s exactly a personification, figure of speech (like parables and metonymies) that is giving to what was “object ” of the Being.
The biblical passage that Jesus uses the personification is the road to Emmaus, when he walks all night apparently asking metaphors, and these will only discover the personification through the heart that awakened their intelligence (Lk 24,31-33): “In this the eyes of disciples opened up and they recognized Jesus. Jesus, however, disappeared in front of them.
Then one said to the other, “Wasn’t our heart burning when he spoke to us on the way, and explained the Scriptures to us?” At that very hour, they got up and returned to Jerusalem where they found the Eleven gathered with the others. ”
This is not an apology for religion, just to think that we often do not hear what is said to us as clearly as possible, but our intelligence is not linked to the heart.
The way up
22
Apr
For both faith and science, the way up is to contemplate the truth and as the
philosopher of science Karl Popper proposes, treading the path of falsifiability and science as a human project, is not impassive of transformation, that is why several theories arise.
However, the arrogance and use of authoritarianism is incompatible with faith, the Encyclical Veritas Splendor of John Paul II, next to the affirmation of faith also establishes in paragraph 39: “Not only the world, but man himself was entrusted to his own care and responsibility. God left him “left to his own decision” (Sir 15, 14), so that he could seek his Creator and freely reach the perfection Achieve. it means personally building up such perfection ”, it is not a matter of Platonic perfection.
But rather the rise that Teilhard Chardin proposes, it is, therefore, a path and not a state, so there are people capable of external attitudes, but without values. Dialogue can be established in these circumstances, and there are certain issues, such as medicine and many other professions, that the truth, or the verification of falsifiability as proposed by Popper, must be verified by science.
A comment on the faith, it is interesting that the Risen Jesus who appears after Easter, goes to bake a fish, talk to Thomas who doubts that he would be alive, exhort the disciples, but there is no demonstration of spectacles or miracles in him.
The Enlightenment intended to present its light, but it is in the Heideggerian “clearing” that modern philosophy found a way, the ontological resumption, and only through it can one better get out of the pandemic crisis, look at an earthly world where the Being lives.
We have to walk in the light, but with everyday life and not reject the truth, but the path of falsifiability, that is, proposing that some assertion is false until it proves its truth is a safe path for science and faith it is not blind, otherwise it gives no real hope.
