Arquivo para a ‘Noosfera’ Categoria
The heart, the pain and the truth
24
May
Heidegger’s thought must start from starting, read by Byung-Chul in Introduction
to the Phenomenology of Spirit “in terms of the forgetfulness of being”, he sees it as an “arid self” that finds “its limitation to the being that meets it ” (Han, pg. 334 citing Hegel).
Although he recovers Hegel, in part, in the epigraph of the last chapter: “truth is the whole”, he re-discusses dialectics and its metaphysics in idealism: “in relation to “just being” which empties it to a name “that does not names nothing else”, natural consciousness… when it becomes aware of being, it assures that it is something abstract. ” (Han, pg 336).
Natural consciousness (seen in this way) “lingers on ‘perversities’… “it tries to eliminate one perversity by organizing another, without remembering the authentic inversion” where “the truth of the essence of being is withdrawn into beings” (pg. 336 with quotes from Heidegger), who sees this as a step back and the “already” forgotten, misunderstood (pg. 337), does not appear completely denied, it appears in the form of “not yet” which is not a negation, nor a barricade, since “next to the already prevents it from presenting itself” (pg. 337).
There is a whole development in contrast with Hegel’s dialectic, more than a topic it could very well be a book, but the dialogue he has with Derridá and Adorno in the chapter on Mourning and the work of mourning, leads to his vision of the whole outside of dialectical abstraction, says the concern with immortality, with killing death, is not only secret in the hearts of Plato or Hegel (pg. 384), it would be the main concern with the “cardiographic” archive of the history of philosophy, in it the philosopher “works” to reverse the negative of being.
This is what will give basis to his “work of mourning”: “being capable of death as death”, that is, being capable of mourning, this “tragedy” “is radically different from the noisy work of mourning of the Hegelian dialectic” (Han, p. 385).
“Tears free the subject from his narcissistic interiority… they are the “spell that the subject casts on nature” (Han, p. 394) now quoting Adorno, and the author states that “Aesthetic Theory is the book of tears (idem) and that unlike Kant, and that “the spirit perceives, in front of nature, and that “the spirit perceives, in relation to nature, less its own superiority than its own naturalness” (p. 395).
“The aesthetic experience shakes the narcissistic subject who considers himself sovereign and makes the hardened principle of the “I” crumble… the tear of the shaken and moved subject proves to be capable of truth” (pg. 395).
Capable of truth, of the infinite and for those who believe in God, not a God of passing goods and false joy, but that of the already, but not yet, that beyond pain and the transience of temporal things.
Han, B.C. (2023) Coração de Heidegger: sobre o conceito de tonalidade afetiva em Martin Heidegger (Heidegger’s heart: on the concept of affective tonality in Martin Heidegger). Transl. Rafael Rodrigues Garcia, Milton Camargo Mota. Brazil, Petrópolis: Vozes.
.
There is a voice of truth
17
May
Although it is a preceding chapter in the book “The Heart of Heidegger”, chapter
IV “Voice” could be a conclusion by Byung-Chul, however this is correct as it would not be a Heideggerian conclusion, the epigraph which is a quote from the book of Kings to the prophet Isaiah is symbolic: “Go out and stand on this mountain before the face of the Lord… and it came to pass, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his face […]” (Han, pg. 107 ).
He searches the “series of indications” in Heidegger’s “Four Seminars”, the first is listening than writing, he proposes that there is a connection with metaphysics, while writing is fixed in “logocentrism”, he puts the listener in an affective tone of the appropriating event? And he responds with Plato’s speech about writing as “betrays the living and animated speech of the wise man” (Han, pg. 110), as it withdraws into interiority in time, differs from Hegel who sees “the truth of space” , interestingly the one who claims the story.
“The voice also fulfills the need for an unobstructed interiority, undisturbed by an exteriority” (Han, pg. 111) and it is important that “It creates the appearance of an absolute unworldly interiority” (pg. 111) and it is not about of the egocentrism of Cartesian reason, and of idealism: “hearing-oneself-speak, the fundamental formula of subjectivity, does not do justice to all the phenomenality of the voice” (pg. 113), it questions the narcissistic economy of the mirror.
The flute and the voice for Plato and also in Aristotle are very similar to the human voice, Aristotle wrote: “Now, the singing and the sound of the flute mix as a result of their similarity […]. Furthermore, the flute, due to its sound and its similarity (with the voice), can hide many errors in singing […]” (Aristotle apud Han, pg. 116).
The Being-there of Being and Time (Heidegger) “certainly cannot be suspected of narcissistic blindness. Being-there does not settle inside without windows. Existence means being-outside” and goes beyond “Being-there is at home outside the world” (Han, pg. 118), but neither Heidegger nor Han go all the way in this elaboration, that is, being at home and outside the world world what they really are.
They identify that “being-there relies on the voice that propagates”, and that the “strange voice” reveals itself as belonging to being-there (Han, pg. 119), and who is “the one who calls and the listener are identical” (pg. 119), and who is “the one who calls and the listener are identical” (pg. 119) since “this voice does not carry any meaning, any concept” (pg. 120).
This unity of Being and Being-with-Other cannot be achieved without this true non-egocentric, non-polarizing and non-individual spirituality, a trinitarian concept is needed, that is, there is a third Person who unites the ear and the listener in one thing There is only one final point missing in this conversation between Heidegger and Byung-Chul (in the image the painting by Tsherin Sherpa (Nepal), Lost Spirits, 2014.).
Han, B.C. (2023) Coração de Heidegger: sobre o conceito de tonalidade afetiva em Martin Heidegger (Heidegger’s heart: on the concept of affective tonality in Martin Heidegger). Transl. Rafael Rodrigues Garcia, Milton Camargo Mota. Brazil, Petrópolis: Vozes.
Resistance of the spirit: overcoming anguish
15
May
Despite being written well before the current
crisis, Byung-Chul’s reading of Heidegger shows an extraordinary knowledge of current affairs and proves that in fact this crisis was born from a profound crisis of thought, the central chapter on “Heidegger’s Heart” points out for anguish and terror, speaking in advance of the current polycrisis.
It starts with what is the current central focus: “a basic principle of the economy is security” (pg. 257), and as it should be, it goes to the heart of current thought, which is idealism and its poly-ideological ideologue Hegel, quoting Bataille: “Hegel, I imagine, reached the extreme. He was still young and thought he was going crazy. I even imagine that he invented the system to escape. […] Finally, Hegel returns to the seen abyss to annul it. The system is cancellation” (Bataille, apud Han, pg. 258).
“The Hegelian subject longs for the position of power of the conscious author, who is troubled by no uncertainty, nor threatened by any destiny” (pg. 260), the idea of hope and spiritual resistance (his spirit is the taste for power), “it is not bowed by the rigid and indeclinable presence”, “negativity is welcome as a leaven of truth” (pg. 261) and thus it is more about destroying it than affirming it as hope and vision of the future.
In it, the negative is articulated as the “feeling of violence” (Han citing Hegel), which drags consciousness from one death to another (Han, 261), and war is inevitable.
It was not the owners of power and its imperial articulation who created feelings of war, the idea of violence is inherent to idealist thought, in it the “subjective interiority, which suggests absolute knowledge” (pg. 260), Hegel finds salvation in system, “kills” the “insistent plea” and becomes “modern man” (pg. 261).
Apparently the “subject is not afraid”, “the enigma gives way to the rule” so there is no place for mystery, for the divine and for eternal life, being in the world means being under the rules of violence, indifference and death.
The resistance of hope is being in coexistence with idealistic reality, having a true asceticism that longs for true joy.
Han, B.C. (2023) Coração de Heidegger: sobre o conceito de tonalidade afetiva em Martin Heidegger (Heidegger’s heart: on the concept of affective tonality in Martin Heidegger). Transl.Rafael Rodrigues Garcia, Milton Camargo Mota. Brazil, Petrópolis: Vozes.
Ontology, Kant and affective tone
07
May
Like a good Oriental man, although based in Germany, Byung-Chul Han starts his analysis not from the objectivist, materialist and substantialist´s perspective of the classic authors of Western philosophy, but from the perspective of what he will call “affective tone” in Heidegger.
His book, different from others that I consider essays, analyzes “Heidegger’s heart: on the concept of affective tonality in Martin Heidegger” (Ed. Vozes, 2023), with this new, human and I would even say spiritual analysis of the core of philosophy western.
Part of a concept dear to Judeo-Christian civilization, which is that of circumcision, but circumcision of the heart and not of the failed organ (the skin attached to the beginning of the penis), it is necessary to remember that although it is a male organ, it is an emblem of power, of authority and desire, was culturally a warlike culture.
Apart from his religious vision, he has a spiritual sense for the whole society, contrary to what Han will develop, which is the circumcision of the heart, that which modulates and governs affection.
It begins with what is the root of Eurocentric culture, starting with Kant’s hypochondria, which he confesses in his text “Conflict of the Faculties”: “because of a flat and narrow half-chest, which leaves little space for the movement of the heart and lungs, I I have a natural predisposition to hypochondria, which in previous years bordered on the boredom of life” (Han, 2023, pg. 8), and then develops “yearning expands the heart, makes it define and exhausts the strength” (pg. 9 ).
This longing, you will say, is not also painless for Heidegger, but according to this author (it was Han’s doctoral thesis), the longing is the “pain of the proximity of distance”, the spell of the “always-the-same”, but in a movement of leaving the in-itself there is a “seam” with the Other (for example, rescue in natural disaster in south Brazil, foto).
Thus, Han will say, Heidegger’s “seamstress (Näherin), “works in proximity”, is also a circumciser of the heart (pg. 10), developing it by converting it “into a heteroauditory eardrum” (pg. 10) , “the heart of being-there” throbs in the transcendental horizon, thus according to Han in the late Heidegger, “the constriction penetrates more deeply” and being-there separates itself from the being of there: Da-Sein (Han, pg. 11 ).
Thus, “this circumcision frees the heart from subjective interiority” (Han, Idem), and there is a surprising preliminary conclusion in Heidegger: “Heidegger’s heart, on the other hand [confronts with Derridá], listens to one voice, follows the tonality and gravity of the “one, the only one that unifies”, for him it is an “ear of his heart” but there is something strong spiritual in this.
Spiritually there is an inner voice that speaks to our hearts if they are circumcised.
Heidegger, M. (2023) Coração de Heidegger: sobre o conceito de tonalidade afetiva em Martin Heidegger (Heidegger’s heart: on the concept of affective tonality in Martin Heidegger). Transl.Rafael Rodrigues Garcia, Milton Camargo Mota. Brazil, Petrópolis: Vozes.
The sense of the big and the new
26
Apr
Presenting something Big and New worthy of the
idea does not mean creating something new and forming a bubble with it, it means some minimal sign of originality, it should be noted that the term does not dispense with the origin, and means something that actually brings a positive transformation.
The continent of Old Europe is in crisis, and it is difficult to admit this, and the war does not represent the new but rather the old imperial conquest, the looting of neighboring peoples and the lying narratives that hide imperialism.
Sloterdijk establishes some requirements for a current politician: “Profession: politician. Main residence: opacity. Program: belonging. Moral: small challenge jobs. Passion: having a relationship with the absence of relationship. Evolution: self-recruitment based on knowledge, which becomes initiative” (Sloterdijk, 1999, p. 65).
Perhaps the opacity, lack of transparency and diffuse and even contradictory speeches depending on the occasion are clear, the program is clear, affirmation of one’s personality and the recruitment of equals, morality is not anything that requires challenge, and good morality is not Another thing, often the ability to suffer and give oneself for others and in fact, for the people.
In 1999 Sloterdijk ruled: “it is evident that at a time when the form of the great is changing, pathologies of affiliation of all kinds become epidemic… the oldest state athletics has already had to deal with the limits of its power of generalization…” (page 66).
In the book “The new science of networks” Laszlo Barabasi writes a very important example, without the persecutor of Christians Saul, who, after having a mystical experience, leaves the Jewish bubble and goes to the Greek and then the Roman world, Christianity would still be today a sect, and today he seems to return to it for lack of an open spirit.
Saul, now Paul will not fight on the front lines of the empire but rather bring a new spirit to the Roman imperial kingdom and will be persecuted by this spirit and not for using any type of weapon, and announce the kingdom of peace.
In Acts of the Apostles 9:31, after a re-presentation of Paul to the Christian community that feared him, it is said: “The Church, however, lived in peace throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria”, and finally Paul fights the good fight: without wars, accusations or intolerance.
Pre-occupation and pre-concepts
25
Apr
It’s not about playing with words, they have a clear
meaning without the hyphen, issues that occupy our mind and become challenging, and prejudices when socially and structurally stimulated put people, individuals, ethnicities and peoples into discredit.
However, there is another meaning for those who care about mental health and social health, where it is possible to live with difference, with the Other and with the contradictory, this is spiritual health, in the sense of making the spirit resist a hostile environment.
The objective of leaving a person in discredit through prejudice cannot be confused with the intolerance and lack of love of the pre-concept present in the structure of dualistic thought: subject x object, natural x cultural, body x mind, in which resides a good part of the resistance to dialogue and openness to the different Other.
Some authors consider that prejudice as discrimination (Erving Goffman for example) is more relevant than the stereotype made about certain individuals, but these authors also understand that there are anti-dogmatic characteristics that can articulate the relationship between prejudice, stigma and discrimination (Goffman himself does this).
From the perspective that the pre-concept is interesting to man and his perception of truth (Gadamer, 1997), the way of conceiving and understanding reality regarding a given phenomenon must first go through a pre-understanding or pre- concept of this same phenomenon, that is, we hardly go to reality without any concept about it, for this we need a phenomenological epoché, says good phenomenology.
I say this before pre-occupation, because in general a large part of natural and existential phenomena pass through a prejudiced filter, in the sense of pre-understanding, and thus the knot and veil over reality is established, an attitude is needed to go forward, letting the occupation (and not its pre-establishment) acquire the right place in due time.
Hope (and for those who believe it is faith) enters this vacuum between the two stages, the pre-occupation that may be surrounded by preconceptions of reality, and the truth established by the phenomenon itself, some will think the fact, but the phenomenon or the thing in itself, is its own and the fact always depends on a narrative subject to preconception.
In short, don’t worry too soon, let the phenomenon and reality speak for itself at the exact time of your “occupation” or in ontological terms of your “presence”, your da-sein.
GADAMER, H.G. (1997) Verdade e método. Tradução Flávio Paulo Meurer. 3ª. ed. Petrópolis, Brazil (RJ): Vozes.
The return to the nations and the absence of the Whole
24
Apr
In a time of hypercommunication, social media
makes one feel the absence of the Whole, which Peter Sloterdijk calls the Big: “the form of the big in the industrial world insists on the well-known megalopathic stress in expanded dimensions – but then the people on the street must worry, who previously would have supported a Minister of Foreign Affairs” (Sloterdijk, 1999, p. 61), what he did not imagine was that this would have the opposite reaction: the return of patriotism.
However, only unexpected forces realized this effect, while today’s society: “suffering bouts of nausea in the face of its political class, at the moment cannot do more than grant a pause for reflection on fundamental questions” (p. 62).
The author notices the lack of “something”, the emphasis is his, but prefers to “interpret it as the spirit of the agrarian age” and the great empires (pg. 60), and in his agnostic vision, “for her came the critical moment with the “death of God” “ (idem), again the emphasis is on the author.
Thus in the absence of an eschatological figure, in a world that rejects the idea of the sacred, the divine and a human-divine God of Christians, “the form of the Great is changed, filiation pathologies of all kinds become epidemic” (pg . 66), not only in politics, but also in religion, everyone believes they have found a “great one” and heretically places him in the place of God, even in religions an imaginary god of wealth, leisure and even lust, however contradictory it may be. as it may seem.
The book from the end of the last millennium, understands the problem right but in the wrong place, under the theme of “conservative revolution” (a new highlight from the author) it is experienced “two or three generations ago in the Catholic resistance movements in central Europe and the south, probably a great intercultural career ahead – under a religious, culturalist, regionalist banner” (pg. 67).
Returns to a correct analysis: “in the Great modern – the quasi-religious state-national identities that since the 19th century have marked political forms of life in Europe and later throughout the world” (idem), remember Nazism and now in several forms of “national” wars.
The modern phenomenon of this Great One, of the great homeland whether in Israel or Russia, in China or the USA, is nothing other than the absence of a Great Greater, the divine one that leads men to break borders, to live with what is different and to understand the need for a new civilization that sees the planet as a Homeland.
For the great religious man, one may ask where God is, but the divine-historical figure of Jesus and his beyond-Abrahamic vision that surpasses that of these conflicting peoples, proclaimed a universal motto: “Whoever has seen Me has seen Him who sent Me ” (John 12:45).
A power hidden in little ones
19
Apr
Throughout history, the layers of society that had no participation in power
have been ignored, not in authoritarian regimes where this is evident, even though dictators enjoy some popularity due to their power of manipulation and use of force, the majority of society must and the The process becomes irreversible with access through social media, which can be networks.
The power of weak ties, unknown to most manipulators and authoritarians, exists and even if subjected to a harsh regime, in the shadows and in informal media it ends up manifesting itself, however, the power of propaganda and mass media in the mainstream media was immense.
It is true that part of the so-called popular opinion is also subject to traditions and cultures of oppression and manipulation, it was so before, and now it can become perverse, but when used to promote the common good, equality and respect, it can be the only asymmetric force.
Oppression always presupposes a certain consent, by persuasion, by fear or by some circumstantial or historical convenience, but over time, it may take years, a true “public” opinion will prevail and the polarization of the imperial forces at play will weaken. .
How to recognize the wolf and the lamb in this game is simple, and the biblical parable explains it (John 10:12):
“The mercenary, who is not a shepherd
and does not own the sheep,
sees the wolf coming, abandons the sheep and runs away,
and the wolf attacks and scatters them.”
The shepherd knows the sheep and they listen to his voice, says another biblical passage, and he does not act with power, but as a protector and facilitator of the sheep’s path so they don’t get lost.
Power in Foucault and Chul-Han
16
Apr
Michel Foucault broke with the classical
conceptions of the term power and defined it as a network of relationships where all individuals are involved, and we understand the network here with the modern sense of network, although it was vague in his time, individuals are both generators and recipients of power. movement of these relationships, however he identifies them as biopower, while Chul-Han identifies them as psychopower, and in a way adds the media to this.
State ideology, born from Hegel, is the basis of every history of contemporary power, authoritarianism and modern wars were born from a new idea of imperialism and colonialism, in which stronger states control power not only through weapons, but rather through biopower and now psychopower.
Foucault’s biopower, the state is the first level of power (he calls it a sector), the market is the second level, and the third is civil society, the idea of 4th. The power of the press comes from there.
He studied power not to develop a theory about it, but to identify aspects of subjectivity (in ontology it would be the question of Being), that is, subject over other subjects.
This is important to differentiate him from Chul-Han, who starts from the ontological relationships between beings and identifies the action of media and media structures that act on the psychology of power, so his idea of power (What is power) is like a domination technique that stabilizes and reproduces the dominated system through programming and psychological control.
Foucault sees biopower, as in the body as a training machine, since biopolitics, in the middle of the 18th century, was focused on regulatory controls on the population, the idea being that it was the population increase that caused misery and hunger.
Peter Sloterdijk, who supervised Chul-Han’s doctoral thesis on Heidegger, argues that this “training” process failed and thus, the control process develops towards the fourth power, which Chul-Han focuses excessively on the media, forgetting the 4th. power of the press, TV and cinema that had an enormous influence.
He develops pathologies of self-centeredness (narcissism), emotional instability (borderline) as responses to the demands of a society intoxicated with demands for efficiency, appearance and disciplinary coercion, wrote the author):
“The violence of decapitation is inherent to the pre-modern society of sovereignty; its medium is blood. Modern disciplinary society is, to a large extent, a society of negativity, being governed and dominated by disciplinary coercion, that is, by ‘social orthopedics’. Its form of violence is deformation. But neither decapitation nor deformation are capable of describing the postmodern performance society. It is dominated by a violence of positivity, which confuses freedom and coercion. Its pathological manifestation is depression” (Han 2018, pp. 183-184).
HAN, Byung-Chul. (2018) Psicopolítica: o neoliberalismo e as novas técnicas de poder. Brazil, Belo Horizonte: Âyiné.
Overcoming fear by having hope
12
Apr
It is common to hear in everyday life, there is
no way, everything is really lost, in difficult days for all humanity, it seems impossible to believe in a future full of light and happiness, however, both in philosophy and in true spirituality there is a spirit of resistance: the hope.
So many times in history we seemed close to the end, the ancient empires, the great wars and the two recent “world wars” are not a mere chance, and they were also not without a lot of death, sadness and disappointment, but the worst thing is that we did not have the lucky to understand that scourge.
We don’t know how to deal with pain, with disappointment, with “no” and we want at all costs to be the winners in any dispute, even sporting ones that should only be a reason for joy and distraction, can become a war due to the lack of healthy spirit of competition.
In Palliative Society: Pain Today, Byung Chul-Han writes: “The palliative society is a society of enjoyment. It degenerates into a mania of enjoyment. The like is the sign, the painkiller of the present. It dominates not just social media, but all spheres of culture. Nothing should cause pain”, we want something that will immediately “cure” or suppress any pain or even a small amount of suffering.
The author creates a verb based on new media: “Not only art, but also life itself has to be Instagrammable; that is, free from angles and corners, from conflicts and contradictions that could cause pain. We forget that pain purifies”, and fear brings light to consciousness.
How to beat him? Have you ever stopped to try to answer this question? with Hope, not that of those who wait and do nothing, but that of those who stop and meditate on pain, also on those who suffer injustices, judgments and who should occupy our consciences.
The resistance of the Spirit, which Edgar Morin advocates for today, is also a spirit of Hope, because spiritual exercise would be worthless without a belief in a better future for all, of peace, justice and acceptance. the differences.
In the biblical narrative, when the disciples saw the resurrected Jesus “walking on the sea”, they were afraid and did not fully understand his iconic meaning, but the master said (John 6:19): “Take courage, it is I”, and approaches them , a new force came precisely after this “fear”.
