Arquivo para a ‘Social Network’ Categoria
Neosophism, enmity and violence
17
Jun
The modern polis, a cult of Western civilization in crisis, was born from the
need for politicians who could manage the public good with virtues (aretê), true knowledge (episteme) and justice above what is advantageous and beneficial to a given group.
Socrates, seen in the text Plato’s Republic, was the method of dialogue (dialectics, but in the Greek sense) where the power of argumentation and maieutics, “give birth” to knowledge.
This is how Plato’s Theaetetus (see our post) discusses relativism and the polis; dialogue is the Socratic method of investigation, including the analysis between reason and sensation, and had as its main objective to overcome the sophist thought that only justified power, despite any virtue (moral or ethical) and any reasonable concept of justice.
This is why Theaetetus is considered the first classic text on relativism, and dialogue as a Socratic method of overcoming the dichotomies of oligarchic forms of power also had the idea of overcoming all forms of relativism that involved the sovereigns’ thirst for power. Thus, Plato’s Republic should be reread by contemporary politicians and they could avoid what we call neo-sophisms, what is valid for power is not valid for the people, for example, what is advantageous can be found in the epistemology of Protagoras, where according to some commentators (Chappell, 2005) he discusses the “advantageous” and political and moral prudence, and are largely applicable to contemporary politics.
The sense of what is advantageous, Socrates grants to the subjects of Protagoras’ epistemology the possibility of sustaining their convictions according to the particular or social demand in the cities, while at the same time seeking to guarantee for the state a minimum sphere of values around what is beneficial or harmful, the emphasis on minimum here is for good understanding.
The divorce between justice and benefit according to the commentator cited (Chappel, 2005), is very much in the order of the day because it is not very different between the current political and moral prudence, here I include what leads to violence in modern society, not only the lack of prudence but also what modern politics considers as fair the benefits and immoralities of the circle of power.
Socrates was led to martyrdom, not because of worshiping false gods, this was the sophist argument (it is also valid to a certain extent for the present day), but for wanting to “give birth” to true knowledge, justice and public morality, hence the violence of the power of the oligarchs and their kings. Of course, humanity has walked 2 thousand years from there to here, but the current polis is experiencing a crisis similar to that of Greek cities, and violence seems institutionalized and unbridled.
Chappel, T. (2005) Reading Plato’s Theaetetus. Indianápolis/Cambridge: Hackett.
Plato. Teeteto.(2010) Trad. Adriana Manuela Nogueira e Marcelo Boeri. LisboN: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.
Other wars and heroes
16
Jun
Africa lived through a long period of colonization that it would not be an
exaggeration to call genocide or at least the erasure of a culture and an imperiocentric worldview, in the sense that every idea of liberation in Africa is accompanied by some form of epistemicide, which is the imposition of a worldview on the most unarmed nations that don’t share in the wealth.
I came across the book I got from a friend: “História Geral da África – África desde 1935” (General History of Africa – Africa since 1935) (2011, Cortez and UNESCO). I was careful to check the publishers, who are independent, and the translation was done by the Center for Afro-Brazilian Studies at the Federal University of São Carlos, where I studied and later taught.
Ali A. Mazrui was a Kenyan professor and political writer, who died in 2014. His assistant was Christophe Wondji, who died in 2015, a university professor from Ivory Coast.
Chapter 21 of the book, written by Ali A. Mazrui himself. Mazrui himself and colocabolaradores, I find a definition of the African soul in the form of a poem: “Nous sentons [we feel], donc nous pensons [therefore we think], donc nous sommes [therefore we are] (Mazrui, 2011, 763), the highlights are by the translators, we translate from it: we feel (perception) precedes we think (logos) which precedes we are (ontological), and with this we understand African ontology as perception and I would add hay intuition maybe fenomenology.
The book sets out an in-depth history of post-35 Africa, as well as part of colonized Africa (apartheid, for example, lasted until 1994) and there is a gap from 2015 onwards; in the previous period there would have been an analysis of the Kingdom of Congo, which had already been colonized since 1942.
I’ll make another point: “The colonialism of maintaining order was, in essence, a substitute for the colonialism of development. Belgian colonialism in Zaire (today’s DR Congo) was only marginally better than Portuguese colonialism in Angola” (Mazrui, 2011, p. 772), which we want to analyze.
Initially colonized by Portugal, the Republic of Zaire under Belgian rule (hence Belgian Congo) after revolts had its name and constitution changed to the Democratic Republic of Congo from 1971 to 1997. It is the second largest country in Africa (Algeria is the first) after Sudan was divided creating South Sudan, which is also experiencing a war and there are others in Africa.
Zaire suffered a military coup in 1965 led by Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, after a crisis known as the Congo crisis (1965), democratically elected Patrice Lumumba did not take office, becoming the Democratic Republic of Congo, but Mobutuism became known for its nepotism, corruption and messianism and was deposed in 1995 by Laurent-Desiré Kabila, politically considered ambiguous, he is an ally of the Tutsis who are enemies of the Hutus.
The regime of the Democratic Republic of Congo is semi-presidential and the current president is Félix Tshiseked, The country will be elected in 2019 and re-elected in 2023, and the prime minister is Judith Tuluka, the country has enormous mineral wealth including the famous rare earths, important for today’s technology (columbite tantalite), and among the conflicts, the northeastern province of North and South Kivu, which involve both political and ethnic issues.
Today a young man from Kivu, Floribert Bwana Chui (pictured at a school for peace), who opposed the delivery of spoiled food to the population, died under torture and refused to be corrupted and to abandon his beliefs and values, will be proclaimed “servant of God” in a ceremony at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, with the presence of Congolese Bishop Willy Ngumbi and other cardinals of the Congo, and the presence of the Cardinal for the Causes of Saints, Marcello Semeraro.
MASRUI, Ali A., WONDJI, C. (Eds) (2011) História Geral da África: África desde 1935, v. 8, 2a. ed. Brazil, São Paulo: Cortez Editora, Brasilia: MEC/UNESCO.
Escalating war: Israel attacks Iran
13
Jun
Since the early hours of yesterday, the movement in the US embassies
in the Middle East indicated that the Trump administration had authorized the attack on Iran and it happened, and in Russia too the war is escalating, as Ukraine is now attacking military systems on Russian territory.
Defense Minister Israel Katz himself told the press: “After the State of Israel’s pre-emptive strike against Iran, a missile and drone attack against the State of Israel and its civilian population is expected in the near future.” The population is already stockpiling food and looking for protective bunkers.
There were also Russian planes close to the conflict region, indicating strategic support, since Iran is a Russian ally, having supplied drones and Russia supports Iran’s nuclear weapons, one of the main points of conflict between the US and the Israeli government.
Iranian state TV confirmed that the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hossein Salami, was killed in the attacks. There are indications that other members of the high command have been killed, but Iran won’t confirm this, but it is only known that Iranian military systems were targeted.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio assures that he is not taking part in the offensive, but that the government aims to protect “interests and personnel” in the region.
In Russia, Ukraine’s kamikaze drones hit the control station of the Navodchik-2 system, which is responsible for commanding the flights of UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles). Russia accuses NATO of direct involvement in the current operations in Ukraine, while Europe expects attacks outside Ukraine, especially by troops concentrated in Belarus.
The region is close to Sumy in northwestern Ukraine, where Russia has concentrated its attacks.
In the early hours of the morning, sirens were sounding in Israel (photo) and in Europe the atmosphere was tense as Russia waited to respond outside Ukraine in the southern countries or in the Baltics.
In Israel there was a motion to call new elections and Netanyahu resisted, the Trump administration is facing demonstrations and protests in various regions of the country, and the war is likely to escalate.
War interests are drowning out the voices of peace, but there is only one way out of civilization without more tragedies and conflicts: diplomacy, that governments return to sanity and dialogue.
Early this morning (13/06) the international community called for a de-escalation and UN Secretary General António Guterres asked Israel and Iran to show maximum restraint.
Peitarchy, relativism and violence
09
Jun
More than 100 years after Sorel wrote Réflexions sur la violence (Paris, 1908)
and 50 years after Giorgio Agamben’s text On the Limits of Violence (Nuovi Argomenti, n. 17, 1970) this discussion seems to be the order of the day, the latest events and the vision of a polis now without tolerance and diplomacy has taken hold of warlike minds.
Agamben, recalling Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition, wrote: “To be political, to live in the polis, meant first of all to accept the principle that everything should be decided by word and persuasion, and not by force and violence” (Agamben, 1970, pp. 154-174) and used the concept of Peitarchy, a particular understanding of its relationship to politics and truth, that is, the belief that truth itself had the power to persuade.
In order to justify powers and make authoritarian governments legitimate, the sophists used rhetoric as an art and technique to distort the truth, and Plato had watched helplessly as his master Socrates was condemned to death.
To Socrates’ question about what knowledge is, Theaetetetus sees it as Geometry and other arts, and Socrates replies ironically: “It is noble and generous, for they ask for something simple and you offer multiple and diverse things”.
Socrates’ first demand is that Theaetetus abandon his initial ideas, which appear in conjunction with the ideas of appearance, truth and soul, and the second is to abandon the idea of “familiarity” that we have things, and we must abandon it because: “It seems to me that he who knows something perceives what he knows, and to say the thing as it now manifests itself, knowledge is nothing more than sensation.”
That’s why Sorel, Agamben and Hannah Arendt can be taken up again today. Arguments about war are nothing more than justifications for violence, when violence itself is already a break with the truth, as the popular saying goes: “the first thing that dies in war is the truth”.
The response to Operation Spider’s Web, which Russia carried out by attacking civilian targets without discrimination (in photo, a residential area), targets that on a large scale were also a response to the terrorism of the Hamas group, and the news this weekend that Miguel Uribe, a pre-candidate for the presidency of Colombia, has been heavily attacked and is in a very serious condition, is nothing more than the limits being crossed.
Both in Europe and the Middle East, the escalation of war is already a reality. In America, politics is beginning to break the limits of dialog and persuasion, and it’s a step towards the worst.
There is no shortage of hope and calls for peace, but they are being suffocated by weapons.
Plato. 2010. Teeteto (Theaetetus). Translated by Adriana Manuela Nogueira and Marcelo Boeri. Lisbon: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 2010.
Being (the thing), substance and unity
04
Jun
Since Parmenides, Being is and non-being is not. Enlightenment/idealist
philosophy conceived of the world according to the logic of Being and being, but as separate things, and this went on throughout the High Middle Ages with Porphyry, Boethius and his quarrel about universals, arriving at nominalism vs. realism at the end of the Middle Ages.
Some readers of classical antiquity may notice that Parmenides’ philosophy refers to nature, which he proposes as a single, eternal, immutable and indivisible being, but denies the vision of a constantly changing reality with its plurality. Karl Popper’s book “Parmenides’ World: Essays on Pre-Socratic Enlightenment” is very clarifying.
In addition to Leibniz’s monism, it can be either idealist dualism or pluralism, which affirm the existence of two opposing or distinct and irreconcilable realities, such as mind and matter.
But at the heart of this contradiction is the idea of what the thing (the quid) and the substance are.
Suzanne Mansion (1916-1981), a Belgian specialist in Aristotle, restates this debate in the following current terms: let’s ask ourselves the following question: how can we understand quidity ? can we define it as a specific way of being, or rather of “being a thing” ? she explains that this expression has the Greek correlative Tó Ti en Einai*, which the Latins translated as quod quid erat esse, or quidditas (*τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι significa “o que era para ser” ou “a essência”).
This quidditas allows us to interpret what a thing is, was and is becoming (taking into account the verb tenses), which creates a dimension of temporality proper to the being – to the Tó Ón – as it exists in act, as an being subject to the changes that occur in the world, in the background and to becoming, with a clear reference to Thomas Aquinas’ way of conceiving the being (Mansion, 1984).
Thomas Aquinas was a realist, but another moderate realist of his time was Duns Scotus, who argued that universality (Boethius’ theme, universal vs. particular), for him the concept of being as being, that is, the purest and most general concept of being, is “transcendental” (not that of idealism, which did not exist at the time, but the Greek eidos).
It is beyond any categorization and can be applied both to created things and to the Creator, thus overcoming the dualism of body and mind, or substance and being.
Of course this is a linguistic turn, Scotus was once seen as a nominalist, but today in the contemporary concept he is a moderate realist according to various classifications.
What does this have to do with unity, everything, those who separate the vita activa from the vita contemplativa, those who see the world as action in constant change, without the contemplation that allows us to see the essence of the entity, a flower may disappear, but its essence remains in both the poetic and realistic sense, without the flowers there is no fruit.
The world of action, of pure “being” separated from its essence, is in fact non-being, while the non-being that implies the oriental “absence” (see our posts on the concept in Chul-Han) and the stopping of productivism, consumerism and the efficiency of the Society of Tiredness, is a Being-Living, the modern the activism, or Rancière’s critique of engagement in art.
Unity lies in combining these two concepts in their triad of the third included and the one.
Mansion, Suzanne (1984). Etudes aristotéliciennes: recueil d’articles. Louvain-la-Neuve: Edited by J. Follon.
Critical moment for peace
02
Jun
Although there is always talk of peace negotiations, the war already involves
countless countries, both in the Arab world in the Israel vs. Hamas conflict, and in Europe over Ukraine vs. Russia, where NATO military forces and Russia’s allies are increasingly involved.
Richard Barrons, former British military chief, said: “Russia is taking territory, but at an unsustainably high cost” and it would take 91 years to create the “buffer zone” it wants, a strip inside Ukrainian territory, with losses of more than 1 thousand soldiers a day.
An operation at the end of the month called “Pavutyna” (spider’s web) in Ukraine wiped out 41 Russian strategic bombers that could carry nuclear warheads, but Russian retaliation is increasing and hitting civilian targets, using 117 small drones (photo).
There is a large military concentration in the south of Belarus, a Russian ally, NATO suspects it is to invade one of its allies, Russia has lost the support of Serbia, which was thought to be a pro-Russian government, and Germany has enormously increased its military apparatus.
In the Middle East conflict, it’s no different. In addition to the Arab world, Israel’s allies are calling for an end to the conflict and condemning Israel’s increasingly inhumane actions.
Israel, through Benjamin Netanyahu, has talked several times in the last month with the Trump administration about carrying out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, saying that it would take 7 hours just to just to prepare every attack in detail and arm its defense, Trump is against it.
In Eastern Europe, the problem is negotiations. Russia wants between 20% and 22% of the Ukrainian territory conquered in the current war, and what makes it difficult is the growing war environment.
Manuel Furriela, who holds a master’s degree in interior law, told the press that “it’s very difficult to negotiate with a conflict going on”, stressing the importance of a ceasefire for talks to move forward.
There is always hope for peace for people with common sense and only those who know the horrors of war can imagine the disaster of a nuclear escalation in the current period and know that there is an urgent need for a rapid response from peace negotiators to the current situation.
Blog surpasses 100 thousand readers in may
01
Jun
This blog surpassed the mark of 100 thousand readers in May.
On March 16, 2010, I wrote the first post of this blog about the iPad, even though the first iPad was launched only on April 3, 2010, thus our blog anticipated its success, even though it is critical of the company’s business model and uses Androids.On August 27, 2010, I added the first image to the blog talking about the Diáspora* network, whose development is now on a new link, but the project has not taken off yet.
In the same year, the internet was about to reach 2 billion users, we announced the arrival of the 4G model in the USA, pointing out that LTE technology was compatible with GSM,The LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology also has the advantage of being fully compatible with GSM, and the release of the book Practical Open Source for Libraries by Nicole C. Engard.
We never forget social concern, the fight in Brazil for the Ficha Limpa model against the corrupt, we commented on and popularized the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics, Elinor Ostrom (2009), and her model of organizations managing common goods (Governing of Common), and we seek in various ways how to truly and directly confront poverty. I thank the readers; there is no media concern here (in the sense of personal promotion), I seek to look at all sides of social and political problems and to seek the truth.
I renew my commitment to a universal and fraternal humanity with respect for differences.
Remaining in peace and love
22
May
In the stressful´s situations, uncontrollable and challenging situations arise,
the normal thing is for us to get on the “bandwagon” and what is outside passes into our interior, so being “inside” and cultivating a healthy and non-alienating interiority, because it is unaware of the dangers, is fundamental in a crisis.
The climate is already in place, it’s not the distant wars but how they splash down on souls in disarray, tormented by “monsters” like Don Quixote’s windmills, which don’t just mean a specific moment in society, but a set of ideas, values and social situations.
It’s also like that in personal life, someone who looks after the sick, drug addicts, the poor and even a wake, needs people who keep calm and point the way, in fact a path, in situations that are not very comfortable.
Querela pacis by Erasmus of Rotterdam, who saw a “religious” war between the kingdoms of his time, The Girl Who Stole Books by Markus Zuzak, which portrays the climate of an era, and now the reissue of Crooked Cross by author Sylvia ‘Sally’ Carson, are examples of people who were “outside” the climate of the time and were able to point out non-warlike paths to their contemporaries.
How these hearts, in the midst of tribulations, manage to remain serene, not cold, but on the contrary very suffering, but they maintain their calm, their humanity and their love for their contemporaries.
Absence in the oriental spirit pointed out by Byung-Chul Han, hope in the Christian spirit and empathy in a teleological sense are means that do not resolve conflicts, because they are the ones that order them to go backwards, but they point to a path in which they safeguard the human.
Picasso’s painting Guérnica (photo) in the midst of the Spanish Civil War manages to look at that despair of an irrational and inhuman battle and give a breath of humanity and awakening.
Hannah Arendt, in a dialogue with St. Augustine, in her doctoral thesis “The Concept of Love in St. Augustine”, makes one of the statements about a passage that is often proclaimed without due depth: “They did not understand […] that ‘Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you’ was in no way susceptible to different interpretations depending on whether they belonged to such and such a nation. Indeed, if this principle is applied to the love of God, then it is the end of all shameful action; if it is applied to one’s neighbor, it is the end of all crime.” (Arendt, 1973, p. 9) and I would add of all war.
Arendt, H. (1997) O conceito de amor em Santo Agostinho. Lisbon, PT: Instituto Piaget.
What precedes a war
21
May
The 2015 Politzer Prize went to the American writer Anthony Doerr,
whose novel All the Light We Cannot See takes up the question of the Second World War, and what happened in Germany in the period before the rise of birth, which was later adapted into a Netflix series.
I prefer the novel, many of these authors were based on documents, letters and eyewitness accounts from eight decades ago, films such as Schindler’s List (1993), The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008), The Fall – Hitler’s Last Days (2004), based on the work of Joachim Fest, author of a biography of Hitler and refused to enlist in the Hitler Youth.
Personally, I liked the movie “The Girl Who Stole Books”, written by Markus Zusak, which was adapted for the cinema in 2013. In fact, it was the movie that made me go back to the book, which at first I found too depressing because of the death that surrounds the character Lisel Meminger, but then I understood that it was a resource that the author used to create the atmosphere created by Nazism.
I would also like to highlight the works of Hannah Arendt, who thinks philosophically about the issue.
The American novelist E.L. Doctorow, who wrote Ragtime, Billy Bathgate – the Gangster Boy once said: “The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist can tell you what it felt like.” We’ve already posted here about novels read by statesmen.
A book from the period of Germany in a Nazi crescendo, Crooked Cross, by Sylvia “Sally” Carson, an English author who was inspired by friends in Bavaria in the early 1930s, has been reprinted by British publisher Persehone Books, and has been highlighted in the press (BBC, Correio Braziliense and others).
The book had already pointed out the horrors of the Nazis, but with Carson’s untimely death in 1941 it fell into oblivion, but reading it you can foresee the “sensation” of Germany with Nazism on the rise.
The story tells of a Christmas gathering of the Hans and Rosa Kluger family with their three grown-up children: Lexa, Helmy and Erich, with the father without a salary from the post office, the children without a job and Erich with his seasonal job as a ski instructor.
Erich quits his job and feels “hypnotized” by Hitler, Carson writes:
“He had not been warned of the destruction that would be caused by the release of that power for which he now cried out in a voice as hoarse as the others…. Hitler was to them like a splendid liberator; a god… Their arms stretched out in the same sign – a forest of brown arms outstretched with their fingers pointing at the little god with a toothbrush moustache. Heil Hitler!”
Periods of crisis can lead us to these false liberators, “saviors of the fatherland” and captivate young people into real genocide: war, hatred and the horrors that follow it.
Periods of crisis can lead us to these false liberators, “saviors of the homeland” and captivate young people into real genocide: war, hatred and the horrors that follow it.
Peace requires people and leaders who don’t get caught up in the climate of war in the environment and who inwardly are truly people of peace, the crisis around them must be analyzed with care and serenity.
Carson, Sally, (2025) Crooked Cross. UK: Persephone Books.
The longed-for peace
20
May
Peace is not the absence of wars, as many people repeat, but with hearts full
of intrigue and intolerance, Erasmus of Rotterdam wrote about this in his Querela Pacis, published in 1516. In addition to being a critique, it is also a satire on countries that defend peace and harmony by waging war.
The issue is so topical that in 2007 the Spaniards Consuelo Ramón Chornet and Javier Lucas Martin wrote the book “Querela pacis, perpetua A reivindicación del Derecho International” which follows Erasmus’ question and Hans Kelsen’s proposals that if we want to guarantee peace, the indispensable conditions, although insufficient, are the resources of international law and the institutions of multilateralism, starting with the UN.
There is also a thesis at USP by his Portuguese translator Marcos E. Melo dos Santos.
Using the philological methods of the pioneering Italian humanists, Erasmus helped lay the foundations for a historical-critical study of the past, including in his studies of the Greek New Testament and the Church Fathers. His writings contributed to the replacement of the old scholastic curriculum with a new humanist emphasis on the classics, but without omitting them.
Erasmus articulated his belief in the transformative power of education to shape human nature, promoting peaceful and social dispositions while discouraging negative and destructive desires, what today we might call “a culture of peace”.
Erasmus articulated his belief in the transformative power of education to shape human nature, promoting peaceful and social dispositions while discouraging negative and destructive desires, what today we might call “a culture of peace”.
He advocated the study of the “human letters” of classical and Christian antiquity that could help positively influence the mind, in contrast to scholastic argumentative logic or even the vengeful pride cultivated in young aristocrats through chivalric literature, the kind of novel composed of heroic deeds of battle, so common today in countries at war where manliness and pride in defending the “homeland” are emphasized.
Don Quixote de la Mancha cannot be properly read without understanding the madness of Alonso Quijano, a nobleman who goes mad after reading too many chivalric novels and then, together with his sidekick Sancho Panza, gets into absurd situations in a mixture of comedy and criticism.
It is at the same time a transition to the modern novel, where isolated heroes appear in modern novels, but are no less vain and “heroic”.
Peace must come from a culture of peace, “I will give you peace, but not as the world gives” (Jn 14:27).
Rotterdam, Erasmus (2020). A queixa da paz. Trad. Marcos E. Melo dos Santos. Brazil, São Paulo: Editora Gallipoli.
