Arquivo para a ‘Social Network’ Categoria
Violence , manipulation and resistance
04
Jun
Edgar Morin asked in an interview that when
faced with a situation of polycrisis, we face it with resistance of the spirit, strength of character, opposition to hatred and opposition to small dishonest acts, but the most difficult thing is spiritual resistance, the narratives that go from politics and religiosity.
Clarifying as we did in the previous post, that when using Walter Benjamin who passed away in the 40s, what he was mentioning was about the press being concerned with hot news and not always thinking and digesting in depth the “slowness” as proposed by Byung-Chul Han the facts of reality, says Byung-Chul: “Digitalization sets in motion the process that Benjamin, due to his time, could not predict… associates information with the press. The press is a means of communication that follows narration and romance” (Han, pg. 27), remembering that it is the romantic vision that begins a process of death of narration.
We had already mentioned in previous posts Karl Kraus (1874-1936), an Austrian poet and journalist who was a strong opponent of the 1st. world war, a spirit of resistance of the time, alerted the boiling nationalist and militarist ideas, of which the press was a partner, and saw in war a manifestation of humanity’s collective madness.
In times of spiritual emptiness, it is very common for a warlike and passionate spirit to grow, there is no shortage of exalted spirits without any reflection in all media, the order is to promote disorder, the moral order is to promote the immoral, this madness feeds on warlike and sick spirits, they need collective madness for their war madness to thrive.
In an even earlier period, the [disordered] information regime stated George Büchner (1813-1837), quoting Byung-Chul: “we are puppets, whose strings are pulled by unknown powers; we are nothing, nothing ourselves” (Han, 2023, pg. 29), now “the powers are becoming more subtle and invisible, so that we are no longer aware of it. We even confuse it with freedom” (Idem).
The poverty of the narration experience, also pointed out by Benjamin and cited by Han: “what happened to all this? Who still finds people who know how to tell stories the way they should be told?” (Han, 2023, pg. 31), there is certainly no neutrality, but between two warlike forces a power of resistance is possible that denounces them.
In biblical reading, give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar (Mc 12,16-17): “They took the coin, and Jesus asked: “Whose figure and inscription are on that coin?” They replied, “Caesar’s.” Then Jesus said, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they were amazed at Jesus, because it was not an allied act but rather showing which side the power is on and which side are the peaceful men who truly want the common good of all.
After countless alliances with the Pharisees, in the year 70 AD the Roman Empire destroyed the second Jewish temple and whose reconstruction they dream of to this day, both lost, the Roman Empire also fell in the year 476 to the German leader Odoacer , the barbarians had already undermined the political, financial and military power of the Empire (in the photo the Visigoths sacking Rome).
Han B.C. (2023) A crise da narração (The crisis of narration). Transl. Daniel Guilhermino. Brazil, Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes.
Narratives, wars and dangers
03
Jun
In one of Byung-Chul Han’s recent essays,
while the author remembers Hyppolyte de Villemessant, founder of the French newspaper Figaro and Walter Benjamin, essayist and philosopher who died in the 40s, the author does not fail to associate the modern narrative associated with new media, with storytelling called storyselling (product that sells).
Thus, instead of provoking a reflection on the major problems of today, including the escalation of wars, the problem is old: “the reader of a modern newspaper jumps from one piece of news to another, instead of letting his gaze wander into the distance, and linger there. The long, slow and lingering look was lost” (Han, 2023, p. 17), that is, there is no reflection.
So it’s about creating a narrative favorable to this or that ideological vision, logic and humanity don’t matter, even in the face of tragedies we are more busy (not all of them fortunately) in creating a narrative to justify a certain position than to defend a principle. humanitarian, there is this or that war, but all of them kill innocent people, all of them, as Eduardo Galeano said, hide desires for power and exploitation over the nation to be dominated, but great empires have succumbed despite all the arrogance and genocides.
The resurgence of the war in Ukraine, the threats to the last stronghold of Palestinian refugees, the constant threats to Taiwan, in addition to incursions into Africa and now even South America, Venezuela is once again threatening Guyana with intense troop movements and provocations between the USA and Iran, warlike spirits ignite and even good but innocent people embark on these narratives, there is no other interest in wars: looting, deaths of innocent people and inhumanity.
There is no shortage of meetings between nations in Brazil, Europe and attempts to sensitize governments to the dangers of this war escalation around the world, but they come up against partial and partisan narratives, few minds are aware of the serious and civilizing danger of this escalation. , around the world, armaments are the only response that seems to reach the rulers, and so narratives of “heroic acts” of warlike events grow around the world that should shame those who invoke humanitarian principles, with the UN being the wars and environmental problems that have led starve more than 700 million people.
Even for a biblical or historical narration, where the intention is to build a “whole” narrative, there is a call for humanitarianism, when Cain kills his brother Abel, the divine question is “where is your brother?” (Genesis 4,9) and the narration suggested by Byung -Chul Han is that of the Egyptian king Psammenit who was captured by the Persian king Cambyses, and after the defeat makes the king humiliate when he sees his daughter turned into a slave and his son being taken to be executed (Han, pg. 21), however the Egyptian king only felt when he saw an elderly and frail servant among the prisoners and “hit his head with his fists and expressed deep sadness” (pg. 22), so the narration, says Han, “needs no explanation” (Han, pg. 22).
If we are capable of long, slow and lingering reflections, it is not difficult to understand the danger of the escalation of wars, of simple people like Psammenit’s service who suffer and die for issues that they barely understand, and that the narratives do not explain, they only try to justify the unjustifiable: death, jokes and lies.
As the philosopher Morin states, it takes resistance of the spirit, we are gradually losing the sense of love, hope and solidarity and if we read and investigate the news and facts of the wars we will see that there was nothing in them other than great genocides, robberies and In situations of hunger and misery, it is necessary to resist hatred and violence.
Han B.C. (2023) A crise da narração (The crisis of narration). Transl. Daniel Guilhermino. Brazil, Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes.
The narrative and its sunset
31
May
Modern thinking lacks a model for the Whole,
I would say that it even lacks systematic thinking, Peter Sloterdijk even states that it is not a time for thinking, it is a time of trends dictated by hashtags, Stories, blogs and reels (mass diffusion mechanisms using social media).
Byung-Chul Han states that despite the “inflationary use of narratives reveals a crisis of narrative”, paradoxical, however “there is a narrative vacuum that manifests itself as a void of meaning and as disorientation” (Han, pg. 9), before the narrations anchored us: “they assigned us a place and transformed being-in-the-world into being-at-home, giving life meaning, support and guidance, that is, life itself was a narration…” (idem, pg . 9), is at the same time deterritorialization and uprooting.
However, Byung-Chul himself lets slip, through reading The Narrator by Walter Benjamin (died in 1940) that this is before the new media, citing it as “knowledge that comes from far away finds fewer listeners today than information about the upcoming events” (Han, p. 17 quoting him), the reader jumps from one piece of news to another, he doesn’t linger there, “the long, slow and lingering look was lost. “(pg. 17).
Still quoting Walter Benjamin, he differentiates information more clearly from knowledge: “information only has value when it is new.
She only lives in that moment, she needs to give herself entirely to it and, without wasting time, she has to explain herself in it” (Han, pg. 18), curiously a thought prior to the 40s. He will go into the concept of information, so important in certain areas such as Information Science, saying that it [today] is “the means of the reporter, who scours the world in search of news” (pg. 19), there is no necessary distance from the fact that digests it and makes it knowledge, “the information withheld, that is, the explanations avoided, increase the narrative tension” (pg. 19).
The narrative crisis is not due to the new media that have enhanced them, but to the fact “that the world is flooded with information. The spirit of narration is being suffocated by the flood of information” (pg. 20), but what then is narration? Han quoting Walter Benjamin invokes Herodotus, narrating the defeat of the Egyptian king Psamenit to the Persian king Cambyses, after his defeat.
The Persian king humiliates him by making him see his daughter becoming a servant and his son being executed, but the Egyptian king remained motionless looking at the ground, but when he saw his slaves as prisoners, “he hit his head with his fists and expressed deeply sadness” (pg. 22), because by lamenting for the servants “they destroy the narrative tension” (pg. 22).
He mentions that for Benjamin, the first sign of the decline of narration is the emergence of the novel at the beginning of the modern era (pg. 23), with its condition of experience and wisdom, narration knows how to give advice “about life” (pg. 24), the narrative community is a “community of attentive listeners” (pg. 25), there is careful listening in it.
Modern political and ideological narratives are after curious, picturesque and spicy facts, there is nothing of wisdom in them, they move the public through the impact and rush of “hot” and summarized information, there is no narration, there is no attentive listening and when there is it is due to the ecstasy or the spectacle promoted, it is removed from the context of a narration.
Those who still exist in legalism and moralism, contradictorily with the daily life they live, present in the modern religious narrative, should remember facts such as the non-judgment of the adulterous woman (who should be stoned according to the Jewish custom of the time) and Jesus “does not judge her ” (John 8:3), the testimony of the sinner who sits in the back while the Pharisee sits in front and feels proud because “I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust and adulterers” (Luke 18, 11-13), and also Jesus’ challenge when healing a man with a dry hand on the Sabbath (Mc 2,4): “And he asked them: “Is it permissible on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil? Save a life or let it die?” But they said nothing”, the biblical narrative always makes this distancing a way of thinking and rethinking values, it is not Manichaeism and modern moralism.
The stories of pirates and the impressive stories of the Vikings, prior to the period of navigation and mercantilism and even of tax havens on islands spread across the globe, with the complacency of “legal and moral states”, where the deposit is deposited, are also narrated. public money stolen from nations and the people themselves by politicians.
Han, Byung-Chul. (2023) A crise da narração, transl. Daniel Guilhermino. Brazil, Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes.
Renunciation, economy and joy
28
May
Byung-Chul theorizes that despite the difference
between Derridá and Heidegger (see our previous post) there is a structural affinity in their vision of mourning, which is characterized by the renunciation of the subject’s autonomy in Derrida: “No matter how narcissistic our subjective speculation continues to be, , it can no longer close itself to this gaze, before which we ourselves show ourselves the moment we convert it into our mourning or we can give up on it [faire de lui notre dueil], mourning, making ourselves mourn for ourselves, I mean, I mourn the loss of our autonomy, for everything that made us the measure of ourselves” (Han, p. 430 citing Derridá’s text “Krafter der Trauer”, strengthening of pain), this That is, they both have in common a vision of renouncing the autonomy of the subject, the “I” of idealism.
Here the important thing is not to let mourning work (let us remember the concept already seen in the posts about “work mourning”) it is replaced in Derridá by a game of mourning: “however, the happier the joy, the purer the sadness that sleeps in it. The deeper the sadness, the more it calls us to joy…” (Han, pg. 430-431), but Heidegger’s mourning, explains Han, does not kill death, trying to kill it results in something even worse: “ wanting to resurrect, violently and actively surpassing the limit of death would only drag them (the gods) into a false and non-divine proximity and would bring death instead of our life” (Han, pg. 431-432 quoting Heidegger).
Heidegger explains that it is “not a symptom that can be eliminated by psychoeconomic accounting. He does not have a deficient trait that involves work (of mourning).
This “withdrawn” or “saved” for which Heidegger’s “holy and mourning” heart beats is not subject to economics, this “saved” cannot be spent or capitalized, it is therefore that which is and characterizes renunciation, Han does not exemplifies, but we can think of humanitarian aid in disasters and wars, as it will characterize the identity of renunciation and gratitude as conceivable outside of economics, using Heideggerian terms “grievously bear the need to renounce” and promises the “unthinkable donation”.
A profound and wise phrase by Heidegger says, renunciation is the “highest form of possession”, it seems contrary, but we only really have what we can give because otherwise it is a commodity of exchange, and even more so renunciation becomes gratitude and “ duty of gratitude”, this pain increases and becomes joy: “the deeper the sadness, the more the joy that rests in it calls us”. (pg. 433), but it does not even become sublimation, which forces us to “work”, as it is the “inhibition of all income” and the “awareness of the emptiness and poverty of the world”.
Praise of misery one might think, is not a praise of moderate and continuous joy, different from the euphoria and ecstasy that is followed by depression, “the lack of the divine brings about mourning, goes back to an obstinate forgetfulness of being, in which Heidegger inscribes the divine” (Han, p. 433-434), but it is certainly not yet the biblical divine, but surrounds it.
The reward and joy of the Divine inscribed in the being, is that which renounces and gives, but knows that there will be a reward of receiving a hundred times more, not in goods, but in joy.
Han, Byung-Chul (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 difference, the wars and the calamities
27
May
All reading in the recent posts about “Heidegger’s
heart: on the concept of affective tonality” by Byung Chul Han is not a mere philosophical exercise, especially because philosophy has returned to sophistry in a more sophisticated way: narrative, it is because the absence of pain perception exacerbates the difficulty in understanding the other’s pain and the difference.
He wrote about Hegel’s dialectic: “Heidegger uses the word ‘differ’ to describe the tragic-dialectic movement of difference”, and opens quotation marks: “But, in truth, in Hegel beings no longer exist, since all beings have dissolved into the movement of the absolute concept” (pg. 414), and added: “The “differance as differance”, the “differing”, is the blind spot of metaphysics” (pg. 415), and thus: “Différance is more contentious than than Hegel’s difference” (pg. 415) and this explains how idealist thought is more attached to highlighting its political difference than capable of understanding the true meaning of treating those who are different, especially the excluded, the innocent in wars, and The pain of a tragic flood becomes more of a game in the field of power than reaching the hearts of those who can help the affected people.
Difference “is not articulated in “contradictions” that exist in the space of identity, but works for manifestations of identity” (pg. 415), this is how pain works.
Byung-Chul opposes Hegel in addition to Heidegger also to Derridá, “differance maintains discord […] without ever forming a third expression”, maintains contention, “without ever giving reason for a solution along the lines of speculative dialectics ” (Han, pg. 416 quoting Derridá), and says “the pure play of difference is nothing, it does not even relate to its own fire” (pg. 417), see Han’s emphasis on the Western culture of “relationship ”, but the German-Korean’s wit gets there: “Subjectivity is always produced in a movement of westernization” (pg. 417).
The search for “speculative dialectics” is for an ontotheological or ontoteleological synthesis, I would say more the latter since Hegel’s god is invented, that of an abstract absolute, but not far from the triumphant God of Manichaeism, expressed not only in the justifications of wars and in différance, the westernized god also judges, condemns and excludes and makes sacred readings a game of convenience, mourning, pain and suffering have no space, everything is power, joy and consumption, the kingdom in sameness proclaiming difference.
“What does Derridá’s pain revolve around?” asks Byung-Chul, “Around the lack of a sacred name?” (pg. 424), those would say yes because not even the Absolute, or the Whole can have an ontological answer, perhaps enthelogical (in the sense of pure e objective being), but the author points out his mourning as “probably” like the difference, it is banal (Derridá says this).
In our view, the inability to mourn, to renounce, to understand pain prevents us from a complete vision of the whole as sacred. The innocent deaths of wars, natural catastrophes and respect for differences do not cause us grief, without a Sacred that references these values, we create a thing, an entity that replaces it.
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.
The great idealistic sleep
21
May
The dream of idealism was to propose goals to
be achieved that gradually proved to be contradictory and some of them are a fundamental part of the crisis of current thought, in which the reasons of state precede the popular will, even if it acts in its name, in fact the concentration of power It seems fair to those who believe they have the final say, finally the reason, to exercise power, this has medieval origins, although diffuse.
Even though literature differentiates “idealists” from “realists”, this exists after the Renaissance/seventeenth century paradigm, where in “The Prince” by Machiavelli (1513) it was understood that all the means provided by force and intelligence are lawful for the ruler, from that employed with skill and according to the circumstances (MAQUIAVEL, 2001, p. 85), thus emerge in everyone and in all societies attitudes of force considered reasonable when exercised by the State.
Also contractualism, from Thomas Hobbes, who lived between 1588 and 1679, the State is the fundamental institution to regulate human relations, given the character of the natural condition of men that impels them to seek fulfillment of their desires in any way, at any price, violently, selfishly, this is driven by passions.
In the words of Hobbes, “if two men desire the same thing […] they become enemies”. Everyone would be free and equal to seek profit, security and reputation, according to national author Francisco Welfort, in his work The Classics of Politics (2006), equality between men, in Hobbes’ view, generates ambition, discontent and war”, but it was idealism that divided Man, or the Being of beings, as preferred in ontology, into two opposing halves.
Even though contractualism has the empiricism of Locke (1632-1704), where the state must be a mediator of conflicts, interfering as little as possible in the lives of individuals, and finally Rousseau (1712-1778) who states that man is good, the society that it corrupts (see that there is contractualism on the left and on the right).
Returning to the ontological aspect, in the Heideggerian sense: “the beating of the heart by that “magic key” that could “break a thousand padlocks” would not be the fundamental trait” (Han, p. 280), there is no rigid and perennial light in it. , whose violence and unbridled presence as cause and mistress could penetrate, explain and dominate all phenomena” (Han, p. 281) where there is a direct reference to Plato’s Republic, and Byung-Chul sees him as the first Heidegger.
The second Heidegger is the one who sees the clearing, which “does not offer a fixed setting with a constantly raised curtain, where the theater of beings unfolds” (Han, p. 283) citing Heidegger, where he replaces the physical paradigm of “light ” by the figure of the clearing, to “react against the violent mechanisms of that light that allows everything to coagulate into image” (Han, p. 283), although there is no direct reference to the Enlightenment, it is inevitable to this “luminous” vision of power .
The evident presence is replaced by the non-apparent, which cannot be translated as the counterpart of an encounter: “Here there is no longer an ‘encounter’, no appearance for man already fixes itself in advance and captures what has appeared” (Han, 284), Plato’s world of shadows has never seemed so real as it does today.
So it makes sense to both “unveil” and “clearing”, as terms that are neither “re-vealing” nor illuminating, they are ontological paths where Being “lives”.
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.
MAQUIAVEL, Nicolau. (2001) O príncipe (the Prince). Transl. de M. J. Goldwasser. Brazil, São Paulo: Martins Fontes.
Ukraine may be just one step in the war
20
May
Fears are growing that the Russian advance in
northern Ukraine will be able to reach and capture the city of Kharkiv, the second largest in Ukraine and of undisputed industrial and military importance, the scenario could be more serious than one thinks.
There is no ideological connection, but a tactical analysis of the second war, Germany, before invading Poland, annexed Austria, a country with many common traditions and a very similar linguistic structure, the event known as Anschluss (connection or annexation) occurred in May 11-13, 1938, the invasion of Poland took place on the 1st. from E
The basis of conflicts is always this: a certain culture, ethnicity or people considers themselves entitled to dominate other peoples due to their “superiority” by any criteria.
The signs that Russia would not stop there are in several speeches from the Kremlin, recently Putin said that NATO “is messing with fire”, and also claims possession of the Svalbart islands (map) currently owned by Norway, which has already been challenged by Putin who declared: “The Russia’s right to Svalbard cannot be challenged!”
On the NATO side, France had already declared the possibility of a direct NATO confrontation, financial aid continues to be sent, recently Estonia declared that it could send “rearguard” troops to assist Ukraine, however the country’s Defense Minister, Hanno Pevkur, told the European media outlet ERR on May 14 that such talks “got nowhere” in Tallin, and that Estonia would not make a decision alone, but this reveals that there were “talks”.
The US continues to send millions of dollars in aid to Ukraine, but with the elections approaching this weakens the Biden government, the elections will take place in early November.
Another worrying news these days is that a helicopter carrying the President of Iran Ebrahim Raisi and the country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs crashed this Sunday (19) while crossing a mountainous area in heavy fog upon returning from a visit to the Azerbaijan border, the information originated from the Iranian authority.]
Apparently the accident was due to fog, Raisi since being elected in 2021 is known for violent repression of anti-government protests and pushed nuclear negotiations with world powers, Iran is also an important player for its opposition to Israeli attacks in the Gaza region, now in its last stronghold, which is the Rafah region.
There is always hope when people show solidarity with the suffering, the floods in the south awaken the Brazilian people, but we cannot stop there as there are serious rates of illness in addition to the Zika virus that is taking over the country, CNN being the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has been alerted to the outbreak.
Reason and division
16
May
As said in the previous post, the subject of idealism
“has no fear”, says Byung-Chul “in this space without shadows of transparency, evacuated by the ray of certainty, there is neither surprise nor fear” (pg. 263), the author also rereads Descartes who “projected from his insatiable need for security is sterile, ghostly and uninhabitable” (pg. 263) and this “compulsion for security” leads to the dark, and even Kant’s correction that is saved by “repelling” and “ reinterpret” the imagination (pg. 266).
But reminds Byung-Chul that Kant in his Foundation of Metaphysics looked at the unknown dimension of human existence, the “disquieting unknown” although he is trapped in the “subjective deduction” that leads to the obscure, and recognizes “that it tunes us with the terrors of the abyss ” (Han citing Kant, pg. 267) and that in the “inner horror” “that every mystery carries with it” (pg. 267) and that it is in this “nakedness of anguish” that transforms the subject’s vulnerability.
In Being and Time, Han explains, “anxiety does not bring being-there to the proximity of the ecstatic amplitude that he sees in the late Heidegger”, nor to the proximity of “alienation” from “courage towards the abyss”, and Han concludes: “anxiety wrests the existence of the domestic order from “relational completeness”, taking it to the “region”, to the “world as such”, but at its center resides the self” and here explains the anguish: “Anguish it only leads to hypertrophy of the self” (Han, pg. 268).
Heidegger made an essential ontological discovery, where the rupture of the subject is “the being-there is what calls and the called at the same time […] what calls is the being-there that […] is distressed by its power to be” (Han citing Heidegger, pg. 269), in this “a negotiator’s soliloquy” takes place, but it is conducted between two selves, that is, between the impersonal self and the authentic self” (pg. 269), This division occurs both within the being-there and in the reaction with others, “out of anguish at the voice of the other, the being-there covers its ears” (pg. 269).
Thus this division or disunity arises within man, and it is in this “strangeness of being in suspension, in which being-there can approach a growing lack of foundation” (Han citing Heidegger, pg. 270), it is “in anguish that a certain epoché occurs”, the suspension of phenomenological judgment of Husserl, professor of Heidegger, in it the network of references, woven by the purpose of “for what”, the totality relates and its intersubjective implication collapse, in my conclusion here, unity is born and lives in it.
This conclusion, which is neither Heidegger’s nor Byung-Chul’s, is possible because the latter writes: “they are in a certain way “bracketed”, the “neutral” Impersonal and its “dictatorship” are “inhibited”, this “collapse of the world” (Han, pg. 270), reduce “being-there to a solipsistic sphere of being, a sphere of the “pure ‘fact that…” of one’s own isolated condition of being thrown” (pg. 270), it is “the residue of the epoché, the authentic self, marks the center of gravity of the ‘there, from which the world that has slipped away must be recovered from nothingness or must be filled explicitly with the “stability of the self” (Han, pg. 271) .
This division resulting from reason prevents a true ontology, see that Heidegger even uses the word “dictatorship” of certainty, of the self, of the empire of pure reason where there is no room for the enigma, the doubt, the mystery and the completeness of the being, then it is reduced to “anguish”, part of life, but in which being-there must not stop, nor “collapse”.
Reason, or the criticism of pure reason, is not exhausted in itself, it contains anguish, it needs uncertainty, mystery and full “inner” life.
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.
Is hanging by a thread from a civilizational disaster
13
May
Despite the immense damage already caused by wars, we highlight those
that directly involve the imperialist powers, but we do not fail to look at “smaller wars”, the tone of the discourse of the forces involved, especially NATO and Russia, increased last week.
Russia says it is ready for a direct confrontation with NATO, accusing it of already being present in Ukraine, which was practically confirmed by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, when he declared: “NATO today is helping as much as it can. Without NATO help, Ukraine would not be able to defend itself for so long,” and added to journalists: “Well, and there are some troops there [in Ukraine], I mean soldiers. There are some soldiers there, observers, engineers. They are helping them”, which is a confirmation.
Russia recently carried out military exercises with nuclear weapons, Russia and the USA together have more than 10,600 of the world’s nuclear warheads, out of the 12,100 that exist, followed by China, France and the United Kingdom, a provocation of this size is dangerous.
In the Middle East, Israel threatens to invade Rafah (in the photo above), the last border for Palestinian refugees, with more than 1 million people there and it can be said that now half of the population of Gaza is there, various political and diplomatic forces try to dissuade Israel from carrying out the invasion.
Diplomatic talks for a ceasefire have been going on for months without any results, Egypt and the USA are at the forefront of forcing an agreement, even if American troops support Israel, the humanitarian disaster would be immense as it hits the refugees hard.
There are dialogues, statements by forces for peace, however, those who take a unilateral position must understand that they increase the strength of the conflict and there is no neutrality, yes there is no neutrality in the humanitarian sense (always defend life), but politics is polarizing.
Edgar Morin talks about resistance of the spirit, other authors talk about truce, we posted last week about the “tonality of affection”, one that is neither plural nor polyphonic.
