Arquivo para a ‘’ Categoria
Reforming thought and its viaticum
21
Nov
At the beginning of chapter 5 of Edgar Morin’s
Cabeça bem-feita (Heads on straight), he uses an epigraph from Euripides’ Edita: “The gods invent many surprises for us: the expected doesn’t happen, and a god opens the way to the unexpected” (Morin, 2003, p. 61), only those who meditate and have a well-developed spiritual side know how to work with the unexpected.
He gives us three viaticums in this chapter, the first of which is “Preparing for our uncertain world is the opposite of resigning oneself to a generalized skepticism.” It is necessary to resist what is anti-human not as an act of courage, but in the only certainty which is the error of the path that our mistaken convictions can lead us down (pictured is Leonardo Alenza’s viaticum, 1840).
The second viaticum is strategy; we get lost on the road to what is good and what we want.
“Strategy is opposed to program, even though it can include programmed elements. The program is the a priori determination of a sequence of actions with a view to an objective. The program is effective under stable external conditions, which can be determined with certainty” (Morin, 2003, p. 62) so we need to think about strategy by exercising it, if we want more humanity we need to be human, if we want peace we need to practice it.
The third viaticum is the challenge, we usually look for our comfort zone or security, but neither comfort nor security are there, in general they require a challenge to conquer them, says Morin: “A strategy carries within it the awareness of the uncertainty it will face and, for this very reason, contains a bet. It must be fully aware of the stakes, so as not to fall into false certainty. It is false certainty that has always blinded generals, politicians and businessmen, and led them to disaster” (Morin, 2003, p. 62) – this is the disaster of today’s false peace.
The answer is not exactly a Christian, but someone of Jewish origin who lives a secular life: “Betting is the integration of uncertainty into faith or hope. Betting is not limited to games of chance or dangerous undertakings” (Morin, 2003, p. 62). If we work for peace and for the correct process of civilization, we can certainly count on some extra help, why not: divine.
Morin, E. (2003) A cabeça bem-feita: repensar a reforma, reformar o pensamento. transl. Eloá Jacobina. Brazil, 8a ed. -Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil.
If the night of humanity comes
31
Oct
What to do if the crisis of civilization reaches
its human limits and continues to humanize itself? In previous posts, we discussed Edgar Morin’s awareness of “our earthly purposes” in chapter 4 of his book Earth and Homeland
It is here that the author also addresses the apparent paradox: conversation/revolution, it is about understanding change without abandoning the main humanitarian principles: “Awareness of our terrestrial roots and our planetary destiny is a necessary condition for realizing humanity and civilizing the Earth” (Morin, 2003, p. 99) because the adjective “revolutionary” has become reactionary and heavily tainted with barbarism” (idem).
The author goes on to say: “Another problem arises here: is there a power of ideas over reality, which would presuppose a reality and a power of ideas? As we have already shown, ideas and myths acquire reality, impose themselves on spirits and can even impose themselves on historical reality, violating it, diverting it” (Morin, 2003, p. 126) and this is very relevant in the current context.
This is complemented by Morin when he points out that “conserving/revolutionizing: it is the paradox of progressing/resisting”, where resisting is “being on the defensive on all fronts against the returns and manifestations of the great barbarism, written before the new millennium, this is very current in the face of the possibility of war.
Morin wrote at that time, which today is the fulfillment of a prophecy: “The spring of the people of 1989-1990 suffered a freeze. All its seeds of freedom are on the verge of destruction. The great barbarism makes a great return” (Morin, 2003, p.100).
Resisting now then means not abandoning humanitarian values, also nowadays Morin spoke about “resistance of the spirit” which is preserving within ourselves the most cherished values of life, humanism and belief in truly “divine” values.
Not believing that we were made for war, for barbarism and have a cruel destiny, although the world outlook is bleak, we must resist with the armor of peace.
Morin, Edgar & Kern, Anne-Brigitte (2003). Terra-Pátria. Transl. Paulo Azevedo Neves da Silva. Brazil, Porto Alegre: Sulina.
The crisis of simplistic thinking and the complex
30
Oct
The epistemology of complexity is a branch
of epistemology that studies complex systems and associated emergent phenomena. In some environments, such as mechanics and physics, there has been a tendency to delve deeper into what until then had only been called dynamic systems, and now non-linear or chaotic systems.
The process of industrialization provided great support for a hitherto unthinkable development of the natural sciences, then the generation of technologies: steam and combustion, then electricity, and everything seemed to move in perfect gear.
Until a certain moment, everything was characterized by a movement that Edgar Morin called breaker-and-reducer, both in the sciences and in the arts, the idea of reducing what is complex to the simple (for example, looking for a reality in the smallest part of physics until then, the atoms) that gradually became complex (sub-particles in increasingly microscopic dimensions until reaching the quantum universe).
The particularities of subatomic physics introduced uncertainties and showed the limits of reductionism, which was leading to a distorted view of reality, showing its uncertainties and naivety, the pretension of capturing an objective reality that could be independent of the observer, when the observer himself is part of the phenomenon.
So this reductionist logic of physics was extended to the social and personal universe, and apparently simple mechanisms could solve problems that are complex, and all the problematization resulting from this reality was not observed.
Complex thinking is not limited to the academic world, it overflows and is present in various sectors of society, as well as simplistic reasoning that does not take into account the complexity and diversity of social life.
Even in the spiritual world (or subjective, as you might think, when we see objects outside the reality of the subject) this misunderstanding leads us to a wide door, where the basic values of humanism can be ignored and life fragmented.
Thus the door through which simplistic and trivial logics pass leads to great and problematic mistakes, while the complexity of a socially just and true path is not reduced to simplistic and unhuman ideological forms.
Passing through the narrow door will never be an easy path, but it is the only one that can lead humanity to a sustainable and truly human future of peace, fraternity and social values that respect human dignity.
Identity and the human family
22
Oct
We have regional identities and cultures, linked
to nations. The fact that nationalities exist should not be contrary to the existence and vision of a human family, not just because of our genetic and animal identity, but mainly because of our common life and relationships.
Edgar Morin, in his book Terra-Pátria (Editora Sulina, 2003) traces the origins of a vision of man linked to nature (and consequently to the Cosmos), which will unfold in the visions of Bacon, Descartes, Buffon and Marx (Morin, 2003, p. 54) who made man “an almost supernatural being who progressively assumes the empty place of God” (idem), but this triggered an arrogant and authoritarian vision before the Cosmos and the Other.
As a result, we have regressed in our planetary vision: “The identity of man, that is, his complex unity/diversity, has been concealed and betrayed, at the very heart of the planetary era, by the specialized/compartmentalized development of the sciences” (p. 61), a xenophobic vision of nationalism and identity now explodes, inhibiting a vision of the human family.
Morin writes: “Nation and ideology have built new barriers, aroused new hatreds. The Islamist, the capitalist, the communist, the fascist are no longer human. “ (p. 60), note that this was written in 1993 (the original first edition in French).
Our vision of man has narrowed, Morin points out: “Philosophy, locked in its higher abstractions, has only been able to communicate with the human in experiences and existential tensions such as those of Pascal, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, without, however, ever being able to link the experience of subjectivity to anthropological knowledge” (idem, p. 61), the vision of these authors seems ethereal.
This has also happened in the humanities: “Anthropology, a multi-dimensional science (articulating within it the biological, the sociological, the economic, the historical, the psychological) that would reveal the complex unity/diversity of man, cannot really be built unless it is correlated with the meeting of disciplines … “ (pg. 62), and so the human fragment is translated into fragmented thought.
It is this fragmentation translated into war and hatred that demands an unveiling of Being, called for by Heidegger and thinkers who followed him (Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hannah Arendt and others), and which is also thought of by Morin: “Hence the primordial need to unveil, to reveal, in and through its diversity, the unity of the species, human identity, anthropological universals” (p. 60), to unveil (rather than re-veil, which is to veil again) as modern ontology says.
The human family can be unveiled in its common interests: ecology, economic balance and, above all, peace.
Morin, Edgar Morin & Kern, Anne-Brigitte. (2003) Terra-Patria. Transl. Paulo Azevedo Neves da Silva. Brazil, Porto Alegre : Sulina.
Ontology, idealism and truth
16
Oct
Heidegger’s thought must start from the question
of Spirit in Hegel, read by Byung-Chul in Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit “in terms of the forgetfulness of being” (Heidegger’s central question), he sees it as an “arid self” that finds “its limitation in the being that meets it” (Han, p. 334 quoting Hegel).
Although he recovers Hegel, in part, in the epigraph to 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 no longer names anything’, natural consciousness … when it becomes aware of being, assures itself that it is something abstract. “ (Han, 2023, pg 336).
Natural consciousness (seen in this way) “dwells 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 gathered into being’ (pg. 336 with quotes from Heidegger), which sees this as a step backwards and the forgotten, misunderstood ‘already’ (pg. 337), does not appear completely negated, it appears in the form of ‘not yet’ which is not a negation, nor a barricade, placed ‘next to the already prevents it from appearing’ (pg. 337).
There is a whole development in contrast to Hegel’s dialectic, more than a topic, it could well be a book, but the dialogue he engages in 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, he says the concern with immortality, with death and with the work of mourning.
The “cardiographic” archive of the history of philosophy, in which the philosopher “works” to reverse the negative of being, is not the only secret in the heart of Plato or Hegel (p. 384).
This is what will form the basis of his “work of mourning”: “to be capable of death as death”, that is, to be capable of mourning, this “tragedy” “differs radically from the noisy work of mourning of the Hegelian dialectic” (Han, 2023, p. 385).
“Tears free the subject from his narcissistic interiority … they are the spell that the subject casts over nature“ (Han, p. 394) now quoting Adorno, and the author states that ‘Aesthetic Theory is the book of tears (idem) and that contrary to Kant, and that ’the spirit perceives, in the face of nature, less its own superiority than its own naturalness” (p. 395).
“The aesthetic experience shakes the narcissistic subject who thinks he is sovereign and causes the hardened principle of the ‘I’ to crumble … the tear of the shaken and moved subject proves to be capable of truth” (p. 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 the pain and transience of temporal things.
Han, B.C. (2023) Coração de Heidegger: sobre o conceito de tonalidade afetiva em Martin Heidegger. Transl. Rafael Rodrigues Garcia, Milton Camargo Mota. Brazil, Petrópolis: Vozes.
Noetics, Ontologie and War
14
Oct
For Plato, noesis is superior to dianoia, which
is discursive and apparently logical, while the former is a high possible mental activity, inhabiting the sphere of Good and Harmony.
It is a possibility of access to the “divine” world (Plato’s highest good which is in the eidos), it is transcendent, absolute, beyond ordinary human reasoning, philosophers pursue it without even touching on the question of the belief in a higher God where noesis “dwells”, it is not Being, but a mental attitude.
Dianoia, on the other hand, while it inhabits logical, mathematical and technical reasoning, is attached to what the mind can grasp of the earthly world, even though it admits to mistakes, truths that are not absolute and sometimes confusing, they inhabit the daily life of the human being, who is also disconnected from Being.
There is a foundational line that goes from phenomenology to the anthropotechnics of Peter Sloterdijk and Byung-Chul Han, essentially involving the question of Being, the link between noesis and noema, weakened by the bombardment of narratives that the digital universe has provided, but the forgetting of being, the absence of interiority have led to what Chul-Han calls “deauritization” and “pure facticity”:
“The disenchantment of the world expresses itself as de-auritization. Aura is the radiance that elevates the world beyond its pure facticity, the mysterious veil that envelops things” (Han, 2023, p. 80).
It’s not a question of denying facticity, but of not allowing its noesis, that is, the initial comprehension in the mind in all its aura, it makes a “narrative selection”, in the words of Byung-Chul (talking about photography): “It extends or shortens the temporal distance. It skips years or decades. Narrativity is opposed to chronological facticity” (Han, 2023, p. 81).
These are the lies of wars, of all wars because they hide their real motives, but particularly of current wars because they use narratives to change what is evident if read in chronological facticity, in a very current example, last week’s bombing of a hospital for the elderly in Ukraine (photo) and the bombing of UN bases in Lebanon, this correlates with cruelty and the absence of any narration to justify them.
Peace lies in the hearts and authorities that maintain the aura of hope, the spirit of solidarity.
Han, Byung-Chul. (2023) A crise da narração. Transl. Daniel Guilhermino. Brazil, Petrópolis: Vozes.
Really tackling the issue of poverty
24
Sep
Simply distributing income or just giving a plate
of food solves the emergency issue, but it keeps poverty latent and does not provide social uplift and economic stability.
The issue of poverty is a complex problem, although its consequences are easy to see, but raising the quality of life and dignified survival of millions of people must be tackled in a way that goes beyond the emergency, even if it is necessary.
Among the rarely analyzed causes of poverty are corruption, wars, precarious infrastructure and the difficulty in generating jobs and creating them with decent wages, so informality and even crime and illegal markets (even drugs) are consequences.
The consequences are well known: hunger, unemployment, lack of decent housing, lack of basic sanitation, violence, the spread of epidemic diseases, discrimination and social vulnerability.
Tackling one aspect while ignoring others, for example the issue of basic sanitation, is crucial and is not easily visible to many public managers who only see aspects that give them more visibility and help improve their vision, which in Brazil is always critical.
The issue of income distribution is a fundamental aspect, but it’s not just a question of solving the emergency, creating possibilities for social mobility among the lower income levels is an essential factor in eradicating poverty, as is promoting aspects of schooling and job creation.
The global problem to be tackled is emigration, not just hunger and poverty, but above all wars and persecution of certain ethnic groups, which is a very serious factor and could escalate into a world war.
Clear public programs that not only solve the emergency problem, which is visible to the population, but also the medium and long term problems are essential. The low level of social mobility and the difficulty for the lower income groups to access public goods and services is still a crucial factor in many countries around the world, and extreme poverty persists despite programs and policies, where they have failed is precisely where the propaganda was strongest and the measures least effective.
Changing the rhetoric of welfarism and the distribution of social leftovers is fundamental. We need to restore dignity to every human being, overcoming not only prejudice, but above all the way in which we view these people, who have the same dignity as others.
The logic of productivism and its inverse
21
Aug
Several authors argue about the logic of
modern society regarding productivism, this logic is not specific to a mode of production, but characterizes a society where values are all placed around the power and productivity of each individual, thus excluding, for example , the elderly, children, domestic workers and those with special needs.
According to the literature (A. Giddens and others): productivism is the logic that guides the lives of a group of individuals (the so-called “adequate consumers”) while another group (called “failed consumers”) are adrift in economic life , political and social.
For this reason, more critical social analysts place the allocation of work to directed groups as a factor of crisis in contemporary society, also in the academic, political and even spiritual world, a certain profile of a person with some “performance” is required.
Saying that these people take actions according to their abilities or choices is a farce, even if we find some rebellion among young people who opt for jobs such as cooking, sports or leisure sectors, the majority live on projects manipulated by the society of performance and consumption. .
How to reverse this logic, looking at the excluded sectors of society, it is increasingly common for people with special needs, people with certain types of diseases or syndromes to fit into a restricted market full of productivity demands.
The biblical parable of last-minute workers is a well-placed metaphor, where workers who are sitting in the square (discarded from productive spaces) are called to work and although they arrive at the final hour they will receive the same amount as other workers, not to be confused with Misguided projects (in Brazil) that place young people in work without having the remuneration corresponding to the same function performed by “experienced” workers.
The parable, also called “workers in the vineyard” or “generous employer” (Mt 20:1-16), could be the opposite of the productivist vision of the modern labor market.
Giddens, A. (2013) Consequencies of Modernity. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
What is love after all
07
Aug
In a polarized world and now on the verge of 
regional wars that can escalate, talking about love seems innocuous and has no reflection on reality, but there are good works produced by humanity.
Paul Ricoeur wrote and we have already posted about this a few times about Le socius e le prochain (The partner and the neighbor), separating interests from true love for others.
However, Hannah Arendt’s work, although not definitive regarding love, the advisor Karl Jaspers himself expressed this about his doctorate “Love in Saint Augustine”, developed and appropriated some fundamental categories on the subject, of course we are not talking about erotic nor familial love.
According to author George McKenna, in a review of her thesis, Arendt tried to include a revision in her “The Human Condition”, but it is not very clear in Arendt’s book that, despite this, it has good development.
If this love can also be expressed in ancient Greek literature, such as agape love, which differs from eros and philia in this literature, from a Christian point of view the best development made is in fact that of Saint Augustine.
First because he separated this concept from good x evil Manichaeism, a dualism still present in almost all Western philosophy due to idealism and puritanism, then because he was in fact raptured upon discovering divine love, he wrote: “Late I loved you, O beauty so ancient and so young! Too late I loved you! Behold, you lived within me and I was looking for you outside!” (Confessions of Saint Augustine).
Then man must love his neighbor as God’s creation: […] man loves the world as God’s creation; in the world the creature loves the world just as God loves it. This is the realization of a self-denial in which everyone, including yourself, simultaneously reclaims your God-given importance. This achievement is love for others (ARENDT, 1996, p. 93).
Man can love his neighbor as a creation by returning to his origin: “It is only where I can be certain of my own being that I can love my neighbor in his true being, which is in his createdness.” (ARENDT, 1996, p. 95)
In this type of love, man loves the divine essence that exists in himself, in others, in the world, man “loves God in them” (ARENDT, 1996, 9
The biblical reading also summarizes the law and the Christian prophets like this (Mt 22, 38-40): “This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is similar to this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’. All the Law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”
Love contains all the virtues: it does not become conceited or angry, it knows how to see where the true signs of happiness, balance and hope are found, even in a troubled world.
ARENDT, Hannah. Love and Saint Augustine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Spirit and power
25
Jul
Power and autorithy seem to get confused, but this is not true
as authoritarian governments are growing in the world and this has always been a bad symptom of civilization because it indicates both disputes and, at their limit, wars.
Byung-Chul Han in his book “In the Swarm” explains after saying about the necessary distance in the public sphere, that the “waves of indignation indicate, moreover, a weak connection with the community” (Han, In the Swarm, 20,18, pg. 22) and he has a specific book about power.
The book What is Power? (2019) has a long analysis of the issue in Hegel, this is justified both by the influence on Western thought and by the incidence of the vision of power that affects the entire public sphere, but we highlight his vague concept of the Absolute and the influence even religious , seen in the previous post.
Its analysis is important when it refers to ontological concepts, thus defining that “the entity is, even when it is finite, surrounded by the other” (Han, 2019, p. 110) and the Being must generate a negativity in itself, this is not the case here of “bad thoughts” but the concept that cites in Paul Tillich (1886-1965) that the power of being as “the capacity of living beings to overcome negativity, or as he says, “non-being”, that is, the who does not involve it in self-affirmation” (pg. 111).
Quoting him, Han states: “one has more power to be, because it must have been overcome but not to be, and as long as one can overcome it. When you can no longer bear it or overcome it, then it is total impotence, the end of the power of being, the event. This is the risk of every living being” (Han, 2019, p. 111).
He cites Foucault’s thesis that the human being would be “the result of submission” (pg. 118) and Hegel who thinks that power should act primarily in a “non-repressive way” (pg. 119) however, both do not abandon the idea from the Absolute, which actually comes from Machiavelli’s Prince and Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, and as the author says: “power promises freedom” (pg. 121).
The need to create a “neurotic” religion of power, for Hegel, would come from the idea of God, the power that He has the power to “be himself”, this comes from idealism that does not overcome the division between subject and object, or be the Creator and the created (beings and entities) are not composed.
There is no doubt that power, without the necessary negativity of non-being (the inclusion of the Other) is a neurosis as Hegel says, and thus its “god” or “the spirit” “would still be an appearance of this neurosis” (Han, 2019 , p. 121).
“The pain of finitude can perfectly be the pain of any limit that separates me from the other, which can only be overcome by the creation of a particular continuity… it does not have the continuity of the self that power creates. She does not have the intention of returning to herself” (Han, 2019, p. 121).
Hegel’s neurotic power is not that of the Creator, it is of the being caged in the self, incapable of looking at and serving the Other, of leaving the self, of denying oneself to serve the Other, it is a neurotic power.
