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Happy are the peacemakers
11
Feb
The cycle of plague, famine and war in whatever order it has taken
place in history is fed back because the forces that promote peace succumb and among them are also the true spiritual forces that desire the progress of the human soul, which is inseparable from the substantiality of life. , not only human, but of the entire planet.
The 20th century, in addition to the second world war, everyone who lived through it narrates the horror of this period and the deprivations they went through, especially the poorest, was also marked by authoritarian regimes and Franco, Salazar and De Gaule in Europe, the liberation struggles colonial times, and the civil war in Spain, all wrapped up in atrocities and many deaths.
With the end of the pandemic imminent, but it should be noted that it is still advancing in the southern hemisphere, a cycle of social deprivation approaching a war would be the least desirable and there are no diplomatic forces that can avoid it, what would be the consequences of an insanity of this type is for all analysts, unpredictable in proportion and extent.
There are forces that fight for peace in the underground of societies, today’s pronouncement (02/11) by Pope Francis is one of these forces, but even within religions and spiritualities (we have already discussed the true asceticism) there are those who sadistically (because have not lived and read testimonies of the war) are not bothered by this danger.
The pope said forcefully: “war is madness”, and asks for dialogue, several diplomatic attempts have been made but the paths of any bilateral agreement seem to be closed, in a way because the parties do not seem willing to give in on problematic points. (the presence of NATO and Russia itself in Ukraine, for example), the pope also asked that this dialogue be “serious” and that each side really be willing to listen and give in to a possible agreement.
As the hours go by, the attempts seem to be running out, the common citizens of both countries, the poor and the vulnerable, most would never approve of a war, there is hope and faith that they will be minimally spared if the absurdity happens.
On the eve of a football club world, where the dispute ends with the end of a match and in the midst of the Winter Olympics, despite all rivalries, in this case the desirable thing is that in addition to the opposing sides, everything is consummated from a certain end point, and in this case the supporters of two or more teams, is more humane than the insane dispute for territories and warlike advantages of a war with unpredictable consequences.
The biblical liturgy says, in the passage in which Jesus meets his disciples and a crowd on a plain (all on the same plane) of Tire and Sidon (Lk 6:20=21): “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the God’s kingdom! Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled! Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh!” and explains that the rich and powerful once had the solace in this world and the false prophets who are applauded, because they did not have the courage to tell the truth.
Let us hope that a remnant of serenity, tolerance and balance remain in the great world war forces and the war is avoidable.
The hunger in World
09
Feb
The Welthungerhife report shows the map of hunger 
in the world, where it is evident the concentration in Africa where the poorest countries are and also remnants of a period of colonization (there is still this presence there) that mattered little to the population.
The countries with the lowest per capita income in dollars are concentrated there: Somalia: $953, Central African Republic $996, Republic of Congo $1203, Mozambique $1338, Niger: $1503, Malawi $1503, Liberia $1623 and Madagascar $1630 , there are also wars over the division of territories, diamonds and the extraction of minerals:, as is the case with the phosphate ore in which they are involved: Spain, Morocco and Mali, but also Western Sahara rebels fight for independence in territory claimed by Morocco .
The war that has economic interests and neo-colonization behind has always been present there, Somalia is a typical example of this as it led the country to even greater misery and the Pandemic made the crisis more alarming.
There are still no conclusive studies on the real impact of the pandemic in this territory, a recent report called “The State of Food Insecurity and Nutrition in the world (SOFI) of 2021 trans some efforts of United Nations agencies to map and outline a policy and estimates that a tenth of the global population, estimated at around 811 million people in the world are undernourished in this period of the Pandemic, which shows an alarming picture.
A war of global proportions could further aggravate this situation, also more egalitarian health policies (a distribution of vaccine proportional to the number of inhabitants, for example) are necessary measures to prevent that, in addition to poverty, the number of deaths continues to grow in the aftermath of the pandemic.
Little history of Ukraine
08
Feb
In the 3rd century the region was inhabited by the Goths (250-375),
the region was called Aujo, there was a Cherniacove culture there, the Ostrogoths settled in 350 with the influence of the Huns, to the north there was a people who had a Kievan culture (then later Kyiv or Київ).
The origin of today’s Ukraine is in Slavic tribes that arrived in this territory in the 5th and 6th centuries, in the 9th century Viking invaders arrived, called Varigi, the Mongols invade in the 13th, King Igor I with a young Varigi teenager named Olga united the peoples, this kingdom called Rus had Kiev as its capital, the king will be killed and Olga takes power with great vigor and courage, and dominates the peoples, Olga will occupy a special role and then convert to Christianity with great work in favor of the poor .
Olga is a separate chapter, after being a strong queen and to a certain extent cruel to her enemies, her son takes over the kingdom and she converts to Christianity, built churches, carried out evangelization campaigns, but was unable, however, to convert her son. Sviatoslav (Svyatoslav I), helped the poor and sick people so much that he became a saint recognized by the Orthodox Church in the year and by the Catholic Church of the Byzantine Rite, his son did not convert, but his grandson Vladimir I converted and also was declared a saint.
The Variagi commanded several strategic points in Russia and explored transport and trade, so during the 10th and 11th century, the territory of Ukraine became the center of a powerful and prestigious state in Europe, called at the time Kiev Russia (recall was the kingdom of Rus) and were also the basis for many subsequent Slavic nations (such as Greater Bulgaria and Belarus, for example), in addition to the Russians themselves who were then just scattered Slavic tribes.
The state was conquered by Casimirio IV of Poland, while the heart of ancient Kievan Russia passed to the control of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, but the marriage of Grand Duke Jagellan of Lithuania to Queen Hedwig of Poland, changed control of the sovereigns. Lithuanians to most of the Ukrainian territory and thus returned to Ukraine.
We take a leap into history, which is also rich in the medieval period, a civil war that lasted 4 years after the Russian revolution (1917) in 1921 Ukraine becomes a Soviet socialist republic, with purges and land grabs that Ukrainian farmers refused to deliver, Ukraine is a major grain producer.
The Stalinist period and the Nazi occupation of its territory, which caused more than 10 million deaths between 1930 and 1945, Ukraine resisted Russian collectivization and Nazi invasion, Ukraine in the Soviet period was responsible for ¼ of Soviet production in the agricultural sector producing 40 million cereals, a record for the time.
Finally, the problem of the Crimean territory, which has its origins in the war of 1853 and 1856 where there was a conflict between Russia and an alliance formed by France-United Kingdom-Kingdom of Sardinia (today part of Italy), in 2014 the war is reborn with the takeover by Russia, it should be clarified that there was a contract between Ukraine and Russia in a kind of leasing for the concession of the Balkan port where Russia’s largest maritime fleet is located, in Sevastopol, which was thus an independent territory of Ukraine.
Thus, among the most absurd analyzes is the one that says that Ukraine would be unviable as an independent state, it is weakened by an internal war and under Russian pressure.
Moving forward to true thinking
04
Feb
No thought is complete if it does not have a spirituality, what modernity
calls subjectivity but which is separate from objectivity as is typical of dualism, creates two realities and neither is part of the whole.
Contemplating the whole means considering the depth of our Being and understanding that we are part of an immense universe full of mysteries, and that our soul yearns for infinity and that is where a true spirituality walks, which is not separated from the substantiality of life (the which is called objectivity in modernity, which is just the part) and that without it we do not contemplate and live the whole, we live a segmented life.
To replace it with a small part, small vices and pleasures, is to walk in frivolity, in superficiality, no true asceticism does without a spirituality, and there is no spirituality without contemplating the human soul as part of the whole of our Being, thus surpassing anthropotechnics and to arrive at an onto-anthropotechnic that looks at things and also at the soul.
Many exercises, from the physical to the spiritual, are done seeking this asceticism, at this point Sloterdijk is right almost all of them are “despiritualized” but his explanation is incomplete because there is no eschatology in their spheres, this reasoning is done especially in Spheres II, which is the whole towards which we walk, it is possible to go to Him.
Yes, it is possible if we move towards deeper waters, seek the completeness of our substantiality, overcoming anthropocentrism and understanding the Earth and the Universe as our home, our abode, but mainly walking and casting the nets for deeper thoughts and spiritualities, there is at high sea, even if raging, what our soul longs for: the eternal.
The biblical passage Lk 5:4-5 says, right after Jesus taught the crowds and Peter (Simon) complained that they had not caught anything, Jesus answers him: “when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon: “Go into deeper waters, and cast your nets for fishing”, Simon replies that he worked all night and caught nothing, but obeyed and cast the nets.
The result was a great fishery. Here, the substantiality of the food and also the spirituality of advancing “to deeper waters” are worthy.
Scientific truth and humility
02
Feb
From the Copernican revolution, with the discovery of Galileo
and with the scientific advances it should be clearer, even more now with the discoveries of unknown forces of the universe and with the new telescopic James Webb, it should be more and more clear that the man does not he is the center of the universe, although he is capable of doing a lot of damage if he does not put aside the anthropocentric and enlightened vision that places him as an “all-powerful”.
Schopenhauer also followed, one of the first to criticize the Kantian “thing-in-itself” and his metaphysical system of putting in its place a “Will” (which is the same thing as when man was placed as the center of the universe and the earth where its center inhabits), opened a new philosophical perspective where nothing exists on purpose, everything and we are all consequences of an endless system, with determinations and goals, and that we are responsible for one fate hurting the other, we are hurting ourselves.
In this way Schopenhauer wanted to represent in a compassionate way that he can represent in himself the pain of another, and this would be a great step towards peace, although the phrase of this philosopher is capital: “Man is properly speaking, an animal that attacks” (Arthur Schopenhauer), which goes back to the “wolf man of man” and justifies an aggressive state.
The well-known foundation of Kantian ethics is the categorical imperative (act in such a way as to be a model for others) that serves to guide the actions of subjects, and this in turn is the principle of a “factum” of reason, which is part of the world. numenic, which manages to influence (not in principle sense) the phenomenal world, in order to guide the actions of the rational subject in a universal and necessary way, Schopenhauer at this point makes an important criticism, although it is not enough for a deep criticism of this ethics.
For him, the Kantian ethical program is meaningless because it has as its ultimate foundation of action a metaphysical aspect that disqualifies actions that come from any other instance than reason, the relationship that exists between reason and metaphysics (see that the Kant’s metaphysics is not part of the world, but it is neither theological nor divine), is that rational subjects (transcendental in relation to objects) share the unknowable, since they are able to think about metaphysical things, but not know them.
Numenic refers to what is known without being part of the senses, it is a criticism of empiricism but does not recognize the phenomenal (which manifests itself as a thing).
This gap where there is no mystery, it is natural that it has distanced itself from divine and theological transcendence, but it is an objectified reason, without subjective aspects, that is, proper to the subject, and Schopenhauer correctly points to the pain of the other who is capable of conceiving. , but this principle of compassion will not have a development, other phenomenological authors deal with the question of the Other, and this is a principle for the critique of reason.
James Webb arrives at his destination
25
Jan
Exactly one month ago, the new James Webb Space Telescope
observatory (JWST Nasa) arrived yesterday at 17:00 (Brasília time) in a region where with a minimum of fuel consumption he will be able to remain in orbit, called the Lagrange L2 point, which is actually a region between the Earth and the Sun where the centripetal (attractive) force is balanced with a centrifugal force.
In fact, they are regions and therefore called orbital islands, every planet in the solar system has Lagrange Points and as they move away from the Sun these islands are larger, the island related to the earth is about 800,000 km wide, the which in spatial terms is small, the point L2 for example is 5 million km from Earth and still very far from Mars, 57.6 million is the distance from our neighboring planet.
The observations will still take 5 months to calibrate all equipment, adjust the mirror and aim for the first targets.
Now it will be 5 months of work for Webb to send the first images on his “targets in the infrared universe”, he will not look for exoplanets or new points, but point to known points and make measurements more precise and with greater definition, Webb’s mirrors ( hexagonal) that should have a complicated and fine adjustment will have up to 5 times the power of Hubble’s mirrors, in addition to using a more sophisticated technology that is infrared, where you can “see” by observing the light strongly “deflected to the red” of distant objects and can peer through clouds of murky dust, it will be able to sift through exoplanet atmospheres identifying gases with greater precision.
More than 1,000 teams of astronomers from around the world have requested time on the Webb in its first year and 287 have already been lucky enough to be pioneers, among the questions from these teams are looking at the ice-covered oceans on Uranus’ 27 moons, the icy giants Uranus. and Neptune can explain much of the origin of galactic systems, look at black holes that are of average size and resolve conflicting measurements on the rate of expansion of the universe and generally speaking will use Webb for two dominant themes: time and distance between opposite extremes in the universe. universe: the early universe and the closest planetary systems and their dilemmas.
In addition to these great themes, a topic that arouses curiosity, although it is due to a childish aspect of aliens, is what is called biosignature, that is, real conditions of life, which in fact do not find “beings” but the conditions of past or future existence. of them are: gaseous, direct or indirect products of the metabolism of living beings, of surface, of spectral results resulting from the radiation reflected by organisms, and, temporal, which are responses related to seasonal changes in the biosphere where there is, for example, diurnal and nocturnal variation of CO2, some biosignatures can be found, beings are still left to the imagination, it is clear that some biological form can exist in such an infinite space of probabilities.
Empathy and phronesis
11
Jan
Frônesis (phrónesis, from ancient Greek: φρόνησις), in Aristotle’s
Nicomachean Ethics, book IV, is distinguished from both theory and practice because it is a virtue of the wisdom of practical thinking, however a modern adaptation of Hans -Georg Gadamer is situated between logos and ethos, this relationship can thus bring “theoretical” love closer to an empathic practical action.
Thus, phronesis is inserted in human actions as phenomena through a hermeneutic examination of opinions, not only to reveal the immutable principles of the causes of this action, but above all to understand that from the mere opinion (the doxa) of the Other, it is possible to help it through empathy to reach knowledge (episteme).
It works as a true action of attraction that leads the Other to reflect. within the hermeneutic circle, it is a matter of allowing a reading of the Other’s preconceptions and paying attention to one’s own, so the actions that result from it can be more empathic, explaining in a phrectic (practical) way: reading what the Other actually wants and think.
This knowledge leads to a new episteme (theoretical conception of new horizons) in which it is possible to think of a joint or at least convergent action, as we have said before, empathy is an originally natural relationship, while disempathy (it is different from the antipathy that is opposed to sympathy) is the rejection of the Other, rather something that has become naturalized, due to hermetic ideologies and preconceptions that are impossible to reread.
The real law of attraction is empathy, since it can reinforce positive, collaborative and socially collective actions, while simple opposition leads to the repulsion of the Other and the creation of non-converging poles of opinion (doxa) and knowledge (episteme). and non-humans, it is not about simple logic, but onto-logic, the logic of Being.
Because this has become so widespread and widespread is simple, a strong non-humanist system of thought developed with the aim of power and enrichment, not only colonizing and xenophobic, but above all non-ontological, unbecoming of being.
The idea of simple rejection may seem natural, however it can lead to another system of domination polarized and structurally authoritarian and thus non-empathetic and non-frenetic, again simple theories that in practice prove to be disastrous.
The truth among men
19
Nov
Gadamer establishes the need for co-reference for the construction 
of truth among men, the philosopher Socrates also said that the truth is not with men, but among men, so every self-referential discourse, even that appropriated by a group no longer has a truth growing and becomes just rhetoric.
Emmanuel Lévinas (1906-1995) developed the aspect of human finitude, as that which gives a provisional totality, in his book Totalidade e Infinito where he discusses the theme of alterity, with a central issue that is not being able to objectify the Other , and it is not about subjectivity, but the possibility of thinking of the Other in its absolute Otherness, in other words, as a totally other.
His book cannot be understood without an analysis focused on Husserl and Heidegger because of its phenomenological option in which it is affiliated, thus developing in this first chapter the category of alternation, while the second will deal with interiority, there appear notions of categories such as: jouissance , economy, home, ownership, work and the feminine is a topic that is so current in the question of gender and reflects the relationship of the Self with the real, enabling the building of a being at the same time separate and open to the outside.
Thus, the third chapter relates to the exteriority that underlies an ethics proposed by Lévinas, how an opening is given or built in Being, through the analysis of the categories of Infinity, Face and Exteriority, they are fundamental for the understanding of the Levinasian universe. .
The problem of human finitude in the aspect of truth can refer to a transcendence different from the idealist proposal, where the imperative category is linked to the concept of subjectivity: “acts in such a way that it is a model for others”, thus it is possible to develop in a personal universe an ethics, while for Lévinas, as it is for Gadamer and it was for Socrates, truth can only exist in a process of dialog with the Other and with the outside, every closure is self-referential.
Thus the “Other remains infinitely transcendent, infinitely strange, but his face, where his epiphany takes place and which appeals to me, breaks with the world that may be common to us and whose potentialities are inscribed in our nature and which we also develop in our existence” (Lévinas, 2008), here an epiphany that is only human.
We approach the Christmas feasts, in the Christian liturgy it is the feast of the divine epiphany, the divine manifestation to the peoples, for many only the feast of the wise men or the baptism of Jesus, but for those who think that the truth is “among men”, the presence of God with Us (Emmanuel) happens from the birth of the God-child.
In the biblical text (Jn 18: 37), when asked by Pilate if Jesus was the king of the Jews, he replied: “You say: I am king. I was born and came into the world for this: to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice”, thus this truth among men is also established for Christian culture as the incarnate word.
Truth and finities´s humans
18
Nov
Not only did Hans Georg Gadamer write about the truth regarding
Human finitude, Emmanuel Lévinas also developed the theme.
In Gadamer, the conclusion about the truth of human experience is the awareness of its finitude, that is, it is knowing your own limits, knowing that you are not lord of time and the future, nowadays that you are not lord of nature and its behavior , the great Enlightenment ideal, and so it has its limits and its plans are insecure.
Thus, in Gadamer, the issue of rhetoric and discourse is not exactly an issue and the question is not really called into question, to be able to question it is necessary to really want to know the truth and it may be outside the limits of the questioner, says in your text:
“To ask, you have to want to know, that is, to know that you don’t know. And in the exchange of questions and answers, of knowing and not knowing, described by Plato as a comedy, one ends up recognizing that for all knowledge and discourse in which one wants to know the content of things, the question takes precedence. A conversation that wants to explain something needs to break these things through with a question” (GADAMER, 2008, p. 474).
Thus, it will be inscribed beyond prejudice, and in the constitution of new horizons, thus understanding the text or a fragment of the past, for Gadamer is to understand it from the issue that should be seen as a process of continuous fusion or broadening of horizons through which the interpreter participates with others in the long and arduous path of meaning, he goes beyond the romantic and historical Enlightenment point of view, which is unacceptable: the symbolic and plural language, characteristic of the narrativity of things.
But what does this mean? what this means for the philosophical hermeneutics that recognizes human finitude, there is no immediate possibility of a coincidence with the real, as every human understanding is linguistically mediated as every language is, in the Aristotelian view, a hermenia (interpreter) originating from the real and this it can be extended to cultures, to peoples, and especially to native peoples, primary sources of discourse and their own language.
As man is finite, only in language can his fundamental dialogical power reach what Western philosophy calls objectivity (proper ideality), but it must go beyond the point of view of the anonymous transcendental subject (idealist subjectivity) to reach the dimension of co. -reference of concrete men, of others.
Concreteness is thus the word that decenters and challenges, places what is said in otherness, and its perspective of tracing a fusion of new horizons does not end.
GADAMER, H.G. Truth and Method I. Fundamental features of a philosophical hermeneutics. 10th ed. Petrópolis, Brazil: Vozes, 2008
The truth and the method
17
Nov
Hans Georg Gadamer is the heir to Heidegger’s ontological
hermeneutics, and he developed philosophical hermeneutics through his masterpiece Truth and Method, first published in 1960.
To develop it, it needed to revolutionize modern Western hermeneutics, through the critique of aesthetics, the theory of historical understanding and the development of the ontology of language, to complement the Heideggerian method of the hermeneutic circle.
The publication of Truth and Method still means, today, a new study in the science of interpretation, which enters an important phase called philosophical hermeneutics, which should help human disciplines to seek, from experience, the understanding of their own being, constituting a a new philosophical attempt to assess understanding itself as a process of knowledge of the ontological status of man, thus founding a new anthropology.
As a philosophy of language, we are in the middle of a linguistic turn, it is not just access to the thing and not the truth, as the correspondence between word and thing only occurs when the thing is known, thus learning (teaching, search , question, answer and the information itself) is only done by thinking that leads things to the world of ideas, and thus words are no more than representation of signs to which meaning is attributed. and begins his study by Humboldt.
It was Wilhelm von Humboldt who used the theory of the human “strength of the spirit” as a source of language production, his thesis addresses an “idealist philosophy that highlights the subject’s participation in the apprehension of the world, but also the metaphysics of individuality, developed by the first time by Leibniz” (GADAMER, 2008, p. 568).
As a way of questioning the history developed in an idealistic way, Gadamer, when criticizing Dilthey, starts from preconceptions, where the historian “submits the otherness of the object to the previous concepts themselves” (Gadamer, 2008, 513), and is thus illustrated in his text: “despite all scientific methodology, he behaves in the same way as anyone who, a child of his time, is uncritically dominated by previous concepts and prejudices of his own time” (Idem).
For a new understanding, as a starting point for a new anthropology, interpreting is not a means of reaching understanding, but entering into the very content of what one wants to assign a meaning in a unitary or unilateral way, but that the “Thing of which speaks the text comes to the speech” (GADAMER, 2008, p. 515).
The text at the end questions linguistics itself, which states that each language does this in its own way, but the author emphasizes another focus looking for a unity between thinking and speaking, this infers from the fact that any written tradition can only be understood, despite the great multiplicity of ways of speaking, identifying an existing unity between language and thought, thought and speech, and in this case what is the conceptuality of all understanding? Conceptual interpretation is the way in which the hermeneutic experience is carried out.
As all understanding is an application of language, the interpreter is always in a continuous development of concepts, language remains alive both in speaking and in understanding the entire process of understanding, interpreting and thinking.
GADAMER, H.G. Truth and Method I. Fundamental features of a philosophical hermeneutics. 10th ed. Petrópolis, Brazil: Vozes, 2008
