Arquivo para a ‘’ Categoria
Authors and dialogues
01
Sep
I read a 1968´s text by Roland Barthes “The death of the author” 
in which he problematizes the concept, proposing it as “the destruction of all voice, of all origin”, he would also say about man today in a troubled moment of concept and events truly and “strangers” who are building “barricades in the texts”, what he said of his contemporaries (Alain Badiou and Jacques Derridá stated that without this concept no object is critically thought), and what he would say today, certainly his thesis I was right, and more so today.
It is known that Foucault gave pins to Barthes, but in Sade, Fourier, Loyola they were returned by inserting the reader in the discursive game and reformulating the question of authorship in another dimension: the body, this object of consumption of so many theories today, only in Barthes it finds some solidity (not liquid).
For Barthes the text is a body, an object of pleasure endowed with the ability to penetrate the reader’s life in fragments, generating coexistences between reader and author, or verbatim: “The pleasure of the text also includes a friendly return from the author.
The returning author is certainly not the one identified by our institutions (history and teaching of literature, philosophy, Church discourse); not even the hero of a biography he is… it is a simple plural of ‘charms’, the place of some tenuous details, the source, however, of vivid romances, a discontinuous song of kindness, in which we read death with all much more certainty than in the epic of a destination; it is not a person (civil, moral), it is a body. ” (BARTHES, 2005).
Barthes proposed in 1977 (Leçon) a distinction of the terms: literature, writing and text, which is particularly interesting conceptually, writing has something that is the manuscript an inscription in which a support, an utensil is supposed, in second place (although it is only of a didactic character) the cognitive sense, by which the installation is designated and the third the “linguistic” forms endowed with meaning that take on an artistic sense.
To problematize the question of “pluridimensionality” proposed by Barthes for literature, he initiates the so-called “genetic criticism”, problematizing the enunciative aspect of the term, aims to reconstruct a history of the text in its nascent state, seeking to find in it the secrets of fabrication of work, and thus it is explained what a text is and its relation to literature.
It is here that dialogue is established through language, without understanding the genetics of a text, there may be solicitude or dialogue, but it would not leave superficiality nor reach that level desirable for many contemporary authors to assume the preconceptions and establish new horizons. .
Barthes makes a valuable reflection on listening, distinguishing it from the physiological act of the mechanic of “listening”, giving it a statute of psychological act that can only be defined by its object and intention, a category so dear to hermeneutics although it is not exactly the same, has similarities.
The author makes a valuable reflection about listening, distinguishing it from the physiological and mechanical act of “listening”, giving it a status of psychological act that is defined only by its object and intention.
Barthes’ phrase is famous: “Any refusal of a language is a death” and an interpreter of this author explains the difference between hearing and listening: “[…] a poetic listening (‘brute’, as Barthes wants) aims not to imprison sounds in a hierarchical way, as in an insipid object of cold analysis ”(El Haouli, 2002), it is this aspect of hierarchical dialogues that dominate many who think they do it but do not do it, just want the passive submission of the Other to the their categories.
BARTHES, R. Sade, Fourier, Loyola, Paris: Seuil, 1971. [tradução: Sade, Fourier, Loyola. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2005.
EL HAOULI, Janete. Demetrio Stratos: em busca da voz-música. Londrina: Gráfica e Editora Midiograf, 2002.
Viruses and aorgic mutations
31
Aug
Certainly or that we are a physical structure and DNA not always like
this, also our relationship with differentiated diseases and viruses, “childhood” diseases such as measles, mumps and rubella become common and a triple vaccine has become mandatory, fighting these are more common for years that in indigenous tribes and a few could still be deadly, because their physical structures are different.
Certainly something like the inorganic world that influences the physical happens, it seems scary, more trivial to say that the physical world preceded its organic year, because its origin occurred in an aortic mutation.
Man did not always exist, attested by scientific studies that homo sapiens appeared in East Africa about 300 thousand years ago (Hubrin, Ben-Ncer, 2017), was the first one back in the eastern Mediterranean 100 thousand years ago (Khan, 2015) and 60,000 years ago it was to the west, it can be passed to China about 80,000 years ago (Sherwell, 2015), therefore due to variations in fighting, physical structure and tolerance to certain events, certainly due to dietary changes , climatic and also variations in the physical structure according to the adaptation to the environment, is also logical, of the primordial structure of man formed from the physical world.
Much research on viruses affecting our previously studied foramen, such as Mollivirus sibericum, classified as a “giant virus” because it can be seen under a simple optical microscope, too, or Pithovirus Sibericum was studied by a French team from the National Center for Scientific Research French, assimilated by an “evolution” and transformation of two viruses and how they historically affect or are the home of nature, because now more and more viruses appear with different characteristics, also an aortic change, so it can also affect a nature, a physical part of the planet and also a history.
In the conflict between reason and understanding, several authors have dealt with the aortic issue from aesthetic to physical analysis, for example, used these themes Schiller and Hölderling and appropriation here, to make inferences about the inorganic (virus is not an organism) and demonstrate that the organic totality (organic holism) is not prevalent over the inorganic (aortic holism), which supposes a regime of ataxia and disorder, as well as systemic holism, the supposed single discourse that invaded sociology, Dilthey’s fashion history ( Gadamer contests it) and the current polarization is nothing but systemic holism, idealism and pre-quantum physics.
By this theory of aorgic holism it can be assumed that not only can the human physical organic structure be modified, but even the structure of the planet, the retraction of activities, among them the thousands of daily trips by airplanes, the non use of Fossil fuels are already changing (for the better) the structure of seas and land, so the very structure of the planet may change, and nature as a whole will react, it may be a surprise, but nature will help us.
References
HUBRIN, Jacques Hublin; Ben-Ncer, Abdelouahed «Scientists discover the oldest Homo sapiens fossils at Jebel Irhoud, Morocco». Nature. 2017, Access: august 20, 2020. Available in: https://phys.org/news/2017-06-scientists-oldest-homo-sapiens-fossils.html .
KHAN, Amina. Discovery of 47 teeth in Chinese cave changes picture of human migration out of Africa. Los Angeles Times, Science. 14 oct. 2015, Acesso em: 20 de Agosto de 2020, Disponível em: https://www.gazetadopovo.com.br/mundo/virus-gigante-pre-historico-da-siberia-sera-acordado-6d2dtw1rz8yudoz53visogbti/SHERWELL, Phillip. Ancient teeth found in China reveal early human migration out of Africa. The Telegraph, 2015. Available in: The telegraph (private access),
Conspiracy of fear or of silence
26
Aug
The pandemic generated anguish and fear in the face of death
and health concerns, the virus has become a fear for all serious people, but not talking about the present and future danger and possibilities of this pandemic can be a “fear conspiracy” yet bigger.
Some authors have already spoken of the “conspiracy of silence” that affected society before the pandemic, Böemer and Adorno are two classic authors who touched on the topic of death, I became aware of this issue on my trip to Portugal, where the topic is treated in a diametrical way opposite to Brazil, and the pandemic brought the theme back.
We have already touched on the historical and sociological roots of the Greek tragedy, particularly in the texts by Nietzsche and Hölderling (see the post), but now the question is whether we speak of the pandemic and cause more fear and panic or we avoid and enter a kind of “conspiracy of silence ”, The one that goes from generation to generation, preventing a child from seeing death, not commenting on someone’s illness and death.
The silence related to death is more profound than dying, which is taken as a natural fact of life, but which should only be considered when the hypothesis does exist, so it does not make sense for a child or a young person, also for me it was a taboo because I imagined that the natural biological cycle: being born, growing, aging and dying was broken, or inter-broken, so death seems more “natural” than dying, the opposite event to becoming, becoming .
The proximity, almost daily with death, continues on the other hand with the convenience of not affecting “everyone”, but it is too inhumane, and this made me rethink once more about dying, previously questioned for children and young people, now I also think about elderly people abandoned their luck and their comorbidities.
The “conspiracy of silence” is that mitigation of dying, trying to remove fear of suffering, degeneration, loneliness and abandonment, the idea is to make man deprived of his “death” as some authors say (Carvalho, 1994), using the man deprived of his death, of his humanity (14,15), with euphemisms or allusions to false situations (he traveled, he is with grandma, etc.) to keep her away from the world of the living and the fatality of dying.
It is cruel to think about dying, but more cruel not to speak and not to mention that many are dying, that it is possible that fewer people will die, and that in addition to prevention, we should all dream of remedies that can separate us from this night of suffering that involves all of us. humanity, to speak of him is to show solidarity.
Adorno Y. Conversando com a criança sobre a morte. Campinas (SP): Psy, 1994; 20 p. 12. Araújo PVR, Vieira MJ. As atitudes do homem frente a morte e o morrer. Texto & Contexto, Florianópolis (SC) 2001 set/dez; 10(3): 101-17.
Böemer MR. A morte e o morrer. São Paulo: Cortêz; 1986.
Carvalho MMMJ, coordenadora. Introdução à Psiconcologia. Campinas (SP): Psy II; 1994.
Truth is ontological, is it logical or is it power
20
Aug
The sophists said that man is the measure of things (Protagoras),
not to affirm any ontological principle, only to reaffirm the current status quo that ultimately is power, they used the art of persuasion (Gorgias) for this and lastly they affirmed the convenience of the strongest (Trasímaco), almost all appear in the dialogues of Plato, through the dialogues of Socrates) and whose concern was to contest them to affirm the democracy of the polis.
Then we lived for several centuries organizing the laws until the transition from the Greek city-state to the post-middle age towns, where liberalism will grow until it becomes the modern state, creating the concept of nation and the social contract that governs a specific people .
For the modern epistemological view, truth is linked to the object (the thing itself) and this makes it relative, since it is subject to space, time and categories, this concept comes from Aristotle, but it was on him that the thought of middle ages were divided between nominalists and realists, but for both and also for Descartes who will establish the res-extensive (matter), the res-cogitans (thinking thing) and the divine res (perfect, infinite thinking thing).
It is Kant who makes the connection of the thinking thing about the object becoming relative, since such truth is to the knowing subject having then a subjective face, proper to the subject, for him the “thing in itself” (the object) becomes “The thing in me” (subject to subjectivity).
This means that before the object, the conscience develops the work in the production of the truth according to the space in which that object is occupying, the time that it is situated and in which category it fits, then it is a matter of categorizing and organizing the objects around concepts.
It is not difficult to understand that this creates a logical structure that will initially create a positivist logic and later a logical empiricism, or a neologicism, in both currents any metaphysical aspect is denied, so logic is no longer a function of an argumentative construction , but from a calculation of propositions that follows a logical structure, ultimately it is also what justifies power and its machinations.
We return to the sophist narratives, the idea that it is the power that says what is true, so it is a matter of conquering it many times in a logic in which the ends justify the means, thus corruption is justified, the absence of virtues morals and even death.
The ontological truth seemed to have succumbed, but it was hermeneutics and phenomenology that brought modern ontology back to its roots, Franz Brentano will use a subcategory of the ontological concept of consciousness, by elevating intentionality to a higher category and making it a “mental phenomenon” .
Husserl, a student of Brentano, will recreate the intentionality and remove it from the psychological aspect still with an empiric remnant, and will say that it only makes sense to call consciousness, the “awareness of something”, this means that there is no awareness of the thing-in- itself, but the intentionality in the awareness of something.
Intentionality distinguishes property from mental phenomenon: being necessarily directed towards an object, whether real or imaginary. It is in this sense, and in Husserl’s phenomenology, that this term is used in contemporary philosophy, also by Heidegger, but which will recover and transform the idea of Being.
However, it is necessary to remember that Heidegger in My Way in Phenomenology, was due to the reading in 1907 of Brentano’s dissertation written in 1862: “The multiple meaning of being in Aristotle” (Brentano, 1862) and this meant a resumption of the path of his master Edmund Husserl.
Heidegger, unlike Brentano, denies the fundamental characterization of being as a substance, since, Brentano was still linked to the medieval interpretive tradition, disregarding the dimension of the role in language, for this reason he will properly say that his Dasein is a “new question” .
The true-being (the ontological truth) as being-discoverer [Wahrsein (Wahrheit) besagt entdeckend-sein] is the way in which aletheia appears, it is what Heidegger calls unveiling, taking it literally (but translated that is already an interpretation):
“The statement is true means: it discovers the being in itself. He enunciates, indicates, “lets see” (apophansis) the being in his being and being discovered. The true-being (truth) of the statement must be understood in the sense of being-discoverer. ” (HEIDEGGER, 2009, p. 289)
HEIDEGGER, M. (2009) Ser e Tempo (Being and Time). 4ª ed. Trad. Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback. (Brazilian edition) Petrópolis: São Paulo.
The pandemic and Areté
17
Aug
Areté was for the Greeks a set of virtues that should be exercised
to avoid an even greater crisis in Greek democracy.
Although it is linked to moral virtue, in the Greek sense, of course, two characteristics of areté are necessary at this time of the pandemic: prudence and perfect adaptation.
The conditions of the pandemic will require everyone to adapt, the numbers of infected and dead evolve in a stable curve, but in absolute numbers it means a daily increase in the thousands of deaths, and millions of infected, care must be taken and it means an adaptation the current situation, a new uncertain uncertainty will come, what we are experiencing now is an adaptation to an exceptional situation.
Prudence must be in our mind, it is a situation of limitations, but if taken seriously it makes everyday life less tense, health and political authorities must also take care when adopting vaccines, in addition to health there are political issues and economic interests involved, and again health should take priority, every precaution in adopting the vaccine will be necessary.
The great reason that we have difficulties in complying with rules, and also having sensitivity and respect when complying with them, is that virtues are not in fashion, fashion is full freedom, and it is never possible because of social laws and rules of good coexistence, in a period of a completely exceptional state requires from everyone even more disciplined attitudes, hygiene, social distance and delicacies.
Solidarity is another value that must return to fashion because many people needed our understanding in order to have their survival guaranteed, there is no lack of campaigns and attitudes it is true, but it will be necessary an even greater effort so that everyone really has the minimum dignity to live .
The Greeks who built the first model of polis, can help us to correct values that contemporary culture has corrupted, that is why, throughout the past week we have dealt with this topic, prudence and adaptation require effort so that the drama of the pandemic is not a scourge even
The Lady of God and Greek tragedy
14
Aug
The Greek tragedy Oedipus Rei was analyzed by the poet Hölderlin,
where he uses the term aorgic for the search that Oedipus does to know that it is, since it was donated to a pastor by father Laius to raise him, to avoid the tragedy predicted by the oracle Delphi, and to complete the tragedy Oedipus ends up marrying his own mother.
The term aorgic here is used to understand the corruption of human nature, and it can have a new meaning with each new human tragedy, it is Hölderlin’s sense when saying that “where there is fear there is salvation”, we must fear not only the pandemic that has already it is a disaster, but what can come from inhuman and agonizing after this tragedy.
There is no lack of apocalyptics, however the interesting thing would be to think beyond the tragedy and invert the role of Jocasta for a mother who defends and wants her children safe and sound, and so in a human reinvention we would look not at Eve of human creation, but at Mary who gave birth to the divine son.
It is not only religious prejudice that deviates from this deep sense of human fertility and motherhood, it is the relevance of the role of women in the background, Hölderlin’s analysis involves the paradoxes that commonly constitute the tragic, such as the human and the divine, and the poetic task of modernity as a possible task for any and all poetry, so its cultural plan cannot eliminate the tragic, but must also include the divine.
It is this misogyny of the human to the divine that denies any and all roles of women, Mary should be only a religious theme, but also the divine linked to the tragic, Pietá although remembered and revisited by so many authors, hides the role of the desolate mother before the a faint son, also Salvador Dali in his painting Christus Hypercubus places a female figure at the foot of the four-dimensional Christus, inspired by his wife.
Christians are ignored by the biblical passage of the evangelist Luke (Lk 1,43): “How can I deserve that the mother of my Lord comes to visit me”, and the Lord in this case is not only the divine-human son who will be born of Mary , but also the Lord God of Mary and Isabella, who says this “full of the Holy Spirit” (Lk 1,41), so the relationship is Trinitarian and aorgic, after all the Christmas event is wrapped up in the mystery of the laws of the universe that over it acted.
In the midst of the pandemic it would be extraordinary if the same mother of Pietá was with humanity in her lap (Matris in gremio) and could, in a tragic and divine inspiration, help the humanity that faints and sees an increasingly darker future ahead, the mysteries of Medjugorje and Garabandal (mysterious appearances) may not only be children’s fantasies (today all adults), but the divine revelation about the human tragic, if only it is true, where there is fear, there is salvation.
Cultural differences of the pre-Socratic and the modern
05
Aug
It was Karl Popper who drew attention to the origin of modern Enlightenment,
so it is not possible to criticize contemporary Enlightenment idealism and empiricism without an attentive re-reading of the history of Western thought.
First because it is the history of thought, much of the civilizing night is in the crisis of thought, warns Morin, and also Marx when making the Critique in Theses on Feuerbach (1845) actually pointed to the idealism present in modern Christianity, but the root Jewish-Christian is another, the division occurs in two points of history the liberation by the Maccabees (167 BC – 37 BC) and the incursions of the apostle Paul.
Returning to the pre-Socratic Enlightenment, the root of Western thought, Popper made a foray into the three greatest philosophers of this period Xenophanes, Parmenides and Heraclitus: “the greatest and most inventive period in Greek philosophy”. The author notes that the “adventure of Greek critical rationalism”, and identifies a principle of crisis already in Aristotle who after developing his episteme: “he killed critical science, to which he himself made a major contribution.”
As Popper develops “it was this conception of demonstrable knowledge, presented by Aristotle, that eclipsed the critical attitude developed by the pre-Socratics, and thus all the modern inheritance of this demonstrable“ logic ”, although admitting Popper’s development as this enlightenment having ontological (and not logical) roots, the famous maxim of Parmenides: “being is and non-being is not”, with no third hypothesis besides dual logic and an included third, besides the classic excluded third, there is no third hypothesis.
Only in the 20th century with quantum physics formulating the already proven hypothesis of a third state of matter called “tunneling”, and Barsarab Nicolescu’s proposal for the third included, can one be thinking about a being and not be simultaneous, in the Trinitarian god there is also a third possibility.
Only in the 20th century with quantum physics formulating the already proven hypothesis of a third state of matter called “tunneling”, and Barsarab Nicolescu’s proposal for the third included, can one be thinking about a being and not be simultaneous.
It is not a question of affirming the paradox of the existence of something and its contrary, there would be an evident reciprocal annulment, there would be no possibility of predictions and the scientific approach of the world would be collapsed, which Quantum Physics admits, and Barsarab is based on this. is that there are countless immutable connections on which to experiment or interpret results, it is both Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle” and Popper’s “falsifiability” method.
It does not abolish the logic of Yes and No by Parmenides and Aristotle, it only admits a third hypothesis, the philosophical, social and political consequences are evident, the scientific is what was formulated as transdisciplinarity, while we are confining the third to a specialized disciplinary theory hypothesis seems unfounded or non-existent, if it looks from another angle it appears.
Edgar Morin’s complex thinking goes in the same direction, but let’s leave that for the next post.
POPPER, K. The world of Parmenides: pre-Socratic enlightenment. Portuguese translation: Roberto Leal Ferreira. BR-SP: UNESP, 2014.
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The eschatology of goodness
24
Jul
Just as any worldview has some allegory for the beginning and end, in the case
of the Christian Genesis and Heaven and Hell, and others propose that we are born of plants or animals, or that we come back to life through reincarnation, the good has its eschatology, while evil is a symbolic “structure”.
It is not just the definition of religious views, also in the classical philosophy Plato in the Republic and Aristotle in Ethics, Nicomachus addressed the issue and we have already made some posts here, but it was Democritus who defined our current situation more closely, saying that good depends of man’s inner desire, the good man not only practices good, but always desires it.
So it is in human history too, without historical determinism or romanticism, we walk for good if we exercise from within each man, but socially practicing what the Greeks called “virtue”, but we also have the vicious cycle of evil.
The vicious cycle of evil leads to a “crisis” of good, symbolic evil can be structured in such a way that a given social structure can lead to an end, it can be the end of an era that is very tragic, but it can also lead to a serious civilizing crisis if there is no way out.
Humanity has always found ways out, this gives hope, but tragedies are part of the change, and the severity of the tragedy depends on the resilience of good, although it is fragile that can indicate the new path, a way out for earthly citizenship, for the future human civilizing.
Biblical reading indicates three metaphors for the eschatology of goodness, and compares the “kingdom of heaven” (Mt 13, 24-43) with the planting of the growing tares and wheat that should only be harvested and separated from the eschatological end. mal (the chaff), the second parable the mustard seed, the smallest of the seeds, which gives a beautiful and leafy tree where “the birds come to make their nests”, and the third is a bread recipe, a woman mixes three portions of flour.
The third “parable” the woman mixes three portions of flour, one part should only be fermented, those would be those that have the virtue of good and it should be practiced in order to produce good fermentation in the rest of the dough, the other two portions, then yeast is good.
Civilizing evil, beyond the symbolic
21
Jul
We have already commented in a post on “Symbolic Evil”, a work by Paul Ricoeur
that should be read together with “Evil: a challenge to philosophy and theology and“, symbolic evil exists and can become structural, but in a good reading of philosophy means becoming a personal or social addiction, as well as virtue.
Philosopher Aristotle says that virtue is acquired through habit, practiced again and again, until it becomes a natural or social attitude if many people practice it, when social and human values are confused, evil spreads, and thus a society or civilization falls into disrepair.
To return to the virtues is to return to our roots as human beings, that is why it is not a question of Manichaeism, a perennial struggle between good and evil, but if symbolic evil is installed, we must return to our deepest root as human beings, that almost all contemporary philosophy recognizes a civilization malaise, in psychology Freud (Freud, 1969) and Jung (JUNG, 1988), even contemporaries like Sloterdijk and Byung Chull Han, almost everyone also in this pandemic warns of attitudes in a civilization crisis.
In a quick reading of Freud, with the possibility of being somewhat superficial, the malaise of civilization is equal to that of culture, says the author that there is a dichotomy between the instinctual impulses and civilization, that is, individuals and society, thus the good of civilization the individual manifests in drives and experiences a malaise.
Jung, on the other hand, points to the massification of Western man, crushed by the State, and to the defense that each one seeks through their own personality or religious attitude.
Morin’s work since the 70’s is all linked to the idea of a new humanism, and this specific text on the subject, he deepens what he considers an ethics necessary for this return to humanism, his work essentially points to the lost foundations, the institution of the complex method and a vision of planetary citizenship, in this text about the personal responsibility of each one.
FREUD, S. O mal-Estar na civilização (Edição Standard Brasileira das Obras Psicológicas Completas de Sigmund Freud, Vol. 21). Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1996.
JUNG, C.G. Presente e futuro. Petrópolis, Vozes, 1988 (tradução Márcia Cavalcanti).
MORIN, E. “A ética do sujeito responsável”. In: Ética, solidariedade e complexidade. São Paulo, Palas Athena, 1998.
The reason and the evil
16
Jul
To demonstrate two truths, Agostinho de Hipona wrote a few pages in his book
“On Free Will”, practically the whole book II (from chapters 3 to 17), where we concluded all the goods processed by God, including the free- agency, and the question is welcome must be given to man.
Both Augustine (De Trinitate) and Boethius (Opuscula) defend the cooperation between faith and reason, but it will be in the High Middle Ages that Tomás de Aquino and also Duns Scotto, in different variations (realist and nominalist) defender that the use of reason is complementary of faith.
While Tomás de Aquino defends a distinction between Being and essence, Scotus will elaborate a law of analogy, which states that we cannot conceive or that it is something that does not exist, as a thing that exists (is) that it is (qui est).
What is important in both Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotto is a complementarity between faith and reason, as an idea that Descartes, Kant, Leibniz and Hobbes are heirs of them being too simplistic, or that they will be replaced by cases of faith, by rational arguments , or fact that is important, must be studied from the ontological aspects.
Thus, the ontological argument was corrected by Franz Brentano, incorrectly called a neo-Thomist, as only one subcategory “went up” to “being” which is consciousness, a hermeneutics and the phenomenology that is taken up from it, and remains in Husserl, Heidegger and Gadamer is an ontological philosophy, having in common a metaphysical question of Being.
Hanna Arendt and Paul Ricoeur, who come from these changes, return to the question of “evil”, but as questions of reason and all modern literature is analyzed (Descartes, Kant and Hegel).
