Arquivo para a ‘’ Categoria
Anger and social issues
16
Feb
One of the strongest arguments for anger is the social issue, before economic, now
cultural and ethnic.
The book by the American John Steinbeck, caused a great malaise in society, was cited with a certain reverence when he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962 although the book is from 1929, the book was well received in Soviet Eastern Europe at the time and in the Scandinavian countries.
At the time, the book was burned in public squares and banned from schools, it was the beginning of the cold war and McCarthyism (persecution of communists in the USA), although the author never had an affiliation.
The book begins with Tom Joad, the central character of the book, asking for a ride after 7 years in prison which was his sentence for having murdered someone as a result of a bar fight, even though it was in his self-defense he ended up being declared guilty.
He finds nothing in his old house and ends up discovering that they had sold all the belongings and going to Uncle John’s house and getting there he realizes that everyone is ready to leave and discovers that the big companies and farms are closed and the farmers are leaving to California to look for work.
It is the period of the great American depression, and social issues are emerging, the book shows the conditions of work and exploration in the fields of fruit plantations in California, Steinbeck is from the Salinas region, where the novel takes place, which although fiction has a connection with the region.
The question is how far can the limits of this type of revolt go, is it just violence and ideological struggles when these conditions are present, what are the alternatives to the problems, is it likely that we will enter a new recession, in addition to the risk of war, the book by Steinbeck gives us a similar scenario (recession and war) and may point us not to a return to the past, but to a new possibility for the dark future that awaits us.
Steibeck, John. (1939). The grapes of wrath. First edition: New York Viking, 1939.
The Lights of Enlightenment
31
Jan
We still live under the aegis of the Enlightenment, the strong movement of 18th century
Europe, its principles seemed to lead to a perfect society speaking of freedom and equality among human beings, wishing to abolish both the powers of realization and the influence of Christian religiosity, Voltaire and Diderot were the most radical thinkers, but you can’t help but feel the influences of Immanuel Kant, Adam Smith, David Hume and Montesquieu.
Ernest Cassirer makes one of the important treatises on the Enlightenment, quotes Diderot: “The Author of nature, who will not reward me for having been a man of spirit, will not condemn me to eternal punishment for having been a fool” (apud Cassirer, 1992, p. 224), but the author corrects both the aspect of tolerance, it is necessary to remember the wars between Lutherans and Catholics involving different reigns and the peace of Westphalia, and the aspect now of a free religiosity that “is no longer a gift of a supernatural power, of divine grace; it must spring from the action itself and receive its essential determinations from the action” (Cassirer, p. 225).
The idea also developed by Cassirer of a “pure” intellectualism, on the one hand puts a primacy of thought over pure theoretical speculation and on the other hand seeks to found a religion “in the pure limits of simple reason”, of course without faith, without the mystery (which is part of nature) is no longer religion.
Cartesian insufficiency and reductionism, a strong argument of Cassirer to the Enlightenment, made several philosophers seek roots in Eastern philosophy, Cassirer reminds Leibniz that he had already “quoted Chinese civilization” and in the Persian Letters, Montesquieu makes a comparison between East and West, but it will be Schopenhauer (Upanishad) and Nietzsche (Zaratrusta) who, under these eastern influences, will break with Enlightenment philosophy.
Leibniz is not directly contested, but his disciple Wilhelm Wolff, who “celebrates Confucius as a prophet of great moral purity and places him on a par with Christ” (Cassirer, p.226), will be the target of Voltaire’s irony in his famous “Candido, or optimism” (1759), criticizes the idea of “the best of all possible worlds”.
In the economic aspect, it was important to overcome the philosophy of mercantilism and develop liberal theory (especially Ada, m Smith) on the concept of the economy of nations, but liberalism will develop more broadly with the idea of financial capital by David Ricardo (1772-1823).
The civilizational crisis that we pointed out in last week’s posts (and previous ones, of course), has its roots in the Enlightenment and its ideas of state, religion and freedom, but as Cassirer points out, it is important to “reject the literal meaning of the Bible every time it is mentioned. finds expressed the obligation of an act that contradicts the elementary principles of morality” (p. 228), but in his Treatise on Tolerance (1763), a law of the intellectual world is traced “that reason only exists and subsists if it is recreated day after day” (p. 229).
Cassirer’s development however is that “one cannot decide on their point value apart from their moral efficacy. This is Lessing’s meaning of the apologue of the ring: the ultimate and profound truth of religion is only proved from within” (p. 230).
For these philosophers, only objectivity (the relationship with the external object) is knowledge, and this is achieved in a “transcendence” of the subject in relation to the object, thus there is no sense or value in a moral asceticism, thus for them religion is religion. natural, although they do not have a good relationship with nature.
CASSIRER, Ernest. (1992) A filosofia do Iluminismo (The Philosophy of the Enlightenment). Trans. Alvaro Cabral. Brazil, Campinas, SP: Editora da Unicamp.
The reduction of transcendence to subjectivity
17
Jan
The idea of an absolutizing and unique thought has pursued humanity since classical
antiquity, the One will appear in almost all texts, but an almost hidden concept coming from Socrates (clearly through “All philosophy is just a footnote to Plato and Aristotle” phrase by Alfred Whitehead, in fact one could extend it to Socrates, in fact Dalrymple himself does not include Aristotle (see p. 67).
However, in addition to the problem of translation, few know Greek, and every translation is a betrayal, because we know that language is the expression of Being, and even for science we know that there is no formal truth and we have already posted using Darlymple’s texts , that there are two forms of relativism: the abstract and the empirical, so just to enter a new text, we depend on thought, although abstract dichotomies are also found in it, such as that of formal logic that is valid for mathematics and empirical logic that is valid for science of nature in general and with certain restrictions for social ones as well.
This way we can enter the text of Slavoj Zizek on “The year we think dangerously”, he is talking about 2011 both in the various occupation movements (in Europe in Wall Street) and in the Arab spring, which afterwards the absolutizing thoughts tried to reduce to misunderstandings and ironies, but there was something new and uncomfortable in those movements, and this introduces what Zizek thinks.
And without a doubt a reading more to the left than Dalrymple, but what is interesting is both the search for new paths, the fact that we return to Byzantine socialism and pre-colonial neoliberalism indicates that we are going in circles, and some thinkers look for the new in the midst to populism and polarization.
Zizek’s first important clarification to avoid footnote readings is a quote he makes from Hegel: “if reality does not correspond to the concept, worse for reality” (Zizek, 2012, p. 10), to say that all left-wing thought with Hegelian affiliation, and this includes the orthodox Marxists, are more attached to the theory of thinking, and although they wish to be heirs only to Aristotle who would be more “realistic”, there is also in Plato the idea of the sensible world separated from the world of ideas, but Careful, the eidos of antiquity has little or nothing to do with Kantian idealism, in a word eidos in Greek is image.
The divergence between Plato and Aristotle is in the representation of the real: in Plato the extromission (the image projected into us and which converges to the intelligible world) while in Aristotle coffee the intrusion, where the idea comes from the “world of contingent phenomena” and that emit copies of themselves into our interior, and are interpreted by an innate or acquired knowledge.
Differing from this original conception of Kantian principles, he points out his divergence with Frederic Jameson, and states that in Marx’s thought both the objective and subjective dimensions, not admitting the objective dimensions as ideological, “a description devoid of any subjective involvement” ( pg. 10), but both are not subject to any form of transcendence, what Zizek discusses with Kant and about what he considers “the public space of ‘world civil society’ designates the paradox of universal singularity, of a singular subject who, in a kind of short-[circuit, he bypasses the mediation of the particular and participates directly in the Universal” (pg 11), just as Kant and Hegel do not break away from the objectivity/subjectivity dichotomy to reach a truly universal transcendence.
The absence of an ascesis that reduces man to the merely human, or to use an “too human” philosophical expression, a book by Nietzsche that abandons transcendence, to try later to find it again in the eastern philosophy of Zarathustra, a path taken by many previous contemporary philosophers to the new types of transcendence that we have already mentioned from Theodore Dalrymple.
The analysis of 2011 and its revolts are important for the analysis that he makes of Hard and Negri “Crowd” and the analysis that he makes of the utopias of 2011 are important, if not the only ones, of dreams postponed, since the Prague spring, the revolts of Paris, the movements of the hippies and opposition to the Vietnam War in 1968, if the political consequences were not what was expected, they moved the cultural world for years, and we believe they can also move the scarce political ideas and universal theories about peace between peoples, with the springs of 2011, there is a lack of models of real emancipation, and realism has to do with ideas (eidos) and they are not just “practical” options because they themselves have their theoretical ideals, although rarely examined, Zizek does.
The return to the Greek Eidos, which are what we produce as images, whether from the inside to the outside (extromission) or from the outside to the inside (intromission), is important to review the ideas of our time, where did it get lost or perhaps find the treasure wanted.
ZIZEK, Slavoj (2012). O ano que sonhamos perigosamente (The Year We Dreamed Dangerously), trans. Rogerio Bettoni. Brazil, São Paulo: Boitempo.
Demographic concerns or cultural crisis
11
Jan
Chapter 2 of Dalrymple’s book analyzes the demographic question in Europe,
the Europeans of origin are aging, while Africans and Muslims who have more children grow and also the question of religious and cultural background appears, late rates of 2004 (the book is from 2010 in the original) data are, of average growth:’
“Ireland (1.99), France (1.90), Norway (1.91), Sweden (1.75), United Kingdom (1.74), Netherlands (1.73), Germany (1.37), Italy (1.33), Spain (1.32), Greece (1.29)” (DALRYMPLE, 2016, p. 28)”, considering that each couple should have two children to replace the population, not positive growth but negative.
After doing an analysis on economic power and population growth, citing as examples Singapore and Hong Kong successful economies with small populations, Denmark to cite a European example and then compares with Great Britain that colonized them, and Nigeria with a large population and low development rates despite oil, but economic analysis is not its forte.
Then he analyzes the Muslim question, which is growing throughout Europe, but at the same time becoming secularized, although there are small groups of radical groups, which is no different in this respect from Christians, see the case of Ireland, just for example, after a long analysis of the woman question, from fundamentalism he finally lands on the philosophical question and the role of relativism.
However, it will focus on logicians, and in a certain nostalgia for the period of Descartes’ Reason, since this specific type of rationalism is already practically outdated and already in Kant, long before our period of certain new philosophical scarcity (let’s explore Sloterdijk and Zizek), had already written the “Critica da Razão Pure”, his golden work.
However, the initial analysis of relativism is good, the author wrote: “there are two origins of relativism: abstract and empirical” (p. 67), the author makes a reverse criticism since empiricism is a consequence of rationalism, dreams of returns to its purity (Return, Descartes, we need you, a subitem), and in the field of abstractionism it does not criticize logicism, among its citations are Alfred N. Whitehead (from Principia Mathematica, written together with Bertrand Russerl, another logician also present in your quotes.
However, he writes at the outset, a sentence by Whitehead according to which all Western philosophy is nothing but footnotes to Plato’s philosophy, but this is also valid for logicism, another truth also said also said
by Whitehead is “there are no whole truths: all truths are half truths”, however, logicism is based on the binary False and True.
If empiricism did not fully respond to pure rationalism, neither did abstractionism, and it can be said that pure abstractionism is exactly the logicist, since neologicism, for example by Kurt Gödel, admits its logical contradiction, expressed in its paradox that every axiomatic system (formal logic) is either complete or consistent, it cannot be both at the same time.
However, there are profound things in his analysis of rationalism, for example, when quoting Thomas Khun and stating that science had “epistemological” feet of clay, Kuhn appealed to the fact “to those intellectuals who felt vaguely guilty for not understanding anything about science …. , but on a deeper level he appealed to those intellectuals who deprecated the West in general, and Europe in particular, as the originator of science”…. And so: “The more meticulous the self-deprecation, the more generous, open and progressive a person would be” (p. 71) and this is even among those who idolize science.
So it is not the author’s conclusion, but ours, he tries to rebuild this moral field with “dissemination of doubt”, “the multiculturalism of everyday life” and the “choice of the greater good”, and whose apex is a love of freedom (yes it is important, but it has no moral asceticism in it), citing Shelley’s empirio-anarchism by Walter Bagehot in Estimations in Criticism: “the love of liberty is peculiarly natural to the mere impulsive mind [such as his]. He bristles at the idea of a law; enjoys imagining that he doesn’t need it [….] The government seems absurd to him – a demon…” (Dalrymple, 2016, p. 81).
It is a youthful criticism of the state, and does not enter into the discussion of a strong, mediating or minimal state, but it is right to say at the end of chapter 5: this was exceptional in Shelley’s time (passage from the 16th century to the 17th century ) in which the thoughts of our time seem to be trapped (according to Dalrymple, almost a norm).
Dalrymple, Theodore (2016). A nova síndrome de Vicky: porque os intelectuais europeus se rendem ao barbarismo. Transl. Maurício G. Righi. Brazil, São Paulo: É realizações, original english 2010.
Among the corrupt, thieves and the blind
15
Nov
Blindness is not the privilege of a few, but birth blindness would
be something almost incurable because the cognitive apparatus is not prepared to see, corruption is practically an addiction, a compulsion and difficult to reverse as a character, and finally, theft is a compulsion not only moved by hunger, but mainly by the desire of usurpation and envy of many.
There are in the Bible three rare and personal cases in which there is a complete reversal of these values, this to show the radicalism and strength of faith on paradigmatic cases, the rich and runt Zacchaeus who needs to climb a tree to see Jesus has a radical change of life , the man born blind is healed and the thief crucified next to Jesus, who tradition has called Dimas, is not only redeemed but is invited to go to paradise, said from the mouth of Jesus: “he will still be with me today”.
These examples are to understand why life and society require change and conversion not only in large social plans, but in the individual attitude, however small it may be of each person, a moral and personal conversion is necessary to reverse a situation of obscurity.
In Brazil, it’s Republic Day, and the republican spirit means treating it with the “res” public thing, and Plato’s classic work brings some important thoughts, which need to be updated, of course (photo Praça da República, São Paulo, Brazil)
An interesting universal thought in Plato’s work is: “and each of us does not seek to obtain a certain particular benefit not common to all”, in another passage: “the evil that is not discovered becomes worse still, while, when discovered and punished, the bestial element calms down and softens…”, in short, these are republican norms that must be respected.
Plato, who believed that the soul was immortal, not in the Christian sense, states that it is “capable of enduring all evils, as well as all good, we will always keep to the ascending road, and in any case we will practice justice and wisdom.” ”, which are essential.
Plato Republic. (Wikipedia).
Live like it’s the last day
02
Nov
Days of anguish and euphoria in which one broods over the past
and rambles on about the future, but the day of the dead is for thinking that we have an end to earthly life and we must live each day as the last, and at the same time we must think what exists on the other side, even if there is nothing, what legacy we leave, the goods will only serve for disputes, the gestures and attitudes that will remain.
The prudent man always thinks that there may be a moment of departure and tries to leave the house in order, to weigh less on his neighbors and the people he passed by, he left a message of love and hope.
What we do in secret will be revealed in the light of day, so the search for justice could not be far from looking for the light, it could not be far from moral and cultural values that promote peace and the good of humanity.
There is a little thought value that is the ability to forgive and start over, many injustices that occur are personal, but we must take a step forward and ask and wish well for these people too, in short, forgive those who will never be able to ask for forgiveness, see the previous post, there is a pride in these people and this will always lead them to error.
We also have flaws and mistakes and we must be able to recognize and go through different paths and if we have wronged someone to have the courage to heal and repair that mistake, a simple sincere request for forgiveness is a balm in the lives of many “resentful” people.
Although he abandoned his Lutheran origins, Nietzsche wrote about a great Christian, opposing resentment to oblivion, in his book Genealogy of Morals, he saw the resentful type as the one who does not channel his hatred outside, but in himself, building a kind of imaginary revenge, that is, self-destructive.
There is a quote attributed to Shakespeare: “holding a resentment is like taking a poison and waiting for the other to die”, and it is a type of feeling that prevents us from living the present moment fully.
Diversity and adversity
27
Oct
A society that lives in balance and serenity is one that admits
diversity, see that adversity is precisely the denial of diversity, where differences can coexist.
It is not possible for the civilizing process and the public sphere to develop without diversity being accepted, harmonized in which all differences are respected, says Byung Chul Han: “Respect is the foundation of the public sphere. Where it disappears, it crumbles. The decadence of the public sphere and the growing lack of respect are conditioned.” Byung Chul Han No swarm” (Han, 2018, p. 12), which by the way is a reasoned and balanced critique of digital media.
Adversity is even worse when it comes from the powers that be, because having authority they should precisely oppose the hostile and hateful climate between differences, this does not mean that exactly they should curb exaggerations and abuses that powers have no legitimacy to have.
The public sphere has the right spaces and forums where those who feel that abuses may be committing, it is true, there are cases in which the desire to react is violence, one can enter a vicious circle in which it is often possible not to find the return, behold the wars.
So the ad-diversity school is the choice of conflict, hatred, dispute and death.
The greatest desire of sincere religion cannot be other than that space where there is peace, justice, harmony and respect for differences, difference is part of nature and in it human nature, one of the mistakes is not to be within the ecosystem , read Nature of Nature, we already made a post about this.
Jesus’ anguish when he saw the religious divided was greater than seeing his countrymen divided by the Roman Empire, greater than the theft and exploitation of the humble, we will come back to this tomorrow.
Diversity is a wealth for plurality, for dialogue, hatred and revenge are ad-diversity, the non-acceptance of what is not a mirror, the lack of respect and empathy.
The real nuclear danger
17
Oct
While Russia threatens Ukraine’s entry into NATO would lead
to a third war, the rhetoric of Western countries is that Russia’s use of “tactical” nuclear weapons would be war, so the war between these two countries indicates the possibility of a war. world confrontation that would be catastrophic.
It is difficult to find breaches in this scenario for any peace agreement, the escalation of the war is ascending and even public opinion is divided, as in the scenario before the 2nd. War.
North Korea has already tested its cruise missiles, China, in the view of Japan, would reach its territory, China censored its internet (there is a control of the nationalized electronic network) and India presented its submarine capable of launching nuclear missiles, Russia already has in time.
The idea of a shield in the form of a mosaic (several countries would help Ukraine to defend its airspace), is an attempt to respond to Russia’s demonstration of its ability to reach not only strategic points in enemy territory, but also tested a response to NATO.
Turkey wants to mediate a deal and Iran continues to send its drones to Russia which has improved its attack capability, also the powerful Himars missiles are now being reached by the Russian anti-aircraft battery.
It is little remembered in the literature, but we have more than 400 nuclear plants, each bombed one is a bomb, and the largest plant in Europe, Zaporizhia (photo before the war) is in the middle of the conflict, the presence of troops there is a possible scenario of a catastrophe that would hit the whole of Europe.
It is difficult to talk about peace, but it must be thought of within a civilizing process that is capable of reversing the tendency to hate, intolerance and peaceful coexistence between different opinions, the social and world scenario is increasingly polarized and the idea of submitting the other by force grows.
Crime, punishment and regret
05
Oct
The novel Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky is
considered one of the great novels of universal literature, it tells the story of a character who plans the death of an old loan shark, and when he comes across her sister, he ends up killing her too, he will live a drama of conscience.
The character Raskolnikov, the police arrest an innocent man who ends up confessing because of the pressure he suffered, the character will confess the crime after suffering a huge influence from Sonia, who shares with him the description of the resurrection of Lazarus, contained in the New Testament.
The book was launched in 1866, but it was published in excerpts before in a literary magazine, in eleven chapters of the Russian Messenger, it also deals with socialist themes, but in a deep and special way the question of conscience.
The idea that crimes are justified on the basis of social issues, and evidently a loan shark is not a pleasant figure, but death and war more broadly is deplorable.
The question of this individual conscience is not only of the author’s period, who lived for a few years even in Siberia during the period of the tsars,
Several stories develop in parallel, among them Raskolnikov’s novel, among them Sonia’s romance with the protagonist, daughter of a civil servant, and to whom he donated the money, individual and social conscience are widely discussed in this novel.
Repentance is an interior cure, the greatest of all that we can have in life, it heals and even “resurrects” people who die after committing serious acts and not just murder, every act of hatred and lovelessness is a thesis a small act. of “death” of the other.
Dostoevsky’s novel is of great importance for the present day, when death, theft and the various deaths seem justifiable and are not.
Dostoievsky, F.M. (1866) CRIME AND PUNISHMENTS, Transl. Constance Garnett. (Planet pdf)
Wisdom and training
27
Sep
The most beautiful image that Plato made of Socrates about
philosophy was not the ordering of knowledge, the epitheme that is also necessary, through which the sophists were fought, but the image that exists in his book Symposium, the one with which we have access to philosophy and knowledge of the Supreme Good and in it “the” wisdom.
The one that says that a philosopher is not moved only by a “know-how” as the utilitarian world wants, the presence of Socrates by the “testimony” of Alcibiades, with an appearance without any compatibility with the Beauty of classical Greece, and which imposed to whom he was questioned a change of attitude, not a passive receiver of ideas.
Questions and interrogation are no less important than putting oneself actively in front of oneself and the world, there is a desire to take the lead and to respond to really important questions.
As we read in Theaetetus, Socrates is defined as atopos, with “no-place”, or even “weird”, as one who creates aporias, that is, he does not solve things, he only raises questions, he does not then help the harmony of the “polis”. ” or the cosmos.
What kind of wisdom is this then, “not knowing” is very significant for Socrates, he is a scathing critique of the pretension of the known, after all their knowledge is not the result of conversation, of dialogue, it is not aware of the contradictory questions of the your knowing.
Every Socratic-Platonic-Aristotelian edifice did not resist the brute force of the Roman empire, and falls into ruin before the mighty Roman army, as war won Greek wisdom, acquiring it and making it serve its purposes, the Roman gods were no other. but those corresponding to the Greek gods, but philosophy has decayed.
This is the possible current parallel, there is an almost general feeling that regret is no longer useful or reasonable, and philosophy would be nothing more than mere speculation, says Sloterdijk “it is not a favorable time for thought”, or we go for pragmatism of action or for the deleterious.
There is little room for the birth of the new, for Paidéia with its effect of education and training, everything goes towards the immediate and the market.
Even in environments where culture is present, it seems that the ideals of wisdom are under suspicion and vulgarity is promoted even with a certain ‘status/’, the way out is to call men to conscience and common sense.
Plato. The Banquet of Plato. CHICAGOWAY AND WILLIAMS, 1895. (pdf).
