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Wisdom and Love
29
Sep
*The previous text is wrong, because I had some security problem with my blog.
Perhaps the greatest of paradigms and thus the most susceptible to human
errors is Love, one can speak of the Greek classification: eros, philia and agape, but I want to link it here to wisdom in the sense of full happiness, not the one that produces utilitarian but spiritual fruits.
There is a book “The shadow of love, on the concept of love in Heidegger” and another that was Hannah Arendt’s thesis, they do not seem to be but are linked, because it was during the thesis period that Heidegger and Arendt had a romance and so she began to be mentored by Karl Jaspers.
The great scientific theory of our time, both for Karl Popper and for Thomas Kuhn, two great philosophers of science, is the possibility that there will always be a course correction in scientific methods and theories so that man knows more about himself and nature that surrounds it.
Heidegger’s text, which is a compilation of letters, only exists in French, so let’s return to the German concept of “Dasein” now to re-signify it and give it a connotation linked to Love:
“In the usual meaning, however, it means, for example: the chair ‘is there’; the uncle “is there”, he arrived and is present; hence: presence” (Heidegger, 1994b, p. 300).
It may seem like a simple literary maneuver, but it is not, other authors (Fernandes, 2011) also make this allusion and even compare it with “parousia” and “adventus”, which acquire a more religious connotation, here it is not necessary.
Thus, it is a presence of an absence, but love also passes through language and thinking, so “thinking is, therefore, to found, in the human, the “medium” to give oneself to the truth of being. It is, therefore, to co-found the human as presence: to be the there-in-being. In this sense, the fundamental ontology is a rush towards the passage, to pack itself for the leap, a first movement in favor of the foundation of the truth of being in the human as presence. This entails a transformation of the human from the lord of beings into the shepherd of Being”.
And this is Sloterdijk’s main contestation in Heidegger, the failure of this human domestication, or what in Heidegger is “care” and that modernity has not been able to resolve.
Heidegger’s main idea about Love is its presence in an Absence, to which we can add what we developed in previous topics: working with uncertainty and errors, that is, knowing how to live and work in the face of the natural difficulties of life.
Quantum physics, for example, has its beginnings in the enunciation of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which stated that it was not possible to know exactly what the position of the particles of an atom was with exactitude, Planck who did not agree, it is his statement “I do not agree may God play dice”, went to the laboratory to prove this principle.
NASA (in the photo the crash of the spacecraft colliding with Dimorphos) has just made a scientific feat which is to hit a satellite of a small meteor, which does not pose any danger of collision with Earth, just to prove that it is possible to change course some celestial body, and with that, in case of danger to Earth, change its route.
The DART project is a test for a possible future mission to deflect an asteroid from colliding with Earth, for cosmic dimensions Dimorphos is small (160 m) and orbits another larger asteroid (780 m) called Didymos and form a binary system, the spacecraft that hit it was traveling at 22.015 km/h and the image seen from a telescope in Hawaii on Monday night (26/09) shows that the impact produced many fragments, the deviation from the route, however, is small.
Changing route is wise, when you admit the mistake, but it requires two steps: admitting the mistake and then having the humility to change route.
Reference:
HEIDEGGER, M. (1994). Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis). Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann
Fernandes, M. (2011) A. O cuidado como amor em Heidegger. Rev. Abordagem Gestalt. Vol. 1, n. 2, Brazil, Goiânia.
The gap between rich and poor
23
Sep
The most varied studies, we commented on some in this week’s
posts, point to a practically stable separation between rich and poor when not growing in some countries, this model can never guarantee sustainable social human development, wars and pandemics increase this gap even more.
The most serious problem that is extreme poverty, we have already analyzed and published in February this year an analysis of global poverty, and also, in another post, the social problem after covid 19.
The sustainability of human economic and social development depends not only on increasing wealth and social production, it is necessary to find a balance where both social mobility of classes and ethnic mobility provide sustainability and overcome inequalities.
The problem of sustainability is not secondary, many models distribute wealth but impoverish the country as a whole, this is because the investment aspects and safer strategies of economic models are only thought of around income distribution, the opposite where there is only an increase without distribution is less sustainable.
For this model, the biblical parable of Lazarus and the Rich man, the poor man who lived on the margins and when the rich see himself condemned, here the parable is valid both personally and socially, asks that he be allowed to warn his relatives of this risk, but says the biblical prophets already said and you didn’t listen, how many people and political actions have already denounced the serious social gap.
For those who don’t know, the biblical parable says (Lk 16:19-24): “At that time, Jesus said to the Pharisees: 19 “There was a rich man, who dressed in fine and elegant clothes and held splendid parties every day. A poor man named Lazarus, full of wounds, was on the ground, at the rich man’s door. He wanted to satisfy his hunger with the leftovers that fell from the rich man’s table. And besides, the dogs came to lick their wounds. When the poor man died, the angels took him to Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In the region of the dead, in the midst of torments, the rich man lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham from afar, with Lazarus by his side. Then he cried out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me! Tell Lazarus to wet the tip of his finger to cool my tongue, because I suffer a lot in these flames”.
The rich man also asked to warn the living relatives, and he was reminded that they had (and have) the prophets.
Now the horrors of war
05
Apr
The retreat from Kiev, far from being peaceful and moving towards
a ceasefire, seems to have put more fuel in a war that is gradually returning to the horrors and barbarism of the 2nd. World War.
The photos and facts of Butcha, one of the districts around Kiev reveals scenes of civilian deaths with cruelty and genocide, leaders from all over Europe have already spoken out, and the President of Ukraine Zelensky himself went to check the mass and civilian graves on the spot. dead with their hands tied, in addition to reported cases of rape.
While international agencies speak of 280 bodies, Ukraine claims to have found 410 civilian bodies, either in mass graves or abandoned on the streets, many with their hands tied, while Russia denies these atrocities, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there were “video spoofing”, however did not present any evidence to prove it.
Accusations of biolaboratories in Ukraine follow, also without evidence, if true they are also reprehensible, but they do not serve to justify the brutal death of civilians that leaves the war on another level, where agreements are more difficult and distant.
There is a new world order, or at least an attempt to implement it, the economic and political poles have shifted and a serious economic and food crisis is approaching, how to face it ?
It will be necessary to review values, if barbarism does not awaken our hopes it becomes more difficult, the pandemic itself should have already alerted us to a new wave of solidarity and concern, it is not just a virus, but attitudes that would be expected from leaders and the population, how many small wars still exist without opening to dialogue.
If we find this war and the pandemic horrifying, more horrendous are the attitudes of indifference and neglect, even the twisted ones that organize themselves or that despise the misfortune that occurs next door.
May the horrors of war at least serve to awaken a sincere humanism, concern and responsibility for the Other, mutual respect and dialogue, or we are heading towards an even worse reality which we have done nothing to try to avoid, or we have done little.
Peace, peace and hope, is the cry of those who look with love for humanity and for the Other.
Volcanoes and Possibilities of Earthquakes
24
Nov
In addition to the civilizing crisis, the forces of nature 
seem to be more awake than usual, the volcano on the islands of La Palma, in the Canary Islands, a territory of Spain, arouses great interest in the volume of lava that I expect to arrive close in two months and without give signs of truce.
The earthquakes, the number of mouths opened by the volcano (there are now 5), the seriousness of the situation on the island which, despite being confined, has not been carried out any large-volume evacuation, have sparked debates even in the scientific world, the last one is about an earthquake of depth 3.4 or 34 km that happened these days, because the smaller depth would indicate new lava mouths and a greater risk for some abrupt change in the structure of the island which is composed of faults in its interior and large cliffs. depressions towards the sea.
There are several active earthquakes, some are of the Strambolian type, they are volcanoes with explosive eruptions such as emission of essentially effusive lava, and ejection of ash and gases such as sulfur, in incandescent lavas, also launching volcanic rock bombs that are launched from tens to hundreds of meters high, the Cumbre Vieja de La Palma volcano is of this type, in addition to attracting more attention, it is actually more dangerous, due to the terrain where lava can reach, the gases and, in some cases, the deformation of the terrain.
They are linked to the earthquakes that are a result of the Earth’s plate movements, and the biggest concern is not this island located in the Atlantic Ocean, but because it may be a small-scale representation of what can happen on a larger scale in the Pacific Ocean where there is a great circle of fire, name given to a large planetary junction of regions of volcanoes and quite frequent earthquakes and where the possibility of a Big One, a large earthquake from the San Andres fault on the American plate, is speculated.
The real possibility in La Palma is a small tsunami near the island, the consequences would no doubt be devastating, would it be large earthquakes in the circle of fire, or the eruption of large volcanoes like the Yellowstone Volcanic Chair, the Hawaiian Kilauea volcano on which they exist. just sensational speculations.
The consequences in La Palma are still unknown, but the volcano is still active and rather than calming down, these days were one of big explosions and strong earthquakes.
We’ve been out to update the software.About truth and philosophy
27
Jan
It was rationalism that led to doubts about external existence (the Other, objects and the outer castle, etc.), already in the classic division of body and mind, the question until the end of the Middle Ages was between realists and nominalists, the former said that the real is that it exists and the seconds that we only name what is external, what exists is in the mind, today there is the linguistic turnaround (or virage).
Imannuel Kant states that the perceptions of the senses are after the experience while a universal a priori is necessary, using the realists’ argument, calling it analytical judgment while the first are the synthetic ones, made from the gathering of information.
The pinnacle of idealism is Hegel, which sets out several ideal concepts: state, spirit, and ethics, but the crisis of modernity will return to old dilemmas: language, discourse, and what is the thing or Being, there are then three twists: the linguistic, the ontological and the “sacred”.
Karl Klaus (1874-1936) already complained about the truth in the journalistic medium, it is true that the cultural industry moved masses, and the network media now too, but what about the truth?
The truth of facticity has lost its strength, there are alternative views and even the corruption of facts, something absurd as “alternative facts”, is not at all hermeneutic because it is precisely its absence, the lack of a hermeneutic circle where preconceptions are. overcome and new horizons can be traced that reinterpret the facts and build the future.
Groups entrenched in their half-truths behave only as twisted, dialogical, acceptance of the Other, and Empathy are but demagogic forms as attempts to co-opt members for the crowd itself.
Of course there is a latent future, sectors of society where cooperation, solidarity and the exercise of seeing the Other is already exercise, are groups and people who have changed the dogmatic way of seeing the world for a broader vision, beyond the group and from the crowd.
But still there are those who closing ranks in their “groups” will demand blind obedience, respect for “authority,” and often will resort to authoritarian methods of bending the Other.
Truth will emerge amid chaos, in the niches of society where there is Phronesis, true reflection, looking at the world as a whole and the other with respect to its particularities.
The desired and not built peace
19
Jan
We know that the “pax romana” was the surrender to the empire that dominated the good face of the civilized world at the time, it is true today that there were already people in various parts of the planet, but their paleontological records do not leave many marks of their cultures, and perhaps as Rousseau thought ‘the good savage’ lived in peace, but in the natural conflict with nature.
The “eternal peace” elaborated by the idealists and idolized by the worshipers of the “modern state” is not deepened, because in fact for many this will be the state, excuse the final irony of humanity and should only be perfected. Kant published in 1798, in a Berlin magazine, the essay “Announcement of the forthcoming signing of a treaty for perpetual peace in philosophy”, which was a resumption of his essay two years earlier: “For perpetual peace”, that was confined in its philosophy.
This is because the goal was to resolve peace within a single state, or in terms of relations between different states, which we can see even with the emergence of the UN and the rise of democratic nations, which in essence the idea of state remains enlightened. .
From this essay it can be assumed that what the philosopher understood by philosophy means that if systems of philosophy found a solution to their conflicts they could help political systems to resolve their conflicts, so it remains in the idealistic field.
The conflict between object and subject, which supposes that it is in the object that is the conflict and not in the subject is the hypothesis of the idealism/enlightenment system, but it is in the facticity of the historical subjects that the conflicts are, I do not understand as the historicity romantic because facticity is the Heideggerian concept of the subject thrown into the world with his facts.
Thus, what is meant by peace beyond idealism is that which can be built on the facticity of everyday life, in every conflict encountered in every fact, without being confined to theoretical or philosophical assumptions, but where the “being thrown” is. in the world”.
Peace, therefore, is built and not an agreement between states or within them, the peace treaty of the 1st. world war led to the second, some readers of world history say, the fact is that there were two wars and the “modern” states not only did not avoid, but are authors. “If you want peace, build peace,” said an Italian politician, very few understanding this.
A post-pandemic will be problematic, it may even lead to a civilizational crisis, where many measures should be taken from now on.
Eschatology and being-to-death
24
Nov
Where we came from and where we are going, each culture has its
own eschatology, modernity and especially idealism is characterized by disregarding the idea of the infinite, of mystery and consequently of death, seen as fatality or simple finitude of life.
From the philosophy of Lévinas (Totality and Infinite) to the poetry of Goethe (Faust), from the novel by Tolstoy (The death of Ivan Ilitch) to the ontology of Heidegger (Being and Time) death is more than a concept or a theme, it is the own questioning of being, in Lévinas the infinite is proper to the transcendent being as transcendent, the infinite is the absolutely other, so one cannot think of the infinite, the transcendent, the Foreigner (in Lévinas) as being an object, but as an Other that does not it is something other than Being.
Idealism, in wanting to always live above the real, wants to ignore or “transcend” death (in the false sense of an object) and for this reason is quibble about it, but in the face of the tragedies of a pandemic, of a crisis that can become civilizing, he is immobilized or part of psychology, in this field there is also an adequate phenomenological treatment, after all Franz Brentano father of social psychology reopened phenomenology in modern times, the psychiatrist Kübler-Ross (About death and dying, Martins Fontes, 2002) studied that stage of the disease in which the patient asks “Why me” and deepened the theme.
The analysis in Heidegger, in order not to be superficial, must address three related themes: Care, Impersonality and silence, otherwise it is the analysis that we call epistemology or incomplete eschatology, since they face only pessimism in the face of death, nor the good psychology sees it that way.
Before a clarification, the term ontological refers to questioning the fact of existing, Dasein (being-there) is not only, but has a perception that it is, for phenomenology, it is not thought of itself first and then in the world, because the two things are inseparable, and so is an ontological epistemology.
To help what this being-there is, we need to deepen what Heidegger calls overcoming the factual world, and as for the super the world of impersonality, he manages to free himself from a structured reason endowed with meaning, in a way already given the to exist and to be.
Safranski, an authorized biographer of Heidegger, interprets it this way: “Anguish does not tolerate another god besides itself, and isolates in two ways. It breaks the relationship with the other, and makes the isolated individual fall out of relations of familiarity with the world ”, she is felt by the“ fall ”, by the dark horizon.
Thus, in impersonality, the idea of “everyone dies” is abandoned, which in life evades being-for-death, for its thinking about its solitary death, falls into that anguish described in Ivan Ilitch de Tolstoi.
Regarding Care, Heidegger appropriates the Greek fable in which Jupiter and Care that is shaping clay fight over the name that will be given to the created figure, and called Saturn as a judge he says that Jupiter will belong to the spirit because it was he who gave it the form, while Care will have the land, since it formed it, the German philosopher will use this sense, very ingenious, to say the being-for-death to find something beyond the finitude of the form.
Finally, the aspect of silence nad loneliness are invoked to discover the self, and then to return to the world already master of itself, and open to the relationship with others, which is no longer utilitarian ( so characteristic of idealists) or even by means of fixed guidelines (characteristic of incomplete eschatologies), there is thus a Being beyond the finite and open to the infinite, there is no pessimism, which says it is bad reading
Power and gifts
10
Nov
It is possible that someone who has very special gifts also has power, 
but only as a service to a certain group and in a certain context, the two things are not very confused, and confusing them is almost always a demagogic trick.
Wise people will be given positions or be in power structures only on merit, or because there is a need for their gifts for that structure or center of power, but if they are people who desire power at all costs, they will rarely have the gifts necessary for that to which are designated.
Power has already been studied in philosophy in different ways, in the Greek polis it was an invitation to citizenship, but almost all philosophers (of course after Socrates and sophists) should be trained in values and have virtues that would contribute to a position within of the Greek polis.
Among contemporary philosophers Max Weber defined power as the imposition of the will of a person or institution on individuals, while for Marx the power resides in the one who has the material means of capital production, which in his time was factories and land, but today they would be the big corporations, the owners of vertical media (TVs, Radios, etc.) whereas for Michel Foucault the power in contemporary times is not centralized, but dissolved in society, it also created the concept of biopower, while the practices by which modern states seek to regulate subjects and “obtain subjugation of bodies and control of populations”.
Peter Sloterdijk wrote about the “timotic” situation of our time, the term “thymós” is based on Plato’s theory to designate the “organs” from which the impulses, the excitations, the most inflamed affections are born, in fact seem something common in our times, we do not react with reflexion to situations of power and command, almost always emotionally, on impulse.
Byung Chul Han, who was influenced by Sloterdijk, wrote about psychopower, influenced by vertical media and of course also present in social media, where the state of high tymotic tension is established by the successive and repetitive news that guarantee this state.
The personal, collective or social gifts of each person are submerged by these structures of power and propaganda, similar to the fascination exercised by the speeches of dictators and populists during the war and afterwards, and we cannot imagine that this is far from the current reality.
What are the gifts of those who could serve the population if they are not subjugated to this or that pressure group, is less and less plausible, so the stage for demagogues and populists is open, and dictators are on the prowl.
A citizen planetary and prudence
06
Nov
The pandemic crisis showed that our most serious problems are 
global, affecting the entire planet, the second wave that is already in Europe will soon arrive in the different continents, if it has not arrived in small doses already, they lead us to think globally what it seems difficult with political polarization.
What is needed is to abandon old proposals, and make possible the coexistence of private freedom with the strong social urgencies, the proposal of the banker of the poor Mohanmmad Yunus goes in this direction, eliminating poverty, carbon emissions and guaranteeing jobs for all, has become the most urgent pandemic.
It is not the only proposal, of course, another such as solidarity, creative economy, groups of cooperatives of small farmers, can compose a productive ecosystem capable of adapting to local interests and vocations of production and human life, it is above all necessary to leave the excess consumption and social stress.
The cultural aspects in which the religions and beliefs (in the broadest sense of the word) of peoples and nations are included are not minor or negligible. I distinguish because many nations already have people of different cultural origins within them, what is called here original culture, which also includes indigenous peoples.
There is no clear agreement on how this can happen, a wide pan-national dialogue (which we have just said about “peoples”) is essential to organize a new social ecosystem where the foundation of social security combined with personal freedom are as premises for chart this future.
For the time being, as a family that has disorganized the accounts of the house, and reaps many troubles from this disorganization, there are still dictatorships of different ideologies on the planet, wars such as attempts at cultural submission, new types of colonialism, although a strong current of decolonization has emerged ( the term is this), what happens on the planet can be a rupture in serious situations and the “common home” itself can react, what we already call an aortic mutation.
A biblical passage talks about wisdom and those who seek it, it is a stage above simple intelligence, it is necessary to be open to the new and also leave what it “enters”, says the book of Wisdom (Sb 6,13-15 ): “It even anticipates itself, making itself known to those who desire it. Those who wake up early will not get tired, as they will find her sitting at their door. Meditating on it is the perfection of prudence; and whoever stays awake because of it, will soon live carefree”.
So wisdom is combined with the gift of “prudence”, and meditating on it is “the perfection of prudence”, ignorance creates only fanaticism and cruelty.
