Arquivo para a ‘Sem categoria’ Categoria
Being: Unknown ontologies and epistemes
23
Apr
Augustine of Hippo, after having abandoned Manichaeism, dualism
between good and evil, elaborates an ontology that is little known and cited, even by theologians; it is a Trinitarian ontology and a complex gnosis (or episteme) of truth.
When reading a passage from Genesis (Gen 1:26), which is that man is made in the image of God (imago Dei), he ponders that the correct expression is: “let us make man in our image and likeness, let us and ours were said in the plural, and cannot be understood except as a relation” (Augustine, De trinitate, VII,6,1), where the plural “let us” and “ours” are there.
This anthropological vision could not go unnoticed, but the philosophical vision of being and being are submerged and implied in the text, man as a created being and being, is at the same time Imago Dei and perishable nature, but the image means Trinitarian, and on the other hand perishable means finite as being and not as Being.
Augustine does not use ontological categories, but onto-theological ones, so man has an immortal soul and a perishable body. In order to respond to this apparent creationist paradox, Augustine uses Neoplatonic knowledge, that the human being is made up of a corporeal/material portion and a spiritual portion, which is different from the dualism that dismisses the body.
For Augustine, the soul knows and lives in the body, so “just as the mind gathers knowledge of corporeal things through the bodily senses, it is by itself that it [gathers knowledge] of incorporeal things. Therefore, since it itself is incorporeal, it is by itself that it knows itself” (De Trinitate, XI,3,3 ), and thus formulates its episteme inseparable from the soul.
In other words, underlying the self-centeredness of the mind, knowing and loving itself, there is the concurrence of memory, intelligence and will. This will be further developed in Porphyry and then in Boethius (480-524 AD).
A disciple of Plotinus, Porphyry (c. 234-305 AD) was a Neoplatonic philosopher and his work systematized and disseminated Neoplatonic thought. His contributions covered various areas, including logic, metaphysics, ethics and theology, but his tree of knowledge, called the Porphyry Tree (imave above), is famous.
Boethius, his disciple and translator, advanced the contribution that Porphyry intended to leave behind in unifying Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, the so-called henology (the doctrine of divine unity). His work Philosophical Consolations brings part of the questioning of particular and universal concepts, which will be a controversial topic among the nominalists and realists of the lower middle ages.
A period characterized by feudalism and trade routes prepared the Renaissance.
AUGUSTINE, St. DE TRINITATE. Monergism.com (pdf).
Truth, method and freedom
09
Apr
Truth is not a logical rule or even a scientific
pursuit, science moves in steps towards the construction of knowledge, what is called epistemology, at its great root was the denial of the doxa, of mere opinion.
The truth, Socrates said (through Plato’s speeches) “is not with men, but among men”, so dialogues and opposing ideals are necessary to arrive at what Hans-Georg Gadamer formulates as the “hermeneutic circle” (we’ve already posted about it here).
Hermeneutics is the art of understanding what is written or spoken, so it is the search for what each author formulates, or their mental map, and this fidelity requires a study not to put ideas or words into the mouth of the author, but to discover their intentionality.
Contemporary narratives reflect this lack of hermeneutics, with each author having to give the other their own discourse. This is only possible by restricting freedom, or intimidating the Other, what in today’s culture is called hater, which is characteristic of dogmatic authoritarianism, of those who only know how to listen to their own discourse and refuse to understand what is different.
Freedom is essential for dialog, for an authentic construction of knowledge, and a sincere search for the truth. It is necessary to listen to the other (the spoken or written text) in order to produce a new fusion of horizons, the shared process between interlocutors.
The logic of the narrative is the imposition of a discourse that claims to be unique and true, so freedom is not allowed, interlocutors are interrupted or silenced in their discourse, so that only one narrative survives and its values and arguments are imposed.
The modern idolization of the state as the only source of power, even if it refers to itself as democratic, is the incapacity for a hermeneutic and a method where dialogue is open.
We need to suspend our concepts, put an epoché in parentheses.
The hermeneutic circle is not an end in itself. Hans-Georg Gadamer reflects at length on Dilthey’s thinking, which he considers to be romantic and partly one of the influences on Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics and the ways in which he was committed to Cartesian reason and its logic.
Trapped in this logic, the dualism of subject and object remains, and according to Gadamer (1998, p. 340) it goes back to Vico who had already affirmed the epistemological primacy of the world of history according to the human spirit, this type of knowledge makes subject and object interconnected.
Thus truth is ontological, proper to the human spirit, proper to its being, in it there is truth.
Gadamer, H-G. (1998) Verdade e método: traços fundamentais de uma hermenêutica filosófica. Brazil, Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes.
Serenity: choosing what is good
07
Mar
There is no serenity without reasonable choices
about personal, social and spiritual life, even worse is the one who tries to eliminate one of the three. Without personal life there is no being-there (Heidegger’s Dasein), without social life we live in a bubble, and without spiritual life we do not develop our essence.
Among the choices we have to make in life, they cannot involve only one of the three aspects: the personal only makes us selfish and narcissistic, without the social we become alienated and have difficulty understanding reality, and without the spiritual we do not have a true asceticism that elevates us as human beings.
On the occasion of the centenary of his fellow countryman, the great musician Conradin Kreutzer, in a 1949 conference in his hometown of Meßkirch, Germany, wrote the text on Serenity.
Heidegger questions the difficulty of thinking even at that time, and asks if it is not through music and singing: “is not music distinguished by the fact that it ‘speaks’ through the mere resounding of its notes and does not need everyday language, the language of words?” and: “is it already a commemoration, which involves the act of thinking?” (Heidegger, 2008, p. 10).
Heidegger questions the difficulty of thinking even at that time, and asks whether it is not through music and song: “isn’t music distinguished by the fact that it ‘speaks’ through the mere resonation of its notes and does not need everyday language, the language of words?” and: “is it already a commemoration, which involves the act of thinking?” (Heidegger, 2008, p. 10).
When remembering his hometown, he recalls that [due to the war]: “they had to abandon their villages and cities, expelled from their native soil… they became strangers… and those who remained? They are often even more uprooted (heimatloser) than those who were expelled. Every hour and every day they are tied to radio and television… the cinema transports them weekly to the unusual domains, of representation that simulates a world that is not.” (Heidegger, 2008, p. 16), showing the relationship with technology. If you lived in our day and age, you would see how visible the relationship that is maintained is, now not transporting you to other realities, but to unrealities that transport your mind to the vulgar.
Thus, the choices that must be made become more radical. More than ever, it is necessary not only to choose what is good and healthy, but to fight so that this awareness is not lost in illusions.
Heidegger, M. (2008) Serenidade (Serenity). Lisbon: Instituto Piaget.
The logic of the hater
12
Feb
The word is at the center of heated discussions,
expressions of anger and little empathy, the logic of “me” first has entered all circles, from family to politics.
The translation into Portuguese would be “hater”, but given how little this word is used in Portuguese, I believe that hater will end up being nationalized, and by the way, many people don’t like the use of words like meeting, coach and open house or home-office (in Brazil not translate), although many people use them, but we have examples from the past: abajour (from French, lampshade used in Brazil), software (from English, not translate in Brazil), sauerkraut (German) and schoppen (which became chope in Brazil “draft beer”, from German) and which has nothing to do with shopping, it is to buy.
We need to avoid “hater”, “bullying”, which leads to a type of moral harassment, as well as the meme, which if used in its origin (it comes from the Greek mimesis) would be a basic unit of cultural transmission, which means imitation, but which has been transformed into a malicious analogy, for example, a certain public figure as an animal.
At the root of all this cultural perversion is not the introduction of new words into the spoken language, which in itself is not evil, but done in an evil way it becomes some kind of cultural intimidation, which leads to prejudice and hence violence.
At the root of all this cultural perversion is not the introduction of new words into the spoken language, which in itself is not an evil, but done in a malicious way it becomes some kind of cultural intimidation, which leads to prejudice and hence violence.
It’s not just a lack of empathy, it’s respect for what’s different, it’s the desire to include the Other. Various authors have written about this (Paul Ricoeur, Emmanuel Lévinas, Habermas, Todorov, Martin Buber, etc.) No contemporary philosophy worthy of the name should fail to address this issue, after all it’s a “being” of a world in common, so Being-in-the-world becomes a “being-with-the-others” in a shared world (mitwelt).
This change in behavior begins in the heart and soul of the “dasein”, where Heidegger’s clearing can open up in the midst of a dense and dark forest.
Not looking at the Other with its dignity (Ricoeur wrote “other”, Buber wrote “the sacred self”) is different from the I-that that much of philosophy also explores.
The purified heart empathically accepts the Other as a form of its Being.
Vicious and virtuous circles
21
Jan
Even though we are at a moment of civilization
with a “polycrisis” (a term used by Edgar Morin), where would we be without some idea of justice, kindness and fraternity? perhaps in an even worse barbarism of war and daily violence, but someone might ask, aren’t we close to this?
No one questions that rationality adopts behavior that can guarantee the future of humanity and our own, but the lack of control of personal and social “virtues” creates a new culture, what some call a deteriorated culture that has generated a collective brainrot.
What the English philosopher says about virtues is that rationality must accompany these aspects, that there is something good about it, and this is the reason for the facts about our own human nature, and she challenges two non-cognitivist premises, which would be based on a misunderstanding of practical rationality, human motivations to act in everyday life and on a logical grammar underlying saying that something is “good”, since the “something” here is essential for determining and signifying the good.
He deduces from this reasoning that what is logically vulnerable to facts, and facts, in turn, are identified and understood, correctly and more fully, in the light of what is good.
This is what we prefer to call a virtuous circle, because it is often said that the good is fragile, but only when it is inserted in a vicious circle (cultural and social), the virtuous circle also makes evil fragile if we are part of it; everything that is evil is easily repelled.
The cultural problem is not to allow a culture to deteriorate as it evolves. It is neither harmful nor vicious for a culture to evolve, but its roots must not be lost at the risk of changing values that make it a vicious social, cultural and personal practice.
Interrupting this flow is not simple: a culture of consumerism (as we have more consumer objects), a culture of immorality (as there are more facilities for small thefts which, if vicious, become big ones), a culture of ecological ignorance: deforestation and practices that turn the production of consumer materials into a culture of unsustainable degradation of nature.
Also the inhumane levels of social security, extreme poverty and the absence of sustainable medium and long-term policies to remove the pockets of misery that persist in the world.
Philippa Foot’s logical grammar does not change or adapt the meaning of “good”, it speaks of “good roots” and when we speak of the “good dispositions of the human will” it must include the cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, prudence, fortitude and temperance, which make up agape love, but without these virtues the word can be used in non-virtuous contexts.
In the photo: Allegoria della Virtù e della Nobiltà. Giambattista Tiepolo , 1740-1750.
Foot, Philippa. Natural Goodness. UK: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Four books to read in 2025
31
Dec
Happy 2025 to everyone who reads me and
follows my social, spiritual and intellectual concerns. In my opinion, we need to read and re-read the Other, the contradictory, what we ignore.
It’s good to make a resolution for the year ahead. I consider reading to be important, and now more than ever due to a certain cultural and spiritual cooling of this habit.
Every year I set myself the goal of reading four books, but I end up reading more or partially reading one of the proposed ones if I find the book falls short of what I expected, but this is rare.
In 2025, three books caught my eye. The first, which I still find few references to, is the book “Liberty”, a novel about a couple in love and an intruder, three sick minds, but the author Collen Hoover has also been making a name for herself on social media and in a TV series, that has boosted sales of her book.
The second book is by two Nobel laureates in 2024, “Why Nations Fail” is written by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, who together with Simon Johnson won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2024. The synopsis of the book says that they defend the original thesis that the likelihood of countries developing good institutions is when they have an open political system, with disputed charges, a broad electorate and space for new leaders to emerge, and this seems to explain the current scenario of political and economic decay.
David Flusser’s book caught my attention from the moment I read the first blurb, the book, a comprehensive overview of first century Palestine when Jesus lived, the religious ideas that circulated, the political struggles and social antagonisms of the period, shows a Jesus who was consistent with the Old Testament (the Torah) and identified with his people.
The author was a professor of Hebrew culture at the University of Israel and was a moderate Jew who received the Israel Prize from the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 1980.
I read the first volume of Henrique Cláudio de Lima Vaz’s Obra Filosófica, which was the result of research carried out during the 1988-1989 biennium and sent to the CNPq (Brazilian Foundation for Research) when he was a research fellow. His project was: “The Hegelian construction: a paradigm of systemic rationality”, in which he clearly explains Hegelian thought, and the second volume is more structured in terms of the core of Hegelian thought.
This volume, according to the synopsis, goes from the formation of Hegel’s thought to the Phenomenology of Spirit, and as Henrique Cláudio was a Jesuit priest (he is now deceased) I am interested in the extent to which contemporary religious thought is influenced by Hegelian idealism.
Happy 2025 to everyone, make a purpose, be resilient (happiness isn’t easy) and show solidarity with those who need you.
Interiority, truth and wars
10
Oct
The abandonment of conceptions that lead
humanity to elaborate inwardly, elevating thoughts and spiritualities, is pointed out in countless contemporary readings. We have posted here Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Peter Sloterdijk, Edgan Morin and Byung-Chul Han, among others, of course.
But here we want to start with the question of method and return to the phenomenology of Husserl, one of the first to question “The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology – An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy” (Brazilian edition by Forense Universitária, 2012), which points out this question and in the third part clarifies the transcendental question and the misunderstandings of contemporary science.
This is how he points out his questioning of the concepts of “outer experience” and “inner experience”: “The fundamental absurdity of wanting to seriously consider men and animals as dual realities, as a link between two realities of different kinds, comparable in terms of the sense of reality, and thus also wanting to research minds using the scientific-corporeal method, i.e. in a natural-causal way, existing spatio-temporally as bodies – resulted in the supposed obviousness of a method to be configured in a way analogous to that of the science of nature” (Husserl, 2012, pgs. 177-101). 177-178).
In this sense, he questions both Cartesian dualism and the foundation of a science that creates a “parallelism” where: “the physical-mathematical nature is the objectively true nature; this nature must be the one that announces itself in merely subjective appearances” (pg. 179), and his question is why “is not the nature of the world of life, this mere subjective element of external experience, but this is counterposed to external experience ?
Interiority in philosophy is a founding aspect as long as we look at the ontological question of Being, already present in Plato and Aristotle, and which in St. Augustine will play a central role in his worldview, where he seeks a profound sense of “beatitude” of the soul.
This interiority, reduced to the interior and immediate visions of the world, separates man from the world, from others, and he starts to project himself excessively onto objects, “things”, up to the apex of the digital world, called by Byung-Chul Han “non-things”, to talk about something that is currently on the rise, says the author: “artificial intelligence doesn’t think”.
This is how we move mechanically towards interests for external conflicts that lead us to increasingly contentious positions on values and non-values that justify violence.
The problem, as Husserl points out, is that all of this stems from a “method”, i.e. the particular way in which we look at the exterior and exercise our interiority, opposed in their origins by Brentano and Dilthey: “as in general in the 19th century, at the time of the passionate efforts to produce a rigorously scientific psychology, presentable alongside the science of nature” (pg. 180), but this psychologism is overcome by Husserl’s criticism of Brentano and later by Hans-Georg Gadamer.
What is interiority in sense of live, in new experience of conflits and wars ?
Husserl, E. (2012) A crise das ciências europeias e a fenomenologia transcedental: Uma introdução à filosofia Fenomenológica. Transl. Diogo Falcão Ferrer. Brazil, Rio de Janeiro: Forense Universitária.
(english edition) Husserl, E. (1970) Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Translated by David Carr. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press.
Unveil and future
05
Jul
A large part of the future perspectives that are
not within the scope of civilizational advancement, in addition to including wars and hostilities, rely on revelations, whose etymology of the word comes from re-veiling, which means taking off the veil and replacing another, thus as a rule are obscure.
It is not only on the religious level, but also in philosophy, where the last great oracle and prophet was John the Baptist, after all he was the one who announced the greatest of all prophecies: the birth of Jesus, it does not mean, of course, that in this field there is no no matter what is new, God is always new and creative.
The word unveil in philosophy comes from the search for truth, Heidegger and other philosophers take it from a-letheia (a is not and lethe – forget), to modify the concept of what is true in Being and Time (written in 1927), states in paragraph 44 which understands unveiling as an event that removes entities from the veil.
A prior understanding that frees man’s orientation towards objects (the question of subjectivity x objectivity) favors interpretation (Auslegung), that is, the articulation with what was previously understood, and thus remakes it from the perspective of new horizons.
Discourse, in the correct sense of the narration, is later and consists of a basic activity of what is human, connecting and living with others, it gives man a common understanding and in addition to speech and shared opinions, it creates a fusion of horizons , a narration.
We have already posted here the issue of the Narration Crisis, especially the book by Byung-Chul Han, so the man projected onto objects and actions creates narratives and is unable to clearly reveal reality, it is necessary, using a metaphor, to change the glasses.
So if there are true revelations, they are hidden from today’s futurologists, they reveal much more an anguish about the future than an unveiling of the future.
In the biblical passage that Jesus has difficulty revealing himself to his contemporaries (Mk 6,4), he encounters difficulties even among those closest to him and family members, so to speak, the religious people closest to him in his time and something similar occurs today.
Heidegger, M. (2021) Being and Time. Transl. John MacQuarrie, Edward S. Robingon, UK: Must Have Books.
The strength of weak ties
18
Apr
The theory of networks, not in the focus of
social media, but of the ties between actors has some curious properties and two are very special: the six degrees of separation and the strength of weak ties (Weak ties) that seem strange to those who are unaware the theory.
The six degrees of separation indicate that seen as networks, the relationships between social actors are, in reality, more connected than one imagines, and this is not just in the world of social media (which is incorrectly put equivalent with social networks).
A classic experiment, called the Milgram experiment due to the work of psychologist Stanley Milgram, who sent letters to certain distant people, and identified ties of personal knowledge existing between any two people, and discovered an average distance of 5.5 people to letters reach their destination.
The experiment had flaws, such as letters that were not sent forward and ended up in an intermediary and the lack of knowledge of the objective of certain people in the experiment, for example, not understanding that the letter should go as close to the final destination.
The weak ties experiment carried out by Mark Granovetter (1973) takes into account the weakest and most distant contacts in social networks, and can, in certain contexts, mean that the ties between two people who have similar interests are strong, even if they pass by some intermediary C, and this makes C also part of the strong loop.
So the weak tie will be just the opposite, A and B have distant interests and connection routes, which can mean different or just distant interests, however in network theory these ties are important for the functioning of the network and its dynamization, unlike the what common sense says.
What Granovetter researched is that the greater the strength of the bond between two people, the greater the chance that the circle of friends and ties will be common and that the message will only stay in that circle, not reaching other circles of relationships and expanding the network.
In this sense, limiting or banning social networks means reducing and making the social network (which is not necessarily done via the media) limited, however, there are networks that commit certain crimes and should not be legitimized and, when possible, banned.
This is discussed within the issue of power, because the theory of networks contradicts the idea of an increasingly stronger and centralized power as a solution to social problems, because even if prohibited, social networks continue to function as established by the theory of the six degrees of power. Separation and distance between actors is smaller than centralized power assumes, as it is often isolated in its social or ideological “bubble”.
Social networks dynamize the structures of social ties and ignoring them can be a source of empowerment for different social groups and helps to grow true popular will.
GRANOVETTER, Mark S. The Strenght of Weak Ties. The American Journal of Sociology, vol. 78, n. 6, p. 1360-1380, may 1973.
Fear, society and hope
09
Apr
Fear is not something of these days and perhaps
of contemporary society, it is not, however, something transitory or even impossible to be overcome.
In different societies and thoughts they were elaborated, in ancient classical thought
It is a mistake to think that tiredness, pressure and fear are current problems, they have been present in our society for some time: competition and the demand for perfection are present in the history of humanity.
Heidegger (1889-1976) stated this way (not literal here): fear invites us
living in impropriety, we don’t attribute meaning, we let others and circumstances attribute it, we alienate ourselves from ourselves, we always live on the run, with our schedules full of distractions that occupy us.
For some, it is a more phenomenological and practical way of seeing fear, as Pascal and Kierkegaard would have a more theological fear, but there is a theological mistake “fear of God” is not necessarily a fear, but rather respect, after all the first Christian commandment is to love God above all things.
So seeing fear as a “thing”, the phenomenological sense of Heidegger and others does not suppress the theological vision, a thought limited to man will also limit his existence to this world being a limited intellect.
Kierkegaard’s work “The Concept of Anguish”, remembering that we made a post about this, has a demand for questions, many are asked in relation to the “fear of death”, which in a certain sense is a fragile theological issue, whereas Pascal’s work There is also a tendency to “take a chance on God”, when thinking about the soul.
The philosopher says: “The immortality of the soul is something that worries us so much, that touches us so deeply, that we must have lost all feeling to remain indifferent before it.”, he does not, therefore, affirm its immortality, but rather in the face of doubt.
For Heidegger, it is more than a psychological and ontic phenomenon; it has an ontological dimension, as it refers us to the totality of existence as being-in-the-world, but anguish man only exists if he can have an understanding of Being, although he does not say so, it is a reality beyond “thing”, Hannah Arendt, his disciple, will say beyond the vitta activa.
The contemplative vitta (see also Byung-Chul Han) leads us to awareness of the Being, it is a path to overcoming fear and anguish.
