Arquivo para a ‘Método e Verdade Científica’ Categoria
Human fragility in the face of Infinity
14
Feb
One of the important works to understand the
linguistic shift from the point of view of ontology is the work of Emmanuel Levinas, highlighting here a work that addresses the entire issue of the impossibility of objectifying the Other and human limitation in the face of weaknesses such as vices, ethical difficulties and war.
Levinas draws part of his experience from what he experienced in the Second World War, where he was held prisoner by the Nazi regime, in addition to having his parents and brothers executed, he saw the atrocities of the so-called “enlightened reason” which proved to be violent and totalitarian, these experiences are in tension in his thinking, and are important in a context of threat of a new world war.
Ontology has its role within metaphysics according to the author, but not its primacy as that of first philosophy, the transcendence of the scope of “self” and “being”, since this movement has been unveiled (the categories of reality) veiling is a new veiling) returning the movement to the self, to the identical, to being and its preservation, not to the recognition of the Other.
In contrast to Heidegger, for whom the relationship between being and others is subordinated to a relationship with being in general and nothing interferes with the emergence of the self, Levinas understands that the self is not due to being, but to the Other, and thus this relationship It is fundamental as in Paul Ricoeur.
The author proposes in Totality and Infinity a new choice for understanding being in which exteriority is not sacrificed, thus the relationship with the Other and with the exterior “world” is a reflection and path to interiority, in which it finds a relationship with the all and infinite.
This relationship between the self and the face of the Other that presents ethical resistance, for the author, is through its epiphany, through its “appearance” (a fundamental category in phenomenology), that the exteriority of infinite being can manifest itself as resistance.
His thinking is more complex, but we can understand that the weakness and limitation of the self, if kept in tension with exteriority and with the Other, reveals the infinite and our relationship with it, which cannot be other than the recognition of its “ transcendence”.
Levinas, E. (1969) Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, London: Kluwer Academic Pub.
About Wrath and Hope
08
Feb
The ancient Roman philosopher Seneca 
(4 BC – 65 AD) wrote a beautiful essay On Wrath which, although it is in three books, can be divided into two parts, it is addressed to his older brother Gallio, the first part deals with a theoretical issue ( I-II.17) and talks about the horrors of Wrath and its definitions, the second part gives tips on how to calm people, both children and adults, using real cases as examples.
Although the texts are very interesting and intelligent, there is an essential gap that cannot be achieved through spiritual asceticism, the hope that the context will be changed by actions that go beyond the personal, social or group level, raising the level of spiritual health of a person. group.
According to the philosopher, a great man should never become angry and, when it is not possible to avoid anger, he should try to calm down as soon as possible, his famous phrase is:
“No man becomes more courageous through anger, except one who, without anger, would not have been courageous: anger, therefore, does not come to help courage, but to take its place” (I.13).
However, in social life there are situations in which good and fair men are subject to the power of authoritarian, presumptuous and arrogant men who humiliate, exploit and mistreat humble people.
To this the Stoic responds with another sentence; “Let nothing be allowed to you while you are angry. For what reason? Because he will want everything to be allowed.” (III.12), said in a modern way, if we lose our calm when pointing out a mistake, we can lose our reason in reacting to the error.
Hope is fundamental when an entire social, political or even religious situation becomes difficult and points to a path that seems to be without that of destruction, error and fear, it is not about being in conformity, we wrote in the previous post about the disposition which precedes the intention, but the intention to calm propagate peace and avoid anger becomes both hope and the possibility of viable course correction, anger does not, initiates or expands the confrontation.
It is necessary to believe that the union of forces that desire positive change has a light that is superior to the set of human forces, because they can improve the “disposition”, the climate in favor of sensible and constructive attitudes and raise the moral standard in a virtuous circle .
There is an inner Being
07
Feb
The philosopher Hannah Arendt had already
developed the theme of Vita Contemplativa, and the Korean-German essayist Byung Chul-Han expands on this theme in his book with the same name, but we will only point out the new features there, including what he takes from Heidegger that It’s the disposition.
In Being and Time, Heidegger works on the verb stimmen, using the conjugation stimmung (which is translated as disposition) and also uses Gestiment-Sein (to be willing), but which in German is something like being in tune, being in tune with something and This modifies the concept of intention.
Literally disposition, a state of mind precedes any intentionality referred to objects: “Disposition has already opened up, however, being-in-the-world as a whole, and makes primarily possible a direction towards [something]” (Heidegger apud Han, 2023, p. 66).
Thus, the relationship with the external world, with objects, with beings and with everything that comes from outside the Being, means that we are disposed, says the text: “Disposition opens up to us the space only in which we confront ourselves with a entity. It reveals the Being” (Han, idem).
This vision transforms what we are and what we think, in spiritual terms, what the soul is disposed to and what it is directed towards from interiority, says the text: “The contemplative dimension that inhabits it transforms it into a correspondence. It corresponds to what “addresses us as the voice [Stimme] of being”, by allowing itself to be defined by it” (Han, 2023, p. 67).
Thus thinking becomes something other than logical articulation or narrative discourse: “Thinking means “opening our ears”; that is, listen and listen carefully. Speaking presupposes listening and responding. “Philosophia is the truly consummate correspondence that speaks attentively to the call of the being of beings. The correspondent hears the voice of the call […]” (Han, 2023, pgs. 67-68).
All of this seems excessively philosophical and in fact it is, but it means, as the author states, that something defined, and we have many pre-arranged definitions, is something that is condensed in our mind and our thoughts “in the pre-reflective scope”, I mean inside us.
So it is what we have inside, in our interiority that helps or limits us, says the author quoting Heidegger again: “If the fundamental disposition is left out, then everything is a forced cluster of concepts and shells of words” (Heiddeger apud Han, p. 68).
Thus, it is not the outside and what we take outside of ourselves that defines us, but what we have inside and that is why interiority is fundamental for any analysis.
HAN, Byung-Chul. (2023) Vita contemplativa: ou sobre a inatividade. Trad. Lucas Machado. Brazil, Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes.
Aretê and righteousness
01
Feb
It is necessary to understand that in ancient
philosophy, mainly in Aristotle and Plato, the objective is to develop a philosophy for the polis, education, the politician (for Plato he must be a philosopher in the sense of excellence of thought) and for Aristotle the citizen, considering that only free men were eligible for citizenship.
Thus aretê translated as virtue, is also a characteristic of a particular excellence, but it is not its translation as proposed by some interpreters, the word that Aristotle uses for this is phronesis, a practical theoretical thought that leads to special wisdom.
We cannot assume that men who do not have a private life of “excellence” and live it wisely are men capable of public exercise, attachment to power, money and the vices of contemporary life, done in the name of freedom, inhibit the ability of the politician.
We no longer talk about the moral field, it is not about theft and lies, the name given today is fake news due to its publication by the media, and the lie may have a short leg, but its action confuses social life, misinforms and leads to other vices, in addition to personal fanaticism.
It is also important to address the issue of freedom, we can do whatever we want, but we cannot ignore the consequences, an immoral and dishonest life does not lead to a fair and balanced social life, other vices will accompany greed and power for power’s sake.
So it doesn’t take long for those who see freedom in this mistaken sense to pay with deformations in their personal lives, involvement with anti-social forces, for example, from trafficking to deaths and human trafficking, like those who have already gained publicity.
It is difficult in this context of a mistaken vision of freedom, they talk about righteousness, good customs, from personal to social, empathy and solidarity, what exists is demagoguery only for the immoral exercise of politics, power and public money.
Culture, intelligence and wisdom
31
Jan
The problem of contemporary culture has already
been addressed in several posts, psychiatrist Anthony Daniels who signs his books as Theodore Darlrymple (What We Made of Our Culture, Anything Goes, The Knife In, etc.), intelligence continues to be questioned now with the scapegoat of the digital universe, but whose crisis has been going on since the beginning of the last century (neopositivism, neologicism and the simplistic view of reality), now takes on the contours of a lack of balance, common sense and even some sense of humanity.
Edgar Morin explains this lack of wisdom through the disciplinary and segmented view of reality, a complete absence of a complex and broad vision that gives rise to what he calls polycrisis, however it is important to question what wisdom is.
In the Greek sense, it is not private knowledge in the sense of morality, but public and social, which aims to minimize exacerbations of the self’s egocentric impulsiveness, when placed in the perspective of the work of art, it reaches a level of universal, good and beautiful principle.
The Greek word as “friend of knowledge” or knowledge is reductionist, one of the Jewish words for wisdom is chokmah or tushiya which mean wisdom that leads to practical success, it seems more appropriate to the current reality, because it is wise if it has practical meaning for life of each person and of humanity as a whole.
This is in good agreement with the Greek word proposed in terms of a virtue, phronesis, which is usually translated as prudence, a term that the contemporary philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer adopts but translates as serenity, judging it to be closer than prudence.
Those who claim merely objective knowledge, with an idealistic flavor, are in reality impractical, indicating a lack of wisdom, they become impulsive and active (in the sense of the Vita activa that Hanna Arendt and Byung Chul Han claim), typical of Western society. tiredness.
We want quick, consumerist or media-based knowledge and it has nothing or little to do with wisdom, which requires thought, contemplation and non-immediate thinking about facts.
Current society has deviated from practical knowledge because it demands intelligence and culture without realizing the deep connection it must have with wisdom that comes from a deeper reflection on the Being, things and the essence of life.
We defend peace, but we do not avoid catastrophe, war, hatred and dialogue and respect for those who are different, there is no practical wisdom in this type of contemporary thinking.
The resistance of the spirit of humanity
29
Jan
Victor Serge wrote “Midnight of the Century” in
1939, in the middle of the 2nd. world war, now in an article published in La Reppublica, on 24-01-2024, the French sociologist Edgar Morin published an article: “The resistance of the spirit” about the crisis of current wars.
The war in Ukraine mobilized economic aid from much of the world, while on the Russian side, economically weakened by the sanctions imposed by Western nations, it strengthened both technical-scientific development and the bloc formed with China.
Serge, an anarchist by origin, who supported the Russian Revolution, saw it bureaucratize and persecute all real and imaginary enemies in the Stalinist period, described in “The Great Terror” (1934-38), years before describing the horror to midnight, and whatever you say about today.
A new focus emerged after a massacre of civilians by Hamas on October 7, 2023, followed by deadly Israeli bombings in the Gaza Strip.
In Morin’s analysis, which has been developed for some time, the progress of knowledge occurred by creating barriers in disciplines that are increasingly closed in their object, which leads to a new type of almost blind thinking, linked to the dominance of calculation in a technocratic world, the progress of knowledge does not consider the complexity of reality and becomes blind.
The result of a lack of clarity and understanding of human life exposed by the ease of access to all life on the planet, without its understanding, has led to dogmatism and fanaticism, and a crisis of morals while hatred and idolatries spread.
Recalling the years of Nazi occupation in France (photo Carentan France, June 1944 From the LIFE Magazine Archives), in which Morin himself was a member of the French Resistance, he now evokes a resistance of spirit that avoids almost desperate or truly desperate action, and maintains hope through Resistance.
This resistance implies safeguarding or creating an oasis of communities endowed with a say in relative autonomy (agroecological) and social and solidarity economy networks.
This action also implies associations that are dedicated to solidarity and rejection of hate.
Ontology and Power
26
Jan
Not the external aspects that show what kind of
power we nurture and defend on a daily basis, but those that we concretely place inside our Being and practice as a consequence of what we have inside.
Just like vices, virtues can also have a virtuous circle, they can become habits, and in the face of each phenomenon or thing, we take an attitude that has a good or bad intention.
Power is strength, capacity and, at the same time, authority, but there is the authority of testimony and public recognition, which is a power that is imposed through respect, the only relationship that can give it symmetry (equality before the Other) , and there is the power of force, the one that leads to oppression and ultimately, wars.
We find this in the philosophy of Idealism, which led to a conception of the Absolute and the State, whose peak was Hegelian idealism, and we can find it in everyday life in theories of self-esteem, self-valuation to the detriment of the Other and literature that emphasize the “I”.
Ontology, which is the deepest study of Being and Entity, on the contrary, goes in search of the deepest roots of Being and individual fulfillment without forgetting the relationship with the Other and with things, yes there is an emphasis on “things” today (see Non-Things by Byung Chul Han) however, concrete relationships with nature, food and money say something about who we are.
In this philosophy, the essence is treated as a characteristic element of being in someone, like rationality, which makes man, for Saint Thomas Aquinas, the essence is “quiddity” (the thing in itself) or “nature” encompasses everything that It is expressed in the definition of the thing, both in its form and its matter.
There are no concepts in Ontology, but rather conceptualization, which is a relationship with Being on languages.
This philosophy, although metaphysical, is considered realism, as opposed to nominalism where naming things and conceptualizing them is stronger than the essence of what is, we observe this in all fields of philosophy and human life, we are a “label” and not what we are interiorly and essentially.
The authority of those who expel what is bad for the essence of human life and the civilizing process must be analyzed in light of these categories and not just from the perspective of power.
The essence of Christ’s authority, which underlies his “culture” was a type of Authority in essence, says the reading: “Everyone was amazed at his teaching, because he taught with those who have authority, not with the teachers of the Law” ( Mc 1:22) and even cast out “demons”.
The political question and thinking
24
Jan
The state model, as seen in previous posts,
coming from classical antiquity, was profoundly transformed by contractualism (Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau) and Hegel’s state thought, creating categories such as Philosophy of Spirit and a complex thought based on the triad that develops a cyclical path, going through contradiction of opposites (thesis and antithesis) and synthesis that generates new opposites.
It assumes that the State has superior ethics and laws that are only objective if they are complied with, as it is only formal (that is, it remains idealistic) and the Constitution supposedly results from the spirit of the people and must be thought of as in constant formation.
The State, in its theoretical assumption, exists for itself by virtue of a natural need, which for it is “divine”, since this need, to be founded, does not need the consent of individuals, nor any contract, in short, it is an absolute power.
His theory aims to represent a finished thought, which aims to be the limit of philosophy itself. Here we can understand the paradoxical phrase of Marx (a Hegelian) who states that philosophers must now change reality, creating the state “pure” dreamed of by Hegel, would be an end to philosophy, a system that undoubtedly began with Plato and had politics as its objective (the training of citizens for the polis).
This ultimate thought, states Hegel, “this science is the unity of art and religion. Therefore, philosophy determines itself in such a way as to be a knowledge of the necessity of the content of absolute representation” (HEGEL, 1995, p. 351).
In his youthful writings, Hegel wrote his central theme on theological issues, because the future Berlin professor formulated countless reflections on Christianity, always having Greek culture as the basis for the ideal of political organization, even comparing Jesus to Socrates, So these theories are older than we think.
In the third volume of the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences, he rehearses what he later deepens in his publication of Philosophy of Law, in 1821, a study of the State (ethics) that differs from the time because it resumes a teleological conception of the relationship between universal-particular, its philosophy and elaboration as it uses the Law is still ideal.
As one of his followers, Hegel was strongly influenced by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854), who tried to establish a relationship between the real-ideal of political conception, Marx will criticize these “more idealistic” philosophers, calling himself neo-Hegelian, a philosophy from earth “to heaven”, that is, an inverted idealism, but it still is.
The idea that this political theory could approach ontology comes from a simplism where Being is confused with thinking (let us remember that this is Cartesian: I think therefore I am) and thus its ontology would be that Being, understood by the dimension of thought, absolute identity, seeks to overcome the object-subject, being-thinking and in this last relationship it is necessary to see not a dualism, but a separation, since in classical ontology being is studied as they are and not with their particular properties and facts, it is return to your metaphysical essence.
HEGEL, G. W. F. (1995) Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences V. III. Brazil, São Paulo: ed. Loyola.
Modern sophistry
23
Jan
In addition to the crisis of thought, the social
crisis that we have not been able to resolve in more than a century of a spectacular development of forces and technologies that interfere with nature and should help man and not destroy nature, perhaps the most common civilizational crisis is in politics, I use it perhaps because the thought that underpins it has been lost.
The model of modern society began in ancient Greece and Plato refers to this model mainly in his work “The Republic”, however the initial clash is against what was used as a form of power in his time: sophistic thought.
It is necessary to define the sophist so that he is not confused with the philosopher or the politician, Plato starts from the assumption that no man is given the power to know all things, which would make him a god, and in the false propaganda of the Sophist, he could only teach an appearance of universal science, and here he finds the difficulty of establishing what is the falsehood and the truth of a deceptive speech, as is present in any speech.
This difficulty between truth and falsehood is one that encourages an ontological discussion, thus establishing an art of illusion, it is necessary to investigate what are the parameters that delimit it and what provides this power of illusion, in addition to determining which its object and its relationship with what is imitated, so the sophist is not a layman, he does have an art that must be justified as illusory and harmful when one intends to formulate a critique and establish the ideal principle or norm to educate oneself.
This is the modern sophistry, what it is to educate, now it is not just about Piaget, Skinner, Constructivist, Vygotsky or any of the “modern” learning theories, but rather the problem of fragmentation and vulgarization of knowledge, where even Basic questions in mathematics, geography or literature, for example, are completely ignored in teaching.
Two modern sophisms, just to give an example, of apparently logical arguments that lead to mistaken conclusions: “Those who don’t work have a lot of free time”, the idea of using the power of the knowledge of the crowd led many people to invest “idle time” in social media activities, virtual games that are slot machines, etc., another spiritual one is one that imagines a God or an energy that creates fortunes and automatically resolves complex things in life, the logic is “If God is love and I love God, my life is resolved”, effort, dedication and personal work must come together with this attitude and this means having attitudes compatible with a dignified religious life: honesty, fraternity with those who depend on us and resilience in times of difficulty , which are normal in life.
When Plato created the Republic, he did not forget the virtues of the public man and all philosophy worked in this direction, but the mistakes in thought (philosophy) and in society (or politics) are due to the development of ancient thought in an always true direction, despite logic, because instrumentalized logic can be sophistry.
The time of the clearing
19
Jan
If we are in times unsuitable for thought and
intelligence, unsuitable for human and moral values, it means that it is also a time of clearing, it is a time that many consciences and men will be able to awaken and see and find the clearing.
For this, a metanoia is necessary in philosophical, political, everyday and even religious thinking, remember that the prophets were killed and ignored precisely by “religious” people.
The threshold of an unlimited civilizing and humanitarian crisis is close, but if we look at everyday culture, we talked about this so much from the very Brazilian Ariano Suassuna to the Englishman Anthony Daniels in previous posts, politics and thought also seem polarized between two extremes that in many values are confused, and one of them is war and the desire for power.
Even those who invoke peace hide interests of power, of greed for greater wealth and oppression of those they believe to protect, it is a sad scenario of little light and where men of good will who desire a less dark look at the future should have.
Looking at the etymology of the word clearing in Heidegger’s philosophy, it comes from the German word Lichtung, whose meaning, in addition to clearing in the forest (he himself lived for some years in the black forest of Germany), its root Licht is the word for light, which will mean hidden things, or entities whose truth must come to light, as some translators use as unveiling.
What a propitious time this is, and why we are approaching it, because whenever the prophetic words of thinkers and mystics who ask for a change of course in humanity have not been heard, this time of darkness approaches followed by a great clearing.
In the biblical passage of Mark 1:1-19, Jesus clarifies that the death of John the Baptist is this sign of the clearing, that Herod asked for the head on a platter for his wife after his daughter Herodias danced for the king, the death of the last and greatest prophet begins a new era.
The reading says (Mc 1,15): “Time has already come to an end and the Kingdom of God is near. Convert yourselves and believe in the Gospel”, and for those who believe in the biblical clearing, it is the time of change.
Time to recover and live true humanitarian values, even if they are not Christian, the desire for peace, to look at Others with the dignity that each one has and to live justice
