Arquivo para a ‘Information Science’ Categoria
Saint John Damascene and pericoresis
05
Jun
Even for those who do not believe in the
concept of pericoresis, it is important because it makes the idea of relationship something more substantial, although it is already admitted that man is a relational being, the relationship is full of dualisms and non-Trinitarian interpretations (in the case of Christians) and can lead to indifference.
After resolving the Trinitarian dogma by the Cappadocian priests, who explained that God is One and Triune, are people (hypostasis) and maintain unity (ousia), Damasceno will dwell on the relationship between the three people and create a term also used in philosophy: pericoresis, interpenetration in relationships, that is, the possibility of listening to the Other not just out of respect, which would already be a step, but trying to penetrate and understand the reasons for his thinking.
It was João Damasceno (675-749) who studied this relationship of pericoresis, the term emerges proposing the articulation between the unity and the communion of the Trinity, it seems simple to say this, but difficult to understand and practice, since most relationships exclude the Other which is different, be it of color, race, creed or culture, far ahead of his time João Damasceno was a friend of the Saracens.
In his historical theological journey, he sought to find something to explain the relationship, which was in accordance with what the scriptures said of God and his relevance in history: the articulation between the concept of God that is triune and one, but each one being a natural person (prosopon) and God, João structured the intra-Trinitarian way, based on the Greek concept of person: hypostasis.
In the Greek word it means hypo, which is sub, underneath, and stasis, which is sub-posited; as if it were a support, but in the divine relationship this concept should be expanded and explained.
The term pericoresis emerges in this Patristic Theology, as the articulation between unity and communion of the Trinity, but going further, so the Father is one in the Son and the Son one in the Father, and both are one in the Holy Spirit, so there is an interpretation, it is more what a pure relationship it is to be in the Other.
The problem with some religious interpretations is the static relationship of the three, which is the dualistic relationship that comes from idealistic philosophy, where subject and object are separated and are relational by a type of transcendence, which actually has nothing to do with the Divine mystery nor is it religious.
In a deeper spiritual asceticism is the effort to understand and love the Other who is different, who is not my mirror, does not have my concepts and judgments, does not classify the world as I do, the great tragedy of our days is the lack of pericoresis , and thus of Trinitarian relations.
I think that the pandemic shows us this, even though there is a great pain that kills everyone and that sensitizes many people, that opens the heart to look at the suffering of the other, there are those that close themselves in groups, ideas and schemes to not look at the pain , the hunger and despair that the pandemic has generated, or we wake up together or perish together, staying in our trench is non-relational
Translatio studiorum and writing techniques
03
Jun
The long period that went from the beginning
of registered writing, scriptura, until the appearance of copyists, called mixed orality, is called translatio studiorum, where writing itself will undergo many technical variations, and in them stand out São Jerônimo who compiled and elaborated the first version of the Bible.
During this period, the so-called Cappadocian priests stand out, Gregorio de Nissa (335, died in 394), his brother Basilio the Great, and Gregório de Nazianzeno, whose writing is important for what both Hannah Arendt and Byung Chull Han will analyze in the vita active, and here the information is linked in times of new media, but it will be done during the week.
Translation Studiorum, period of transfer of knowledge, from one era to another when the techniques of culture are changing, and thus their anthropotechnics, between different cultures and religions, especially in the West and the Middle East, where there is the culture of the original of the book of three great Abrahamic religions (comes from Father Abraham), the Koran, the Torah and the Bible.
The translatio thus corresponds to the period of peak and decadence of Greek-Christian thought, which has more links than is apparent, and which would be preserved and would continue in the Western world in the form of a dominant and influential philosophical and Trinitarian and Neoplatonic doctrine.
De Trinitate de Saint Augustine is as revealing as his popular book Confessions, and Plotinus’ influence cannot be denied, nor can it be overvalued, it is not denied because Plotino’s conception of One of the soul is essential, and overvalued because Augustine’s conversion displaces him from Plato’s deontological center, Sumo Bem, to the ontological: the person and Trinitarian of Christian thought.
However, Cappadocian priests bring concepts that can be explored in the light of current thinking, Ousía (οὐσία, correct pronunciation is “ouceea”), is translated a noun from the Greek language giving rise to essence and substance, but semse feminine and conjugation in the present participle of the verb “to be”, the Heideggerian interpretation is “present” or present (being-present).
We will also explore the meaning of the word hypostasis, from the Greek prosopon, it comes from Greek theology with the meaning of person, and in conjunction with ousia it gives a meaning to the Trinitarian.
Human dignity and unacceptable beliefs
02
Jun
The death by asphyxiation of African American George Floyd by white police officer Derek Chauvin shocked
the world and triggered a series of violent demonstrations across the United States, including yesterday in the capital Washington, at the same time as in Brazil to accusations and demonstrations between groups for and against Bolsonaro grow.
In the Brazilian case, these are the president’s fearless words, and a meeting of ministers that became a public scandal due to the way in which serious state issues were dealt with, in a pandemic moment that should be a reason for unity, the political stage is heating up.
It was not the line of reasoning of this blog, but it cannot be omitted when one realizes the serious moment in the world and national scene, and two points must be considered, without forgetting that the pandemic should be our main focus, but gravity forces us to touch these points.
In the American case, Floyd’s own family through the autopsy clarified the death by asphyxiation and thus asked that it be considered manslaughter, when there is an intention to kill and not painful when there is no intention, Derek Chauvin the policeman who killed him already had 20 complaints and two letters of reprimand. In the Brazilian case, there are several manifestations in defense of democracy and the principles that govern the Brazilian constitutional charter.
I personally signed one that calls on all Democrats of different convictions to defend these principles. I want to point out that both in the American case, where Floyd’s brother thanked him for his support and asked for the acts to be peaceful, as in Brazil I also consider the fight against violence and respect for constitutional powers is fundamental.
Corona vírus plateau in Brazil
01
Jun
We defend the use of LockDown here, since last week it would be late, now
what the curve shows is a plateau in 1 thousand deaths during 14 days, depending on when it will start to fall it is possible to evaluate the extension of the plateau and the prospect of a fall, as a week-long holiday was made, with a small result, some response is expected in a week.
The outlook will be as slow as the rise, counting only from March to make the projection easy (March, April and May) we will have the curve retraction only in August (June, July, August) which even coincides with the end of winter, so the “new normality”, because there is no way to predict what may happen afterwards even if there is a second wave of infection, only even in September.
Any plan that intends to open up more, with the collaboration and education of the population that has not happened until now, is an adventure, a plunge into the dark.
The sensible thing would be to allow the opening of trade with severe restrictions and punishments, the collaboration is at most half the population, which is insufficient to contain the contamination, and we still count on the disinformation sometimes aided by government officials.
We will come out of the pandemic more divided than before, with low morale because we were not led and we were not even able to unite, and looking for culprits will be worse than the pandemic itself because we will have to face a serious economic situation to follow.
Hoping that we will learn something from this, the thousands of doctors, nurses, assistants, drivers, rescuers and security guards who helped save lives, the solidarity of those who help the unemployed population and the institutions that struggle to maintain this aid.
It could be worse, if there were no social isolation and field hospitals that expanded the capacity of the health system, if there were no emergency aid for the unemployed and informal workers, in addition to the help of the family allowance (plan for poverty), but it is in the people the impression that a stronger decision for greater social isolation was lacking.
The pandemic has not passed, and the drop in the curve will depend on the population and surveillance.
What is Hegelians spirit and transcendence
27
May
We have already made several posts to explain that Kant’s transcendence is
nothing more than the separation of subjects and objects, but Hegel completes and systematizes this whole philosophy in Phenomenology of the Spirit, a work that deeply influenced the philosophies of law, history, aesthetics and of religion, Marx himself and many currents that flow from it have not escaped this.
We have also made posts on the question of Gadamer’s historical conscience, criticizing Dilthey’s main ideas about history, now let’s analyze the “spirit” in Hegel.
First, as the name says, it is a phenomenology, therefore not a set of facts or even tangible realities, but a set of phenomena placed under a certain scheme.
Hegel understands history, art, religion and philosophy itself as an objective phenomenon, and as such (this is an object) is directed to the spirit for self-knowledge.
His capacity for synthesis will make his history of philosophy, with specific schemes and elements about transcendence and metaphysics in philosophy, give strength to his thinking, and the Phenomenology of the Spirit is central to his scheme.
To understand what he thought as a phenomenon, it is necessary to understand what he calls “natural conscience” which was what opened the way for philosophical knowledge, and it is through it that he will make a reading of the history of philosophy and thus elaborate what it is knowledge.
Just to make a counterpoint, Husserl will say instead that there is only awareness of “something”, while Hegel constructs this category as being “natural” and there is objectivity.
But Hegel’s “natural” is not only natural, but historical, therefore, its introduction to a system of philosophy, is built on the historical path of thought, it seems “natural” but it is not, its is philosophy of history.
What is hidden behind this scheme is what Nietzsche will call the genealogy of morals, but then other genealogies arose, the linguistic turn from Wittgenstein for example, he will see objects in relation to others: “we cannot think of no object outside the possibility of its connection with others” (Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 2.0121).
To understand what is Spirit in Hegel, and which profoundly influences the conceptions of arts, history and religion today, the forms are correlated to an idea of absolute subjectivity, therefore “outside” the object, and related to it by a special type of essential logic that leads to the knowledge of reality, therefore it is not a phenomenological realism as Husserl sees it.
The spiritual and transcendent in Hegel is “the most interior, from which the whole construction of the spiritual world ascends”, it was what Marx called “heaven for earth” and that he (Marx) reversed, however, the separation of subject and object remains, so spiritual is a type of Absolute Spirit of Religion (see diagram).
Between the essence and the Being
21
May
Although dualism remains present, the essence is conceived by analogy to
Being, and this was also the Thomist doctrine, it remained an onto-theology until the 20th century, it took a whole path of phenomenology to encounter the Other, the non – Being not as a contradiction, and the end of the dualism between Being and essence.
The long discussion of the medieval period between realists and nominalists was based on a term now unknown which was quididade, which means that thing is, from Greek hylé to modern models of Heidegger’s metaphysics, where the thing that can be material or not, and also what we think about it, in Husserl’s line there is only awareness of something, or of the thing.
But there was a philosopher in the Middle Ages, Duns Scotto (1266-1308) who did not distinguish between the thing that exists (si est) and what it is (quid est), and theologically it was complicated because the thesis of Santo Tomás de Aquino it was by analogy, that is, the meaning of similarity between things or facts (Houaiss dictionary, 2009, p. 117), and the religious were always in a hurry because in the 20th century Duns Scotto was accepted within the Catholic Christian doctrine, becoming blessed (John Paul II declared it).
His theory of knowledge used the two known distinctions distinctio realis (real distinction) and exists between two beings of nature, and the distinction rationalis (distinction of reason) that occurs between two beings, but in the mind of the subject who knows, but breaks dualism in creating a third possibility to distinctio formalis (formal distinction) that occurs in the perceived entity and is neither real nor in the mind.
So in addition to his disciple William de Ockham, famous for the simplification principle called Ockham’s Razor, but in a way Descartes, Leibniz, Hobbes and Kant had their influence.
However, the recovery of Duns Scotto is essential to overcome the dualism of nominalism / realism and the overcoming of pure realism by philosophical hermeneutics, and thus also the modern correspondent of nominalism, which is the linguistic turn, makes sense and opens up dialogue.
Phenomenology and historical hermeneutics
20
May
Any reading, however simple or complex, involves an interpretation, and in
whatever culture the interpreter is based on language, especially writing for people who have gone beyond oral language, so we speak of text interpretation.
It is clear that the imaginary and the different languages, for example, now the media, have a differentiating influence, however they will still be based on that primary schooling of the different interpretants and it is still in the primary school the interpretation of texts.
We already said in the previous post that it starts with Socrates’ maieutics (act of giving ideas), not by chance the birth of the school as we know it today, then came the Platonic academic and the Aristotelian high school, the long period called “translatio studiorum” from the low and high middle ages, until reaching the Gutenberg press and the modern school, linked to modern enlightenment.
Contemporary hermeneutics, whose starting point for several authors is Schleiermacher (1768-1834) was contemporary with Hegel, but with direct influence from Kant and Fichte, he did not opt for idealistic subjectivism, and as a Lutheran religious he also escaped from Catholic orthodoxy
However, hermeneutics will find another soil in Franz Brentano, which until breaking with the Catholic scholastic vision (he was even a cleric), in 1871, he reinterprets the scholastic-Aristotelian intentionality “the intentional in-existence” (the reference is of Safranski) distinguishing two modes of being: the esse naturale, natural or real being located outside the subject who perceives it, and the esse intentionale, the mental or intentional being of the objects that exist immanent to the subject who knows it.
This philosophical digression is important to understand that in Franz Brentano and later in Husserl, hermeneutics has undergone a profound change, preserving its ontological root, thus maintaining the relationship to a content, but delves into the mental or psychological issue.
Husserl, a student of Franz Brentano, will cause another change in hermeneutics now towards the epistemological crisis of science in the mid-early 20th century, Husserl responds with a rupture to the Kantian dualism between the object and the knowing subject, with a question: “I exist , therefore, all the “no me” is a simple phenomenon and dissolves into phenomenal nexuses? ” (HUSSERL, 1992, p. 43).
The evolution of this thought will pass through Heidegger, a student of Husserl, who in Being and Time (1986), explaining that these elaborations since Plato and Aristotle were tied to natural phenomena: “The dominant representation in the West of the totality of nature (the world) it was, until the 17th century, determined by Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy … ”(page 86) and that now the question of Being should be taken up again, it is thus a big step in philosophical hermeneutics.
The maturity of this thought, elaborating the method of the hermeneutic circle is developed by Gadamer, for those who interpret “… it is not to take notice of what has been understood, but to elaborate possibilities projected in the understanding”, it is thus an opening in the preconceptions.
References
GADAMER, H.-G. (1989) Verdade e Método. Petrópolis (Brazil): Editora Vozes.
HEIDEGGER, M. (1986) Ser e Tempo. São Paulo: Vozes.
HEIDEGGER, M. (1987) Que é uma coisa? Lisboa: Edições 70. (pdf in english)
HUSSERL, E. (1992) A ideia da fenomenologia. Lisboa: Ediçoes 70.
The truth, the method and the life
19
May
The contemporary concept of truth, although quite attached to logicism
and idealism, arises from Socrates’ maieutics, a technique for valuing dialogue for the parturition (in sense of childbirth) of ideas that are consolidated according to the concrete conditions of knowledge (it is said material, but the Greek hilé is something different from matter today) where it is questioned what is unshakable and absolute.
Among modern truths strongly influenced by Hegel, there is a high dose of subjectivism, said in the following way in Phenomenology of the Spirit: “… everything comes from understanding and expressing the true not as a substance, but also, precisely, as a subject. At the same time, it should be noted that substantiality includes in itself not only the universal or the immediacy of knowledge itself, but also that immediacy which is being, or the immediacy of knowledge. […] “, so it seems to refer to Being and Spirit, but it is subjective and fluid.
What resulted from Hegelianism was the formulation of the idea of Power exercised by the State and from it it will derive a large part of modern formulations, until reaching general relativism, that is, in rough terms “each one has his truth”, we return to the Greek doxa, mere opinion.
It is therefore necessary to discuss the method, but also modern methodologies are permeated with dogmatism, the mere repetition of abstract concepts, the logical-theoretical construction of formal theories, empiricism, according to Popper, the greatest modern danger, and idealistic rhetoric.
Hermeneutics initially and later the hermeneutic circle starting from Heidegger and consolidated in Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Truth and Method, reconstructs a modern maieutics, where not only the dialogue becomes viable, but also the possibility of a fusion of horizons becomes possible, including in dialogue with classical ontology and modern historicity.
The hermeneutic method has a profound relationship with life, Husserl’s lebenswelt, is effective for dialogue with different world views, thus it favors the relationship between people who express different cultures, and thus it is crucial for the interpretation of texts in the fields of law , theology and literature, without fundamentalism and false orthodoxy that hides error and doxa.
Hermeneutics in a pandemic relationship makes people act together even with a different visions about political, medical and social reading, it is it that helps distant discourses to show solidarity for life, the common good and in the near future outlines plans for the recovery new horizons of post-traumatic society.
Pandemic and power
15
May
A catastrophe situation is faced with solidarity, compassion with those who suffer
it directly, support for those who must face it head on, and especially with all the support of those who can and must give conditions to face the catastrophe.
It is also a new situation, which requires everyone to review actions, concepts and the lifestyle itself can and must change, those who behave trying to avoid the new routine, hinder the coping of the catastrophe and worsen it personally and socially.
All of this involves power, central powers and micro-powers, the philosopher Foucault developed the concept of biopower, that is, the control of collective phenomena from the processes of birth, longevity, mortality and fertility, already in recent philosophy Byung Chul Han created the concept of psychopower, one that through the media and communication controls the social environment.
The pandemic seems to have combined the two, and even more deeply human anthropology on its return home, uses both the issue of mortality control and communication, especially digital, for tasks, shopping and work at home, as well as the control by power.
State institutions are mobilized as soon as the Modern State enters the scene, to sympathize or to open its contradictions to the social environment, hospitals, educational institutions and mass media are all mobilized by the forces of power.
The more fraternal and more hostile faces of the idealistic model appear, in an eagerness to replace the health and power of the family’s intrinsically fraternal solidarity, spirituality and the common good. It may point to a way out or put the whole of life in check. .
Religious power is also in check, with the temples closed or they give serious and concentrated responses or they stay in the spiritual subjectivism of known phrases and buzzwords that do not explain or solve anything, the subjectivism / objectivism dualism collapses and asks for a transcendent.
In the Christian reading of John (Jn 15,15) you can read: “I no longer call you servants, but friends because the servant does not know what his Lord is doing”, and this is fundamental in a pandemic, and generates solidarity.
And for those who go beyond friendship and generate brotherly love, there is a divine promise that consoles and strengthens us at this moment (Jn 14,21): “Now whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and I will manifest myself to him ”, and they will have inner peace to face the external war that the pandemic generated.
The pandemic and the sign of Jonah
14
May
Nínive (present-day Mossum) was one of the largest cities during the Assyrian
reign, by the standards of the time it had more than 100,000 inhabitants and was quite extensive since the Bible reveals that Jonas took 3 days to explore it and ask for the change of conduct of its inhabitants.
The date on which the preaching took place in Nineveh is uncertain and the author of the book that bears the name of this prophet is also unknown, but as it refers to the reign of Jeroboam II as king of Israel, the date must be between the years 700 and 742 BC, by writing the text in Aramaic typical of late Hebrew, both in style and in grammar, it is post-exile which means between 722 and 742 BC
From the end of the 17th century BC (when the Neoassirian Empire fell), until the middle of the 7th century, it was a geopolitical entity, ruled by other peoples, the Assyrians were known for their wickedness and violence, where they could even kill for debt, and the biblical narrative said that the prophet Jonah, who was to preach and ask for the change and conversion of the people, was afraid to do his mission.
It is not known for sure what was the plague that could come to the people there, but the people including the king all changed their attitude and converted, and the plague did not happen in that region, the current pandemic already has its sign of changing habits and the demand for solidarity with everyone, but there are still those who think that the pandemic will pass without any change in attitude.
The history books do not record exactly what the change was, but it was during the government of Assurbanipal, son Assaradão, who died in 667 BC, that Assiria lived its most profitable period, including the first Library of history, precisely the Library of Nineveh, which is where thousands of texts are found (chronicles, royal letters, decrees, religion, myths and many others) written on a baked clay tablet.
The change that we need not only to avoid the number of deaths that grows, ranges from personal habits to the concern with food and life maintenance of those who no longer had jobs, those who now do not have and those who must lose with the growth of pandemic.
For those who believe, they must also rethink what they believe and experience what they believe, otherwise it is just a legend or fable told as a beautiful story.
