Arquivo para a ‘Politics’ Categoria
The Lights of Enlightenment
31
Jan
We still live under the aegis of the Enlightenment, the strong movement of 18th century
Europe, its principles seemed to lead to a perfect society speaking of freedom and equality among human beings, wishing to abolish both the powers of realization and the influence of Christian religiosity, Voltaire and Diderot were the most radical thinkers, but you can’t help but feel the influences of Immanuel Kant, Adam Smith, David Hume and Montesquieu.
Ernest Cassirer makes one of the important treatises on the Enlightenment, quotes Diderot: “The Author of nature, who will not reward me for having been a man of spirit, will not condemn me to eternal punishment for having been a fool” (apud Cassirer, 1992, p. 224), but the author corrects both the aspect of tolerance, it is necessary to remember the wars between Lutherans and Catholics involving different reigns and the peace of Westphalia, and the aspect now of a free religiosity that “is no longer a gift of a supernatural power, of divine grace; it must spring from the action itself and receive its essential determinations from the action” (Cassirer, p. 225).
The idea also developed by Cassirer of a “pure” intellectualism, on the one hand puts a primacy of thought over pure theoretical speculation and on the other hand seeks to found a religion “in the pure limits of simple reason”, of course without faith, without the mystery (which is part of nature) is no longer religion.
Cartesian insufficiency and reductionism, a strong argument of Cassirer to the Enlightenment, made several philosophers seek roots in Eastern philosophy, Cassirer reminds Leibniz that he had already “quoted Chinese civilization” and in the Persian Letters, Montesquieu makes a comparison between East and West, but it will be Schopenhauer (Upanishad) and Nietzsche (Zaratrusta) who, under these eastern influences, will break with Enlightenment philosophy.
Leibniz is not directly contested, but his disciple Wilhelm Wolff, who “celebrates Confucius as a prophet of great moral purity and places him on a par with Christ” (Cassirer, p.226), will be the target of Voltaire’s irony in his famous “Candido, or optimism” (1759), criticizes the idea of “the best of all possible worlds”.
In the economic aspect, it was important to overcome the philosophy of mercantilism and develop liberal theory (especially Ada, m Smith) on the concept of the economy of nations, but liberalism will develop more broadly with the idea of financial capital by David Ricardo (1772-1823).
The civilizational crisis that we pointed out in last week’s posts (and previous ones, of course), has its roots in the Enlightenment and its ideas of state, religion and freedom, but as Cassirer points out, it is important to “reject the literal meaning of the Bible every time it is mentioned. finds expressed the obligation of an act that contradicts the elementary principles of morality” (p. 228), but in his Treatise on Tolerance (1763), a law of the intellectual world is traced “that reason only exists and subsists if it is recreated day after day” (p. 229).
Cassirer’s development however is that “one cannot decide on their point value apart from their moral efficacy. This is Lessing’s meaning of the apologue of the ring: the ultimate and profound truth of religion is only proved from within” (p. 230).
For these philosophers, only objectivity (the relationship with the external object) is knowledge, and this is achieved in a “transcendence” of the subject in relation to the object, thus there is no sense or value in a moral asceticism, thus for them religion is religion. natural, although they do not have a good relationship with nature.
CASSIRER, Ernest. (1992) A filosofia do Iluminismo (The Philosophy of the Enlightenment). Trans. Alvaro Cabral. Brazil, Campinas, SP: Editora da Unicamp.
War at the crossroads and pandemic under review
30
Jan
Analyzing these two themes of great global relevance, complicating elements of the great civilizing
crisis, which we have already analyzed the political and cultural aspect that is its background, we see a war on a global scale and a pandemic under analysis by the WHO, regarding the use of the term.
These are two euphemisms, as the war already has global proportions with the sending of Leopard tanks by Germany and Poland, while Russia sends its ship called “the end of the world” to international waters in the North Atlantic, there is no prospect of Peace, the pandemic continues what is being discussed is whether the word should continue to be used, the kraker variant infection is already seen worldwide as fast and easy to transmit.
After the announcement of the delivery of Leopard tanks to Ukraine, Russia has already bombed the country with hypersonic missiles that are out of radar range and announced the development in scale of the Poseidon nuclear weapon (image), an Autonomous Nuclear torpedo with intercontinental capacity, as relies on submarines can reach coastal cities in practically all continents.
Vice-President of Security Council and ex-president of Russia Dmitri Medvedev said that whoever has nuclear weapons does not lose a war, and the declaration is seen as a threat to the involvement of European countries and the United States, now seen as direct involvement by the declared shipment of weapons.
Analysts from all over the world, including the so-called symbolic “Doomsday clock”, which began after the end of World War II, advanced the “clock” to 90 seconds from midnight, due to the war in Ukraine and the escalation of threats between the West and Russia.
In 1945, created by biophysicist Eugene Rabinovitch and organized by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the Doomsday Clock featured scientists such as Albert Einstein, J. Robbert Oppencheimer and Marx Born, who are still renowned scientists who maintain this analysis, the 23:58 time: 30 is the closest since its inception.
The WHO is also considering suspending the state of “public health emergency of international interest”, a euphemism for declaring the end of the pandemic, which is worrying because more than 170,000 deaths have resulted in China alone in recent weeks, and the kraken variant continues expanding, with this the help of nations with health difficulties and a global policy to combat the virus is weakened.
I do not believe that the current crisis, which includes and is based on cultural values, can dissipate, but attitudes of peace and care for life can give us some warning, the authorities must bear this in mind.
Addendum:
After the publication of this post, came the official WHO statement: “We cannot control the covid-19 virus, but we can do more to deal with the vulnerabilities of populations and health systems”, said its Director General Tedros Adhanom this Monday. -Friday (01/30/2023).
One year of war and three of pandemic
23
Jan
On December 31, 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) was alerted about cases of
pneumonia in the city of Wuhan in China, in Brazil although there were cases without a precise diagnosis, I remember a case that was reported in Minas Gerais, only in On March 11th, when the WHO characterized the situation as a “pandemic”, it started a combat process in Brazil.
Accurate data is lacking, however WHO continues to talk about advancing numbers and the Kraken variant (other is Othrus, CH.1.1, appear in England) and China has had records of infections.
For those who don’t remember, March 11, 2011 was also the date of a tsunami that affected the Fukushima plant (in the photo the tsunami in Minamisoma, Japan), just to remind you that both natural disasters and those of a war can affect the 447 reactors nuclear weapons in operation in 30 countries (according to data from the WNA, World Nuclear Association), in addition to the nuclear weapons that are growing all over the world.
In a meeting at the Ramstein military air base in Germany, members of the EU, Canada, Japan, USA, and among Latin American countries, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay, signed their support for Ukraine. Brazil did not sign.
The request for sending Leopard tanks, the most advanced and manufactured in Germany, has not been decided, Finland will be able to send 200 units that it has of this type of military vehicle, the next meeting will include the sending of 4th fighters. Generation, Russia has the powerful MIg-31 with strike and aircraft intercept capability in combat.
The warnings should be seriously discussed by those who claim to fight for life and peace, the use of rhetoric no longer works due to social media, at all times election campaign lies and populist statements are confronted with an increasingly warlike reality.
New way for civilization
20
Jan
Both Zizek and Dalrymple advance in the diagnosis of a Western culture in crisis, they only 
struggle with what secularization and the Western ideological struggle have destroyed, they refute any possibility of a new moral and ethical level, but Zizek’s question remains: “How can we find a way out of this confusing situation? “ (p. 41), it will certainly no longer be the tried and tested models gestated at the center of European culture, to appeal to Descartes (Darlymple in his chapter on Relativism and the epistemological problem, “come back Descartes we need you”) or Hegel which occupies a central role in Zizek’s readings along with the New Hegelianism of “Marx” about which Zizek himself points out contradictions.
They blame the moral values of Christianity or Islam, which have little or no influence on contemporary European society, even though because of immigration there are more Arabs or Christians coming from countries with less development, they will always be inferior and subordinate layers in European thought, there is no space for the new, it has to resemble the old theories of European development, culture and morality, the crisis scenario evolves into one of confrontation and hatred.
At all times there were minorities who pointed out ways out, the group of philosophers around Plato did not enjoy great prestige, and as we say this week, Western culture is just a “footnote” of classical culture, Aristotle gained notoriety for being a tutor of Alexander, but it must be said that he taught him and his companions not the art of war, but teachings on medicine, philosophy, morals, logical religion and art, and gave him a copy that Alexander took on his campaigns of conquest.
A new thought will not be anything like what has already aged, and even if it must be read and analyzed, the new one will sprout from poorly explored and forgotten paths, from clearings that can open new poles of real humanism in the midst of the culture of war and hatred, there can be no hope in it and all that is expected is a civilizing crisis, whose heavy clouds can already be seen on the horizon.
In biblical reading, Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Bethany are always remembered where Jesus rested, but Capernaum is the real place where Jesus took his first steps in his mission, near there was Peter’s house and as it was close to the Sea, in fact the edge of the lake of Gennesaret, is remembered as the “way to the sea” and the path where he found his first disciples, his preaching and his miracles.
In biblical reading, Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Bethany are always remembered where Jesus rested, but Capernaum is the real place where Jesus took his first steps in his mission, near there was Peter’s house and as it was close to the Sea, in fact the edge of the Lake of Gennesaret, is remembered as the “way to the sea”, where Zabulon and Nefatali are located, and it was the path where Jesus met his first disciples, his preaching and his miracles.
Capernaum is close to Zabulon and Naphtali, of which the prophet Isaiah said: “Land of Zabulon, land of Naphtali, way of the sea, region across the river Jordan, Galilee of the heathen” (Mt 4,15), so it is likely that a new Capernaum will not be a “religious” land in the sense of dominating Christian or Islamic culture, but a hidden place where a new civilization will emerge.
Waiting for a modern Capernaum, or an Athens, where a new conception of citizenship will sprout, the beginning of Plato’s book “The Republic” is about the just and the unjust and their reputations in society.
Political economy and morals
18
Jan
The confrontation of these ideas will be present in most of the texts that intend to analyze the world
social conjuncture, the decline of the great nations and empires, the return of nationalism and socialism at the beginning of the last century and their main theses are, as explained by Slavoj Zizek: the political economy and the Party of Order (Zizek, 2012, pg. 28), which was the beginning of the polarization that is now worldwide and went beyond patriotic limits.
His whole discussion is between the “doxa” (only to understand that of the ortho-doxa) of the Marxist Frederic Jameson (Valences of the Dialetic) and the neo-Marxists Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (Multitude) for whom the evolution of work called immaterial (Marx’s nomenclature for intellectual work) or symbolic work (nomenclature for linguists and semioticians) and which is at bottom what Kant and later Hegel called “subjective”, which is trapped in objective x subjective dualism, even if transcendence is incorrectly used for the subjective, there is nothing supernatural in any of them.
What Marx differs from Zizek points out: “the ‘objective’ determinations of social reality are at the same time ‘subjective’ determinations of thought (determinations of the subjects trapped in this reality) and, at this point of indistinction (where the limits of our thought, their impasses and contradictions, are at the same time the antagonisms of objective social reality itself)…” (Zizek, p. 10), to summarize and make it clearer, in Marx’s view it is the “mode of production”, that is, the way in which material goods are produced that determines subjectivity, thus unites them, but eliminates any “transcendence”.
The important analysis of the precedence of political economy over any morality, which is submitted to it as explained above, makes this field the object of moral and also political relativism, where the ends come to justify the means, even if morally unjust, it matters little, but the analysis that a large part of intellectual subjectivity has become public (I prefer transcendence that is not or even immaterial work, because the fruit in the last instance is always a physical product, even if it is a book or a text), so for this reason the Hardt’s and Negri’s analysis make sense, even if they are all somehow linked to the subjective of Hegel or Kant, and are ultimately footnotes to Plato and Aristotle, as several philosophers have said.
After reviewing several Marxist concepts, such as added value (I remember that in Portugal it is common to use it as a synonym for adding value to products), he sentences the difficulties of communism in our time, such as the reforms in China by Deng Xiao Ping: “ introduce capitalism without the bourgeoisie (as the new ruling class); now, however, Chinese leaders are painfully discovering that capitalism without a stable hierarchy … breeds permanent instability” (Zizek, 2012, p. 21), this was said long before the real estate giant Evergrande went bankrupt, and was taken over by the state. Chinese contracting this crisis.
The author skips the so-called “Cultural Industry” discovered by the Frankfurtian Marxists in contact with the American marketing machine, but does not fail to note the cultural war in post-socialist countries, when he asks himself whether the economy continues to be the great reference for the analysis political and social, in the case of Eastern European countries: “in which the tension between pseudofolk and rock in the field of popular music functioned as a displacement of tension between the conservative nationalist right and the liberal left” (Zizek, p. 33 ), however, the idea “that the cultural struggle is not a secondary phenomenon…” (idem) is folded.
Although he recognizes, quoting Thomas Frank, that there is a “gap between economic interests and moral questions” (p. 36), he treats the theme with irony and outside the cultural question, of which it is an inseparable part.
ZIZEK, Slavoj. (2012). O ano que pensamos perigosamente (The year we dream dangerously). Trans. Rogerio Bettoni. Brazil, São Paulo: Boitempo.
The reduction of transcendence to subjectivity
17
Jan
The idea of an absolutizing and unique thought has pursued humanity since classical
antiquity, the One will appear in almost all texts, but an almost hidden concept coming from Socrates (clearly through “All philosophy is just a footnote to Plato and Aristotle” phrase by Alfred Whitehead, in fact one could extend it to Socrates, in fact Dalrymple himself does not include Aristotle (see p. 67).
However, in addition to the problem of translation, few know Greek, and every translation is a betrayal, because we know that language is the expression of Being, and even for science we know that there is no formal truth and we have already posted using Darlymple’s texts , that there are two forms of relativism: the abstract and the empirical, so just to enter a new text, we depend on thought, although abstract dichotomies are also found in it, such as that of formal logic that is valid for mathematics and empirical logic that is valid for science of nature in general and with certain restrictions for social ones as well.
This way we can enter the text of Slavoj Zizek on “The year we think dangerously”, he is talking about 2011 both in the various occupation movements (in Europe in Wall Street) and in the Arab spring, which afterwards the absolutizing thoughts tried to reduce to misunderstandings and ironies, but there was something new and uncomfortable in those movements, and this introduces what Zizek thinks.
And without a doubt a reading more to the left than Dalrymple, but what is interesting is both the search for new paths, the fact that we return to Byzantine socialism and pre-colonial neoliberalism indicates that we are going in circles, and some thinkers look for the new in the midst to populism and polarization.
Zizek’s first important clarification to avoid footnote readings is a quote he makes from Hegel: “if reality does not correspond to the concept, worse for reality” (Zizek, 2012, p. 10), to say that all left-wing thought with Hegelian affiliation, and this includes the orthodox Marxists, are more attached to the theory of thinking, and although they wish to be heirs only to Aristotle who would be more “realistic”, there is also in Plato the idea of the sensible world separated from the world of ideas, but Careful, the eidos of antiquity has little or nothing to do with Kantian idealism, in a word eidos in Greek is image.
The divergence between Plato and Aristotle is in the representation of the real: in Plato the extromission (the image projected into us and which converges to the intelligible world) while in Aristotle coffee the intrusion, where the idea comes from the “world of contingent phenomena” and that emit copies of themselves into our interior, and are interpreted by an innate or acquired knowledge.
Differing from this original conception of Kantian principles, he points out his divergence with Frederic Jameson, and states that in Marx’s thought both the objective and subjective dimensions, not admitting the objective dimensions as ideological, “a description devoid of any subjective involvement” ( pg. 10), but both are not subject to any form of transcendence, what Zizek discusses with Kant and about what he considers “the public space of ‘world civil society’ designates the paradox of universal singularity, of a singular subject who, in a kind of short-[circuit, he bypasses the mediation of the particular and participates directly in the Universal” (pg 11), just as Kant and Hegel do not break away from the objectivity/subjectivity dichotomy to reach a truly universal transcendence.
The absence of an ascesis that reduces man to the merely human, or to use an “too human” philosophical expression, a book by Nietzsche that abandons transcendence, to try later to find it again in the eastern philosophy of Zarathustra, a path taken by many previous contemporary philosophers to the new types of transcendence that we have already mentioned from Theodore Dalrymple.
The analysis of 2011 and its revolts are important for the analysis that he makes of Hard and Negri “Crowd” and the analysis that he makes of the utopias of 2011 are important, if not the only ones, of dreams postponed, since the Prague spring, the revolts of Paris, the movements of the hippies and opposition to the Vietnam War in 1968, if the political consequences were not what was expected, they moved the cultural world for years, and we believe they can also move the scarce political ideas and universal theories about peace between peoples, with the springs of 2011, there is a lack of models of real emancipation, and realism has to do with ideas (eidos) and they are not just “practical” options because they themselves have their theoretical ideals, although rarely examined, Zizek does.
The return to the Greek Eidos, which are what we produce as images, whether from the inside to the outside (extromission) or from the outside to the inside (intromission), is important to review the ideas of our time, where did it get lost or perhaps find the treasure wanted.
ZIZEK, Slavoj (2012). O ano que sonhamos perigosamente (The Year We Dreamed Dangerously), trans. Rogerio Bettoni. Brazil, São Paulo: Boitempo.
Insanity in War and Indefinition in the Pandemic
16
Jan
The news of the War in Eastern Europe is that the struggle for the conquest of the Soledar region
had a high military cost and the city was practically destroyed with just over 10 thousand inhabitants has a strategic military significance and the consolidation of Russian positions in the Donetsk region , while the missile frigate Zircon sails across the Atlantic.
The Ukrainian defense denies dominance in the region, while the Russian one celebrates amid a controversy with the mercenaries of the Wagner command who claim that they fought in the region.
The meaning of this battle is that of a war that each piece of territory means bloody battles and still indicate a long period, unless a more aggressive and more dangerous strategy.
The inhabitants of the neighboring city of Sirversk dream of peace, but it could be the next combat, as well as the strategic city of Bahkmut for the land war.
The pandemic is experiencing days of uncertainty, neither the diagnoses nor the severity of the new variants are clear, but it is known that “kraken” is highly contagious.
Although the WHO policy is not to make a fuss and leave the measures to be taken unclear, the picture is alarming (see map)+ and the kraken variant has proven to have higher contagion rates and the effectiveness of vaccines from the WHO is not clear. first lineage.
What is expected in war and in the pandemic is that affective measures are found to save lives, avoid even greater radicalization than the current situation and give simple people hope for a future with peace and security.
The causes of peace
12
Jan
This is the subtitle of chapter 7 “Why are we like this (2)?” of Theodore
Dalrymple’s book that we analyzed this week, topic 1 which deals in particular with transcendence, we left it for the last analysis, although the book does not end there, although this title goes to “Why are we like this (7)?” and then talks consequences, but I think we should first think about why we think that way and where did our culture go, which is the author’s essential purpose expressed in other books of his authorship.
The aspect of the causes of contemporary relativism was already discussed in the previous topic: empirical and abstract, but without overcoming in depth the dichotomy about logical (abstract) truth and scientific empiricism (valid in laboratories for specific cases) which also already has its questions both in philosophy and in science itself, see the anachronistic case of the virus, it cannot be prevented because mutations cannot be controlled and nature also reveals its strength in negative aspects, we hope that the positive thing is to rebalance the disastrous human action.
The author’s approach is interesting, but it is restricted to the European sphere, there is no analysis neither in this author nor in other Europeans there is no analysis of the colonial dispute, also in the leftmost analysis of Slavoj Žižek (I will write without the accents in the Z because for non-Slavs this is too extravagant), because in my view they all focus on state power and its palliative solutions. The peace analysis starts from the idea that the last two wars were basically caused by the conflict between Germany and France (there was the previous Franco-Prussian war, see the map), and the European Union could be a “cause of peace” since a greater harmony in Europe could destroy the reasons for the first two wars. big conflicts.
It was thought then that no one believes that “France would attack Germany, not the other way around. The resulting conclusion would be the following: without this vast European apparatus of containment, the Hun [name given to Germans during the wars] would revert to its old form” (Dalrymple, p. 111). The scenario at the time of the book seemed stable, and although it is plausible to think that greater “unity” between nations means less war, there was no thought of the possibility of England leaving the Union (Brexit, started in a plebiscite in 2017 and finalized in 2020), nor a more recent Soviet turnaround from Russia.
So the causes of peace, as we have already defended this thesis in other posts, almost always result from bad peace agreements, not just truces, but what promises a stable future, because that was how the bad agreement between Germany and France after the first World War, resulted in the Second, although the trigger was the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the already fragile Austro-Hungarian Empire and see that this region can be a trigger again once Bosnia and Serbia wave to the Russian government, and the second war ends with bad deals between NATO and the soviet empire.
The entry of countries from the east to the European Union should be distinct from joining NATO’s military force, this for example is the case with Turkey, although the threat of leaving the community remains.
However, the author points out the Achilles heel of the European Union, a “pension fund” for tired politicians who want to maintain their clientelism: “after having been defeated or losing the willingness to go through the rigors of the electoral process” (p 117).
In comparison with the Soviet state, the author says that it is possible to identify the subject fed by the EU from a kilometer and a half away: “it is a type of subject that has developed that typical countenance of the former members of the Soviet Politburo”, a tendency of the current states the left or the right, within a reasonable proposal that is a greater union between nations, which should differ from states where the appetites of its members are satisfied by those who best know how to manage their appetites, and this does not lead to a true new co-governance and true management of the public good.
So the cause of peace that would apparently come (in 2010) from a greater integration of countries, nations continue in their cultural differences, unfortunately it did not come true, the model of Pax Eterna is bankrupt.
Dalrymple, Theodore (2016). A nova síndrome de Vicky: porque os intelectuais europeus se rendem ao barbarismo. Transl. Maurício G. Righi. Brazil, São Paulo: É realizações, original english 2010.
Demographic concerns or cultural crisis
11
Jan
Chapter 2 of Dalrymple’s book analyzes the demographic question in Europe,
the Europeans of origin are aging, while Africans and Muslims who have more children grow and also the question of religious and cultural background appears, late rates of 2004 (the book is from 2010 in the original) data are, of average growth:’
“Ireland (1.99), France (1.90), Norway (1.91), Sweden (1.75), United Kingdom (1.74), Netherlands (1.73), Germany (1.37), Italy (1.33), Spain (1.32), Greece (1.29)” (DALRYMPLE, 2016, p. 28)”, considering that each couple should have two children to replace the population, not positive growth but negative.
After doing an analysis on economic power and population growth, citing as examples Singapore and Hong Kong successful economies with small populations, Denmark to cite a European example and then compares with Great Britain that colonized them, and Nigeria with a large population and low development rates despite oil, but economic analysis is not its forte.
Then he analyzes the Muslim question, which is growing throughout Europe, but at the same time becoming secularized, although there are small groups of radical groups, which is no different in this respect from Christians, see the case of Ireland, just for example, after a long analysis of the woman question, from fundamentalism he finally lands on the philosophical question and the role of relativism.
However, it will focus on logicians, and in a certain nostalgia for the period of Descartes’ Reason, since this specific type of rationalism is already practically outdated and already in Kant, long before our period of certain new philosophical scarcity (let’s explore Sloterdijk and Zizek), had already written the “Critica da Razão Pure”, his golden work.
However, the initial analysis of relativism is good, the author wrote: “there are two origins of relativism: abstract and empirical” (p. 67), the author makes a reverse criticism since empiricism is a consequence of rationalism, dreams of returns to its purity (Return, Descartes, we need you, a subitem), and in the field of abstractionism it does not criticize logicism, among its citations are Alfred N. Whitehead (from Principia Mathematica, written together with Bertrand Russerl, another logician also present in your quotes.
However, he writes at the outset, a sentence by Whitehead according to which all Western philosophy is nothing but footnotes to Plato’s philosophy, but this is also valid for logicism, another truth also said also said
by Whitehead is “there are no whole truths: all truths are half truths”, however, logicism is based on the binary False and True.
If empiricism did not fully respond to pure rationalism, neither did abstractionism, and it can be said that pure abstractionism is exactly the logicist, since neologicism, for example by Kurt Gödel, admits its logical contradiction, expressed in its paradox that every axiomatic system (formal logic) is either complete or consistent, it cannot be both at the same time.
However, there are profound things in his analysis of rationalism, for example, when quoting Thomas Khun and stating that science had “epistemological” feet of clay, Kuhn appealed to the fact “to those intellectuals who felt vaguely guilty for not understanding anything about science …. , but on a deeper level he appealed to those intellectuals who deprecated the West in general, and Europe in particular, as the originator of science”…. And so: “The more meticulous the self-deprecation, the more generous, open and progressive a person would be” (p. 71) and this is even among those who idolize science.
So it is not the author’s conclusion, but ours, he tries to rebuild this moral field with “dissemination of doubt”, “the multiculturalism of everyday life” and the “choice of the greater good”, and whose apex is a love of freedom (yes it is important, but it has no moral asceticism in it), citing Shelley’s empirio-anarchism by Walter Bagehot in Estimations in Criticism: “the love of liberty is peculiarly natural to the mere impulsive mind [such as his]. He bristles at the idea of a law; enjoys imagining that he doesn’t need it [….] The government seems absurd to him – a demon…” (Dalrymple, 2016, p. 81).
It is a youthful criticism of the state, and does not enter into the discussion of a strong, mediating or minimal state, but it is right to say at the end of chapter 5: this was exceptional in Shelley’s time (passage from the 16th century to the 17th century ) in which the thoughts of our time seem to be trapped (according to Dalrymple, almost a norm).
Dalrymple, Theodore (2016). A nova síndrome de Vicky: porque os intelectuais europeus se rendem ao barbarismo. Transl. Maurício G. Righi. Brazil, São Paulo: É realizações, original english 2010.
War, brazilian intervention and pandemic
09
Jan
Although the Russian government has decreed a unilateral ceasefire due to
Christmas, which is celebrated there on Kings Day (which was yesterday), the war scenario is very worrying: a frigate (named Admiral Gorshkov, but there may be others navy´s movements) will sail across the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Ocean´s, with nuclear Zircon missiles, which are hypersonic and difficult to be captured by anti-missile radars.
The American government and NATO have said that they can bomb Russian territory, although Ukraine has already done so surgically reaching weapons points or military troops, now the threat is general.
In Brazil, after a day of demonstrations with invasions of the Planalto Palace (house of government), STF (Federal Court) and Legislative Assembly, the federal government decreed federal intervention in the Federal District, using Art. 34 of the Brazilian constitution, which in the third item says: “maintenance of public order”, intervention is when a higher body intervenes in a lower body that in a normal situation enjoys autonomy, that is, it is an exceptional act.
The pandemic, although enjoying stability in the country, registers a 25% increase worldwide, so being treated only as covid-19 is an understatement, although the symptoms are milder, also due to vaccination, the new variants are much more transmissible than the previous ones and Kraken (XBB.1.5) is starting to stand out, a subvariant of Omicron already present in 25 countries, with the first case registered in Brazil three days ago.
The WHO statement was “XBB.1.5, a recombination of the BA.2 sublines, is increasing in Europe and the United States, has been identified in more than 25 countries and WHO is closely monitoring it”, said its Director General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
It would be necessary to increase vaccination, in Brazil children have a high delay, and to quickly start inserting second-line vaccines, since the current ones are not effective for the new variants.
It is expected in the world, and especially in Brazil in this moment of tension, greater serenity and dialogue, barbarism does not solve anything, it is like putting out a fire with gasoline.
