The linguistic turn and the return to Being
26
Apr
Completing the introductory journey of the ideas of modernity, which,
as we’ve said, comes from the questions of universals vs. particulars (medieval quarrel), then nominalism vs. realism (philosophy of the late Middle Ages) and finally the question of modern reason.
The philosophical realism of modernity saw itself as independent of the ontology of reality in relation to conceptual schemes, beliefs or even points of view, with truth typically being a question of correspondence between our beliefs and reality.
However, at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, both through phenomenology and hermeneutics, these concepts came back into question, and both the resurgence of ontology and the linguistic turn (which can be connected to nominalism) are two new phenomena in philosophy where the “illusion of meaning” and the “interpretative task” presupposed by the “linguistic turn” and phenomenology are questioned.
Philosophers such as M. Heidegger (1889-1976) and L. Wittgenstein (1889-1951), taking this linguistic turn to its ultimate consequences, question issues such as the subject (the question of Being), truth (beyond formal logic) and rationality through epoché phenomenology (putting into brackets) and eidetic reduction, the search for the essence as the invariable structure of a phenomenon.
Philosophers such as M. Heidegger (1889-1976) and L. Wittgenstein (1889-1951), taking this linguistic turn to its ultimate consequences, questioned issues such as the subject (the question of Being), truth (beyond formal logic) and rationality through epoché phenomenology (bracketing) and eidetic reduction, the search for the essence as the invariable structure of a phenomenon.
For this reason, the entire course of thought was necessary, and also its unraveling with modern idealism (Greek eidos with a rationalist vision), the resumption of Being or reintegration.
Philosophers such as Duns Scotto (1266-1308) are recovered and it is possible to trace his influence on both René Descartes and Heidegger. For him, “the human being has lost the direct intuition of the essence of entities” and this makes his philosophy very current, seeing the direct intuition of essence in the entity.
This essence is interpreted in the context in which the work was written and not in the context in which it is read, as Paul Ricoeur (2010, p. 24) pointed out: it is the identification of what “once was”, the re-effacement of what is a dis-distancing, and not pure distancing assuming it to be neutral.
Thus, the interpreter must be seen in his context as an Other, together with his essence.
Only by emptying the rationalist ego and recovering our miseri–cordis (humility of heart) can modern man emerge from the dualistic and false opposition of modern realism, giving him back the dignity of his culture and his being, outside the idealist vision.
Heidegger, Martin. (2012) Ser e tempo/Sein und Zeit. Brazil, Petrópolis: Vozes.
Ricoeur, Paul. (2010) Tempo e narrativa. Brazil, São Paulo: Martins Fontes.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. (1979) Investigações filosóficas. Brazil, São Paulo: Abril Cultural.
The age of reason and the ontology of the thing
25
Apr
The end of the Middle Ages meant the revival of Greek humanism, 
but it returned to the idea of intuition, based only on the intellect of reason. For René Descartes (1596-1650), it was the only thing capable of distinguishing the true from the false, and it was the only thing that made it possible to obtain knowledge of the world.
This path consisting of doubt, experimentation (empiricism was born) and the formulation of laws were the influences that would come to dominate the rationalist precepts of the Enlightenment.
In his Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) re-elaborates empiricist and rationalist ideas, and it is this path that will elaborate the Enlightenment doctrines of the 16th and 17th centuries in the West. He states that “All our intuition is nothing more than the representation of a phenomenon; the things we intuit are not in themselves as we intuit them, nor are the relations between them in themselves as they appear to us.” This is a central point in his philosophy, particularly in his Transcendental Idealism.
For Kant, through this intuition, objects are given to us and the doctrine that studies this data is Transcendental Aesthetics, which orders and classifies things according to a series of categories that are not only intuited, but deduced by the intellect.
The world of the subject and its elaborations is reduced to its “subjectivity”, the way in which each individual experience and constructs the world, is no longer a divine transcendence, but the fruit of practical reason in a moral order.
The pinnacle of idealism, especially in Germany, was the idealism of Hegel and his disciples, and after his death they were divided between the old Hegelians, stuck in the world of transcendence and its dualistic contradictions, and a re-elaboration of the idealist religious spirit, including David Frederic Strauss (1808-1874), his brothers Bruno Bauer (1809-1882) and Edgar Bauer (1820-1886), and Max Stirner (1806-1956).
Among the young Hegelians, in Karl Marx’s view, were he and his companion Frederic Engels, who criticized Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872), for them the only one to have moved on from Hegel’s idealism to an objectivist materialism, and thus Marxism was born.
This is what Engels wrote: he [Feuerbach] “…pulverized contradiction at a stroke, restoring materialism to its throne without further ado. Nature exists independently of all philosophy and is the basis on which men grow and develop, who are also themselves natural products; outside of nature and men nothing exists…” (Engels, 1941).
However, Feuerbach relied on nature and little on politics, and this is where the Marxist critique comes in.
The idea of being is reduced to a historical and materialist conception, related to production, economics and politics, while the contemplative, moral and ethical vision of Being is subject to the “thing”.
The idea that there was a moment when the universe was created is subject to mathematics and physics.
Engels, F. Ludwig Feuerbach. Spanich Version, p. 14, Moscow, p. 13, Moscou 1941.
On being and essence: scholastic ontology
24
Apr
Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) predates Thomas Aquinas (1223-1274)
and was influenced by Boethius (480-534). The path from Plotinus to Boethius has already been traced in previous posts, passing through Porphyry (234-304 AD), and his real name was Malco or Telec, he translated the Aeneid.
The influence of Aristotle and Plato is great, but the attempt to synthesize Aristotle and Plato in Porphyry’s Isagoge, which was translated into Latin by Boethius and attributed to Thomas Aquinas and consequently to the Catholic Church, is a misconception; it was Anselm of Canterbury who was in fact the founder of scholastic philosophy, with his onto-theology and his “ontological argument” for God.
Boethius is credited with the “quarrel about universals”, whether they exist or are just names, which divided nominalism and realism in the Lower Middle Ages and early Renaissance.
As a teenager, Anselm did not receive his father’s approval to become a monk. After falling ill, he left home and went to Normandy, where his fellow countryman Lanfranco received him as a novice at the Abbey of Le Bec in 1059, and in 1063 he became prior, when he wrote the works Monologion and Proslogion.
Le Bec was a center of study during this period, but was initially protected by William II, receiving lands that were later taken over. It was during this period that the kings first investigated the appointments of bishops and even popes (that’s a separate story), but he was appointed Bishop of Canterbury (Canterbury, which is still the seat of the Anglican bishopric today),
He submits to Pope Urban II (at the same time there was Clement III, considered an antipope), and was even the first to speak out against the slave trade in 1102, at a council in Westminster (reviewing the facts), did not submit to the English monarchy, and was exiled twice.
In Proslogium, the existence of God is an “a priori”, that is, through reason, without recourse to experience, he starts from the concept that “a being of which nothing greater can be thought” (God) and argues that*, in order to be the most perfect being, God must exist both in the mind and in reality.
Thomas Aquinas was influenced by Saint Anselm, and in his youthful work “Being and Essence” he describes the question of being and reality, distinguishing between being (that which is, being) and essence (what something is), in which he clarifies how the intellect initially perceives being and its essence, exploring the relationship between simple and composite substances.
For Duns Scotus (1265/1266-1308), a moderate realist to some, a nominalist in my view, universals exist as entities “in rebus” (in things), but are not separated from them like Platonist ideas, but rather as a “ratio” (reason) of the intellect.
His main thesis (described in Ordinatio I, part 1, qq. 1-2) is that “if there is a currently existing infinite being among the entities”, for him the universals “goodness” and ‘truth’ will be real, this is expressed biblically: “the way, the truth and the life” (Jn 14-6) and “only one is good” (Lk 18:19).
Anselm, St. Proslógio (1988). Transl.: Ângelo Ricci, Ruy Afonso da Costa Nunes. Brazil, São Paulo, SP; Nova Cutlural ed., 1988. (Coleção os Pensadores, Anselmo/Abelardo). (4ª. edição)
Aquinas, S. T. (1981). O Ente e a Essência, Brazil, R.J.: Mosteiro de São Bento, Editorial Presença.
Scotus, John Duns. (1973). Seleção de Textos. In: Coleção Os Pensadores. São Paulo: Abril Cultural.
* “We therefore firmly believe that you are a being of whom nothing greater can be thought. Or does such a being not exist because “the unseeing said in his heart, ‘There is no God’?”4 But the unseeing, when I say, “The being of whom nothing greater can be thought,” hears what I say and understands it.” (4 Psalm 13:1). Text in the “Coleção Pensadores” Thinkers Collection.
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).
Principles of the history of Being and eternity
22
Apr
In philosophy, there is no way of referring to Being without addressing
being and essence, which philosophers have said in different ways during the process of civilization and the construction of knowledge.
For the Greeks, starting with Socrates, being (seen as what constitutes being human) resides in the soul or reason, which is not separate, and conscience is the source of both intellect and morality, and man is capable of transcending the material world and seeking truth and virtue. For him, the soul is essence and is not separate from the body (being or form), it is an obstacle to virtue.
Plato elaborates that “being” is that which exists, while “essence” (form) is the fundamental and immutable nature that defines that being, while Aristotle’s essence of a being is its fundamental nature, what defines it and makes it what it is, it is the form that unites with matter to form a substance, which is the individual being.
So Socrates’ transcendence disappears, Plato then elaborates the High Good as the essence of what is good, just and true, while Aristotle defines it as the pursuit of happiness, the highest good that human beings seek, he also creates the idea of the immovable motor, the first cause of everything that exists and of the universe, Plato defends the immortality of the soul, while Aristotle is stuck with the idea of human finitude where everything is mortal.
The Neoplatonist Plotinus (204-270 AD), saw the soul as a bridge between the intelligible world (the One and the Intellect) and the sensible world, it is the image of the Intellect and of the vital force that drives life and motive, in his book Ennead VI:
“And what are we? Are we that, or are we that which is associated and exists in time? In fact, before birth, we were there [in the intelligible], being other men and, some, also gods: pure souls and intellects united to the totality of essence, parts of the intelligible, without separation, without division, but being of the whole (and even now we are not separate). But now, another man has approached that man, wanting to be. And finding us, since we were not separated from the whole, he clothed himself with us and added to himself that man, which each of us was then” (Plotinus, VI, 4, 14, 16-25).
Plotinus sees the Soul in various “stages”, it is what connects Spirit and Body, the higher nature and its materiality), it is a creature of God, created in his image and likeness, composed of body and immortal soul, Augustine of Hippo reworks this as the Being is a creature of God, created in his image and likeness, composed of body and immortal soul, thus seeing it outside its bodily finitude.
In Saint Augustine’s view, the body has a dual nature, the first physical and material, like his body in which he lived, and the second refers to the church as a metaphor for the body of Christ.
I think of this metaphor in the sense of a worldview, as the 20th century theologian Teilhard de Chardin also saw it this way: the whole universe is Christ’s body, that is, not the itinerant church, but the eternal and living one in the immensity of the universe, so his body is eternal, and this is the greatest meaning of the resurrection, Jesus had a temporal experience, an ex-sistence, but he is eternal.
Peace and the death of the pope
21
Apr
The truce talks between Russia and Ukraine, between Israel and the Hamas and Trump’s tariff-only war put the world on alert for a serious period of civilizational instability.
The death of Pope Francis this morning in Brazil and Italy also means the loss of a tireless defender of peace and has repercussions throughout in all world.
In an official statement this afternoon (21/04) the Vatican clarified that Pope Francis’ death occurred at 7:35 am (Italian time), therefore 2:35 am in Brazil, caused by:
– Stroke
– COMA
– IRREVERSIBLE CARDIOCIRCULATORY COLLAPSE
I leave you with a personal video where I reflect on the Pope’s true thinking on controversial issues expressed in chapter 3 of his encyclical Fratelli Tutti (all brothers), as follows:
Pain, Being and Easter
18
Apr
This is a time that has tried to abolish pain and exalt pleasure and joy at
any price, but it is a time of depression, panic, intolerance and no empathetic life, writes Byung-Chul Han: “Just in the palliative society hostile to pain, silent pains multiply, crowded on the margins, which persist in the absence of meaning, speech and image” (Han, 2021, p. 57).
Nothing could be more paradoxical in this time which shows that pain is an essential part of existence. Who can accept this if not those who have overcome the desire for immortality and pursue the desire for eternity, Han who has Buddhist leanings and Hannah Arendt who has Jewish roots wrote this.
Walter Benjamin, who had strong roots in the Frankfurt School, wrote: “Pain alone, among all bodily feelings, is for the human being a navigable stream, with waters that never run out and that leads him to the sea”.
The lack of understanding of this feeling proper to Being leads to difficulties in dealing with frustration, loss and the twists and turns of existence, making us weaker and less resilient to any contradiction, often unable to deal with them.
Understanding pain also helps us to understand human finitude, death not as an end in itself, which makes life limited and small, but believing that there is something beyond it, that there is a “passage” to eternity, and that without it life seems ephemeral.
We live by consumption, by what is “available”, where “the world that consists of what is available can only be consumed. The world, however, is more than the sum of what is available. The available world loses its aura, its aroma. It allows no lingering” (Han, 2021, p. 94).
It is also a world without “otherness”, as described by Han: “It protects it from being degraded into an object of consumption. Without the original distance, the other is no you. He is not summoned in his otherness, but appropriated” (idem, p. 94), here Han is recalling a text by another thinker and educator, Martin Buber.
Only those who have already moved on from the finitude of the world, from immediate consumption and passing life, to a true desire for eternity, already here, can understand pain, and extreme pain such as Jesus’ death on the cross, but as Han emphasizes, it then returns to the surrounding world, which is reality, but does not cancel out the desire and reach beyond the finite Being.
Han, B.-C. (2021) A sociedade paliativa: a dor hoje. Transl. Lucas Machado. Brazil, Petrópolis, RJ: Editora Vozes.
On palliative care and pain
17
Apr
Byung-Chul Han wrote “Palliative Society: Pain Today” in the midst
of a pandemic (the original book is from 2020), which was practically a challenge to a world frightened by thousands of deaths, isolation and a rush to drugs without proper contraindication tests, but the book is about modernity where “pain is seen as a sign of weakness” (Han, 2021, p. 13).
Among various analyses of the thoughts of E. Jünger (On Pain, 1934) and M. Heidegger (On Ernst Jünger), the former wrote “Tell me your relationship to pain and I’ll tell you who you are! “In a “supposedly ironic retort to Heidegger”, Han quotes Heidegger who observes: ‘Tell me your relationship as a being, if you even have any idea about it, and I will tell you how you will ’occupy‘ yourself with ’pain‘ or whether you can reflect on it’” (Han, 2021, p. 84-85).
Heidegger has in mind, Han points out, “rather, an ontology of pain” … “He wants to penetrate, through being, into the “essence of pain” (idem, p. 85) … “We, however, are without pain, we do not appropriate [vereigen] the essence of pain” (Han’s quote from the Bremen and Freiburg Conferences).
He goes on to say that “thought is pain, the passion for the secret that ‘escapes, oscillates, oscillates in withdrawal’” (quoting another text by Heidegger, On the Road to Language, p. 87), it unveils being, it is the “sanctuary of being”, it reaches out to life” and this ‘sanctuary of nothingness, of that, namely, which in every sense is never merely an entity, but which at the same time, directionally, is not only an entity but at the same time, it directs, even as a secret” (p. 89, quoting new text Conferences and lectures).
And he concludes, by philosophical reasoning, that “death means that the human being is in relation with the unavailable, with the entirely other that does not come from him” (idem, p. 89), it could very well also be a theological development, the one that Heidegger, Arendt and Han differentiate when they speak of human immortality and eternity as pure Being.
In “Vita Contemplativa” Han, reflecting on Hannah Arendt, writes: “However, no human being can, Arendt continues, linger in the experience of the eternal. He must return to the surrounding world. But as soon as a thinker abandons the experience of the eternal and begins to write, he gives himself over to the vita activa, the ultimate goal of which is immortality” (Han, 2023, p. 145).
Arendt marvels at Socrates who didn’t write, as Han said, and thus renounced immortality. We can add that Jesus didn’t write either, and in his case, He suffered the “passion” with pain over exquisite public torture, until his public death alongside two thieves, thus “living the entirely other” as Han thought, and being able to experience the passage (Easter) from life to death and from death to life, that’s the reason for Him too.
Han, B.C. (2021) A sociedade paliativa: a dor hoje. Brazil, Petrópolis, Vozes.
HAN, B.-C. (2023) Vita Contemplativa, Petrópolis, Vozes.
In addition to being-in-the-world and its overcoming
16
Apr
Byung-Chul Han interprets that Heidegger will make his turning point in
the passage from “acting to being” and this is where his greatest work comes from: Being and Time (first published in 1927 in the Annals of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research edited by Edmund Husserl).
Han writes: “as opposed to fear, which merely relates to something in the world, the ‘whereof’ of anguish is the world as such: ‘what anguish is anguished about is being-in-the-world itself. The being-in-the-world […] sinks into anguish. The ‘world’ can no longer provide anything, nor can being-there-with-others” (Heidegger, 2005, p. 179).
And Han adds that this world that escapes anguish is not the general world, but “the familiar, everyday world in which we live without question” (Han, 2023, p. 76), and adds the “impersonal”.
The impersonal as “no one” removes “the burden of decision and responsibility from the being-there by freeing it from action in the narrow sense. The impersonal leaves the being-there at the disposal of a pre-prepared world in which everything has already been interpreted and decided“ (p. 77), I don’t know if in German it has this connotation, but in Portuguese this ”stop” (such as pre-pare, pare is stop, this pause in the life of action is what modernity seeks.
It is this impersonality, Han explains, that repels any autonomous perspective of the world, and which Heidegger considered “inauthenticity” or “decadence” and which prevents the realization of Being.
In contrast to the idealist view, Han describes that “boredom is not, for Heidegger, some dreamlike bird hatching the egg of experience. It is also interpreted as a call to action” (p. 78), the call that today is so disastrously driven by social media.
What Heidegger claims by refusing this call is “precisely the possibility of its [being-there’s] action and inaction” (Han, p. 78 quoting Heidegger).
Heidegger and Han even compare this to a “death” (of course not exactly in the physical sense, but of the affirmation of the self), and “this death frees me for the other. In view of death, it awakens a serenity, a friendliness with the world” (Han, 79 quoting his work Death and Otherness).
It is this openness that makes it possible to overcome fears, uncertainties, frustrations, insecurities and so many everyday anxieties, from which are reborn a new spirit, creativity and joy to move forward, to overcome barriers and understand the possibility of a new horizon.
Heidegger, M. (2005) Ser e tempo. Brazil, Petrópolis, Vozes, 2005.
Han, B.-C. (2023) Vita Contemplativa ou sobre a inatividade. Brazil, Petrópolis, Vozes.
Listening to that voice
15
Apr
What is the voice of the world that we listen to, or do we have the capacity to
develop and know how to listen to an inner voice, both Hannah Arendt and Byung-Chul develop this clearly, but we need to recover the German roots, which is why Byung-Chul in his translations purposely leaves out the terms willing [gestimmtes] and listening and placing oneself in accordance with the voice [stimme].
In this way, he explains how the original being-in-the-world articulates the current and the disposed, “we cannot dispose of the disposition, rather we are thrown into it, not the activity”, but the “correspon- der” means that which “addresses us as the voice [Stimme] of being” (p. 67), so listening and listening attentively precedes the action and gives rise to the disposition.
Thus, “corresponding to the voice of the call […] is always necessary… not just by chance and sometimes a disposition [gestimmtes]“, where ”the speaking of the correspond receives its precision” … “rather, it conceives in the thought a De-finition [Be-Stimmheit]” (Han, 2023, p. 68), which comes from Heidegger’s text “What is this – Philosophy”
Han explains: “thinking is always already disposed; that is, exposed to a disposition that grounds it”, and quoting Heidegger’s text again: “all essential thinking requires that its thoughts and propositions be drawn out again and again, like ore, from the fundamental disposition” (Heidegger, quoted on p. 69).
This thinking is in his friend, what the Greeks called pathos and Heidegger recovers, but recalls in the Latin roots the paschein*: “to suffer, to bear, to endure, to surrender, to let oneself be carried, to let oneself be de-defined by [something]” (p. 69), and I add here, [or someone] if you think again about the difference that Arendt and Han make between immortality and eternity, *our emphasis from the Hebrew (פַּסחָא), recalling our previous post on the “passion of civilization”.
Thus, we can reduce (simplifying is always complicated), that we can hear an inner voice of conscience, but Heideggeer and Han remind us that the disposition precedes this, that is, we are often “listening” because we have auditory functions, but we don’t have the disposition and attention to actually listen to what conscience tells us.
Of course, having a conscience is much more than having convictions, often our certainties and convictions get in the way of hearing this voice, because we are human and we make mistakes, we want the eternal, but we are content with what is fleeting, listening requires “meditating”.
Even those who don’t believe in the “pachein” can help in times of difficulty too, setbacks, in short, everything that in a way is normal in life and that we must go through.
Han, B.-C. (2023) Vita Contemplativa Ou sobre a inatividade. Transl. Lucas Machado, Brazil, Petrópolis: RJ.
