Arquivo para July, 2024
Wisdom and simplicity
17
Jul
Among the various contemporary narratives,
one of the most absurd is the praise of ignorance as if it were an ally of simplicity and humility, from the “cultural” to the religious world this is transformed into narratives: he did not attend college, he did not read a book, did not walk among wise men, etc. Do not confuse this with the ability to live simply and among simple people.
It’s not a sign of the times, it’s not “generational”, it’s just a lack of interest in true asceticism, in an inner and outer growth that gives your human nature that something more that is the only thing capable of removing depression, anguish, anxieties and other illnesses. current.
The wise man is an observer, and observes not only the everyday scenes, those that different types of people live in, especially the simplest ones, but also the one who searches in the history of humanity for those peaks of civilizational moments that made us more people, more human. and more supportively, there are many examples, authors and people who gave us this.
We posted yesterday about fresh water and hot food, but in several regions this has interesting contours and cultural aspects, for example, in many countries there is no breakfast, an African told me, in Portugal there is breakfast which is a breakfast. simple morning, and in Brazil what is called breakfast is actually a small lunch.
What to read beyond is of course your personal belief, read the Bible, the Quran, the Vedas or what is sacred or culturally read in a certain culture, the red book in China for example, the second most read book in Brazil is The little prince, although Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist is 5th. in the world, but Iliad and Odyssey are still little read, King Lear and Othello by William Shakespeare are increasingly less known.
Of course, wisdom does not mean literary culture, but far from it it also becomes narrative in the sense that it ignores cultural history, the modern model of the novel is present throughout Western culture, and Honoré de Balzac and Gustave Flaubert are representatives for different tastes, but even for social criticism they should be read.
Someone can launch the philosophical argument, it is an entire Eurocentric culture, true, but it has been incorporated into everyday thoughts, nationalism through national colors is all over the world, freedom of expression, as the romantic Victor Hugo (Les Misarables (photo), in my opinion, the best of romantics said: “Not even a rule, nor models” is also an expression of individualism and personal heroism, but historical.
We made several posts about being, interiority and the complement of Contemplative Life with Active Life (Hannah Arendt and Byung-Chul Han in particular), about the methodology of the hermeneutic circle where we must listen to the text (and also the dialogues) for fusion of horizons and also the disaster of our Western culture and the need for resistance of the spirit.
Some fresh water and hot food
16
Jul
While the powerful fight for dominance,
colonization and power ignore the lives of simple people, of basic service workers who are necessary in any country and culture because they have forgotten true community and moral values.
They can talk about this in everyday life, but their minds, articulations and efforts are focused on achievements and power, not the achievement of a good friendship, of a few hours of relief and pleasure in a day to day life and in a society that pushes us towards maximum efficiency and fatigue. to the limit of strength.
When hiring some construction service workers, they told me that they would like that in order to work they needed good fresh water and hot food, lunch boxes needed to be reheated and sweat was restored with simple fresh water.
They are also grateful for a dignified treatment and a little rest after lunch, it is incredible that a large part of the affluent society is unaware of these simple things that can bring great happiness, balance and peace, the tired society ignores this.
The centers of power are surrounded by ambitious people who know (or think they know) how to deceive simple people, but they are unaware of the day-to-day lives of these people.
I see when they form conversation circles, the issues and concerns, there are almost always concerns about relationships that are lost, the use of violence and chemicals that permeate their family life, as human values crumble and fall as well. upon them the worst degradations and inhumanities.
A good word, it is also a little fresh water now in a figurative sense, but no less true, true cultures and religions keep this “fresh water” in their thermal jugs and where the food of the soul can be digested and provide energy for everyday life. .
The biblical passage in which Jesus speaks to the crowds, and his family seeks him, he has a surprising answer Mt 12,49-50: “And stretching out his hand to the disciples, Jesus said: “Here are my mother and my brothers. whoever does the will of my Father who is in heaven is my brother, my sister and my mother” “, does not mean that he ignores his family, but he wants to give those people some good food and fresh water.
The world we live in is not ignored, in fact those in power ignore it, but its good to bring a little peace and hope to the souls that survive in a society of tiredness, hatred and neglect.
Insecurity in Europe and attack in the USA
15
Jul
NATO decided to place American missiles in
Germany, the Tomahawk ballistic missiles, which can hit targets up to 2,500 km away and carry nuclear ammunition, there are also hypersonic weapons in development, which increase European firepower, Russia already has weapons of this type and which are already spread out in strategic locations.
The Russian reaction came through Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov “Europe is in the crosshairs of our missiles, our country is in the crosshairs of American missiles in Europe. We have already experienced this. We have enough capacity to contain these missiles, but the potential victims are the capitals of these European countries”, which would be the trigger for a 3G.
The fighting continues hard, a secret document reveals that the death toll is already immense in the war and Russia would have 750,000 soldiers killed or injured, the number in Ukraine, although unknown, must be close to this figure, and neighboring countries Poland, Latvia and Lithuania and the Scandinavians threaten to send troops if Ukraine becomes more fragile.
Former president and presidential candidate Donald Trump was attacked when he was holding a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, several shots were fired, killing one person and injuring another, Trump was hit in the ear and removed from the scene by his security guards, the shooter was killed and the FBI investigates the motivations, the first is clearly political.
Although the scenario is frightening and there is no shortage of warmongering spirits, at this moment there is a civilizing crisis installed because from the center of power to ordinary citizens there is an animosity that does not perceive the danger of intolerance, violence like this not only awakens more authoritarian spirits but also strengthens them, and should not receive applause from anyone.
The good news comes from Iran where the moderate Masoud Pezeshkian, President-elect of Iran claims to be willing to hold ‘constructive dialogue’ with the European Union, the announcement was made in an English-language newspaper bringing great hope.
Time of conflict and clearing
12
Jul
If we are in inappropriate times for thought
and intelligence, which is why artificial intelligence scares so much, it is inappropriate times for human and moral values, this will be a time of clearing too, as it will require that many consciences and men will be able to awaken and see and launch to open the clearing.
For this, a metanoia is necessary in philosophical, political, everyday and even religious thinking, remember that the true oracles and prophets were killed and ignored precisely even by intelligent and “religious” people.
The threshold of an unlimited civilizing and humanitarian crisis is close, but if we look at everyday culture, we talked about this from the very Brazilian Ariano Suassuna to the Englishman Anthony Daniels (using the pseudonym Theodore Dalrymple – Our Culture, What’s Left of It – 2005) in previous posts, also politics and thought it seems 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 future they desire, they must have a spirit of resistance.
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 metaphor, the clearing is the light of the good news (gospel), but the master warns “behold, I send you (Mt 10:16) “Behold, I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore, be wise as serpents and simple as doves.”
This was the case at the time of the Punic wars, of little Greece fighting against the strong Persian empire and also at the time when the apostles of Jesus were sent two by two on a mission to open the clearings and minds of humanity to a more fraternal civilization and not It was a war against his empire, but his mentality.
Evil and compassion
11
Jul
Hannah Arendt, in her work The Origin of 
Totalitarianism (original 1951) criticized Kant’s theory that defended evil as the search for satisfaction through self-love, and argued that evil exists for different reasons, such as greed, greed, resentment, desire for power and cowardice.
Byung-Chul Han’s genius analyzes Heidegger’s work from the heart and affective modality, but it is not something totally original, Kant confesses in his book “Conflict of the Faculties” that “because of his flat and narrow chest, which leaves little space for the movement of the heart and lungs, I have a natural predisposition to hypochondria, which in previous years bordered on the boredom of life (Han, 2023, p. 8) and hence in Kant a “yearning expands the heart, it defines him and exhausts his strength” (Han, 2023, p. 9).
Han uses the metaphor of Heidegger’s seamstress (Näherin) who “works in proximity” and is also a circumciser of the heart” (pg 10) and there “the heart of being-there” beats in the transcendental horizon, just as Han explains, in the late Heidegger that “contrition penetrates more deeply” and being-there separates itself from the being of there: dasein (p. 11).
Analyzing the affective tones of the heart and its close connection with being-there is more than discovering the interiority and transcendence of philosophical discourse, it is “Heidegger’s heart, on the other hand [confronted with Derridá], listens to a single voice , follows the tonality and gravity of the “one, the only one that unifies”, for him it is an “ear of his heart” but there is something strong spiritual in this, more than feeling or emotion.
The resistance of the spirit, in our times, Han says that Heidegger’s speech is quite temporal in the sense of the context of the second world war, it is the speech of peace, of announcing fraternity, of overcoming hatred and differences (it will recover the “Il y a” by Lévinas, and also Derrida’s concept of différance), to go beyond conflict and Hegelian dialectics.
It is necessary to circumcise the heart, this is the origin of the Jewish term, in the reading of Deuteronomy (10:16) cited in the epigraph by Han: “Circumcise therefore your spiritual heart; removing all carnal obstructions, and stop being insubmissive and stubborn!”.
Han, B.C. (2023) Coração de Heidegger: sobre o conceito de tonalidade afetiva em Martin Heidegger (Heart of Heidegger). Trans. Rafael Rodrigues Garcia, Milton Camargo Mota. Brazil: Petrópolis: Vozes.
The question of spirit in Hegel
10
Jul
Byung-Chul Han criticizes Hegel’s Phenomenology
of Spirit seen “in terms of the forgetfulness of being” (Heidegger’s central theme) as an “arid self” that finds “its limitation to the being that encounters it” (Han, 2023, p. 334), this is not the resistance of the spirit.
Hegel recovers in part, in the epigraph of the last chapter “truth is the whole”, re-discusses the dialectic and its metaphysics in idealism “in relation to “just being” which empties it to a name “that no longer names anything”, consciousness natural… when he realizes being, he assures that it is something abstract” (Han, 2023, p. 336).
This natural (idealistic) consciousness “lingers on “perversities” … “it tries to eliminate one perversity by organizing another, without remembering that the authentic inversion” [occurs when] “the truth of the essence is withdrawn into the being” (Han, 2023, p. 336, citing Heidegger).
In contrast to Hegel’s dialectic, this topic would fill a book, it engages in a dialogue with Derrida and Adorno on the question of mourning and the work of mourning, killing death is not just something secret in the heart of Plato or Hegel (pg. 384), but also reverse the negative of Being.
This work of “tragedy” is distinguished from the “work of mourning” of dialectics (Han, 2023, p. 385), it is what Han calls in other works excessive positivity, not understanding pain (in the palliative society, for example, analyzing the pandemic and the pain itself).
“Tears free the subject from his narcissistic interiority… they are the “spell that the subject casts on nature” (Han, 2023, p. 394), citing Adorno the “Aesthetic Theory” is the book of tears and that contrary to Kant, “the spirit perceives, in relation to nature, less its own superiority than its own naturalness” (Han, 2023, p. 395).
Hegel’s absolute is abstract: “the Absolute is absolute only to the extent that it knows itself as Absolute, that is, as self-consciousness” (Hegel in §565 of the Phenomenology of Spirit).
For true asceticism it is beyond human nature, it leads to an ascension, a new interiority that expresses itself in a more human exteriority, not human self-consciousness (even thought of in religion) but rather that which admits human singularity in the one divine and This is Absolute.
Han, B-C. (2023) O coração de Heidegger: o conceito de tonalidade afetiva em Martin Heidegger (Heidegger’s Heart: on the concept of affective tonality in Martin Heidegger). Trans. Rafael Rodrigues Garcia, Milton Camargo Mota. Brazil, RJ: Petrópolis, Vozes.
Resistance of the spirit and pacifism
09
Jul
What Edgar Morin defines as resistance of the
spirit, he is 103 years old yesterday, is beyond thought and political force, what is spirit for European philosophy is mediated by the idea we formulate about the world, and spirit here has to be beyond current everyday thinking.
Human beings are capable of thinking about peace in their relationships, cultivating their interiority, an exhaustive theme in Byung-Chul Han’s ontology, and delving deeper into values such as: humility, fragility and the need we have for each other, we do not live isolated.
Finally, having a true otherness, the fear of otherness is when there is difference and we “put ourselves on the defensive”, for example what is called preventive wars, guarantees of sovereignty over other peoples or other cultures, this generally starts wars and does not prevent them as intended.
The main reason, say many authors, one that is not questionable for denouncing “the open veins of Latin America” is Eduardo Galeano, who said that the big reason is the theft and the jokes of the people to be dominated, today in addition to this they are also clashing empires.
The spirit of resistance and pacifism is historically not an easy or “neutral” position, it is to avoid the humanitarian catastrophe that characterizes all wars, on a global scale this means an unprecedented civilizational crisis, since the military power today is immense .
It takes a very high, truly altruistic and missionary spirit, since current wars easily find allies, even among the simple population, both polarization and the use of the media to promote almost all biased narratives, are what give substance to the warlike thinking and spread throughout the social fabric.
Congratulations to the long-lived Edgar Morin, his resistance is visible due to his age, the lucidity he still maintains and may his words echo and civilization finds a path of resistance.
Ukraine in danger and change in Iran
08
Jul
The scenario in these two wars, among many others
that exist on the planet, had opposing points this past week, Vikton Orbán’s visit on Friday (5/07) to Moscow, and the victory of moderate president Masoud Pezeshkian in Iran, represents a breath of peace.
Vikton Orbán does not speak on behalf of the European Union and Putin is only interested in discussing the “nuances” of proposals for a ceasefire, as Russian forces are currently threatening the second largest city in the country Kharkiv with more than 1.5 million inhabitants and an important industrial center (in the photo the city hall square).
Wars always involve hatred and heinous crimes, of course they must be investigated and punished, but it is hardly clear everything that is inhumane and cruel that was done during a war, the prisoners exchanged the previous week, for example, showed signs of torture and ill-treatment in Russian prisons.
In the Middle East, Israel announces a new delegation sent to Qatar to negotiate peace with Hamas, but an operation with drones by the Israeli army left 6 dead in the West Bank, and there are still fears of a war with Hezzbollah in Lebanon.
The elections in France are also in this chessboard scenario, the right curiously supports Putin and the left allied with Makron supports Ukraine, a republican front formed at the last minute ended the elections with the largest number of seats in the French National Assembly.
In the USA, there are still fears of Biden’s defeat to Donald Trump, the American president seems to no longer enjoy good health and disposition, but there are still no options.
When the prospect of peace is small, it means that men have distanced themselves from seeing the world with a stable and sustainable future, the spirits of difference and hatred are loose, but as Edgar Morin states, it is necessary to have resistance of the spirit, to have hope.
Unveil and future
05
Jul
A large part of the future perspectives that are
not within the scope of civilizational advancement, in addition to including wars and hostilities, rely on revelations, whose etymology of the word comes from re-veiling, which means taking off the veil and replacing another, thus as a rule are obscure.
It is not only on the religious level, but also in philosophy, where the last great oracle and prophet was John the Baptist, after all he was the one who announced the greatest of all prophecies: the birth of Jesus, it does not mean, of course, that in this field there is no no matter what is new, God is always new and creative.
The word unveil in philosophy comes from the search for truth, Heidegger and other philosophers take it from a-letheia (a is not and lethe – forget), to modify the concept of what is true in Being and Time (written in 1927), states in paragraph 44 which understands unveiling as an event that removes entities from the veil.
A prior understanding that frees man’s orientation towards objects (the question of subjectivity x objectivity) favors interpretation (Auslegung), that is, the articulation with what was previously understood, and thus remakes it from the perspective of new horizons.
Discourse, in the correct sense of the narration, is later and consists of a basic activity of what is human, connecting and living with others, it gives man a common understanding and in addition to speech and shared opinions, it creates a fusion of horizons , a narration.
We have already posted here the issue of the Narration Crisis, especially the book by Byung-Chul Han, so the man projected onto objects and actions creates narratives and is unable to clearly reveal reality, it is necessary, using a metaphor, to change the glasses.
So if there are true revelations, they are hidden from today’s futurologists, they reveal much more an anguish about the future than an unveiling of the future.
In the biblical passage that Jesus has difficulty revealing himself to his contemporaries (Mk 6,4), he encounters difficulties even among those closest to him and family members, so to speak, the religious people closest to him in his time and something similar occurs today.
Heidegger, M. (2021) Being and Time. Transl. John MacQuarrie, Edward S. Robingon, UK: Must Have Books.
Interiority in a time of exteriorities
04
Jul
Modern man has not only projected himself
onto objects (what idealist philosophy calls subjectivity) but there is also an absence of inner asceticism, what projects and builds itself in his soul, are not just values, but a characteristic of being- there (dasein).
This extends more deeply into the disbelief that there is any interiority and then cultivating empathy, altruism, goodwill and sharing the common good is increasingly distant in the face of selfish, narcissistic values and the cultivation of only worldly exteriority.
The Neoplatonists, like Plotinus (205 – 270), believed in monism and in this radiation of light, there is a one or a god (it was not the Christian God) from which emanates a divine source that radiates throughout all creation, in this one light that Augustine of Hippo will rely on this philosophy to deny the Manichaean dualism which he had previously believed and from there he turned to Christianity.
Soul, or anima for the Greeks, is not just an interiority but also what moves it externally, so it is not disconnected from its actions in the world, the distance between the vita activa and the vita contemplativa, was described by many authors, in antiquity Gregory of Nazianzen (329-369), a Christian mystic who is cited by Byung-Chul Han in the Society of Fatigue, and developed more fully in his more recent book Vitta Comtemplativa.
The Jewish festival of the Sabbath (or Shabbat) (photo) is described in Byung-Chul Han’s book as the phatos of the action, which he begins in his book by describing this festival that contemplates God and the Sabbath, for Jewish culture redemption, the immortal (page 107), yesterday time is suspended, that is, the moment of pause in human action for divine action, thus complementing the action.
Exteriority and interiority are related, civilization’s malaise is due to the culture and time we live in, but also interiorities without true asceticism.
In the Bible, when a paralytic (someone with difficulty in acting) approaches Jesus before healing him, he states that his sins are forgiven (Mt 9:5), he gives him full interiority, the Sabbath.
Han, Byung-Chul. (2023) Vita Contemplativa (Contemplative Life). Trans. Lucas Machado, Brazil, RJ: Petropolis.
