Arquivo para February, 2025
Friendship and the Other
28
Feb
In an individualistic world, where people look
for bubbles where everyone “has the same thought”, friendship seems to be the path of the same and not the Other, worse when this is seen as religion, pushing away bad friendships, when in fact the Other will always be different, there is no “soulmate”, “half of the orange” or any other idealistic concept, the next in the religious sense will always be Other different from my mirror.
Aristotle goes against the biblical meaning of neighbor to define friendship: “perfect friendship is that which exists between men who are good (see previous post) and similar in virtue, as such people desire good for each other in an identical way, and are good in themselves” (EN VIII, 1155/2021, p. 167).
Thus, avoiding “false” friendships is avoiding a world without virtues and without any desire for understanding, thus opposing the idealistic definitions of friendships, where there is “affection” between narcissists and egocentrics.
About false friendships Aristotle warns that they do not reveal themselves, we were the ones who had a false concept out of interest or little known, he thus divides friendships into three types: virtuous (the main one at the top), useful where there are common interests and pleasant where there is a mutual relational love, which makes it possible to bear differences, but there are almost always conflicts.
Paul Ricoeur wrote about usefulness in “Le socius et le prochain” (The partner and the neighbor), where the neighbor is a world where the center of relationships can be long-lasting, but mediated by complex and anonymous collective circuits, where there are common interests, when they end the “society” falls apart.
Biblical wisdom about friendship can be found in Ecclesiasticus 6:5-7: “A gentle word multiplies friends and calms enemies; an affable tongue multiplies greetings. Let those who greet you be numerous, but your counselors be one among a thousand. If you want to acquire a friend, acquire him through trial; and do not be quick to trust in him.”
This highlights the concept of empathy through pleasant words and reinforces Aristotle’s concept that we did not “lose” friendship, we did not have a correct concept about it, in the biblical sense “do not rush to trust him”, and your advisors “one among a thousand” we see the perverse influence of modern narratives of “coaching”, “influencers” and “idols”.
Finding friendship requires wisdom, in a world of shallow culture and shallow elaborations, it is not uncommon to seek security in artificial “bubbles” and groups that do not even understand their own foundations.
A true humanism, a true spirituality or just “a path” needs a method, a deep elaboration and a detailed examination of the consequences.
Aristotle. Nicomachean ethics. (2012) Trans. Torrieri Guimarães. Brazil, São Paulo: Martin Claret.
Evil and its ontological meaning
27
Feb
Every analysis of the contemporary world is
permeated (if not itself) by a Manichaean sense: the struggle of good against evil, and this depends on the particular narrative.
Manichaeism presents good and evil as a basic question for understanding the universe, as opposing forces such as action and reaction, or attraction and repulsion – you could list a large number of contemporary books that describe reality in this way.
Here we are interested in two essential points: the religious sense and the political sense. In the religious world there is a growing discourse that “we are good against evil”, but a good reading of patristics (the religious of the early Christian era) helps us to understand that this is not the case.
Augustine of Hippo (354-430), who was a Manichaean for nine years, saw in Manichaeism the struggle between the soul and the body and thus justified the struggle between good and evil, but he revised this position under the strong influence of Ambrose of Milan (340-397), who was to exert a strong influence on Augustine, one of whose phrases was: “Tears do not ask for forgiveness, but achieve it” and so they achieve good.
Thus, Augustine began to give evil an ontological meaning, understanding that body and soul are related, saying: “However, I had no clear idea of the cause of evil. However, whatever it was, looking for it couldn’t force me to take an immutable God as mutable, if I didn’t want to become what I was looking for. That’s why, in my peaceful search, I was certain of the falsity of the doctrine of those from whom I had turned away out of conviction. I really saw that they were studying the problem of the origin of evil, being themselves immersed in malice, to the point of preferring to imagine your substance subject to evil, rather than recognizing themselves capable of committing it” (Augustine, 2014, p. 172) in other words, they achieve good.
It is also necessary, for an in-depth analysis, to read: “The Nature of Good”, “Free Will” to understand the problem of human freedom which can refuse to do good and free will which is this freedom of choice, but Confessions is his main work.
Augustine wanted to break away from dualism and in Confessions (pp. 174-175) he develops the idea that evil is not a substance, because if it were a substance, it would be a good. And, in fact, it would be an incorruptible substance and, therefore, undoubtedly a great good, and so what was corruptible and subject to deterioration has no eternal existence, so he exchanges his Manichaeism for Christianity.
Seen from the perspective of modern narratives that seek to deny the existence of the incorruptible and thus admit the existence of God or at least something incorruptible that gives substance to the cosmos, Byung-Chul Han says of modern narrative: “We live today in a post-narrative time. Not narration [Erzählung], but counting [Zählung] determines our life. Narrative is the capacity of the spirit to overcome the contingency of the body” (Sociedade Paliativa: a dor hoje, 2021, Brazil, ed. Vozes).
In order to justify all disaffection, we need a narrative; if we escape from it, we do good.
Agostinho. Confissões. Tradução de Maria Luiza Jardim Amarante. São Paulo: Paulus, 2014.
The civilizational malaise
26
Feb
The Burnout Society is also a society that
led adults, young people and adolescents to psychiatrists or alternative methods, and to those who have few resources, it led to closed groups with sometimes dubious social conscience.
The number of mental illnesses in children and adolescents should pay attention to this situation.
It is no coincidence that Freud wrote at the beginning of the last century about this “Civilization’s malaise” (Freud, 1930) the author will not discuss the psychic issue itself, but the distant one between instinctual impulses and civilization, that is, contemporary culture that takes man to his opposite as much as nature and his well-being.
Intolerance to errors, even scientific misunderstanding, the demand for effectiveness in all fields, the lack of empathy and love in everyday life and in particular, of values that are natural and lead to true human asceticism, takes emotional and social conflicts to dangerous limits.
By detecting this evil, Freud himself, the founder of psychiatry, did not take humanity to the couch, and I feel he pointed out that there are cultural evils and these must be remedied first, that is not what was done, in this sense Sloterdijk is right, human “domestication” was possible (Rules for the human park), which caused great discussion in Germany in the months of September and October 1999.
Even if religions themselves live on this civilizational evil, the true asceticism that is climbing the mountain of wisdom with values that support this asceticism on one’s feet is necessary to reach a true civilizational stage, it is necessary to “love in absence” it is necessary to aim for the true values that lead to plenitude and to true and unique comfort, empathy and love.
When we remove this from society, it begins to move towards isolation, hatred and conflicts and “malaise” are just the consequences of the absence of this “natural” state, but a plant only evolves if cared for in its natural conditions: adequate fertilizer, water and sun.
Wisdom, serenity and balance are possible remedies for the current warlike spirit.
Freud, S. (1974) O mal-estar na civilização (1930 [1929]). In: ______. O futuro de uma ilusão, o mal-estar na civilização e outros trabalhos (1927-1931). Direção geral da tradução: Jayme Salomão. Brazil, Rio de Janeiro: Imago, p. 73-171. (Brazilian edition of complete Works of Sigmund Freud, 21)
Delay and the meaning of life
25
Feb
Just like any appreciation of art, any
narration that is not a fragmented narrative, requires a sense of appreciation, sensitivity and empathy and this means a delay in the time of view, Byung-Chul Han wrote: “the world is loaded with meaning. The gods are nothing more than bearers of meaning” (Han, 2016, p. 25), I’m not looking at life as a pantheist here, but dialoguing with any possibility of contemplation.
The masters of contemplation were masters of taking their time and “appreciating” life (read Vita Contemplativa by Byung-Chul Han), for this appreciation we must go against the current world where “narrative creates the world of nothingness” (p. 25).
Han reveals the relationship we have with the senses today: “Here [and now] everything has meaning is the eternal repetition of the same, the reproduction of what has already been, of the imperishable truth. This is how prehistoric man lives with a present that lasts” (Han, 2016, p. 26), a present that is not an update but a repetition, which is why there is confusion with the virtual, which in the etymological sense of the word is that which is already potential, and not the same.
Its deeper meaning also reveals the post-truth: “time will be defactified (defaktiziert) and, at the same time, denaturalized (entnaturalisier) (Han, 2016, p. 28) and the revolution today refers to a defactified time, i.e. a return to previous models that do not correspond to current problems and realities, which is why it is necessary to falsify it.
Byung-Chul separates the time of orality from history by understanding “the mythical that functions as an image”, and sees the history of the Gutenberg galaxy as one that “gives way to information” (Han, 2016, p. 30), to give it an unprecedented definition: “in reality, information presents another paradigm. Within it dwells another very different temporality. It is a manifestation of atomized time, of a time of points (Punkt-zeit)” (Han, 2016, p. 31), without having read Stephen Hawking’s ‘information paradox’ as a prediction of ‘energies’ escaping from the black hole.
It is necessary to separate the cosmological reality of this information, the megatelescope James Webb detected these “energies” from the reality of atomized and fragmented information, there is no contextualization of thought, its etymology and its contextual meaning, a world of denaturalized “information” as Han points out.
All this isn’t philosophy, it’s the daily information consumption of haters, opposed to the culture of peoples and nations, due to its fragmentation and the lack of a meaningful narrative.
That’s why anxiety, the consumption of low-level information, isn’t just disinformation, because those who proclaim it don’t look for the etymological, social roots of the thoughts they have constructed and which can make sense of them.
*defatikiziert: could be translated as in-fact, but the translator was careful to change it (de is “not”).
Han, Byung-Chul. (2016) O Aroma do Tempo: um ensaio Filosófico sobre a Arte da Demora, Lisbon. Ed. Relógio d´Água.
The pax romana and its dangers
24
Feb
We warn that the pax romana, the one that Rome
decreed after the end of conflicts in its conquered territories, hides the hatred and indignation that does not eliminate wars; no dominated people will be comfortable seeing their goods, cultures and values denied.
This pax proposed by Trump in both Ukraine and Gaza may cause a momentary disarray, but it hides future confrontations that would free peoples from the yoke, and more critically, this climate is now spreading to other peoples and nations.
The Palestinian group Hamas handed over six hostages to Israel on Saturday morning (22 February). The first on the list were Tal Shoham, 40 years, and Aversa Mengisto, 39, who were handed over in the south of Gaza, in Rafah, to the Red Cross and then taken to Israel, and then three more, one more who was a Muslim and was not handed over to the Red Cross.
Under the agreement, Israel must release 602 prisoners, thus completing the first phase of the agreement, but the idea of keeping Gaza under control proposed by Trump and accepted by Israel will be an obstacle to extending the ceasefire agreement.
In Ukraine, Trump’s proposal is to hand over the territories conquered in the war, and Trump even called Zelensky a dictator, which the European Union denied, saying that he was elected in a legitimate election, while Putin rigs the elections and doesn’t give the opposition freedom.
Germany held parliamentary elections, which according to the number of seats will appoint the new chancellor. The center-left SPD (Social Democrats) of Olaf Scholz lost to the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) of Fredrich Merz, who should be the new chancellor, but it depends on an agreement that will have to be negotiated with the far-right AfD (Alternative for Germany), which has grown to the point where it is in second place (table above, before the end of counting on Sunday).
What is striking in Germany, and this is happening in many parts of Europe and the Americas, is the growth of the nationalist discourse of rejection of immigrants and the loss of values whose discourse, even in Germany, is growing among young people, the Grüne are the Greens.
Without clearly confronting the ideas and thoughts that lie behind apparently praiseworthy attitudes, we won’t be able to separate the wheat from the chaff and tell which side has the civilizing capacity to make humanity less conflictive and respectful of all.
Among the voices defending a peace without borders, without hatred and polarization is the Pope, now in a state of critical health, at the age of 88, he has placed the Church and his concerns for humanity above his health.
More than ever, we need public men of peace, above hatred and polarization, who speak and practice the values they claim to defend.
Pain today
21
Feb
This is the subtitle of the book: “The Palliative
Society: Pain Today” by Byung-Chul Han, which outlines the new control that reigns over minds: “Be happy is the new formula of domination” (p. 26).
It’s not just rulers or local authorities who proclaim this, churches and coaches also promise this, they are the new sellers of illusion, parents want to prevent their children from frustration and difficulties: “my child won’t go through what I went through”, “I want to give them every assistance and comfort”, but life is made up of frustrations, obstacles and setbacks.
Positive psychology wants to avoid any change: “not revolutionaries, but motivation trainers take the stage, and take care that no discontent [Unmut] arises, but no anger [Mut]” and Byung-Chul Han recalls a relevant historical fact: “On the eve of the world economic crisis in the 1920s, with its extreme social oppositions, there were many workers’ representatives and radical activists who denounced the excess of the rich and the misery of the poor” (pg. 28). 28), pointing out that the word “mut” in German is also courage, so as not to confuse the translation anger with hatred.
He reminds us that “social media and computer games also act as anesthetics” (p. 29), asking a young man why he uses computers so much, he replied “I relax”, but this is the counterpoint to a society of anxious, immediate, depressed and self-centered people.
The essence of this type of “happiness” is objectification: to buy a new piece of furniture, a new car, to change their house, to have an advanced cell phone and, for the poorest, a pair of branded sneakers or a designer shirt; if this is impossible, they will choose idols that embody “thinghood”.
While “true happiness is only possible if it is broken. It is precisely pain that protects happiness from objectification. Pain carries happiness. Painful happiness is not an oxymoron. All intensity is painful. Passion links pain to happiness” (Han, 2021, p. 31).
And there is no greater pain than giving oneself to others, George Bernanos wrote: “Knowing how to find joy in the joy of others is the secret of happiness, French writer and journalist at the beginning of the 20th century, he was a soldier in the French resistance in the Second World War and wrote ‘France against robots’ and ‘Dialogues of the Carmelites’ which is a kind of ‘reverse mysticism’.
For the Greeks, the good life was not a state, but a continuous quest, which they defined as happiness, but they did not abandon contemplation, wisdom and reason in order to live well.
“The society of survival loses all meaning for the good life. Even enjoyment [Genuss] is sacrificed to health elevated to an end in itself” (pg. 34), so what it actually leads to is a painful life of striving for survival, at least for the average person, although of course there are exploiters, millionaires and the powerful who also eagerly seek profit and a ‘happier’ survival.
Han, B.-C. (2021) A Sociedade Paliativa: a dor hoje. Brazil, Petrópolis, RJ: Editora Vozes.
Being, language and the word
20
Feb
The true meaning of the word, and
consequently of language, has always been a theme of human thought. Heidegger considers it to be a characteristic element of our humanity, from which the truth of being is unveiled (the veil is removed).
In the High Middle Ages, nominalists and realists were divided over its importance. Nominalists saw that no metaphysical substance is hidden behind words, that the supposed essentials are nothing more than words or signs that represent things that are always singular.
Realism, on the other hand, is a term that can refer to different concepts, depending on the concept, so this current in philosophy defends the existence of an objective reality, which does not depend on the human mind, this objectivity built modern thought.
Although it was a reaction to romanticism, especially in literature and art in Europe, especially in France at the end of the 19th century, in the 20th century there was a certain return to nominalism, through the so-called linguistic turn, its main characteristic being the relationship between language and thought as an object of philosophical investigation.
Thus, the word and language are part of the human essence, and the dualism of objectivity vs. subjectivity is called into question, even though much of thought is tied to this concept of early modernity, where objectivity predominates.
It is language and words that are used before weapons and growing hatreds are used, it is our relationship with the Other, with objects and with everyday life, what words we follow, linguistic variations are the result of social, geographical, professional and situational factors, so the current narrative that corresponds to an impoverishment of language is the result of human impoverishment and the deterioration of social relations.
The exponential number of mental illnesses that already affect not only adults, but also school-age children, affect the difficulty of verbal communication, so it is necessary to take care of language, which is sometimes aggressive and even litigious.
Biblical wisdom reminds us (Mt 15:17-18): “Do you not understand that whatever goes into the mouth goes into the belly, and then is thrown into an obscure place? But what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart, and that is what defiles a man”.
Let’s pay more attention to what we say, how we address the Other, our capacity for listening and dialog, looking for those words that bring growth and wisdom and always seeking an empathetic relationship to communicate something important.
Pay attention to words, especially those that bring wisdom, common sense and empathy.
The third included and the counterpoint to the crisis
19
Feb
It is no longer the Copernican and
Newtonian models that explain the universe, the center of the galaxy has a black hole, whose laws of operation still challenge astrophysics and even quantum physics, the simple operation by mechanical laws described at the beginning of modern science have already fallen apart, although mechanistic reasoning has a social survival.
Philosophy has already returned to the question of Being and essence, although the majority of dialogues and articles still discuss empiricist science and the idealism of Parmenides (460 BC – 530 BC), according to Popper, he and Xenophanes made a pre-project of modern enlightenment (The World of Parmenides: Essays on Pre-Socratic Enlightenment, Karl Popper), the Renaissance tried to return to Greek originality.
For Popper, both the Critical Science that Aristotle had built, as well as the philosophy of nature and the theory of nature, the great original attempts at cosmology collapsed after Aristotle, and the modern age, starting with Newton, formulates a physics that modifies part of the cosmological vision, But quantum physics and the theory of relativity destroy this model and go beyond the idealist/Enlightenment model of the logic of non-contradiction (Being is and non-being is not), creating a third included (the logic of Stéphane Lupasco and the physics of Barsarab Nicolescu).
They create new paradigms by changing the model of absolute time and space (which is now relative) and understanding quantum states of particles, discovering tunneling (a third state between quantum particles) and wormholes (non-absolute spaces that can open up in the movement of celestial bodies), see the movie Contact from Carl Sagan’s novel of the same name.
The Aristotelian logic that justified a third term has collapsed and with it the Manichean, scientific and fundamentalist logics, a clearing is opening up, larger than Heidegger would have imagined in his “Forest Paths”.
The meaning of the clearing in Heidegger’s Dasein (being-there) is a metaphor for an opening in the forest that symbolizes human experience, a static field (figure above) where we move and try to see this experience clearly (image ‘Plan Générique’ by Fotis Ifantidis).
The great clearing promises to open up in a world of conflicts of all kinds, which will at some point have a “broad” light, science itself will see the serious epistemological divergences, from an archaic scientism to pure philosophical speculation, which hides under the idea of science, which ignores the true transcendence (not the scientific one) of humanity.
The root of the social crisis is revealed within the ancient frameworks of scientific, religious and political fundamentalism, it will need to create an even greater crisis that will make humanity wake up from its idealist/Enlightenment slumber and turn towards the good (see previous post) and flee from narratives.
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What is the Good?
18
Feb
This is the question that Aristotle begins
to develop in his ethics (The Nicomachean Ethics): “It is generally admitted that every art and every investigation, as well as every action and every choice, have some good in view; and for this reason it has been said, with great accuracy, that the good is that to which all things tend” Aristotle (1991, p. 2).
Plato’s idea of the Highest Good, which is closer to an idea of the divinity of the “World of Ideas” (he divided the world into the sensible world and the world of ideas) and Aristotle’s idea of the Good, as the idea of a choice in both art and research, presuppose that this was the choice for the social and political life of the Greek polis, which would lead to the balance of politics.
This was in contrast to the world of the sophists, where all logic and choice was for power and the possession of earthly goods, so Aristotle indicates that when he talks about ethics, he is talking about human ethics.
The author reminds us that both he and Plato established themselves on principles and were not subject to mere rhetoric and the justifications of power: “Plato had raised this question, asking, as he used to do: ‘Does our path start from first principles or does it lead towards them?’ (Aristotle, 1991, p. 5).
It is this loss of principles, and the relativism that results from it, that causes contemporary thought to lose its way about what the Good is and even what happiness is. Both Plato and Aristotle don’t lose sight of it, but they know that happiness depends on life in the polis.
Thomas Aquinas in the early Middle Ages did not define the good, but he knew that it also started from principles or what he called “primary notions”, he says: “since the good moves desire, we describe it in this way as everything that desires” and as such it can approach the good or distance itself from it.
When we see the good in this way, we can use an Aristotelian and Thomist category of seeing the good as a final cause, as a perfection to be attained.
Love for our brothers and sisters, universal brotherhood, is not a “theory”, but an end to be achieved.
*In Aristotle, causes are: material: what makes up the object or being, formal: the physical and conceptual form of the object or being, efficient cause: what makes the object or being, and final cause: what the object or being is for.
Aristotle. Ética a Nicomaco (Nicomachean Ethics). translated by Leonel Vallandro and Gerd Bornheim, Brazil: NOVA CULTURAL 1991 (Coleção os Pensadores).
Middle East and Eastern Europe in tension
17
Feb
After threatening to suspend the truce that
began on January 19, Hamas accuses Israel of violating the agreement, this weekend three more hostages of the extremist group were returned in exchange for hundreds of prisoners, the hostages were displayed on a stage in the city of Khan Yunis, in southern Gaza (photo).
The three hostages: Israeli-American Sagui Dekel-Chen, Israeli-Russian Sasha Trupanov and Israeli-Argentinian Yair Horn, had been with Hamas since October 7 last year, the fateful terrorist attack.
The situation is tense because the American government does not accept the Hamas group’s governance in the region and is putting all kinds of pressure on the region to remain neutral.
In Eastern Europe, American policy is to consider that Ukraine will not be able to recover the territories lost in the war and is forcing a peace agreement with new borders, threatening to withdraw any support, but it is not without Russian advances in Europe. At the Arctic Pole, the Russian presence is notable, and forces from Canada, the USA, Denmark and Norway are already moving there.
Europe is not completely abandoning Ukraine, because it knows that Russia may not stop there, and has already threatened the Baltic countries, Moldova and Poland.
Last week, drones hit Chernobyl, and it seems that the drones were sent by Russia, hitting the central protection shield.
This Sunday (02/16) France declared that it would host a summit of European leaders this Monday (17) to discuss the war in the east and the security of Europe and seeks to respond to the unilateral approach of President Trump, who uses the policy of what is not good for the US does not concern him.
In all this spectrum of tensions and threats, there is always a background of hope for peace, for a return to common sense and for allowing peoples to live in peace, being able to cultivate their roots and their culture without xenophobia and wars.
