Blog Marcos L. Mucheroni Filosofia, Noosfera e cibercultura

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.