Blog Marcos L. Mucheroni Filosofia, Noosfera e cibercultura

Being is not what manifests itself directly and immediately, it manifests itself with a being, but it is not a being, although it appropriates it, so Being has something that transcends the being.

Heidegger writes: “Not only can being not be defined, it never allows itself to be determined in its meaning by something else or as something else. Being can only be determined from its meaning as itself” (Heidegger, 2005), so it is autonomous, independent and indefinable.

In philosophy, essence refers to the fundamental and immutable nature of an object, being or concept, it is what defines the identity and essential characteristics of something, replacing being with scientific “logic” and the dilemma of logicism.

It was Etienne Gilson in his book Being and Essence who clarified the philosophical debate on this issue, reading Being and Nothingness (Jean-Paul Sartre) and the first chapter of Hegel’s Wisseschaft der Logik (The Science of Logic), admitting that this word “being” in a certain idealist tradition had tried to banish it from the philosophical vocabulary, at least in the “West”.

In Being and Nothingness (1943), Sartre’s philosophy is faced with a negation of Being that plunges into nothingness, in other words, I am myself and never an Other, it seemed at that moment in history (he also writes about The Age of Reason), that the Other would be my hell and not part of Being.

In a book Absente in which Byung-Chul Han departs from his essays and begins to outline a philosophy of the “Orient” in which he works on what he considers to be overshadowed in Western culture, he writes, quoting Elias Canetti, “that perhaps it doesn’t hurt to believe that there is in fact a country ‘where anyone who says ’I‘ immediately sinks into the earth’” (Han, 2024, p. 9) and this is how he begins to outline absence.

In this work, Han begins a new philosophy beyond being and essence: “Essence is substance. It subsists. It is the immutable that resists change by persisting in itself as the same and therefore distinguishes itself from the other” (p. 12), and denounces its warlike character: ‘only something that is entirely resolute of itself, that maintains itself firmly and dwells in itself permanently, that is, that has the interiority of essence, can also engage in conflict and combat with the other’ (p. 13).

He pursues his linguistic vision of philosophy and goes on to re-read Leibniz (quoted in the previous post) in his Monadology: “Leibniz consequently pushes the idea of essence, i.e. substance, to the limit. The “monad” represents the consequent exacerbation and completion of the essence” (p. 14), I would remind you that Leibniz’s monism is opposed to the idealist dualism of object vs. subject, it is the essential unity.

He describes the Leibnizian soul as a “mirror vivant” and “it is a place of desire. The universe is just an object of its ‘appetition’. The monad perceives it because it has an appetite for it.” (p. 15), in other words, without desire there is nothing.

In this sense, he begins to introduce his critique of Heidegger (it is worth remembering that his teacher Peter Sloterdijk appeared on the philosophical scene criticizing Heidegger’s Letter on Humanism, 1946), but he does so in a more profound way: “despite his efforts to leave metaphysical thought behind, despite the fact that he was always trying to get closer to the thought of the Far East, Heidegger also remained a philosopher of the essence of home and dwelling” (Han, 2024, p. 16).

He clarifies that it is in Heidegger’s statement: “love also consists in helping the other to access their ‘essence’: institute love!” , then claims Augustine, writing:  “perhaps the most profound interpretation of the question ‘what is love’ lies in the sentence … ‘amo volo ut sis’, I love, that is, I want the beloved to be what he is” and clarifies that he summons the essence (Han, 2024, p. 17), but for Augustine the essence and transcendence is God.

Han, B.-C. (2024) Ausência: sobre a cultura e a filosofia do extremo oriente. Transl. Rafael Zambonelli, Petrópolis, RJ, Brazil: Vozes.