Bad agreements and threats
31
Mar
On the same day (March 18) as the partial truce
agreement (only the attack on Ukrainian energy stations and ships in Russia’s Black Sea), Ukraine claimed to have been attacked at 8 energy stations.
Russia wants the Russian state bank to be reconnected to the international payment system, but Europe rejects this position, saying that this will only happen when Russia withdraws all troops from Ukraine.
One thing is clear about Putin’s personality: he is a clue, but he doesn’t bluff. When he made the peace agreement on Crimea, curiously enough on March 18, 2014, in Putin’s view he is doing the same as NATO, advancing on enemy terrain and demarcating positions.
Europe fears further advances on NATO countries, judging by history Poland could be the next step, there Hitler advanced in WWII and the regime established by the Soviet state in the post-war period was also cruel to the Polish people, remember the revolts of the Solidarity Union in Gdansk, already in the final period of General Jaruzelski’s regime.
Truce agreements have little support because there are no “neutral” forces to guarantee them.
The Middle East is also living under bad agreements: after the Hamas-Israel agreement, there has been little or no progress towards a broader truce, the recognition of Palestinian territory has not moved forward, Israel and the US want to maintain control of the region under the threat of new attacks on Israel.
Iran is a character in the shadows of this war, because it finances and supports extremist groups. Trump’s threat to bomb Tehran was met with the response that the US will receive a “reciprocal blow”, what Trump wants is a new nuclear agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear weapons, it is worth remembering that they are partners with Russia, which already has a vast nuclear arsenal.
The world is in the shadow of an insane war, and those who don’t think about this insanity don’t know the horrors and consequences of a war today.
The figure above is a sculpture made by Marie Uchytilová in Lydice, Czech Republic, in memory of a group of 82 children asphyxiated with gas in the Chelmno extermination camp in the summer of 1942.
Narrative, languages and orality
28
Mar
Taking up one of Byung-Chul Han’s words: “Narrative is the capacity of
the spirit to overcome the contingency of the body”, this capacity to overcome the contingency of the body is linked not only to the memory of poetic and conative language, but also to the spiritual meanings and values that modernity has abandoned under the pretext of creating an “objective” vision (A crise da narração, Byung Chul Han, Vozes, 2023, brazilian edition).
The telling of the stories of peoples, their cultures and religions are thus key factors in overcoming such a dramatic moment in the history of communication.
The languages developed for machines are capable of producing narratives with a set of words that are part of their vocabulary, but without the imagery of the voices that perform the storytelling, especially in oral cultures, where writing is secondary.
The dramatic text is also a genre in which acts, scenes, rubrics and speeches are presented, which is why it is part of a theatrical form or a-presentation, in the sense that the presentation is both a telling of a story and its negation, since it involves fiction, storytelling always has a present aspect, this is the meaning.
The dispute between nominalists and realists in the lower middle ages (11th to 14th centuries) ended up neglecting the importance of language, but the linguistic turn of the late 19th century brought back its importance in studies such as grammar, semiotics, etymology and, more broadly, linguistics.
The beginning of modernity is marked by the break between the metaphysical function of language and the use of objectivity as a mode of expression, but this is only one of the functions of language, the Russian linguist Roman Jacobson recalls the functions: phatic, poetic, conative and metalinguistic, in which modern codes are inserted by example: Morse, digital and quantum, where “the code explains the code itself, that is, the language explains the language itself”, and this should be the only context where the concepts of sender/receiver apply.
The linguistic turn occurs in the midst of the crisis of idealist and positivist thinking in modernity: Husserl, Heidegger, Hanna Arendt are fundamental, although they are most remembered: Noam Chomsky, Mikhail Bakhtin, Michel Foucault and Ferdinand de Saussure.
In the 1950s, Noam Chomsky wrote variations on these linguistic styles that are more technical, involve a restricted grammar and regular expressions. It is used in computer science and formal language theory.
When proclaiming texts in an oral culture, such as the Bible, it is necessary to have meaning, and in particular to make a hermeneutic of its presentation (repeat it when telling).
Language, truth and the eternal
27
Mar
Leibniz (1646-1716) theorized that truth is
related to reason: “I understand by reason, not the faculty of reasoning, which can be used well or badly, but the chain of truths which can only produce truths, and one truth cannot be contrary to another”, so from a half-truth a truth cannot emerge, this is the problem with contemporary narratives and truth is linked to Being through language.
Leibniz’s philosophical project included a “symbolic language” that would be the very language of philosophy, he called it “characterística universalis” through which we could express truth, but in his time the division between realism and nominalism led to a victory for Enlightenment realism, and Leibniz and his disciple Christian Wolff (1679-1754) were rejected (picture).
Leibniz thought of three principles for his project: Identifying and structuring simple ideas hierarchically, stipulating a suitable system of signs and establishing logical rules for composing complex ideas.
Christian Wolf goes so far as to elaborate a system of concepts, different from Porphyry’s tree of knowledge, but also based on Aristotelian thought (Isagoge). It is from Porphyry (232-304) that Boethius takes the famous quarrel about universals: whether universals are things or just words (categories of Aristotle) that we attribute as names to things.
Modern ontology, especially in Hannah Arendt and her interpreter Byung-Chul Han, creates new concepts that link this dualism in thinking about the Vita Activa and the Vita Contemplativa: “the quest for immortality, for immortal glory, is, according to Arendt, ”the source and center of the vita activa“ (Han, 2023, p. 145), but ”he must return to his surrounding world” (idem).
One thus lives in a paradox between the eternal and the temporal: “as soon, however, as a thinker abandons the experience of the eternal and begins to write, he surrenders to the vita activa, whose ultimate goal is immortality” (pgs. 145-146).
Arendt “marvels at Socrates who doesn’t write, who voluntarily renounces immortality” (Han, 2023, p. 146), even though writing “can be a contemplation that has nothing to do with the quest for immortality” (Han, 2023, p. 146), one can also think of the experience of Jesus who didn’t write at all, so one should follow his word and his example and not his writing, thus orality has “vita activa” (actions life) while writing seeks potency.
Arendt also recalls Plato, but Han thinks that this “distorts” Plato’s allegory, “it is the story of a philosopher who frees himself from the chains that bind him and his companions” (pp. 147-148), he acts when he returns to the cave “with its shadows, to a regime of truth”.
To put words into the vita activa is therefore to imitate them, neither proclaiming them nor quoting them, says Han: “The vita activa without the vita contemplativa is blind” (Han, 2023, p. 149).
Han, B.-C. (2023). Vita Contemplativa: ou sobre a inatividade. Trad. Lucas Machado, Brazil, Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes.
Language, being and the infinite
26
Mar
Language and being are ontologically linked,
that is to say, language is a mode of being that Heidegger calls Dasein and presents itself in the fundamental constitution of being-in-the-world.
However, the limits of language are not limits for being, it is the expression of the communication of our connection with the other and with the world, the characteristic mark of language is the sign (or the sign as semiotics conceptualizes it) because it is what will identify knowledge, it shows it the object and grants it a “re-presentation” (here to recall the concept of “present).
On the other hand, the ethicality as objectivity (this is a Hegelian concept that Heidegger uses) of the representative (which is why he uses “re-”) gives it a present validity of the object, so it is the word that produces knowledge that grants a truth of correction of representation, so it has a logical truth and thus other corrections will be necessary, but all finite in time.
The limits of representation lie in listening attentively and silently to the other of the si-impersonal that we all bring into our relationships, and it is by listening appropriately to the coexistent other that the being-there comes to understand what really matters in the relationship with itself and with the other.
In his work “The Road to Language” (2003), written in the 1950s (Heidegger died in 1976), he states that speaking is not the same as saying, because you can speak a lot without saying anything; on the other hand, by keeping quiet and being silent, someone can say a lot, which means that speaking can be just showing, appearing, seeing and no longer listening.
There is nothing more important than in media periods when we want to listen to public parlors and we don’t listen to the other in our inner silence, the Greeks and phenomenology call it epoché, it is so important that no really true philosophy or religion can refrain from this resource, so we have an empty philosophy, thinkers with full bellies and vain.
The step to go beyond, to extend our knowledge beyond worldly representation is to unveil the world, since its re-revelation is only a new veiling, unveiling makes us go beyond to reach what for present objectivity seems impossible, it is neither about wealth, nor utilitarian goods, nor public visibility, but an encounter with Being.
In his Letter on Humanism (1949), in which he analyzes his turning point during the 1930s and early 1940s, he states that his thought was directed towards the relationship of being to the essence of man, but it is this Heidegger that Peter Sloterdijk questions because he only saw one side of the process, the forgetting of being, and left unthought its properly domesticating character, in his book: “Rules for the human park” in which he questions bioengineering, technology that puts the humanitarian question in crisis again.
Reaching beyond human limits has been a challenge for the process of civilization, its is divine.
Heidegger, Martin. (2003) A caminho da linguagem. Tradução de Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback. Brazil, Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes; Bragança Paulista, SP: Editora Universitária São Francisco.
Worldviews, science and religions
25
Mar
Worldviews are more closely related to
philosophy and cosmology, but in literature they are also linked to science and religion. Geocentricism (the earth as the center of the universe) and the Copernican revolution, which declared the sun to be the center of the universe, correspond to scientific and religious views and both were limited worldviews.
In Heidegger’s ontological vision, he updates the term Weltanschauung, which first appeared with Kant, who understood this idea of worldview only through experience with the sensible world. For Heidegger, these are values, impressions, feelings and conceptions of an intuitive nature, prior to reflection, and thus correspond to a “worldview”.
The connection with cosmology is important, we have already highlighted the Copernican revolution, and today the influence of the discoveries of the James Webb space observatory has even contributed to a broader view of the creation of the universe, and if it was not created, and has “always” existed, this further favors the worldview of the eternal and the infinite.
The universe also informs us of scientific and religious facts, the vision of the information paradox theorized by Stephen Hawking about small radiations that “escape” from the black hole broadens the cosmological and scientific vision, while the guide star that indicated the place of Jesus’ birth could well be a new one or a supernova, a star that is born or that dies.
Scientists and observers of the cosmos are expecting the birth of a “new” star in the next few days, the name given to binary systems of a dwarf star and a red giant that explode and give off the intense glow of a rising star.
The subject has taken over astronomers’ fantasies because since September 2024 TCrB (T Coronae Borealis), the binary system near the constellation of the Crown, is about to explode.
Astronomers are predicting that the explosion is about to take place in the early hours of March 27. The TCrB (now called the Blaze Star) is 3,000 light years away and the constellation of the Crown is close to the Serpens Caput and the Bootes (pictured above).
While we observed eclipses, comets and meteors, our vision was still geocentric, looking at a wider universe corresponds to a wider world view, we have left our terrestrial bubble to admit celestial realities that are more universal than our pale blue dot.
This expression came about when the Voyager 1 spacecraft, on February 14, 1990, at a distance of six billion kilometers from Earth (passing the planet Saturn), and having completed its mission, at the suggestion of Carl Sagan, turned towards Earth and looked back to take a photo.
The horrors of war
24
Mar
The elections in Germany, in which the
debates were polarized in a way never thought possible in that country after the horrors of World War II, made many analysts think that we are already a little distant from that sad moment in the history of civilization and perhaps we no longer know how to understand the horrors of war, no matter the narrative, every war is always some kind of looting, some level of genocide and what dies first is the truth.
Despite attempts and proposals, the conflict in Eastern Europe seems to be escalating to ever more dangerous limits and entanglements of antagonistic forces. The attempt at a ceasefire has not only failed, but has also shown interests that differ from those that are declared.
The ceasefire in the Middle East, too, after a first cycle when it looked like it might enter a second phase, has once again escalated, with the Israeli army claiming last Tuesday (18/03) to be carrying out “extensive attacks” and the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry saying that 400 Palestinians were injured in the attacks.
In Eastern Europe, even though the US proposals for an initial ceasefire have been accepted, both the Russian army has carried out drone attacks on Kiev and Ukraine’s energy sources, and Ukraine has launched attacks on a nuclear weapons base in the Engels region (Saratov Oblast), as well as attacks on the capital Moscow, making any ceasefire impossible at the moment.
According to an analysis by CNN on Saturday, May 22, what Russia wants is much, much bigger than the end of Ukraine as an independent state, it wants NATO to return to the size it was in the Soviet period, countries that are now part of NATO were once in the Soviet-Russian sphere.
There is no strong view that peace is better than war, that sitting down at the table and having a diplomatic debate prevents the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians and stops fueling a global crisis that, for obvious reasons, affects life, economic balance and fraternal spirit.
There is still a long way to go in the direction of peace, to disarm the spirit not only in the countries at war, but among those who in the shadows feed a genocidal spirit of hatred and conflict, forgiveness and concord need to come from every person who wants a peaceful world.
Language and its fruits
21
Mar
Hermeneutics is the art or technique of
interpreting and explaining texts. Originating in Greek, it also applies today to the ontology and philosophy of language, and is used to interpret not only traditional texts and philosophies, but also sacred texts and legal texts.
The serious problem with language today is its perspective of a fragmentary and distorted analysis of texts, while hermeneutics is used for true interpretation (etymological aspects, translation and meaning), the use of language to justify power was more typical of the sophists in ancient modernity.
So the fruits of true linguistic expression, and of philosophical hermeneutics, was to build a branch of philosophy that studies the theory of interpretation. There are several authors, but I would highlight Hans-Georg Gadamer, who is fundamental to a humanistic perspective.
Gadamer reconstructs the concept of preconception, removing the negative charge of pre-judgment that it had acquired in illustration, giving it an essential character within hermeneutics, since it allows the fusion of horizons, within the hermeneutic circle prior to dialogue.
He thus rejects the idea of a knowledge of the past through pure reason, without the mediation of the interpreter’s own tradition, since this prevents the fusion of horizons and dialog.
He thus rejects the idea of a knowledge of the past through pure reason, without the mediation of the interpreter’s own tradition, since this prevents the fusion of horizons and dialog.
The interpreter doesn’t just carry out a “reproductive” activity of the text, but updates it according to the circumstances of the moment, which is why they speak of their ‘productive’ labor (Gadamer, 1997), there is no direct reference to Hannah Arendt’s concept of “labor”, but it fits well with the text, a natural and non-durable activity that is exhausted when it is carried out.
So is the productive use of language, words that are actions that trigger attitudes of help, rescue, solidarity and dialogue, even if they have different interpretations, the important thing is that humanitarian language leads to actions in favor of society and fruitful principles.
You can’t pick figs from thorns, a good tree can’t bear bad fruit, language that is directed towards good humanitarian initiatives won’t have negative results, so it easily moves towards a dialogue if the “fusion of horizons” is the starting point for interpretation, the basis of a hermeneutic dialogue.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. (1997) Verdade e Método: Traços fundamentais de uma hermenêutica filosófica. Brazil, Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes.
Language and modernity
20
Mar
The philosophical disagreements and struggles
at the end of the Middle Ages that marked the difference between realists and nominalists ended in a suppression of the importance of language, of the exercise of thought in a form of dualistic subjectivity, since it separates subjects from objects.
It was partly due to the crisis of Western thought and partly due to the lack of a correct understanding of the importance of language that a linguistic “turnaround” began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
As is the case with all knowledge in modernity, this important turning point has also ended up being used as a metaphor in the philosophy of language, but its contribution both to contemporary thought and to understanding what kind of crisis we are experiencing is a broad and essential response: the word gives life to our actions and its meditation cannot be separated from its practice (see previous post).
There are those who prefer to date this turn to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Logical-Philosophical Treatise (1889-1951) or, even later, The Linguistic Turn: Essays in Philosophical Method, which Richard Rorty published in 1967. He defended this creation to the thinker Gustav Bergmann, but also points to Heidegger as one of its founders.
The important thing is to verify both the dialogue between the turn and the new logical perspective of the Vienna Circle (with whom Wittgenstein maintained contacts) and the relationship with the philosophical hermeneutics born out of Schleiermacher (“on the different ways of thinking”), He was a contemporary of Schelling, Hegel and Fichte, and thus under some influence of German idealism.
Thus oral and textual language is translated into language and interpreted according to a hermeneutic (photo).
On the other hand, the philosophical hermeneutic approach that comes from Husserl, Heidegger and their successors (such as Hannah Arendt and Peter Sloterdijk) makes a deeper break and questions even the philosophy and thought of its time, with major gaps.
The living word is the one that leads us to concrete actions far from the individualism and lack of meditation (or contemplation) of modernity, it leads to concrete gestures of humanity.
make a deeper break and question even the philosophy and thought of their time, with major gaps.
The living word is the one that leads us to concrete actions – far from the individualism and lack of meditation (or contemplation) of modernity, it leads to concrete gestures of humanity.
Work, action and contemplation
19
Mar
Hannah Arendt considered that labor, work and
action are the three spheres of human life that make up the “vita activa”, a thought that we have placed around Byung-Chul Han’s essay, which Arendt also uses to complement the Vita Contemplativa.
It is not characteristic of modern man to think in this way, and this has put human thought and even scientific and religious thought at a standstill. Narratives arise as a consequence and not as a cause of this, it is through the fragmentation of human activities that the interpretation of reality becomes subject to a limited worldview.
Labor ensures the biological survival of the individual and the species (Arendt, 1995) while work, although it doesn’t individualize man, establishes a relationship with objects and with the transformation of nature, and allows him, and this is important, to demonstrate his craftsmanship and inventiveness (Arendt, 1995), but craftsmanship and inventiveness are not separate from thought, because there man conceives of his relationship with nature as a whole.
It was industrial work that destroyed this idea of the whole between work, labor and action, but noticing that artisanal work already included a contemplative vision, “Perché non parli?” said Michelangelo when completing his work “Moses”, meaning “why not speak?” (photo).
A little noticed detail, but certainly conceived by Michelangelo when he made his work, is the support of his right arm on the tablets of the law, we would say a first biblical codex, since the Torah was a scroll, and if compared to the statue of the Greek thinker, he is resting his head on his right arm, Auguste Rodin made his version around 1880.
Thus, work, labor and action can be united with the idea of contemplation, if we think of it as the conception of a previous thinker and included in the object, in this way we reunite and re-signify work and labor, no longer as an alienated attitude, but as an ontic Being.
Therefore, human work and its labor must be united with the ontological idea of Being, and it also means an act of love for humanity, for the Other and for the one who will use, conceive or just contemplate the action of labor.
Arendt, H. (1995). A condição humana. 7th. ed. Brazil, Rio de Janeiro: Forense Universitária.
Psychopolitics and authoritarianism
18
Mar
The contemporary view of authority is rooted
in the idea of the power of force, of money, of authoritarianism, of the manipulation of justice and public bodies in favor of the state, but all this authority is an authority that passes away as great empires did.
The Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han, drawing on various authors: Nietzsche (Will to Power), Hegel (Principles of the Philosophy of Law), Luhmann (The Communication of Power) and his main influence, Heidegger (Being and Time), established the concept of psychopolitics.
The modern techniques of power through narratives that hide the real interests of power, mainly using the new media, is what Han called psychopolitics, which replaces and goes beyond Foucault’s concept of biopolitics.
Starting from Max Weber’s concept, quoting him: “power means the opportunity, within a social relationship, to impose one’s will even against resistance, regardless of what this opportunity is based on” (Han, 2019, p. 22, quoting Weber’s Economy and Society), this author already saw the modern trend of this psychological manipulation.
This approach replaces the concept of “domination” (we’ve already posted something about this here), which is “obedience to an order, which is sociologically ”more precise”, with the concept of a pure game of narratives that change this order according to temporal and social necessity.
The root of the idea of the modern state, different from the Greek one which was the overcoming of power as a sophism of manipulation, pure rhetoric, lies in Hegel: “in the longing for an absence of limits, for an infinitude which, however, would not be infinite power” (pg. 123), and what takes away the idea of the eternal and the transcendent, saying of its true limits is not an unlimited will for power: “Religion is fundamentally profoundly peaceful. It is goodness” (p. 124), but there are those who also see it only as a power, which is Hegelianism.
The biblical idea is the opposite of this arrogance, even if “religious” people use it, because “But it is not so among you; on the contrary, whoever wants to become great among you, let him serve you; and whoever wants to be first among you shall be servant of all” (Mark 10:43), “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6), there is no incitement to hatred, violence or the segregation of peoples or races in a good biblical reading.
So is the idea of the little ones, the children and the peaceful ones who are linked to the divine Kingdom.
Han, Byung-Chul. (2018) What is power? NY; Wiley. (citations is 2019 portuguese version)
