Spirit what is
23
May
In Greek origin the word is pneuma meaning “breath, seeing, air” in translation
into religious “divine breath, spirit” or “Holy Spirit”, in analysis of the theme that we developed in the previous topic it means a consequence of true asceticism, a “assistance” of the Holy Spirit in everyday matters.
In the Hebrew translation the word is “ruah” (or ruach), meaning something like “breath, air”, but distances itself from the Christian idea of the Holy Spirit as a person.
The Hebrew word ruah also has the meaning of “breeze” or “breath”, in Genesis for example: “They entered the ark with Noah, two by two of all flesh in which there was the spirit of life”, in Hebrew.
The Hebrew word ruach also has the meaning of “breeze” or “breath”, in Genesis for example: “And of all flesh, in which the spirit of life was, two by two entered Noah into the ark”, the translation in this case This seems out of place in philosophy or even contemporary ideas, but since the Greeks: Plato, Plotinus and more recently the Hegelians have explored several meanings close to this of absolute spirit, truth or life. the Hebrew word “ruach” is more than that.
This spirit, which is the Supreme Good of Plato and Aristotle, will be articulated in medieval philosophy and will reach Kant’s practical philosophy, to describe the greater good that human beings should seek, but in this case it is confused with Eudaimonia, which means ethics of happiness (in a sense not always “supreme”).
Plotinum (205-207 AD) is particularly important for having received influence from Plato and having influenced: Christians, Islamic, Jewish and Gnostic Enneads through his book, his influence particularly on Augustine of Hippo is quite strong, on the nature of the Intellect and on the “beyond the Intellect”, that is, the One, although it can be classified as having a metaphysical thought, it is in the articulation of the intellect with the soul, where the One can encompass both.
This idea was developed in Augustine of Hippo, for whom it is the dichotomous separation between good and evil (Augustine was a Manichaean) that makes the intellect distant would justify the episode of the Fall of the primordial couple? Augustine’s answer is for the insufficiency of good, that is, the absence of good gives rise to evil.
So it seems more correct in a broader sense, the idea of Spirit of Truth, of Wisdom and a category “superior” to the world of substantiality.ce itself from the soul, thus raising the question of how the Supreme Good would consent to the prevailing manifestation of the evil in the world? What would justify the episode of the Fall of the primordial couple? Augustine’s answer is for the insufficiency of good, that is, the absence of good gives rise to evil.
So it seems more correct in a broader sense, the idea of Spirit of Truth, of Wisdom and a category “superior” to the world of substantiality.
G7 meeting and Russian breakthrough
22
May
Reunited in Hiroshima, the G7 meeting was held: United States, United Kingdom,
Canada, Italy, Japan, France and Germany, to which some countries were invited, including Brazil, Australia, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Vietnam, Cook Islands (president of the Pacific Islands Forum) and Comoros (president of the African Union), Zelensky’s presence was as a special guest.
The countries reaffirmed their support for Ukraine, condemning the invasion, but Zelensky’s expected meeting with Brazilian President Luís Inácio Lula da Silva did not take place, concretely on the war, only American support promising more funding for weapons.
On the battlefield, Russia registered an advance in Bakhmut with the support of the mercenary group Wagner, who were praised by Putin, but the real takeover of the region is still controversial, Ukraine claims that there are still battles in the surroundings, in short, the war will continue and not s and knows in fact the limits it will still have.
The Ukrainians had celebrated the interception of the fearsome hypersonic missiles, and only one hit the country’s soil, it is still uncertain what kind of counteroffensive will be carried out, the Battle of Bakhmut may just be a bait already taken by Russia, the fighters and powerful tanks have not yet been used.
What is worrying is that on both the Russian and Ukrainian sides there is a real danger of the use of chemical and even nuclear weapons, Zelensky said that he would win the war before “that event” and on the Russian side there is open talk of the battle of Armageddon, Russia condemned the delivery of fighter jets to Ukraine.
In the diplomatic field, little progress has been made, Russia wants the territories it has already conquered, including Mariupol and a strip of eastern Ukraine, in addition to Crimea, which has been considered territory under Russian administration since 2014.
Hypersonic missiles with nuclear charges, increased army recruitment, food security and China’s alignment are concerns.
The scenario is still one of war and there has not been a more emphatic proposal for peace, the world continues with fears of a wider war.
Ascension in body and soul
19
May
Both human and spiritual ascesis are a question to be answered by human
existence, human existence because it implies advancing to higher stages of life, the photos of the current war in Eastern Europe ask us if we are heading towards this, the spiritual being the vision Greek, idealist or religious show that there is an issue.
For both, the answer is not simple, otherwise in thousands of years of civilizing process humanity would have already answered, the question that arises for the present day is how one can (and should) cooperate with the other, the bottom line is that kind of spirituality makes this cooperation productive.
The Latin motto “mens sana in corpore sano” which is from the Roman poet Juvenal, from the first century of the Christian era, indicates a precedence of the mind, however the mind, like the body, also ages and dies, which separates the idea of mind from soul, but only a spiritual ascesis that does not limit life to its bodily finitude can admit this immortality.
The soul is also not a specific theme of Christianity and other Abrahamic religions (Islamism and Judaism), Greek philosophers also speculated about the soul and Eastern religions that admit reincarnation (in the philosophical sense would be resubstance or reembodiment) also do not see the finitude of life.
Also in contemporary philosophy the speculations of objectification (or reification, res – thing) in the sense of finitude.
In the Christian way of seeing, a certain vision of separation of body and soul persists, but a deeper reading shows that the body can also be vivified by the soul, and the biblical proof for this are both the various appearances of Jesus alive after his death and resurrection, where he even eats bread and fish, as the maximum feast of his ascension.
The Christian biblical scene that is described in Acts of the Apostles 1, 9-10 is described like this: “After saying this, Jesus was taken up into heaven in their sight. A cloud covered them, so that their eyes could no longer see him. The apostles kept looking up to heaven as Jesus went up.”
For those who do not believe in the possibility of this life after death, all that remains is to consume life and this can also prevent a human asceticism.
Asceticism and the dualism between body and soul
18
May
Already in Greek philosophy, self-discipline and self-control of body and
mind (or soul) accompanied asceticism as well as the search for truth.
This quest and its corresponding asceticism is present throughout philosophy and even in literature, it is from Shakespeare’s Hamlet “there are more things between heaven and earth than vain philosophy supposes”, but it is from the same play “To be or not to be, this is the question” that refers to ontology.
Freud also said that the main task of an existence is to understand the mind, in contemporary philosophy there is the classic dilemma of separating body and mind (or soul), even Marx proposed to reverse Hegel’s path “from earth to heaven” , clear Hegelian sky.
What is certain is that the civilizing process depends on asceticism, on men as a community and on individual men, because otherwise they will not have anything to bring to the community if it does not have its own asceticism, they will take away the human misery and decadence that they experience.
The body and mind dualism is the one that separates the phenomena of the mind (which would be just mental, in the case of the soul, just spiritual) and the body that are physical and, therefore, are largely separable, there is also today a cheap philosophy that states that what I think will come true, I do not cite the books so as not to give greater popularity to this one without any theoretical or practical basis.
Husserl’s phenomenology will penetrate the ontological category of “intentionality” to remove this obstacle “the peculiarity by virtue of which experiences are experiences of something” (HUSSERL, 2010), and in § 14 of Cartesian Meditations (1931), repeats it o again, but in a more complete way: “The word intentionality does not mean anything other than that fundamental and general particularity of consciousness of being conscious of something, of carrying, in its quality of cogito, its cogitatum in itself” (HUSSERL, 2010).
Husserl and his teacher Franz Brentano recovered Aquinas’s category of intentionality for which the exterior in nature (esse naturale) is how things exist, the forms being distinct from existing in thought (esse intentionale), thereby supporting the mode of existence, in which things exist in the intellect (in intellectu) as “things thought”, but Husserl removes from intentionality the empirical basis and immanent objectivity.
In the previous post, we showed this separation between Philosophy of Nature and Philosophy of Spirit as divergent and even opposite, by admitting that in a certain way there is in consciousness some form of awareness of something that is the basis for phenomenology and then in ontology and existentialism, there is in the consciousness a definite and transcendental form of what is external, but part of the intentionality of consciousness.
The transcendent is present in the mind (or soul) through intentionality, while the transcendental is of a higher order and only becomes knowledge if it can be understood within the transcendental mystery of existence, or we return to nothingness.
Husserl, E. (2010) Meditações Cartesianas. Conferencias de Paris. Phainomenon –Clássicos de Fenomenologia . Portugal, Lisbon: CFUO.
Controversies of spiritual and philosophical asceticism
17
May
To deny asceticism, one resorts to the idea that it would be impregnated with
“Christian exegesis”, however, the literature itself shows that this is a contradiction, since both idealist philosophy tries to remake a vision of what is spiritual in the “Phenomenology of the Spirit” and also more modernly Foucault ( ) will say that the Greeks in the Hellenistic and Roman times would be far from understanding the term we call ascesis. “Our notion of asceticism is, in fact, more or less modeled and impregnated by the Christian conception”. (FOUCAULT, 2004, p.399).
In Michel Inwood’s Hegelian dictionary, we find the concept of Spirit (geist): “Geist includes the most intellectual aspects of the psyche, from intuition to thought and will, but excluding and contrasting with the soul, feeling, etc.”, however Spirit in Hegelian usage has a meaning that is both similar and different from that used in everyday life (in the sense of the soul) and in philosophy, since there is also a “Trinitarian” meaning there.
As in all idealist philosophy, Hegel is a post-Kantian it is good to say, there is a search for overcoming the subject and object duality, for Hegel it is found in the Absolute Spirit, said in such a way as to propitiate an encounter between the subject and the object, forming an identity that takes place within the mutual relationship between subjectivity and objectivity.
While in Kant transcendence is what makes the Subject go to the object, in Hegel it is the Absolute that marks a meeting between the subject and the object, forming an identity that takes place within the mutual relationship between subjectivity and objectivity, but in both there is no Being in transcendence.
It is important to understand this relationship because in it what Hegel treats as an essential intellectual activity takes place, for the intellective apprehension both about the object (which is precisely the moment of alienation as a “going out of the Self”) and about the subject itself (the return to subjectivity after the experience with the object, that is, the Other as he sees it), thus different from the ontology of Husserl, Heidegger and others, who see in this an ontological relationship with Being.
For this, one must penetrate the Hegelian categories: in-itself, of-itself and for-itself, said in the Philosophy of Right as: “In effect, the in-itself is consciousness, but it is also that for which it is a Other (the in-itself): it is for consciousness that the object’s in-itself and its being-for-an-other are the same. The I is the content of the relationship and the relationship itself; it confronts an Other and at the same time surpasses it; and this Other, for him, is only himself” (HEGEL, 2003);
Many contemporary philosophers will see the Other, as something beyond the Self, and a for-itself something beyond the Self and the Other, a “for” beyond.
Although there are controversies both in Hegelian idealism and in his “Trinitarian” dialectical conception, it is important to note that for him the members of a community should always have among the principles the one that “has objectivity, truth and morality” (HEGEL, 2003, §258).
Foucault, Michel. (2004) A hermenêutica do sujeito. Transl. Márcio Alves da Fonseca; Salma Tannus Muchail. Brazil, São Paulo: Martins Fontes.
Hegel, G.W.F. (2003) Princípios da Filosofia do Direito. Transl. Orlando Vitorino. Brazil, São Paulo: Martins Fontes.
Inwood, M. J. (1997) Hegel. Dicionário Hegel. Transl. Álvaro Cabral. Brazil, Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar Editor.
Asceticism as human and spiritual elevation
16
May
It is not specific to a religion and is also defined in philosophy, from the
Greek áskesis, “spiritual exercise”, derived from ἀσκέω, “to exercise”, consisting of a practice or more practices that promote spiritual development, the simple idea of renouncing pleasure or the primary needs, must be seen within certain contexts or periods, therefore it is not normal in general and also its opposite does not mean just sinning, but deteriorating, weakening when failing to do certain exercises.
Peter Sloterdijk, an agnostic, speaks of this despiritualized asceticism, in the sense that we are a society of exercises, but that they do not provide either a human or spiritual elevation, a clear example of this is the number of academies that grow in the country and in many places of the world. world, another example is the demonstrations of virility as a human elevation, of course it is important to take care of health, but sometimes excessive exercise and medication do the opposite.
From the human point of view, what we experience is a decadence that goes from the moral to the religious, subjects so clear until recently, today they are seen as having almost absurd controversies to the point of the immoral being considered “normal” and “human” and the religious being identified with atrocities.
The series of humanitarian crises could not fail to affect the economy, these are not simple market crises, they are at the epicenter of wars and economic fallacies, it is not necessary to be an economist to see that simplistic formulas do not work at either extreme: the wild capitalism and socialism without freedom and without human quality.
It seems difficult to recognize what a true spirituality would be then, even with the principle of asceticism, which means human elevation in social relations and in the inherent dignity of every human being, in respect for nature and in the preservation of its benefits, in short, in the love of life .
Even for the concept of peace we go back in history, the pax Roman seems to be the principle for many wars, whatever the one that subdued “enemy” territories to declare peace, not even the eternal peace of contemporary idealism is claimed, although it also have limitations.
It is a harbinger of great tragedies, including war, what is hoped is that somehow forces that still have a human and spiritual background can interpose this contemporary reality and revert the dangerous situation that we all face and few work for its reversal (photo about Pulitzer Prize in 2023).
Visit to Rome, Counteroffensive and Pulitzer Prize
15
May
The week was all about Ukraine: a visit to Rome and the pope, advances in
Backhmut and photos from the war that drew attention when they won the Pulitzer Prize, the photos are shocking and perhaps say more than words, since today there is even incomprehensible rhetoric favor of war.
In the strategic plan, there is no Portuguese analyst Germano Almeida pointed out: “here in the West we are not yet aware of the plans, so there is a Ukrainian idea that this is just the beginning and nobody knows where in fact this counter-offensive can be launched because the Bakhmut’s question could be a first diversion maneuver [discussion] and the essential thing and the mass offensive could be elsewhere”, says Almeida.
The visit to Italy, in addition to the country’s already declared support, the visits to Italian President Sérgio Mattarela and with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, he also participated in a talk show on Italian TV, about the pope, all that is known is an agreement humanitarian assistance to refugees.
The images that won the prize also have a Brazilian on the list: Felipe Dana, from Rio de Janeiro, who filmed and photographed scenes from Bucha, the most cruel and violent massacre carried out by Russia in Ukraine (first photo below), it is worth remembering that the war was also from Vietnam had awards on the horrors there.
Some images from the 2023 Pulitzer Prize given to several Associated Press photographers, including the Brazilian, if words don´t move, maybe the images will.
The Other, the Infinite and the Truth
12
May
The development of the question of Being in modern philosophy is not separated
from the religious question, Gadamer recalls the example of the gods in works of art from the Greek world (Gadamer, 1997, p. 18),
The other is treated in different areas of ontology, becoming almost an essential category.
Another important point on the path to Truth, states that it is necessary to recognize: “The finitude of understanding itself is the way in which and where reality, resistance, the absurd, and incomprehensible reaches validity.” (Gadamer, 1997, p.24), and expands this history to the historical one, where he criticizes Dilthey’s romantic historicism and emphasizes that it is not ahistorical.
Thus, the path (or the method) to the Truth is traced the development of the hermeneutic circle as a new and revolutionary method for the Truth, listening to the text (or the Other) and performing a fusion of horizons, where it is possible to see and rethink more clearly the Truth.
The simple elaboration of narratives that justify the power of certain truths is nothing more than a return to the obscurity and opportunism of the modern sophist discourse, now using as a resource the limits and specialties of certain sciences, for example, law and economics that seen in their restricted fields are nothing but sophisms that justify each other.
When analyzing the possibility of the end of metaphysics, Gadamer points out: “If science rises to total technocracy, and thereby covers the sky with the “night of the world” of “forgetfulness of being”, the nihilism predicted by Nietzsche, may if then you keep looking behind the last glint of the sun that went down […]” (GADAMER, 1997, p.27), that is, science is not part of this question.
A true humanism must look to the infinite, not just the one that is now visible through the James Webb megatelescope (which raises many questions as well), it cannot fail to ignore the infinite, the mystery and the religious phenomenon.
For Christians, this truth was revealed humanly and visibly in Jesus, last week we remember the disciples saying “Show us the Father” (Jn 14:8), now on another front Jesus reveals himself more fully to those who follow him (Jn 14:8). 14, 16-17): “And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, that he may abide with you always: the Spirit of Truth, which the world is not able to receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him” .
This is not an arrogant Truth, it can and must dialogue with the cultures of our time.
Gadamer, H.G. (1997) Verdade e método. Transl. Flávio Paulo Meurer. Brazil: Petrópolis, RJ: ed. Vozes.
The fundamental question of the method
11
May
The historical question could not be missing, in fact before the book “The truth
and method”, it was a lecture by Gadamer that started this work, called “The question of historical conscience”, the book was corrected and translated into English after publication of the masterpiece, and from this version came the Portuguese version.
Thus the author states: “Because, only with the failure of the naive historicism of the historical century, it becomes evident that the opposition that exists between a-historical-dogmatic and historical, between tradition and historical science, between ancient and modern, is not absolute.” (GADAMER, 1997, p.22).
So it is in the face of this finitude of knowledge that one must depart: “The finitude of understanding itself is the way in which and where reality, resistance, the absurd, and the incomprehensible reaches validity. Anyone who takes this finitude seriously must also take the reality of history seriously” (Gadamer, 1997, p.24), and from there he resumes and reorganizes the hermeneutic circle.
Thus, what he calls effectual history starts from the understanding of “what makes the experience of you so decisive for all self-understanding” (idem), it will be from there that he will elaborate his philosophical hermeneutics, which seems paradoxical, he states: “precisely Heidegger’s critique to transcendental questioning and his thought of the “turn” (Kehre) serves as a basis for the development of the universal hermeneutic problem, which I undertake” (Gadamer, 1997, p.25), and thus for him “language does not arise in the consciousness of those who speaks” and has nothing to do with subjectivity, since the subject’s experience has nothing “mystical” or “mystifying”.
He clarifies that his methodology goes beyond a purely metaphysical view, and says about the method of idealism: “I think that Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is binding, and that propositions that do nothing more than add, by thought, and dialectically, the infinite to the finite, the being in itself to what is humanly experienced, the eternal to the temporal, I consider them as mere extreme determinations, from which, by the strength of philosophy, no knowledge of our own will be able to develop. (GADAMER, 1997, p.26).
With regard to metaphysics, he clarifies that even the Hegelian tradition, which does not abandon the idea of infinity, has: “the tradition of metaphysics and especially its last great formulation, Hegel’s speculative dialectic, contains a constant proximity.” (idem).
And he resumes Heidegger’s question of the oblivion of being: “What does the end of metaphysics mean, as a science? What does it mean to finish in science? If science rises to total technocracy, and thereby covers the sky with the “night of the world” of the “oblivion of being”, the nihilism predicted by Nietzsche, then one can look behind the last glint of the sun that has set […]” (GADAMER, 1997, p.27).
The opening to the Other opens up a perspective of merging the horizons of the Being, which applies a new meaning to the text (or discourse) and allows one to question oneself about the truth and reach it, this is the hermeneutic circle.
Gadamer, H.G. (1997) Verdade e método. Transl. Flávio Paulo Meurer. Brazil: Petrópolis, RJ: ed. Vozes.
Truth and Hermeneutics
10
May
It was Hans-Georg Gadamer who developed and founded a deeper criterion for 
making a correct interpretation of method and truth (the name of his two-volume book) in the human sciences, and it is not about opposing the natural sciences, but giving the sciences social a soul and a “spirit”, even the one understood strictly in non-religious thought, but that actually seeks the truth and not the syllogism, pure logic or even sophistry.
Gadamer clarifies right at the beginning of his masterpiece: “The fact that I used the expression “hermeneutics”, weighing an old tradition on my shoulders, certainly led to misunderstandings” (GADAMER, 1997, p. 14) .
Returning to the question of the natural sciences, the author clarifies the misunderstanding “the famous Kantian distinction between the questionio juries and the questionio facti” (Gadamer, 1997, . 16), it was not a question of a court of reason, but “.It posed a philosophical question, that is, he asked about the conditions of our knowledge, through which modern science becomes possible, and what is the scope of science” (idem).
Thus his philosophical behavior in response to the question: “what is knowledge” was developing the temporal analysis of existence: “which Heidegger developed, I think, convincingly showed that understanding is not a way of being, among other modes of behavior of the subject, but the way of being of the pre-sence itself (Dasein)” (ibidem).
Before entering the question of history, he seeks its origins by stating: “However, where is the world and the afterworld really separated? How does the vital significance of the originary pass into the reflective experience of the significance of formation?” (GADAMER, 1997, p. 17).
Humanism had not been separated from the religious phenomenon: “One should recognize and admit that an ancient image of gods, for example, which was not represented in the temple as a work of art for the aesthetic enjoyment of reflection, and which today has its representation in the modern museum, contains within itself the universe of religious experience.” (GADAMER, 1997, p. 18).
Thus, before reflecting on history, Gadamer will reflect on art, and does not fall into the dualism of subjectivism, he exposes his conviction that: “Thus, no one will convince me, objecting to me that the reproduction of a musical work of art is interpretation in a different sense than, for example, the achievement of understanding in reading poetry or looking at an image.” (GADAMER, 1997, p. 19).
The artistic experience in its “method” and “truth” is not exclusive, but it is the one that allows greater breadth in its conception of what really leads us to the “method” that guides the “truth”.
Gadamer, H.G. (1997) Verdade e método. transl. Flávio Paulo Meurer. Brazil: Petrópolis, RJ: ed. Vozes.
