Narrative and truth
26
Sep
It’s not just some thinkers like Edgar Morin,
Peter Sloterdijk and Mario Bunge who complain about the difficulty of elaborating thought in a truthful way, the fundamentals have been lost and narratives dominate even areas like science and religion, not to mention politics which is the realm of narratives, peace, climate and social security are part of rhetoric.
In Byung-Chul Han’s book “The Crisis of Narration” he recovers an essay by Hungarian writer Peter Nadás “Betsutsame Ortsbestimmung” (I don’t think there is a Portuguese translation, but Han translated the title as Location pending), which tells the story of a village where in the center stands a huge wild pear tree.
Nadás describes this village as a narrative community that gathers around the pear tree “on warm summer evenings” for “ritual contemplation” and ratifies the “collective content of consciousness” (Han, 2023, p. 121), where there is “no opinion about this or that, but uninterrupted narration of a single great story” (Há, p. 122) and where they used to “sing softly … Today there are no more of these trees and the singing of the village has died down” (Nadás, apud Han, 2023, p. 122).
The Korean philosopher adds: “That ‘ritual contemplation’ that ratifies the collective content of consciousness gives way to the noise of communication and information” (Han, p. 122), “that ‘singing’ that tunes the villagers into a story and thus unites them” (Idem).
What they experience from “noisy” communication “does not create any social cohesion, it does not create a We. On the contrary, it dismantles both solidarity and empathy” (Han, 2023, p. 123).
Han’s philosophical critique is clear: “But not all the constitutive narratives of a community are based on the exclusion of the Other, insofar as there is also an inclusive narrative that does not cling to an identity” (Han, 2023, p. 124) and even quotes Kant’s Perpetual Peace, despite all its conservative idealism.
His universalism is clear: “Every human being enjoys unrestricted hospitality. Every human being is a citizen of the world … He [Novalis] imagines a ‘world family’ beyond nation and identity. He elevates poetry as a form of reconciliation and love” (p. 125).
The author, based on Novalis, also refers to the issue of complexity that contemplates the whole: “The individual lives in the whole and the whole in the individual. It is through poetry that the highest sympathy and coactivity originate, the most intimate communication” (Han, 2023, p. 125).
Han, B.-C. (2023). A crise da narração. Transl. Daniel Guilhermino. Brazil. Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes.
Sophists and relativism
25
Sep
The political issue and the current polarization
involve an age-old problem: sophistry. Its origin in ancient Greece is when Plato started a school for training philosophers to create men of the “polis” who would serve not only authoritarian governments, but the Greek city-states.
The speech in Theaetetus on the nature of knowledge, written in 369 BC, is where the confrontation between truth and relativism appears, at least clearly for the first time in philosophy.
In it, a character called “the Stranger from Elea”, who would have been a companion of both Parmenides and Zeno”, elaborates on three important figures in the Platonic school: the sophist, the politician and the philosopher, but in it he only did not write about the definition of the philosopher that would be investigated in other texts, but the politician for him, par excellence, would be the philosopher, who among other things should have ‘Aretê’, that is, virtues.
The reason there is a coincidence with current political discourse, and this origin of relativism, can be seen in the explanation he gives about reality and the image they seek to represent, both of which are not what they represent, but are clearly something else, for example the image of a house can look like and show very well what a house is, without being one.
Just as the image of a dog is characterized by not really being a dog, the content of a false speech is characterized by not being what it really is, both say something about the truth, but are in essence different things.
Despite this, an ontological contradiction remains in the discourse, as the Stranger emblematically announces: “such a statement presupposes being and not being”, Parmenides’ classic thesis, although the root of his thought is logical and not ontological.
Thus, appearance and image do not coincide with the real truth, although they may confuse an inattentive viewer, they are not the same thing, discerning them is an essential condition for exercising truth, so we may not remain in the truth when we embark on “images”.
There is a popular saying, it is not known who first said it, but in war the first thing that dies is the truth, and its more than tragic consequences lead to a crisis of who we really are as humanity and with our inalienable rights that are stolen.
Really tackling the issue of poverty
24
Sep
Simply distributing income or just giving a plate
of food solves the emergency issue, but it keeps poverty latent and does not provide social uplift and economic stability.
The issue of poverty is a complex problem, although its consequences are easy to see, but raising the quality of life and dignified survival of millions of people must be tackled in a way that goes beyond the emergency, even if it is necessary.
Among the rarely analyzed causes of poverty are corruption, wars, precarious infrastructure and the difficulty in generating jobs and creating them with decent wages, so informality and even crime and illegal markets (even drugs) are consequences.
The consequences are well known: hunger, unemployment, lack of decent housing, lack of basic sanitation, violence, the spread of epidemic diseases, discrimination and social vulnerability.
Tackling one aspect while ignoring others, for example the issue of basic sanitation, is crucial and is not easily visible to many public managers who only see aspects that give them more visibility and help improve their vision, which in Brazil is always critical.
The issue of income distribution is a fundamental aspect, but it’s not just a question of solving the emergency, creating possibilities for social mobility among the lower income levels is an essential factor in eradicating poverty, as is promoting aspects of schooling and job creation.
The global problem to be tackled is emigration, not just hunger and poverty, but above all wars and persecution of certain ethnic groups, which is a very serious factor and could escalate into a world war.
Clear public programs that not only solve the emergency problem, which is visible to the population, but also the medium and long term problems are essential. The low level of social mobility and the difficulty for the lower income groups to access public goods and services is still a crucial factor in many countries around the world, and extreme poverty persists despite programs and policies, where they have failed is precisely where the propaganda was strongest and the measures least effective.
Changing the rhetoric of welfarism and the distribution of social leftovers is fundamental. We need to restore dignity to every human being, overcoming not only prejudice, but above all the way in which we view these people, who have the same dignity as others.
Real danger, decisive week for peace
23
Sep
The death of Ibrahim Akil, one of the heads
of Hezbollah’s military operations, led the organization to declare “indefinite war” against Israel.
This Sunday they exchanged heavy fire, with Israeli warplanes carrying out the most intense bombardment in almost a year of conflict in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah for its part firing rockets towards northern Israel.
The peace talks are thus at a standstill, although US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin exchanged six phone calls in the week with his Israeli counterpart, showing serious concern about the escalation of the conflict and calling for a diplomatic solution.
In Ukraine, the peace talks are also polarized in this respect: Brazil and China are trying to talk to Putin, while European countries and the United States are trying to reach a dialogue that is more favorable to Ukraine’s claims for peace.
What’s most frightening are the nuclear threats, which Russia always brings up and now Ukraine is saying that the Russians are also planning attacks on nuclear power plants, the effects of which would be terrifying, just think of Chernobyl, of course in this case it was an accident, but the effects should never be repeated by these two countries that came to that moment.
On April 26, 1986, reactor number 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, then a Soviet republic linked to Moscow, suffered a catastrophic meltdown that caused the government to evacuate 30 km around the plant, the area of which is uninhabitable to this day. C, 4 times higher than volcanic lava.
Sources indicate that between 2 and 50 people died in the explosion, dozens of others contracted serious illnesses caused by the radiation, some of whom died later. Between 50 and 185 million curies (unit of radiation activity) of radionuclides (radioactive forms of chemical elements) escaped into the atmosphere – several times more radioactivity than that created by the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan (pictured is a monument to the workers who fought the Chernobyl fire).
Modern reactors incorporate more safety devices to prevent a disaster like Chernobyl, but in the event of a war “accident” control can be difficult.
The fact that there are countries committed, albeit polarized, is an encouragement and also those who see the civilizational crisis that they would unleash can serve to allow minds inflamed by hatred to cool their anger.
Towards a political ontology
20
Sep
Various authors talk about what power is,
from the classic contractualists (Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau), through the modern readings of Marx, Weber, Tocqueville, Bobbio and Norbert Elias, to Byung-Chul Han (psychopolitics) and Foucault (biopolitics), but Hannah Arendt went further by envisioning political ontology and completely escapes Hegelian thinking.
In her book from the late 1960s (and therefore Arendt’s Arendt’s maturity), she criticizes the “new left” which thought of Fighting a world threatened by nuclear destruction and dominated by large state, administrations and they would be responsible for violence and ultimately the essence of all power, she writes.
If we turn to discussions of the phenomenon of power, we quickly realize that there is a consensus among political theorists, from left to right, that violence is simply the most flagrant manifestation of power. ‘All politics is a struggle for power; the basic form of power is violence,’ said C. Wright Mills, echoing Max Weber’s definition of the state as ‘domination of man by man based on the means of legitimate violence, that is to say, supposedly legitimate violence. Wright Mills, echoing, as it were, Max Weber’s definition of the state as the ‘domination of man by man based on the means of legitimate, that is, supposedly legitimate, violence’”. (Arendt, 2001, p. 31)
For the author, following the Greco-Roman tradition, this concept bases power on consent and not violence, thus on a relationship of command and obedience.
The author notes that this concept is “a sad reflection of the current state of political science” (p. 36) and a natural identification of the traditional view of power and violence, since “power, vigor, force, authority and violence would be simple words to indicate the means by which man dominates man; they are taken synonymously because they have the same function” (idem) and this “virility” is often observed from Greece to the present day.
For the author, “power corresponds to the human ability not only to act, but to act in concert. Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only to the extent that the group remains united. When we say that someone is ‘in power’, we are really referring to the fact that they have been empowered by a certain number of people to act on their behalf” (p.36).
For the author it is necessary to review these concepts: power, vigor, force, authority and violence, since “violence would not identify any coercive act, but only that which operates, in the case of social relations, on the physical body of the opponent, killing him, violating him, in short, it seems to describe only the effective use of implements” (p. 37) and thus war.
Arendt speaks of “isonomy” where Chul Han speaks of “symmetry”, similar concepts, and so power is indeed that which “emerges wherever people unite and act in concert, but its legitimacy derives more from the initial being together than from any action that might then follow” (p. 41, with emphasis in my text).
What is needed is an action of “unity”, of “service” and, at best, as the one who serves the community and not the one who serves himself, and for this he will always need violence.
This requires an action of “unity”, of “service” and, at best, as a the best case scenario, as the one who serves the community and not the one who serves and for this you will always need violence.
ARENDT, H. (2001). Poder e violência. Brazil: Rio de Janeiro, ed. Relume Dumará.
The difference of the divine Love
19
Sep
Hannah Arendt’s reading of Saint Augustine
in her doctoral thesis remains between these two interpretations of human and divine love.
To analyze this, Arendt interprets Augustine’s work as governed by three principles that appear without apparent contradiction. She increased Augustine’s dogmatic rigidity to the extent that Christianity was inserted into his thinking, this consisting of his passage from pre-theological, philosophical thinking to theological thinking, according to the author.
Thus the first part of the author’s thesis, entitled “Love as desire: the anticipated future”, approaches love from a philosophical perspective of continuity with Hellenic thought, in which love is seen as a disposition that is always driven by lack, by something that is not possessed, but which one hopes to have, as a means of achieving happiness, thus desire is something not yet achieved while Love is the desire obtained, and this is philosophical.
These two types of love are given two names by Augustine: caritas and cupiditas. They differ in their love for the object they love, “but both right and wrong love (caritas and cupiditas) have this in common – desirous longing, that is, appetitus”, writes the author.
Caritas is pure, true love, because it desires God, eternity and the absolute future, while cupiditas loves the world, the things of the world, here it is pre-theological, because charity is not just a passing love, or desire for a passing good, but for the eternal.
Whether we are religious or not, we are between desire and possession, after we have obtained the desired object in general, and enjoyed the pleasure of this possession, cupiditas passes and something eternal remains if there is caritas in it, that is an Eternal Love, which gives an eternal possession and then does not pass away.
So the man who has this quest must withdraw into himself, and within himself, isolating himself from the world, he penetrates the Augustinian “quaestio”, the guiding thread that Arendt pursues: “for the more he withdrew into himself and collected himself in the dispersion and distraction of the world, the more he became a ‘question for himself’,” wrote the author.
Every philosophy has a basic question, and Augustine’s becomes theological: “What do I love when I love my God?” (Confessions X, 7, 11 apud Arendt p. 25), even if it is “in the world”.
Thus the second part of her thesis is called “and ‘Creature and Creator: the remembered past’, in book X of Confessions. “Memory, then, opens the way to a transmundane past as the original source of the very notion of a happy life,” the author wrote about Augustine.
In proposing a relationship with the Creator, man does not lose himself, but finds himself, and this is different from any kind of worldly attachment, the god of money, consumption or desire.
Arendt, Hannah. (1996) Love and Saint Augustine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Hannah Arendt and Love´s Mundi
18
Sep
Hannah Arendt was, in our view, instigated
by her existential drama, and within it, to take up the question of Love as an essential issue from an early age, writes Safransky:
“At the beginning of 1924, an 18-year-old Jewish student arrived in Marburg wanting to study with Bultmann and Heidegger. She was Hannah Arendt. She came from a good assimilated Jewish family in Könisberg, where she had grown up. By the age of 14, her curiosity had already been aroused. She read Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and mastered Greek and Latin so well that at the age of 16 she founded a study and reading circle for ancient literature. Even before her final exams at the Könisberg high school, she spent a season in Berlin, where she read Heidegger and took lessons from Romano Guardini (a specialist in Kierkegaard),” Safranski wrote about Hannah.
While still a teenager, the thinker who had already formed a philosophy circle as an adolescent, wrote her first concerns, Hannah Arendt wrote the poem Consolation (Trost):
“The hours pass, Die Stunden verrinnen / The days pass, Die Tage vergehen, / There remains one grace Es bleibt ein Gewinnen / The simple persisting. Das blosse Bestehen.” (Young-Bruehl, Hannah Arendt, For Love of the World, p. 53).
In a letter from Heidegger to her, “And what can we do but open ourselves, but let it be what it is? To let ourselves be in such a way that love becomes for us a pure/chaste joy (reine Freude) and the source of each new day of life. To be elevated to what we are. In any case, it would be possible for one of us to ‘say’ and open up to the other. We can only say, however, that the world is no longer mine or yours, but ours”.
Thinking of the world as “ours” and not mine is a necessity of our time, an essential step towards our world problems. When we read Hannah’s doctoral thesis “The Concept of Love in St. Augustine” (ARENDT, 1998), we understand that there was an attempt to go beyond the existential and get to the essence of love, and the search for amor mundi.
When reading Augustine of Hippo, the subject of her doctoral thesis, she observes the separation between love and enjoyment: “this joy lies in loving love without inscribing it in something particular and fleeting”, and then emphasizes: “Love hopes to find its own fulfillment in eternity” (Arendt, The Concept of Love in Saint Augustine, p. 35).
Despite this reference to “eternity”, Arendt doesn’t get to that theological virtue: love, which must be combined in an “existential” way as faith and hope, since in eternity, for those who believe, faith and hope will already be in fullness in Love.
ARENDT, H. (1998) O conceito de amor em santo Agostinho. Transl. de Alberto Pereira Dinis. Portugal, Lisboa: Instituto Piaget.
SAFRANSKI, R. (2000) Heidegger, um mestre da Alemanha entre o bem e o mal (biografia). Transl. de Lya Luft. Apresentação de Ernildo Stein. Brazil, São Paulo: Geração Editorial.
Power, punishment and psychopolitics
17
Sep
After Surveillance and Punishment, Foucault
realized that disciplinary society was not exactly what modern society reflected, as Byung-Chul Han’s book on Psychopolitics puts it, “the problem, however, was that it remained linked both to the concept of population and to that of biopolitics [quoting Foucault] ‘if once we know what this governmental regime called liberalism was, we can, it seems to me, grasp what biopolitics is’ (Han, 2020, p. 37).
Byung-Chul discovers that “disciplinary technique passes from the corporeal to the mental sphere. The English term “industry” also means “effort”. The locution industrial school can mean house of correction. Bentham also suggested that his pan-opticon would morally improve the inmates. Content, the psyche is not the focus of disciplinary power” (Han, 2020, p. 35).
The Korean-German essayist develops all the assumptions developed by Foucault to make the transition from biopolitics to psychopolitics, which he is right to do, but it is totally linked to the idea that it is the neoliberal principle and not the Hegelian one that establishes this logic of power, although both in the book What is Power and in the book In the Swarm, he examines other aspects ranging from technology to human behavior, for example, in the essay In the Swarm, he states that the only symmetrical form of power is respect.
In a more analytical way, he also considers idealist philosophy from a behavioral perspective:
“As in the relationship of knowledge (Kant), there is no continuity of the Ego, without the Alter, as he attests, by denoting that, power allows the ego to be in the other by itself. It generates a continuity of the self. The ego makes its decisions in the alter. This is how the ego continues in the alter. Power gives the ego spaces that are its own, in which, despite the presence of the other, it can be itself.” (Han, 2019, p. 11).
So it is necessary to escape from selfish, exclusivist concepts to penetrate a level of alter in order to fully realize our feelings and decisions, it is not an effort of the self nor of egocentric power that we achieve this state of peace and happiness so desired.
So inflamed egos, masters who seize power in order to dominate others, are unable to create a healthy policy that includes the whole of society and perhaps the whole of society, because it is not possible to live in harmony without respecting diversity, difference and the Other.
All totalitarian regimes are heading for war because they need to eliminate the Other, the different and the voice of those who see the world from a different perspective.
HAN, Byung-Chul. A Psicopolítica: o neoliberalismo e as novas técnicas do poder. Brazil: Petrópolis: Vozes, 2020.
HAN, Byung-Chul. O que é Poder? Transl. de Gabriel Salvi Philipson. Brazil: Petrópolis: Vozes, 2019.
Maximum tension between NATO and Russia
16
Sep
credits Avpics/Alamy Stock Photo
Accusations of direct aggression between the West and Russia have reached a dangerous limit.
The tensions surrounding the war in Eastern Europe have reached an all-time high. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and US President Joe Biden are reportedly talking about allowing Kiev to use American ATACMS and British Storm Shadow long-range missiles on internal Russian targets.
On the other hand, China and Russia have held joint military exercises called “Joint SEa-2024”, which Japan and Eastern countries view with suspicion, as well as Taiwan and the islands that are conflicts between Japan and Russia (Sakhalin and Kuril Islands) and China and the Philippines (Spratlye Islands and Scarborough Atoll), but the main conflict is markets with the West.
Russia has used drones from Iran in the confrontation with Ukraine, and this strengthens the link with the Muslim world, while support for Israel from France and the US strengthens the NATO alliance.
Brazil and China had proposed a peace proposal that would “freeze the current borders” in a ceasefire, but this referred to May, now the advance of the Ukrainians into Russian territory changes this scenario, and it is not clear what the proposal actually is, but Ukrainian President Zelensky had already rejected the proposal, saying he was not consulted.
The scenario is serious because a simple attack on Russian territory with long-range missiles will be considered a NATO aggression, since Western countries have offered weapons and given a go-ahead, while NATO forces are preparing a possible retaliation.
On the Middle East front, as I explained with almost the same allies and enemies, the climate is also one of hostility and an agreement seems to be further and further away.
A senior Hamas commander, Oussama Hamdane, in an interview with AFP accused the United States of not exerting enough pressure on Israel to seek a ceasefire agreement, and claims that on the contrary “it is trying to justify the Israeli side’s evasion of any compromise”, and American political strength would be able to lead the Middle East to a hope of peace in a conflict that has gone beyond humanitarian limits.
There are still hopes, voices calling for serenity and common sense, various organizations and entities that are honestly seeking a reasonable and lasting peace.
Joy, sacrifice and hope
13
Sep
Pain is part of human reality, and so no joy is
everlasting if it doesn’t understand sacrifice, in the etymology of the word “sacred office”, it’s not exactly pain, as Byung-Chul Han describes in The Palliative Society: pain today, meaningless pain, it’s “bodily affliction”, pain has become a thing, it has lost an ontological and in a way “eschatological” meaning, “meaningless pain is possible only in a bare life emptied of meaning, which no longer narrates”. (Han, 2021, p. 46).
Han cites literary authors such as Paul Valéry, for whom in his book Monsieur Teste “is silent in the face of pain. Pain robs him of speech” (Han, 2021, p. 43), and also Freud, for whom ”pain is a symptom that indicates a blockage in a person’s history. The patient, because of his blockage, is unable to move forward in the story” (p. 45).
It is with the Christian mystic Teresa of Avila, as a kind of counterfigure of pain, “in her, pain is extremely eloquent. The narrative begins with pain. The Christian narrative verbalizes pain and also transforms the body of the mystic into a stage … deepens the relationship with God … produces intimacy, an intensity” (p. 44). For those who don’t know, it was through reading this book that the philosopher Edith Stein, a disciple of Husserl like Heidegger, converted to Christianity.
Sacrifice is the art of living joyfully through pain. Of course, it’s a mistake to think about and desire pain, but if it comes, and someday it will, it can be re-signified as a “sacred office” that is offered. Byung-Chul Han wrote about it: “Suffering is not a symptom, nor is it a diagnosis, but a very complex human experience.” Only great mystics have penetrated it.
In Mark’s Gospel (Mk 9:31), Jesus shocks his disciples by teaching them in secret: “And he said to them, ”The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. But three days after his death he will rise again,” and then he denies all forms of human power: ‘Whoever wants to be first, let him be servant of all,’ and finally he teaches the simplicity of children: ‘Whoever welcomes one of these children welcomes me,’ is different from what they think today.
Understanding pain, the inverted logic of power and the simplicity and innocence of children is a distant logic in a civilization in crisis, hedonistic, authoritarian and full of malice.
Han, B-C. (2021) A Sociedade paliativa: a dor hoje. Transl. Lucas Machado, Brazil, Petrópolis: ed. Vozes.
