Posts Tagged ‘teologia’
Revelation and unveiling
23
Jun
While in philosophy, unveiling is the clarity attained by metaphysical or 
ontological intelligibility, which is not restricted only to the material, empirical or quantitative aspects of reality, unveiling in theology is revelation and intelligibility through faith.
Both seek knowledge of the whole, from its original aspect, passing through the means (the paths and methods it proposes) to understand rationally or through the “revelation” of harmonic knowledge (elucidation) of divine truths or those contained in the Scriptures (justification).
Thus, Theology, while it is the study that represents an effort of the reason (and spirituality) for a greater understanding of what is said through the Scriptures, however, it is always revelation because divine knowledge is infinite, while human knowledge is finite.
Thus, the word unveiling (removing the veil) is suitable for rational effort, but without the resource of metaphysics and ontology, it remains tied to revelation, which is pragmatic rational knowledge.
The effort to understand the new data from the James Webb telescope, for example, is already giving physicists and astrophysicists new understandings of the universe, but it is increasingly difficult to understand the initial moment or what initial substance it formed, the answer seems to be go beyond its limits when conducting hypotheses: without this one there is no beginning or there are other multiverses beyond our universe.
Thus, unveiling is that knowledge that goes towards the essence of what we are and where we are heading and what ethical-metaphysical laws govern us and we should obey them.
So un-veil can indicate that more than an initial substance (a primordial monad or an initial cosmic energy) there can be a Being and an intention in creation.
If the eye is the lamp of our body and reveals reality to us, we must go beyond it to reveal the secrets of eternity, because our knowledge is limited.
This wisdom is the one that affirms, in the biblical reading that we know how much two sparrows are worth, but the divine (Mt 10,31-32): “As for you, even the hairs of your head are numbered. Do not be afraid! You are worth more than many sparrows.”
What’s beyond human
03
Mar
Certainly existing nature, the planets and the entire universe, when seen more by human
devices: interplanetary travel and the James Webb megatelescope, more complex and challenging human intelligence.
But there is something in man in the human beyond that is in his conscience and in his feelings and affections, there is a complex divine spark, says the poet that makes him look outside for what is inside.
Imagining that this could be in a machine is just one of the aspects of control and the will to human power, whose theme we developed last week, the transhuman creates a fiction and a human fantasy that man himself would create something to overcome it, the great fantasy of the development of the resources of the current Artificial Intelligence, everything that is there the man who put it.
It is the human desire to be your own creator and who knows how to reach an earthly divinity, but contrary to what you seek, technology does not only have the purpose of destroying and also of helping, it can, by daydream, impel extra-human forces of destruction.
We were created because man has not always existed on earth, and even the hypothesis that we come from other celestial bodies, the fantasy of aliens, which may even exist, will be created by something that has an infinite consciousness and greater than ours, had to there is a celestial and ontological creative principle, with logic of being (onto).
This mystical fantasy makes sense, because any self-respecting science, philosophy, or theology will speculate about human creation, and any eschatology will wonder about our destiny.
There is a moment in Jesus’ earthly life, the historical figure is indisputable, in which he reveals himself as divine to his disciples, who are so amazed that they want to build three tents and stay there, the event called “Mount Tabor” (Photo), where they were with Jesus only three disciples.
(Mt 17,1-3): “Jesus took with him Peter, James and John, his brother, and led them to a place apart, on a high mountain. And he was transfigured before them; his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light. Then Moses and Elijah appeared to him, talking with Jesus.”
Power and interiority
24
Feb
Clarified in the previous post the difference between soul and spirit, the concept used by
Hegel to develop the (metaphysical, for him “subjective”) idea of power uses an analogy of digestion, which Byung Chul Han takes advantage of:
“Power is, for Hegel, already effective at the most elementary level of life. Digestion, in this way, is already the process of power in which the living being takes with him, little by little, his other identity” (Chul Han, What is Power?), he goes so far as to say that the living being generates identity with the other, but ignores that in its genesis there is a metaphysical process.
Nietzsche will develop this issue as the will to power, in this case confused with the domination that we have already dealt with here and which is a sociological category, but power as a metaphor, in our view the most appropriate, is what we generate in our digestive interiority.
How do we digest the image of the other as our identity or not, as we recognize differences not only in the genotype, but mainly in the differences in feelings, judgments and decisions, more broadly according to our cosmovision.
So the desire for peace or war with what is different, tolerance or intolerance in diversities of thought about the world and things should not be in the category of right and wrong, of course, wrong should be punished, but what is wrong it must be circumscribed within the limits of the human, so if killing is wrong, war is a serious mistake where one people can exterminate another.
The renunciation of this metaphysical power, generated in our interiority and our vision of the world, must always be internalized (digested) also as a will, a command, of the non-power.
The biblical lesson on this issue, described as the “temptations of Christ”, is found in the passage Mt 4,1-11.
In the passage after fasting and renouncing the power to turn stones into bread and saying that he should fall on the city of Jerusalem, the devil tempts him with power and shows him the kingdoms of the world: “and he said to him: “I will give you all this, if you kneel before me to worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Get thee behind me, Satan, for it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. Then the devil left him. And the angels approached and served Jesus ′′ (Mt 4. 9-11).
Power and soul
23
Feb
There is nothing in the sociological discourse that actually unveils what the Spirit is, the great
reason why philosophy came to re-work the question of the Other (Levinas, Ricoeur and even Habermas and Chul-Han resumed it) is that the vision idealist is centered on the “I”, vulgar thought has also followed this path: the “mystery”, the key to success, etc.
To have a relationship with the soul, it is necessary to know not the ex-sistence (ex-outside and cistere – cistern), but that God is, his essence is Being in his fullness and thus in him there is ontological fullness and thus the soul, from the Greek anima, is what He inserts into man to give him life.
Thus, its power is ontological, Byung Chul Han manages to relate Heidegger with his conception of power, and also of religion with power, but his reading is dualistic at this point, either religion or ontology, it is true that there is a theo-ontology, but there is a strong relationship.
The relationship that Chul Han establishes is described as follows: “Although God is ‘subjectivity’, this is not exhausted in the abstract identity, without content, of ‘I am I’. He does not remain in an eternal silence and hermeticism´” (Han, 2019, p. 120), quotes he takes from Lectures in the philosophy of religion by Hegel, and it is not surprising that he thinks, he is close to Buddhism and asceticism it’s human.
We already wrote in the previous post that God is power in the Hegelian view, and Chul Han describes it from the idealist idea: “for He is a power of being Himself” (Han, 2019, p. 121), and thus there is no relationship of creation (and not immanence) with everything that exists, including man and his soul. Unlike the Spirit developed by Hegel (Phenomenology of the Spirit), without the relationship with the soul there is no Trinitarian God, in addition to the divine-human Jesus, the Holy Spirit, third person.
Through a true asceticism, man knows a true power, which is not domination in its sociological description, but an ontological relationship with its ascension, through which the biblical reading says man truly rises.
A passage from the divine reading, in which Matthew reveals as a lesson from Jesus (Mt 4,25): “For what good is it for a man to gain the whole world if he loses himself and destroys himself?”, that is, if he destroys his soul.
Han, Byung-Chul. (2018) What is power?. NY; Wiley. (2019 portuguese version)
Being, consciousness and clearing
03
Feb
The clearing of Being was an important theme in Heidegger’s ontological resumption, it
is inseparable from the phenomenological methodology which his teacher Husserl was the main modern developer, but it remains an aporia, as stated in Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s Dialectics of Enlightenment, if there is in fact a self-destruction of enlightenment in modernity and why this happened.
Therefore, it is not simply a matter of resuming the Being, but as this can happen from the phenomenological method, then two questions must be raised: placing our preconceptions in parentheses as a result of enlightenment, which is called by Husserl the epoché phenomenological, and the question of the intentionality of consciousness, in it the Being is unveiled, there reside most of our problems and dissatisfaction.
Contemporary culture (or what’s left of it, as Dalrymple says, we’ve already posted here) goes against the grain in this sense, what some authors call an excess of positivity, that logic described even as “mystery”, affirmation of desires and needs, summarizing life seen as utility only and not as essence or fullness.
In this way, we must make an “emptiness”, a silence in the soul so that we have the fullness of the being, remove the immediate desires and needs in order to be able to understand in fact the true needs and nourishment of the Being that lead to joy and fullness, the simple impulse leads to temporary compulsions and as such satisfy only the immediate need, what is proper to the Being remains hidden.
It is possible with these two measures: to make a void (epoché) by putting in parentheses what our preconceptions are, re-elaborating them in a hermeneutic circle that actually allows a new “concept”, after the fusion of horizons.
This is why ontology says that the Being remains hidden, it is beyond what is immediate and apparent, it should not be sought “Outside”, but “Inside”, true interiority is needed, without manipulations and barriers, many thinkers, mystics and spiritualities manage to this, and reach a fullness, even if temporary, will be food for a true asceticism.
For Christian philosophy and theology, it is not possible to reach true fullness without announcing and living its values, says the reading (Mt 5:14): “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. Nobody lights a lamp and puts it under a bowl, but on a lamp, where it shines for everyone in the house”, but this must be done with respect and fraternity and never with proselytism and judgments.
