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Peace and the death of the pope
21
Apr
The truce talks between Russia and Ukraine, between Israel and the Hamas and Trump’s tariff-only war put the world on alert for a serious period of civilizational instability.
The death of Pope Francis this morning in Brazil and Italy also means the loss of a tireless defender of peace and has repercussions throughout in all world.
In an official statement this afternoon (21/04) the Vatican clarified that Pope Francis’ death occurred at 7:35 am (Italian time), therefore 2:35 am in Brazil, caused by:
– Stroke
– COMA
– IRREVERSIBLE CARDIOCIRCULATORY COLLAPSE
I leave you with a personal video where I reflect on the Pope’s true thinking on controversial issues expressed in chapter 3 of his encyclical Fratelli Tutti (all brothers), as follows:
The great civilizational passion
14
Apr
Military wars, market wars, endemic situations (dengue fever in Brazil
is not under control, for example) and endless polarizing rhetoric is a civilizational crisis, the basis of which is not the current situation, it has been going on since the beginning of colonization and worsened with two world wars.
It seemed at the end of the Second World War that with the UN, the establishment of human rights and the nuclear agreements we had found the way out, but the basis of this whole process, as we have seen here, is idealistic thinking, which the polarization calls neoliberal and the other pole communist, but every war is one of plunder and the death of innocents.
At a meeting concluded by NATO (photo) on Sunday (April 13), European defense ministers stressed that despite the United States’ negotiations with Russia, which both consider to be progress, Europe is discredited because Russia’s aggressions continue and threaten the region.
No matter the rhetoric, the basis of all idealistic/enlightenment thinking is a strong state and many countries are not abandoning this thinking, the tariff crisis is now the manifestation of Trump’s motto: “American first”, confronting even Europe.
The little I understand about economics, I understand that there is an interdependence of nations, a car produced anywhere in the world has parts produced all over the world, the Americans want them to be produced there again, with tariffs the American car becomes more expensive, while China’s tactic has been to produce cheaply and dominate the markets.
In fact, at the request of American carmakers, Trump backed down on car production, and on Saturday (April 12) he also backed down on taxing smartphones, computers and chips.
There will be more jobs in the US, but this didn’t seem like a problem to me, a lot of people were going there because there were jobs and they paid well, but in this regard the deportation of illegals is also going the other way and the lack of labor could represent another problem.
The war in the Middle East continues to be cruel to the Houthis, in the attacks the group’s intelligence chief Abdul Nasser Al-Kamali was killed, and the threats to Iran continue down a dangerous path.
There is always hope, there are always negotiators with a sincere desire for peace. What makes the crisis of civilization advance is that imperialist and warmongering thinking is on the rise with the increasing election of authoritarian governments, influenced by Enlightenment thinking, who see other peoples’ countries as enemies and won’t give in to any negotiation process.
It’s a week for Christians that involves the passion of Jesus, it seems to be closer to a civilizing passion of humanity, we need to think about the innocent, the future of humanity and the peace that is so desired, but so little remembered at the time of a conflict, we need to sow peace.
Freedom, memory and eternity
10
Apr
The theme may seem to be only theological, but it isn’t. Both Hannah
Arendt and Byung-Chul Han have dealt with this topic, of course, as well as authors with a theological scope such as Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, and current authors such as Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Ricoeur, who have outlined some issues in the problematic between time and the eternal.
Hannah Arendt’s epistemic scheme is much deeper because it also presents the political aspect: memory, which has references to history, narration, which has to do with the ([hermeneutic] possibility of rescuing events, and immortality, which places the action of the concrete world, making men beings capable of continuity in time, seen in this way: “the meaning of Politics is freedom” (Arendt, 2002, p. 9).
Mnemonics are inserted into processes to preserve narration, in other words, their memory.
On the other hand, immortality is what is being perpetuated by memory and narration, but the author did not refuse to see a difference between immortality and eternity, we pointed out in the previous post what is also the author’s elaboration, the link between these categories.
This does not negate but rather highlights the concept of immortality, which is imposed as what is being perpetuated in time by memory, by narration and also develops as a Vita Activa, i.e. what makes up the tradition and the actualization of a narrative and at this point merges with theology, i.e. it goes beyond the temporal and unveils itself in the eternal.
Tradition, however, has gradually lost this notion of the public and the private, to the point where this boundary between the two has disappeared. It is easy to see this today when we see the exposure of the private even in what is most sacred, and in Arendt’s conception, this is a vital detriment, since action, a central category for the constitution of the public world, is no longer considered in favor of respect for the members of society.
In The Swarm, Byung-Chul Han says: “Respect is the foundation of the public sphere. Where it disappears, it collapses. The decay of the public sphere and the recent absence of respect are mutually conditional.” (B.-C. Han, No exame “The swarm”, 2018, p. 12).
Arendt highlights the absence of empathy: “The death of human empathy is one of the first and most telling signs of a culture on the brink of barbarism.”
Religions have called this a covenant, because they all have a symbolic character, like the Ark of the Covenant for the Old Testament and the Passion of Jesus for the New Testament, this meaning is to transcend death (eternity), to overcome it with all its values: hatreds, wars, divisions and all kinds of inhumanities we practice because of human finitude (image is Pillars of Creation, James Webb telescope).
Arendt, A. (2002) O que é Política. Tradução Reinaldo Guarany. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil.
Finitude, wars and passion
07
Apr
We are not referring here to emotional passion, but to that which suffering causes and which, according to religious sentiment (recalling Jesus’ passion), is also a time of many tragic changes and the reaffirmation of a saving breath.
When man forgets his finitude, he imagines himself to be the master of his future and doesn’t look elsewhere.
Humanity seems to be experiencing this, now on the economic side, with an economy that is already fragile due to wars, the Trump administration’s tariffs on imports from that country are causing strong instability in international trade, with repercussions on the financial exchange rate and stock markets.
Only a few countries with little economic significance have been left out of this tariff, the Seychelles, Burkina Faso and some Pacific islands. Even the Argentine government, which rushed to reach an agreement (Milei personally went to the US), came back empty-handed, the excuse being the delay of the helicopter carrying Trump, but shortly afterwards he said that he was demanding a withdrawal from China, which has strong investments there since the previous government.
The tariffs are reminiscent of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, passed by a margin of 20 votes in the US Senate, which provoked a global world war and deepened the Great Depression, according to trade experts.
Not only because of these tariffs, as the Trump administration’s unpopularity grows, there were several demonstrations this weekend in the US, even traditional partners neighboring Mexico and Canada are in this war, already with retaliatory measures against US imports.
The Asian stock markets have already opened with a “sharp drop” this Monday, according to several news channels, and this should lead to a worsening of the wars, in addition to the economic problems, and an even stronger wave of authoritarian governments, measures to restrict freedom, etc.
It’s a climate of passion, not divine, but human. The process of civilization could enter a more accelerated phase than the military wars in an economic and humanitarian crisis, which is already serious almost everywhere in the world.
Brazil at the time, during the beginning of the Vargas government (which after being elected would become a dictatorship) burned tons of coffee in the ports, then a national wealth, to hold down prices and this ended the great coffee cycle in Brazil and especially in the state of São Paulo, a major producer.
Two economic analysts André Valério and Rafaela Vitória said that “the scenario, which was already complex, has become considerably more uncertain”, also referring to production rates in Brazil, which fell slightly in February/2025, Rafaela pointed out in X (see in graphics).
Acting according to the Vita Activa
03
Apr
As explained above, the Vita Activa (Action´s life)
is not separate from the Vita Contemplativa, this was already elaborated in Hannah Arendt and will be dealt with at length in Byung Chul Han’s Vita Contemplativa (Contemplative´s life).
In order to establish parallels, it is necessary to understand that Arendt takes up Aristotle, who saw three dignified ways of life for man: people subjected to slavery by war remained tied to their masters only to meet the needs of staying alive, and the Greek philosopher saw the life of artisans and markets in a similar way.
For him, the “political” man was truly free and could devote himself to contemplation, so dignity was linked to contemplation, but seen as the life of fortune (the Eutychia) which personified destiny, good fortune, prosperity and abundance.
This is because although man aspired to immortality, it is life without death on this earth, it is an “immanent” life in this world, which Arendt differentiates from eternity, which aspires to a beyond the cosmos, or the cosmos itself thought of as the creation of transcendent eternity.
Immortality, on the other hand, is continuity in time, it is life without death on this earth, it is life “immanent” to this world, the life of the Olympian gods was like this in the way the Greeks understood nature and its “immortality” in the cosmos, with man’s mortality being what distinguished him in the cosmos.
Byung-Chul describes that “just before Arendt’s Vita activa or On Active Life, Heidegger gave a lecture entitled Science and Reflection [Besinnung]. As opposed to action, which propels us forward, reflection brings us back to where we have always been“ (Han, 2023, p. 62), thus ”a dimension of inactivity is inherent in reflection” (idem).
For Hannah Arendt, labor and work are two elements that make up human activity, along with action, while labor corresponds to the biological activity of human beings for their survival as a species, while work allows for the creation of objects and the transformation of nature.
The society of performance, of the media and of impulsivity shifts the being towards an action that is neither good nor bad, it is pure reactivity and thus incapable of conscious action, the action of Being.
It is still easy to see those who act wisely by the results of their actions, not a simple response to some speech or action, but reflection in action, even if it is silence.
Han, B.-C. (2023) Vita contemplativa: ou sobre a inatividade. Transl. Lucas Machado, Brazil, Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes.
Silence, an essential part of language
02
Apr
The question of silence is fundamental
in the appreciation of language, the spoken word presupposes that there is an interlocutor capable of silence, if it is profound, the epoché (emptiness) occurs, which all philosophers in a certain way impose so that the word can be articulated in thought, it is before and complementary to action, Foucault was one of the philosophers who realized this gap back in the 19th century.
In the hermeneutic circle, it precedes the process of interpretation and is necessary for dialog and the “fusion of horizons” that philosophical hermeneutics demands. This mere acting on the impulse of language omits an essential part, which is reflection, meditation or, for minds that really seek the truth, contemplation.
Hans-Georg Gadamer was the great philosopher of hermeneutics. He argues that there is not only meaningful knowledge in the humanities that can be reduced to that of the natural sciences, a logic and a language that is only grammatical; there is a deeper truth than the scientific method.
It is not a simple return to metaphysics, it is acting according to thinking, according to an articulation of human and collective consciousness, capable of seeing the other and their hermeneutics, capable of reviewing the humanism of every man, without a vertical reading, of the simple authority of power.
Agamben in “The Language of Silence” also speaks of this false articulation as a field that seeks to apprehend with reason alone, it is an “experience of language that goes towards thought without ever reaching it; it is the tension and infinite nostalgia that never understands what it wants to apprehend and never reaches where it wants to go” (Agamben, 2013, Brazil, São Paulo, Magazine Fronteira Z, p. 293).
The famous song of the sirens that lured the sailors to their deaths in Homer’s Odyssey (photo mosaic from the 3rd century, National Museum of the Bardo, Tunis) is also the lack of silence that Ulysses saw in his subordinates (Ulysses covers his ears and ties the sailors to the ship’s mast), which became a metaphor for the chatter that enchants his followers; the greatest dictators were always good orators.
So putting contemplation into action requires true contemplation, the word read is a guide whenever it is purified by an “art of loving”, of showing solidarity, of humanizing action.
Small actions, lack of thought and big disasters
01
Apr
I read it from a psychologist: “It’s not big actions
that cause big effects!” We need to pay attention to small vices, small faults that we think are tolerable, because over time they become big problems. The idea of letting everything around us off the hook makes us more vulnerable to frustration, life’s difficulties, disappointments and obstacles.
It’s also not about the rigid discipline of dictators and people with little dialog, owners of the truth, pseudo “thinkers” who are increasingly common in the daily life of media society.
The ideas of simplification, of doing what “feels right”, freedom without obligations, a world without obstacles and without pain (Byung-Chul Han: The Palliative Society: Pain Today), create a world of rebels without measuring consequences, gratuitous hatreds, intolerance, bubbles and obstacles to dialog, to the right of the Other and the different, in short, the society of hatred and war.
The idea that every action is external is characteristic of non-thinking, acting impulsively and this is not only linked to the new media, but also to the absence of reflection, meditation and contemplation (Vita Contemplativa, Hannah Arendt and Byung-Chul Han), verbose thoughts without reflection.
Han explains by quoting Arendt: “Hannah Arendt’s Vita activa begins with the distinction between immortality and eternity” (Han, 2023, p. 144), and continues: “Surrounded by the infinite, the human being, as a moral being, seeks immortality by creating works that remain” (Han, p. 145), but “in contrast, the objective of the vita contemplativa is not, according to Arendt, to persist and last in time, but the experience of the eternal, which transcends both time and also the surrounding world” (Han, p. 145).
She clarifies that Arendt herself may have intended to be immortal when she wrote, but “even writing can be a contemplation that has nothing to do with the search for immortality” (p. 146), and she is surprised that Socrates didn’t write, thus renouncing immortality, she doesn’t quote, but Jesus didn’t write either, the gospels were only written by his disciples.
Small actions, lack of thought and big disasters
I read it from a psychologist: “It’s not big actions that cause big effects!” We need to pay attention to small vices, small faults that we think are tolerable, because over time they become big problems. The idea of letting everything around us off the hook makes us more vulnerable to frustration, life’s difficulties, disappointments and obstacles.
It’s also not about the rigid discipline of dictators and people with little dialog, owners of the truth, pseudo “thinkers” who are increasingly common in the daily life of media society.
The ideas of simplification, of doing what “feels right”, freedom without obligations, a world without obstacles and without pain (Byung-Chul Han: The Palliative Society: Pain Today), create a world of rebels without measuring consequences, gratuitous hatreds, intolerance, bubbles and obstacles to dialog, to the right of the Other and the different, in short, the society of hatred and war.
The idea that every action is external is characteristic of non-thinking, acting impulsively and this is not only linked to the new media, but also to the absence of reflection, meditation and contemplation (Vita Contemplativa, Hannah Arendt and Byung-Chul Han), verbose thoughts without reflection.
Han explains by quoting Arendt: “Hannah Arendt’s Vita active (active life) begins with the distinction between immortality and eternity” (Han, 2023, p. 144), and continues: “Surrounded by the infinite, the human being, as a moral being, seeks immortality by creating works that remain” (Han, p. 145), but “in contrast, the objective of the vita contemplative(contemplative life) is not, according to Arendt, to persist and last in time, but the experience of the eternal, which transcends both time and also the surrounding world” (Han, p. 145).
She clarifies that Arendt herself may have intended to be immortal when she wrote, but “even writing can be a contemplation that has nothing to do with the search for immortality” (p. 146), and she is surprised that Socrates didn’t write, thus renouncing immortality, she doesn’t quote, but Jesus didn’t write either, the gospels were only written by his disciples.
Accepting small setbacks, starting over and thinking about why you stumbled helps you move forward.
Han, B.-C. (2023) Vita contemplativa: ou sobre a inatividade. Transl. Lucas Machado, Brazil, Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes.
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.
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.
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.
