Arquivo para a ‘Antropotécnica’ Categoria
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.
The forest bordering the clearing
10
Mar
Modern man, victim of ideologies, cultures and religious apostasy lives only with the awareness
of individual freedom, without really understanding who is the Other who is not equal, the Korean/German philosopher Byung Chul Han developed this in “The expulsion of the other : Society, perception” (Editora Vozes, Brazil) in which he talks about the adipose emptiness of fullness.
This emptiness has nothing to do with the phenomenological epoché, opening the mind and soul to dialogue and receive the Other, the different, the discourse and the narrative contrary to ours, to later merge the horizons in the “hermeneutic circle”, the emptiness of soul is positive, it elevates us.
Through successive tragedies, the pandemic was the first and will not be the last, and this is not about an apocalyptic discourse, but about the social realization of a civilizing crisis in an increasingly profound and dangerous process, not only in the rulers, but also in personal conscience.
Chul Han goes so far as to say these processes are obscene in “hypervisibility, hypercommunication, hyperproduction, hyperconsumption, which lead to a rapid stagnation of the same. Obscene is the ‘connection of like with like’ (Han, 2022) in short, everything translates into an obscene sameness.
He cites a very illustrative example which is the animation Anomalisa by Charlie Kaufmann (photo), which talks about a speaker Michael who goes to Cincinnati for a lecture and there approaches a person by his voice, Lia is a person who already knows him and came to see his talk and fall in love.
But the hell of the same are the employees of the Hotel, all the same and who want to seduce Michael.
The essay emphasizes erotic love, but this also applies to agapic love, without falling in love and dialoguing with what is different, we live in the hell of the same, in our vicious circle, in an environment full of vices and obscenities, in the worst sense of word.
In the biblical narrative, Moses, who was trying to lead his people to a new path, wanted to stone him and blasphemed against the proposal of a different life (Exodus 17,3-7), even asked for the return of Egyptian slavery (any resemblance to the current politics is no coincidence), and also in chapter 4 of John, Jesus goes to meet the Samaritan woman, a woman and “pagan” and dialogues with her
In the week that women’s day was celebrated, this is important, which is not a biblical detail, but the essence of her message, Jesus, when meeting her, finds her interest strange and says “How come you, being a Jew, ask drink to me, a Samaritan woman?” (Jo 5,9).
The obscenity and sameness of the same not only impoverishes each one, but limits the civilizing process that is enriching the more the different can exist with dignity.
HAN, B. C. (2022) A expulsão do outro: sociedade e percepção. (The expulsion of the other: society, perception). Trans. Lucas Machado. Brazil, Petrópolis: Editora Vozes.
Clearing: method and contestation
08
Mar
It is through phenomenology that it is possible to resume the positivity of the being
in relation to the only possible transcendentality, where the thing opens up in the dimension of the transcendental, the one that we developed in last week’s post and which in a certain way is opposed to Kant’s transcendent, which goes towards the knowledge of the object and for this reason it is confused with subjectivity.
In phenomenology, there is an intentional consciousness in its “a priori”, taken in a similar way to the subjective (proper of the subject), however, consciousness as a phenomenon reveals what is hidden, what the Greeks called “alétheia”, but at that moment science and all awareness of it was early.
In the phenomenal experience of the clearing (lichtung) there is the truth of the being that gives itself with a kind of “arch-phenomenon” (Ereignis), this is the very thing of phenomenology, where its intentionality is, but this also remains hidden.
If we create a void in consciousness in a phenomenal way (the phenomenological epoche), we open ourselves to our truth, we can enter a clearing even before an external event clears us up, this is the reason why humanism in both Heidegger and Sloterdijk is tied to history.
It was Hans Georg Gadamer who developed “The Question of Historical Consciousness” in his contestation of the romantic historical truth which is a quasi-determinism defended by many variants of leftist thought (Marx did not defend it), however there is the question of “natural time” in opposition to “human time”, a self-awareness of consciousness itself.
The hermeneutic circle method is a way to break this conception of consciousness that is only “temporal”, but it comes up against what must be “beyond the human”, shrouded in mystery and vices of historical interpretation.
Rüsen (2011) says that there is a type of historical consciousness made through the “intellectual transformation of natural time into human time”, understanding natural time as contingent events and human time as human representations of life itself.
Few are able to see in their own representations distortions of the truth, interpretations and repressed feelings that do not “clear” the conscience, this seen in a civilizing panorama transforms authoritarian, inhuman and destructive concepts into obscurity of the conscience, not to use the Greek alethéia again.
Civilization and the Glade
07
Mar
The merit of Heidegger having written about the clearing in the midst of the period post world
wars was that of returning to contemplate what was essentially obscured: The Being, not just the human being, since his Letters on Humanism was polemicized by Peter Sloterdijk (much later), but mainly for returning to the question of the Life of Being.
The Heideggerian reading says: “”Destiny appropriates itself as the clearing of being, which is, as clearing. It is the clearing that grants the proximity of being. without him being able to experience and assume this dwelling today” (in Cartas sobre o Humanismo, 1967).
This clearing is different from any idea about modernity, such as enlightenment or some mystical process of enlightenment, says Heidegger: “”… , nor with regard to the thing that is expressed with the adjective luminous’, which means ‘clear'”, in another of his writings on the task of thinking.
The idea of “Being”, the fact that we are and that death and war hide is once again important in the midst of war threats (see our previous post), thinking and the desire for political and social transformation cannot be allowed to submerge. this true purpose, which is the life of the Self.
This open free means that we can, faced with a situation of denial of Being, have a vision of what is ex-sistent, not as enlightenment, but as a real vision of what is in our presence, in Greek philosophy our “on”.
It is not a question of revelation, but of “unveiling”, that is, something that is always present in us, but hidden and almost dormant, returning to Parmenides’ reading of Being, Heidegger wrote: “As long as being prevails, from the aletheia, the self-revealing emergence belongs to him. (a-lethe).
Growing barbarism is not only the result of emerging social issues or territorial political disputes, but of the concealment of the Being.
HEIDEGGER, Martin.(1967) Carta sobre o humanismo (Letters on Humanism). Brazil, Rio de Janeiro: Tempo Brasileiro, p. 61.
The question of consciousness
28
Feb
The big issue for artificial intelligence was until
recently autonomy, robots, autonomous machines and now autonomous cars, with all the controversy the project evolves, Germany, for example, already provides a line of autonomous cars for the next decade that will begin.
The new issue is the question of consciousness, it has occupied the minds of philosophers for over a century, and can conceptualize in general terms the ability to take actions and consequences of these actions, which has to do with autonomy, because autonomy It is to analyze the consequences of acts performed by machines, the limits of dangerousness and privacy.
In the context of social or historical consciousness, this was Gadamer’s great debate with Dilthey, to which he attributed a conception of romantic consciousness for the absence of a “historical mediation” from facticity, and asks “how will the task of hermeneutics ”and finds a common ground between Schleiermacher and Hegel” (Gadamer, 2002, Truth and Method, p. 256), with the concepts of reconstruction and integration, and according to him, Dilthey makes the intermediate path between them.
Gadamer explains: “Schleiermacher and Hegel could present the two extreme possibilities of answering this question.
Their answers could be assigned to the concepts of reconstruction and integration. For both Schleiermacher and Hegel, in the beginning there is the awareness of a loss and alienation from tradition, which is what drives hermeneutic reflection” (idem).
However, he will say, each of them will determine the task of hermeneutics differently, and what Gadamer calls reconstruction and integration means the separation of preconceptions and alienation from tradition, and therefore rebuild and integrate.
Schleiermacher’s famous thesis is “What matters is to understand a better author than one would have understood himself,” Gadamer thought about the work of art, but Schleiermacher is stuck with his conception of “history of the spirit” which is his concept.
What Hegel says, according to Gadamer, is the creation of a category by stating that the essence of the historical spirit is not the restitution of the past, but the mediation of thought with the present life, which is the prevalence and idealism of the ideal over the factual questions.
And the origin of consciousness, as it happened, is that Terence Deacon is right in claiming that the mind came from matter, and with it came consciousness, if it is true, it is possible to think that somehow the machine, on the levels of intelligence artificial, you may have “consciousness” and then you will know that it is machine and that we humans are not.
What we relate in the videos of Gadamer and Peter Sloterdijk was to introduce this question, and the question of truth is proposed as the genesis of historical consciousness (Gadamer, 2002, p. 265), so machine consciousness cannot have this level.
GADAMER H. G.(2002) Verdade e Método (Truth and Method), 4th ed., Tr. Flavio P. Meurer. Petrópolis: Vozes (Brazilian edition).
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)
Power and domination
21
Feb
We’ve written in our previous essays about the difference between power and domination, and
while it can be wielded with wisdom and discernment, most of the time it devolves into the purest form of domination: control of opinions and narratives and the exercise of force for this, so it’s very easy to become pure domination.
Byung Chul Han in his book “The swarm” that talks about “psychopolitical” domination discusses the use of media and its control for this, current trends in the use of AI make this more dangerous.
We wrote in a previous post here, long before this war tension looms over our civilization:
“Symmetry, reciprocity, the understanding of human diversity and respect for it are almost always ignored in the models of the beginning of the 20th century, returning to them is nothing but a harbinger of a greater tragedy: the civilizational crisis with deeper roots than the previous ones”, we wrote this well before the beginning of the war in Eastern Europe.
Understanding that this is part of models of political domination of opinions and power narratives, Byung Chul Han’s analysis in his book: “What is power” shows the efficiency of using new media as an efficient and directing form of control even of our “freedoms”.
Among his analyses, we find among several discussions around modern and contemporary philosophy and the routine practices of postmodernity one that is particularly important and that escapes many analyses: gamification.
The game that, in general, motivates participants with its reward system that produces immediate sensations of success is also an exploration tool in psychopolitics. Social communication manifests itself in the grammatical lack of Twitter, in the affective appeal of the like and in the alienation promoted by influencers.
Thus, wanting, which is manageable according to our possibilities and the Other’s reactions, is trained in electronic games as a compulsive wanting, the desire is to “kill” the enemy, and the increasingly compulsive rhythm is being dictated by battles and speed in battles. answers.
Even if you can find advantages in gamification or think of it in educational terms: building a house, a farm or making knowledge games, there is a strong predominance of “battles” and domains of territories.
Han, Byung-Chul. (2018) What is power?. NY; Wiley.
Blindness and new paths
02
Dec
The greatest of all personal blindnesses is hatred, and the greatest social blindness is war, in which men lose their reason and become fanatics.
It is common in times of crisis and few know and actually defend the path of serenity and wisdom in these moments, polarization and war were signs, resorting to authoritarianism and social misguidedness is the consequence.
The visual physical limitation made me have the exact feeling of what this means, first recognizing my own blindness and then knowing how to walk with it and accept the limits resorting to healing.
Socially it is not quite like that because the narratives make men believe in what they say and say and what they imagine they see, we have already posted here Saramago’s essay and other blindness, also their meaning around the pandemic.
The social course of a society in disequilibrium and under tension is always worrying, because common sense does not always win, remember the two wars and their humanitarian disasters and other pandemics.
The Christian liturgy at this Christmas time does not speak only of the advent of the baby Jesus, it also speaks of the Parusia, that is, of a new advent, where it also says that there will be cuts and changes (Mt 3,10): “The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire”, that is, the root of all evils and disagreements.
In religious terms, conversion is asked, a change of route, in social terms it is necessary to recognize what is not in the path of hope and love, and cut it at the root because it is the only way to change.
Not everything that shines is gold
01
Dec
Who proclaims or hears about changes, thinks of values and
immediate situations that indicate earthly benefits and not straight and new paths that lead to a superior ascesis, then this is not the time to come, this is not a new advent.
Structural changes imply a change of mentality, in religious terms they mean conversion, not for this or that particular position, but for a new moral and social asceticism.
Words are often said to convince men, but they do not mean that if in fact there is coherence in what is said, in current terms they mean building narratives to favor personal interests.
Just as not everything that is new is revolutionary, and as the popular saying goes, not everything that glitters is gold, also for those who believe, not everyone who claims to be religious is in fact changing values.
The literal reading is (Mt 7,21-24): “not everyone who says Lord, Lord enters the Kingdom of God, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Therefore, anyone who does not listen to these words of mine and put them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the Rock.”
When in fact the changes start to happen, times of crisis always indicate this, consciences will also be enlightened, they will enter a “clearing”, but for now everything is confused and uncertain, each one wants to prevail his point of view, and so if fanatically opposes what he considers opposed to his interests, but a new advent is announced.
More than prophetic or apocalyptic words, they are necessary conditions and structures for a new social, moral and spiritual time, everything is immersed in conflicts of interest groups and immediate politics.
So, while the house is being put in order, everything looks upturned and uncertain, and in fact it is.
Wisdom and Love
29
Sep
*The previous text is wrong, because I had some security problem with my blog.
Perhaps the greatest of paradigms and thus the most susceptible to human
errors is Love, one can speak of the Greek classification: eros, philia and agape, but I want to link it here to wisdom in the sense of full happiness, not the one that produces utilitarian but spiritual fruits.
There is a book “The shadow of love, on the concept of love in Heidegger” and another that was Hannah Arendt’s thesis, they do not seem to be but are linked, because it was during the thesis period that Heidegger and Arendt had a romance and so she began to be mentored by Karl Jaspers.
The great scientific theory of our time, both for Karl Popper and for Thomas Kuhn, two great philosophers of science, is the possibility that there will always be a course correction in scientific methods and theories so that man knows more about himself and nature that surrounds it.
Heidegger’s text, which is a compilation of letters, only exists in French, so let’s return to the German concept of “Dasein” now to re-signify it and give it a connotation linked to Love:
“In the usual meaning, however, it means, for example: the chair ‘is there’; the uncle “is there”, he arrived and is present; hence: presence” (Heidegger, 1994b, p. 300).
It may seem like a simple literary maneuver, but it is not, other authors (Fernandes, 2011) also make this allusion and even compare it with “parousia” and “adventus”, which acquire a more religious connotation, here it is not necessary.
Thus, it is a presence of an absence, but love also passes through language and thinking, so “thinking is, therefore, to found, in the human, the “medium” to give oneself to the truth of being. It is, therefore, to co-found the human as presence: to be the there-in-being. In this sense, the fundamental ontology is a rush towards the passage, to pack itself for the leap, a first movement in favor of the foundation of the truth of being in the human as presence. This entails a transformation of the human from the lord of beings into the shepherd of Being”.
And this is Sloterdijk’s main contestation in Heidegger, the failure of this human domestication, or what in Heidegger is “care” and that modernity has not been able to resolve.
Heidegger’s main idea about Love is its presence in an Absence, to which we can add what we developed in previous topics: working with uncertainty and errors, that is, knowing how to live and work in the face of the natural difficulties of life.
Quantum physics, for example, has its beginnings in the enunciation of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which stated that it was not possible to know exactly what the position of the particles of an atom was with exactitude, Planck who did not agree, it is his statement “I do not agree may God play dice”, went to the laboratory to prove this principle.
NASA (in the photo the crash of the spacecraft colliding with Dimorphos) has just made a scientific feat which is to hit a satellite of a small meteor, which does not pose any danger of collision with Earth, just to prove that it is possible to change course some celestial body, and with that, in case of danger to Earth, change its route.
The DART project is a test for a possible future mission to deflect an asteroid from colliding with Earth, for cosmic dimensions Dimorphos is small (160 m) and orbits another larger asteroid (780 m) called Didymos and form a binary system, the spacecraft that hit it was traveling at 22.015 km/h and the image seen from a telescope in Hawaii on Monday night (26/09) shows that the impact produced many fragments, the deviation from the route, however, is small.
Changing route is wise, when you admit the mistake, but it requires two steps: admitting the mistake and then having the humility to change route.
Reference:
HEIDEGGER, M. (1994). Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis). Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann
Fernandes, M. (2011) A. O cuidado como amor em Heidegger. Rev. Abordagem Gestalt. Vol. 1, n. 2, Brazil, Goiânia.
