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Arquivo para a ‘SocioCibercultura’ Categoria

Contemplation and the polis

30 Nov

The fifth chapter of the book “Vita Comtemplativa” is The pathos of action, it begins by describing the two sacred concepts of the Jewish tradition: God and Sheba, for Jewish culture God is Sheba, that is, he is redemption, the immortal (page. 107), yesterday time is suspended, that is, compared to Han’s concept, it is inactivity.

The creation of the human being is not the last act of Creation, only the Sabbath rest completes it, the world is similar to the bridal chamber: “but the bride is missing. Only with the Sabbath does the bride arrive” (Han, 2023, p. 108), which is a quote from “Der sabbat” by Heschel.

The analogy with the bride will also be used in the parables of the brides, the arrival of “that day” when the groom comes to look for her and must find the lamps lit (developing around the theme of prudence), Arendt will modify the idea of ​​rest divine complementing it with the principle freedom for a new beginning (or a fresh start, necessary in many stages of life), says Han’s quote:

“with the creation of the human being, the principle of the beginning (which in the creation of the world was in the hands of God and, therefore, outside the world) appears in the world itself and will remain immanent in it as long as there are human beings; which, of course, naturally, ultimately, means nothing other than that the creation of the human being as a ‘someone’ coincides with the creation of freedom” (apud Arendt, Han, 2023, p. 109).

“The “feeling of reality” that is due only to action; that is, when acting and producing an effect, it completely represses the feeling of being. The feeling of festivity, in which it is possible to experience a superior reality, is foreign to Arendt” (Han, 2023, p. 112).

This concept is the temenos of the Greek polis, which means the sacred space cut off from the public space that is reserved for deities; a peribolos (literally a playpen or enclosure), that is, a fenced space, an area of ​​the temple delimited by walls. Temenos is a templum, a consecrated and sacred place, the word contemplation goes back to the templum (in picture the acropolis).

Thus the templum is part of the polis, on his trip to Greece, Heidegger has the acropolis in mind when he writes about the polis: “… this polis did not know, therefore, subjectivity as a measure of all objectivity. She submitted to the yoke of the gods, who, in turn, were subjected to destiny, to Moirá” (apud Heidegger, Han, 2023, p. 113-4).

By presenting it only as freedom and action, Han criticizes Arendt, the cultural dimension of parties, rituals and games has no place in her thinking and they were members of the polis.

HAN, B.C. (2023). Vita Contemplativa: In Praise of Inactivity, transl. Daniel Steuer, USA, ed. Polity.

 

Contemplation and the Self

29 Nov

The third chapter on Byung-Chul’s “Vita Contemplativa” begins with a text by Walter Benjamin on the painting Angelus Novus in ink, pastel chalk and watercolor on paper by Paul Klee from 1920, which is currently in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, in the Christian collection.

Describe Benjamin’s quote: “an angel is represented there who appears as if he were moving away from something he is facing. His eyes are wide, his mouth is open, and his wings are outstretched. The angel in the story must look like this. He turned his face to the past. Where a chain of events appears to us, there he sees a catastrophe that incessantly piles rubble upon rubble, sliding before his feet. He would very much like to linger, awaken the dead and bring the fallen together” (apud Han, 2023, p. 57) and continues.

Benjamin’s text ends with a sentence: “What we call progress is a storm” and thus begins the chapter “From action to being”.

Hannah Arendt was the first to understand the 20th century as a time of action, says the author, later in the text the author will remember that the anthropocene was the result (I would say the attempt, since nature rebels) of the submission of nature to human action, losing our autonomy and dignity, we “make” history by acting, he states.

What can we do about this catastrophic action on nature, Arendt confesses that she cannot offer any solution, cited by Han: “address the essence and possibilities of the action, which had never been shown so openly and revealed in their greatness and at their peril” (apud Han, 2023, p. 59).

She points out a path in thought that would be a type of “philosophy of politics” that would bring a reflection on the problematic of human action, in “Vita activa” she exposes (I think recovers) human action in its grandeur and dignity (page. 60).

Reflecting further on the figure of Angelus novus (above), “his wide eyes reflect his impotence, his horror. Human history is an advancing apocalypse. This is an apocalypse without an event”, the relationship with current events is remarkable.

Years before Arendt published Vita Activa, Heidegger had given a lecture on Science and Reflection where he said that as opposed to action that moves us forward, reflection brings us back to where we always already are. It opens up to us a being-there (Da-Sein) that precedes every doing, every action and that takes time (Han, 2023, pg. 62).

The same Heidegger will write in Black Notebooks: “What would happen if the presentiment of the silent power of inactive reflection disappeared?” and Han reflects: “the presentiment is not deficient knowledge. Rather, it opens up to us the being, the there, which escapes proportional knowledge. Only through presentiment do we have access to that place in which human beings always find themselves…” (page 63).

HAN, B.C. (2023). Vita Contemplativa: In Praise of Inactivity, transl. Daniel Steuer, USA, ed. Polity.

 

Illness, health systems and abandonment

23 Nov

Illness is part of the human experience, it is not specific to this or that class, race or ethnicity, however the way we treat different types of humans is often disrespectful and a symptom that something is wrong in the social structure.

First, of course, there must be a system that allows access to treatments as widely as possible and safely, then comes the issue of proximity to family, friends and especially the system itself that must treat the patient and not just the disease.

The experience of human fragility in different situations, and also in a serious illness, is what should awaken greater solidarity and harmony between the people who are close to us and the health systems. The pandemic revealed great fragility, although the systems worked, the degree of solidarity and responsibility remained at sordid levels.

We did not improve humanly with such a huge scourge that shook the entire planet, the expectation that we would emerge more supportive of this experience was not confirmed.

The Korean-German philosopher expressed in a lecture at the university…., he expressed his post-pandemic feeling like this: “it is dramatic that we are not able to touch another person, as this transmits incredible energy”, “we no longer touch each other, we don’t even tell stories among ourselves” (a reference to his latest book “The Narration Crisis”), and he said: “we are more alone than ever”.

In the book “The palliative society”, Byung-Chul, quoting Ernest Jünger, writes: “Tell me your relationship with pain, and I will tell you who you are!”, our relationship with pain in society shows how we live today, those who speak of peace, many Sometimes they support and even desire war, not all of them of course.

HAN, B.C. The Palliative Society: Pain Today , transl. Daniel Steuer, NY: Polity Press, 2021.

 

Meditate or pray

17 Nov

There is no space in contemporary life for time spent caring for one’s inner life, the hustle and bustle and demands of the “society of tiredness” pushes man to an action that is not always meaningful, in many cases a space of time is needed for the personal life.

It may seem like alienation, or even something useless, but the countless human illnesses that only grow in society: depression, anxiety and even the use of chemical drugs are often the result of a process of inner emptiness that is not filled, of course there are cases that They are purely clinical and require specialized care.

The moment of conflicts and increased social tension only aggravates these phenomena of modern man, one of the processes that has been faced socially is that of treatments aimed at greater physical and mental health, public policies are necessary for this.

However, those who are healthier, in everyone there is always a gap of emptiness to be filled, must also take care that the “inner” life does not succumb to the pressure of a complex social life with constant dangers.

Therefore, care for inner life, in addition to physical health, must pay attention to human aspects that are fundamental, one of them is the use of meditation, prayer or praying, it depends on the type of worship each person has, but everyone has this need. .

In biblical passages in which processes of great public dialogue occur, whether between prophets, judges, kings or oracles, there is always a space reserved for the sacred, man before the infinite and for those who believe, before God

The passage in which the parable of the widow who insists that an unjust judge handle her case is told, is the path not of social justice as it may seem, but to say the fact that those who ask God for their “case” will be listen to the unjust judge, so that the widow does not trouble him any more.

The passage says (Luke 18:2-8):

 “In a city there was a judge who did not fear God and respected no man. In the same city there was a widow, who came looking for the judge, asking: ‘Give me justice against my adversary!’ For a long time, the judge refused. Finally he thought: ‘I do not fear God, and I do not respect any man. But this widow is already annoying me. I will give her justice, so that she will not attack me!’” And the Lord added: “Listen to what this unjust judge says. And God, will he not give justice to his chosen ones, who cry out for him day and night? Will it make them wait? I tell you that God will give them justice very quickly. But when the Son of Man comes, will he still find faith on the earth?”

Prayer is a request to the just God to listen to the soul and calm the inside of the person who prays it.

 

Contemplating or searching for nothing

16 Nov

Byung-Chul Han, in his essay on contemplation, gives a cruel sentence to Eurocentric Western knowledge: “knowledge cannot fully portray life. The entirely conscious life is a dead life” (Han, 2023, p. 29) and is supported by nothing more than Nietzsche in the context of a “new enlightenment”, one that for Heidegger opens a clearing of Being, albeit from a different perspective.

Quoting Nietzsche, Han writes: “it is not enough that you understand in what kind of ignorance human beings and animals live; you also need to have the desire to not know and learn it. You need to understand that in this type of ignorance life itself would be impossible, under which the living being is preserved and flourishes: a great and solid bell of ignorance must be around him” (quoting Nietzsche, pages 29-30) .

He clarifies that the ultimate objective of a “master” is “to reach a state in which the will resigns itself. The master exercises in order to eliminate the will.” (page 31)

It states on the next page that it cites a parable made by Walter Benjamin “Don’t forget the best” in which he outlines the idea of ​​a happy life, it deals with a businessman who has always carried out his life with precision and zeal, but at a certain moment he throws his clock out.

Then he starts to arrive late and things start to happen without his intervention, and they make him happy, it now turns out to be a “path to heaven”, things happen now when he least expected it, “friends visit him when they least thought of him” and remembers the legend of a little shepherd boy who is allowed on “one Sunday” to enter the mountain with his treasures, with an enigmatic instruction: “don’t forget the best” (page 33).

Benjamin’s parable of inactivity ends with these words: “At this time he was quite well off. He finished few things he had started, and didn’t consider anything finished” (page 33).

The age of hyperinformation, of fatigue, is not a time to search for the truth of being, for what we really are culturally, socially and spiritually; It is a time of searching for nothingness, in times like this, prophets, oracles, monks and sages emerged who fled this temporal void, to find themselves in an infinite totality, one that contemplates all being.

Byung-Chul Han wrote: “those who are truly inactive do not assert themselves. He discards his name and becomes nobody”, it is not nihilism, it is a reunion with the truth that everyone looks for in things and does not find them if they do not look at themselves, at their inner emptiness and their inactivity.

There will be a time when everyone will be looking for the truth, they will say it is here or there and they will no longer find it, it will not be an end, but rather a “new enlightenment”.

HAN, Byung-Chul. (2023) Vita Contemplativa or about inactivity. Trans. Lucas Machado. Brazil, Petrópolis: Vozes.

 

 

 

 

Inform, symbol and connect

15 Nov

What was missing in the text of Crisis of Narration, there is also something wrong in “Infocracy: digitalization and the crisis of democracy in philosophy” (2022) of Byung-Chul, the idea that information is in itself incomplete, is present in another book entitled Vita Contemplativa (ed. Vozes, 2023) because there, returning to being, one can find how form becomes narration within being, and becomes in-form.

An excerpt from this book says: “The loss of shared feeling accentuates the lack of being. The community is a symbolically mediated totality. The symbolic narrative void leads to the fragmentation and erosion of society.” (HAN, 2023, p. 91-92). (emphasis added)

Thus recognizing this aspect of the need for being as a symbolic void, which the contemporary narrative in general does not contemplate due to its informational vices, at the same time the author states: “The human being, as a symbolon, longs for a sacred and restorative totality” (page 92).

The term symbolon appears prominently because the author uses it based on a reading of Plato’s Banquet, where Aristophanes remembers that this broken piece of being, which for him was initially spherical and was broken, has this broken piece with a “symbol”.

Now if symbol is a part, united to another part we form a totality, not just in a community, but in every “sacred and restorative totality”, where there are men united for a good and just cause.

Narrative and information in this context, where the part is united, as an important principle defended by Edgar Morin said: “It is necessary to replace a thought that isolates and separates with a thought that unites and distinguishes”, thus the union of distinct “symbols” and that are part of contemporary cultures and peoples.

Thus, the ontological information (proper to being) linked to the context of the narration in its time and the object of thoughts within a diversity, are not a reason for fragmentation but rather for a universe that unites us and makes us more “whole” within our lives. communities.

Contemporary hyperactivity, which not only but also the digital world can lead us to, is itself a world that rejects internalization, meditation and thus, narration itself.

The author writes about this interiority: “Active life, with its pathos of action, blocks access to religion” (page 154), action is part of religious life as much as lay life, what differentiates is that in addition to prudence, our reflections from last week, can lead to a different, fair action that leads to happiness and fulfillment different from pure “action”.

Pathos, to clarify, is part of the Greek triad “ethos, pathos and logos”, while ethos persuades us through character, or by whoever narrates, if this is worthy of faith, logos persuades us through logical (broad) reason and pathos by feelings caused by sadness or joy, love or hate, and so often without going through reason and ethics.

HAN, Byung-Chul. (2023) Vita Contemplativa or about inactivity. Trans. Lucas Machado. Brazil, Petrópolis: Vozes.

 

 

(Português) Recortes iniciais da crise da narração

14 Nov

Sorry, this entry is only available in Brazilian Portuguese.

 

Wars and narratives

13 Nov

The recently released book, in Portuguese, “The crisis of narration” (ed. Vozes, Brazil), by Byung Chul Han, more than a discussion of the crisis of literary aesthetics with Walter Benjamin and philosophical with Hegel, which are the contours of the book, the author comes across the republic of Weimar and its political aspects.

Officially known as the German Reich, it dates back to the period from November 9, 1918 to March 23, 1933, a constitutional federal republic in Germany, but which had nationalist and warlike aspects that led Germany to two wars.

Chul Han’s book is timely due to the war climate that is gradually being established and with different narratives and interpretations that lead to an escalation of war, speaking of peace, the same forces that reinforce the war budget, call for an immediate ceasefire.

It is clear to a good reader that a narrative is implied in each speech that tries to justify the war and the death of innocents, whether in Gaza or in Ukraine.

The narratives disguise their war celebrations, at the same time they justify genocides and the most horrific war crimes, when asked they respond with cynicism: “it’s war”, and thus they think they are justified.

Most likely, all of this was prepared in the midst of the pandemic, an opportune moment for those who imagine that measuring forces will create “a new world” and that peace will come as in the Roman Empire, through the submission or slavery of a people.

The details of the war are, for opportunists, details that can be reviewed by articulating this or that narrative, the death of innocent civilians, the destruction of basic means of subsistence (water, energy and food) must always be condemned and must not be admitted.

They are important humanitarian corridors (photo), but they should not only enter Gaza, they should enter where there is war and in speeches at the UN.

It is necessary to defend peace wherever there is war, so the narrative can be true

 

Homo economicus and the reduction of Being

02 Nov

Still on the Human Identity Card, chap. 2 of the book Terra-Pátria by Edgar Morin, after a long speech on the prehistoric issue, there are already new advances and discoveries in this sense, such as the Chauvet Cave (discovered by amateur cavers in 1994, including Jean-Marie Chauvet) , show that what is called human subjectivity is something present and intrinsic in man that makes us rethink his “genetic” origin.

This cave from 32 thousand years ago (photo), from the Paleolithic period, shows through the paintings and environments of a cave that man, even if primitive, had feelings that were far superior to what we think dated back to our era.

Morin shows the fragmentation of this vision of man’s being: “Man’s biological characteristics were discussed in biology departments and medicine courses; psychological, cultural and social characteristics were divided and installed in the various departments of human sciences, so that sociology was unable to see the individual, psychology unable to see society, history accommodated itself apart and economics extracted from the Homo sapiens demens the bloodless residue of Homo economicus.” (MORIN, 2003, p. 61)

Philosophy can only “communicate with humans in experiences and existential tensions such as those of Pascal, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, without however ever being able to link the experience of subjectivity to anthropological knowledge” (idem), and only in the 1950s -60 thoughts appear about “the first approaches to the universal dialectic between order, disorder and organization…” (ibidem) and which will lead us to the basis of a fundamental anthropology.

Morin launches 5 essential points to get out of planetary agony: “• we are lost in the cosmos; • life is solitary in the solar system and probably in the galaxy; • the Earth, life, man, consciousness are the fruits of a singular adventure, with astonishing adventures and leaps; • man is part of the community of life, although human consciousness is solitary; • the community of humanity’s destiny, which is specific to the planetary era, must be inscribed in the community of terrestrial destiny.” (MORIN, 2003, p. 63).

Morin launches 5 essential points to get out of planetary agony: “• we are lost in the cosmos; • life is solitary in the solar system and probably in the galaxy; • the Earth, life, man, consciousness are the fruits of a singular adventure, with astonishing adventures and leaps; • man is part of the community of life, although human consciousness is solitary; • the community of humanity’s destiny, which is specific to the planetary era, must be inscribed in the community of terrestrial destiny.” (MORIN, 2003, p. 63).

Morin’s thought is not a treatise on humanity, but a warning of the dangers that this false imperative economic, power and environmental disaster adventure has led us to.

MORIN, E. and Kern, A.B. Terra-Pátria. Trans. by Paulo Azevedo Neves da Silva. Brazil, Porto Alegre: Sulina, 2003.

 

 

 

Terrestrial identity and the black hole

01 Nov

Chapter 2 of Edgar Morin’s book is “The Terrestrial Identity Card” where he states that after the discoveries of astrophysics, biology, paleontology, ideas about the life of the universe, the nature of the Earth and man’s own life were “subverted in the 1950s-1970s” and we still didn’t have James Webb and the discovery of the ties between homo sapiens and Neanderthals.

“Afterwards, with Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, the Earth stopped being the center of the universe and became a round planet around the Sun, like the other planets” (page 43) and seemed to “witness the perfection of its divine creator” for order and regularity, until an expanding universe was discovered based on Hubble’s observations of the separation of stars in 1923, the astrophysicist would later give his name to the famous telescope already surpassed by James Web.

At the beginning of the 19th century, “Laplace expelled the Creator God from a self-sufficient universe that had become a perfect machine for all eternity” (pg. 44) and not cited there, but also in a Mathematics Conference at the beginning of the 19th century. . XX Hilbert proposes some last problems not solved by mathematics, to say that everything is logical and mathematical.

In 1965, Arno Penzias and Harold Wilson would give facts for this expansion of the universe as an “isotropic radiation originating from all horizons of the universe” and this “cosmological background noise” a kind of “fossil residue” from the initial deflagration of the initial explosion that would confirm the famous Big Bang theory, today the new data casts doubt on this, but something remained from this period, which is the conception of anti-matter and the investigation of black holes.

The 1960s, when Penzias and Wilson won a Nobel Prize, would bring new celestial bodies among them: “quasars (1963), pulsars (1968) (pg. 44), then black holes, and astrophysicists’ calculations suggest that we only know 10% of the matter, 90% of which is still invisible to our detection instruments” and that James Web is only now looking at.

The center of our galaxy is no longer the sun, but a black hole, and in it unfolds a whole new vision of the universe as “in its beginning the Unknown, the Unfathomable and the Inconceivable” (pg. 44), here we are now in a galaxy 8 billion years after “the birth of the world, and which, with its neighbors, seems attracted to a huge invisible mass called the “great Attractor” “ (idem), which is a black hole.

And we, a small planet, created 4 billion years ago, discover that it has a history, “and takes shape in the 19th century” and on the threshold of the 20th century, the German Alfred Wegener elaborates the theory of continental drift, despite the initial resistance, proven later.

After its initial long periods of cooling, the formation of the first microorganisms, and finally man appears, “the last and deviant branch of the tree of life, appears within the biosphere, which, linking ecosystems to ecosystems, now involves the entire planet”, This early birth, in recent discovery also unites Neanderthals and homo sapiens.

If “Bacon, Descartes, Buffon, Marx make it their mission to dominate nature and reign over the universe” (pg. 54), “from Rousseau onwards, romanticism will umbilically link the human being to Mother Nature” and thus, having a mother, man can be born and inhabit this Mother Earth.

MORIN, E. and Kern, A.B. Terra-Pátria. Trans. by Paulo Azevedo Neves da Silva. Brazil, Porto Alegre: Sulina, 2003.