Arquivo para a ‘Politics’ Categoria
Administer the common good and peace
22
Sep
I thought about keeping silent and just
writing PEACE, PEACE, PEACE today, but that would be silent.
Managing the common good is making peace prosper, disregarding it is allowing a large space for hatred, intolerance, violence and on a larger scale: war.
The 21st of September was established by the UN as an international day of Peace, the secretary general António Guterres cited in a video the effect of conflicts that expel a record number of people from their homes, and did not fail to also talk about these factors people, other factors such as: fatal fires, floods and high temperatures, combined with poverty, inequalities and injustices in a reality of distrust, division and prejudice.
In Italy, a group with numerous social initiatives launched a campaign “Italy united for peace”, the Community of Sant’Egidio stands out for a dispassionate and bilateral vision on the problems of wars and peace, it has the authority to talk about peace.
On the 10th to 12th of September in Berlin, Germany, they had already promoted a religious meeting that they called “The boldness of peace”, and there was no shortage of reflections on social inequalities, intolerance and injustices present in various areas across the planet.
We need to manage what Nature, the Planet and human development itself have given us to allow for a more fraternal, more just and more humane world.
For those who believe, all this is a divine gift, but it is necessary to manage it well as we will be charged in some way for the consequences of our actions, as the biblical parable says of the employees who were entrusted with talents through the owner of a vineyard.
The contract workers arrived, but as he needed more he went to the square and also hired those who were unemployed, and asked why they were there without work, they replied: “because no one hired us” (Mt 20,7) and then they were also hired.
At the end of the afternoon he paid the same salary, 1 silver coin to everyone, and some who were there from the beginning didn’t think it was very fair, but the boss remembers that the agreement was a silver coin so everyone was receiving the agreement.
So the meaning of the common good is that everyone has the right to a decent wage, but correct administration and honesty and zeal on the part of those who pay are necessary, it is fair for everyone to receive a decent wage.
But peace also requires a heart open to the just and dignified rights of the excluded other.
A voice for peace
18
Sep
There were few writers and journalists who did
not become involved in the mid-20th century in the ideological and nationalist appeals that Europe was making amid the weakening of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the growth of militaristic sentiments that led to war, Karl Kraus, a playwright and writer Austrian (they were born in 1874 in a village in Bohemia (today the Czech Republic), then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Unlike the journalism of his time that he criticized, those that judged seers like Raphael Schermann who was in evidence in Vienna and who criticized him, Karl Kraus’ criticism was directed at the political-ideological engagement of the journalists of his time, which he criticized since the vulgar language that they used even the moral decadence of their time that they mirrored.
Famous and known today for his book “Aforismos” (Arquipélago Editorial, 2010), which he defined as “Aphorism never coincides with the truth; it’s either a half truth or a truth and a half”, he had several works published recently in Portuguese, there were the releases in Portuguese of the works “The last days of humanity” by the Portuguese publisher Relógio d´água and more recently of texts from his newspaper “ Die Fackel” (The Torch or The Archote, as the Portuguese prefer) which were written during the First World War, which was one of the most prominent opponents.
There was an incomplete edition of The Last Days of Humanity, edited by Antígona in 2003, by its Portuguese translator Antônio Souza Ribeiro, recalls the young man who arrived in Vienna and had already written “Literature in Demolition” in 1897 and “A Crown for Zion” in 1898, as “In fact, what will be the distinctive mark of Kraus’s position in the Viennese literary field, defined by Edward Timms as a “combative isolation” is clearly outlined here” (pg. 96).
While the “media” of his time engage in ideological discourses of his time, his translator writes “… on the contrary, Kraus is laying, in a pioneering way, the foundations of what could today be called a critique of the media, in which constitutes one of the most strikingly topical dimensions of his work” (pg. 97).
Although lonely, Karl Kraus did not close himself off: “The reality is that, throughout his life, while facing irreducible hatred within the Austrian and German literary field, Kraus cultivated a very wide circle of relationships, which intersects with relevant intellectual and artistic circles and with several prominent names from the first decades of the century…” (pg. 97).
With the outbreak of war in August 1914, only one issue of the Magazine “Die Fakel” would appear in December 1914 with the 20-page text “In this great era”.
After publishing a new short text in February 1915, the magazine “…republished itself, in October 1915, with an extensive number of 168 pages, to establish itself as a space of violent rejection of the war policy in all its aspects” (p. 101).
In addition to his importance for the history of journalism, Karl Kraus brings great reflection to the present day.
RIBEIRO, Antônio Sousa. (2003) Os últimos dias da humanidade (The last days of humanity – reading manual), Portugal, Porto: Ed. Teatro Nacional de São João (Manual de Leitura Últimos Dias final.pdf (tnsj.pt)).
Stoics, Epicureans and Cynics
14
Sep
Seneca was a lawyer and a great writer, but he was
questioned a lot and is still Nero’s tutor today, it is good to remember that legend or fact Nero condemned him to suicide for treason, and the philosopher was consistent with his theory against anger and did so patiently.
His phrase is also famous: “If I decided to go through one of the current republics one by one, I would not find any capable of tolerating the wise man or one that the wise man could tolerate”, he was thus aware of his time and perhaps this is the reason why he is returning “the fashion”.
He was different from the Epicureans because he defended the public involvement of philosophers, after all this was the first argument in Plato’s time to found his academy, but Seneca even stated in “The Retreat”, that in certain circumstances it would be better to withdraw from public life, but this never meant an omission, and he explains it in “The Withdrawal” this way:
“We float, being tossed from side to side; desired things, we abandon; what was put aside, we resume. Thus, we alternate in a permanent flow of voluptuousness and regret. We are entirely conditioned by the opinions of others.”
In times of polarization, not always rational, it is also a reason for him to come back to the fore.
In addition to the Epicurean “purists” and the “retired” Stoics like Seneca, there are the Cynics, while the former valued “natural” aspects, the behavior of the Cynic philosophers pointed to a philosophical distinction between natural aspects (physis) and human customs. (nomos), a problem that permeated all the philosophical thought of Ancient Greece, reaching, in a certain way, also to the nominalists and realists of the Middle Ages.
I remember the critique of cynical reason, the work of Peter Sloterdijk, to say that the problem is current and it is no coincidence that these currents resurface, although updated by social and political problems, they point to a civilizational crisis.
The society that tries to eliminate pain, suffering, that worships “nature” is also reminiscent of the Stoics, those that try to destroy human culture and customs are reminiscent of the cynics, it must be said here that it does not mean the common sense of saying the which is not true.
Antisthenes, from Athens, and Diogenes, from Sinope, were the first cynics, they lived despising the customs and “sages” of their time, Sloterdijk says that today “is not a time suitable for thought” and in a way he is right, Cynicism comes from the Greek word kynikos, which means dogs because of the way they lived abandoned on the streets and often begging for alms.
In these thinkers there is a background of reason why they should be studied, they knew the crisis that the civilization of their time was going through, they were looking for a happy life within a troubled society and away from the false problems of their contemporaries, but Seneca and others did not omit themselves in public life, which is why they taught to value suffering and understand why.
The cold war is heating up
11
Sep
It seems like a paradox, but it is not, as the fact is
that Europe and the entire northern hemisphere are heading towards autumn and then winter and in the middle of the cold the limits of ideological polarization seem to go beyond, new weapons, narratives of victories on battlefields, etc.
Not even the tragedy in Morocco (photo), despite the condolences, seems to awaken a greater feeling of solidarity among the people, sub-Saharan Africa itself is heating up with coups and new military dictatorships.
The expansion of the Brics economic bloc also strengthens this polarization, despite the G20 meeting, a more diverse bloc, the possible creation of a new currency and new geopolitics point to a conflict that has already resulted in coups and authoritarian regimes, it does not mean that this diversification of currencies and new economic and political forces should not exist, but they should favor the diplomatic field and the establishment of peace.
On the front of the most declared battle, Russia announces an imposing weapon, not by chance called Satan II, capable of transporting several missiles at the same time without bothering with demonic names, on the front of the war a general called Armageddon, Sergey Surovikin, was sent. , who worked in Syria and against demonstrations in Russia, is now at the front.
On the side of Ukraine, whose counteroffensive is slower than expected, new weapons with weakened uranium have been received from the USA, while it trains pilots of its allies’ new fighters, a more aggressive change of tactics should take place before winter.
There is a weakened peace front, the president of Turkey tried to reach a new agreement to release the grain leaving Ukraine through the Black Sea, but apparently without success and a large grain producer in Ukraine died with his family when a missile hit his house in Odessa, Olesky Vadatursky.
Propaganda of deeds in war are also growing on the Web, peace seems distant and the spirits and voices of balance and common sense seem suffocated, there is always hope and peace.
Language, truth and error
07
Sep
The most common is to understand truth as the 
logical tautology that derives from the conception of scientific empiricism and mathematical syllogism,
Modern philosophy has developed several conceptions of truth, currently seeking the adequacy of truth to ideological systems that came from Hegelianism and a conception of History, on these mistakes is the elaboration of Hans-Georg Gadamer, which in turn comes from the conception of truth as Heidegger’s Being.
From syllogism and logicism come idealist concepts of judgment and positivist law.
Truth is for Descartes: “Never accept anything as true that one does not know evidently as such” (Descartes, Discourse on Method), is thus the opposite of falsehood, very close to formal truth.
The utilitarian pragmatism of Stuart Mill is the opposite extreme of this (is ilogic), and is close to the conception of Hegel and Nietzsche, it is the relativist truth that dominates many current discourses.
Nietsche also remakes the Hegelian concept of historical truth for the concept of existence, although the positive concept seems simple to be refuted, the difficulty is to establish what is true and real, which in reality would be the same thing, but what is real? Often this adjustment is made ideologically, thus the narratives arise.
It is because of this difficulty that the true conjugate with morality arises, it makes sense in the context of moral realism. For example, “Oppression and exploitation are malevolent” is a moral truth within a humanist morality, and “Unholiness is sinful” is a moral truth within a religious morality, and this conjugation is resolved in relation to Being and language, and one can withdraw the veil, the concealment through a-letheia, the unveiling.
The Western conception of truth, so difficult to have a single definition, can be combined in the Western case with three roots, the Greek “aletheia” (a- no, occult lethe), which comes from what comes from the definition of what being is: “language is the house of Being” (Heidegger), Veritas, the Latin concept conjugated between logic/language (true and false) and Emunah (the ethical-moral concept) truth/fidelity and its negation infidelity, Augustine of Hippo: “ in the interior of every being dwells the truth”.
Another critique of Hegel
05
Sep
We have already outlined here several criticisms of
Hegelianism, with its vices of German idealism, which in our view also affects the so-called Young Hegelians like Marx, but there is another possible rereading that is that of Soren Kieerkegaard (1813-1855) who is more contemporary with Marx and perhaps for this reason little read, since the great philosophical clashes took place in the German idealism of this period.
However, a Hegelian reading of Kierkegaard is possible and who called my attention to this is a Brazilian “millennium” doctor, Natália Mendes, who, in addition to writing an award-winning doctoral thesis of the author, speaks with ease and propriety of the philosopher.
First, it is important that he writes and studies Greek metaphysics, and the author draws attention to the issue of being the “father of existentialism”, labels that hinder the study and perception of the great problems that the philosophers brought.
The author sees Kierkegaard’s depth in three fundamental axes: the ontological, the epistemic and the psychological, without denying and realizing the theological origin of some of his concerns, she clarifies the theme of anguish, which must be understood as “philosophical anguish” that is having the right questions and the right answers to them.
Here I explore a little-explored and non-secondary angle that is post-positivism, and post-philosophical logicism, perhaps one of Kierkegaard’s great anxieties about theology.
Before proceeding, I highlight a phrase of the philosopher about prayer: “The function of prayer is not to influence God, but especially to change the nature of the one who prays”, seems profound to me.
Returning to Kierkegaard’s logic, which I believe is appropriate for our millennium, in addition to not considering himself a philosopher, which would mean undergoing severe criticism of authors he criticized, he builds his own perspective and does not abandon literature, psychology and theology in it.
In order not to make a treatise on his truth, I quote two of his quotes: “There is no true truth that is not subjective, this is appropriate” and another: “There are two ways to be deceived. One is to believe what is not true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
Kierkegaard, S. (1986). Textos selecionados. Seleção e tradução por Ernani Reichmann. Brazil, Curitiba: Editora Universidade Federal do Pará.
Fears of a 3G
04
Sep
A third world war, which would be the greatest
civilizing crisis ever, seems to arrive together with the proximity of the European autumn, interviews with a BBC reporter in Moscow show that there is a climate of patriotism and support for the war in Ukraine, even if it is euphemistically called a “special military operation”.
The reporter interviewed pro-Kremlin blogger Andrei Afanasiev, a university professor, and also heard the other side of military analysts who say that state propaganda hides military failures and losses in war, he also interviewed anti-war activities, although most have left Russia or be arrested.
The scenario, despite a good amount of the population maintaining a certain indifference, is one of a growing climate of war, some fear of the future and no hope of peace in sight.
The increasingly declared and ostensible involvement of NATO creates an even worse climate, last week there was an attack on the Russian airport in Pskov, and in Ukraine there is a threat of bombs in schools that are returning to classes, since the beginning of the war 3,750 schools have been partially or completely destroyed by missiles and bombs, according to Ukraine.
On another front that is beginning to draw a war, after the elections there was a military coup in Gabon, a country of French language and influence, the re-elected president Ali Bongo Ondimba, whose family has governed the country for 56 years, is arrested and the elections were considered fraudulent.
Countries of the Central African Union condemned the coup, now the number of countries that do not align with the West is growing and a war could start in the region that I have already seen other coups and military councils governing the countries, recently there was in Niger with the support of the Russia (Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Chad and Tunisia are former French colonies) (see the map).
In the famous missile crisis in Cuba, three generals of the Soviet Navy were supposed to approve the firing of missiles according to Russian protocol, but one of them Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov was against it, and this avoided a tragic nuclear holocaust, the hope is that there are other Vasilis who prevent the 3G war.
Religion, philosophy and humanism
01
Sep
Neither is he who simply proclaims a faith without
knowing it, nor is he who follows a series of precepts without understanding the fundamentals. In Christianity what is Love, the philosopher Hannah Arendt, for example, studied as her doctorate “Love in Saint Augustine” while Edith Stein discovers from philosophy and Saint Teresa of Ávila a religious path and became a nun and martyr (died at Auschwitz).
There is much apology for superstitions and beliefs in the religious environment, but they were not unknown to Jesus, the question of the Sabbath is famous, in which Jesus asks if it is fair to save someone from an illness on Saturday (Matthew 12:10), he calls the Pharisees “whitewashed tombs” (1Jn,2,27) and finally ends by revealing to the apostles that he will have to suffer a lot from the elders, the high priests and teachers of the law (Matthew 16,21-22), to which Peter is scared and asks that this not happen, and Jesus scolds him and calls him saying that he did not have a divine inspiration.
So it is not the model of public life of many nominal religionists, false prophets and people with little depth of faith that we can understand what religion is, but there is an anthropological, philosophical and clear theological sense that underlies the teachings of love, of enduring the cross, of not building hatred, revenge or resentment in the fashion of those who do not believe.
Augustine overcame the Manichean dualism of good against evil, it is about Love that is far superior to everything and evil is just its absence, Boethius and later Thomas Aquinas instituted the question of the person and the Being, which is part of the polis, but inseparable from it.
The importance of Severino Boécio, venerated as a saint by the Catholic Church (his date is October 23rd) for the history of science and philosophy, the “quarrel of universals” and the importance of reason, Thomas Aquinas and current figures such as Edith Stein do not separate faith from human thought and contemporary humanism.
From this was born modernity and its dualisms (objective x subjective, body x mind, spiritual x material) part of the ontological dualism: being is and not being is not, however, there is now the principle of the third included coming from Stéphane Lupasco and Barsarab Nicolescu, it’s physical and real
It is time to review humanism and no face of human reality can remain without a necessary revision: what is the Being, what is the idea (the Greek eidos linked to Being) and what do the modern myths and cosmogonies mean before a deeper look to the sacred with dialogue and depth.
It is in autumn that the chickens are counted.
28
Aug
Spring is approaching in the southern
hemisphere and autumn in the northern hemisphere, it is the period when Europeans know that they must have provisions to make repairs in their houses for some type of protection against the cold: heating systems, coal, gas and organize the pantry for this period.
There is a saying in Eastern Europe, a version of our saying “you don’t count the eggs before the hen lays”, there it is said “in the autumn you count the chickens”, this serves for the war that approaches to complete two years in the Eastern Europe and which spills over to all humanity.
Many analysts, including the Portuguese Miguel Monjadino, claim that Kiev’s main objective “is to recover enough territory by the autumn to maintain the support of its society, Washington and the European capitals for a military campaign in the spring” from there that will be our autumn here, only after March 2024.
American analysts indicate that more than 500,000 military personnel have already been killed in this war, and the end of the agreement on the shipment of grain from Ukraine in the region of Black Sea ports and the increase in arms, and now also planes, has yet to be considered.
But the count of losses has already begun, the disaster with a Brazilian plane that crashed in Russia and killed its occupants draws attention to yet another strange death of Putin’s opponents, the death of the head of the paramilitary group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, all occupants of the plane was confirmed in genetic analysis.
While offering condolences to Prigozhine’s family, Putin said that he had made many mistakes in life, in a clear allusion that he no longer enjoyed his sympathy.
On the economic side, the BRICS, an alliance in which Russia and Brazil participate, announce an increase in its members and a possible currency in the future, the objective is to compete with the euro and the dollar.
Peace seems more and more distant and the tension is increasing
About the modern and God
22
Aug
If it is true that the religious discourse of our days borders on insanity, it is also true that what modernity thought and still thinks about God is practically unknown.
Born to a family of Lutheran pastors, Nietzsche did not speak of the Death of God as his shallow reading thinks, they did not read the Gay Science where the philosopher proclaims “The mad man – You have not heard of that mad man who in the middle of the morning lit a lantern and ran to the market , and began to cry out incessantly: ‘I’m looking for God! I’m looking for God!’?” drink the sea entirely? Who gave us the sponge to erase the horizon? What have we done, in untying the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving?'” is in §125.
He sought in the philosophy of the East: Thus spoke Zarathustra the lost mystique, but his work The Birth of Tragedy has striking passages where he shows the need to understand this way of understanding life, where he makes studies on the Apollonian and the Dionysian, where chapter 5 it is believed that this is where Heidegger starts to write the Origin of the Work of Art.
From Husserl’s Influence were born the philosophies of Heidegger and Edith Stein, who later became mystic, being Jewish became Christian and was a martyr in Nazi Germany, still under the influence of Heidegger is Hannah Arendt, whose doctoral thesis is “Love in Santo Agostinho”, although there are gaps that his contemporaries attest, it is a good read.
From Hannah Arendt came the meditations on Vitta Activa and Vitta Contemplativa, which the contemporary philosopher Byung Chul Han will take up again in his Society of Tiredness, not forgetting to touch on the Christian philosophy of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus (or Nazianzen).
He was strongly influenced by Peter Sloterdijk, who despite his atheism, in all his works the deep marks of the knowledge of Christian thought, claims the prophet Jonah to say that we all have a whale (Jonas when refusing his mission was devoured by a whale and returned to the beach) and a little Jonas, refuses our mission on this planet.
Byung Chul Han makes a very current diagnosis, he adds that the “modern loss of faith, which concerns not only God and the beyond, but reality itself, becomes radically transitory human life” (Han, p. 42) .
This is not a separate problem, it is an essential part of modern thought, refusal of the essential, adoption of the transitory, fleeting and frivolous life and of fleeting and ecstatic pleasures.
Han, Byung Chul. (2015) Burnout Society. Ed. Stanford Briefs; 1ª ed., Stanford, USA.
