Arquivo para a ‘Politics’ Categoria
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.
Cultural plane and threat to peace
21
Aug
Russia officially announced the revision of all
history books taught to teenagers, which there are the 8th., 9th. and 10th. series of the teaching cycle, recounting the history of the 1970s to 2000, the period of the end of the “Soviet Union” and a new section from 2014 to the present day, where the war is called “special military operation”.
The announcement was made by Vladimir Medinsky, Russian adviser to President Vladimir Putin at a press conference, and by reaching the age group of teenagers, not only does it predict a long war, they are being prepared for the next 10 years when they will be adults, as arouses distrust of military plans more audacious than the war in Ukraine.
The threats to Poland are already real, and besides Poland belonging to NATO, this recalls the 1st. September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland triggering the 2nd. World War.
This puts peace further away, and hope now comes from the bloc of declared or tactical allies of the Russian government, Ukraine’s own Zelensky believes that the Brics, the international bank that Russia participates in, could be a last attempt and mediation of the War.
The cultural war with even opposing narratives, about what the civilizing process is and its threat are increasingly present on the world stage, a war on a global scale these days, with nuclear weapons much more lethal than before the real civilizational threat .
Among several analyses, the Israeli writer and journalist Yuval Harari, author of the book “Sapiens – Brief History of Humankind”, declared to the London newspaper The Guardian, that the war in Ukraine will define the future of the whole world, “Every day that it becomes clearer that Putin’s gamble is failing. The Ukrainian people are resisting wholeheartedly, winning the admiration of the whole world and winning the war,” but there are other views.
What is clear is that the civilizing process is at stake, yes, not in the sense that Russian cultural books point out, it is not about the victory of this or that “cultural” tendency, but about the coexistence of different ideas within democratic environments and dialogue .
There is always hope for peace, but armed spirits and threats only prepare war.
Taxes, profit and tithing
15
Aug
Whenever a crisis appears on the horizon, the
most common temptation is to overload society and the issue of taxation is on the agenda not only in Brazil, but worldwide.
For benefits to be incorporated into civil life, the state needs taxes, but they should not serve as perks of the state since it is a service provided to society, and taxes incorporated into costs and prices distort and can strangle investments, savings public and private and inhibit export.
The problems in the country are enormous, the most common is double taxation (taxes on services that are already taxed, road fees for example), but governments are insatiable, they need to feed the plentiful tables of those who sustain them in power.
Profit must be thought of as having three purposes, the maintenance of social services that also serve companies, goods and social security that serve all citizens, especially workers, and the growth of the company itself and the country in investments.
Finally, the contribution to the cultural, social and religious interests of specific groups can be seen both as a society, to which everyone freely opts, and as a compulsory one, provided that there is a prior agreement for this.
The important thing is to understand that fraternal relationships, which are spontaneous, differ from obligatory ones, which imply a type of society that, once broken, the bond is lost, and this must be the case of tithing, spontaneous donation and action “between friends”.
In the philosophical field, Paul Ricoeur wrote about these relationships between partner and neighbor (Le socius et le Prochain, 1954) and
Those who doubt that this is biblical, I recommend reading Mt 17,25 when asked if they paid the temple tax: Peter replied: “Yes, pay”. Upon entering the house, Jesus came forward and asked, “Simon, what do you think: Who do the kings of the earth collect taxes or fees from: children or strangers?” to which Peter replied of the strangers, but Jesus, in order “not to offend” ordered that the taxes be paid.
The three behaviors are not far apart: dishonest profits, high tribute, and temple taxes.
Dangers of expanding war
14
Aug
While on the front of Russia and Ukraine the danger
that the war will spread to all continents is more and more real, the coup d’état in Niger, in the sub-Saharan region that already has other conflicts and ruptures with democracy, is at the limit and the nations themselves African women threaten to intervene.
This region, where Chad, Mali and Niger are located, is one of the poorest regions in the world with high rates of infant mortality, illiteracy and low life expectancy, however the wealth of minerals attracts interest in these countries of Russia and France .
The leaders of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have approved the military intervention in Niger, as the recently democratically elected president Mohmed Bazoum has been ousted and is under house arrest.
At the meeting, President of Côte d’Ivoire, Alassane Quattarao stated that the intention is for the military operation to begin “as soon as possible” so we will have a new war front on another continent, while the climate between South and North Korea increases tension in the east.
In Argentina and Ecuador, during the electoral period tensions increase, the Argentine surprise was the victory of the anarcho-capitalist Javier Milei of Libertad Avanza, while within the proposal Juntos por el Cambio, of Macrista tendency (ex-president Macri) Patricia Bulrrich of the Proposal Republican won Hora Rodrigues Larreta, there is still the candidate Sergio Massa, government economist, with little chance for the economic ruin of Argentina.
In Argentina, analysts estimate that the economic decline has made society bet on new proposals, with the risk that new things always carry, it is not clear what they will do, the elections will take place on October 22nd.
In Ecuador, the death by assassination of the candidate Fernando Villavicencio, of the Construye Movement, shows the action of paramilitary groups in politics, this Sunday (13) the movement announced the new candidate Christian Zurita, but tensions of political violence continue.
It is necessary to relaunch the principle of self-determination of peoples, respect for sovereignty and democracy in countries and limit military interventions and their actions in the field of politics.
New holodomor and the war
07
Aug
While there are expectations of new 
meetings for peace with Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, the perspectives of a greater involvement of other countries in the war grow with the danger of a war on a global scale.
In the harsh period of the former Soviet Union, there had already been a conflict between the Russian Soviet Republic and the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, the holodomor in 1931-32, in which the dictator Joseph Stalin confiscated Ukrainian production, killing a large number of Ukrainians from starvation, there is a book on the subject (pdf), the ukrainians managed many years after declaring this episode of their national life as a genocide.
Russia had already undermined Ukraine’s supply sources, now it systematically bombs ports and grain storage sites and spreads mines across the borders of the conquered territory, the Ukrainian economy already in ruins, now suffers a hard blow and with that there are a threat to world grain supplies.
The internal battlefront remains tough, with small advances in the counteroffensive, but the pole is now moving towards the Black Sea, where grain export ships can be hit and already a provocation with Poland, by the Wagner group that is in Belarus .
Some discourses and narratives hide the horrors of war, death of civilians, distribution and disasters in rivers and energy sources, and violation of war treaties, with mutilation and torture of prisoners, and use of weapons of war prohibited by international agreements such as, land mines, white phosphorus bombs and cluster bombs.
An involvement of Poland and Belarus, would be the first scale of a world war, reminiscent of the invasion of Germany in 1st. of September 1939, which was the trigger for the involvement of several countries, the first to declare war were England and France.
The political and financial involvement of other countries is already practically declared, with forces alongside Ukraine and Russia, but common sense still makes some countries and more cautious diplomats think about the disaster for the economy in addition to the serious danger of using nuclear force.
The forces for peace have started a conference of senior officials from around 40 countries, including the US, China, South Africa and India and are taking part in the discussions in the coastal city of Jeddah, on the Red Sea, being European newscasters, including the German DW (Deutsch Welle), without the participation of Russia.
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Conflict rages and hope for peace
31
Jul
The combat front extends across the entire 
eastern region of Ukraine, which claims advances, while Russia is again bombing the ports of grain stocks in Ukraine, which threatens the food security of several countries.
Putin promises to deliver grain “for free” to several African countries, but South Africa warns it is not enough, and Niger has had a Russian-backed coup d’état, and President Hohamed Bazoum is jailed, while General Abdourahamane Tchiani has taken over. the country, the European EU cut all support given to the country, with France having interests in the country’s business.
The Wagner group of mercenaries from Russia operated in the region, having influenced the positions of Mali and currently influence Burkina Faso, the group is currently in Belarus and raises fears of Poland that it could cause a conflict in the region, expanding the war zone and reaching NATO’s “weak points”.
Mali and Burkina Faso are among the poorest countries in the world and dependent on foreign aid, both for food security and military, they are predominantly agricultural countries.
Hope comes from Saudi Arabia, which will host a meeting in the city of Jeddah to address the situation of the war in Ukraine, in addition to Brazil and India, which are members of the Brics, the United Kingdom, Poland and South Africa are among countries that confirmed their attendance, Egypt, Indonesia, Mexico, Chile and Zambia are among the guests, US Security Secretary Jake Sullivan is expected to attend the meeting and Putin will not attend.
The meeting is important because there were accusations to the OPEC+ group, on October 22, that oil producing countries are supporting Russia, however the bloc, along with other countries invited to the meeting, maintains a firm position of expanding peace talks.
The meeting to attempt a peace agreement in Ukraine will take place on the 6th and 7th of August, while the Brics will have a meeting on the 22nd to the 24th of August and China proposes the inclusion of Saudi Arabia and Indonesia in the group, while Brazil and India resist the idea, Putin should not participate.
Jeddah (or Giddah) (photo) is located on the edge of the Red Sea, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has 23 sister cities, including Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, Odessa in Ukraine, Kazan and Saint Petersburg in Russia, and its main twinning (another sister city concept) is with Miami of the US.
