The bubbles and the other
25
Jun
Several authors wrote about the issue of the Other,
unfortunately there is still ignorance about the term, it has been reborn (in my opinion it has always existed in Christian philosophy, patristics largely treats the term as “neighbor” and Paul Ricoeur remembers this), Habermas wrote about the Inclusion of the Other which would be the borders of communities open to all, Byung-Chul Han wrote The Expulsion of the Other, when reflecting on communication today, however Emmanuel Lévinas and Paul Ricoeur treated it with originality and richness.
We have already posted something about Lévinas read by Byung-Chul Han which recalls his concept of “il y a” in which he analyzes a functional aspect of the ethical relationship, making it transcend. It must be said that it is not Hegel’s ethics, for him the principle the exit from being to existence, passing from being to its raw state, is leaving the solitude of “il y a”, thus giving meaning to existing.
From Paul Ricoeur we post in some excerpts the relationship between the “partner” and the neighbor, the first is utilitarian and the second really “transcends”, but his seminal work is the Self as another (published in 1990, in Portuguese on Brazil in 2014 by Martins Fontes), he is careful to ensure that the self is not left aside, since it is common to see the Other eliminating the self, even though in the phenomenological relationship an “epoché” is always necessary. ”, but placed in parentheses.
But here we want to move on to the concept of bubbles in Spheres I by Peter Sloterdijk, he exposes his spherology, a way of defining and problematizing what it means to “be in the world”, since we come from a sphere that is the maternal womb, and leave to the sphere of our planet, and he creates a concept of immunology to give meaning to his idea of a social means of communication that is co-immunity. It is curious that the term came well before the pandemic.
It is curious that the author, who does not see religion as something objective, does not fail to analyze in his work concepts that come from the “culture” of Christianity when speaking, for example, of a despiritualized asceticism that applies to many religious people today, and of The Matrix in Gremio (on the mother’s lap, a clear allusion to Mary) and here we highlight the Eucharist (it is not the orthodox concept, obviously).
When talking about bubbles, a special topic is “Of Eucharistic excess”, this mutual incorporation is described in illustrative episodes that constitute the European tradition of cordiality in his view, which for us Latins could be an adjective of miseri-cordis, has a heart that humbly welcomes the heart of others, and its “excess” would be better understood.
It narrates three episodes on this topic, the first is from the period of the chivalric troubadour of the 13th century by the poet Conrad of Würzburg, in which the impossible troubadour adultery of a knight and a lady is brought to fruition only with the unconscious consummation of the boy’s heart by the girl, of course it’s about human love here.
In second example, the author also deals with the testimony of Raymond of Capua (1330-1399) that gains chorus, in which Catherine of Siena (a very wise Catholic saint) who has her heart exchanged for that of Christ himself revealed, marking the spherical communion of the human with the divine, and here we understand its adjective of “eucharistic excess”.
The third is more philosophical and takes up Plato’s classical philosophy, an adaptation made by Marcílio Ficino of Plato’s Symposium, with the influence of medieval medicine he imagines that Phaedrus penetrates, with a clear medieval adaptation, with blood vapors that came from his heart and extrapolated from their own eyes, the others of Lysias, with this inflates his heart making him fall in love with Phaedrus.
Lysias’ speech, in the Platonic dialogue Phaedrus, talks about the enchantment caused by the art of using logos beautifully, with the intention of persuading, he elaborates a beautiful and “logical” speech to say that it is more advantageous to give oneself to someone who is not in love than a lover, he exerts a phenomenon called apathê on Phaedrus.
Sloterdijk’s important point is that we are all subject to our bubbles, our preconceptions and only with this resource thought by Lísias, seeing the other non-lover and not close, as a possible delivery can we begin a process of rapprochement, in the philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer the “fusion of horizons”.
What perspective do we have on the different Other and how can we carry out an “apathê” that becomes a favorable and interesting encounter, a possible communication.
Sloterdijk, P. Spheres I (2016). trans. José Oscar de Almeida Marques, São Paulo: Estação Liberdade.
