Narrative and truth
26
Sep
It’s not just some thinkers like Edgar Morin,
Peter Sloterdijk and Mario Bunge who complain about the difficulty of elaborating thought in a truthful way, the fundamentals have been lost and narratives dominate even areas like science and religion, not to mention politics which is the realm of narratives, peace, climate and social security are part of rhetoric.
In Byung-Chul Han’s book “The Crisis of Narration” he recovers an essay by Hungarian writer Peter Nadás “Betsutsame Ortsbestimmung” (I don’t think there is a Portuguese translation, but Han translated the title as Location pending), which tells the story of a village where in the center stands a huge wild pear tree.
Nadás describes this village as a narrative community that gathers around the pear tree “on warm summer evenings” for “ritual contemplation” and ratifies the “collective content of consciousness” (Han, 2023, p. 121), where there is “no opinion about this or that, but uninterrupted narration of a single great story” (Há, p. 122) and where they used to “sing softly … Today there are no more of these trees and the singing of the village has died down” (Nadás, apud Han, 2023, p. 122).
The Korean philosopher adds: “That ‘ritual contemplation’ that ratifies the collective content of consciousness gives way to the noise of communication and information” (Han, p. 122), “that ‘singing’ that tunes the villagers into a story and thus unites them” (Idem).
What they experience from “noisy” communication “does not create any social cohesion, it does not create a We. On the contrary, it dismantles both solidarity and empathy” (Han, 2023, p. 123).
Han’s philosophical critique is clear: “But not all the constitutive narratives of a community are based on the exclusion of the Other, insofar as there is also an inclusive narrative that does not cling to an identity” (Han, 2023, p. 124) and even quotes Kant’s Perpetual Peace, despite all its conservative idealism.
His universalism is clear: “Every human being enjoys unrestricted hospitality. Every human being is a citizen of the world … He [Novalis] imagines a ‘world family’ beyond nation and identity. He elevates poetry as a form of reconciliation and love” (p. 125).
The author, based on Novalis, also refers to the issue of complexity that contemplates the whole: “The individual lives in the whole and the whole in the individual. It is through poetry that the highest sympathy and coactivity originate, the most intimate communication” (Han, 2023, p. 125).
Han, B.-C. (2023). A crise da narração. Transl. Daniel Guilhermino. Brazil. Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes.
