Ethics and resistance
15
Feb
Hegelian idealist formalism establishes an
ethics, since it sees a fatality in man’s finitude, in the words of many thinkers his worldliness, however the categories used in phenomenology, where the thing in itself turns, there is the essence of Being.
It was Emmanuel Levinas who opened this essence to the relationship with the Other, and calls it an ethical resistance, declaring it as an epiphany, in the philosophical sense of apparition, which is an opening to exteriority to the infinite being, where this resistance can be manifest.
Thus, different from the idea of the openness of Being or idealistic transcendence, the relationship between the subject and the object, its exteriority is that which the inner Being manifests itself before the infinite, its openness to the Other requires an examination of conscience: we love or hate, we forgive Either we resent what is different, I favor ethics and moral behavior, or we relativize it.
Brazilian professor Brüseke clarifies: “It is curious how frequently concerns or even fears are being raised that mysticism weakens social morality” (Brüseke, 2000).
Thus, Levinas’s transcendence is a true opening of the Being to the outside world and life in a broad and totalitarian way (of course not in the authoritarian sense of the word), it can give the Being a true asceticism, a reunion with itself in the face of a metanoia, a complete change of mindset.
Open to life does not mean open to pleasures and momentary circumstances, but to find a path to our “ascension”, a daily growth even with obstacles and setbacks, the falsehood of “easy” paths is that they do not perform the “exercise” of true asceticism, they just get around it with palliatives (read Byung Chul-Han’s Palliative Society).
Resistance, a category also used by Edgar Morin for the contemporary world, is more than opposing “evil”, or an inner resilience, it is a resistance of hope, of believing that an alternative path is possible, that war cannot it is a way out, and that we will have a future.
Philosophy and science are not opposed to the spiritual growth of humanity, to a certain extent they can even be healthy complements to a balanced faith and a science that is in fact humanized, it is not about dominating nature but about cooperating with it.
It must start from personal attitudes and decisions, put into reflection and lived socially.
Brüseke, F. (2000) A ética da resistência. Cadernos de pesquisa interdisciplinar em Ciências Humanas. V. 1, n. 8, Santa Catarina, Brazil.
