Mind the Gap: A Theory of Society,
in terms of a phenomenological personalism
"Where is my house but where my heart meets yours?"
Andy Bell and Vince Clark
Victor Mota
Lisbon Faculty of Arts KEY WORDS:
Theory, Praxis, Techné, Social Anthropology, Philosophy
1. Contextualized approach to the problem
I write based on my ideas of what I call existential personalism and phenomenological relativism to understand society, more or less contextualized in terms of a philosophical anthropology. I propose to make you understand the relationship betweentechne and theory, that is, the practical and technical knowledge linked to certain professions (electrician, carpenter, bricklayer) and philosophical knowledge. The simplest of men know how to make good philosophy (António Aleixo, a popular figure from Alentejo) and they admire philosophical knowledge, contrasting and challenging it with technical knowledge. This relationship may be an infernal cycle, given that theoretical knowledge is not demonstrative and does not pass through science. But, on the other hand, this conflict between theory and technical praxis will always be eternal because it is, as Claude Lévi-Strauss ("Anthropologie Structurale") and Pierre Bourdieu ("Practical Reasons") stressed, open to a certain discourse in a certain way of masculinity linked to the conquest and possession of women. In fact, we ask ourselves: what is anthropology?
What is philosophy? The perfecta imperfectibilitas of human experience demonstrates that there is more communication between theoretical philosophy and craftsmanship, in fact, we defend that they do not overlap with each other, but that they know ways of communication and exchange of data, symbolic or effective. In social terms, it all starts with Marx's theories of infra and superstructure and with the assignment of
the figure of the intellectual worker as equivalent to manual work, not the result of a thorough study of classical languages, mathematics and philosophy. On the other hand, the American myth revolves around the figure, the character, who unravels, soon after having but who know ways of communication and exchange of data, symbolic or effective. In social terms, it all starts with Marx's theories of infra and superstructure and with the assignment of the figure of the intellectual worker as equivalent to manual work, not the result of a thorough study of classical languages, mathematics and philosophy. On the other hand, the American myth revolves around the figure, the character, who unravels, soon after having but who know ways of communication and exchange of data, symbolic or effective. In social terms, it all starts with Marx's theories of infra and superstructure and with the assignment of the figure of the intellectual worker as equivalent to manual work, not the result of a thorough study of classical languages, mathematics and philosophy. On the other hand, the American myth revolves around the figure, the character, who
unravels, soon after having
stuck in a rough thing... not having to account for anyone but the canvas and the coherence of the script...
We could turn to physical anthropology and point out how the development of primitive man's brain depended on his relationship with the environment, mainly using his hands, to even make art. Or robotics or manipulation of the body by prostheses, in the way man, in time, in duration (Bergson) domesticates the environment and domesticates his mind. But we prefer to see the question of the relationship between theory and praxis as a way in which the human spirit evolved, which embodied in a body whose avatar came from a while ago, from adurée. Lévi-Strauss sought to understand the human spirit through the myths of primitive societies, rather, the mythemes, units that neurology corresponded to neurons, chemistry to the elements of the periodic table, and astrophysics to the potions. I believe that the philosopher also seeks this, that is, to understand the human spirit from the most diverse attitudes and activities, as something germinal, ontological, rather than anthropological1.
For the rest, we can equate the following question: how does the philosopher enjoy himself? Reading the Encyclopedia which contains good entries in the area of philosophy. Thus, we move towards an existentialist personalism through Sartre and Camus and a phenomenological relativism (Hüsserl, Geertz), to lead to a phenomenological personalism, to give a name to what the subject experiences with his experience in the world, capturing impressions mainly through the sense of vision. The use of other senses, touch, smell, mundane things, has much more to do with
1. Just as, in terms of the end, physical death is not the end, existence is not in vain (Ricoeur). We passed by, this in a way ontologically eternalizes being according to opinion. On the other hand, in Kierkeegardian terms, the sadness, despair and
anguish that follow the victory corresponds to the mythological and even Nietzschean idea of the man-god, who always wins in a regime of automation of his behavior leading to the effectiveness and efficiency of performance (Paulo Valverde , Sloterdyick and Zizek).
social anthropology rather than philosophy, I don't think I'm mistaken. After all, what is the social? It will not be the subjective and even literary in the game of mirrors (andscatters) from others, from society? And society, what is it?
Does it correspond to the nation-state? Or would it not be better for each ethnic group, in practice, to correspond to a territory? The issue raises issues of the order of transdisciplinarity and human rights, which a left acts as a flag and a right sometimes takes it for granted, sometimes refuses in the name of a race, or a pure ethnic group.
2. The Dual Mask in Social Roles A Philosophical Interpretation
On the other hand, does the inaptitude for practical things, in the terms of técné, necessarily mean quality for the things of theory? It is that, in certain contexts, few social actors assume both terms and meanings, domains and the connection between them and, even in terms of the dramatic representation of their roles, on the screen of the social, they prefer one of the two roles in a regime of insistence and reiteration of the same, as someone who manages or asserts a symbolic capital that allows him to unfold his persona in the game and stage of social, social relations. In other words, the perfecta imperfectabilitas becomes perfecta imperishabilis... Why, then, does
philosophy fix itself on the subject and not jump to the object, in other words the Other, as does anthropology? Because what anthropology does is
"take advantage of" a social, class, status and civilization, but also a moral,
unevenness. The other is, an object of study in terms of a science of behavior
and discourses, is always someone who is
under the "owner" of the observation point, participant or nottwo. Thus, existentialism, whether by Camus or Sartre or Kierkegaard, leads us to be aware of the gap, that is, the gap of existence that we sometimes occupy here or here, either in search of the nest or in terms of a return to an obsessive neurosis of oral and anal character3, which plays particularly well with the notions of social exhaustion proposed by Pina- Cabral, if we want to go from the level of the subject to that of the group and society, in a civilization marked by both the oral and the phallus....
Thus, each subject, now an individual, has in him an exutory, so called social, that expels what intersubjectivity does not use, just as digestion takes advantage of what the social organism, a subject that is, in a way, a way of seeing the world, cosmovision, reflection or even the world itself, literally. Thus, the real old world disappears and the comfort zones are getting smaller, smaller and less and lessandexisting. The world ceases to exist, as well as society, which in fact only existed for the subject, for him... But if the philosopher seeks and studies, seeking, the meaning or meanings of life, it will necessarily have to be greater than Life? And what live is it about? Yours, society, your species? Here is a question that I consider to be central: the philosopher's relationship with the senses, sexual pleasure, worldly love, because it seems to me that there has not been a "philosophical" answer so far about conduct more or less regulated, more or less filled in terms of erotic pleasures. Neither Alberoni nor the classics got there. And, it is said that, before departure, it is necessary to fast and all intellectual activity is
two. For this text, we would only need an Encyclopedia, like the Britannica or the Luso-Brasileira, of the four volumes of As Raças Humanas, for ethnographic contextualization and one or another philosophy manual...
3. In this regard, see Erich Frömm's "Escape from Freedom" or the almost completeness of Kierkegaard's work, articulated
with the annotation of nasuea and dasein (Sartre and Heidegger).
quite related to the deprivation or not of the sexual game, since it also drives disenchantment but also the discovery and an opening of the subject to the Other, to the Other's World, to the World. There is here, in my humble opinion, something to discover... far from hedonism and epicureanism where the senses are not slaves to Man but pathways to this opening, paths to an inevitable fusion with what is beyond dasein...A exteriority, openness, the useful elision of the subject and its mixture with reality in a plethora that is not disguised... I do not ask (more) What is Philosophy, but What is Being a Philosopher? I believe that I am, after more than twenty years of philoanthropological investigations, in a position to defend that the philosopher's task, in addition to discovering the meaning(s) of Life, not just human, but from her emanation from the moment, to make others happy through a self-transformation of her spiritual magma, her vital elan, her halo or even ossogoto, plethora, everything else. Therefore, the philosopher cannot, as soon as he finds out in his investigations, encompass (in more or less encyclopedic terms) all philosophy, all knowledge, intra or extra discipline, so he launches himself into a truly anthropological undertaking: making the Other happy. This poses for a particular work, a particular discipline, a mental enterprise that is, of course, and above all, a sentimental enterprise, no matter how scientific its more or less scientific assertions and conclusions about behavior, discourse and social relations may be. .
Then, further on, what can save man? And does man need to be saved?
Is there not a mental eugenics in all relationships, broad, that is, more
than that, a destiny for the march of humanity and of every man in particular in his DNA? If religion doesn't save, if science
complicates, if even the new religions and the new sciences do not give complete answers to a man, on the one hand, increasingly questioning and, on the other, increasingly hurried, irritated (perhaps looking for happiness in bodies), perhaps the man tries to be happy as he advances in his biography...in my opinion, the taste for public things brings happiness and, even so, the secret must be cultivated, in a broad and torn moral relativism. That is why I defend a phenomenological personalism, which comes from two ways, from different authors and from what I somehow call relativistic personalism and phenomenological relativism, based on the most diverse authors, of which I highlight Jacques Maritain, Emanuel Mounier, Teillard de Chardin , Kierkegaard, Camus, Sartre, among some Portuguese and Spaniards in a long-standing German Spanish tradition of anthroposophy,
3. A Sun Hat in the Rain:
How Man came to Think in the middle of the storm
Rousseau's own myth could be revised: yes, man is naturally good, he cannot live without goodness and the Good, otherwise he destroys himself, in society or outside it. While an anthropology considers closure, philosophy considers, or patents, openness, as if, in terms of gender,
one were male and the other female... While the essential task of anthropology is context and identity, that of philosophy is sober in abstract form, a certain sense of elevation in a certain form of inquiry and the creation of question marks. But what is the
Good? What is it to be good outside the terms of a moral philosophy and a particular religion? The spirit atrophies itself above all, because it is contextualized in order to be able to act, to be able to develop. Is there competition between good guys? Is the profane no longer of this world, more effective and practical? Yes, because religion is essentially theoretical, but also terribly practical. How should life be lived? Is it worth the effort to be able to raise a family, to have a job, personal and social fulfillment? All issues that, in my opinion, come under a certain form of moral philosophy, customs, moeurs. To this extent, when a member of society dies, not all society pays him homage, but those who were closest to him, either because many do not know him or have anything to do with his life or audience of it, or because, in a way, , society must continue to develop, to shape itself within the scope of an almost unreal real.
We can resort to sociobiology and ethology to study, then, the
behavior and discourse of men and the man-god, as if they were insects or, more closely in terms of coexistence, Chinese, who are recognized as having a maximum focus capacity in terms of a fight for survival. Then art, later relaxation and humor. Nothing is random. So that man escapes, slides over what gives him pain and results in fatigue, but realizes that without effort nothing is worth it, that is,
4. TRANSCENDENTAL MUTISM:
The praxis denied by the efabulatory process
What is truly worth life then. What meaning does it have in the face of what we are, we know and in the face of what is beyond our thinking?
Only efabulation, writing, makes sense, because there, the spirit is at work, busy and preparing itself for relaxation like a watchdog in the night. Self-consciousness can be hell, in psychoanalytic terms, which leads us to think that hell is us. But Sartre would be right in this respect:
hell is the Others, because not all men give in to the absence of work that is alienation, even if interaction is more work, but it tires more although perhaps it bears more fruit in reverse to the Yes. But everything is a question of semantics, of nomenclature and, in a certain sense, philosophy is just a game, like life itself, a set of fabulatory and efabulatory acts, e-fabulatory, I would say. Fear, the greatest fear, perhaps is not aggressiveness and physical contact, sexuality, but the fear of losing Self- consciousness... So what gives meaning to finitude? What saves us from death? Believing that death is just the elision of a number?
Is the subject a number or part of society? Is it worth believing that society, at the limit the species, will never disappear? And do we allow ourselves to do various atrocities, often to ourselves, in the name of this conservation instinct? Thus, in these terms, a sacred order of technique, we follow closely the analysis of Agamben and Stiegler, but in a mainly empirical context that refers to many of Freud's notions, where kindness
and generosity, like happiness (Russel), are things , therefore, not ideas, they are objective in the sense in which they measure and mediate and maybe it's not aggressiveness and physical contact, sexuality, but the fear of losing self-consciousness... So what gives meaning to finitude? What saves us from death? Believing that death is just the elision of a number?
Is the subject a number or part of society? Is it worth believing that society, at the limit the species, will never disappear? And do we allow ourselves to do various atrocities, often to ourselves, in the name of this conservation instinct? Thus, in these terms, a sacred order of technique, we follow closely the analysis of Agamben and Stiegler, but in a mainly empirical context that refers to many of Freud's notions, where kindness and generosity, like happiness (Russel), are things , therefore, not ideas, they are objective in the sense in which they measure and mediate and maybe it's not aggressiveness and physical contact, sexuality, but the fear of losing self-consciousness... So what gives meaning to finitude? What saves us from death? Believing that death is just the elision of a number?
Is the subject a number or part of society? Is it worth believing that society, at the limit the species, will never disappear? And do we allow ourselves to do various atrocities, often to ourselves, in the name of this conservation instinct? Thus, in these terms, a sacred order of technique, we follow closely the analysis of Agamben and Stiegler, but in a mainly empirical context that refers to many of Freud's notions, where kindness and generosity, like happiness (Russel), are things , therefore, not ideas, they are objective in the sense in which they measure and mediate and
but the fear of losing Self-consciousness... So what gives meaning to finitude? What saves us from death? Believing that death is just the elision of a number? Is the subject a number or part of society? Is it worth believing that society, at the limit the species, will never disappear? And do we allow ourselves to do various atrocities, often to ourselves, in the name of this conservation instinct? Thus, in these terms, a sacred
order of technique, we follow closely the analysis of Agamben and Stiegler,
but in a mainly empirical context the
mediatization of man with the object, as if the concrete (of the body) were pleasing to happiness, even in the Convent, where contingency, by being delegated and transmitted, is eternal and infinite like the Cosmic World.
Conclusion
The Return of Man to Himself
Thus, the biography, made of inevitability, finds Itself in the encounter Man with himself, through the natural return to his childhood, when everything around him says he is crazy, just because he expresses himself differently. Yes, territory of wedges and the unwary. Who then rules? All but those who are seen and seen. Who insults...where is the problem? From the side of the victim, the target, or the aggressor? The world is, therefore, still full of aggressors and of the few who find themselves, subjective experience is intransmissible, even in social science, especially in social science, because we are all blind, as Saramago would say, fools, when we fall, against each other.
The greatest way to solve a problem, then, is not to solve it? And why are problems created, and should we format our mental disk or send it for a loop with feedback like a boomerang? Thus, the return to Rousseau's post-nature state has to do with something that betrays both philosophy and social science: its salvation is its constant, stubborn, methodical, and programmatic denial. Thus, it was with a race that Being was born and it is as a race, not just a football game, that Being rips itself apart, evolving into the phenomenology of the real earth... in terms of the character of the phenomenological personalism. Finally, I reached
the end of my philosophical system, understanding a social and cultural anthropology, by discovering a new notion, the
economy of happiness, which seems to me to be a happy expression, because it implies and means happiness as a state for which one works, where it also implies a notion of effort, physical, psychological, emotional, which also calls for the notion of intelligence emotional and the expressions "being at home" and "out of the box", as well as notions such as "narrative", leverage, "resilience", "captivation", words that come from the humanities to economics, finance and management, in which money is seen as an object of use, in the span or at the high tide of existence, in short, notions of libidinal economy, which I formulated several years ago and which trace and describe the evolution and involvement of man in the real and geographic social space, vertical and horizontal, as if life continued with us, for our lack,for our contribution, both in horizontal and vertical position ("Positions", Derrida), beyond the notions where economics is seen in philosophical terms (already far from Stiglitz or even Agamben and Stiegler), including the vision of a value ( of use and distribution) explained by Anselm Jappe (Theory of Value, inThe Adventures of Merchandise) and Yáñes Casal in Between Gift and Merchandise, reaching a spread in the anti-utilitarianism theories of the Revue du Mauss.
