Distropia

Índice
1. Heidegger – o teólogo sem Deus. Tradução de Marcos Fanton

2. Anti-anti relativism, historicity and dissemination Artigo de Fabrício Pontin

___________________________________________

Heidegger – o teólogo sem Deus

Marcos Fanton

Segue abaixo a minha primeira tradução de um texto em alemão; assim, qualquer erro precipitado, favor me notifiquem. É um texto de George Steiner, divulgado no Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, nº 221, em 23.09.89, no qual temos um pequeno comentário de diversos filósofos (como Gadamer, Lévinas, Tournier, Odo Marquard, Cioran) sobre Heidegger. Gostaria de agradecer, especialmente, a professora Elizabeth, do Instituto Goethe, pelas correções.

 

O Teólogo sem Deus

George Steiner

As investigações detetivescas de Hugo Ott alcançaram, definitivamente, uma clareza. Martin Heidegger simpatizou com o nacional-socialismo ainda antes de Hitler subir ao poder. Seu envolvimento no nacional-socialismo, durante o reitorado de 1933-34, foi muito mais do que um caso de vaidade pessoal, de ambição autoritária burocrata e de cegueira. Heidegger simpatizou, decididamente, com muitos aspectos do novo regime. Como Ott prova, sua conduta foi covarde e falsa durante a desnazificação após 1945. Segundo os atestados de Ott e as indiscutíveis declarações de contemporâneos como Karl Löwith, Heidegger aparece como astuto, arrogante, profundamente vaidoso e, ocasionalmente (em suas atitudes em frente a determinados colegas), malicioso.
Em meu livro sobre Heidegger, eu procurei acentuar o tempo pós-1945. Profundamente consternado, eu encontro o silenciar de Martin Heidegger não apenas sobre todo o Mundo-Auschwitz e o mundo pós-Auschwitz. Um pensador do destino humano, da política planetária, da essência das instituições humanas como a indústria, do sentido da arte, escreve, ensina, prega, como se não tivesse acontecido a desumanidade mais terrível diante de sua porta, como se não tivesse sido questionada de maneira terrível a essência do homem e sua relação com o ser, com a verdade, com a linguagem. Sobre o mundo – e houve um mundo – do matadouro, referiu-se Heidegger em uma única frase, que se tornou célebre por causa de sua terrível inconveniência. Este longo silêncio e seu desagradável epílogo nos pretextos e na inteligente retórica da publicação póstuma da entrevista na Spiegel são, para mim, o centro e o gravame do enigma Heidegger.
Eu acredito que durarão gerações, porventura séculos (pense-se no inacabado debate sobre a morte de Sócrates), antes de se poder chegar a um inteligente, quanto menos completo, quadro de Heidegger, antes de nós podermos esperar obter um juízo excludente sobre as relações entre os escritos e o homem. Talvez, melhor fosse se estes escritos fossem publicados anonimamente e nós pudéssemos estudá-los somente por eles mesmos!
Pois nós devemos estudá-los. Disso eu estou convencido.
Eu gostaria de apontar apenas alguns dos entendimentos e re-avaliações imperativas, que nos obrigam a aceitar.Apesar de muito se dever a Kierkegaard, permanece radical o diagnóstico do tédio de Heidegger, da interior falta de moradia do homem moderno urbano, do ruído vazio no qual nós vivemos, do caráter de consumo de massa, das mortes individuais radicais. O antídoto de Heidegger – o regresso para o enraizamento, para a pátria, para a maneira e grandeza de Meβkirch – prefere o páthos romântico, prefere ser política e socialmente suspeito, porém o diagnóstico tem consistência. Após Agostinho e Pascal, ninguém olhou mais profundamente na tristeza, na furiosa falta de sentido da existência da humanidade.
O discurso metafísico de Heidegger é opaco e não permite discussão racional. A convicção do Heidegger tardio, que não é o homem que fala, mas a linguagem (“a linguagem fala”), que o verdadeiro poeta é alguém mediante o qual o ser fala, é de um grande poder sugestivo. Da mesma forma, é, de certo modo, improvável e até mesmo implausível, a sua crença de que certas manifestações dos filósofos pré-socráticos provam uma proximidade da linguagem com o Ser, uma evidência que nós perdemos. O próprio gênio lingüístico de Heidegger fez com que se tornasse palpável, por instantes, a sua visão do vigor produtivo perdido do discurso humano. Não há exagero quando se diz que nós leiamos ou devamos ler, posteriormente, a poesia de Martin Heidegger, também os grandes textos metafísicos, de outra maneira. Mesmo onde suas notórias etimologias de verbos e substantivos gregos ou alemães são simplesmente inaceitáveis, o “viver na linguagem” de Heidegger continua sendo um desafio duradouro e um trovão[?].
Os escritos de Heidegger sobre a arte, especialmente em seus anos tardios, me parecem de fundamental significado. Enquanto Heidegger inverte o paradigma platônico da mimese, ele localiza a cristalização da verdade, do ser efetivo na obra de arte. O velho par de sapatos de Van Gogh faz, assim ensina Heidegger, o autêntico “ser dos sapatos” visível. Na pintura, o ente é iluminado pelo ser; no templo grego, aquilo que os homens devem aos deuses e à terra adquire harmonia visível e significado. Estranhamente, Heidegger jamais escreveu sobre música em toda sua metafísica do indizível; contudo, é claro que “Sentido e Ser” ter-se-iam tornado mais evidentes na obra. O que ele, porém, diz sobre a realidade transcendental da arte permanecerá um dos grandes momentos na história da estética.
Com o tempo, nós veremos, eu acredito, na obra de Heidegger, o mais importante “passo além de Nietzsche”. A tentativa básica fundamental de interpretar o homem e o mundo ontologicamente, e não de maneira teológica. Eu não penso que esta tentativa tem sido bem-sucedida. Inumeráveis passagens quase impenetráveis na obra de Heidegger tornam-se completamente claras, quando nós colocamos “Deus” no lugar de “Ser”, quando reconhecemos nelas um discurso meta-teológico. Martin Heidegger tornou-se um dos maiores teólogos, mas sem Deus. Onde Nietzsche dançara, ali caminhava o homem da Floresta Negra. Pesado, obscuro, quase cego. Porém, seu ritmo transformou nossa paisagem.

 

Der gottlose Theologe

George Steiner

Die detektivischen Nachforschungen Von Hugo Ott haben restlos Klarheit geschaffen. Martin Heidegger sympathisierte mit dem Nationalsozialismus, schon bevor Hitler zur Macht kam. Seine Verstrickung in den Nationalsozialismus während des Rektorats 1933-34 war weit mehr als ein Fall von persönlicher Eitelkeit, von bürokratischherrischem Ehrgeiz und von Blindheit. Heidegger war vielen Aspekten des neuen Regimes entschieden zugetan. Wie Ott nachweist, war sein Verhalten während der Entnazifizierung nach 1945 feige und verlogen. Nach den Zeugnissen Otts und den unanfechtbaren Aussagen von Zeitgenossen wie Karl Löwith erscheint Heidegger als verschlagen, arrogant, zutiefst eitel und gelegentlich (in seinen Handlungen gegenüber bestimmten Kollegen) als böswillig.
In meinem Buch über Heidegger habe ich den Akzent auf die Zeit nach 1945 zu legen versucht. Tief bestürzend finde ich Martin Heideggers Schweigen nicht nur über die ganze Auschwitz-Welt und die Welt nach Auschwitz. Ein Denker des menschlichen Geschicks, der planetarischen Politik, des Wesens der menschlichen Institutionen wie der Industrie, des Sinns der Kunst schreibt, lehrt, predigt, als ob nicht schrecklichste Unmenschlichkeit vor seiner Tür sich ereignet hätte, als ob nicht das Wesen des Menschen und seines Verhältnisses zum Sein, zur Wahrheit, zur Sprache auf schreckliche Weise in Frage gestellt worden wäre. Auf die Welt – und es war eine Welt – der Todeslager nimmt Heidegger einem einzigen Satz Bezug, der wegen seiner eisigen Unangemessenheit berühmt geworden ist. Dieses lange Schweigen und sein unerfreuliches Nachspiel in den Ausflüchten un der rhetorischen Schläue des postum veröffentlichten Spiegel-Gesprächts sind für mich das Zentrum und gravamen des Rätsels Heidegger.
Ich glaube, daβ es Generationen, womöglich Jahrhunderte (man denke an die unabgeschlossne Debatte über den Tod des Sokrates) dauern wird, ehe man zu einem einsichtigen, geschweige denn vollständigen Bild von Heidegger gelangen kann, ehe wir hoffen können, über die Beziehungen zwischen den Schriften und dem Mann zu einem schlüssigen Urteil zu kommem. Wieviel besser wäre es gewesen, diese Schriften wären anonym erschienen und wir könnten sie bloβ um ihrer selbst willen als Texte studieren!
Denn studieren müssen wir sie. Davon bin ich überzeugt.
Auf nur einige der zwingenden Einsichten und Umwertungen, die sie uns aufnötigen, möchte ich hinweisen.
Obwohl sie vieles Kierkegaard verdankt, bleibt Heideggers Diagnose der Langeweile, der inneren Heimatlosigkeit des modernen städtischen Menschen, des leeren Lärms, in welchem wir unser Leben führen, des Charakters von Massenkonsum, selbst des individuellen Todes radikal. Heideggers Gegenmittel – die Rückkehr zur Verwurzelung, zur Heimat, zur Art und Gröβe Meβkirchs – mag romantisches Pathos, mag politisch und sozial suspekt sein, doch die Diagnose hat Bestand. Nach Augustin und Pascal hat niemand tiefer in die Traurigkeit, in die rasende Sinnlosigkeit des menschlichen Daseins geblickt.
Heideggers Sprachmetaphysik ist opak und läβt sich rational nicht diskutieren. Die Überzeugung des späten Heidegger, daβ nicht der Mensh spricht, sondern die Sprache („die Sprache spricht“), daβ der wahre Dichter einer ist, durch den das Sein spricht, ist von groβer suggestiver Kraft. Ebenso sein wiederum unerweislicher und sogar unplausibler Glaube, daβ bestimmte Äuβerungen der vorsokratischen Philosophen eine Nähe der Sprache zum Sein, eine Unmittelbarkeit beweisen, die wir verloren haben. Heideggers eigenes Sprachgenie lieβ augenblicksweise seine Vision der verlorenen zeugenden Kraft der menschlichen Rede greifbar werden. Es ist keine Übertreibung, wenn man sagt, daβ wir nach Martin Heidegger Dichtinug, aber auch die groβen metaphysischen Texte anders lesen oder lesen sollten. Selbst wo seine berüchtigten Etymologien griechischer oder deutscher Verben und Nomina schlicht unakzeptabel sind, bleibt Hedeggers „Leben in der Sprache“ eine beständige Herausforderung und ein Blitzschlag.
Heideggers Schriften zur Kunst, zumal in seinem späteren Jahren, scheinen mir von fundamentaler Bedeutung. Indem Heidegger das platonische Muster der mimesis umkehrt, lokalisiert er die Kristallisation der Wahrheit, des wirklichen Seins im Kunstwerk. Das Paar alter Schuhe von van Gogh macht, so lehrt Heidegger, das eigentliche „Sein der Schuhe“ sichtbar. In dem Gemälde wird Seiendes vom Sein erleuchtet; im griechischen Tempel erhält, was die Menschen den Göttern und der Erde schulden, sichtbare Harmonie und Bedeutung. Merkwürdigerweise hat Heidegger nie über Musik geschrieben, in der doch seine ganze Metaphysik von unnaussprechlichem, aber kalrem „Sinn und Sein“ am offensichtlichsten am Werk gewesen wäre. Doch was er von der transzendenten Wirklichkeit der Kunst sagt, wird einer der groβen Momente in der Geschichte der Ästhetik bleiben.
Mit der Zeit werden wir, glaube ich, in Heideggers Werk den wichtigsten „Schritt über Nietzsche hinaus“ sehen, den grundlegenden Versuch, den Menschen und die Welt ontologisch und nicht theologisch zu interpretieren. Ich denke nicht, daβ dieser Versuch gelungen ist. Zahllose fast undurchdringliche Passagen in Heideggers Werk werden vollkommen klar, wenn wir „Gott“ an die Stelle von „Sein“ setzen, wenn wir in ihnen einen metatheologischen Diskurs erkennen. Martin Heidegger zählte zu den gröβten Theologen, doch ohne Gott. Wo Nietzsche getanzt hatte, da ging der Mann aus dem Schwarzwald. Schwer, dunkel, nahezu blind. Doch sein Gang hat unsere Landschft verwandelt.

 

 

Voltar.

Anti-anti relativism, historicity and dissemination

- towards a justice of memory

Fabrício Pontin¹

 

Para Fábio Caprio e Walter Valdevino

 

Political theory, which presents itself as addressing universal and abiding matters concerning power, obligation, justice, and government in general and unconditioned terms, the truth about things as at bottom they always and everywhere necessarily are, is in fact, and inevitably, a specific response to immediate circumstances. However cosmopolitan it may be in intent, it is, like religion, literature, historiography, or law, driven and animated by the demands of the moment: a guide to perplexities particular, pressing, local, and at hand. (Geertz:2000,218)

 

At hand - we build our world with ready-to-hand-objects, objects that are on the horizon of our knowledge, upon which we may drive our concern and with whom we create. However those ready-to-hand objects change from place to place, and as the objects change so does the horizon of possible knowledge changes – consequently, we have different conceptions of world as we have different objects surrounding those who build-the world as such. An object only exists as such if we apprehend the object as an object. Such apprehending of something as something is relative; it stands on the openness of the world. This shift of horizon, shift of place, and shift conceptions of world (in the relation with the object) is precisely what is at stake for the cultural relativism; different views of what is the matter on the world implies on different actions towards the world and those with whom we inhabit this same world, with whom we share a form of being in the world. It is surprising, nevertheless, that even in a phenomenical understanding of the world as such the biological comprehensions of mankind as the same group of Rational Animals (complex organic beings, in the philo cordata, mammals, capable of sintax, etc.) remains an universal data about ourselves. Even so, from an anthropological point of view such universal data does not add or say anything to our comprehension as ourselves or about the existence of something we may call Culture – here understood as the sharing of conceptions by a group of people according to what the objects that surround them are. This implies that Culture is an universal element in its form but never in its content; on one hand, one may say that there are cultures, but on the other one cannot quite establish what is the common-ground between cultures or whether such a common-ground actually exists.

 

We also say of some people that they are transparent to us. It is, however, important as regards this observation that one human being can be a complete enigma to another. We learn this when we come into a strange country with entirely strange traditions; and, what is more, even given a mastery of the country’s language. We do not understand the people. (And not because of not knowing what they are saying to themselves.) We cannot find our feet with them. (Wittgenstein: 1986, IIxi)

 

We cannot find our feet with them - it is precisely this lack of placement, this lack of a common ethos that is important to the concept of strangement, fundamental for the understanding of a relativist view in anthropology. Still, it must be clear that from the concept of strangement and from a cultural relativism it does not follow that moral judgements about cultures are not permitted or that one is not allowed to take a cultural standpoint when one makes a moral statement. On the contrary, the strangement itself is the taking of a moral position. What must be clear for us, and this is what I try to approach in this essay, is that the political mediation of the conflicts between cultures cannot follow a perspective that works on the difference between “civilized” and “uncivilized” or “reasonable” versus “unreasonable”. One may say that all cultures are capable of well ordering themselves according to a hypothetical original position – such as the Rawlsenian – ,and such sentence “all cultures are capable of well-ordering themselves accordingly to a hypothetical original position” does not imply in any problems to a relativist view; what causes some problems is to assume that once this original position is granted in the political sphere all cultures will come to – though by different reasons -, in minimal and similar principles of justice. Such conclusion may be desirable, but it is not something that we can expect as an universal data. In order to deal with different claims of different cultures we must accept the fact that different cultures have different conceptions of justice, right and principles – even though they share a similar original process of deliberation. Such different outputs in a similar process of deliberation arisen from different conceptions of world that do not share, for instance, a concept of reasonability or of justice as fairness.

 

It seems, however, that such scenario gets more complex in the international arena, especially for those who wish to keep a radical posture when faced with cultural conceptions. Global issues demand a change regarding some conducts – however: Can one claim that such conducts arise from a cultural background? It seems that most problems considered being global, nowadays, arisen from one of the following points:

 

1) Uncontrolled environmental exploration and degradation.

2) Utilization and production of weapons of mass destruction.

3) Flagrant disregard against a certain universal set of fundamental rights.

 

Insofar the first and second topics, it seems that there are no arguments of cultural order that may justify the indiscriminate destruction of the environment, or a security police that produces enough weapons to destroy the planet. Still, even if such arguments could find justification on cultural claims, such justification would provide reasons for a kind of conduct that would jeopardize the continuity of all cultures – including the culture that aims to justify its actions. In such scenario, it is possible to argue that the demand for a changing of behavior is acceptable, nevertheless exactly what is that could be demanded from a determine culture remains unclear, and at this point a public arena of discussion of what is demandable is necessary – at the same time, the negative side of this conclusion is the failure in the repeated trials of implementing such public arena in the international scenario. Moreover, one cannot help but notice that such failure is usually led by the same nations that claim to adopt a culture of tolerance or a political liberalism.

 

The third point though the less damaging in terms of the consequences to the globe, or to the continuing of the species, is the most highlighted on discussions regarding the cultural relativism – and most accusations against a relativist view. Nevertheless, I wish to approach such point through a less pragmatic fashion than the one I used in points one and two. Since at points one and two I focus my arguments on the difference between what we may demand and we can expect in public sphere, I will approach the matters of rights from a perspective identified with the problems of dissemination, focusing, mostly, in two issues regarding the universalism²:

 

1) The idea of a rigorous universalism finds a limit between the saying (dire) and the dictum (dit).

 

Among the saying and the dictum we find an empty space, a limit in the kantian meaning of the term. The universability of what is dictated (dit) crashes with the gramma in what is said (dire), as we can learn from Derrida. The letter has a potence that shifts the meaning of what is dictated, and faced with such dissemination universalism finds a limit, where the content is given by the potence of the letter (gramma). The pure form of law that is placed universally in Kant is set against this limit, as we can notice as we read the name of Kant’s work on international law: “The perpetual peace”: as one goes further in the reading of this work one concludes that the perpetual peace does not belong in this world, it is not possible. The perpetual peace seems closer to war memorials than to the UN Office.

 

When the simple form of law that obliges moral action is stated, Kant leaves the norm to rule without meaning. Thus, the norm remains valid, but the grounds on which the transcendental norm rule the actions are left with no content, and we are faced with a norm that rules the action but does not explicit on what grounds should one act – the form of the imperative is explicit, at the same time, its content is open to the interference of a sovereign power. At this point, it is simpler to understand what Walter Benjamin understands as the “state of exception as a rule”, such exception as a rule is precisely the paradox of an imperative that at the same time opens an universal form of a rule, that is exposed to a direct interference from the outside. This understanding of the Benjaminian state of exception may help us understand the failures of an universalistic approach that aims to be considered as a political doctrine: what does the universal principle of Human Dignity refers to? How is one to enunciate such principles without facing the boundaries of the gramma? When one says that we are ruled by the principle of human dignity one does not say on which grounds that principle rule, neither enlights how such principle, in its universal form, is not open to be filled with meaning through a sovereign decision. In this sense, I believe that Walter Benjamin insight is still valid: The bare form of law that abstracts itself from all matter towards a rule without meaning, the “bare form of a universal legislation”, that, in Kant’s terms, is correlate to the “pure idea of the relation” of the transcendental object with an absolutely indeterminate thought, expresses a dualism between the transcendental form of law and its content that faced with the indetermination of the pure form of law is paradoxically subject to a sovereign power that establishes the content of the law, consequently – by the correlation of transcendental and the empirical – saying what is the form of life and the form of living that the bare lives subject to the transcendental schema are set to be ruled by.

 

1. Justice is a historic and cultural conception, and as such any claims of Justice is connected to specific conceptions of history and memory that will mediate the local understanding of “human rights”, and even the possibility of talking about “human rights” inside certain cultures.

 

If we understand “human rights” as the ground for the juridification of “fundamental rights” (FLICKINGER, 1986:117-129), the possibility of an universal claim for certain fundamental rights looses its strength, since we are not sure we can talk about “human rights”, certainly the juridical form of such rights, understood as “fundamental” are even more difficult to state.In his ninth thesis (aphorism) on the concept of history, Walter Benjamin takes the angel of Klee on a trip over the ruins of history³. In this trip, all the angel sees is destruction, death and desolation, for such is the history of mankind: a history of repeated failures while searching for peace, a repetition of war, a Rule of Law that only affirms a sovereign exception. Walter Benjamin would despair over such projection of destroyed passages; ruins and statues, which in its own particular way, were monuments of culture and also monuments of barbarianism. There was no exit, in Benjamin, towards an affective memory of this destruction; all that was left was the waiting for a messiah that would come throught the interval of history- nevertheless the messiah always arrives too late. As in the kantian perpetual peace, the Messiah arrives only to pacify the struggle for a way out of the indetermination of the gramma, but his arrival is always after the happening. As Adorno once said, the imperative that “Auschwitz can no longer happen” is only possible after Auschwitz has happened, and then it is too late.

 

Derrida finds in this impossibility of justice a peculiar kind of madness. In Benjamin’s view of the ruins of history, Derrida finds a relation with the lost object that creates a mystical conception of justice, connected with a memory of what is lost.

 

Ruin is not a negative thing. First, it is obviously not a thing. One could write, maybe with or following Benjamin, maybe against Benjamin, a short treatise on the love of ruins. What else is there to love, anyway? One cannot love a monument, a work of architecture, an institution as such except in an experience itself precarious in its fragility: it has not always been there, it will not always be there, it is finite. And for this very reason one loves it as mortal, through its birth and its death, through one’s own birth and death, through the ghost or sillouette of its ruin, one’s own ruin–which it already is, therefore, or already prefigures. How can one love otherwise than in this finitude? Where else would the right to love, even the law of love, come from? (Derrida,1990:1009)

 

The ruins remind us of a lost object, that give us the dimension of temporality. Searching for the lost object is searching for the time that was lost – once we are in the ruins we can remember what once stood in the place where we find debris, and if we lack a memory of what is lost, we can create a story and fill with affective meaning the ruins. From this encounter with the lost object we can also reach a constitution of a common ethos; hence our moral conception is intimately connected to a conception of historicity, and once we have common conceptions of history we may also build common ethos, common ways to inhabit the world. Such forms-of-being-in-the-world, however, change through time and place, our common ethos is a permanent construction that is placed against the finitude.

 

Still, to say we inhabit the world does not mean we inhabit the world in the same manner. We inhabit and build world differently, in particular ways, and precisely because our form-of-being is particular we may speak of a demand for justice – since there would be no need of speaking about justice were there no other to demand for justice to be made. Communitarian conceptions of justice will often collide for this different conceptions and demands for justice, and the challenge that is set for those who study political philosophy is to think on ways of respecting this grounding historicity and, at the same time, deal with the problems that arise from such different conceptions.

 

Nous n’avons pas le temps d’analyser ici ce texte et ce n’est pas le lieu de le faire. Il nous faut seulement, entre Kant et Lévinas, aiguiser ici une différence qui compte aujourd’hui plus que jamais quant à ce droit du refuge et à toutes les urgences qui sont les nôtres, partout où, en Israël, au Ruanda, en Europe, em Amérique, en Asie et dans toutes les églises St Bernard du monde, des millions de « sanspapiers» et de « sans domicile fixe » exigent à la fois un autre droit international, une autre politique des frontières, une autre politique de l’humanitaire, voire un engagement humanitaire qui se tienne effectivement audelà de l’intérêt des États-nations. (Derrida, 1997:175)

 

Derrida gives us two important insights in this essay, upon which I wish to conclude this essay: first, the reference to Kand and Levinas as two philosophers among (entre) which we must find a mediation. What could be the reason to refer authors that at first may seem so distant from each other? Kant was not able, with the transcendental analytic, to deal with the problem of the Being, and in order to overcome this, the transcendental schema is provided in the Critic of Practical Reason as a way to deal with people from a normative-reflexive point of view. With this schema Kant sacrifices ontology in order to provide a study of morals inside the critical perspective. This sacrifice that puts Dasein as a data that cannot be known, creating a form of thought that allow us to deal with the concept of person only politically is one of the most important points for the shift proposed by Heidegger that would once again revolutionize metaphysics: the transcendental analytic would be turned into an existential analytic, in order to provide the structures that would make it possible to build Dasein as

the ontological ground and condition of possibility for all philosophical discourse.Nevertheless, if Kant had sacrificed ontology in his schema, Heidegger clearly sacrificed political thought in order to make such existential analytics possible. In this context, Levinas proposes the ethos and not the ontological as the condition of possibility – a postheideggerian return to Kantian morals.

 

Levinas shares with Kant, hence Derrida quote, a grounding concern with the moral act. However, as this act is placed from a metaphysical and normative point of view in Kant, Levinas places the ethical as the ground for all action and relation to and with the other. The condition of possibility for existence itself is not ontological, but ethical – there must be a relation that makes it possible for the Being to exist. The ethical gives existence a meaning – even in its denial. Levinas is not trying an uplifting and spiritual discourse, but placing the ethos as the first relation, ontology is not fundamental because it is preceded by a relation with the other that is ethical in its origin. Thus, when Derrida reminds us of this mediation among Kant and Levinas, what is at stake is the need to inform Kantian morals with an existential meaning, bringing the problem of ontology into normativity. When Derrida writes about a humanitarian engaged (un engagement humanitaire) politic what is suggested is that the subject should take a position about politics, in opposition to a politic system that takes the subject as a data in his bare life. The subject must affirm oneself beyond the State and beyond a certain conception of rights and norms. As we see in the international scenario non-governmental organizations and individuals that are eager to keep a certain authenticity inside the system and rule of law, Derrida’s position seems less empty and metaphysical than a fast reading could suggest: politics of engagement or politics of authenticity arise as a real possibility and in an universal fashion -as memory.

 

Part II

6.421 -It is clear that ethics cannot be expressed. Ethics is transcendental. (Ethics and æsthetics are one.). (Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logico – Philosophicus, 6.421)⁴

 

217. “How am I able to obey a rule?”-if this is not a question about causes, then it is about the justification for my following the rule in the way I do.

If I have exhausted the justifications I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: “This is simply what I do.” (Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations, I – 85e). ⁵

 

Despite the efforts made by Levinas and Derrida in order to claim a prevalence to ethics in contemporary philosophy, it is necessary to investigate the epistemic conditions of such claims. How is it possible – if it is possible at all – to state a necessary moral obligation towards something or someone? How can we say that something that happens is always already a moral fact? Moreover, when we follow rules, do we actually consider deontological circumstances, or do we just follow rules, with no consideration at all⁶?

In this sense, it is interesting to notice the defense strategy of the accused by the war tribunal in Nuremberg. Most accused by the tribunal claimed to have had “followed current rules” or “obeyed superior orders”. Formally, this argument cannot be considered false: the sending of people to concentration, labor and death camps, the carrying on of medical procedures with no consent from the subjects, and so many other facts were all legitimized by the positive legislation in the time of the 3^rd Reich. The wide system of rules that gave support to such actions was the same that would threat those who denied themselves to carry such practices with martial court. In this sense, how are we able to say that all those actions were wrong? Moreover, are we eager to admit that such actions were wrong, but they were not illegal?

Hannah Arendt in her famous report on the judgment of Eichmann in Jerusalem reproduces some of these questions, and brings to the discussion a decisive argument: if we are to understand that the system of laws has supervenience over our own moral convictions, we may then justify the actions of Eichmann.

When the possibility of moral facts and moral acts is questioned, the possibility of defining something as essentially moral is at stake – can we say that acting in a certain manner is “wrong” with the same kind of empirical and epistemic force that we can claim that it is “wrong” to say that one cannot grow wings and fly? Arendt’s thesis on the construction of the world through language seems to indicate that everytime we speak, our words carry a moral meaning, the world- forming (weltbildend) characteristic of men is a linguistic ability, at the same time that it is carrying of a moral sense⁷. Whenever we talk, Arendt claims, we structure the moral standards of the community wherein we live – there is no act of language, or speech act, that is not also a moral act as far as Arendt’s metaphysics are concerned.

However, if we speak differently and have different believes towards the moral relevance of certain facts, it seems that we cannot universalize claims of morality, nor can we state that facts always have a certain moral relevance – or a moral relevance at all. As Geertz states, all our moral convictions reflect necessities at hand. Our immediate necessities are reproduced from the community and towards a specific moral universe. If we can say that most communities are capable of booing someone who is pedophile, and also that most communities are capable of saying “hooray!” when one helps an old and blind lady to cross the street⁸. We cannot say the same about a claim on equality among men and women on civil prerogatives, if we divided communities in a football stadium, the audiences would be divided among those who enthusiastically support equality and those who think there are certain prerogatives women should not be granted. And a fight among both groups is very likely to occur.

In this sense, we cannot speak of moral facts except artificially, and by artificially I mean after the mediation of the fact with the communitarian and subjective expressions toward the fact. We can say that “Auschwitz happened, and a lot of people were killed” , there is enough evidence to state the fact of Auschwitz – we have the remnant of this fact. However, as we say that “Auschwitz is itself a moral problem, it is always already a moral issue.”, we state only our capacity of identifying that event as a moral event – when we perceive something wrong in a event we do not refer to the event in itself but to our capacity to give this event a moral meaning – when one speaks of the importance of memory what is at stake is precisely the capacity of keeping informing facts with moral meaning. We cannot speak of morality outside our own comprehension of memory and outside culture – when Benjamin speaks of the arrival of the Messiah that would give meaning to our formal structures, he also says the Messiah always arrives too late⁹. Our moral apprehension seems to do the same at times: we can only identify the absurdity of some past events after those events have actually happened – this seem to enforce the thesis that the events in itself do not carry meaning. As stated in the first part of this essay, memory is build subjectively and inside the community as one relate to the objects that surround him, and, perhaps more importantly, with the others that will allow him to identify difference. However, such construction is not universal, but embedded in meaning by cultural standards that occur in time.

This implies that moral judgments reflect the relation of the subject with the place where he was socialized, and above all, with the peculiarities of his socialization in this environment. Thus, when we say “this is immoral” we imply in our statement the local and subjective contigences that led to such statement – if may refer to a semantic-transcendental structure to justify the reasonableness of our claim, but such structure is an artificial paradigm, a field wherein we can justify our claims. At this point, the reference to Kant and the test to the categorical imperative is a good illustration. We never have the imperative itself, what we are given is a structural reference that may help us test our claims in order to see if they might be considered imperative. The form of law that the passes the test of the categorical imperative is not the categorical imperative itself, but the reflex of adequation of a conduct to a number of principles that Kant desired to state universally.

Once we recognize that we have lost the referent to an universal morality, how are we to set the rules of the game we are playing? After all, sooner or later we are bound to find someone who thinks differently – a member of the other team.

When the issues of estrangement were addressed it was stated that the necessity of distancing oneself to understand the other was a kind of moral judgment. Whenever we are inside our own community, among people who think in a similar fashion to ours, we do not need to take distance .

Relativism states that the estrangement is always a moral estrangement, we feel defied by someone who brings a different perspective to our own conceptual-world, that shows that our very cherished concepts of “right” and “wrong” are not universal, are not safe. However, we should not imply that the fact that someone comes with different conceptions of morals means that anything goes. One of the most common disputes regarding relativism is that such approach would necessarily lead to a nihilistic comprehension of morals, that estrangement would be a view from nowhere, a position of a meta-spectator that just accounts on different and prosaic forms to deal with morality.

It seems that this is not necessarily the case. What relativists try to show is that there are different world views, and that our comprehension of moralities is just as failed as any other. Sooner or later, we will be faced with someone that will not act accordingly to what we consider moral. This does not mean we should let go of our own intuitions regarding morals, but might show that we should be open to at least rethink some, and to let the conceptions of the other be considered into our own system. This exchange of historicities is the pedagogical ground of a cosmopolitanism – a Kantian subtlety that is sometimes overseen.

Derrida takes this insight from Kant when he rights on a politics of hospitality; to mediate different historical conceptions of justice and morality is necessary in order to develop an international policy that could be actually called cosmopolitan. From an institutional standpoint perhaps we could follow a point where authors as different as John Ralws and Michel Foucault seem to agree: the same State that is idealized during the beginning of modernity as the structure that would protect the individuals from barbarianism, cannot differentiate among subjects to the extent of saying that a human being might be illegal, or bared of his rights out of force of law.

 

References

ARENDT, Hannah. Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, Brighton, Harvester Press, 1982

____.Eichmann in Jerusalem: a Report on the Banality of Evil, London, Faber & Faber, 1963

____.The Human Condition, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1958

BENJAMIN, Walter. The arcades Project. New York: Belknet press, 2001.

_____. Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings. New York: Scholken,

1986.

DERRIDA, Jacques. On cosmopolitanism and forgiveness. London : Routledge, c2001.

____. Adieu à Emmanuel Levinas. Paris: Galilée, 1997.

____. Of spirit: Heidegger and the question. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.

____. Force of law. In Cardozo Law Review, II, 1990.

FLICKINGER, Hans-Georg. “O paradoxo do liberalismo político: A juridificação da

democracia”. Filosofia Política 3 (1986): 117-129.

GEERTZ, Clifford. Avaliable light: Anthropological reflections on philosophical topics.

New York: Harvard University Press: 2001

HEIDEGGER, Martin. Phenomenological interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure

Reason. Bloomington : Indiana Univ. Press, 1997.

LEVINAS, Emmanuel. Humanismo do outro homem. Petrópolis : Vozes, 1993.

LÖWY, Michael. Walter Benjamin: aviso de incêndio: uma leItura das teses “Sobre o

conceito de história”. São Paulo: Boitempo:2005.

MACK, Michael. Between Kant and Kafka: Benjamin’s notion of law. In Neophilologus, n.

85:257-272, 2001.

RAWLS, John. The law of peoples : with “the idea of public reason

revisited”. Cambridge : Harvard University Press, c1999.

____. A theory of justice. Cambridge : Harvard University Press, c1999.

____. Political liberalism. New York, NY : Columbia University Press, c1996.

OLIVEIRA, Nythamar Fernandes de. Adeus: A epifania do Outro segundo Levinas. In

http://www.geocities.com/nythamar/adeus.html, último acesso em 16/01/2006.

SMITH, Michael. The Moral Problem, Oxford: Blackwell, 1994.

SOUZA, Ricardo Timm de. Razões plurais : itinerários da racionalidade ética no século

XX : Adorno, Bergson, Derrida, Levinas, Rosenzweig. Porto Alegre : EDIPUCRS, 2004.

____. Três teses sobre a violência : violência e alteridade no contexto contemporâneo.

Algumas considerações filosóficas. Civitas, v.1, n.2, 2001. p.7-10

1The first half of this essay was originally presented in a 2006/I seminar on international law and justice since the perspective of John Rawls (http://www.geocities.com/nythamar/direitos.html) , the essay was modified after being shown as a presentation paper in a seminar on Enlightenment and Messianism by professor Hans Georg-Flickinger. The original paper was selected to be a part of a book on Phenomenology and Hermeneutics organized by professors Nythamar Fernandes de Oliveira and Ricardo Timm de Souza. It was also selected and shown as a presentation in a seminar on Sociology of Law at PUC-RS. The second half of the paper is the result of my current research on moral epistemology and minimum normativeness.

2 It is important to highlight that I follow E. Tugendaht’s interpretation of universalism as a rigid doctrine of commandments - a different view of universalism, such as Hare or Benhabib have recently defended would demand a different kind of argumentation to he one I am following in this article.

3“A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.” [Es gibt ein Bild von Klee, das Angelus Novus heißt. Ein Engel ist darauf dargestellt, der aussieht, als wäre er im Begriff, sich von etwas zu entfernen, worauf er starrt. Seine Augen sind aufgerissen, sein Mund steht offen und seine Flügel sind ausgespannt. Der Engel der Geschichte muß so aussehen. Er hat das Antlitz der Vergangenheit zugewendet. Wo eine Kette von Begebenheiten vor uns erscheint, da sieht er eine einzige Katastrophe, die unablässig Trümmer auf Trümmer häuft und sie ihm vor die Füße schleudert. Er möchte wohl verweilen, die Toten wecken und das Zerschlagene zusammenfügen. Aber ein Sturm weht vom Paradiese her, der sich in seinen Flügeln verfangen hat und so stark ist, daß der Engel sie nicht mehr schließen kann. Dieser Sturm treibt ihn unaufhaltsam in die Zukunft, der er den Rücken kehrt, während der Trümmerhaufen vor ihm zum Himmel wächst. Das, was wir den Fortschritt nennen, ist dieser Sturm. Über den Begriff der Geschichte , VII]

4 Es ist klar, daß sich die Ethik nicht aussprechen läßt. Die Ethik ist transzendental. (Ethik und Ästhetik sind Eins.)

5 217. »Wie kann ich einer Regel folgen?« – wenn das nicht eine Frage nach den Ursachen ist, so ist es eine nach der Rechtfertigung dafür, daß ich so nach ihr handle.

Habe ich die Begründungen erschöpft, so bin ich nun auf dem harten Felsen angelangt, und mein Spaten biegt sich zurück. Ich bin dann geneigt zu sagen: »So handle ich eben.«

6 One must keep in mind that the Wittgenstein seems to refer to grammatical rules when he writes of our ability to follow certain linguistic patterns. However, Derrida has shown how the gramma may somehow constitute the nomos. We use language to express our moral claims, and in this sense, our moral claims also reach bedrock when we fail to express our reasons to act in a certain manner that we consider moral. The fact that we act and that such act may be informed morally nevertheless remains.

7 It is clear that Arendt takes her comprehension of Worldliness and World building from Heidegger’s seminar from

1929-1930 on the Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. However, her deontological interpretation of the constructio of the world wherein we life is a tentative to overcome Heidegger’s disregard for politics and morality on his works.

8I am following Smith’s account of Emotivism: moral claims as expressions of disapproval (BOO!) or approval (WOORAY!) in non-rational means.

9Also, Adorno: ” We can only speak of the imperative that Auschwitz cannot ever happen again after it has already happened, and then its too late”.

Voltar.