circumstantial subjectivism

The great crisis consists of something like the epistemological, logical and moral relativism of modernity, which advances a type of secularism marked by anti-religious militancy.

From the ancient Greeks to the modern ones (such as Nietzsche, a German thinker of the 19th century), the history of philosophical thought has been marked by the search for the quiddity of an entity; in other words, by the essentia (essence) of something that our experience, or thought, calls into question.

For example, you have this text in sight and yet, without realizing it, you immediately know the meaning of the letters and the message that unfolds here. Your understanding of the message is precisely the understanding of the essence. We could thus equate essence with discernment. However, in modernity, the understanding that the human capacity to apprehend the universal essence of a being in its universality was – at least – problematic, demanding a critique and abandonment.

A certain doubt then emerged in the West about the power of human rationality to determine the being of something.

Some literary movements are expressions of this crisis of thought. In 1916, several artists [or authors] founded the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. It is in this context that the Romanian poet Tristan Tzara (1896 – 1963) inaugurates the Dadaist movement, in the middle of the First World War, together with the artists Hugo Ball (1886 – 1927) and Hans Arp (1886 – 1966).

Dadaism, whose meaning has no apparent meaning in French (since it originates from “dada”, nothing more than “wooden horse”), precisely marks the character of irrationality. It was a way of expressing discontent.

The illogical (or irrational), that is, the absurd was what best characterized the time and still had the purpose of confronting the bourgeoisie.

"The work of art should not be beauty in itself, because beauty is dead" (TZARA).

What is at stake in surrealism, heir to Dadaism, is much more of the order of the oneiric world. Therefore, linked, as psychoanalysts say, to the domain of the pleasure principle, which is opposed by the reality principle. Something like waking delirium, the world of dreams and fantasy – fabbling like an imaginative child [1]. Officially, it was created in 1924, but, since 1919, works with this style were already produced. Its greatest representatives are the Spanish artists Salvador Dalí (painter) and Luis Buñuel (filmmaker).

The works focus on hidden desires, primitive impulses that are removed by reason. Surrealists reproduce a peculiar reality that transcends everyday life, with the issue of the struggle against the bourgeoisie ― as an expression of the prevailing order ― less intense.

On a timeline, movement is historically located between World War I and World War II. During this period, after the defeat of the German Empire, Europe was redesigned and new countries emerged. Russia, in turn, opened a new political and economic trajectory after the 1917 revolution. Alliances were confirmed or created; and treaties were signed, such as that of Versailles, which brought severe impositions on the German nation. In any case, all European countries found themselves immersed in an economic crisis.

In this scenario of reconstruction (sacrifices and uncertainties), the surrealist movement was born, which abandoned this heavy socio-political reality to explore the unconscious - perhaps this had some answer regarding psychic suffering.

Thus, his main non-artistic influence was the psychiatrist Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939), inventor of Psychoanalysis and investigator of the human unconscious. It is, therefore, in this movement of crisis of reason that what we know as globalization takes shape.

Globalization is the phenomenon of economic, social and cultural integration of geographic space, on a worldwide scale. It is characterized by the intensification of capital, goods, people and information flows, provided by technical advances in communication and transport. Our present world best expresses the idea of globalization. Today, we can video and/or audio chat with anyone, anywhere in the world. Space-time has been suppressed or, at the very least, subsumed.

As if all the diversity of perspectives were not enough [so to speak to refer to a plural world], we still have a crisis present in science, either because of its denial (antiscience), or because of it (in the case of quantum physics), that is , from the subatomic world by postulating the concept of the Uncertainty Principle, which, in short, marks the difficulty of precisely determining the objectivity of an observation, since the observer – in this case, the scientist – interferes with the observation.

Not only philosophy, but the arts, literature, architecture and science suffer in this historical period. If not only that, it is clear that the first two world wars around Capitalism versus Communism in the 20th century, as well as the political crises conditioned by such models [for example, the problem of whether the state should be maximum or minimum, i.e. , if we were to be more guided by a vision] reverberate in 21st century capitalism, in such a way that – even after the victory of capital – the neoliberal and progressive debate is still in question as a problem of the crisis of our time [which has not yet been resolved broke away from the 20th century]. That is, the problem of political ideology as a problem even after Terry Eagleton decreed the end of ideological society is still an issue that brings us some discomfort [2].

The world itself appears [3] as a crisis.

The great crisis, in our view (in addition to the characters above), consists of something like the epistemological, logical and moral relativism of modernity that advances a type of secularism marked by anti-religious militancy. The world becomes liquefied, fragmented. The unit dissolves in the ephemerality of experience and sensations ― obviously linked to capitalism (by the way). In Philosophy, and even in the philosophy of language, we experience [in our time] the crisis as a crisis of a language, whose character is that of artificiality; that is, the consistency we have with respect to the thing, for example, our “I”; and of the entity in sight (as an example, the table under which I am now writing) is nothing more than a false consistency arising from language, since the world as such ― the sciences inform us ― is dynamic, uncertain and impermanent (in the end, what difference does it make? do? Or, why is it necessary to problematize at this level?).

Nothing would be left for us but a singular illusion. There is no truth. There are no certainties. Everything is just language games, names, mental categories and even the will to power as what makes the ephemeral eternalization possible. Reason, therefore, would not be able to explain the world. Despite the fact that the problem is of the greatest importance and the most difficult to solve, we (thinkers) cannot help calling everything into question; even the problems!

Couldn't we think of something like the use of uncertainty, insecurity, nihilism... In short, of all the negativity of our time on the part of the market or even politics? Yes we can!

Daniel Bell (1919 – 2011) came to the fore for his positions on the end of ideology, set out in The End of Ideology (1960), where he postulated the decline of class ideologies in capitalist societies. According to Bell, the old themes of the ideological debate between "Left" and "Right" no longer serve to respond to the problems we face in the world and in our own home. As the spearhead of "convergence theory" which appeared in the late 1950s, Bell argued that social structure was actually shaped more by technical and economic imperatives than by political ideology. However, in Brazil in our period (2023), political ideology exerts a great influence on behavior, linguistic expression and political decisions.

With that, we want to explore another point: the notion of political ideology as an enormous simplification of reality ― that is, of the dynamic totality (mentioned before) that metaphysics in its two thousand years has not been able to satisfactorily define. In our country, simplification consists in the unrestricted adherence to ideological-political dogmas (“right” or “left”) as a rule of faith.

Now! In the last elections (2022) we saw this issue in the dispute of narratives and crimes on both sides. We therefore believe that adherence is all the more intense the greater the psychosocial and economic fragility of a given population. Thus, we believe in political ideology (above all) as an explanatory device, capable of determining [delimiting] the ontological-existential space. That is, ideology simplifies the complexity of the world. In this, it creates a space that welcomes our ways of being and existing (ontological-existential), ensuring a space of being and being [circulation of thoughts, experiences and affections].

Something like this occurs with regard to political ideas and ideals, depending on the problem of ontological indetermination [that is, of our human being-there] when rationally justifying oneself in the public space, for example, through social networks. That is, ideology helps us to present ourselves publicly without, however, needing to be perfectly rational or coherent.

Faced with some problems (such as abortion, euthanasia and the like), not only are the answers given in view of ideology, but they also contain another fundamental trait: circumstantial subjectivism.

It consists of something like the even unconsciously cherished philosophical doctrine that the truth is the individual lie. Each subject would have his own truth, but the idea of the subject is that he would project the object. Subjectivism attributes the source to each; and each has its own truth. However, perhaps it is impossible – because of this relativistic view – to have a common understanding [consensus].

It is not necessary to go far to question the absurdity. In this case, for example, the most blatant thing is that science would not be able to tell the truth. Nor, therefore, could he legislate on anyone. The problem of truth does not end with accepting the individual understanding of the facts of life, or the way each one sees and interprets life. There is, yes, an apparent truth, limited to everyday issues, and other possible practical functions of objects, when they can be given other uses.

However, about moral questions - for example, about good and evil, crime, the ends of life - we could not say anything, since everyone has his own way of evaluating the world, all these ways being equally different. true [because, in subjectivism, truth originates only in the subject]. In short, it means that terrorism, torture, murder, rape could not be penalized, at least if the principle (that the truth is in the subject) is carried out to the last consequences; for the terrorist, the torturer, the murderer have their truth.

Our world, thus, is the crisis [4].

Thiago Carvalho.

Psychologist and graduate student in neuropsychology.

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[1] In this part I am beginning to show how the world has gone from a mechanistic, logical, scientific world, where things are certain, to a world full of uncertainty, inconsistency, indetermination. Commenting on Dadaism and Surrealism is a way of appropriating the literary as a background that allows me to present more than logical-conceptual arguments. It is, therefore, a way of showing the phenomenon in its historical appearance. Therefore, I am not exactly interested in art in this text. It is a means to achieve another greater end [the text].

[2] I wanted to show that the 20th century was built by successive crises that, even after overcoming some (that is, even after the victory of capital, the ideology of the last century still survives in the 21st century, showing (thus) that we remain on the critical horizon.

[3] The "world appears" means that the world appears to us (as if it had the intention of showing itself to us) as a crisis, that is, crisis as indeterminacy and a critical or breaking point. It is an expression of phenomenological origin. The phenomenon is all in sight. Since the world is what we have in sight, the world appears to us (as a phenomenon). Appearing means the existential and historical mode of the world-being.

[4] Disruption of horizons, landmarks, hierarchy, concepts, systems, etc.