The paradigm shift (second part)
"Make revolution everywhere" thus spoke Sainte-Beuve of the Cartesian method. it is Descartes formulated the great paradigm that would dominate the West, the disjunction the subject and object, mind and matter, the opposition of man and nature. whether to from a paradigm of complexity, a new method can be born, incarnate, walk, progress, then it might be "make revolution everywhere," including the notion to become flattened revolution, conformist and reactionary.
Edgar Morin (Method, Vol. 1, The Nature of Nature)
This world, our vast and terrible world, here for the first time we are part.
Carl Sagan
Everything leads us to end the vision of a non-human nature and not of a man natural.
Serge Moscovici
Science moves, evolves, with the change of conceptual models guiding all speech. In many scientific fields we can see changes paradigms that more than mere "reforms" interesting the closed world of men Science, open new perspectives for humans in general. These changes paradigm in anthropology, biology, astrophysics, sociology (etc.) reveal horizons unexpected and upsetting vision that man has of himself and of the whole universe. Therefore a particular paradigm shift does not affect only one area but can cause upheavals in the way of thinking, raise questions philosophical and even affect the world of art or poetry. That is to say the importance of the topic that interests us and we will address mainly by study the exciting work of Edgar Morin, "The lost paradigm: human nature." After the first component that analyzed the new conceptions of the universe, this study therefore proposes to hold forth on what we now call human nature. He This is therefore a broad issue affecting more or less directly anthropology, biology, sociology and philosophy. To introduce in the first place, the work of Edgar Morin it is worth noting its rich documents and information various and by that very competence of the author, but above all clarity, clarity of text, easy approach due to the choice of non-ludicrous expressions. Moreover, the many digressions, accounts of experiences do not interfere with the fervent reader scientific theories neglected in a timely manner for the benefit of comments, criticisms Edgar Morin. Before addressing the direct study of the "Paradigm Lost" is nature human it is necessary to point out that behind the sociologist, the researcher what originally Morin, hides an analyst, a remarkable observer of nature and consequently rights.
The Edgar Morin project is to establish that man, more a descendant of primates, final stage of a long evolution, is primarily a primate (albeit endowed with reason) that has build cultural stronghold but everything suggests that it remains natural. Edgar Morin is therefore working to inhibit, destroy the myth of Man only cultural demonstrating that there is no hyphenation, no difference in nature / culture. The Culture can not be an "independent kingdom" of nature simply because its ruler is 'cultural'. Since the dawn of civilization man thinks, as highlighted Morin, "extra-natural or supernatural" by his many creations and domestication primates. The philosopher who has contributed most to this belief is no doubt René Descartes whose project for the improvement of the human condition to "make ourselves masters and possessors of nature "(Discourse on Method, Part VI) is originally upsetting all our natural atavism. Indeed, Morin notes that "since Descartes, we think against nature ensured that our mission is to dominate, to control, the to conquer ". The Human destiny is no longer dependent on nature, man was able build a cultural universe based at the expense of "virtues" of nature. The man, continues Morin, is subject in a world of objects and so "over-natural." Nature has always formed among philosophers a subject of meditation (especially in "physiologists" Presocratics, Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau), and human nature for remained much uncertainty, abstruse thing unknown. The latter, because elusive, obscure, became assimilated to matter that only the form (which can be here, history or culture) - Set. Human nature is so for some (JJ Rousseau, for example) a paradigm lost forever, for others, a pure chimera fruit utopian theories of metaphysicians unconcerned about reality.
Breaking cultural insularity of the man remains a company in the sense difficultueuse that the philosophy of non-natural man has since Descartes, everywhere widespread.
Some outstanding minds have nevertheless tried to open breaches in the wall that between nature and culture, human and natural disorder reigns, human society and packs or animal hordes. The painter Braque, to name one, alleged, that on one of its paintings featured an imaginary light, he respected the reality making himself part of the Nature (his whole ego, to use a Kantian term which presupposes its imagination, sensitivity ...). The fact remains that was formed from the "Humanist myth of the supernatural man" kind of antinomy / culture, human / animal a paradigm. Morin says he is inept to consider antithetical natural duality / culture human / animal simply because the man can not be made of dual way, ie, bio-natural and psychosocial. The man says Edgar Morin, is "a bio-psycho-all sociological ". If, indeed, as we have seen previously, human nature, 'Biological being of man "is a material that forms the culture, where does Asks Morin, culture? Anthropology begs the fundamental question. As stated Friedrich Hölderlin, the essential problem was to approach nature poetically and grasp the essence of "natural", "the Ideal relayed Nature" (Hyperion) by the same token, abstractly said that nature has risen to the status of culture where reign the Ideal. Culture according to the German poet and an ideal of human nature which is the desire to own rise by the reflexivity of his will (will of the will confer Nietzsche). By myth the extra-natural man, we could observe there are twenty years of strict separation Triad Man Culture, Life-Nature, Physics and Chemistry in three independent levels:
Man - Culture Life - Nature Chemical Physics
Morin notes that the past twenty years the breaches were made that demolishing the old paradigm of a disorderly nature of a non-natural man and disorganized life. There is first the "biological revolution" that confronts notions order and disorder by considering life as a complex and self-organizing.
All living machines are then perceived as reliable, capable of regenerating, reproduce, in which various interactions made-in-game reveal their complexity. There is, can we say a logic of living in uncertainty, chance, disorder that opens perspectives and causes a breach to the "destruction" of the paradigm that we captious interested, "the logic of living is undoubtedly more complex than our understanding applies to things, although our understanding is a product of this logic. " The knowledge of this logic of living as a product of the logic of our understanding tends already to reduce the gap between with the human paradigm extra- natural, man (culture) and nature. More than offering new perspectives epistemological, this knowledge opens new horizons revealing metaphysical the unity of living (mind-body) in its complexity "as the" biological revolution " just begun. The old paradigm is crumbling, the new is not made. But the notion of life is now changed: it is, implicitly or explicitly linked to ideas of self-organization and complexity. "The new ecological theory modifies it, the notion of nature. Nature no longer offer the eyes of scientists, where chaos reigns of the fittest but appears as a global organization. The beings of the community alive, notwithstanding the chance and uncertainty seems self-regulated (balance rate reproduction and mortality rates from random interactions), hierarchical, based as in human societies over the competition. In short, the overall unity of living beings (Ecosystem) appears through these complex foundations as self-organized. It is the whole idea of nature, by "ecological revelation" exchange "ecology, or rather the écosystémologie is a science born. But it is already a capital contribution to the theory of self-organization of life, and in terms of anthropology, she rehabilitates the concept of Nature and rooted there man. Nature is not disorder, passivity, environment amorphous; it is a complex totality. The man is not a closed entity with respect to this complex totality: it is an open system in relation to independence / dependence organizer in an ecosystem. "
Ethology, said Morin, opens biologism "up" in the student animal behavior in the wild. It upsets the idea of animal whose behavior was hitherto regarded as governed either by reflex or by instinct conservation, survival, backup or playback. It is not so ; The behaviour animal is organized and organizer that animals communicate and express themselves in diverse and complex messages. The communication system between animals reveals a more hierarchical society, organized relatively complex way rules appear rigid.
The ultimate "breach" that allows to remove the hyphens between the three levels aforesaid and cause an epistemological welding and thus change the paradigm of extra-natural man is that offered by the "bio-sociological revelation 'that interests straight man. Human sociology is not unique in the world of the living. He are, as everyone knows, ant societies, bees, but certainly recognized considered perfect example of antisociété based solely on the rule of obedience instinctive. Moreover, these cases were considered exceptional, case in which not reveal an animal sociology.
Groups of animals, packs, hordes, troops show more than single herd instinct, a real society organized in complex ways. The man has not invented the hierarchical structure of the group communication; sociology, Morin says, loses its insularity and became the coronation, the perfect result of the general sociology. And human social order is not to oppose the corporate mess animal. This "bio-sociological revelation" makes change not only the idea of society but also the idea of monkey and human mind. The company primates is seen as one that led, through a long evolution of men. As well as Human Physiology "comes" from that of primates, the social body derives companies animal.
These various "revelations" or revolutions thus upset the nature of ideas, society, animal and especially human. Man is no longer the complacent demigod in his but rationalized world becomes bio-cultural, animal scientist who rediscovers his roots natural, which stops thinking against nature. The long analysis of animal societies, the animal behavior in parallel with human behavior leads to Edgar Morin this conclusion: "that dies today, it is not the notion of man, but insular notion of man cut off from nature and his own nature. "
This return to the lost paradigm is human nature remains a fairly good example change of paradigm itself revealing of scientific developments while entire ...
Political Ideologies and Human Rights
The project of a problem on the issue of political ideologies and Human rights is no less a subject intended to categorize the different types ideologies throughout history and geopolitics in their acceptance of core values. Form which is of current typology face of globalization, the various contexts socio-economic and structural. It is in this eternal problem of sovereignty and freedom of axiological and moral conflict which finds its culmination in the impossibility of legislate or manage the foundations of political power with the common good. It is not be over index the "trade down" of politics and law by a specious idea and high state. The ideology fits into this paradox now dominates the field booked an elitist thinking. These persist beyond the turmoil, shock socioeconomic and creep rained tendentiously to the problem with a increased acuity. They question the role of the intellectual in society, media to our way of thinking. It was in this meeting between the world of thinking Today respect for individual freedom and matching of Human Rights that will now pose such a problem to decide on the values of the world tomorrow.
Political science
The field of Political Science taught a field of investigations profuse and varied in the development of issues concerning public affairs. extended in the social area, legal, historical, geo-political and even philosophical them questioned by asking theoretical and practical problems for the development of a knowledge constantly updated in both Institutes, Universities by studying specialized.
In Western Democracies and Third worlds since the fall of the Empire Soviet announcement of the end of ideology was able to illusion. These drawing in all social strata that keep him a crucible not lend anything to the age of Globalization other forms of mass political thoughts. Political Parties of mass like unions where Schools of thought inspired the work of representatives.
Towards the discovery of death, temporality, and nothingness
anxiety M. de Unamuno
1) The relationship life-death
Life and death are closely related both empirically and conceptually. Sure empirically that all life leads to death. From a conceptual point of view, the concepts of life and death imply each other in some way. The concept of "Death" is generally understood as opposed to "life" or at least in relation to it by reference to the final limit of life. The philosopher focuses on human death. The man is to be able to question the death. The man is being one aware of his own death and therefore able to anticipate it. There is no However, to say with certainty if this feature is specific to it. The other fact particularly humans is that death is deeply linked to his life, it is part of his vital project. Man is the animal that keeps its dead and the only one who theorizes about death and tries to understand, perhaps, also, the only one which does not conform to death considered as total annihilation. The man is the problem of death by urgency to understand his own life to give it meaning. Life, normally (at least in a theoretical level) does not necessarily mean death, it could indeed be a life unending. But man confronts in daily experience the death of his similar and they deduced his own death. Philosophers have raised the question as center of the analysis. It is impossible to understand the life of the design of the Christian philosophy regardless of the meaning of death as the gateway to a another life. It is from the XIX th century that the concern for the problem of death gradually acquired importance in the same philosophical thought in authors as Dilthey and Simmel, whose own philosophical tendencies were lands on a ontology of life that could not be agreed as stated in its connection with Heidegger the death.
Heidegger sees the mortality constitutive of the being of Dasein; for the German thinker, death is being constitutive of Dasein is being-towards-death. The death is always imminent for Dasein. It is a clean event at Dasein. Death is, Heidegger, the most special opportunity.
One possibility when human life begins. Before Heidegger and Dilthey, Mr. de Unamuno affirmed the same things, obsessed with the problem of death. according to Unamuno, life should consist, in addition to a meditation on death, in preparation for death. Unlike Spinoza, for Unamuno the object of knowledge is not life but death, while that of science is life. He says in "Sobre la europeización" ( "on Europeanisation ") science says," he must live "and is seeking ways to extend the life, the increase of the aid, to expand, to make it bearable. Knowledge says, "must die ", and seek ways to prepare for it well. According Unamuno there no truer freedom than that of death for which assumes that life and death to complement each other. Unamuno frequently not as calmly accept death and considers consistent with Senancour an injustice sometimes as a punishment. The unamuniennes ideas Avelina Lafuente notes that life is "dying" and that death is his supplement were taken a few decades later by researchers in medicine and in psychology who saw the presence in the life of "irreversible process" of death. The Death can be designed either as dialectically opposed to life is as intrinsic to she. Unamuno reminds us Lafuente identifies two realities.
2) Different attitudes to death. The "meditatio mortis" our time and Unamuno
Attitudes to the problem of death and designs vary among individuals one time or another, in different countries or different cultures and societies. The attitudes can also vary in the different stages of human life. these attitudes can be synchronic and diachronic. From a synchronic point of view, a man called "primitive" culture, will face the problem of death in a way different than a man of the 'industrialized' countries where life expectancy is greater. There is also differences among primitive peoples that anthropologists identified explain the death or by external agents to natural causes (men, objects) or by following offenses to the gods. It also exists in industrialized countries differences between countries by religious, cultural. Differences also vary by social group (we do not see death the same way to the city or fields).
On the diachronic perspective, there are variances according to the steps of the life of the individual or according to historical periods.
There are times, indeed, in the life of the man or preoccupation with death seems not to exist and others where it is vivid and present. In childhood the human being seems not aware of the problem of death. "The child says Unamuno, feels immortal - I would say better - it is out of death and immortality: he feels eternal because he saw the whole time that passes. " Unamuno speaks of a "spiritual puberty" that do not necessarily coincide with the physiological puberty when one becomes aware of fundamental human problem. In "Niebla" he called that moment "second birth "or" real birth ". During youth and maturity (especially during the first), we think, in general, little death, or at least, it is not the problem of dramatically (except in times of crisis). In old age, rather the problem arises drastically even anguished by individual and personal beliefs. We becomes aware of the passage of time and the imminence of death. It is however other periods where "one does not detach from the gaze of the Sphinx," where man confronts the mystery of the final destiny. These periods often coincide in transitions youth to maturity, for example. At other times the human being seems to have completely forgotten the question. The man finally has no equal interest to the problem of death in all historical periods and did not face the same way. In history of philosophy, for example, the problem is to a certain thinkers decisive, for others it is forgotten. Periods of crisis and decay promote the resurgence of this problem. According to the J. Marias "meditatio mortis" is a themes characteristic of our time (just see the importance of this theme in the existentialist thought, inaugurated in "Being and Time" in 1927). Unamuno was originally of this philosophical tendency by his interest in the concrete man and the problem of death. Unamuno is, therefore, a thinker of our time.
3) Unamuno faces death
Unamuno was hit by several near deaths, including that of his father when he had not six. That of a college friend afflicted him later. He witnessed, at sixteen, to the first time, the death of someone, his paternal grandmother. Avelina Lafuente omits not to report the tragic event that darkened his maturity, disease and the death of his Raimundo son which led to a serious personal crisis in 197. Two loved ones Unamuno also died before his mother and wife who inspired him many poems - His favorite phrase means - can not explain how all "Encounters" with the death of Unamuno this concern is perhaps a trait race as emphasized A. Guy, perhaps similar effect of pathological anxiety fruit of his neurosis that make any manifest the importance of psychological and temperamental factor in relationship with Unamuno, with the problem of death. The family and religious education have contributed to the formation of this character if unamunien predisposed to experience the problem death acutely and anticipate one way or another.
4) The imaginative anticipation of death
It seems qu'Unamuno felt this need, particularly intense, anticipating, as evidenced by his literary work, death. Unamuno assist us in Most dramas or news as in "Paz la guerra" to the death characters. Unamuno often sits death to sleep sometimes requires a walk to the early ages of the individual life. Among all the characters news or unamuniens dramas ( "Paz la guerra", "El Otro", "La tia Tula", "Nada menos that todo un hombre ") remains a common point: the radical solitude of the dying and another manner of one who remains. According Marías, in his book "Miguel de Unamuno" the vision more fruitful de Unamuno about the problem of death is its interpretation as loneliness which is neither analyzed nor themed, barely suggested. Serrano Poncela sees this aspect of death felt like poetic intuition, constant radical presence in Unamuno of loneliness by the peculiarity of each death whose experience can be reiterated. He also sees the appearance agonist in anguish immortality revealed by various processes. Besides the imaginative anticipations of death offered by characters unamuniens, Unamuno expressed other personal experiences in his poems and autobiographical works with the attempt to imagine the death of another, as a process reported to his own eventual death. Fernández y González explains the spiritual crisis 1897 by the emotion of death and anguish of nothingness.
5) contingency, finitude and temporality
For the Basque thinker limitation, finitude, contingency are the characters essential to the human being. Man carries in itself, by its ontological constitution, possibility of death. Unamuno is aware of the precariousness and the free man on Earth. Contingency The idea of human beings as the initiative of Leibniz and before Heidegger's reformulation was imposed on him as stated in one of the protagonists of "Niebla": "For it need be he was God, the world and nothingness? "Why should there be Something ? The most radical contingency farm here the way for any kind of need. But Unamuno can not accept free of human existence. He looked for a way give life but to endless life, always struggling against death and against the same life quota. Unamuno which considers "that" the spring of living is the anguish of survival time and space, are confronted with the sensation of its own limit - we are beings whose existence unfolds between limits - and concludes that the awareness of oneself itself is nothing but the awareness of his own limitations. Unamuno was a being who rebelled against his condition and sought infinitude. It is in this sense says Grangel that the confrontation with the finitude motivates confused anxiety to survive, to save bodily annihilation implied death. Clearly the issue of annihilation confused with Unamuno. If he rebelled against the contingency of the human being, he had more reason to do against finitude to more serious consequences. In his rebellion, he called an infinite being, contrefigure this lonely man on earth God. As thinker concerned about the time and finitude, says Lafuente, Unamuno was a man of his time and a precursor. Time he held the irreversible and fleeting appearance. This theme nodal in thought unamunienne was often placed in opposition to the concept of eternity. Eternity, paradoxically, it is the abyss of endless peace, absence of becoming, it does not lead us into the future.
Unamuno, although he was interested in his own roots, he showed nostalgic in his elegies. If Unamuno emphasizes the dimension of the future of human life, This is due to the particular structure of the latter he called "Vector". Life is in Indeed, facing the future with their essential constitution.
6) The shadow of nothingness and anxiety
As Pascal saw the man caught between two infinities, its own finitude radical and its higher aspirations, Unamuno regarded man as torn between two opportunities / threats of death as total qu'annihilation and aim to prolong its existence in time and extend into space, and to be forever the whole being. Man can realize its annihilation, its own empty (Emptiness), but from her, wants to exist as fully as possible. There are two extreme contraposés, fullness and nihilité (empty), and between them stands the human existence aware of its own ontological limits. The problem is posed in Unamuno to be concrete (because it is human life is at stake) and not to the pure metaphysical level (at this that death implies). This is the man who is torn between being and non-being. The research unceasing ways of salvation, of survival is always accompanied with Unamuno, terror nothingness. From a religious perspective it appears in "Diario intimo", another aspect Human nothingness, the need to "annihilate" in God to annihilate nothing. The author speaks then a more terrible nothingness as eternal death, referring to his time intellectualist and atheist, he says: "I flirted with the nothingness, the ideational destruction of everything I reduces the smallest phenomenon; I wanted to do my nothingness the center of the universe. "
At about the same time the accents of hope echoing in "Diario" absent "if there is no end in creation, everything is really absurd ..."
Saturated scientism and disillusioned by his political ideals? it was thought that the science and progress were of no use if its "single issue" was resolved or worse, if the destiny of man is nothingness. J. Marias believes in the significance of this unamunienne concern nothingness qu'Unamuno "smelled and felt like nobody, the imminence of the problem and took home, life and significance of fullness. " other