Apresentam-se os resultados clínicos principais de uma primeira investigação efectuada a familiares de doentes sob tratamento paliativo no domicílio da área de Lisboa, com o instrumento de medida da satisfação SERVQUAL Modificado. Dos 58 familiares/doentes que responderam ao questionário apenas uma minona estava insatisfeita (uma classe de 5 indivíduos mostra-se francamente insatisfeita), uma classe de 15 estava moderadamente satisfeita, havendo 38 individuos fortemente satisfeitos com a qualidade e prontidäo dos serviços prestados. Porém urna percentagem elevada de doentes, segundo a opinião (...) retrospectiva dos cuidadores, faleceu com sintomatologia agravada, nomeadamente dores (60%), obstipação (67%) e depressão/ansiedade (43%). Discute-se a consistência e validade do questionáno SERVQUAL Modificado, contextualizam-se os resultados no que é o standard da prática da MCP e integram-se na promoção da dignidade humana no fim da vida. We present the main clinical findings of research on palliative home care, carried out among relatives of patients in the Lisbon area. An adapted version of SERVQUAL was used. Of a total of 58 carers surveyed only a small number (5) was unsatisfied 15 were only moderately satisfied. 38 family carers were strongly satisfied with the services. Yet, a high percentage of patients, as viewed in retrospect by their relatives died with some aggravated symptoms: 60% with more pain, 67% constipation, and 43% anxiety/depression. We discuss the consistency and validity of this adapted SERVQUAL tool and the main results are contextualized beanng in mind the standard practice of palliative medicine and the pursuit of human dignity in death. (shrink)

Depuis la publication des Dits et écrits, la place de la littérature dans l’oeuvre de Michel Foucault a une position bien assignée dans les recherches académiques, où l’on souligne surtout l’approche nietzschéenne de la lecture qu’a proposé le philosophe. Prenant appui sur des nouvelles publications et sur des manuscrits inédits, notre texte envisage ce thème sous un autre prisme, à partir du structuralisme de l’analyse littéraire et de l’enjeu philosophique de la revue Tel Quel dans son rapport avec le Nouveau (...) Roman. En repérant l’importance du concept de « distance » dans ses écrits sur la littérature, nous discuterons comment plusieurs des notions créées par Foucault se trouvent en dialogue avec cette constellation théorique plus large. Nous y établirons ainsi le rapport entre la structure et l’événement, la paire conceptuelle au centre des débats philosophiques des années 1960, qui nous guidera dans la compréhension des tensions et des adhésions de la méthodologie foucaldienne à l’égard de l’analyse structurale. A abordagem da « distância » nos escritos literários de Michel Foucault, ou como inscrever o acontecimento na estrutura Desde a publicação dos Ditos e Escritos, o lugar da literatura na obra de Michel Foucault possui uma posição bem definida nas pesquisas acadêmicas, nas quais se ressalta sobretudo a abordagem nietzscheana da leitura proposta pelo filósofo. Recorrendo a novas publicações e aos manuscritos inéditos do Fonds Foucault-BnF, este texto enfocará o tema da literatura sob um outro prisma, à partir do estruturalismo da análise literária e do contexto filosófico da revista Tel Quel em sua relação com o Nouveau Roman. Enfatizando a importância do conceito de “distância” em seus escritos sobre a literatura, discutir-se-á como várias das noções criadas por Foucault se encontram em diálogo com esta constelação teórica mais ampla. A relação entre a estrutura e o acontecimento, enquanto par conceitual que se encontrava no centro dos debates filosóficos nos anos 1960, nos guiará na compreensão das tensões e das adesões da metodologia foucaltiana no que tange à análise estrutural.Palavras-chave: Análise literária. Estruturalismo. Distância. Acontecimento. Tel Quel; BnF Inéditos. (shrink)

Este artigo trata de uma leitura singular de Kierkegaard acerca de Sócrates. Segundo o filósofo dinamarquês, haveria na ironia de Sócrates um elemento mais profundo, que não só se conecta com seu método, mas também à sua própria filosofia: trata-se do negativo como ponto de vista filosófico. Assim, na leitura de Kierkegaard, toda a filosofia socrática não passa de ironia. O autor busca evidenciar sob qual atmosfera e segundo qual patologia fundamental movia-se o filósofo grego, para compreender sua postura e (...) pensamento. A ironia é o trabalho do negativo, que no método do questionamento, exaure os conteúdos na direção do abstrato, forma conceitual vazia. E será a Apologia, escrita por Platão, o texto mais apropriado para tal investigação. (shrink)

O debate sobre o ensino de Filosofia no Brasil tem se pautado em torno de uma argumentação voltada preponderantemente para a defesa daquilo que pode ser chamado de transmissão da “tradição filosófica ou, de forma mais divergente, o desenvolvimento de habilidade de pensamento. Invariavelmente essas abordagens da filosofia se convertem num exercício retórico reduzindo o filosofar numa arte literária fechada que não ilumina nem dirige a confusão que a criança e o jovem encontram-se imersos em suas experiências de vida. Pretendemos (...) argumentar nesse artigo que a educação filosófica pode ser pensada sob outro patamar, ou seja, estabelecendo como seu objeto primário o campo contínuo, interconectado e conflituoso da experiência de vida. Para desenvolver nossa argumentação tomaremos como referência a compreensão da filosofia como uma atividade de pensamento reflexivo no âmbito social e cultural de valor indispensável uma vez que ela tem a tarefa de pensar os problemas da experiência presente tal como podemos encontrar nas principais obras de John Dewey. A filosofia passa a habitar a experiência gerando e vitalizando os sentidos lógicos, éticos, políticos. (shrink)

Craig, Barry M Today's gospel reading includes one of the eleven parables unique to Luke; it is also one of the most well known, and is often said to be misnamed in its common designation as the Prodigal Son. Many parables are similarly named in ways that appear to miss the point of their telling, but this tendency actually points to how we engage with all stories, and the power of Christ's storytelling. We need to realise that the mind does (...) not distinguish between reality and fiction, for all viewing and understanding of the world takes place in our heads. Thus we respond emotionally and even physically in the same way to what we see unfolding, be it real-time events in the world or depicted events, historical or fictional, as mediated by actors and machinery at the movies. In the same way, we do not distinguish between reports of actual happenings and fictional stories. Should there be any doubt about this, ask yourself: Have I ever cried at a movie, or laughed, or grown angry, or felt anything, or ducked, jumped or reacted in any way at all? At a recent viewing of Les Miserables someone at the end of the row was overcome with uncontrollable sobbing as the movie drew to an end. This distraction provided suitable cover for not a few people to sneak hankies out of pockets and return them before lights returned. If we did not respond to movies there would be no point in seeing them. Similarly with novels. They are also fodder for our imaginations, where we in a sense try on the experiences of others, imaginatively inhabiting the bodies and feelings of others. This is the basis of empathy, and the source of the power of storytelling. (shrink)

As the patient drew her last breaths, with her daughter at her bedside, and the curtain closed across the room, my resident, whom I will call Emma, talked me through what was happening. She explained that the patient's only hope for survival had been surgery, yet surgery would surely have killed her. Emma talked about the different ways different families approach withdrawing the level of care provided in the intensive care unit, allowing a loved one's death. She talked about how (...) hard it is to leave behind everything that happens in this job when she goes home. An intern arrived to make the declaration of death, and Emma encouraged me to go back into the patient's room for this. I placed my stethoscope on the patient's still chest, confirming what we already knew to be true. Death was palpable in that room, and my response was visceral. I did my best to leave the ICU calmly and then ran down five flights of stairs to the hospital chapel and sobbed. When I returned, Emma could see that I was shaken. “It's human,” she told me. In the afternoon, I felt the deep tiredness that I always feel after really crying. In that haze of emotion, I wasn't sure quite how to respond when Emma's next activity for us was to find a patient who needed an arterial blood gas. (shrink)

Pretende-se nesse artigo confrontar as posições de Theodor Adorno e Friedrich Hegel acerca da concepção de progresso, inferidas do rearranjo adorniano das categorias de particular e universal, que depreendem da filosofia hegeliana. O propósito é expor a crítica de Adorno, formulada na Dialética negativa, à noção de Hegel de que o curso da história universal é a realização efetiva do progresso do espírito do mundo em suas figuras particulares. Para tanto, o particular e o universal serão tomados como categorias explicativas (...) da crítica adorniana à totalidade e à sistematicidade, no intuito de realocar o particular no interior da dialética, enfatizando seu caráter não identitário e resistente à sistematicidade e às formas de totalidade com pretensões universalizantes; em seguida, evocar-se-á os elementos da filosofia da história de Walter Benjamin presentes no pensamento de Adorno, para que, por fim, se sustente a hipótese de que a marcha do espírito condiz menos com o progresso, porém, muito mais com a regressão, o que ocorre na medida em que o progresso se serve de uma narrativa que oblitera a violência e a dominação do universal sobre o particular, ao ocultar as contradições deflagradas no contexto da marcha da história do espírito do mundo. (shrink)

A ideia do “fi m da história”, subentendida no capítulo fi nal da Fenomenologia do espírito, serviu de base para o início de uma discussão, feita a partir das posições assumidas por Alexandre Kojève nos seus cursos sobre Hegel em Paris, na década de 1930, e em sua publicação no fi nal dos anos 1940 (com reedição em 1968), voltou à baila com o artigo de Francis Fukuyama, de 1989, sobre o “fim da história”, no qual ele comemorava o fi (...) m do “socialismo real” e a hegemonia mundial completa dos Estados Unidos da América. Passada a euforia sobre a “nova ordem mundial”, inclusive em virtude de sucessivas crises econômicas, é interessante recolocar a questão sobre as condições sob as quais são aceitáveis conceitos associados a esse tema, especialmente o substantivo “pós-história” e o adjetivo “pós-histórico”. A tese a ser defendida nesse artigo é a de que o campo da estética é um âmbito em que esses conceitos são defensáveis. Como exemplos de refl exões estéticas frutíferas que deles se valem, são consideradas a noção de “arte pós-histórica”, de Arthur Danto, e os desdobramentos estéticos do conceito de “pós-história”, tal como sustentado por Vilém Flusser. (shrink)

re s u m o O pre s e nte artigo se inic ia com uma cláusula interna à filosof ia de l e u z e a na, a de que todo pens a me nto pode ser carc t e r i z a do pelo grau de ima n ê nc ia que o me s mo realiza. O pens a me nto de Hu me, como “e m p i r i s mo superior”, segundo ex (...) p ressão de Deleuze, pro mo v e r ia a ima n ê nc ia, ou seja, ele não se re nde r ia a ne n hum tra ns c e nde nt e. Ao me s mo tempo, como s u p e r i o r, se trata de um empirismo que não se pre nde ao ime d ia - t a me nte da do, como suporia um “e m p i r i s mo ing ê nuo”. Por isso, o empirismo seria um p e ns a me nto da ima n ê nc ia que apre s e nta certa alçada tra ns c e ndental, permitindo a Deleuze falar em “e m p i r i s mo tra ns c e nde nt a l ”. A complexa fórmula filosófica re s u m ida nessa ex p ressão de l e u z e a na será por nós, aqui, tratada sob o ponto de vista Hume, de mo do que o ceticismo humeano será tomado como um operador de imanência que of e - rece ao empirismo sua dimensão transcendental. Tal tra t a mento será levado a cabo em duas etapas, quais sejam: a) ceticismo e pro b l e ma da disjunção inclusiva na int e ra ç ã o das fa c u l da des ; b) ceticismo e tra ns c e ndent a l ida de dos juízos empíric o s. palavras-chave Ceticismo; Empirismo; Hume; Deleuze; Transcendental; Imanência. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Pairing breaths:Rabah Ameur-Zaïmech's Terminal Sud (2019)Marion Froger (bio)Translated by David F. BellAsphyxiaNever had I felt such a sense of suffocation watching a film by Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche.1 The poisoned atmosphere of Terminal Sud (2019) recalls the atmosphere of the Algerian War (1955-1962) and that of the decade of darkness (1991-2002) in that country. The filmmaker chose not to make a historical film, however, but rather a dystopia that fuses together (...) periods and places. The story appears to be contemporary, in a country bathed in the colors of southern France, apparently in the grip of all the violence that French and Algerian memories are nowhere near forgetting.2 Bandits wearing combat uniforms, policemen wearing outfits sporting an acronym that strangely resembles one used by Islamist Algerian groups,3 and generals evoking the French putschists of 1961 all fight against each other—ransoming, threatening, kidnapping, killing, and torturing the local population. Meanwhile, out in the countryside, guerrillas (maquisards4) try to care for their dying leader, like North African freedom fighters (fellagas) were doing before them, and this in turn evokes French Resistance fighters in the 1940s. The film's work on confused memories, which, according to Thierry Kuntzel, is related to the condensation, overdetermination, and displacement of dreamwork, transforms being out of breath into a symptom that hounds the doctor, played by Ramzy Bédia ("Inhale…Exhale…Inhale again…Hold your breath…Exhale"), a state of the world in the form of a trap that threatens to suffocate him—and launches the quest for a filmic poetics of calm through the pairing of breaths.Peeling façades with tightly closed doors, lowered metal shop shutters, narrow and tense streets: the doctor, his wife Hazia, and their family slip outside in fear of kidnapping and gunfire, climb up stairs breathing heavily, anxiously await by the window, their bodies obscured in starkly contrasting shadows cast by glaring light, hug each other with endless sighs. As they share their grief, they have barely enough breath left to sing to the memory of someone who has disappeared,5 as if after an argument, [End Page 244] when everything has been said and all that remains is a strangled sob serving as last farewell.The film opens with an attack on a minivan used for public transportation: bandits, who could be soldiers, steal everything from the passengers and driver. The doctor sees his patients in a rundown hospital, treats a woman whose breathing is raucous, her voice taut with anxiety, and who speaks about the disappearance of her husband. Back home, he finds anonymous letters containing death threats and, to calm down, he searches for his breath by taking a deep drag from a cigarette and a swig of whiskey. "I can't take it any longer, I can't even stand up, I can't do anything, I'm at the end of my rope, I'm tired […] Is that what our country has become?" he confides to a friend several hours before losing, in the emergency room, his wife's brother, a journalist assassinated in front of his house. "Stay with me," he says as he runs beside the stretcher calling for help, "Breathe, breathe."The spasmodic breathing of Ramzy Bédia, provoked by the fear, effort, and pain that define his character, intensifies as the film progresses. He barely breathes in the car taking him to treat the rebel leader; he is running out of breath beside the leader's bed as we hear the death rattle and as Bédia shouts to the leader's comrades, "Give him some air, everyone get out!" Later, one of the policemen standing guard at the entrance to the hospital will be mortally wounded by a kamikaze attack and will die on the operating table despite the doctor's exhausting reparatory manipulations. Asphyxia will ultimately directly threaten the doctor after his arrest. Tied to an old bedspring, he will be tortured by electroshock,6 will attempt one last time to justify himself to a soldier who wants to know everything about the rebel leader the doctor has treated, and will nearly suffocate in his... (shrink)

O artigo retoma a presença de Diotima, inserida no contexto do Banquete de Platão, por meio do discurso rememorativo de Sócrates, dos ensinamentos recebidos da mulher de Mantineia, quando era ainda muito jovem. O jogo cênico de um discurso masculino que faz alusão aos ecos de fala de uma figura feminina, cujo conteúdo resguarda valores masculinos, me instiga a pensar o estatuto do feminino e do masculino, sob a perspectiva da relação entre o parto no corpo e o parto na (...) alma. Ao longo da análise, pretendo cotejar algumas representações da natureza feminina nos diálogos platônicos, observando o tratamento diferenciado como Platão pensa a questão do feminino, sob perspectivas variadas, como a tese da natureza similar de mulheres e homens, e a polêmica comunidade de mulheres e crianças, contidas, respectivamente, na primeira e na segunda ondas em República V; ou a tese da diferença de gêneros do Timeu. O viés interpretativo consiste em revisitar o contexto da considerada “questão de gênero” em Platão, a partir das metáforas do parto e da maternidade. Palavras-chave: Parto; Maternidade; Masculino, Feminino; Imortalidade. The feminine and masculine in Diotima's metaphor of childbirth Abstract: This article revisits the presence of Diotima within the context of Plato’s Symposium through Socrates’ recollective discourse on the teachings he received from the woman of Mantineia when he was still very young. The theatrical interplay of a masculine discourse that alludes to the echoes of a female figure’s speech, whose content embodies masculine values, prompts me to consider the status of the feminine and the masculine from the perspective of the relationship between physical childbirth and spiritual childbirth. Throughout the analysis, I intend to compare some representations of feminine nature in the Platonic dialogues, noting the differential treatment in how Plato addresses the question of the feminine from various perspectives. This includes the thesis of the similar nature of women and men and the controversial community of women and children, contained respectively in the first and second waves in Republic V; or the thesis of gender differences in the Timaeus. The interpretative approach consists of revisiting the context of the so-called “gender question” in Plato through the metaphors of childbirth and motherhood. Keywords: Birth; Motherhood; Masculine; Feminine; Immortality. Le féminin et le masculin dans la métaphore de l'accouchement de Diotime Résumé: L'article reprend la présence de Diotime, insérée dans le contexte du Banquet de Platon, à travers le discours remémoratif de Socrate, des enseignements reçus de la femme de Mantinée, quand elle était encore très jeune. Le jeu scénique d’un discours masculin qui fait allusion aux échos des paroles d’une figure féminine, dont le contenu préserve les valeurs masculines, m'incite à réfléchir sur le statut du féminin et du masculin, sous l'angle du rapport entre l'accouchement dans le corps et l'accouchement dans l'âme. Tout au long de l'analyse, j'entends comparer certaines représentations de la nature féminine dans les dialogues platoniciens, en observant le traitement différencié dans lequel Platon réfléchit à la question du féminin, à partir de différentes perspectives, comme la thèse de la nature similaire des femmes et des hommes et la controversée communauté des femmes et des enfants, contenues respectivement dans la première et la deuxième vagues de la République V ; ou la thèse de la différence entre les genres du Timée. Le biais interprétatif consiste à revisiter le contexte de ce qui est considéré comme la « question du genre » chez Platon, à partir des métaphores de l’accouchement et de la maternité. Mots-clés: Accouchement; Maternité; Masculin; Féminin; Immortalité. Data de registro: 02/08/2024 Data de aceite: 25/09/2024. (shrink)

Este artigo explora a dialogicidade do objeto da Estética Peirciana. Seguindo Herbart, o pragmaticista americano, em seu relato mais maduro (1911), concebe a Estética como uma ciência que lida com os dois tipos de τὸ καλόν, a saber, com a nobreza da conduta (realizada na ação) e com a beleza sensual (experimentada na arte natureza), embora predilete sistematicamente pela primeira, isto é, pelo estudo das condições da imaginação de um fim último admirável em si mesmo (considerando assim o fim esteticamente (...) em sua primeiridade, como uma qualidade possível) e que é pressuposto no estudo das condições de sua atualização como summum bonum (considerando assim o fim eticamente em sua segundidade, como norma que fundamenta relações diádicas de conformidade de conduta autocontrolada a ele). Como a (des)aprovação estética dos fins revela o fundamento último de imaginar a unidade de uma possível identidade prática, a Estética revela as condições de uma liberdade interior que torna a conduta autogovernada possível em primeiro lugar; não, porém, como dado transcendental, mas como resultado de práticas pedagógicas (Seção I). Em seguida, analisamos como a dialogicidade estética se origina da postura de primeira pessoa da questão fundamental que ela faz: “[O] que estou procurando?” (II.1); diferenciamos os partidos, fases e pressupostos dessa dialogicidade (II.2), e analisamos o papel de um ideal – em sua concretização metodológica como hábito de se sentir “crescido sob a influência de um curso de autocrítica e de heterocríticas” – joga pela causalidade semiótica envolvida na formação da conduta (II.3). (shrink)

O presente artigo investiga o impacto da recepção da obra de K. Goldstein – Der Aufbau des Organismus – sobre o pensamento francês do final dos anos 1930 e início dos anos 1940. Especificamente, trata-se de explorar três diferentes paradigmas segundo os quais a noção de vida pôde ser pensada. De um lado, a teoria bergsoniana do elã vital – apresentada em L’évolution créatrice –, a qual fornece uma compreensão precisa da evolução geral da vida, entendida sob as prerrogativas da (...) intuição, tal como o filósofo a compreende. De outro lado, a partir da recepção do pensamento de K. Godstein, a noção de elã vital é criticada, de forma que o pensamento francês produz duas novas abordagens da vida, as quais buscam enfatizar o vivente e sua singularidade (e não a generalidade do impulso vital): a filosofia da normatividade vital – defendida por G. Canguilhem em Le normal et le pathologique – e a fenomenologia da vida, tal como aparece nas diferentes fases da obra de M. Merleau Ponty. Nosso trabalho pretende explicitar as dificuldades enfrentadas pela filosofia francesa contemporânea – especialmente pela fenomenologia – para dar conta da criatividade e da interioridade expressa pela estrutura vivente, uma vez que ela abre novos horizontes para a abordagem da gênese da racionalidade. (shrink)

Marjorie Grene has argued in a number of contexts that any attempt to reduce the explanation of human actions to “mechanistic” explanations is doomed to failure in advance because it is absurd. “This argument examines the status of the reductivist thesis in its own terms and reduces it to absurdity …” ; “the attempt to reduce human purposive, or ‘intentional,‘ action to physiology and ultimately to physics and chemistry is an absurdity rather than simply a confusion”. I wish to show (...) that this argument is fallacious because it involves a petitio principii; and if Plato can be credited with introducing the same argument in the Theaetetus, as she suggests, so much the worse for Plato. (shrink)

continent. 2.2 (2012): 66–75 ~*~ We’re Doomed. Pessimism is the night-side of thought, a melodrama of the futility of the brain, a poetry written in the graveyard of philosophy. Pessimism is a lyrical failure of philosophical thinking, each attempt at clear and coherent thought, sullen and submerged in the hidden joy of its own futility. The closest pessimism comes to philosophical argument is the droll and laconic “We’ll never make it,” or simply: “We’re doomed.” Every effort doomed to failure, every (...) project doomed to incompletion, every life doomed to be unlived, every thought doomed to be unthought. Pessimism is the lowest form of philosophy, frequently disparaged and dismissed, merely the symptom of a bad attitude. No one ever needs pessimism, in the way that one needs optimism to inspire one to great heights and to pick oneself up, in the way one needs constructive criticism, advice and feedback, inspirational books or a pat on the back. No one needs pessimism, though I like to imagine the idea of a pessimist activism. No one needs pessimism, and yet everyone—without exception—has, at some point in their lives, had to confront pessimism, if not as a philosophy then as a grievance—against one’s self or others, against one’s surroundings or one’s life, against the state of things or the world in general. There is little redemption for pessimism, and no consolation prize. Ultimately, pessimism is weary of everything and of itself. Pessimism is the philosophical form of disenchantment—disenchantment as chanting, a chant, a mantra, a solitary, monophonic voice rendered insignificant by the intimate immensity surrounding it. In pessimism, the first axiom is a long, low, funereal sigh. ~*~ We’re Still Doomed. No one has time for pessimism. After all, there are only so many hours in a day. Whatever our temperament, happy or sad, engaged or disengaged, we know pessimism when we hear it. The pessimist is usually understood as the complainer, forever pointing out what is wrong with the world without ever once offering a solution. But more often than not pessimists are the quietest of philosophers, submerging their own sighs within the lethargy of discontent. What little sound it makes is of interest to no one—“I’ve heard it all before,” “tell me something I don’t know,” sound and fury, signifying nothing. In raising problems without solutions, in posing questions without answers, in retreating to the hermetic, cavernous abode of complaint, pessimism is guilty of that most inexcusable of Occidental crimes—the crime of not pretending it’s for real. Pessimism fails to live up to the most basic tenet of philosophy—the “as if.” Think as if it will be helpful, act as if it will make a difference, speak as if there is something to say, live as if you are not, in fact, being lived by some murmuring non-entity both shadowy and muddied. Had it more self-assurance and better social skills, pessimism would turn its disenchantment into a religion, possibly calling itself The Great Refusal. But there is a negation in pessimism that refuses even such a Refusal, an awareness that, from the start, it has already failed, and that the culmination of all that is, is that all is for naught. Pessimism tries very hard to present itself in the low, sustained tones of a Requiem Mass, or the tectonic rumbling of Tibetan chant. But it frequently lets loose dissonant notes at once plaintive and pathetic. Often, its voice cracks, its weighty words abruptly reduced to mere shards of guttural sound. ~*~ Maybe It’s Not So Bad, After All. If we know pessimism when we hear it, this is because we’ve heard it all before—and we didn’t need to hear it in the first place. Life is hard enough. What you need is a change of attitude, a new outlook, a shift in perspective... a cup of coffee. If we have no ears for pessimism, this is because it is always reducible to something as reliably mutable as a voice. If pessimism is so frequently disparaged, it is because it brings everyone down, determined as it is to view each day as a bad day, if only by virtue of the fact that it is not yet a bad day. For pessimism the world is brimming with negative possibility, the collision of a bad mood with an impassive world. In fact, pessimism is the result of a confusion between the world and a statement about the world, a confusion that also prevents it from fully entering the hallowed halls of philosophy. If pessimism is so often dismissed, this is because it is often impossible to separate a “bad mood” from a philosophical proposition (and do not all philosophies stem from a bad mood?) The very term “pessimism” suggests a school of thought, a movement, even a community. But pessimism always has a membership of one—maybe two. Ideally, of course, it would have a membership of none, with only a scribbled, illegible note left behind by someone long forgotten. But this seems unrealistic, though one can always hope. ~*~ Anatomy of Pessimism. Though it may locate itself at the margins of philosophy, pessimism is as much subject to philosophical analysis as any other form of thought. Pessimism’s lyricism of failure gives it the structure of music. What time is to the music of sorrow, reason is to a philosophy of the worst. Pessimism’s two major keys are moral and metaphysical pessimism, its subjective and objective poles, an attitude towards the world and a claim about the world. For moral pessimism, it is better not to have been born at all; for metaphysical pessimism, this is the worst of all possible worlds. For moral pessimism the problem is the solipsism of human beings, the world made in our own image, a world-for-us. For metaphysical pessimism, the problem is the solipsism of the world, objected and projected as a world-in-itself. Both moral and metaphysical pessimism are compromised philosophically; moral pessimism by its failure to locate the human within a larger context, and metaphysical pessimism by its failure to recognize the complicity in the very claim of realism. This is how pessimism makes its music of the worst, a generalized misanthropy without the anthropos . Pessimism crystallizes around this futility—it is its amor fati , rendered as musical form. ~*~ Melancholy of Anatomy. There is a logic of pessimism that is fundamental to its suspicion of philosophical system. Pessimism involves a statement about a condition . In pessimism each statement boils down to an affirmation or a negation, just as any condition boils down to the best or the worst. With Schopenhauer, that arch-pessimist, the thinker for whom the philosopher and the curmudgeon perfectly overlap, we see a no-saying to the worst, a no-saying that secretly covets a yes-saying (through asceticism, mysticism, quietism), even if this hidden yes-saying is a horizon at the limits of comprehension. With Nietzsche comes the pronouncement of a Dionysian pessimism, a pessimism of strength or joy, a yes-saying to the worst, a yes-saying to this world as it is. And with Cioran yet another variation, futile yet lyrical, a no-saying to the worst, and a further no-saying to the possibility of any other world, in here or out there. With Cioran one approaches, but never reaches, an absolute no-saying, a studied abandonment of pessimism itself. The logic of pessimism moves through three refusals: a no-saying to the worst (refusal of the world-for-us, or Schopenhauer’s tears); a yes-saying to the worst (refusal of the world-in-itself, or Nietzsche’s laughter); and a no-saying to the for-us and the in-itself (a double refusal, or Cioran’s sleep). Crying, laughing, sleeping—what other responses are adequate to a life that is so indifferent? ~*~ Cosmic Pessimism. Both moral and metaphysical pessimism point to another kind, a pessimism that is neither subjective nor objective, neither for-us nor in-itself, and instead a pessimism of the world-without-us. We could call this a cosmic pessimism ... but this sounds too majestic, too full of wonder, too much the bitter aftertaste of the Great Beyond. Words falter. And so do ideas. And so we have a cosmic pessimism, a pessimism that is first and last a pessimism about cosmos , about the necessity and possibility of order. The contours of cosmic pessimism are a drastic scaling-up or scaling-down of the human point of view, the unhuman orientation of deep space and deep time, and all of this shadowed by an impasse, a primordial insignificance, the impossibility of ever adequately accounting for one’s relationship to thought—all that remains of pessimism is the desiderata of affects—agonistic, impassive, defiant, reclusive, filled with sorrow and flailing at that architectonic chess match called philosophy, a flailing that pessimism tries to raise to the level of an art form (though what usually results is slapstick). ~*~ Song of Futility. An ethics of futility pervades pessimism. Futility, however, is different from fatality, and different again from simple failure (though failure is never simple). Failure is a breakage within the heart of relations, a fissure between cause and effect, a fissure hastily covered over by trying and trying again. With failure, there is always plenty of blame to go around; it’s not my fault, it’s a technical difficulty, it’s a miscommunication. For the pessimist, failure is a question of “when,” not “if”—failure as a metaphysical principle. Everything withers and passes into an obscurity blacker than night, everything from the melodramatic decline of a person’s life to the banal flickering moments that constitute each day. Everything that is done undone, everything said or known destined for a kind of stellar oblivion. When scaled up in this way, failure becomes fatality. Fatality is the hermeticism of cause and effect. In fatality, everything you do, whatever you do, always leads to a certain end, and ultimately to the end—though that end, or the means to that end, remain shrouded in obscurity. Nothing you do makes a difference because everything you do makes a difference. Hence the effects of your actions are hidden from you, even as you deceive yourself into thinking that, at last, this time you will outwit the order of things. By having a goal, planning ahead, and thinking things through carefully, we attempt, in a daily Prometheanism, to turn fatality to our advantage, to gain a glimpse of an order that seems buried deeper and deeper in the fabric of the universe. But even fatality has its comforts. The chain of cause and effect may be hidden from us, but that’s just because disorder is the order we don’t yet see; it’s just complex, distributed, and requires advanced mathematics. Fatality still clings to the sufficiency of everything that exists... When fatality relinquishes even this idea, it becomes futility. Futility arises out of the grim suspicion that, behind the shroud of causality we drape over the world, there is only the indifference of what exists or doesn’t exist; whatever you do ultimately leads to no end, an irrevocable chasm between thought and world. Futility transforms the act of thinking into a zero-sum game. ~*~ Song of the Worst. At the center of pessimism lies the term pessimus , “the worst,” a term as relative as it is absolute. The worst is about as bad as it gets, “the worst” as “the best” in disguise, shrouded by the passage of time or the twists and turns of fortune. For the pessimist, “the worst” is the propensity for suffering that gradually occludes each living moment, until it eclipses it entirely, overlapping perfectly in death... which, for the pessimist, is no longer “the worst.” Pessimism is marked by an unwillingness to move beyond “the worst,” something only partially attributable to a lack in motivation. In pessimism “the worst” is the ground that gives way beneath every existent—things could be worse, and , things could be better. “The worst” invariably implies a value judgment, one made based on scant evidence and little experience; in this way, pessimism’s greatest nemesis is its moral orientation. Pessimism’s propositions have all the gravitas of a bad joke. Perhaps this is why the true optimists are the most severe pessimists—they are optimists that have run out of options. They are almost ecstatically inundated by the worst. Such an optimism is the only possible outcome of a prolonged period of suffering, physical or metaphysical, intellectual or spiritual. But does this not also describe all the trials and tribulations of each day—in short, of “life?” It seems that sooner or later we are all doomed to become optimists of this sort (the most depressing of thoughts...) ~*~ Song of Doom. Rather than serving as a cause for despair, gloom and doom are the forms of consolation for any pessimist philosophy. Neither quite affects nor quite concepts, gloom and doom transform pessimism into a mortification of philosophy. Doom is not just the sense that all things will turn out badly, but that all things inevitably come to an end, irrespective of whether or not they really do come to an end. What emerges from doom is a sense of the unhuman as an attractor, a horizon towards which the human is fatally drawn. Doom is humanity given over to unhumanity in an act of crystalline self-abnegation. Gloom is not simply the anxiety that precedes doom. Gloom is literally atmospheric, climate as much as impression, and if people are also gloomy, this is simply the by-product of an anodyne atmosphere that only incidentally involves human beings. Gloom is more climatological than psychological, the stuff of dim, hazy, overcast skies, of ruins and overgrown tombs, of a misty, lethargic fog that moves with the same languorousness as our own crouched and sullen listening to a disinterested world. In a sense, gloom is the counterpoint to doom—what futility is to the former, fatality is to the latter. Doom is marked by temporality—all things precariously drawn to their end—whereas gloom is the austerity of stillness, all things sad, static, and suspended, a meandering smoke hovering over cold lichen stones and damp fir trees. If doom is the terror of temporality and death, then gloom is the horror of a hovering stasis that is life. At times I like to imagine that this realization alone is the thread that connects the charnel ground Aghori and the graveyard poets. ~*~ Song of Spite. There is an intolerance in pessimism that knows no bounds. In pessimism spite begins by fixing on a particular object of spite—someone one hardly knows, or someone one knows too well; a spite for this person or a spite for all of humanity; a spectacular or a banal spite; a spite for a noisy neighbor, a yapping dog, a battalion of strollers, the meandering idiot walking in front of you on their smart phone, large loud celebrations, traumatic injustices anywhere in the world regurgitated as media blitz, spite for the self-absorbed and overly performative people talking way too loud at the table next to you, technical difficulties and troubleshooting, the reduction of everything to branding, spite of the refusal to admit one’s own errors, of self-help books, of people who know absolutely everything and make sure to tell you, of all people, all living beings, all things, the world, the spiteful planet, the inanity of existence... Spite is the motor of pessimism because it is so egalitarian, so expansive, it runs amok, stumbling across intuitions that can only half-heartedly be called philosophical. Spite lacks the confidence and the clarity of hatred, but it also lacks the almost cordial judgment of dislike. For the pessimist, the smallest detail can be an indication of a metaphysical futility so vast and funereal that it eclipses pessimism itself—a spite that pessimism carefully places beyond the horizon of intelligibility, like the experience of dusk, or like the phrase, “it is raining jewels and daggers.” ~*~ Song of Sleep. A paraphrase of Schopenhauer: what death is for the organism, sleep is for the individual. Pessimists sleep not because they are depressed, but because for them sleep is a form of ascetic practice. Sleep is the askesis of pessimism. If, while sleeping, we have a bad dream, we abruptly wake up, and suddenly the horrors of the night vanish. There is no reason to think that the same does not happen with the bad dream we call “life.” ~*~ Song of Sorrow. Nietzsche, commenting on pessimism, once castigated Schopenhauer for taking things too lightly. He writes: ...Schopenhauer, though a pessimist, really —played the flute. Every day, after dinner: one should read his biography on that. And incidentally: a pessimist, one who denies God and the world but comes to a stop before morality—who affirms morality and plays the flute... what? Is that really—a pessimist? We know that Schopenhauer did possess a collection of instruments, and we also know that Nietzsche himself composed music. There is no reason to think that either of them would ever banish music from the Republic of philosophy. But Nietzsche’s jibes at Schopenhauer are as much about music as they are about pessimism. For the pessimist who says no to everything and yet finds comfort in music, the no-saying of pessimism can only be a weak way of saying yes—the weightiest statement undercut by the flightiest of replies. The least that Schopenhauer could’ve done is to play the bass. I’m not a big fan of the flute, or, for that matter, wind instruments generally. But what Nietzsche forgets is the role that the flute has historically played in Greek tragedy. In tragedy, the flute ( aulos ) is not an instrument of levity and joy, but of solitude and sorrow. The Greek aulos not only expresses the grief of tragic loss, but it does so in a way that renders weeping and singing inseparable from each other. The classicist Nicole Loraux calls this the mourning voice . Set apart from the more official civic rituals of funerary mourning, the mourning voice of Greek tragedy constantly threatens to dissolve song into wailing, music into moaning, and the voice into a primordial, disarticulate anti-music. The mourning voice delineates all the forms of suffering—tears, weeping, sobbing, wailing, moaning, and the convulsions of thought reduced to an elemental unintelligibility. In the collapsed space between the voice that speaks and the voice that sings, pessimism discovers its mourning voice. Pessimism: the failure of sound and sense, the disarticulation of phone and logos . Have we rescued Schopenhauer from Nietzsche? Probably not. Perhaps Schopenhauer played the flute to remind himself of the real function of the mourning voice—sorrow, sighs, and moaning rendered indistinguishable from music, the crumbling of the human into the unhuman. Failure par excellence of pessimism. ~*~ Song of Nothing. In Buddhist thought, the First Noble Truth of existence is encapsulated in the Pali term dukkha , conventionally translated as “suffering,” “sorrow,” or “misery.” The Buddhist teachings are clear, however, that this is an objective claim, and not simply one point of view among others. Existence is suffering and sorrow—and yet this is not, the teachings tell us, a pessimistic attitude. It is likely that Schopenhauer, reading the Buddhist texts available to him, recognized some filiation with the concept of dukkha . But dukkha is a multi-faceted term. There is, certainly, dukkha in the usual sense of the suffering, strife, and loss associated with living a life. But this is, in turn, dependent on the finitude and temporality of dukkha , existence as determined by impermanence and imperfection. And this ultimately points to the way in which both suffering and finitude are grounded by the paradoxical groundlessness of dukkha as a metaphysical principle—the insubstantiality and the emptiness of all that is. Beyond what is worse to me, beyond a world ordered for the worst, there is the emptiness of dukkha as an impersonal suffering... the tears of the cosmos. In this context, it is easy to see how Schopenhauer’s pessimism attempts to compress all the aspects of dukkha into a nothingness at the core of existence, a Willlessness coursing through the Will. Though one thing for certain is that with Schopenhauer we do not find the “ever-smiling” countenance of Buddhism—or do we? The texts of the Pali Canon also contain lists of the different types of happiness—including the happiness of renunciation and the strange happiness of detachment. But Buddhism considers even the different types of happiness as part of dukkha , in this final sense of nothingness or emptiness. Perhaps Schopenhauer understood Buddhism better than he is usually given credit for. Thus the experiment of Schopenhauer’s philosophy—the point at which a Western pessimus and an Eastern dukkha overlap or exchange glances. Empty sorrow, a lyricism of indifference. The result is a strange, and ultimately untenable, nocturnal form of Buddhism. ~*~ Cioran once called music a “physics of tears.” If this is true, then perhaps metaphysics is its commentary. Or its apology. ~*~ Pessimism would be more mystical were it not for its defeatism. Mysticism is much too proactive for the pessimist, and pessimism too impassive even for the mystic. At the same time, there is something enviable about mysticism—despite its sufferings. There is a sense in which pessimists are really failed mystics. ~*~ You, the Night, and the Music. In a suggestive passage, Schopenhauer once noted that, “music is the melody to which the world is the text." Given Schopenhauer’s view on life—that life is suffering, that human life is absurd, that the nothingness before my birth is equal to the nothingness after my death—given all this, one wonders what kind of music Schopenhauer had in mind when he described music as the melody to which the world is text—was it opera, a Requiem Mass, a madrigal, or perhaps a drinking song? Or something like Eine kleine Nachtmusik , a little night music for the twilight of thought, a sullen nocturne for the night-side of logic, an era of sad wings sung by a solitary banshee. Perhaps the music Schopenhauer had in mind is music eliminated to non-music. A whisper would suffice. Perhaps a sigh of fatigue or resignation, perhaps a moan of despair or sorrow. Perhaps a sound just articulate enough that it could be heard to dissipate. ~*~ Teach me to laugh through tears. ~*~ Pessimism always falls short of being philosophical. My back aches, my knees hurt, I couldn’t sleep last night, I’m stressed-out, and I think I’m finally coming down with something. Pessimism abjures all pretenses towards system—towards the purity of analysis and the dignity of critique. We didn’t really think we could figure it out, did we? It was just passing time, taking a piss, something to do, a bold gesture put forth in all its fragility, according to rules that we have agreed to forget that we made up in the first place. Every thought marked by a shadowy incomprehension that precedes it, and a futility that undermines it. That pessimism speaks, in whatever voice, is the singing testimony to this futility and this incomprehension—take a chance and step outside, lose some sleep and say you tried... ~*~ Is there a music of pessimism? And would such a music be audible? ~*~ The impact of music on a person compels them to put their experience into words. When this fails, the result is a faltering of thought and language that is itself a kind of music. Cioran writes: “Music is everything. God himself is nothing more than an acoustic hallucination.” ~*~ If a thinker like Schopenhauer has any redeeming qualities, it is that he identified the great lie of Western culture—the preference for existence over non-existence. As he notes: “If we knocked on the graves and asked the dead whether they would like to rise again, they would shake their heads.” In Western cultures it is commonly accepted that one celebrates birth and mourns death. But there must be a mistake here. Wouldn’t it make more sense to mourn birth and celebrate death? Strange though, because the mourning of birth would, presumably, last the entirety of that person’s life, so that mourning and living would the be same thing. ~*~ To the musical idea of the harmony of the universe corresponds the philosophical principle of sufficient reason. Like the music of mourning, pessimism gives voice to the inevitable breakdown of word and song. In this way, music is the overtone of thought. ~*~ The Patron Saints of Pessimism. The patron saints of pessimism watch over suffering. Laconic and sullen, the patron saints of pessimism never seem to do a good job at protecting, interceding, or advocating for those who suffer. Perhaps they need us more than we need them. Lest we forget, there do exist patron saints of philosophy, but their stories are not happy ones. There is, for instance, the fourth century Saint Catherine of Alexandria, or Catherine of the Wheel, named after the torture device used on her. A precocious fourteen year old scholar, Catherine was subject to continual persecution. After all forms of torture failed—including the “breaking wheel”—the emperor finally settled for her decapitation, a violent yet appropriate reminder of the protector of philosophers. There are also patron saints of music and musicians, but theirs too are sad stories. In the second century, Saint Cecilia was also subject to persecution and torture. As she knelt to receive the blade that would separate her head from her body, she ardently sang a song to God. It took three attempts before she was fully decapitated, all the while she continued, perhaps miraculously, to sing. Does pessimism not deserve its own patron saints, even if they are unworthy of martyrdom? But in our search, even the most ardent nay-sayers frequently lapse into brief moments of enthusiasm—Pascal’s love of solitude, Leopardi’s love of poetry, Schopenhauer’s love of music, Nietzsche’s love of Schopenhauer, and so on. Should one then focus on individual works of pessimism? We could include Kierkegaard’s trilogy of horror— Sickness Unto Death , The Concept of Dread , and Fear and Trembling —but all these are undermined by their fabricated and unreliable authors. Besides, how can one separate the pessimist from the optimist in works like Unamuno’s The Tragic Sense of Life , Shestov’s Postetas Clavium , or Edgar Saltus’ under-read The Philosophy of Disenchantment ? Even in cases where the entire corpus of an author is pessimistic, the project always seems incomplete—witness Cioran’s trajectory, from his first book, On the Heights of Despair , to the last unpublished notebooks of acrid and taut aphorisms. And this is to say nothing of literary pessimism, from Goethe’s sorrowful Werther, to Dostoevsky’s underground man, to Pessoa’s disquiet scribbler; Baudelaire’s spleen and ennui, the mystical Satanism of Huysmans and Strindberg, the hauntologies of Mário de Sá-Carniero, Izumi Kyoka, H.P. Lovecraft, grumpy old Beckett... even the great pessimist comedians. All that remains are singular, perhaps anomalous statements of pessimism, a litany of quotes and citations crammed into fortune cookies. Patron saints are traditionally named after a locale, either a place of birth or of a mystical experience. Perhaps the better approach is to focus on the places where pessimists were forced to live out their pessimism—Schopenhauer facing an empty Berlin lecture hall, Nietzsche mute and convalescent at the home of his sister, Wittgenstein the relinquished professor and solitary gardener, Cioran grappling with Alzheimer’s in his tiny writing alcove in the Latin Quarter. ~*~ There’s a ghost that grows inside of me, damaged in the making, and there’s a hunt sprung from necessity, elliptical and drowned. Where the moving quiet of our insomnia offers up each thought, there’s a luminous field of grey inertia, and obsidian dreams burnt all the way down. ~*~ If pessimism has any pedagogical value, it is that the failure of pessimism as a philosophy is inextricably tied to the failure of pessimism as voice. I read the following, from Shestov’s The Apotheosis of Groundlessness : When a person is young he writes because it seems to him he has discovered a new almighty truth which he must make haste to impart to forlorn humankind. Later, becoming more modest, he begins to doubt his truths: and then he tries to convince himself. A few more years go by, and he knows he was mistaken all round, so there is no need to convince himself. Nevertheless he continues to write, because he is not fit for any other work, and to be accounted a superfluous person is so horrible. (shrink)

Книгу характеризует широкий охват затронутых проблем, глубина анализа, оригинальность подхода, многоаспектность освещения материала. Для специалистов.

The usual definition of (non-contextual) hidden variables is found to be too restrictive, in the sense that, according to it, even some classical systems do not admit hidden variables. A more general concept is introduced and the term “approximate hidden variables” is used for it. This new concept avoids the aforementioned problems, since all classical systems admit approximate hidden variables. Standard quantum systems do not admit approximate hidden variables, unless the corresponding Hilbert space is 2-dimensional. However, an appropriate non-standard quantum (...) system, which arises by focussing on momentum and position and neglecting the remaining observables, admits approximate hidden variables. Systems associated with JBW-algebras (resp. von Neumann algebras) and satisfying some mild conditions admit approximate hidden variables iff they are classical, that is, iff the corresponding JBW-algebra (resp. von Neumann algebra) is associative (resp. commutative). (shrink)