PORTUGUÊSAbove: The ruins of Ur, the ancient Sumerian homeland of Abraham, located at the site of modern Tell el-Mukayyar, in Iraq.
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This page makes reference to classic opuses of the universal thought rarely or never mentioned in the 3rd World and particularly in Brazil. Published: 26/01/11.
The main point in Islam THOSE WHO ARE STILL ALIVE
Above: Socrates, the Greek philosopher — for many Muslims, a great man of God.
Aristotle versus Plato Another important reason why Islam annoys so much the Western mentality is its essentially non-Aristotelian nature. Such an observation is fundamental for the due understanding of Islam — especially when you are a Latin-American in particular or any non-White Christian or Westernized person in general. For no civilization succeeded in incarnating Aristotelianism so fully as the very Modern Western mentality itself — the same which in the last 500 years has forced us to become what we persist in not being. But, after all, what the very white man usually calls Aristotelianism? In summary, the worldview based on that kind of knowledge acquired by experimentation, by the investigation of concrete and particular things: empiricism. An intellectual methodology which prefers a particular type of reasoning called induction: “This swan is white; that and that, as well; then, all of them are so!” This, in contrast with the posture generally associated to what is designated normally Platonism. Which, in its turn, privileges another kind of knowledge: the innate, that which is inherent to the constitution of our own mind in itself. And which is brought to light by intuition and deduction. And embodies logic and mathematic. As much as the unconscious. That is: once more, we are reporting ourselves to a dispute between worldviews which started thousands years ago and which supposedly was already brought to an end by the mechanistic science of the white man. At least, up to now. When not only the atomic question but also the ecological have been forcing civilization to challenge its validity again. GENERAL INTRODUCTION http://netwar.wordpress.com/2007/08/15/empiricism-vs-idealism/ http://quantumleap42.blogspot.com/2010/03/platonic-vs-aristotelian-world-views.html http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/ http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/rar/PvA.htm THE BEST INTRODUCTION Bertrand Russell, one of the fathers of linguistics, the predominating philosophical stream of the Western contemporaneity, delineated nearly 70 years ago the position in favor of empiricism which remains as the academically official until today — this, in “The philosophy of logical analysis” (the last chapter of “History of Western philosophy”, published in 1946, in 3 volumes). http://www.archive.org/stream/westernphilosoph035502mbp/westernphilosoph035502mbp_djvu.txt
Walking around Anyway, the main problem of empiricism is that, by trying to understanding reality in an entirely controllable manner, it ends up excluding from it those qualities without which the very mind who practices it could not exist: subjectivity, ethics, values, quale, meaning. And this, by employing nothing less than the same mathematic and logic which belong to the very mind whose existence it paradoxically tries to deny. In a vicious-circle. Hence, peripatetic — which means “walking around” (circumambulating, digressing, diverging) and constitutes the adjective coined by the very Western tradition just to designate such an Aristotelian kind of reasoning. The dark side Nevertheless, there is another crucial failure in this type of thinking which seldom happens to be duly analyzed. It refers to the fact that empiricism does not recognize as valid any kind of knowledge other than that called a posteriori. That is: knowledge as the product of a given action over the outer reality and, therefore, an object independent of mind. A dead, manipulatable, collectable, accumulable, manageable, dischargeable, capitalizable thing. The implications of such intellectual attitude unmask nothing less but its own dark side: (1) In it, knowledge ends up being completely reduced to the condition of an investment. The question is: if no knowledge is available beforehand, how can anyone decide which investment is worth doing? And so, the economic factor ends up exerting a dangerous role in the choice of subjects to be investigated. And it is not necessary to be a genius to understand, then, that truth — as an earthquake — does not necessarily obey the same rules of banks. After all, contrary to the usual belief of such entities, a very risky investment may well constitute the best sometimes. For instance, the money employed in the latest particles accelerator built in the West could well have solved the problem of Africa definitively — if not even the present economic crisis in Europe itself. (2) Therefore, such a way of thinking allows a margin for an arbitrary selection of knowledge. And avoids its natural vocation: to reach the necessary truth. And that is another reason why empiricism must be regarded as evasive, digressive and divergent: peripatetic. That is: fallacy, deceive, misinformation. (3) Thus, knowledge ends up disconnecting from our immediate experience of things, becoming something without existential meaning, something dead. This discourages the emotional engagement in the quest for truth — idealism, romanticism, passion: essential factors in the pursuit of an eventually challenging solution. That is: cynicism, indifference, if not even disheartenment, ends up prevailing, then. (4) Abandoned by the average man, knowledge ends up, thus, being monopolized by the specialists and the technicians, losing its capability of providing an ample panorama, extending to other spheres what is undue, generating a fragmentary outlook of reality. (5) And so does the petrification of culture occur. What concretizes itself in some sort of either a traditionalist and obscurantist ritualism or an ever-changing and technocratic bureaucracy. Here is born the so-called anal society of Freud (details: “Courage to be like we are”). That is: a way of living which turns us inhuman (robotic, mechanic, compartmentalized, disjointed, without soul and evil) and subhuman (manipulatable, discardable, subjugated, debilitated and androgenized). (6) Consequently, for the perverse elite engendered by such a culture, generalized ignorance may well seem more advantageous than enlightenment. Education becomes acculturation, programming, and slavery — not a natural process of liberation and development. And technology, the supreme lord of society — not a mere tool of it. THE MAIN WESTERN REFUTALS (Thomas Nagel) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Nagel http://www.jstor.org/pss/2183914 (Noam Chomsky) http://www.chomsky.info/books/responsibility02.htm Insolent hypocrisy As for Platonism — usually identified with the posture of all the non-Western cultures, like ours — the classical criticism of the white man against it is that (1) it happens to be but dualist and (2) tends to engender an authoritarian and inefficient model of society. As for the first accusation, considering that it is just the materialism generated by the empiricism that leads to the psychotic denial of the blatant reality which is mind — Holy patience! — it is but an insolently hypocritical lie. For it is Aristotelism which ends up reducing to a dualism. As for the second, not to lose time with pointless speculations, it is worth noting that this supposedly democratic, open-minded, scientific, technocratic and successful model of society defended by this nerdy, effeminate, cynical and cold-blooded Aristotelian of today corresponds to nothing less the incomparably worst empire of all times — in terms of atrocities committed against humanity, in terms of racism and segregation, in terms of environmental destructivity. And not only that: it is just such a society which at this exact moment is psychopathically threatening the entire humanity — what even includes the very same itself — with a well possible complete annihilation. That is: such a kind of culture has no conditions to call anybody whatsoever authoritarian and inefficient. And only a masochist fool would bend an ear to such a sort of people. ATROCITIES COMMITTED BY THE WEST Namely: at least 4 times more than the Communists Europeans and Asians together (in 2nd place in the list of the greatest perpetrators of atrocities in the history); 6 times more than the ancient China along with the Mongols (3rd place); and — well at least! — 10 times more than the same Islam (in 4th place, while involving all continents of the earth except the Americas and erroneously taking some of its self-defense actions as atrocities) the very same persists in labeling as violent. (Details) http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat0.htm WORLD WAR 3 http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=latestNews http://www.granma.cu/ingles/reflections-i/4agost-reflections.html http://aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=157107 http://dueband.com/2010/03/27/americanism-and-the-coming-third-world-war/ http://www.examiner.com/la-county-nonpartisan-in-los-angeles/british-military-insider-world-war-iii-is-being-staged-starting-with-israel-and-iran http://www.internationalreporter.com/News-538/third-world-war-is-imminent-may-involve-the-globe.html The true hero In fact, empiricism tends to generate a materialist and skeptic worldview. As, besides, proven by the very history of Western philosophy itself. Which has been oscillating between extremes since ever. At the present, for example, between a reductionist materialism and a primitivist anarchism. That is: between a “nothing is worthy” and an “anything is worthy”. Despite that eternal vacillation, such a mentality persists in trying to convince us that faith (metaphysics, values) cannot unite with reason and, therefore, that there is no obligation in the practical employment of the latter, except the obtainment of an immediate, hedonistic and egoistic advantage. And even Socrates, the Western father of the Platonic position, would anticipate such a tendency two and a half thousands years ago. And for that very reason he preferred to pay with his own life, heroically, on the hands of his own obstinate compatriots, instead of acceding to this malign walking around without end represented by empiricism. Contrary to what is usually told to us about the matter by the very executioners of Socrates, his death marked not the beginning but the end of the Western philosophy itself. For, instead of an example of human posture like his — proletarian, artistic, idealist, romantic, mystic, heroic, revolutionary, virile, religious, humanitarian — this people who pretends to be more scientific than everybody has since then been electing more and more as person models men such as Aristotle — elitist, technocratic, theoretical, misanthropic, nerd, effeminate, reactionary, fascist; and nothing but the life-time personal councilor and adulator of one of the greatest tyrants of history: Alexander, the Great — a bloodthirsty and sexually perverted psychopath. SOCRATES http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates
A warning to those who are still alive Then, Gods brings Muhammad to earth. Who destroys forever all the excuses which feed useless discussions like that here. And the solution proposed by him is so simple like that: “After all, who said that Platonism rejects nature and analytical reasoning? The urban decadence naturally resulting from the pretentious disregard for the same universe which involves it?” In reality, his original formula is quite more gentle than mine: “Say: ‘See ye if the (Revelation) is (really) from God, and yet do ye reject it? Who is more astray than one who is in a schism far (from any purpose)?’ Soon will We show them our Signs in the (furthest) regions (of the earth), and in their own souls, until it becomes manifest to them that this is the Truth. Is it not enough that thy Lord doth witness all things?” — Koran 41: 52-53. Note that “schism far from any purpose” relates very well to the peripatetic attitude of the Aristotelians. And “Is it not enough that thy Lord doth witness all things?”, to the Platonic idealism. But with a revolutionary emphasis: “in the furthest regions of the earth”. That is: recognizing the benign nature of the material reality and, therefore, not discarding the investigation of nature — as, apparently, ended up doing the great Platonic proposals formulated until then (Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, Platonism, Zoroastrianism, Neo-Platonism, Manichaeism, Christianism). Except one. And it was just that which Muhammad preferred to follow: the Abrahamic. Note that even according to the Western archeology Abraham participated of the first urbanistic wave of history. Cain had barely killed Abel and was just building the first city. That is: the nomadic people living from pasturage — the predominating lifestyle of the time — was then converting into sedentary farmers — urban, technocratic and imperialist. Even so, Abraham had the pertinent capability of recognizing the dangerous character of that novel culture and promptly decided to return to the old worldview. However, perceiving the irreversibility of that social process, he adjusted the old perspective — founded on synthesis, unification, and generalization — to the novel circumstances, which stimulated complexity, analyses and specialization. So that the city would no more try to swallow the very world around, but only to subsist within it in harmony. Yet, always aware of the differences between Cain and Abel. Always admiring Adam: the primitive collector, the gardener, the guardian of the paradise only tangible to the holder of the eternal wisdom. The heritage of Abraham would repeatedly come to be corrupted by some of his descendants and then restored by other of them again. Until Muhammad. Who finally succeeded in revealing it to the whole civilized world in the clearest manner possible before it could be forgotten or corrupted once more. Faith united with reason. And so was Islam born. “We [God] have not instructed the (Prophet) in Poetry, nor is it meet for him: this is no less than a Message and a Book making things clear: that it may give warning to any (who are) alive, and that the charge may be proved against those who reject (Truth).” — Koran 36:69-70.
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PAINTING LITERATURE THE AUTHOR MISCELLANEA MAIN TOPICSThe renaissance of Islam The main point in Islam The surprising history of Islam A revolutionary worldview What Islam has to do with the Americas What Islam has to say to the Americas Islam under attack
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UPDATED: 29/09/12 - LAUNCHED: 18/04/10