História e Vita Acti em Hannah Arendt · 2020. 2. 11. · História e Condição Humana em Hannah Arendt Viriato Soromenho-Marques FLUL, Filosofia da História Ano lectivo 2019-2020,

História e Condição Humana em Hannah Arendt

Viriato Soromenho-Marques

FLUL, Filosofia da História

Ano lectivo 2019-2020, 2.º Semestre

www.viriatosoromenho-marques.com 1

“ Capacidades”: o que permanece e o que muda?

“Not the capabilities of man, but the constellation which orders their mutual relationships can and does change historically (...) in the changing self-interpretation of man throughout history” (The Concept of History/Co.Hi., 62).


Dois conceitos inconfundíveis

To avoid misunderstanding: the human condition is not the same as human nature, and the sum total of human activities and capabilities which correspond to the human condition does not constitute anything like human nature (HC 11) (…) The problem of human nature (…) seems unanswerable in both its individual psychological sense and its general philosophical sense (…) if we have a nature or essence, then surely only a god could know and define it.” (idem 12).


Estamos limitados à nossa “condição”

A “natureza humana” é um conceito incomensurável. O máximo que

podemos determinar descritivamente são os elementos que integram a

«condição humana»:


Os elementos do horizonte da condição humana

“On the other hand, the conditions of human

existence – life itself, natality and mortality,

worldliness, plurality, and the earth – can

never «explain» what we are or answer the

question of who we are for the simple

reason that they never condition us

absolutely.” (HC13).


Nunca abandonamos o horizonte do condicionado

A «condição humana» - com as suas categorias constitutivas -- não permite um saber explicativo

fundamental, mas simplesmente um conhecimento descritivo. Jamais

abandonamos o terreno do condicionado


1.ª capacidade: Labor (Trabalho)

“Labor (Trabalho) is the activity

which corresponds to the biological

process of the human body (...) The

human condition of labor is life

itself.”


2.ª capacidade:“Work (obra/fabricação)

“Work (obra/fabricação) is the activity which corresponds to the unnaturalness of human existence, which is not embedded in, and whose mortality is not compensated by, the species’ everrecurring life cycle. Work provides an “artificial” world of things, distinctly different from all natural surroundings. (…) The human condition of work is worldliness.”


3.ª capacidade: “Action (Acção),

“Action (Acção), the only activity that goes on directly between men without the intermediary of things or matter, corresponds to the human condition of plurality, to the fact that men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world. While all aspects of the human condition are somehow related to politcs, this plurality is specifically the condition – not only the conditio sine qua non, but the conditio per quam – of all political life.” (HC 9-10).


As 3 capacidades e a condição da natalidade…

“Labor and work, as well as action, are

also rooted in natality in so far as they

have the task to provide and preserve

the world for, to foresee and reckon

with, the constant flux of newcomers

who are born into the world as

strangers. However, of the three, action

as the closest connection with the

human condition of natality; (…)” >>> www.viriatosoromenho-marques.com 10

…e a relação especial entre Acção e Natalidade

“(…) the new beginning inherent in birth can

make itself felt in the world only because the

newcomers possess the capacity of beginning

something anew, that is, of acting.In this sense

of initiative, an element of action, and therefore

of natality, is inherent in all human activities.

Moreover, since action is the political activity

par excellence, natality, and not mortality, may

be the central category of political, as

distinguished from metaphysical thought.” (HC,

10-11)” (..)


Nota Sobre Heidegger

Em 1927, na obra Sein und Zeit, Heidegger desenvolve uma espécie de antropologia, a um tempo fenomenológica, existencial, e ontológica.

Centrada no definição do Dasein como Sein zum Tode, a reflexão de Heidegger recuperar conceitos de Pascal (divertissement) e de Kierkgaard (Angústia).

Mortalidade e Authentizität.


Três constelações

1. Greek classic antiquity agreed that

the highest form of human life was

spent in a polis and that the supreme

human capacity was speech (…)

2. Rome and medieval philosophy

defined man as the animal rationale;

(…)


De h.faber a h.laborans

3. In its initial stages of the modern

age, mas was thought of primarily as

an animal faber, until, in the nineteenth

century, man was interpreted as an

animal laborans whose metabolism

with nature would wield the highest

productivity of which human life is

capable.” (The Concept of History, 63).


Para Aristóteles o primado era o da acção

“Neither labor nor work was considered

to possess sufficient dignity to

constitute a bios at all, an autonomous

and authentically human way of life,

since they served and produced what

was necessary and useful, they could

not be free, independent of human

needs and wants.” (HC 14).


A política era o modo humano de conseguir almejar à sobrevivência na memória

“[Na Grécia Antiga]The task and potential

greatness of mortals lie in the their ability to

produce things – works and deeds and

words – which would deserve to be and, at

least to a degree, are at home in

everlastingness, so that through them

mortals could find their place in a

cosmos where everything is immortal

except themselves.” (HC 19).


Da imortalidade à eternidade

Não foi a filosofia grega, mas a

combinação entre a queda do Império

Romano e a platonização do

Cristianismo que levaram á substituição do

ideal mundano da imortalidade pelo ideal

extra-mundano da eternidade (HC 21). A

bios politikon foi perdida durante mais de mil

anos, posta ao serviço da vita

contemplativa.


Crise ambiental, mesmo sem conceito

H. Arendt chama a atenção para o

facto de que contemporaneamente a

actividade dominante, já não a

política, mas aquela associada ao

trabalho técnico sobre a natureza,

acarretar enormes riscos ambientais,

mesmo sem o uso do conceito.


A perigosa “humanização” da Natureza

“The moment we started natural processes of our own – and splitting the atom is precisely such a man-made natural process – we not only increased our power over nature (..) but for the first time have taken nature into the human world as such and obliterated the defensive boundaries between natural elements and the human artifice by which all previous civilizations were hedged in.” (Co.Hi. 60).


Projectamos a imprevisibilidade humana sobre a natureza:

“To act into nature, to carry human

unpredictability into a realm where we are

confronted with elemental forces which we

shall perhaps never be able to control

reliably, is dangerous enough. Even more

dangerous would it be to ignore that for the

first time in our history the human

capacity for action has begun to

dominate all others.” (Co.Hi., 62).


Na época dos riscos auto-criados

“ (…) It is beyond doubt that the capacity to

act is the most dangerous of all human

abilities and possibilities, and it is also

beyond doubt that the self-created risks

mankind faces today have never been faced

before.” (Co.Hi., 63).


Por que razões é perigosa a “acção” penetrar na Natureza?

> Irreversibility and the Power to Forgive (cap. 33, pp. 212-219 (edição Americana, e pp. 288-295 edição port.).

> Unpredictability and the Power to Promise (cap. 34, pp. 219-223 e pp. 295-300).


O totalitarismo político como outra hipertrofia da acção sobre o mundo

“In my studies of totalitarianism I tried to show that the totalitarian phenomenon, with its striking anti-utilitarian traits and its strange disregard for factuality, is based in the last analysis on the conviction that everything is possible (…). The totalitarian systems tend to demonstrate that action can be based on any hypothesis and that, in the course of consistently guided action, the particular hypothesis will become true, will become actual, factual reality ( Conc.Hist., 87)”.


A perda do mundo e da sua alteridade

“The modern age, with its growing world-

alienation, has led to a situation where

man, wherever he goes, encounters only

himself. All the processes of the earth and

the universe have revealed themselves

either as man-made or as potentially

man-made.” (Conc. History, 89).


O que significa um mundo comum?

“To live together in the world means

essentially that a world of things is between

those who sit around, as a table is located

between those who are sit around; the

world, like every-in-between, relates and

separates men at the same time. “ (HC,

p.48).


Sem mundo, também não há “public space”

• O que estrutura «o Mundo em comum» é a existência de um “public space”, construído numa perspectiva plurigeracional: “If the world is to contain a public space, it cannot be erected for one generation and planned for the living only; it must transcend the life-span of mortal men.” (HC, 50).

• A prova de que este espaço público está perdido actualmente é a perda da noção de imortalidade hoje, ofuscada também pela perda da noção de eternidade.


Sem mundo, não à história, nem natureza…

“In the situation of radical world-alienation, neither history nor nature is at all conceivable. This twofold loss of the world the loss of nature and the loss of human artifice in the widest sense, which would include all history has left behind it a society of men who, without a common world which would at once relate and separate them, either live in desperate lonely separation or are pressed together into a mass (….)>>>. “


..resta a solidão da sociedade de massas

“ (…) For a mass-society is nothing more

than that kind of organized living which

automatically establishes itself among

human beings who are still related to one

another but have lost the world once

common to all of them (Conc. History, 89-

90)”.


Textos 68 e 138

• Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition. A

Study of the Central Dilemmas Facing Modern Man, Garden City-New York, A Doubleday Anchor Book, 1958, 385 pp. (Texto 68).

• Arendt, Hannah, “O Conceito de História”, Entre o Passado e o Futuro. Oito Exercícios sobre o Pensamento Político, tradução de José Miguel Silva, Lisboa, Relógio D’Água, 2006, pp. 55-103 (texto 138).


Documents

História e Vita Acti em Hannah Arendt · 2020. 2. 11. · História e Condição Humana em Hannah Arendt Viriato Soromenho-Marques FLUL, Filosofia da História Ano lectivo 2019-2020,