Agemir Bavaresco

In this paper, we criticize the depoliticization of Western modernization by liberal political theories through the correlation between systemic institutional theory and meritocracy, which is based on the idea of strong individualism with regard to the understanding and the legitimation of social evolution, as well as the logical-technical constitution of social systems. Thus, according to liberal political theories, meritocracy defines social stratification and even systemic institutional evolution throughout time, due to the fact that it is the only political possibility from the viewpoint of a technical-logical understanding of social systems, which implies the delegitimation of an inclusive democratic political praxis concerning the structuring and evolution of such social systems. Our central argument is that a proper political comprehension of Western modernization needs to overcome both the technical-logical understanding of institutions and meritocracy as bases for the comprehension and legitimation of political praxis, institutional evolution, political reformism and social rights. The notions of political democracy and social justice, therefore, must be considered through the refusal of systemic theory and of strong individualism – both assumed by contemporary liberal political theories.

A partir da reconstrução do modelo normativo de modernidade cultural europeia idealizado por Habermas como base de sua teoria da modernidade, criticamos sua proposta de colocar esse modelo normativo de modernidade cultural europeia como paradigma epistemológico-moral universalista e como projeto integrativo cosmopolita, que serviria como guarda-chuva normativo dos contextos culturais particulares. A partir do desenvolvimento do conceito de condição pós-universalista, procuraremos defender que a modernidade cultural europeia não tem condições de sustentarse como paradigma da crítica, do enquadramento e da integração válido para todos os contextos, posto que não se pode separar esse modelo idealizado de modernidade em relação à colonização travestida de racionalização cultural e levada a efeito via globalização econômico-cultural. Nosso argumento consiste em que a racionalização cultural enquanto possibilitando o universalismo, cerne do modelo normativo de modernidade cultural europeia reconstruído por Habermas, leva à assimilação e à deslegitimação dos contextos culturais particulares, considerados por ele como incapazes de gerar uma postura universalista, legitimando de maneira direta a prossecução totalizante da modernidade para além de si mesma, como juiz, guia e projeto societal superiores, exatamente devido à sua cultura descentrada e às suas estruturas de consciência moral universalistas.

O presente dossiê apresenta algumas investigações no âmbito das teorias das relações internacionais, a partir da inspiração dos clássicos da filosofia política moderna. Textos mais representativos de Grotius, Bodin, Maquiavel, Hobbes, Bentham, Locke e Kant, vitais para a compreensão da formulação contemporânea das teorias das relações internacionais, foram lidos e analisados pelos professores Agemir Bavaresco e Marcelo Gross Villanova com estudantes pós-graduandos do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Filosofia da PUCRS, durante o 2º semestre de 2011.

This article argues that Habermas’s division of the process of Western modernization into cultural modernity (a pure normative sphere) and social-economic modernization (a pure technical-logical or instrumental sphere) and his use of this theoretical-political standpoint in order to ground a model of radical political democracy as an impartial, neutral, impersonal and formal procedural juridical-political paradigm based on the dialectics between institutionalization and spontaneity lead to strong institutionalism in politics. The notion of modern social systems or institutions as structures of impartial, neutral, formal and impersonal proceduralism with a technical-logical or instrumental sense, constitution and evolution implies their non-political and non-normative understanding, depoliticizing them. As a consequence, institutions (especially political and economic ones) become self-referential and self-subsisting structures-subjects which are centralized and managed by institutional elites and technicians from a technical-logical standpoint-dynamics. We argue that a model of radical political democracy must overcome such separation between cultural modernity and social-economic modernization, politicizing the social systems and making them normative-political institutions-subjects streamlined and defined by social struggles between conflicting social classes, their hegemony and counterpoints.

O tema do idealismo e realismo é abordado por Hegel e Marx de um modo específico. De um lado, Hegel entende que toda a verdadeira filosofia é um idealismo. De outro, Marx defende que o verdadeiro pensamento inicia com o realismo. Nós entendemos que as abordagens não são excludentes, pois, trata-se de pontos de partida diferentes. Os diagnósticos têm na contradição o motor da história; e na dialética o método de descrever e analisar o real. A partir das categorias da finitude e infinitude de Hegel e da categoria do fetichismo de Marx estabelecemos aproximações e diferenças entre os dois autores.

This paper provides a criticism of the New Left’s discourse of legitimation of the globalization hypothesis based on the same understanding of it than contemporary Conservative Liberalism. According to the New Left’s basic epistemological-political standpoint, the economic globalization is a consolidated process which leads not only to the era of international economy, but also to the failure of a nationalist interventionist politics, as to the irreversible weakening of the Welfare State model of strong political institutions as the basis of economic constitution and of social evolution. According to the New Left, only international political institutions can frame the international economy. We argue that the New Left does not seriously consider the notion of late capitalism, disregarding the political-economic dependence between central and peripheral countries as the fundamental characteristic of international politics and of global economic constitution. Here, international political institutions cannot tackle macroeconomic contradictions and pathologies due to the fact that the international economic order is grounded on political inequality and dependence of these central and peripheral countries. The important epistemological-political question is not primarily the economic globalization itself, but its political basis, that is, the international politics founded on the periphery’s dependence as the condition to central development. Therefore, only the recovery and the renewal of a nationalist and interventionist politics based on the strengthening of political institutions in general and of the Welfare State in particular can respond to problems of economic globalization, deconstructing the New Left’s globalization hypothesis.

In the text, we put the category of differences as anthropological-ontological and epistemological-moral contemporary ethos and praxis which challenge-streamline institutionalized and universalist religions, for example the Catholic Church, in their use of essentialist and naturalized foundations as normative-paradigmatic basis for framing, legitimation and orientation of these differences, as basement for the dialectics between plurality and unity regarding these differences. From that, we will argue that the institutionalized and universalist religions’ central challenge – and, in our case again, the Catholic Church’s central challenge – consists in the deconstruction of the correlation among strong institutionalism, strict anthropological-ontological and epistemological-moral objectivity and political-normative fundamentalism. In this sense, as long as religious institutions bring the differences as normative praxis and epistemological-political subjects into their internal dynamic of constitution, legitimation and social foment of the creed, it is possible to achieve the weakening and the moderation – and perhaps the own abandonment – of the essentialist and naturalized foundations as basis for framing of all areas of human life. Anyway, as we think, this must be the case for gender and sexuality, which could not and should not be grounded on such an essentialist and naturalized basis.

  Resumo: A teoria marxiana do trabalho alienado ocupa um papel de destaque na Filosofia política moderna. Seguindo a esteira de Hegel, Marx concebe o homem como sendo o produto de sua própria atividade, isto é, a autoproduçáo do homem pelo trabalho. Isso significa que o ser humano náo é um ser que nasce acabado, mas que se desenvolve como ser humano enquanto desenvolve as potencialidades que lhe sáo inerentes. Imerso no estudo da sociedade capitalista, Marx percebe como nela se interdita esse postulado da autoproduçáo do homem pelo trabalho. Mas, se a realizaçáo da humanidade depende da genuína atividade produtiva, do exercício do trabalho, sem alienar-se em relaçáo ao seu produto, surge a necessidade de se criarem alternativas frente a esse modo de produçáo, no intuito de se assegurarem as condições de realizaçáo da humanidade do trabalhador. As condições para o exercício do trabalho náo-alienado seráo superadas, na medida em que se superar a propriedade privada e a divisáo social do trabalho. E na linha de pensamento de Marx, a tese de que o trabalho perdeu sua centralidade náo tem lugar. Vale dizer que, se tal tese fosse admitida, seriam suprimidas as condições de realizaçáo do ser humano, pois, para Marx, trabalho e o desenvolvimento das potencialidades humanas sáo indissociáveis. O que precisa ser superado é o trabalho alienado e náo o trabalho como tal.   Palavras-Chave: Divisáo do Trabalho. Marx. Propriedade Privada. Trabalho Alienado

Cette étude soutient que la théorie hégélienne de l'opinion publique ne tombe pas dans le relativisme subjectiviste, ni dans une discussion sans fin. Elle rejette ainsi l'opinion monopoliste de publicité d'Etat, et ne préconise pas un retour en arrière sous prétexte de retrouver l'âge d'or de l'opinion publique. Elle ne se laisse pas entraîner par l'optimisme naïf ou le pessimisme apocalyptique. Cette théorie élève d'abord l'opinion à un savoir dialectique, et ensuite, à travers la liberté d'opiner, effectue la vérité de l'opinion publique par la médiation politique.

The classic analytic tradition associated the philosophy of George Berkeley with idealism. Yet in terms of the German Idealismus, Berkeley was no idealist. Rather, he described himself as an “immaterialist”. In the classic analytic tradition we find a misunderstanding of the German Idealismus. This paper will suggest, through reference to the work of Paul Redding, that Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit presents Idealismus as that which reconciles objectivity and subjectivity in the experience of consciousness. Hegel’s Phenomenology develops this idea in the elaboration of a remarkably novel theory of consciousness. For Hegel, the conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience are a dialectical movement between consciousness and the object, or immediacy and mediacy. In the whole movement of consciousness we have the logic of contradiction working at the back of phenomenological experience that Hegel will make explicit in the Science of Logic, a logic that involves the thinker becoming consciously aware of their own thought processes. Yet Hegel’s Logic is different from the common meaning of ‘logic’. His Logic is not a formal approach to valid inference but captures the method and the moments and movement of logic. For Hegel, the great problem of classical logic is the immobility of the categories. This paper proposes that Hegel’s ‘holism’ entails the description wherein Logic, Nature, and Spirit are articulated as a whole in dialectical movement.

A Filosofia Moderna Alemã não inventou o sujeito nem o descobriu pela primeira vez. Mas, em Kant e no Idealismo Alemão, a teoria do sujeito e da liberdade chegou a um nível de reflexão, de diferenciação e de aprofundamento nunca alcançado antes e poucas vezes depois. A temática do sujeito livre é tão central para esta corrente que ela poderia ser compreendida sob o título geral de “Filosofia da Liberdade”. O volume reúne alguns resultados da pesquisa sobre “Sujeito e Liberdade”, pensados nessa perspectiva da Filosofia Moderna Alemã. Ele é fruto da colaboração de pesquisadores dos Programas de Pós-Graduação em Filosofia da Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS) e da Universidade Federal do Ceará (UFC), no Programa Nacional de Cooperação Acadêmica (PROCAD), promovido pela Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES). A maioria dos textos foi apresentada no Simpósio PROCAD PUCRS-UFC, sobre a mesma temática, realizado de 25 a 28 de agosto de 2011, em Fortaleza. Além destes, Christian Iber, Anton Friedrich Koch e Andreas Schmidt contribuíram para enriquecer este livro com seus artigos.

New settings for communication are being built, having, at one side, great corporations of television, radio, press and on line media, and at the other side the role of the independent / alternative press, understood as not bound to a private, public or state enterprise or to some economic group. It takes gradually shape the constitution of the opposition between the traditional media and the independent / alternative press, having as a material base the new technologies of information. How can the new technology of information associated to the new settings of press freedom and the phenomenon of the contradiction of public opinion in the era of internet accomplish the mediation of the opinion in a globalized society? Or still, starting from the presupposition of the press freedom, how to guarantee that the society solves the contradiction of the public opinion? The phenomenon of the public opinion is contradicting because it has in itself, at the same time, the universality of constitutional principles of Law and Ethics, together with the peculiarity of the citizens’ rights and concerns. This contradiction finds its solution by means of the mediation of the freedom of the press itself within a frame of democratic legality. This is the power of the contradiction: to put into effect the dialectic tension between the opposed poles of the universal and the particular in the press freedom, avowing the right of every citizen to express publicly his opinion. This is Hegel’s theory of public opinion: the press freedom and the parliament, as a politic space, are privileged spheres of the mediation of the contradictory phenomenon of the public opinion. Keywords: Press freedom; public opinion; press; citizen journalists.

O presente artigo objetiva discutir a lógica subjacente ao movimento dialético da figura do Senhor e do Servo. Jean-Pierre Labarrière é quem afirma categoricamente a tese segundo a qual há uma Lógica por trás do movimento da Consciência. Ora, a questão fundamental que se coloca, nesse caso, é: qual a lógica que preside o movimento da consciência para a consciência de si, culminado em sua unidade no momento da Razão? A hipótese aqui perseguida, situando-se na esteira da interpretação de Labarrière, é de que a lógica que se encontra "por trás da consciência", nessa figura da Fenomenologia do Espírito, é a mesma lógica que Hegel apresenta na Doutrina da Essência, na Ciência da Lógica. Para tanto, explicitar as categorias lógicas da Doutrina da Essência e acompanhar o seu desdobramento configuram o objetivo central deste trabalho. This paper aims to discuss the logic that underlies the master-servant dialectic. Jean-Pierre Labarrière categorically claims that there is a logic underlying the movement of the consciousness. The fundamental issue at stake is this: What is the logic that regulates the movement of the consciousness of the self, which culminates in its unity in the moment of reason? The hypothesis advanced here, following Labarrière's suggestions, is that the logic that lies "behind the consciousness" in this figure in Phenomenology of the Mind, is the same logic that Hegel presents in the doctrine of essence in the Science of Logic. The central goal of the present work is to make explicit the logical categories of the doctrine of essence, and to follow their unfolding.

El fenómeno de la globalización pone en crisis la teoría de la soberanía nacional, porque el Estad-Nación, configurado por la modernidad no consigue ya controlar y proteger su territorio y, menos aún, garantizar la legitimación de sus decisiones y poder, con el fin de fomentar un proyecto político. La soberanía moderna ha sido elaborada a partir del Estado-Nación, cerrado sobre sí mismo en su territorio, volcado hacia las guerras de expansión contra otros Estados. El predominio de la soberanía interna oculta la dimensión inter-estatal, mientras que la soberanía postmoderna se construye a partir del Imperio Mundial, que ignora los Estado nacionales. Se verifica un traspaso del poder hacia la soberanía externa en detrimento de la garantía nacional. En efecto, tanto el primer como el segundo modo de soberanía se hunden en los extremos del silogismo, es decir, no entienden la soberanía interna y externa como una forma de mediación. A mi parecer Hegel propone una adecuada "tensión mediadora" entre los dos momentos de la soberanía.The phenomenon of globalization has brought the theory of the modern sovereignty into crisis, as the Nation-State, forged by modernity, is no longer able to control and protect its territory, and even less able to guarantee its people the legitimacy of its decisions, in the fostering of a political project. Modern sovereignty has developed from the initial starting point of the Nation-State, enclosed within itself in its own territory, and through wars of expansion against other States. The predominance of internal sovereignty eclipses the inter-state dimension, while post-modern sovereignty is constructed on the basis of a World Empire that ignores Nation-States. We are witnessing a displacement of power towards external sovereignty to the detriment of a national affirmation. Now, both the first and the second models of sovereignty are floundering in the extremes of the syllogism. In other words, internal and external sovereignty are not understood as a form of mediation. Hegel, in our opinion, puts forward the right "mediating tension" between the two moments of sovereignty theory.