Um comentário ao meu artigo anterior me chamou a atenção para a relevância do livro de Hannah Arendt citado abaixo para o artigo em questão.

Comprei o livro no Amazon/Kindle e achei na Introdução esta fantástica passagem que cito abaixo.

Antes, porém, quero chamar a atenção para o último parágrafo citado:

“In other words, once the always precarious balance between the two worlds is lost, no matter whether the “true world” abolishes the “apparent one” or vice versa, the whole frame-work of reference in which our thinking was accustomed to orient itself breaks down. In these terms, nothing seems to make much sense any more.”

Arendt está falando da distinção entre:

(a) aquilo que é sensório, que percebemos pelos sentidos, e que é objeto de estudo e investigação por parte das ciências experimentais — das quais a física é a rainha;

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(b) aquilo que seria suprassensório, captável, quem sabe, apenas pelo nosso pensamento ou por nossa “razão pura” — i.e., pela “meta-física”. É nesse reino que habitariam Deus e a mente humana.

O segundo domínio era, na era clássica e até o surgimento da ciência moderna, de longe considerado o mais importante — na verdade, o mais real, o primeiro domínio sendo chamado de domínio das aparências ou dos fenômenos. Apesar disso, a distinção ainda é claramente pressuposta por Kant, embora ele tenha negado que possamos ter conhecimento das “coisas em si mesmas” que habitariam o suprassensório.

Por várias razões, essa distinção caiu em desuso — morreu, razão pela qual se anunciou “a morte de Deus” (Nietzsche) e “o fim da metafísica” (os positivistas lógicos).

A tese de Arendt é que a distinção é indispensável, porque, quando se perde um desses domínios, cedo ou tarde perde-se o outro também…

Ou seja, e agora a conclusão é minha, talvez a ciência e os filósofos que são seus apologetas tenham feito mal até mesmo a si próprios ao afugentar a metafísica do cenário atual. Assim fazendo, acabaram por se desacreditar a si mesmos.

Terá chegado a hora de ressuscitar a metafísica, entre outras razões porque as bases metafísicas e epistemológicas da ciência — vale dizer, seu paradigma — precisam ser revistas.

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“What has come to an end is [not God, but] the basic distinction between the sensory and the suprasensory, together with the notion, at least as old as Parmenides, that whatever is not given to the senses— God or Being or the First Principles and Causes (archai) or the Ideas— is more real, more truthful, more meaningful than what appears, that it is not just beyond sense perception but above the world of the senses.

What is “dead” is not only the localization of such “eternal truths” but also the distinction itself.

Meanwhile, in increasingly strident voices the few defenders of metaphysics have warned us of the danger of nihilism inherent in this development; and although they themselves seldom invoke it, they have an important argument in their favor: it is indeed true that once the suprasensory realm is discarded, its opposite, the world of appearances as understood for so many centuries, is also annihilated. The sensory, as still understood by the positivists, cannot survive the death of the suprasensory.

No one knew this better than Nietzsche, who, with his poetic and metaphoric description of the assassination of God, has caused so much confusion in these matters. In a significant passage in The Twilight of Idols, he clarifies what the word “God” meant in the earlier story. It was merely a symbol for the suprasensory realm as understood by metaphysics; he now uses, instead of “God,” the expression “true world” and says: “We have abolished the true world. What has remained? The apparent one perhaps? Oh no! With the true world we have also abolished the apparent one.”

This insight of Nietzsche’s, namely, that “the elimination of the suprasensory also eliminates the merely sensory and thereby the difference between them” (Heidegger), is actually so obvious that it defies every attempt to date it historically; all thinking in terms of two worlds implies that these two are inseparably connected with each other.

Thus, all the elaborate modern arguments against positivism are anticipated by the unsurpassed simplicity of Democritus’ little dialogue between the mind, the organ for the suprasensory, and the senses. Sense perceptions are illusions, says the mind; they change according to the conditions of our body; sweet, bitter, color, and so on exist only nomo, by convention among men, and not physei, according to true nature behind the appearances. Whereupon the senses answer: “Wretched mind! Do you overthrow us while you take from us your evidence [pisteis, everything you can trust]? Our overthrow will be your downfall.”

In other words, once the always precarious balance between the two worlds is lost, no matter whether the “true world” abolishes the “apparent one” or vice versa, the whole frame-work of reference in which our thinking was accustomed to orient itself breaks down. In these terms, nothing seems to make much sense any more.”

Arendt, Hannah (1981-03-16). The Life of the Mind: Vols 1&2 (Combined 2 Volumes in 1) (Kindle Locations 193-214). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.

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Em São Paulo, 27 de Maio de 2013