Philosophy is not for the timid

What is to be a philosopher?

It is to firmly believe in human capacity to understand reality – and to bet one’s life in this belief. The apotheosis of reason begins with an act of faith. Hegel already said that: without faith in the power of the spirit, no philosophical investigation. Philosophy, like the Kingdom of Heaven, was not made for the timid and recalcitrant. But to this first bet there follows a commitment, which is the one of never ignoring anything of the reality on purpose. The philosopher has to open himself entirely to the variety of facts that present themselves, without taking refuge on premature explanations. Instead of inventing explanations, he has to wait until reality suggests and proves them, even if, during this wait, he risks going almost insane in the confusion of data. That is why I do not like to call philosophers “thinkers”. Thinking is easy. What is hard is to think things as they are – and to do this it is needed, many times, to go against our own thought, make it go where it does not want to go. That is why, also, I do not see substantial difference between philosophy and science. The sciences are only provisory stabilizations of certain philosophical investigations, for which was found a consensual method that can be uniformly practiced by a whole community, but that, from time to time, are dissolved again in the sea of deep philosophical questioning.

How do you see the current situation of philosophical studies in Brazil?

Disastrous, though less than one would expect. Journals like "Presença Filosófica" (Philosophical Presence), "Revista Brasileira de Filosofia" (Brazilian Journal on Philosophy), and "Síntese" (Synthesis) from Belo Horizonte, which I do not know if is still in print, save our honor. But, in general, what one sees is the basest ideological rubbish dominating the scenery. Just an example: the almost instinctive capacity to distinguish between a concept and a figure of speech is the mark of talent for philosophical studies, the initial condition for entering philosophy. Our most renowned academic philosophers, after decades of study, have not yet acquired this elementary skill. They only occupy themselves with spreading among the students the confusion and obscurity of their crude souls, and compensate their interior misery through the exhibitionist participation in political campaigns. The worst part is the new fashion of philosophy for kids, to produce jobs for academe and to abuse childish innocence: philosophy is not a thing for kids, as supposes our execrable Ministry of Education. Alchemically speaking, philosophy is the brimstone that crystallizes mercury, the volatile mind, to produce salt – the perfect mind. Premature crystallization is an alchemical disaster, the congealing of the soul. Philosophy teachers are helping our children to suffocate their authentic perceptions under a pseudo-intellectual discourse of despairing superficiality.

How can we unite sense of humor, argumentative eloquence and philosophical lucidity?

These things always come together, or they do not come at all. The founder of philosophical tradition, Socrates, was a synthesis of the three. Plato was not to be left behind. And even the writings that were left of Aristotle, mere technical drafts for class lecturing, let us see the fine sense of humor that certainly animated his conversations with the students.

Can your reinterpretation of Aristotle lead us to a unified view of the whole of Greek philosophy?

Sincerely, I hope so. Aristotle was very aware of his position in the evolutionary scheme of the philosophy before him. All his thinking is not only a reflection on this evolution, but almost a materialization of it under the form of order and system – like when you hear a melody and suddenly perceive this temporal sequence in the form of a drawing, of a graphic: time that becomes space. First the Greeks knew the mythological-poetical discourse of epics and poetry, after that the rhetoric discourse of the Sophists, and after that the dialectics of Socrates and Plato, and finally the logical structure revealed by Aristotle. This historical sequence is identical to the internal structure of the system of Aristotle, such as I believe I have revealed in the "theory of four discourses". This phenomenon of a system that has consciously made and remade the historical evolution is a great miracle of the spirit. Some Islamic mystics consider Aristotle a prophet, and I think they are right.

How was your recent experience in Romania, your conferences there, your contact with writers and universities of that country?

Romania today is my second country. I have as many friends there as in Brazil, and no enemy except the cold. I also have good friends among the Romanians that live here in Brazil, such as Gheorghe Legmann, valiant fighter for Brazil-Romania relations. The Romanians are a very cultured people, with the soul refined through suffering. The number of wise men "per capita" there is impressive. It is also a breathtakingly beautiful country, the greatest natural reserve of Europe, with forests full of bears and wolves that never heard of ecological crisis or of Greenpeace. But the neighboring countries did not give Romania the least chance. They invaded her and pillaged her all they wanted, and imposed on her the straightjacket of totalitarian regimes, first Nazism and after that forty years of communism. Today the Romanians, deprived by the New World Order, are a tired, worn out, unbelieving people, with difficulty to see their own more obvious qualities. However, in the midst of the blackest poverty, they do not lose the love of studying. They are an example for Brazilians, which only admit study as a means of finding a job or making party conversation wittier. The Romanians love Brazil (they even gave the name Copacabana to a beach on the Black Sea, and the anthem of the Romanian national soccer team is a samba), and our presence there does them good. Maybe no one has done more to improve the self-image of the Romanians than the Brazilian ambassador, Jerônimo Moscardo, today a veritable "pop star" in Bucharest. I think every Brazilian should spend some time there, to see what dignity in misery is and to stop complaining so much. Bucharest is the poorest capital in Europe – and the most peaceful. There simply are no armed robberies. When I return to this country of ours, where a whole broiled chicken costs only two dollars, I am perplexed at this middle class so chubby and so rebellious. They complain so much about life, and justify violence through “misery”: I wish those people would go see the thousands of street children in Bucharest. They have to hide on the sewers during winter, and come beg us for food in English, French, and German, with an air of innocence that day by day disappears from the eyes of our children, corrupted by false educators.

How do you see the work of Emil Cioran in contemporary thought?

Cioran cannot be read literally, or else you will blow your brains out. That is something he himself did not do, what shows us he was aware of the dose of irony in his writings (he used to say he was a fraud and that people would see that if they understood him). Cioran takes the stand in the name of the devil, prosecutor of humanity, and defies us to take charge of the defense. Playing among patent truths and truthlike exaggeration, he always leaves us an opening for salvation, and it is precisely in these hiatuses, in these calculated failings inside his argument, that lies the most intelligent part of his work, in truth more pedagogic or psycho-therapeutic than philosophical. Cioran can induce you to despair, to stoic resignation, or to resuming faith and hope. He can be poison or medication: it is up to you to decide.

Do you get along well with the computer?

Wonderfully well. It was affinity at first sight. Actually, I think I would never have published any books if I had no computer: it was this machine, and only it, that allowed me to put in order writings accumulated during twenty years. And today Internet is my main medium of information.

Do you think that the regular practice of journalism is important to your work?

When you write only for a circle of students, like I did for a long time, you have a tendency to create a style that is compacted, full of abbreviations and things left unsaid, that in the end becomes a hermetic thing; or else something that multiplies explanations, with minutiae and pedagogic details that lengthen it overmuch. To return to regular journalism was healthy discipline, that forced on me daily exercises to conciliate what Horatio thought impossible to do so: brevity and clarity. On the other hand, this also gave me the opportunity to circulate ideas that I have been “brooding over” in solitude along twenty years, and that seem to me can be useful to Brazil.

Sign, preferences, family.

Sign: Taurus with Ascendant Aquarius (like Karl Marx, dammit!), Moon in Leo, Mars and Mercury in Aries, Jupiter culminating in Scorpio.

Preferences: Book – The Bible and the Koran, the Hindu scriptures commented by Shankara, the Metaphysics by Aristotle, the Divine Comedy, all of Dostoievsky, Walter Scott and Pío Baroja selected, poems from Camões, Antonio Machado, and William Butler Yeats. Food – Barbecue. Drink – Coffee. Hobby – Smoking in forbidden places. Animals – Dogs and horses. Clothes – The most inexpensive. Perfume – Soap and water. Cigarettes – Ducados, Spanish, and Romeo y Julieta, Cuban, from the same factory as the cigars (good cigarettes are my only luxury). Music – Gregorian chant; Bach; Haendel; Wagner; Old Italian and Irish songs; Country music from any part of the world. Consumer dream: An Irish wolfhound. Costs a bunch and eats a lot. Family: The best thing in the world. I’m sorry the kids are just eight.

And the future? What is the place of Brazil in the world?

I think that Brazil is going through its most difficult and decisive moment in its history. We have the dream of being a nation and have the right to be, but at the moment when we are just about to realize this dream, nations are not in fashion any more and world government approaches with giant steps. Our challenge is to prove we are capable of representing the superior ideals of humanity better than the world government. But, to do that, we need three things: to rapidly absorb the spiritual legacy of all civilizations, to learn to avoid the stereotyped ideological alternatives with which this world strategy divides us, and overcome a false native nationalism, full of complexes and debilitating, that is today easily manipulated by the left wing sold to the New World Order. We have to create a new nationalism, capable of competing in the world market. I usually call it national-liberalism, with the explanation that it is not an ideological system, but only a provisory arrangement, a Brazilian improvisation of a solution.

The greatest obstacles are the intellectuals, strongly attached to absurd ideological schemes, to antimilitary resentments that are very well used (and well paid for) by this world strategy to weaken us, and to personal hates unexplained logically, such as this feud against Roberto Campos, a man that, in the field of actions, and not in the field of bla-bla-bla, did more for Brazil than all the Left united. The only way to persuade this people, is to have the patience of Antônio Olinto.