Man, the soul, body and nourishment [ 1 ]

Reflections on post-modernism: the great depressions occur nearly every day at the time of the newscast. Where has globalization and Lyotard ‘s “ungoverned society” led us?

1. The narrative crisis

Extrapolated from the discussion on the rights of stateless persons in the context of Nazi persecution, the new threats to citizenship bring forward to our days this summary reflection on human rights, with the aggravating circumstance of its actual positioning on the traditional territories of each state’s sovereignty. Seven years after the publication of the book “The Origins of Totalitarianism” (1951), Hannah Arendt publishes “The Human Condition”, where he emphasizes the importance of politics as an action and as a process aimed at achievement of freedom. Half century past, the markets freedom is clearly outweighing the freedom of rulers and ruled (democratic pact, regulatory state, its representation and development).

Finally we will see how some radical theories of Thomas Hobbes lead us to doubt the very seriousness of governments in the protection of the rights of its citizens. One might say, nowadays, that it is relevant to investigate if we are not also being victims of those who in principle have the duty to protect us; in other words, to verify if those who should be protecting us are protecting us are actually doing it.

In 2001, on a conference held in Portugal on the challenges of globalization, Alain Touraine admitted for the first time that «it is urgent to rebuild a political control of the economy (...) and rebuild democracy» (newspaper ‘Público’, December 9th 2001). Ten years later, there’s still no solution to an increasingly technically cloistered culture or, if you will, a technique increasingly detached from culture.

«All countries located in the zone of influence of Wall Street and the City are threatened», says the French sociologist. The capitalist post-cold war enthusiasm degenerated into a «financial and economic system that was been put out of reach of all social and political interventions» (newspaper ‘El País’, January 6th 2010). Touraine calls it the «non-human economic forces». Jean-Francois Lyotard had already defined it as the «ungoverned society».

Because — according to Popper in whom I believe — the lessons of the past are not always examples to the crossroads of the future, today nobody knows how and when will man be freed from the “eclipse of reason” in the concerns of Horkheimer, Max Weber, Adorno...

Has the world crumbled?

«Against the cynical interpretation of history», Popper is optimistic about the present (A Vida é Aprendizagem/Life is Learning, Lisbon: Edition 70, 2001). Touraine also: «the world is getting better, except for Europe» (Euronews, 2010). Gilles Lipovetsky and Sebastien Charles idem: «the hyper-modernity future remains open and does not prevent us to work for fairer regulations.» (Le Temps Hypermodernes, Ed Grasset, 2004). Finally, Habermas, who foreseen the replacement of the “instrumental reason” for the “communicative reason” (The Theory of Communicative Action, vols. 1 and 2, Cambridge, 1981). This can only mean that man is, yet, a narrative: to end it would mean to finish the possibility of improvement.