EPISTEMOLOGÍA PARA PRINCIPIANTES

ANIMACIÓN EN DEFENSA DE LA FILOSOFÍA

"CONFIDENCIAL" MINISERIE NACIONAL

http://www.caracoltv.com/producciones/series/confidencial/video-206669-verdades-empiezan-a-salir-a-flote

"Jorge le cuenta a su esposa que tuvo un romance con Carmen mientras estuvo secuestrado, pero Ángela se empeña en seguir ocultando su traición. Pedro busca la manera de aliviar sus penas de amor."

DESPUÉS DE LA LIBERACIÓN, EL DOLOR

A propósito de la miniserie “CONFIDENCIAL” del canal Caracol

Eduardo Botero Toro

Lo liberaron y entonces se dio de bruces con que lo que le había servido como refugio durante doce largos años de secuestro, ahora, en la libertad, se convertía en su condena.  En el secuestro resulta fútil preguntarse si uno se enamora o no: ya se tiene bastante con pagar condena sin haber sido sometido a juicio, descubrirse ficha de un macabro juego de intereses en pugna en el que a lo mejor se tuvo algún grado de participación, verse reducido a cumplir con las órdenes proferidas por carceleros provistos de una capacidad de odio fríamente ejercida y calculada.

POR ESTAR PREOCUPADOS ¿SOMOS POTENCIALMENTE ENFERMOS?

NUESTROS JÓVENES: NOSOTROS MISMOS XXI

GARANTIZAR LOS DERECHOS DE LOS JÓVENES NO ES LA CAUSA DE LA VIOLENCIA DE ALGUNOS

A Manuel Teodoro y Silvia Corzo...

Eduardo Botero Toro

Nos rasgamos las vestiduras explicando que nuestros jóvenes se han vuelto especialmente violentos porque cuentan con la impunidad necesaria.  La falta de castigo, pensamos, ha contribuido a acrecentar su predisposición a la violencia y al abuso por parte de criminales de mayor edad que los utilizan para sus protervos fines.  Hay quienes sugieren que el endurecimiento del trato, la posibilidad de imputación y el incremento de las penas, servirían para disuadirlos de modo suficiente como para que esa predisposición disminuyera.  La pasión que disimula la ideología a través de documentales aparentemente rigurosos en materia de investigación periodística, insiste en que si no se actúa en esa dirección, pronto estaremos abocados a un estado de desorden tal que estará en peligro la sociedad entera.

PALABRAS AL VIENTO

NUDOS EN LA GARGANTA QUE IMPIDEN LANZAR PALABRAS AL VIENTO

Eduardo Botero T.

Tengo atorada la garganta con la palabra biopsia.  Mi mujer y mi hija, ambas, están pendientes del resultado de una.  Y todos los demás también. 

Destaco la tranquilidad de todos, incluso la que yo aparento. Pareciera como si no se estuviera a la espera de una noticia que puede ser desagradable.  Llevamos cinco años en esto y, hasta el presente, en más de una ocasión no hemos obtenido los resultados deseados sino los que retumban implacables en la memoria y en el corazón.

Adentro, bien adentro, tanto más por el atoramiento, otra cosa bulle como líquido en olla a presión.  Biopsia, según el DRAE, hace referencia tanto una medida tomada con fines diagnósticos como al resultado de la misma.  Doña María Moliner no difiere mucho en su definición, solo que especifica que el procedimiento recae en un tejido.  Para ambos: de bios y del griego opsis, vista. Para mí: espera que tortura.

Tortura por mil razones, pero sobre todo por una: hay loterías que nadie quiere ganarse, esta es una de ellas.  Por más conocimientos que puedas tener, la participación del azar resulta difícil de apartar.  Haciendo un balance de las muchas veces has comprado billetes de lotería que no te has ganado, esperarías que tampoco te ganarás esta.  Reparo: la malignidad, ¿cuestión de suerte?  Sí de mala suerte.  Y has contado tantas veces con la mala suerte de no ganarte un billete de la lotería que esperarías un destino diferente.

Como paciente, los ojos de los médicos no ven más que sacos de huesos y tejidos en nosotros.  Como médico, no logro evitar la pesadumbre de los colegas cuando me comunican determinadas decisiones, una de ellas, la de ordenar biopsias.

Es una situación que, aunque a veces me lleve a exclamar ¡pero porqué más bien no fui carpintero!, tomo con relativa serenidad para efectos de no contribuir con mi aprehensión a la pesadumbre de mis familiares.  Supongo que también vivo para eso, para sostener sobre mis hombros el peso de la incertidumbre y hacerla soportable para quienes quiero. 

A veces creo que todo el párrafo anterior es una impostura, una delicada mentira que logro creerme asistido por la fuerza imperativa del deseo.  “Diga mentalmente: con Jesús mi esposa y mi hija están salvas”, me recomienda amistosamente una colaboradora académica.  “Si usted piensa positivamente, se le cumplirá su deseo”, me dice otra persona.  No puedo evitar pensar en las bondades que ofrece el pensamiento infantil.  Pero no logro encontrarlo y mucho menos refugio en él. 

Trago saliva con dificultad.  Y envío al aire estas palabras.

HISTORIA DEL PARTENÓN -COSTA GAVRAS

The Curse of Minerva ^*by George Gordon, Lord Byron
(composed: 17 March 1811, Athens)

Slow sinks, more lovely ere his race be run,   Along Morea’s hills the setting sun;      Not, as in northern climes, obscurely bright,      But one unclouded blaze of living light;   O’er the hush’d deep the yellow beam he throws,   Gilds the green wave that trembles as it glows;      On old Aegina’s rock and Hydra’s isle      The god of gladness shed his parting smile’   O’er his own regions lingering loves to shine,   Though there his altars are no more divine.      Descending fast, the mountain-shadows kiss      Thy glorious gulf, unconquer’d Salamis!   Their azure arches through the long expanse   More deeply purpled, meet his mellowing glance,      And tenderest tints, along their summits driven,      Mark his gay course, and own the hues of heaven;   Till darkly shaded from the land and deep,   Behind his Delphian rock he sinks to sleep.   On such an eve his palest beam he cast   When, Athens! here thy wisest look’d his last,      How watch’d thy better sons his farewell ray,      That closed their murder’d sage’s latest day!   Not yet—not yet—Sol pauses on the hill.   The precious hour of parting lingers still;      But sad his light to agonising eyes,      And dark the mountain’s once delightful dyes;   Gloom o’er the lovely land he seem’d to pour,   The land where Phoebus never frown’d before;      But ere he sunk below Citheron’s head,      The cup of woe was quaff’d—the spirit fled;   The soul of him that scorn’d to fear or fly,   Who lived and died as none can live or die.      But, lo! from high Hymettus to the plain      The queen of night asserts her silent reign;   No murky vapour, herald of the storm,   Hides her fair face, or girds her glowing form,      With cornice glimmering as the moonbeams play,      There the white column greets her grateful ray,   And bright around, with quivering beams beset,   her emblem sparkles o’er the minaret:      The groves of olive scatter’d dark and wide,      Where meek Cephisus sheds his scanty tide,   the cypress saddening by the sacred mosque,   The gleaming turret of the gay kiosk,      And sad and sombre ’mid the holy calm,      Near Theseus’ fane, yon solitary palm;   All, tinged with varied hues, arrest the eye;   and dull were his that pass’d them heedless by.   Again the Aegean, heard no more afar,   Lulls his chafed breast from elemental war;      Again his waves in milder tints unfold      Their long expanse of sapphire and of gold,   Mix’d with the shades of many a distant isle   That frown, where gentler oceans deigns to smile.   As thus, within the walls of Pallas’ fane,   I mark’d the beauties of the land and main,      Alone, and friendless, on the magic shore,      Whose arts revive, whose arms avenge no more; **   Oft as the matchless dome I turn’d to scan,   Sacred to gods, but not secure from man,      The past return’d, the present seem’d to cease,      And Glory knew no clime beyond her Greece!   Hours roll’d along, and Dian’s orb on high   Had gain’d the centre of her softest sky;      And yet unwearied still my footsteps trod      O’er the vain shrine of many a vanish’d god:   But chiefly, Pallas! thine, when Hecate’s glare,   Check’d by thy columns, fell more sadly fair      O’er the chill marble, where the starling tread      Thrills the lone heart like echoes from the dead.   Long had I mused, and treasured every trace   The wreck of Greece recorded of her race,      When, lo! A giant form before me strode,      And Pallas hailed me in her own abode!   Yes, ’twas Minerva’s self; but ah! how changed,   Since o’er the Darman field in arms she ranged!      Not such as erst, by her divine command,      Her form appeared from Phidias’ plastic hand:   Gone were the terrors of her awful brow,   Her idle aegis bore no Gorgon now;      Her helm was dinted, and the broken lance      Seem’d weak and shaftless e’en to mortal glance;   The olive branch, which still she deign’d to clasp,   Shrunk from her touch, and wither’d in her grasp;      And, ah! though still the brightest of the sky,      Celestial tears bedimm’d her large blue eye:   Round the rent casque her owlet circled slow,   And mourn’d his mistress with a shriek of woe!   “Mortal!”—’twas thus she spake—“that blush of shame   Proclaims thee Briton, once a noble name;      First of the mighty, foremost of the free,      Now honour’d less by all, and least by me;   Chief of thy foes shall Pallas still be found.   Seek’st thou the cause of loathing?—look around.      Lo! here, despite of war and wasting fire,      I saw successive tyrannies expire.   ’Scaped from the ravage of the Turk and Goth,   Thy country sends a spoiler worse than both.      Survey this vacant, violated fane;      Recount the relics torn that yet remain:   These Cecrops placed, this Pericles adorn’d,   That Adrian rear’d when drooping Science mourn’d.      What more I owe let gratitude attest—      Know, Alaric and Elgin did the rest.   That all may learn from whence the plunderer came,   The insulted wall sustains his hated name:   For Elgin’s fame thus grateful Pallas pleads,   Below, his name—above, behold his deeds!      Be ever hailed with equal honour here      The Gothic monarch and the Pictish peer:   arms gave the first his right, the last had none,   But basely stole what less barbarians won.      So when the lion quits his fell repast,      Next prowls the wolf, the filthy jackal last;   Flesh, limbs, and blood the former make their own,   The last poor brute securely gnaws the bone.      Yet still the gods are just, and crimes are cross’d:      See here what Elgin won, and what he lost!   Another name with his pollutes my shrine:   Behold where Dian’s beams disdain to shine!      Some retribution still might Pallas claim,      When Venus half avenged Minerva’s shame.”   She ceased awhile, and thus I dared reply,   To soothe the vengeance kindling in her eye:      “Daughter of Jove! in Britain’s injured name,      A true-born Briton may the deed disclaim.   Frown not on England; England owns him not:   Athena, no! thy plunderer was a Scot.      Ask’st thou the difference? From fair Phyles’ towers      Survey Bœotia;—Caledonia’s ours.   And well I know within that bastard land   Hath Wisdom’s goddess never held command;      A barren soil, where Nature’s germs, confined      To stern sterility, can stint the mind;   Whose thistle well betrays the niggard earth,   Emblem of all to whom the land gives birth;      Each genial influence nurtured to resist;      A land of meanness, sophistry, and mist.   Each breeze from foggy mount and marshy plain   Dilutes with drivel every drizzly brain,      Till, burst at length, each wat’ry head o’er-flows,      Foul as their soil, and frigid as their snows.   Then thousand schemes of petulance and pride   Despatch her scheming children far and wide:      Some east, some west, some everywhere but north,      In quest of lawless gain, they issue forth.   And thus—accursed be the day and year!      Yet Caledonia claims some native worth,      As dull Bœotia gave a Pindar birth;   So may her few, the letter’d and the brave,   Bound to no clime, and victors of the grave,      Shake off the sordid dust of such a land,      And shine like children of a happier strand;   As once, of yore, in some obnoxious place,   Ten names (if found) had saved a wretched race.”   “Mortal!” the blue-eyed maid resumed, “once more   Bear back my mandate to thy native shore.      Though fallen, alas! this vengeance yet is mine,      to turn my counsels far from lands like thine.   Hear then in silence Pallas’ stern behest;   Hear and believe, for time will tell the rest.   “First on the head of him who did this deed   My curse shall light,—on him and all his seed:      Without one spark of intellectual fire,      Be all the sons as senseless as the sire:   If one with wit the parent brood disgrace,   Believe him bastard of a brighter race;      Still with his hireling artists let him prate,      and Folly’s praise repay for Wisdom’s hate;   Long of their patron’s gusto let them tell,   Whose noblest, native gusto is—to sell;      To sell and make—may shame record the day!—      The state receiver of his pilfer’d prey.   Meantime, the flattering, feeble dotard, West,   Europe’s worst dauber, and poor Britain’s best,      With palsied hand shall turn each model o’er      And own himself an infant of fourscore.   Be all the bruisers cull’d from all St. Giles’,   That art and nature may compare their styles;      While brawny brutes in stupid wonder stare,      And marvel at his lordship’s stone shop there.   Round the throng’d gate shall sauntering coxcombs creep,   To lounge and lucubrate, to prate and peep;      While many a languid maid, with longing sigh,      On giant statues casts the curious eye;   The room with transient glance appears to skim   Yet marks the mighty back and length of limb;      Mourns o’er the difference of now and then;      Exclaims ’These Greeks indeed were proper men!’   Draws slight comparisons of these with those,   And envies Laïs all her Attic beaux.      When shall a modern maid have swains like these!      Alas! Sir Harry is no Hercules!   And last of all, amidst the gaping crew,   Some calm spectator, as he takes his view,      In silent indignation mix’d with grief,      Admires the plunder, but abhors the thief.   Oh, loath’d in life, nor pardon’d in the dust,   May hate pursue his sacrilegious lust!      Link’d with the fool that fired the Ephesian dome,      Shall vengeance follow far beyond the tomb,   And Eratostratus and Elgin shine   In many a branding page and burning line;      Alike reserved for aye to stand accursed,      Perchance the second blacker than the first.   “So let him stand, through, ages yet unborn,   Fix’d statue on the pedestal of Scorn’      Though not for him alone revenge shall wait,      But fits thy country for her coming fate:   Hers were the deeds that taught her lawless son   To do what oft Britannia’s self had done.      Look to the Baltic—blazing from afar,      Your old ally yet mourns perfidious war.   Not to such deed did Pallas lend her aid,   Or break the compact which herself had made;      Far from such councils, from the faithless field      She fled—but left behind her Gorgon shield;   A fatal gift that turn’d your friends to stone,   And left lost Albion hated and alone.   “Look to the East, where Ganges’ swarthy race   Shall shake your tyrant empire to its base;      Lo! There Rebellion rears her ghastly head      And glares the Nemesis of native dead;   Till Indus rolls a deep purpureal flood   And claims his long arrear of northern blood.      So may ye perish! Pallas, when she gave      Your free-born rights, forbade ye to enslave.   “Look on your Spain!—she clasps the hand she hates,   But boldly clasps, and thrusts you from her gates.      But Lusitania, kind and dear ally,      Can spare a few to fight, and sometimes fly,   Oh glorious field! by Famine fiercely won,   The Gaul retires for once, and all is done!      But when did Pallas teach, that one retreat      Retrieved three long olympiads of defeat?   “Look last at home—ye love not to look there;   On the grim smile of comfortless despair:      Your city saddens: loud though Revel howls,      Here Famine faints, and yonder Rapine prowls.   See all alike of more or less bereft;   No misers tremble when there’s nothing left.      ‘Blest paper credit;’ who shall dare to sing?      It clogs like lead Corruption’s weary wing.   Yet Pallas pluck’d each premier by the ear,   Who gods and men alike disdain’d to hear;      But one, repentant o’er a bankrupt state,      On Pallas calls,—but calls, alas! Too late:   Then raves for...; to that Mentor bends,   Though he and Pallas never yet were friends.      Him senates hear, whom never yet they heard,      Contemptuous once, and now no less absurd.   So, once of yore, each reasonable frog   Swore faith and fealty to his sovereign ‘log.’      Thus hailed your rulers their patrician clod,      As Egypt chose an onion for a god.   “Now fare ye well! enjoy your little hour;   Go, grasp the shadow of your vanish’d power;      Gloss o’er the failure of each fondest scheme;      Your strength a name, your bloated wealth a cream.   Gone is that gold, the marvel of mankind,   And pirates barter all that’s left behind.      No more the hirelings, purchased near and far,      Crowd to the ranks of mercenary war.   The idle merchant on the useless quay   Droops o’er the bales no bark may bear away;      Or back returning, sees rejected stores      Rot piecemeal on his own encumber’d shores:   The starved mechanic breaks his rusting loom,   And desperate mans him ’gainst the coming doom.      Then in the senate of your sinking state      Show me the man whose counsels may have weight.   Vain is each voice where tones could once command;   E’en factions cease to charm a factious land:      Yet jarring sects convulse a sister isle,      And light with maddening hands the mutual pile.   “’Tis done, ’tis past, since Pallas warns in vain;   The Furies seize her abdicated reign:      Wide o’er the ream they wave their kindling brands,      And wring her vitals with their fiery hands.   But one convulsive struggle still remains,   And Gaul shall weep ere Albion wear her chains.      The banner’d pomp of war, the glittering files,      O’er whose gay trappings stern Bellona smiles;   The brazen trump, the spirit-stirring drum,   That bid the foe defiance ere they come;      The hero bounding at his country’s call,      The glorious death that consecrates his fall,   Swell the young heart with visionary charms,   And bid it antedate the joys of arms.      But know, a lesson you may yet be taught,      With death alone are laurels cheaply bought:   Not in the conflict Havoc seeks delight,   His day of mercy is the day of fight.      But when the field is fought, the battle won,      Though drench’d with gore, his woes are but begun:   His deeper deeds as yet ye know by name;   The slaughter’d peasant and the ravish’d dame,      The rifled mansion and the foe-reap’d field,      Ill suit with souls at home, untaught to yield.   Say with what eye along the distant down   Would flying burghers mark the blazing town?      How view the column of ascending flames      Shake his red shadow o’er the startled Thames?   Nay, frown not, Albion! for the torch was thine   That lit such pyres from Tagus to the Rhine:      Now should they burst on thy devoted coast,      Go, ask they bosom who deserves them most.   The law of heaven and earth is life for life,   And she who raised, in vain regrets, the strife.” * (Poem was a Satire about the "Elgin Marbles," the antiquities taken from the Acropolis in Athens and shipped to England during that time. Although Byron never intended to publish this poem, a copy was stolen from him and printed without his approval) ** (line amended from original:  Whose arts and arms but live in poets’ lore; as Byron requested the following year, although it was not done.)

VERSIÓN EN ESPAÑOL SE PUEDE ENCONTRAR EN: http://filosofiacr.wordpress.com/la-lechuza-de-minerva/

AFORISMOS DE CIORAN

Cuando se ha salido del círculo de errores y de ilusiones en el interior del cual se desarrollan los actos, tomar posición es casi imposible. Se necesita un mínimo de estupidez para todo, para afirmar e incluso para negar.

***

Todo lo que me opone al mundo me es consustancial. La experiencia me ha enseñado pocas cosas. Mis decepciones me han precedido siempre.

***

Para poder vislumbrar lo esencial no debe ejercerse ningún oficio. Hay que permanecer tumbado todo el día, y gemir...

***

Existe un placer innegable en saber que lo que se hace no posee ninguna base real, que da lo mismo realizar un acto que no realizarlo. Sin embargo, en nuestros gestos cotidianos contemporizamos con la Vacuidad, es decir, alternativamente ya veces al mismo tiempo, consideramos este mundo como real e irreal. Mezclamos verdades puras con verdades sórdidas, y esa amalgama, vergüenza del pensador, es la revancha del ser normal.

***

No son los males violentos los que nos marcan, sino los males sordos, los insistentes, los tolerables, aquellos qué forman parte de nuestra rutina y nos minan meticulosamente como el Tiempo.

E. M. CIORAN

Imposible asistir más de un cuarto de hora sin impaciencia a la desesperación de alguien.

JAVIER NAVARRO: "CRITICAR A FREUD"

  Si fuera pertinente, sería preciso retomar todas las críticas razonadas del libro de Onfray y del Libro negro del psicoanálisis, para honrarlas con la discusión. Para aceptar todo lo que tengan de renovación oportuna del pensamiento. Pero es muy probable que no sea pertinente.

Nacimiento del Alma

Por Javier Navarro

            Para todos los interesados en el psicoanálisis, en cualquiera de sus variantes teóricas o pseudo teóricas, no podría sino ser muy interesante, no debería dejar de serlo, el hecho de que se discutieran los postulados freudianos. ¿Quién, que no sea un sectario, puede pretender que una teoría puede y debe durar para siempre como irrefutable, inmejorable, sostenible? De pretenderlo, se estaría en la posición de un ingenuo narcisismo, que supone que lo dicho por Freud, puesto que se ha creído siempre en ello, es excepcional, y que su “ciencia” es la única que no ha cambiado en más de 110 años, salvo en los puntos en los que el mismo se refutó.

LA GANGSTERIZACIÓN DE LA VIDA COTIDIANA

UNA VIÑETA

“El ladrón juzga por su condición”

Del refranero popular.

Eduardo Botero T.

I.

Una fecha cualquiera, salgo de un almacén de cadena cuyos propietarios son accionistas franceses.  Voy a salir y el guarda privado me detiene.  Me exige que le muestre mi factura de compra para revisar si su contenido coincide con el de los productos que llevo, en bolsas, conmigo.  Me niego a aceptar la exigencia: me considero ciudadano con el derecho a que no se prejuzgue mi conducta y me declaro insubordinado contra una acción arbitraria.  El guarda me impide, entonces, continuar mi camino, sin aceptar mi protesta contra el hecho de que ninguna ley lo habilita para permitirme el libre desplazamiento.  Le insisto en que soy cliente y que debo ser tratado con el debido respeto, más si he dejado mi dinero en las arcas de ese almacén.  “Yo he venido a comprar, señor, le digo, no a robar.”  Llama a su superior. Espero.  Esperamos.