By GENILDO FERREIRA DA SILVA & JOSÉ CRISÓSTOMO DE SOUZA

Doing philosophy is, for Poética, doing contemporary, critical and thematic philosophy

Efforts to renew our academic philosophy have taken several forms, beyond just doing “history of canonical philosophy”, which has predominated among us in recent decades. That is, beyond the so-called internal, non-critical commentary on the work of a metropolitan author, such as “perennial philosophy” or something similar. Such new ways of doing philosophy could now represent, even in their variety, developments of living thought, which faces contemporary themes and problems, hopefully those specific to philosophy, according to philosophical ways of dealing with them.

These forms would tentatively present themselves as developments of problematizing thought, oriented towards a philosophical, productive interlocution or conversation with authors and currents, through work in progress, plural and collective, towards greater Brazilian autonomy of thought. This is a work aimed both at philosophical elaboration and at teaching and guiding work that puts itself under the test of critical discussion between rival positions. Finally, why not? a work aimed at developing our own philosophical points of view, even new paradigms for philosophy in our time and context.

These are in fact the workhorses of the Group – with an air of Movement – ​​Pragmatic Poetics, as can be seen, for example, in the collection Philosophy, Action, Creation: Pragmatic Poetics in Movement (Crisóstomo (org.), Edufba). They also largely coincide with the “philosophical maturity”, to be marked by autonomy, topicality and relevance, which Anpof proposed to the Brazilian philosophical community in 2016, when the creation of the Anpof Column as an instrument for this.

See the launch text of the aforementioned Column, “A project of debates between philosophy and contemporary experience” (22/09/2016), and, in dialogue with it, the text by José Crisóstomo “De como como não faz philosophy, but we might as well start doing it” (01/12/16). This is a path that, since then, has begun to be increasingly followed, or at least attempted, and in various ways, by Brazilian academic philosophy, in addition to the aforementioned historical model, of apologetic reading of metropolitan authors, also fashionable.

In this text, we speak of a particular experimental development, with a collective meaning, as if of a constellation, which involves precisely the idea of ​​a plural philosophical point of view, but also of a philosophy of praxis as poiesis, as a proposal for appreciating the Brazilian philosophical community. This is precisely the development unfolded in Philosophy, Action, Creation: Pragmatic Poetics in Movement, a collection with the style of jam session philosophical, as a concertation between different thematic speeches, in tacit or explicit dialogue with each other, based on a more general or central opening speech.

And this as a productive exploration of a common philosophical ground, of our own time, and as a construction, within it, of an elaboration of thought, something rare in our country. With a beautiful name, rich in inspiring associations, the Grupo Poética Pragmática encourages this construction with an invitation to the participation of more colleagues, at a time when the Brazilian philosophical community, as we said, tries to rehearse new paths, in addition to the aforementioned exegetical comments .

As a large part of our philosophical community already knows, Poética Pragmática is an open, research and elaboration group in philosophy, interested in doing philosophy, democratically, as a work in progress. Doing so also as a resumption of contact with the efforts to produce Brazilian critical thought, essayist, philosophizer, generally canceled by the “submissive” path of our academic philosophy of previous decades.

Doing philosophy is, for Poética, doing contemporary, critical and thematic, Brazilian philosophy, that is, put in relation to our time and context, and eventually with our thought references. This does not exclude, on the contrary, that it be done in dialogue – critical, appropriating, user – with metropolitan traditions and any other.

This should be done through a confrontation – argumentative, conceptual – of the philosophy that is done today wherever philosophy is done, on themes and problems. Including, in the terms of Poética, obviously in an updated way, those themes and problems that concern subjects such as action, reality, knowledge, values, politics, culture, creation, people, etc. Always in relation to our most general terms of understanding things, which is what philosophy is concerned with.

To give you an idea, the aforementioned collection brings 16 contributions from 11 institutions, from six countries, on the same “field”. This is a result that is supported by prestigious assessments (see the fourth cover of the aforementioned collection) on its general perspective, from distinguished colleagues, such as Paulo Margutti, Waldomiro Filho, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Linda Alcoff and others.

Let us take the opportunity to let them speak here about what has been the product of this philosophizing movement. In the order of the names listed above, what is in this collection represents “an alternative to our national model, commentator, of doing philosophy”. It displays “a practical and productive philosophical point of view, without foundationalist pretensions, in tune with democratic proposals and practices”. It does so as an elaboration of an “intellect that insists on dealing with the important questions of life”, that is, as a production of the “human spirit” that exceeds “university culture, with its bits of the encyclopedia”.

To the point of constituting, therefore, “a new, fascinating philosophical trend, in critical convergence with Marx and pragmatism, which captures the creativity and contingency of history, and points to a hopeful and democratic path, but also realistic and concrete.”

The general perspective that “shapes” this poetic-pragmatic movement has already been and continues to be proposed, defended and practiced in several published texts, in addition to the aforementioned collection, on Brazilian philosophy and on doing philosophy in Brazil, by several members of the Poética Pragmática group. . It continues to be proposed and practiced, as in Anpof Column, by Laiz F. Dantas, Tiago Medeiros, Rodrigo Ornelas, Hilton Leal, Carlos Sávio, Crisóstomo, André Itaparica, Pedro Lino, Genildo da Silva and more.

Along with these, other names, from more partners, are also in this collection, such as Cristina di Gregori, Paniel Reyes, Goyo Pappas, Andy Blunden, Ralph Bannell, Daniel Vargas, Laila Galvão, Frederick dos Santos, Erick Lima. Furthermore, in replicas and rejoinders published in different magazines, this perspective has been debated and criticized by prominent representatives of our humanities community, such as the aforementioned Waldomiro and Margutti, and also Marcelo Carvalho, Leonardo Pereira, Marcelo Silva, Eduardo Rangel and Roberto Dutra, for example, in the magazines Cognition e ideation, again in Anpof Column and in more sources.

What has Poética’s journey been like so far? In the introduction to the aforementioned work, we learn that the aforementioned movement began with an idea of ​​“philosophy as a civil thing”, civic, worldly, without a transcendental position, which reminds us of Oswaldo Porchat Pereira of the philosophical turn towards the lives of ordinary human beings .

The path of Poética Pragmática began with the guiding idea of ​​a philosophical elaboration thought to be associated, even if through interposed mediations, with discussions in the public sphere and conversations in the world of life, as suggested in the late 1990s in an essay later published in The Philosophy Between Us (Crisóstomo, org. Ed. Unijuí), along with texts, in a similar spirit, by professors Ernst Tugendhat, Oswaldo Porchat and Renato Janine Ribeiro.

This idea was, later on, associated with that of a practical, material turn in philosophy, among other things a non-linguocentric turn, as well as friendly towards science and democracy. A turn that, in the aforementioned collection, unfolds into more notions, such as institutional constructionism, modernism as appropriation, as creation and self-creation, also notions such as that of a more political and “mass” critical theory, let's say, “popular democratic”. These are themes that, before this collection, were elaborated, by people in the group, in dissertations and theses, some at this point already published as books, in addition to countless articles, essays, interviews, etc.

A milestone in this journey, which has a side of reconstruction of historical materialism or philosophy of praxis (such as poiesis), is the article “Marx and Feuerbachian Essence: Human Essence in Historical Materialism, in the collection The Left Hegelians: New Philosophical and Political Perspectives (Cambridge U. Press, 2005). Another landmark is “Towards a Critique of Marx’s (Non)Pragmatism” ( Cognition, São Paulo, v. 13, no. 1, 2012) – both written by José Crisóstomo.

But the books by Tiago Medeiros (on Romantic Pragmatism and Democracy), Hilton Leal (on Richard Rorty and Cultural Politics), Pedro Lino (on Institutional Imagination), and Rodrigo Ornelas (on Modernism and Young-Hegelianism, in press) are also landmarks. .

About this practical-poietic philosophical turn, towards action and creation, after “Philosophy as a Civil Thing”, see, among other things, the experimental essay “O Mundo Bem Nosso”, by José Crisóstomo, which is not in the collection, but it clearly informs it, along with other important reference texts, from more members of the group. “The World of Ours”, a practical-critical, post-metaphysical but not “post-modern” turn, begins by developing notions such as “sensitive intentionality” and “practical-creative entanglement with the world”, and extends to others such as “objectification” and “appropriation”, such as “material form of life”, “artefactual materialism” etc.

This with a view to what it wants to be, and as we have seen it has also been understood by others, an innovative philosophical alternative, in these times of metropolitan, linguocentric imposition of a reductionist dominance of language and discourse in philosophy, which can involve practical consequences questionable, also on a political and cultural level. A “materialist” alternative that unfolds politically in ideas of democratic constructionism, popular democracy and “mass line”.

The texts in the collection Philosophy, Action, Creation: pragmatic poetics in movement they do not provide a direct, developed presentation of the conceptual core of this point of view. But they display their thematic developments, as well as some of their faces and interfaces, in relationships of approximation, comparison and distinction, with and against other positions of thought, in the form of an interlocution.

Because it is characteristic of the creation of Poética not to present itself as a ready-made thing, from a single person or group, just like Minerva coming out of the head of Zeus. Much less to present itself as something without kinship, without dialogue and reconstruction efforts, nor as something that constitutes itself without criticism and without controversy, that is, without dialectics.

The poetic-pragmatic point of view, as an interactionist, relational, historical position, as a certain social-material holism, beyond the dualisms, mentalisms and representationalisms of the modern and classical tradition, can even be put into productive dialogue with other traditions , non-Western and non-modern, without ceasing to be philosophy in the specificity of the term, that is, without ceasing to be productively involved with the articulation of concepts and arguments, and with what is from our time and context.

It is in this spirit that the list of subjects covered in the collection Philosophy, Action, Creation displays, in this order: critical theory, Marxism, humanism; how much criticism and theory we want; mind and world in enactivism; experience and sensitive activity in John Dewey and the Poetics; Nietzschean pragmatism; sensitive creation and personal self-creation; modernism, anthropophagy and appropriation; interpretations and projects of Brazil; Mangabeira Unger and the aggrandizement of common people; institutional constructionism; cultural pluralism in education; technology and transformation of human nature; forms of life and artefactuality; Hegelianism and pragmatism.

All these thematizations of the collection are placed in relation to elements common to the “philosophical platform” of Poética, and also in relation to each other, by the extensive Introduction, which also offers a narrative of the course of this entire work, of Poética Pragmática, of which This text only exposes some elements. Its richness and interest are not limited to what can be summarized here, which is just an invitation for you to participate, in your own way and critically, in something that can become a true philosophical, national, contemporary, plural movement.

The basic proposal, as we suggested, is not to just focus on uncritical, non-appropriating comments on works by historical philosophers, nor by contemporary metropolitan authors, in comments that can be good formative, scholastic exercises, but They are not yet doing philosophy. The idea is also not to stop at the simple exposition of expressions – again, non-critical, non-appropriating – from other traditions, peripheral, non-modern, or “non-patriarchal”, “non-white”, “ethnic” . This is to dare to do philosophy, in this country, as it is done in others, in fact better than in them, thus refusing the neo-colonialist international division of intellectual labor, in which other countries produce and create, and we consume and repeat – ideas “out of place” and even out of time.

The results of the poetic-pragmatic movement thus far, and, in fact, of the movements of many other people, also at the international level, as shown in the Collection, offer themselves as a possible example of another type of work, and as a presentation of clues by which this experience conveys, from a practical, contemporary, detranscendentalized philosophy – and ours.

Something, as we said, like a turn towards a philosophy of praxis as poiesis, towards a non-metaphysical, non-representationalist, non-linguocentric point of view, and towards a philosophy connected with our time and our circumstances. Let us enhance this turn, with pluralism, autonomy and our own contribution, with criticism and debates as well, within the idea of ​​a movement with a practical bias of thought, in the spirit of the Anpof convocation of September 2016 and the Ampofian efforts that followed it. We have not yet made general progress along this broad line, but things are no longer stagnant as they were before. [I]

*Genildo Ferreira da Silva is a professor at the Department of Philosophy at UFBA.

*José Crisóstomo de Souza is a professor at the Department of Philosophy at UFBA.

Note

[I] This text is a development of the brief “Philosophy, Action, Creation: Pragmatic Poetics in Movement” (ANPOF Reviews, 13/12/2023), and is also based on texts such as the introduction to the Collection that has this title, widely mentioned here, such as the article “Doing Philosophy in Brazil: Civil, Practical, Transformative, Wow"(Arguments, v. 25, 2021), by José Crisóstomo, and others.

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