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Arendt (RJ:165) – objeto do pensar
quinta-feira 5 de março de 2020
destaque
No décimo primeiro livro de Da Trindade, Agostinho descreve vividamente a transformação que um objeto dado aos sentidos deve sofrer para se adequar a ser um objeto do pensar. A percepção sensorial - "a visão que estava fora quando o sentido foi formado por um corpo sensível" - é seguida por uma "visão semelhante interior", uma imagem destinada a tornar presente o "corpo ausente" na representação. Essa imagem, a representação de algo ausente, é armazenada na memória e se torna um objeto do pensar, uma "visão em pensamento", assim que for voluntariamente lembrada, pelo que é decisivo que "o que permanece na memória", ou seja, a re-apresentação é “uma coisa, e outra coisa surge quando nos lembramos” (capítulo 3). Portanto, “o que está oculto e retido na memória é uma coisa, e o que é impressionado por ela no pensamento de quem se lembra é outra coisa” (capítulo 8). Agostinho está bem ciente de que pensar "de fato vai ainda mais longe", além do reino de toda imaginação possível, "como quando nossa razão proclama a infinidade de números que nenhuma visão no pensamento das coisas corporais apreendeu ainda" ou quando a razão "nos ensina que até os menores corpos podem ser divididos infinitamente" (capítulo 18). Agostinho aqui parece sugerir que a razão pode alcançar aos totalmente ausentes só porque a mente, em virtude da imaginação e suas re-apresentações, sabe como apresentar o que está ausente e como lidar com essas ausências na lembrança, isto é, em pensamento.
original
Closely connected with this situation is the fact that thinking always deals with objects that are absent, removed from direct sense perception. An object of thought is always a re-presentation, that is, something or somebody that is actually absent and present only to the mind which, by virtue of imagination, can make it present in the form of an image. [1] In other words, when I am thinking, I move outside the world of appearances, even if my thought deals with ordinary sense-given objects and not with such invisibles as concepts or ideas, the old domain of metaphysical thought. In order to think about somebody, he must be removed from our senses; so long as we are together with him we don’t think of him—though we may gather impressions that later become food for thought; to think about somebody who is present implies removing ourselves surreptitiously from his company and acting as though he were no longer there.
"Thinking and Moral Considerations", in ARENDT , Hannah. Responsability and Judgement. New York: Schocken, 2003 (ebook) [RJ]
Ver online : Philo-Sophia
[1] In the eleventh book of On the Trinity, Augustine describes vividly the transformation an object given to the senses must undergo to be fit to be an object of thought. Sense perception—”the vision which was without when the sense was formed by a sensible body”—is succeeded by a “similar vision within,” an image destined to make present the “absent body” in representation. This image, the representation of something absent, is stored in memory and becomes a thought object, a “vision in thought,” as soon as it is willfully remembered, whereby it is decisive that “what remains in the memory,” that is, the re-presentation, is “one thing, and that something else arises when we remember” (chapter 3). Hence, “what is hidden and retained in memory is one thing, and what is impressed by it in the thought of the one remembering is another thing” (chapter 8). Augustine is well aware that thinking “in fact goes even further,” beyond the realm of all possible imagination, “as when our reason proclaims the infinity of number which no vision in the thought of corporeal things has yet grasped” or when reason “teaches us that even the tiniest bodies can be divided infinitely” (chapter 18). Augustine here seems to suggest that reason can reach out to the totally absent only because the mind, by virtue of imagination and its re-presentations, knows how to make present what is absent and how to handle these absences in remembrance, that is, in thought.