Michael Owen Piercing

Peruvian education and awareness Humanities a word of the diversities

Humanities and taking the word diversity (1)
José Ignacio López Soria



Introduction

The question for the future of the humanities and humanities of the future lies, not to speak, the field of art was a time of human history, ours, in which the tendency of technology to organize his whole life is getting clearer. Looking at the problem from this perspective humanities epochal understand the question before us not as an invitation to a prospective to anticipate what will happen to the humanities in the future, but as a summons, first, to think about the humanities in our own present, and second, to explore avenues for theoretically humanitas notion that allows us to take seriously Westerners take the word of the diversities.

understand the question about the future of humanities as an exercise in foresight to not to think about the present and, therefore, to be at the mercy of potentially total mastery of technique, which tends to make man a replaceable object that inherits from the metaphysical tradition the notion of man as rational animal. By contrast, in the understanding anchored ask how this is announced and the stripping back of an essentially technical nature of our own historical epoch and, consequently, the question itself is already an invitation to question the notion of underlying humanitas modern humans and that prevents other speak. Picking

messages that come from Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, and Vattimo, among others, rehearse here, however briefly, an approach to the humanitas that departs from traditional humanism, not ignored or presented as an anti-humanism. I turn then to disciplinizacion fragmentation and the humanities, and end up thinking about taking the word of the diversities and the utopian horizon that is advertised in the tendency to think in terms of human possibility of living a dignified and joyful these differences.

In these reflections has implications for studies in the humanities, some of which leave here pointed out as elements for discussion which brings us together.

Humanism and being in the world

When the human understanding, it is assumed, as did Nietzsche, the supreme values \u200b\u200bdesfundamentación is not difficult to infer that either man has an ahistorical essence but its essence as Heidegger insists, is merely their existence, their being-in-the-world. It is, however, an existence that has the distinction of being history and being called to mind. As convened

thought, man dwells in the truth of being, that is intended to uncover, caring, be ways of being, but the living is crossed by the very historicity of man and therefore their thinking can not claim to be settled on an absolute foundation.

When thinking neglects its traditional claim to be settled in meta-historical grounds, it is necessary to be aware of the historical conditions from which, inevitably, the thought is developed. At present, these conditions are characterized, in the realm of reality, the total potential preeminence of the art and artifact, the derealization of the world, the widespread commercialization and the sacredness of the simulation, and in the domain of thought, the dissolution of the metadiscourses and Babelization of languages, the rediscovery of the symbolic and other dimensions of possibility human, the secularization of values \u200b\u200band desfundamentación, the primacy of language, the discrediting of the entire project of reappropriation and, last but not least, the release of the differences and making the word diversity. We are in a transit time in which reality has become a fable. There is no longer a neutral place for the theory and therefore have to remit any theory to the historical horizons of her own pregnancy. We can only interpretation of this philosophy is to know what to expect and guide in the world. It is therefore an era of dehumanization accomplished if we understand the reappropriation humanism a substance that was supposed based on supreme and absolute values.

The crisis of humanism is often associated with the dehumanization caused by technical, humanistic ideals decline of culture for a culture of productivity and develops a sharp rationalization that points towards an overall organization providing for Weber and analyzing both Heidegger and Adorno. Existentialism believed that, to the world of natural science, had to preserve an area of \u200b\u200bhuman values \u200b\u200ba person outside the quantitative logic of positive knowledge. But it was Heidegger who opened a new perspective to the analysis of the relationship crisis of metaphysics / crisis of humanism, with its reflections on the art, among others.

The imposition of the art world is the historical essence of today. Technology, the concatenate all entities with predictable and controllable causal links, constitutes the maximum deployment of metaphysics and their idea of \u200b\u200bmerit. When deployed as complete technical world of metaphysics and humanism, but also well advertised event of being that transcends the framework of metaphysics. Men lose their character and be metaphysical, with all the character that contrasts as subjective and objective. Under these conditions, humanism is in crisis, is invited to a referral. The subject ceases to be what underlies and remains identical through change of accidental configurations, ensuring the process unit. On the other hand, the subject gradually becomes pure consciousness, and therefore metaphysically conceived as the counterpart of the object.

This is what Heidegger is opposed to his anti-humanism. Heidegger does not claim another principle that can provide a reference point. What it does is attack the humanism, understood as a doctrine that assigns men the role of subject or self, that is based on the evidence in the context of being designed as a foundation or full presence.

The culmination of the art, giving rise to the crisis of humanism and metaphysics, is also the time step beyond the world of subject-object opposition, resulting in dismissal of both objectivity and subjectivity of modern style. It is true that capitalist rationalization has created the social conditions for the settlement of the subject and subjectivity, but it is also true that the subject to which the dehumanization defends his technique is just the root of that dehumanization because subjectivity is defined in terms objectives.

But goodbye does not mean abandonment of humanism in the arms of the art. We leave the humanism and metaphysics but not exceeding overrun. Must see art in its links with history metaphysics. This means not to let the world impose forging technique as "reality, endowed with metaphysical character. But to remove the art, its production, its laws, the world she creates, the imposing character of being metaphysical, it is essential that a subject is no longer conceive, in turn, as a strong subject. We must make the subject passes a slimming cure to make it capable of hearing the call of a being that no longer exists in the peremptory tone of the foundation or the absolute spirit, but his presence-absence dissolved in a society networks increasingly transformed into a body of communication in which the subject-intersubjective now, we assume sui generis as a confluence of social relations.

precisely the intersubjective nature of man, hermeneutics and ontology of the present and consideration of the truth as facilitate decision opened the floor for the diversity and open new perspectives for thinking in terms of coexistence humanitas dignified and joyful these differences.

Humanities

today True to the metaphysical tradition that defines man as a rational animal but immersed in the era of technology, we understood the humanities as a body of knowledge that fall within the field of culture and referring to the man, their cultural productions and its history. We know that the concept of humanitas comes in the West, the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian and reprocessing that they did the Renaissance and humanism, but the modern project was commissioned then to bring the knowledge of humanities to the pragmatics of discourse of modernity. This discourse, as is known, proposes a anthropocentric worldview, secularized values, stripping them of their mythic-religious foundation and grants autonomy to the areas of culture, forming three distinct areas: the objectivity, legitimacy and that of symbolic representation. Each of these areas is organized into different knowledge (philosophy and science, ethics and law, art and language) that are expressed in different languages \u200b\u200bformally, each of which has its own logic, its own experts and even different ways for the training of experts.

other hand, and by the world of macro-organization, the project takes shape in the modern nation-states and they become the perceptual horizon, axiological and representative from which to define the various fields of culture, National now, being, therefore, informed humanitas nationalism.

Thus, knowledge of the humanities not only characterized by being anthropocentric, secular and independent of each other, but that to a large extent, are nationalized and eventually formalized in disciplines that have a letter of citizenship in modern society need to bring their own procedures to science and technology. Knowledge of the humanities are earning well, if successful, such as science, but are lost as thought. Assumed

and formalized as distinct disciplines, humanities humanitas stop thinking to engage in small parcels of knowledge that do not provide criteria for guidance in the world and knowing what to expect. There is therefore now the man and his problem that interests itself to the knowledge of humanities, but the development and provision of theoretical tools and practical "performance" efficient and effective in a particular discipline.

When this occurs, it may be argued that humanities become functional at the age of technology, unable to uncover the intention of the art of making man an object-not only what they aim at and, without saying so, the metaphysical tradition but a product as replaceable as any other. It is in this sense can be said, with Heidegger and Vattimo, the technique is the consummation of metaphysics and humanism associated with it.

But the consummation is announced, and in our present, a new horizon of human possibility if the crisis afflicting the humanity leads us not to leave through the charters of the strong subject of metaphysics, but to a slimming of the subject until it can think and think without having to resort to a ground.

What I mean is that in our time, if it is true that the humanities are at risk of being subordinated to the demands of technology, it is equally true that by reading this subordination as "natural" consequence of humanism and of traditional metaphysics, it opens a window into a notion of humanitas to make possible the meeting and fruitful dialogue between the diversities that we inhabit. Taking

word

for diversity in the current context of globalization of the logic of modernity, the overflow of the institutional dimensions of the modern project and the weakening of metanarrative discourse there are two trends that belong together as conflicting: one points to the homogenization and the other to the release of the differences. The first is settled, but do not know, in the metaphysical tradition, ie the consideration of being as firm structure and a marked preference for one versus the many, the latter being understood as an event, knows that there is and neutral place for the theory, but we do not elaborate interpretations are historical conditions insurmountable and expressed in language equally historic, and has decided to deal with the multiplicity is not to reduce it to one but to manage it appropriately for the differences.

this context, in its twofold aspect, is being carried by reaction or action, to take the word diversity to tell in their own language, their own stories, their notions of good life, conceptions of Humanitas, etc. Today, precisely because we are increasingly multicultural context, we note that the differences have survived, despite the efforts of the cultures and the dominant axiological constellations to build monolithic units and state identities, behaviors, perceptions, beliefs and sensibilities uniforms. What is new, however, is the very fact of survival of diversity, but now began to assume as a component of our perceptual framework, representative, or even to understand them as part of our normative and axiological horizon. Besides being present in the world of life and in the fields of culture, diversity began to be taken into account in the network of institutions that constitute the complex fabric of contemporary societies. It is therefore contemporary life that puts us face the problem of multiculturalism or polivaloridad. It is not uncommon, therefore, that multiculturalism is being becoming the subject of our time, intercultural understand the intersection of these diversities in both the fields of culture as social subsystems and the lifeworld, a crossover that tends to form constellations poliaxiológicas in living, not without conflict, different lifestyles and concepts of good life rooted in different languages.

wonder, then, from the outset that we are facing a problem that concerns us, more and more people today and, therefore, is not a rescue operation reminiscent of traditional cultures rated of "primitive." For what is at issue here Not back to the homogeneous and essentially prescriptive worlds of premodern cultures, but finding ways of sharing that beyond even the modern concept of tolerance make possible the recognition and enjoyment of diversity.

paraphrase the title of a voluminous study of Alain Touraine, the problem that we face today can be enclosed in a question: Can we live with dignity together being different? In the search for an answer to this question is, in my opinion, bet utopian of our time.

Roads to respond affirmatively to the above question is, of course, different. One possible is being advertised in our reflections previous weakening of the metanarrative discourses, thinning of the notion of subject and intersubjective nature, the absence of a neutral place for the theory, the radical historicity of all thoughts, etc.

Somehow, all these items are collected by hermeneutics, a form of mind knowing that every people is the measure of himself, respects the other in his otherness, which means truth and openness, which assumes languages as purveyors of meaning horizons, which means the dialogue as the proper environment to make the experience of truth, which is devoutly to messages about us from the past of our own present but not assumed to commands, etc..

would be naive not to recognize that this path is strewn with theoretical and practical difficulties, including the not insignificant possibility of loss in the multiplicity of reality and fall into relativism. If these problems seem insurmountable is because we come from a tradition that has accustomed us to produce more homogeneity than appropriately for managing diversity. Annotations


practices
In a text published in 2003 General Studies in Arts at the university left scored some suggestions for understanding and organizing the training in the humanities from a perspective that derives from the above considerations. The remember here now to feed the debate on this event.

The first suggestion is an invitation to the universities that have a strong tradition of humanistic education to maintain a respectful but elective training with their own traditions, understood not as mandates to have to continue to abide only as a source of inspiration to think things differently.

The knowledge of humanities, secondly, should respond to cultural and linguistic diversity enriches us as a historical community. For example, the "Peruvian history" themselves do not have to include the "history of the vanquished" -That it does is tell others their own history, but the different peoples stories woven around its own historical experience.

Thirdly, should be restored to humanistic dimension of the sacred, but had shed the authoritarian and coercive characteristics which have covered religions.

would, moreover, that knowledge of the humanities to refer to their own historical horizons, stripping them of ahistorical universality that often adorn themselves with.

I can no longer, if I stick to the time it set me dwell on the practical implications arising from the above considerations and the latest suggestions for the organization of training in the humanities. I shall just leave me noted that humanities studies would lose its current status as divorced from other disciplines and often understood as his introductory or preparatory to specialized studies in order to earn as articulated knowledge that facilitate the learner ownership of the rich and diverse historical experience.


Notes (1) Conference at the forum "The future of the humanities. The humanities of the future. " PUCP, Lima, August 18, 2007.