So let's go, good evening everyone, welcome, I chose this book on purpose, this book by do do do lavel, the dialectical methodology manual, precisely because of its difficulty, and it is the last book on lavel, certainly the most difficult, and for this very reason. it contains in a condensed form all the problems that were dealt with in the previous work and for this very reason a correct reading of it forces us at all times to go back and consult the previous texts and in fact if it were possible to read Lavel's books in their own way order of publication It would be very good or in the order in which it was written It would be very good starting with the war notebooks which are notes he took while he was a Prisoner of the Germans in the first war that he spent years there as a Prisoner and in fact gave a course , from which he later derived his thesis, but these war notebooks are notes, right, but there are several books of his that are notes, they are like aphorisms, these little books that have aphorisms, for example, and condu legacy trui the conduct in face of the other or their precepts, the rules of everyday life, etc. are sometimes like drafts of what would be the fifth volume of the dialectic of the eternal present, which would be called the sagest of wisdom, which was not written but which is sufficiently outlined there.
In these sparse writings, reading in chronological order would be very interesting, precisely because of the fact that the evolution of Lavel's thought is something entirely continuous, that is to say, he starts from certain problems that he discovers a lot in his youth and that he goes deeper into deepening deepening with extraordinary continuity and coherence Although he doesn't give the slightest importance to logical coherence he says that when you try to force logical coherence it never works, it just ends up being rubbish and also that it's not for you to try to prove too much You don't have to say things the way they appeared, but precisely there the great difficulty is to transpose the most direct and present experience, so to speak, and in a language that is not just analogical symbolic and not just poetic, therefore transposing to say a philosophical vocabulary made up of terms of Universal application, that's more or less what I'm talking about in this little text that I wrote for this course but which I'm also going to turn into an article called spirit and personality and which I'm going to read here and comment on, eh, spirit is that which only comes to us through thought but that thought itself can neither Create nor reach the spirit is the truth of thought which by definition is beyond it in cases where it creates its own object when for example, we mentally create a triangle, which already contains all its geometric properties, which thought at that moment still completely ignores. If that weren't the case, you would only have to think of a triangle and you would already know all the theorems that Euclid created within the Triangle. which is not true, it means that you have been learning and understanding the contents for a long time, but they are all already given in the figure of the triangle and they make up the truth of the Triangle, that's not it, look at any object you see and its physical presence It's just one, that's right, but its truth is multiple and sometimes inexhaustible.
If you take a simple element, take a glass, you look at the glass immediately, you recognize what it is the moment you pick it up, you recognize it, you learned exactly what the essence is. of that object or whatever it is the quid Okay then Ah I know it's a glass very well but now if you ask what exactly a glass is, that's right, you'll start to think like that the glass It didn't come out of nowhere cups don't grow on trees they had to be invented Where did the idea come from for you to make a cup of you create a cup a container any according to this specific object this specific cup it is made of some material from which this material was taken, that 's right and what other possible materials could have been used there, thirdly, this was manufactured by some human being somewhere, that is, it was brought to you, it didn't come flying, everything, ISO, all these elements make up the truth of that object, so regarding a simple glass you could write many volumes and you would not exhaust the truth of it would not be exhausted So this is the sign that we are going to say the truth is not in the simple thought of the glass it is in other things that are already contained in the glass itself, that's right and which in themselves are never the content of a thought it is important that you understand the following whenever you think something That's right you can think it for example in the form of a statement This is the most that thought does thinking by itself he himself cannot apprehend whether his own self is true or not. In other words, apprehending the truth is not thinking about something.
When Aristotle said that truth only exists in judgment, you are not in a simple proposition, he was already more or less on the trail of that, either say that it is the proposition that you affirm or deny something, that's right, what the judgment is, then he said it is the disagreement or disagreement that you have in relation to the judgment, now this agreement or disagreement is in turn neither a proposition nor a judgment Um it is a purely internal attitude of the human being that does not and does not coincide with their own verbal expression, that is, you apprehending that a proposition to Rizo is true and you expressing this agreement in words is not the same thing So what Aristotle says about judgment, logicians use these two terms as if they were synonyms, proposition and judgment, right ? it is the thought itself it is an agreement or disagreement Where is this agreement or disagreement it is not in the thought of course it is also not in the imagination it is not in the memory it is not in anything It is in the moral attitude of the human being who accepts or rejects and who can be totally unexpressed and that never corresponds let's say to your expression in words In other words, you agreeing or disagreeing is one thing and you expressing saying agree or disagree saying is this true or is it false is another thing completely different and this here we are going to say is a basic point that, right, I've already said this other times, I believe, I don't know if I said it in this course, but I think it's absolutely fundamental to this, knowledge of the truth is not something that you have access to through some mental function or reasoning or intelligence, you can use the word intelligence to designate this this activity but that's not even very correct So let's continue here eh so geometric property thought at that moment is still completely ignored and when it is discovered one by one in the long effort developed over time you will have to confess that you were in the triangle in simultaneous mode before he learned them And even when he only grasps one, he grasps something that is in the triangle and not in the thought itself, there is no difference in the Mental Sphere between thinking the false and thinking the true thought only becomes true when it touches something that is beyond it, which cannot be reduced in any way to the act of thinking. This something is what we call truth, as seen in the example of the Triangle, truth is beyond thought, even when its object is created by thought itself.
thought does not dominate and does not create the veracity of even purely thought objects, the truth only appears beyond a border that thought sees but does not transpose, the truth is the realm of the spirit, that is what I am calling spirit here, that is to say, it is the realm of truth that you glimpse through thought, sometimes through Sensations as well, but which neither thought nor Sensations apprehends, so the question is: you are the one who apprehends, right? So there is no function to which you can delegate this work understanding, so it's your real person that learns your person, you can't say your whole person It's right in the quantitative sense of the thing, right, so only the whole person is involved, that's right, but what you learn It's true, in the end your moral person is its spirit truth is spirit even when apprehended in a material object our senses can apprehend the presence of an object but cannot decide for themselves whether this presence is real or imaginary thought has to intervene by asking questions that complete and correct the mere impression he makes In Search of the Truth of the object but when he reaches it he knows that it is not only beyond the Senses but beyond this self, otherwise it would not be true at all but just an impression supplemented by thought that is to say, thought completes it, so to speak, corrects it, Alters the object captured by the senses in order to apprehend its truth or falsity, but it is not itself that apprehends it, a thought, only thought only generates thoughts, it cannot generate agreement or intimate disagreement that are exactly what Aristotle called judgment, judgment, okay, so judgment, judgment is a mute attitude Um, it's not a representation, it's not a thought, it's not an image, it's not a sensation, it's not an emotion That's right, it is an attitude of the human Spirit that is exercised freely That is, you at the time you say This is true This is false, you are exercising your moral freedom, there is no function, no inner mechanism that forces you to do this, the thought he has its own mechanics, the syllogism, for example, in this logic, the imagination also has its own mechanics, a system of analogies, association of ideas , etc. , etc.
, but the judgment, saying yes or no, agreeing or disagreeing, there is nothing that obliges you, it is in an instant where you accept the veracity of the object where you have the judgment But internally we will say your entire mental process nothing obliges you to do this so understanding this but if this is so then the problem arises whether to say yes or no whether to consent or deny it If apprehending the truth is an act of the spirit and not of the mind, then this means that all knowledge is an act of the spirit and not of the mind, this is the same thing as saying the mind knows nothing, thought knows nothing, memory knows nothing emotions know nothing and they only show us representations that is to say or direct sensitive impressions or representations they never tell us if this is true or false um true or false is only accessible at the level of the Spirit where the human being he is forces himself to accept the truth of the object thing here nothing external and in fact not even internal can force him that means knowledge of the Truth is a function of human Freedom and if when You ask But why is it that sometimes we show a thing shows a multitude of facts to a guy demonstrates he continues to disagree because nothing can force him to recognize the truth if it were a function of the mental the mental has its internal laws That's not it, let's just say thinking has its internal laws but thought has its logical order so it has a rule it has an obligation it has a forces But you are obliged to accept these forces no this clearly shows us that no thought no imagination no emotion no image no perception carries within itself the truth the truth is there but apprehending it is an action of human Freedom Um this explains why the dimension of truth does not exist for animals because they do not have the human moral person they can recognize a state of fact but not can know the truth in this sense that of agreement or disagreement they neither agree nor disagree So let's say the words yes and no are totally unknown in the Animal Kingdom and the truth is always transcendent to the Sphere of thought of Sensations of emotions of everything that constitutes the mental IQ tests do not measure the amount of mental activity but their efficiency in transcending themselves in apprehending the veracity of the object their ability to glimpse beyond the sphere of thought the realm of the spirit this is in fact what the IQ tests IQ is being tested but that doesn't mean that psychologists know this. This ability is not called thinking but intelligence, it is entirely Allied to quantity, intensity or formal elegance of thinking, thinking is dead, the saying goes, thinking falsehood takes so much work and sometimes even more than arriving at the truth, a good thought is not one that delights in the richness of its own movements but one that humbly withdraws to give way to intelligence to the perception of Truth here I am still using the word intelligence as perception of Truth in the active sense of understanding, that's right, but the word intelligence is also used in other contexts as a sign of mental ability, so in this case we will have to say that the apprehension of the truth it is not even in intelligence in this sense of the word intelligence the formal correction of thought may be important sometimes but thought itself cannot grasp the truth of its own formal correction When you think Look, this syllogism is correctly developed, right, you ask but it is in fact correctly developed it is a truth that it is correctly developed or if your internal form is really perfect then you have to enter with assent or disagreement you have to say yes or no and it is only then that you are aware that it is really correct to become aware of the formal correctness of a syllogism, it is not a thought, it is the instantaneous intuitive perception, if you will, of a necessary nexus between two thoughts, but even this nexus is not yet knowledge, there is only knowledge when You agree, if it were not so, it would be a third thought whose connection with the other two would in turn have to be proven logistically and so on until the end of the centuries, that is, if the perception of the Truth of the thought or even the Truth of its simple formal correction were in turn a thought right, you would have to prove the connection between it and the two other thoughts that you thought before and then you would have a fourth connection, a fifth connection, so it would not end Never, that is, if there is no attitude on the part of the moral person that says yes or no knowledge is not perfected, it is not completed It remains only in thought or imagination, even mere formal veracity is veracity and transcends thought, people who think a lot are called intellectuals for that reason, but this is wrong, the life of the intellect only begins at the border in which that thought is erased to give way to the perception or glimpse of Truth, both thought and impressions, memory or emotions do nothing but accumulate reasons for the truth to emerge later in an instantaneous perception with the exception that I am not expressing things correctly here not even this instantaneous perception is known it is the instantaneous perception accompanied by the agreement of the moral person you can have an instantaneous perception and not realize that it is true How many times do you have the correct intuition and pass it on and end up believing something else that is wrong and then when D everything went wrong in F, but I knew, I realized this, I say, you realized , but you didn't know, it crossed your mind, you understand, but there was no agreement , and this accumulation can be long and work hard, but it is never final. the goal itself, all education in intelligence should take this into account, but this became almost impossible in an age that turned its back on the very notion of truth, not to mention the Spirit, replacing it with that of subjective projection, adequacy, utility, class interest, cultural creation etc.
etc. All of these are pretexts for not having to deal with this hot potato, it has to be a truth because it is a hot potato because you cannot define it in terms of the various cognitive functions, thought, imagination, memory, etc. , in other words, you cannot transform in one thing and note well that all our effort to do science, if it has its important and meritorious side, it also has, on the other hand, an aspect of escaping cognitive responsibility Where do you want to cling, let's say to beliefs that are collectively admitted by a community that you respect that has authority over you deep down the impulse that leads us to do a TRE called science in the systematic and professional sense is the cult of authority and not of Truth, right let's say that truth that you learned on your own and through which you assume full responsibility It is only valid for you but it is true in a sense that is much more superior to any scientific truth than a truth collectively admitted by a community um by these truths collectively admitted they are truths they are knowledge they are only Representations it only becomes true the moment someone becomes aware of it and agrees and says it is true even then yes there is only truth in the perception of the Truth and in the admission of the Truth that is in judgment So I said that Aristotle 2400 years ago hit the nail on the head when he said that there is only truth in the judgment and not in the proposition, a science provides us with judgments, provides propositions, right, that they transform into truths the moment the human being apprehends them as such as truths, right?
This means that an entire scientific library is just a set of propositions and not a set of truths subsumed by these notions, as if all these notions did not implicitly affirm their own veracity and thus did not convey to Fools what they would like to suppress, right? It's the old skeptic's problem, right? When the guy says no, there is no objective truth, you can wait, but is what you're saying an objective truth or is it just something you thought, we can accept it perfectly at times.
Sometimes I also have the impression that there is no objective truth because I'm so confused that I say no, I'm like a fool Staff everything is a scam in the world is not green it's all a joke it's all a pretense Sometimes you have that impression too so as a subjective impression it is perfectly valid but if you say no objectively there is no objective truth then you have created a problem I cannot recognize as true what you are saying that is to say then that problem is created in which the expression of a proposition the The fact that the proposition is expressed shows that it is false, if it were true, it could not be said, right? In the course of its temporal evolution, the individual comes to have an intellectual personality at the moment in which the submission of his thought to the Spirit became an acquired habit and it became integrated in your soul as a usual and almost unconscious reaction Hmm, so this means the individual comes to have an intellectual personality in the sense in which I use this term in the theory of layers of personality in a little while I will explain this better here too, eh in an instant where he became docile to a truth that he desires this is for you to see how the search for truth is a rare thing it human beings need the Truth and accidentally occasionally everyone recognizes some truth but the question is this is this what you want how much you want and for how long you want it Um so if you look closely you will see that most of the time we are just thinking we are not looking for the truth right if we live falsehood We also accept it in the same way because we don't put This distinction is still there, saying thinking, it has an attractive force in itself, you start thinking, you're going to end up far away. That's right, sometimes you don't even remember what you thought so far that you ended up, that's not seeking truth, right?
the search for truth when the problem arises it is true nor false, everything is just possibilities and these possibilities are what thought, imagination, memory etc. brings us brings us representations that are possible In other words, you are in the middle of poetic discourse, in fact in the strictest sense lead The student, this level crossing would be the objective of all higher education, but the reduction of Universities to the condition of professional schools or ideological training centers for militants has made this objective completely utopian and elitist instead of democratizing access to the superior goods of the Spirit, as all governments in the world promise to do. world, right?
Then, in continuation of this here, I say that, incredible as it may seem, IQ studies never use the concept of truth, although they are investigating exactly our capacity to know the truth, right? In a little while we will see this here But back to business of intellectual personality, do you remember that the personality layer theory shows the evolution of human beings over time according to the displacement of their axis of attention, right, and the axis of attention, for you to know where the individual's axis of attention is, you have to know where they suffer Where it hurts the most where he tries the hardest Okay, so the displacement of the axis of attention is also the displacement of the axis of the Objective or fundamental goal that the individual is living during a certain period. Okay, so simply because you were born, you have access to the presence of your body, okay, so this is the first layer of the personality Um, that is to say, the sen has a body and it is present, um, in a second stage, he starts exercising his instincts and fundamental needs, eating, sleeping, crying, sucking fingers, etc.
, etc. These are the occupations of a baby, right, in a third layer, he seeks to obtain means of communication with his peers, right, for example, he doesn't limit himself . so that he gives the bottle um In the first case it's just a body that is expressing in the most direct way its suffering or its needs, so to speak, so to speak, to use Carl Buer's term, the crying baby is in the expressive clef of language he's just expressing what he feels, that's right, but the baby who calls his mother to give him wood is in the appellative clef he's trying to influence someone else to do this or that for him Um, so that means this development of the third layer can obviously take many years Um I say that he has reached a fourth layer when he already has a world of feelings, emotions and memories of his own in which he recognizes himself more than in his body um even in the third when you are still in the third layer What you call self is Above all your body is the place where you are but there comes a point where you have an emotional history Um and for you to recognize yourself in It you don't need to make reference to your body um because that The body has already undergone several modifications, it cannot be recognized in just one of its forms, that's right, but then it means the set of emotions and experiences that marked the individual's emotional personality already has its own identity that allows it to be recognized as such without reference.
to body identity, although body identity continues to be there, right, I say individual, he passes to the fifth layer, when, so to speak, this emotional world has already closed, he already has his own identity, OK, and that is no longer enough for him, he has to test himself in the world to be recognized not only by others but also by oneself, so it's no longer just about needing to communicate or having feelings, having emotions, but about doing something, okay, in order to reinforce yourself anyway. So see that even at a certain point, all the strengthening or weakening of the individual comes, so to speak , from Outside, the baby becomes stronger or weaker depending on the food they are given. what happened to him is right, but now he seeks to make himself a source of reinforcement for himself Um, so for example, let's say when competing, trying to show off or show his capabilities or simply, right, when looking in the mirror, fixing his hair hair, a nice outfit, etc.
etc. All of this, whatever the individual is doing, he is reinforcing himself. He no longer depends only on external reinforcement, as was the case when he was a defenseless baby.
That's right, but this reinforcement is worth it for you. subjective effect based on what the individual feels, let's say in response or as a reward for what he himself did Okay, so this is generally present in adolescence, before adolescence, it's difficult for a child to do this, if they have this initiative to do it, it's silly, but When a teenager does it, he already knows what he's doing, he knows that he wants to show himself, that he wants to appear victorious, strong, capable, beautiful, etc. That's right, but there comes a point where this is no longer enough, that is, the subjective effect.
this reinforcement does not satisfy the individual he needs something else he needs to obtain an objective effect for example earning a salary if you did your work there you thought it was cool etc etc but a salary of this size does not solve the problem um if the salary But you know that you did everything wrong and that it will cause losses doesn't solve it either So you need to achieve objective efficiency, the achievement of objective efficiency is a motivation, it's a completely different goal from the simple search for subjective reinforcement, that's not what everyone sees goes through these stages until here practically everyone who has a job got there, although I think that in Brazil it is very common for people to already have a job and are already working and they have never faced this problem of efficiency ob n sometimes because they do not have the capacity to understand the cause and effect relationship between their actions and the results obtained, right? Why is it so good? I say because it is a society where there are a lot of people who fail, where failure is normal and therefore, statistically, right, you see that as in general people are failures You only know failures So you will not attribute your failure to a cause and effect relationship between your actions and the objective world, no you will explain it as a coincidence or general bad luck then This means that a society that, so to speak, accepts failure as a normal and majority thing, it does not allow people to develop beyond the fifth layer, you understand the tragedy that this is, so what do you mean in a general society you see people going to moving forward etc etc but you hope the same thing happens to you and if that doesn't happen there's no way you can blame society or the world, that is, I did something wrong, I have to change my behavior, I have to do something different, right?
Is that the difference between fifth and sixth, right? I mean what is it that you seek subjective reinforcement and what is it that you obtain some real effect? Isn't that so, then the two things can also overlap?
where are you what you want if you got the subjective reinforcement that's enough for you so it's the fifth layer now if you want a good real effect then the real effect is on the sixth even if there is no subjective reinforcement that's important ok understanding so after you have achieved That means you are already able to manipulate your practical life in order to obtain some effect so then for the first time you are able to have a glimpse of what your obligations are in human society um everyone talks citizenship citizenship citizenship say no if you haven't passed the sixth layer you don't know what citizenship is citizenship for you means having the right to get in line for the form zer and receive some money, right or now how has the ministry of culture received your R 50 per month to buy magazines that can even be pornographic, that's culture in Brazil, so citizenship is that, citizenship consists of a right to obtain certain satisfactions, right, but I say citizenship as an objective given as a set of very clear rights and obligations, that's right, that's right. something that the individual can only have access to once he has managed to obtain a clear view of cause and effect in his actions, otherwise it is not possible, you know, if he has reached that far, I say, well, then he is ready for a TRE called maturity. what maturity means is that you can look at everything that has been done before, including the achievement of Citizenship and you judge all of this, so generally this achievement is equivalent to some crisis, some Shake Okay, because you might say no, I did everything right, right?
And mine life is fine everything is organized I have a good job I'm married cool I have cute kids I have the car I have that but it's not cool I'm missing something that's missing I'm right and it's only from this point that it's possible to achievement of intellectual personality, understanding, well, you study, you read, you think a lot, it's something you did throughout all these previous layers, um, maybe you never thought as much as you did in adolescence, in layer three, in layer three to four, that's not it, however. now it's not enough if you pose the problem, let's say the meaning of your existence So you You're starting to look for the truth of your existence and if you persist in this, I mean, eight, you can stop there, in general, adult people stop there. They won't, they won't have any intellectual personality.
It doesn't mean that you will understand that you need to seek truth, but for some people this happens Okay, so note that the interest you have in culture, literature, philosophy, history has nothing to do with intellectual personality, the subject can develop a intellectual personality without having studied any of this and the other person who studied all of this may not have any intellectual personality, right? Because it's a question of the layers, I'll repeat, they are defined by the axis of your motivation for what is really important to you at a certain stage. of life and therefore where it hurts is not ISO So it becomes whether the individual is, for example, whether he performs an important intellectual function in society as an intellectual, etc.
