Os problemas clássicos da possibilidade, origem e natureza do conhecimento não deixaram rasto na obra de Vilém Flusser; e mesmo os relativos à ciência e à técnica foram abordados, não numa perspectiva teórica, mas prática.O autor de A Dúvida, depois de uma intervalar sedução pelas virtualidades integradoras da cultura lusíada, na versão brasileira, recaiu na atitude analítica, crítica e separativa em que nascera para a vida do espírito. A crescente preocupação operativa de que deu mostras a partir (...) daí constitui uma pedra de escândalo na modernidade, conforme se apura até da recepção que tem tido. (shrink)

Começaremos com uma exposição (crítica) de um “suposto” processo de marginalização intelectual que Vilém Flusser sofreu na história da filosofia brasileira. Mas esta exposição será um “pré-texto” para aproximarmo-nos daquilo que chamaremos de “fulcro de todo o pensamento filosófico” flusseriano: a ideia de transcensão. Trataremos primeiro de demonstrar - numa conversa triangular entre Flusser, Benedito Nunes e Clarice Lispector - que “transcensão” é a “originalidade” com a qual esse filósofo de língua portuguesa buscou superar o modo de pensar do (...) existencialismo moderno - sobretudo o pensamento que culmina no “Nada”, como “revelado” pela experiência de “nojo do mundo” e pela “angústia existencial” como (supostamente) abordados por Sartre e Heidegger, respectivamente. Para ilustrar o lugar central que a ideia desempenha no pensamento deste filósofo, trataremos também de demonstrar que ela é o fundamento de uma “ética da alteridade” peculiarmente flusseriana. Depois de expor a ideia assim - nalgumas de suas linhas fundamentais, e de maneira sumaríssima - ousaremos chamar o pensamento de transcensão de Flusser de seu “único” pensamento. Importa-nos com isso dizer, claro, que “todos” os outros pensamentos filosóficos de Flusser são, essencialmente, alimentados pela sua ideia de transcensão. No processo, mostraremos - também de forma concisa -, como a ideia de “transcensão” parece levar Flusser curiosamente de volta a Hegel; esse “retorno” indica, entre outras coisas, que toda tentativa de filosofar sobre a experiência da alteridade parece dar sempre a “última palavra” a Hegel. Com essa conjetura, iniciamos nossa análise, conscientes de que há muito “pano para manga” imbricado na discussão. (shrink)

Resumo: O objetivo deste artigo é contribuir com o conhecimento e reconhecimento da filosofia brasileira, apresentando alguns aspectos da teoria de um de nossos autores mais originais, Vilém Flusser. Embora seja um pensador judeu de origem tcheca, Flusser foi naturalizado brasileiro e viveu mais de trinta anos em São Paulo. Nesse período, escreveu uma importante e pouco discutida parte de sua obra. Por esse motivo, pretendemos expor alguns aspectos da ontologia inicial de Flusser, que marcam sua permanência em (...) solo intelectual brasileiro. O artigo concentra-se em sua tese inaugural de que a língua e a realidade são o mesmo, ou melhor, de que as diversas línguas se identificam com as diversas realidades - tese defendida em seu primeiro livro publicado, em 1963, Língua e realidade.: The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the knowledge and recognition of Brazilian philosophy by presenting some aspects of the theory of one of our most original authors, Vilém Flusser. Of Czech and Jewish origins, Flusser was naturalized as a Brazilian and lived for over thirty years in São Paulo. During this period, he wrote an important but little-studied part of his work. This paper analyses certain aspects of Flusser's ontology which characterize his experience on Brazilian intellectual ground. The paper focuses on his thesis that language and reality are the same, or rather, that the various languages can be identified with various realities. This idea was defended in Flusser's first book, Língua e realidade, which was published in 1963. (shrink)

Este artigo propõe uma reflexão sobre arte, filosofia, cultura e educação balizada pelos pensamentos de Friedrich Nietzsche e Vilém Flusser. Avesso à erudição acadêmica e profissionalizante, o jovem professor Nietzsche criticava a cultura histórica que segregou o pensamento e a maneira de viver. A essa tendência, o autor opunha uma educação artística, ou seja, uma formação para o pensamento livre e para a criatividade. Este conceito é basilar no pensamento de Flusser e deve ser entendido em consonância (...) com o termo grego poiesis, isto é, instauração de elementos novos na realidade, passagem do não-ser ao ser, abertura de novos caminhos. Trata-se de uma caracterização complexa e extremamente inspiradora para uma reflexão sobre processos educativos que valorizam aquilo que ambos os autores consideram ser o mais próprio do homem: a capacidade de criar.: This paper establishes a reflection about art, philosophy, culture and education inspired by the thoughts of Friedrich Nietzsche and Vilém Flusser. Disinclined to academic and specialised learning, the young teacher Nietzsche criticized the historical culture that had created a separation between the ability of thinking and the ways of life. To this tendency, the author opposed an artistic education, that is, an education towards free thought and creativity. This concept is fundamental in Flusser`s philosophy and must be understood in accordance with the Greek word poiesis, which means the introduction of new elements in reality, the passage from not-being to being, the opening of new routes. This is a complex conceptualization and yet extremely inspiring to a reflection about educational processes that accentuate what both authors consider the most essential human feature: the capacity to create. Keywords: education, art, philosophy, learning, culture. (shrink)

A relação entre ciência e cultura referida na filosofia da pós-história de Flusser é o tema deste trabalho. De que forma se articulam a ciência e a cultura hoje? Se considerarmos a cultura como a condição de nossa liberdade, onde situamos a ciência neste processo? O conceito de cultura é mais abrangente e inclui o conceito de ciência. Por exemplo, podemos dizer que a ciência é uma chave para entender a história cultural do ocidente e, dessa (...) forma, não podemos perceber os dilemas de nossa cultura sem abordar o conceito de ciência. Um dos sintomas da pós-história é o isolamento da ciência em relação à sociedade: o discurso científico tornou-se abstrato e absurdo, impossível de ser percebido e convertido em diálogo político para realizar o projeto de liberdade pelo qual ainda queremos dar sentido à cultura. (shrink)

Língua e realidade é um dos mais instigantes ensaios escritos em língua portuguesa e, ao mesmo tempo, um dos primeiros livros filosóficos de abordagem moderna da linguagem.Vilém Flusser junta a teoria linguística de Ludwig Wittgenstein com a fenomenologia de Edmund Husserl para criar o seu próprio método de análise fenomenológica da linguagem, que lhe permite captar a língua como um elemento vivo, capaz de transformar o caos dos dados imediatos no cosmos das palavras preenchidas de sentido. No entanto, a (...) obra não é estritamente científica, como pode parecer à primeira vista. De forma sofisticada, estrutura-se em várias camada, como a poética ou a ficcional, todas emaranhadas por uma leveza lúdica. Flusser mostra-se, assim, não só um grande pensador, mas também escritor excelente, capaz de criar uma obra plástica, poética e provocativa, o que torna Língua e realidade atraente e acessível a um vasto público de leitores. (shrink)

À primeira vista, pode-se pensar que toda restrição à dúvida é contrária à progressão do conhecimento e antidemocrática. Este argumento é utilizado por diferentes sabores de negacionismo. No entanto, um exame do modo como funcionam dúvidas nos mostra que existem exigências epistêmicas para a legitimidade da dúvida que não são satisfeitas pelos negacionismos. Uma consequência deste argumento é que a normatividade epistêmica não é absorvida pela normatividade política. A especificidade da normatividade epistêmica, que explica porque a dúvida de negacionistas (...) não é legítima, desaparece em teorias construtivistas. Teses construtivistas resultam de uma confusão entre o fato de teorias serem construtos sociais e a tese que elas constroem os fatos sobre os quais portam a teoria ela mesma. A legitimidade da dúvida depende de processos sociais de filtragem epistêmica. Os filtros epistêmicos socialmente construídos refletem um fato profundo da evolução da cultura humana: a produção cumulativa, social e assimétrica do conhecimento. (shrink)

Media philosopher Vilém Flusser proposed a revolutionary new way of thinking about photography.

In Post-History, Vilém Flusser asks the essential question: Is there any room left for freedom in a programmed world? Written as a series of lectures to be delivered at universities in Brazil, Israel, and France, this first English translation of Post-History brings to an anglophone readership Flusser's first critique of apparatus as the aesthetic, ethical, and epistemological model of present times.

Vilém Flusser was born in Prague. He emigrated to Brazil, where he taught philosophy and wrote a daily newspaper column in Sao Paulo, then later moved to France. He wrote several books in Portuguese and German. Writings, Into the Universe of Technical Images, and Does Writing Have a Future? have been published by the University of Minnesota Press, and the Shape of Things, Towards a Philosophy of Photography, and The Freedom of the Migrant have also been translated into English.

A utilização das plantas pela espécie humana ocorre das mais variadas maneiras, principalmente, na alimentação, vestimenta, no tratamento e cura de doenças. Dentre os grupos culturais que usam as plantas medicinais, encontram-se os povos remanescentes dos quilombos. O conhecimento que os quilombolas possuem é baseado em valores, símbolos, crenças e mitos. Hábitos e costumes estão diretamente envolvidos com o ambiente e esta relação permitiu que estas comunidades acumulassem conhecimentos. Deste modo, a Lei nº 10.639/2003 tornou obrigatório o ensino sobre (...) História e Cultura Afro-Brasileira em instituições de ensino. Assim, o presente relato de experiência foi realizado por intermédio de uma intervenção, desenvolvida em três encontros e uma visita à UESB, sendo um conjunto de atividades mediadas pelo professor, que permite aos discentes questionar, sanar dúvidas e realizar ações. Assim, as visitas ao HUESB e ao LPN contribuíram para que os estudantes fizessem uma associação entre o conhecimento popular e o conhecimento científico e entendessem como esses estão entrelaçados, bem como perceber a relevância de ambos os conhecimentos para a história da Ciência. Palavras-chave: Educação informal; Pedagogia crítica; Educação Quilombola. (shrink)

Gestures is a collection of essays that proposes a daring and ambitious new conception of human behavior. Defining gesture as “a movement of the body or of a tool attached to the body for which there is no satisfactory causal explanation,” Flusser moves around the topic from different points of view, angles and distances: sometimes he zooms in on a modest, ordinary movement like taking a photograph, shaving, or smoking a pipe. Sometimes he pulls back to look at something as (...) vast and varied as human “making,” embracing everything from the fashioning of simple tools to mass manufacturing. Holding firmly to basic phenomenological principles – that consciousness is always consciousness of something, that we know others by reference to ourselves, he claims that we constantly “read” states of mind, i.e. thoughts, intentions, emotions, from gestures; still we lack a theory about how this happens. Gestures takes a first step. It offers alternatives to theories by now so veiled by habit and myth that we are hardly conscious of them, and so hardly realize that they are failing. These include the assumption that we can “know” something without being affected by it, the belief that science is value-free, and the common conviction that science and art are fundamentally different activities. (shrink)

Ten years after his death, Vilém Flusser’s reputation as one of Europe’s most original modern philosophers continues to grow. Increasingly influential in Europe and Latin America, the Prague-born intellectual’s thought has until now remained largely unknown in the English-speaking world. His innovative writings theorize—and ultimately embrace—the epochal shift that humanity is undergoing from what he termed "linear thinking" toward a new form of multidimensional, visual thinking embodied by digital culture. For Flusser, these new modes and technologies of communication make (...) possible a society in which dialogue between people becomes the supreme value.The first English-language anthology of Flusser’s work, this volume displays the extraordinary range and subtlety of his intellect. A number of the essays collected here introduce and elaborate his theory of communication, influenced by thinkers as diverse as Martin Buber, Edmund Husserl, and Thomas Kuhn. While taking dystopian, posthuman visions of communication technologies into account, Flusser celebrates their liberatory and humanizing aspects. For Flusser, existence was akin to being thrown into an abyss of absurd experience or "bottomlessness"; becoming human required creating meaning out of this painful event by consciously connecting with others, in part through such technologies. Other essays present Flusser’s thoughts on the future of writing, the revolutionary nature of photography, the relationship between exile and creativity, and his unconventional concept of posthistory. Taken together, these essays confirm Flusser’s importance and prescience within contemporary philosophy.Vilém Flusser was born in Prague and taught philosophy in Brazil. Andreas Ströhl is director of the film department at the Goethe-Institut Inter Nationes in Munich. Erik Eisel works for a software technology company in Southern California. (shrink)

Notre faculté critique est en crise par manque de critères qui soient adéquats à notre situation culturelle. À la racine des termes « critique », « crise » et « critères » que je viens d’utiliser, se trouve le verbe grec krinein. Ce verbe signifie à peu près : diviser pour pouvoir juger. Il s’agit, dans ce verbe, d’un geste qui casse une unité pour voir ses composants. C’est un geste destructif. C’est pourquoi nous retrouvons le même verbe à la (...) racine du terme « crime ». (shrink)

A partir da implantação da República, surgiu um movimento de intelectuais que procurou congregar e dinamizar num esforço comum os pensadores de várias áreas do conhecimento, através da revista A Águia, tendo em vista uma nova ordem moral e cívica dentro do ideal democrático. Procurámos dar a conhecer as linhas principais que consubstanciaram o espaço aberto pela revista, as influências recebidas e os debates que a animaram.

Deux tendances sont en train de converger. L’une tend vers la simulation artificielle du comportement vivant dans des objets inanimés. L’autre vers la simulation de cette simulation dans les hommes, pour que ce comportement devienne programmable. Quand ces deux tendances se fondront pour n’en former qu’une, la distinction entre le vivant et l’artificiel deviendra caduque. L’art de la vie deviendra le méta-jeu de toutes les autres disciplines, y compris la science, la technique, la politique et l’art, au sens traditionnel de (...) ce terme. (shrink)

Vilém Flusser was one of the most fascinating and original European thinkers of the late twentieth century. In this collection of his essays on emigration, nationalism, and information theory, he raises questions about the viability of ideas of national identity in a world whose borders are becoming increasingly arbitrary and permeable. Flusser argues that modern societies are in flux, with traditional linear and textual epistemologies being challenged by global circulatory networks and a growth in visual stimulation. Beyond globalization, Flusser's (...) ideas about communication and identity are rooted in the Judeo-Christian concept of self-determination and self-realization through recognition of the other. (shrink)

Vilém Flusser was one of the most fascinating and original European thinkers of the late twentieth century. In this collection of his essays on emigration, nationalism, and information theory, he raises questions about the viability of ideas of national identity in a world whose borders are becoming increasingly arbitrary and permeable. Flusser argues that modern societies are in flux, with traditional linear and textual epistemologies being challenged by global circulatory networks and a growth in visual stimulation. Beyond globalization, Flusser's (...) ideas about communication and identity are rooted in the Judeo-Christian concept of self-determination and self-realization through recognition of the other. (shrink)

La production d’images par ordinateur fait apparaître deux aspects d’une telle importance pour le futur imminent que tous les autres aspects de cette nouvelle technique seront ici éliminés. Ces deux aspects sont l’auto-programmation et l’imagination conceptuelle. Il s’agit là d’une révolution de la structure de la société et de la conscience, de l’émergence d’une existence nouvelle.

Ce terme, et son équivalent latin « prescription », signifient « texte dont le propos est de provoquer un comportement spécifique de la part de son récepteur ». Le comportement se dépolitise progressivement, pour devenir de plus en plus fonctionnel. Mais, dans cette série progressive, il y a rupture. Toutes les prescriptions, des Dix Commandements jusqu’au mode d’emploi, s’orientent vers l’Homme. Tout programme d’ordinateur, lui, indique une machine. Je proposerai dans cet essai l’idée que la rupture entre l’avant-dernier et le (...) dernier exemple de la série est ce qui nous caractérise. (shrink)

Si on considère les appareils électroniques, on a tendance à croire que c’est leur vélocité qui caractérisera notre expérience temporelle dans le futur. Or toutes les machines précédentes, à commencer par le levier, et à finir par l’avion, en ont fait autant. La révolution informatique aura des conséquences beaucoup plus profondes sur notre vécu du temps : c’est sous le signe de l’ennui que le temps sera vécu dans la société informatisée.

continent. 2.2 (2012): 60–63 Translated by Rodrigo Maltez Novaes. From the forthcoming book Post-History , Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing, 2013. It is not necessary to have a keen ear in order to find out that the steps we take towards the future sound hollow. But it is necessary to have concentrated hearing if one wishes to find out which type of vacuity resonates with our progress. There are several types of vacuity, and ours must be compared to others, if the aim (...) is to understand it. The incomparable is incomprehensible. If we affirm that our situation is incomparable, we give up the effort to grasp it. The comparison that imposes itself is to the vacuity of the Baroque. There are innumerable traces in the present that evoke the Baroque. We bear the mark of the same somber rationalism (logics, informatics, cybernetics), and of the same magic and fanatic irrationalism (mass media, phantastic ideologies). But there is a decisive difference. Humanity advanced over a stage during the Baroque. All of its gestures, even the most sincere, were marked by theatricality. The vacuity that resonated under its feet was of the void under the stage. Baroque man represented. 1 For example he represented faith in waging religious wars. Baroque vacuity was the consequence of a medieval loss of faith in dogmas . Our vacuity is different. We do not represent anything. Our world is not a stage. We are not actors, and if we act, it is not to represent a drama, but to divert the audience's attention and our own from the subjects that really matter. We act like criminals that try to hide their tracks. We pretend. Our progress is a farce. The vacuity under our feet is not Baroque. We have not lost our faith in dogmas: we have lost faith in ourselves . We are as counter-reformists as was the Baroque (we want to cover up the recent revolution with warm cloths), but for different reasons. Although comparable with the Baroque, in certain aspects, our situation is in fact incomparable to any other. That is because an incomparable, unheard of, never before seen event happened recently, which emptied the ground we tread. Auschwitz . Other posterior events; Hiroshima, the Gulags, are nothing but variations of the first. Therefore every attempt to grasp the present leads to the following questions: how was Auschwitz possible? How can we live after this? Such questions relate not only to the ones directly or indirectly responsible, and not only to those who were directly or indirectly hit by it: they relate to everyone who takes part in our culture. Because what is so incomparable, unheard of, never before seen and therefore incomprehensible in Auschwitz, is that it was there that Western culture revealed one of its inherent virtualities. Auschwitz is a characteristic realization of our culture. It is neither the product of a particular Western ideology, nor of specific “advanced” industrial techniques. It springs directly from the depths of culture and of its concepts and values. The possibility to realize Auschwitzes is implicit within our culture from the very start: the Western “project” already harbored it, although as a remote possibility. Auschwitz lies within the initial program of the West, which progressively realizes all of its virtualities as history unfolds. That is why the question that Auschwitz poses before us is not: how did it happen? It serves no purpose to “explain” Auschwitz. The fundamental question is: how was it possible? Because what is being questioned is not the extermination camp, but the West. Thus one other question: how to live within a culture henceforth unmasked? Everything that happened afterwards resonates with such a question, with such vacuity. Every economic, social, political, technical, scientific, artistic, philosophic event is corroded by such an undigested question. The distance that separates us from the event does not mitigate the abyss, it erodes it even deeper. Because the distance progressively dissolves the aura of the horror that envelops the event, and it progressively opens up a vision of the scene. It progressively reveals that there all of our categories, all of our “models”, suffered an irreparable shipwreck. Auschwitz was a revolutionary event, in the sense that it overthrew our culture. Insofar as we seek ways to cover up such revolution with trips to the moon or with genetic manipulations, we are counter-revolutionaries: we are inverting the course of history in order to cover up the past. The unspoken in Auschwitz is not the mass murder, it is not the crime . It is the ultimate reification of people into amorphous objects, into ashes. The Western tendency towards objectification was finally realized and it was done so in the shape of an apparatus . The SS were functionaries of an extermination apparatus, and their victims functioned in function of their own annihilation. The extermination camp's program, once it started functioning, developed in an automatic fashion, autonomous from the decisions of the initial programmers, even if, as it effectively did, it contributed to the defeat of the programmers. The SS and the Jews functioned one in function of the other like cogwheels. The models for such functionality were provided by the highest of Western values: the SS behaved like “heroes” and the Jews like “martyrs”. This is an apparatus that functions at a borderline situation: objective even beyond death. What has just been said is intolerable. We cannot accept it and so we mobilize arguments against it. Good arguments. The SS behaved like criminals: they removed the gold teeth from the cadavers. The Jews behaved like victims: they rose up in the Warsaw ghetto. Such arguments are true, but they do not reach the nucleus, the “ eidos ” of the phenomenon: they do not grasp it. Although there was “normal” behavior: (theft, murder, revolt, heroism), there was also “abnormal” behavior: functionality during a borderline situation. And this is what counts. There, for the first time in the history of humanity, an apparatus was put into operation that was programmed with the most advanced techniques available, which realized the objectification of man, together with the functional collaboration of man. The previous horrors committed by Western society against other societies and against itself (and there are many) were crimes . They were violations of Western models of behavior: anti-Christian, anti-human, irrational. So that it is possible to condemn them and continue to be Western, even if the horror is so colossal, such as the enslavement of Africans. However, it is not possible to condemn Auschwitz and continue to adhere consciously to the West. Auschwitz is not a violation of Western models of behavior, it is, on the contrary, the result of the application of such models. Our culture allowed its mystifying mask to fall and must be rejected in toto if we admit that the purpose of every culture is to allow for the convivial existence of men that recognize each other mutually as subjects. However: it is not possible to reject one's own culture. It is the ground we tread . Those who seek to reject their own culture (as Nietzsche did in rejecting Judeo-Christianity), fall victim to madness. Those who reject their culture's models, are incapable of grasping the world in which they live. Cultural models are traps to catch the world. Those who seek to substitute their own models for other's (for example by shouting “Hare Krishna”) will find that such exotic models have already been caught by the very models to be substituted. There is no exit: we are condemned to use our models and to serve such models, even after they have been unmasked, if we wish to continue living. The only alternative would be to commit suicide. That is: we must continue our economic, political, scientific, artistic, philosophic activities despite Auschwitz. We must continue progressing despite everything . That is why there are those who recommend that we should seek to forget what happened, that we should repress the event. They sustain that enough has already been said and written about the subject and that it is time to “overcome” it. But such an ostrich strategy reveals itself disastrous. Because the result is that Auschwitz transfers itself from Poland of the 1940s to the post-industrial society of the future. What characterizes the extermination camp is precisely that it is not an event that can be “overcome”, because it is the first realization of an inherent virtuality within the Western project, which will repeat itself in other formats unless we become totally conscious of it. The advantage (if this is an appropriate term) that Auschwitz offers us, is to give us a concrete example of the West’s tendency towards the apparatus. For the first time in our history it is possible for us to experience concretely the utopia inherent in our culture. For the first time in our history we have the experience that utopia, no matter in what form, towards which we progress, is the extermination camp. Everywhere we can observe, as of now, the emergence of variations on the theme “Auschwitz”. Everywhere apparatus spring, just like mushrooms after a Nazi rain, from the ground that has become rotten. Certainly: such new apparatus are not externally similar to the Nazi extermination camps. Their labels are different, as are the ideologies that pretend to inspire them. Even the apparatus that admittedly envision extermination, such as the Gulags, the ones of a future nuclear war, or the ones that functioned in Vietnam, claim to be different from Auschwitz. Others claim to be “friends of mankind”, such as the scientific, technical and administrative apparatus. But such labels and such ideologies are deceptive and serve only to cover up the essence of apparatus. They are all just like Auschwitz, black boxes that function with complex inner-workings in order to realize a program. They all function according to an inertia that is inherent to them and such functionality escapes , from a certain point, the control of their initial programmers. In a final analysis such apparatuses function, all of them, towards the annihilation of all their functionaries, including their programmers. Exactly because they objectify and dehumanize man. Thus Western culture reveals itself as a project that seeks to transform itself into an apparatus. What characterizes the West is its capacity for an objectifying transcendence. Such transcendence allows for the transformation of all phenomena, including the human phenomenon, into an object of knowledge and manipulation. The space for such transcendence opened up thanks to Judeo-Christianity and resulted, in the course of our history, in science, technique and recently, in Auschwitz. The ultimate objectification of the Jews into ashes is the ultimate victory of the spirit of the West. It is social technique taken to the extreme. Certainly: the transformation of men into ashes is primitive, incipient social technique that progressively refines itself. It will be followed by less brutal objectifications, such as the robotization of society. But it does not matter which form it will assume: it will always be an objectifying manipulation of mankind. Although the apparatus of the immediate future are not necessarily incineration ovens, all will be, and not only the nuclear ones, apparatus for the annihilation of man. The Western program contains several virtualities, not only apparatus. Numerous virtualities have not yet been realized. In this sense the “history of the West” has not ended yet, the Western game continues. But all not-yet realized virtualities are infected by apparatus. That is why it has become currently impossible to engage ourselves in the “ progress of culture .” As it would be to engage ourselves in our own annihilation. We have lost our faith in our culture, in the ground we tread. That is: we have lost faith in ourselves. It is this hollow vibration that follows our steps towards the future. What remains is for us to analyze the event “Auschwitz” in all its details in order to discover the fundamental project that realized itself there for the first time, so that we may nurture the hope to project ourselves out of that project. Out of the history of the West. This is the “post- historical” climate in which we are condemned to live from hereon. NOTES 1. In Portuguese representar (to represent) also means “to act” or “to play a role.&rdquo. (shrink)

In 1939, a young Vilém Flusser faced the Nazi invasion of his hometown of Prague. He escaped with his wife to Brazil, taking with him only two books: a small Jewish prayer book and Goethe's Faust. Twenty-six years later, in 1965, Flusser would publish The History of the Devil, and it is the essence of those two books that haunts his own. From that time his life as a philosopher was born. While Flusser would later garner attention in Europe (...) and elsewhere as a thinker of media culture, The History of the Devil is considered by many to be his first significant work, containing nascent forms of the main themes that would come to preoccupy him over the following decades. In The History of the Devil, Flusser frames the human situation from a pseudo-religious point of view. The phenomenal world, or “reality” in a general sense, is identified as the “Devil,” and that which transcends phenomena, or the philosophers' and theologians' “reality,” is identified as “God.” Referencing Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in its structure, Flusser provocatively leads the reader through an existential exploration of nothingness as the bedrock of reality, where “phenomenon” and “transcendence,” “Devil” and “God” become fused and confused. So radically confused, in fact, that Flusser suggests we abandon the quotation marks from the terms “Devil” and “God.” At this moment of abysmal confusion, we must make the existential decisions that give direction to our lives. (shrink)

Nestes artigos da Nação Portuguesa é perceptível um pendor mais prático que surge com maior clareza no princípio da série seguinte, na qual o periódico é seccionado em duas partes distintas, já claramente perceptíveis nesta segunda leva: a primeira, onde se inserem os estudos de momentânea curiosidade, feitos de crónica, transcrições, referências à revista, etc.; a subsequente, onde se podem encontrar os ensaios de crítica, filosofia, história e ciência, “em que os altos problemas do espírito vão sendo discutidos”. Por (...) esse motivo, foi desta última secção que nos ocupámos, tentando traçar as linhas gerais dos textos de António Sardinha, Pequito Rebelo, Rolão Preto, Afonso Lucas, Francisco Veloso, Rodrigues Cavalheiro e Avelino Soares. (shrink)

L’être humain préhistorique invente, par le calcul, la notion de possibilité. Avec l’ordinateur, on peut désormais computer ces calculs. On peut ramasser les points pour en faire des mondes objectifs, des mondes subjectifs et des valeurs alternatives. Ceci implique un changement radical des idées que nous nous faisons : un abandon de la distinction entre la science, l’art et la politique en faveur de la projection.

Notre crise n’est pas seulement la perte de la foi en l’objectivité scientifique. Notre programme occidental est menacé partout, aussi bien dans le monde codifié qui nous entoure que dans notre intimité. C’est l’existence occidentale elle-même, cette existence historique, dramatique, conceptuelle, progressive, qui est à la mort. Or la science reste « valable », même après la chute du programme occidental, quoiqu’elle soit « valable » pour des valeurs nouvelles que nous ne pouvons pas encore articuler par manque de foi.

Este texto objetiva mostrar no contexto das mídias digitais em rede, a experiência de interação baseada no diálogo entre a Rádio Comunitária Cidadã FM e o programa Vaidapé na Rua que integra a programação semanal da emissora localizada na região Oeste do município de São Paulo. Partindo da compreensão das dinâmicas dialógicas e discursivas inerentes aos processos comunicacionais e estudadas pelo jornalista e teórico Vilém Flusser, o texto objetiva evidenciar as possibilidades que um ambiente comunicacional pode desencadear para uma (...) prática efetivamente comunitária. Para a compreensão sobre a rádio comunitária na conhecida “sociedade em rede”, o texto situa brevemente o surgimento e desenvolvimento do movimento das rádios comunitárias no Brasil, iniciado nas últimas duas décadas do século XX, quando motivadas pelas experiências das rádios livres, atuaram na luta contra a opressão dos poderes estatal e econômico e pela democratização do acesso aos meios de comunicação de massa. Além da pesquisa bibliográfica, o estudo recorre à pesquisa documental e de campo na realização de entrevistas qualitativas. Conclui-se que além da necessária desmitificação tecnológica e sua apropriação popular, a dinâmica dialógica em equilíbrio com a discursiva atua para o surgimento de ambientes comunicacionais propícios para o compartilhamento de conhecimentos e prática da cidadania. (shrink)

Marshall McLuhan and Vilém Flusser were primarily media communication theorists and new media philosophers. Both thinkers were deeply concerned with electronic and digital technologies and the impact of technology on human society. Likewise, both thinkers were critical and probably cynical about these developments, however, they believed in the notion that one has to fully understand technology to be able to use and discuss positive models of these new technologies for a better future. Independently, McLuhan and Flusser became interested in (...) the role of the artist in this new digital society, and Flusser in particular elaborated on the means of artistic production. Both theorists delved into collaborative projects with artists; and they produced films and other artistic output over their lifetimes. In our essay we highlight this particular interest and focus on the artist and modes of artistic perception. McLuhan’s understanding of the artist as society’s safety antenna was, indeed, personified by both men. (shrink)

The works of Vilém Flusser contain explicit as well as implicit traces of a philosophy of design, principally in the way of an investigation about the sign intentionality of the human as a symbolic animal. Retracing Flusser’s anthropological and philosophical ideas and hereby the cultural evolution from the formation of things to the information of non-things, the present essay points to the importance and responsibility of the designer in society today.

While Vilém Flusser’s writings on (media) philosophy and communication have found a wide readership across the globe, another ‘Flusser’ has been present all along, interwoven perhaps, namely that of the ‘obsessive futurologist’. Flusser, the futurologist, does not only imagine or predict media-technological universes unfolding with, among, and for us, but he, in his insistence that ‘communication is anthropology’, also imagines scenarios of possible worlds to come. In his little-known book Angenommen: Eine Szenenfolge (1989), available in English translation as What (...) If? Twenty-Two Scenarios in Search of Images (2023), he designs sketches of an Anthropocene fraught with nightmares and wonders. What If? offers insight into the radical futures of a slipstream Anthropocene that have to do with speculative design, with Flusser’s concept of design as ‘crafty’ or slippery, and with art and the immense creative potential of failure versus reasonable, ‘good’ computing or calculability. (shrink)

A pesquisa demonstra que a nova magia na contemporaneidade se dá por meio da ritualização de programas, que são estruturados com a clara intenção de programar o comportamento idolátrico da sociedade. A partir da teorização de Vilém Flusser examina-se o processo idolátrico das imagens que transforma as pessoas em sombras das imagens, presas ao desejo da imortalidade. O problema reside em saber como o ser humano se ocupará de símbolos, códigos, sistemas e como será sua vida nesse ambiente imaterial. (...) Até que nível a sociedade atual está programada? Os aparelhos vão resolver os problemas, ou seja, eles funcionarão em função da sociedade? Em primeiro lugar, explicita-se a lógica do funcionamento dos aparelhos. Depois, como a ciência se automatizou e transformou o programador em programado: de sujeito a objeto do processo ao transferir ao programa do aparelho todo o seu poder, tornando a sociedade em massa programada, que funciona em função dos aparelhos. O processo de idolatrização está em curso, entretanto o que se percebe é que a humanidade caminha para um totalitarismo programador. (shrink)

The article discusses the technical image, a central concept in Vilém Flusser’s later main work Into the Universe of Technical Images (1985a). After identifying its various dimensions, the analysis frames the concept as an amalgamation of disciplines, theories, and artistic practices the cultural philosopher Flusser explored during the 1960s and especially the 1970s. In particular, the field of information aesthetics developed by Max Bense and Abraham A. Moles, among others, as well as artistic video practices in France and the (...) United States played an important role in both Flusser’s biography and the formation of his technical image concept. At the same time, in Flusser’s cultural philosophy the technical image is the condition and result of a new kind of human imagination, which in this paper is specified as ‘projective imagination’. (shrink)