Lendo Voegelin, Anamnesis

O desafio é enorme. Entender em inglês as questões pertinentes a “Theory of Consciousness” não é fácil.

O Cap. 1 “Remembrance of  Things Past” pra quem leu as Reflexões… é familiar. E então, o oásis: o cap. 3 “Anamnetic Experiments” que de longe nos lembra C. Jung, com Voegelin dando de goleada na emoção e na consciência da “relembrança“. A alegria de transcrever faz parte de minha experiência de Notas de leitura.

Eis, pois, a transcrição respeitando todas as “assumptions” (presunções) do autor quais sejam:

1. that consciousness is not constituted as a stream within the I;
   (a consciência não é constituída como uma corrente dentro do Eu);
   
2. that in its intentional function consciousness, in infinite experience, transcends into the world, and that this type of transcendence is only one among several and must not be made the central them of a theory of consciousness;
   (que em sua função intencional, a consciência, na experiência finita, transcende para o mundo, e que este tipo de transcendência é apenas um entre muitos e não deve ser feito o tema central de uma teoria da consciência);
3. that the experiences of the transcendence of consciousness into the body, the external world, the community, history, and the ground of being are givens in the biography of consciousness and thus antecede the systematic reflection on consciousness;
   (que as experiências de transcendência da consciência no corpo, no mundo externo, na comunidade, na história e no fundamento do ser são dados na biografia da consciência e, então, antecedem a reflexão sistemática acerca da consciência);
4. that the systematic reflection operates with these experiences, that thus …
   (que a refelxão sistemática opera com essas experiências, que então…)
5. the reflection is a further event in the biography of consciousness that may lead to clarification about its problems and, when reflection is turned in the direction of meditation, to the ascertainment of existence; but that it never is a radical beginning of philosophizing or can lead to such a beginning.
   (a reflexão é um evento posterior na biografia da consciência que pode levar à clarificação de seus problemas e, quando a reflexão se volta para a direção da meditação, à afirmação da existência; mas que isso nunca é um começo radical do filosofar ou pode levar a tal começo.)
   (Trad. de Elpio M Dantas Fonseca)
   
   

Transcrevo, assim, duas situações que mais me agradam para compreender as experiências de Anamnese do grande filósofo do séc. XX, Mr. Voegelin:

Uma do grupo classificado como “experiences remembered without being completely clear about the meaning” (8):

8. The Petersberg

The Petersbeg (St. Peter’s Mountain) was a serious problem. From our house one could see it well. There it was, not too far away, a high ridge with rounded shoulders; on top, in the middle, a little house, a toy house like the several toy houses I possessed.

One day I learned that a passing-through friend of my parents lived up there. I could not believe it. The toy house was a real house, a hotel in which one could eat and sleep! BY insistent questioning I made sure that the house was as big as ours, that it contained real rooms, that the door was as large as a real door and that one could enter in through it.

Something new broke in on me. I learned that the house up there was small when I was below; that it was big when I wen there and stood in front of it; that our house, which was big was also small when I stood above on the mountain and looked down on it.

The experience was disturbing and has remained so until today. At that time I coul no cope with it. Ther remained the discovery that space is a weird matter and that the world which I knew looked differently if one stood at a different place in it.

Later this first shaking of my world center was followed by other experiences that concerned the relations of spatial position to psychic an spiritual perspectives. These experiences, however, occurred after the years in th Rhineland; they did not begin until after my own revolutionary change of location to Austria. At any rate, space was never something neutral, a quantitative extension; it always remained for me a problem of soul.

(p.42).

E a outra, do grupo classificado como “esquecido e só recentemente ‘reappeared’” (9)

9. The Freighters

In Koeningswinter we lived in a house on the waterfront. It stood on a little bluff, which had a stonewall; in front of the wall was the river-lane. When the Rhine carried high water, it flooded the path and the water rose on the wall. At that time, in order to leave the house, we hat do pass through a neighbor’s garden behind our own. Unfortunately, this exciting change occurred only a few days once a year.

From our front yard we looked down on the river where the steamboats were passing. There were three kinds: most numerous were the tugboats with barges(1) behind them; then the were the passenger boats of the Koeln-Duesseldorf Line coming by every one or two hours; and finally the Netherland Line passenger ships, twice or thrice a day.

The freighters were the source of a physical discovery, and the nature of this discovery taught me for the first time caution in the delicate questions of interpretation. They emitted thick partly with uneasiness – for when clouds appeared then rain would follow, and I would have to say in the house.

One day, in the circle of the family, I summed up the result of my observations: that tomorrow it woul rain because today the freighters had produced many clouds. My parents laughed, and I learned that clouds of smoke and rain-producing clouds are not the same thing. I was ashamed about my ignorance and because I had made a fool of myself.

I still love to see interesting relationships – but just when I see them in the most satisfactory and beautiful way, the smoke of the freighters rises and clouds my pleasure.

Bônus(es).

19. The Cannons of Kronburg

The cannons of Kronburg speak in the story of Holger Danske. Again, nothing has remained of the story but the cannons. When the ships pass by, the cannons say ‘boom’.

That is somewhere far away, in the north, where the world has gone farthest, with nothing beyond. Ships will pass there, and nobody asks whence they are coming and where they are going. Where they pass, without a sound, there is nothing; no human beings, only the cannons; and they say ‘boom’ with solemn sadness, as the end of the world.
(p. 50)

20. First Emigration

In 1910 my father accepted a position in Vienna. I was then nine years old. A move of this kind must have been in preparation for some time. I do not recall, however, that there was any kind of disturbance before the departure.

I still remember clearly the day when I went to school for the last time. The teacher, Mr. Corbach, whom I revered, said goodbye to me. He said something about my going into foreign parts but that it might not be so bad, since German was also spoken there. I was a little afraid, but I also was excited by the adventure and proud that something so important was happening to me.

What had happened only dawned on (2) me several weeks later, when I first went to school in Vienna.
(p.51).
+++++

Fonte: E. Voegelin, “Anamnesis” Univ. of Notre Dame Press, London, 1978, p. 36-51

(1) barca, barco, lancha
(2) dawn on: começar a entender
(3) ascertainment: s. averiguação, determinação