Educação em tempos sombrios: ontologias perspectivistas

Abstract

The present work sought to investigate ontological dimensions about the meaning attributed, in the history of philosophy, to the human condition in contrast to the animal condition. In asking himself "what is human", this essay has stumbled in its quest in the very paradox of the question: man is one who, in order to define himself, must deny himself (the human is the nonanimal, although animality is part of its own nature) - a paradox that Agamben (2017) will perceive as an "ironic device" of the anthropological machine of humanism. Such a need for separation between humanity and animality served as the foundation within the human sciences for evaluating the degrees of humanity and development of particular societies on the basis of a misleading understanding of the Theory of Evolution. So from these debates, we enter into another question that seems essential to us, the moral question - why, in our history, do we exclude, deny and enslave other humans, different social, ethnic, racial groups? The complexity of the question led me to seek different answers. We, the human animals, are social beings who act on norms and behaviors considered acceptable and / or desirable, and understand the motivations that lead us to act in a certain way proved important to renew the question about the ontological condition of the human, in relation to both the psychological dimensions of morality and social or environmental dimensions. From authors of anthropology, philosophy, sociology and psychoanalysis, I have tried to weave a mesh that would allow me to examine the moral issue, even though I am far from fully understood. In the last chapter, I also bring Amerindian perspectivism as a support for thinking possible futures in dark times.