Life as Autarchy: Deconstructing Bio-Theological Western Paradigm

2022

UPH

Self Cite

Este trabajo muestra cómo una deconstrucción del cuerpo propio, desde la centralidad del tacto como autoafección (haptocentrismo), debe ser completada por una deconstrucción del aptocentrismo, es decir, de la comprensión del cuerpo propio como cuerpo del cual hago uso. Tanto el haptocentrismo como el aptocentrismo postulan al cuerpo propio como aquello que puede ser eminentemente apropiado por el viviente, una apropiación conceptualizada por el estoicismo como oikeiosis. En un recorrido que va desde el estoicismo hasta Michel Henry, pasando por Condillac, Maine de Biran, Rosmini, Husserl, Bergson, Marcel y Merleau-Ponty, podrá advertirse cómo estas argumentaciones están motivadas por dicha necesidad de apropiación del cuerpo y, por tanto, cómo la autoafección debe comprenderse dentro del esquema de la autoapropiación del viviente. Este paradigma de la autoapropiación encuentra, sin embargo, su lugar aporético en el cuerpo propio, el cual no puede ser nunca apropiado del todo y se presenta como el lugar de la resistencia y de la expropiación.

Section: Del Cuerpo Vivo Y Sus Deconstruccionesunclassified

Haptocentrismo y uso del cuerpo: una deconstrucción del cuerpo propio desde la oikeiosis estoica hasta la fenomenología de la carne

2022

UPH

Self Cite

“…Life is defined in contrast to the inert by its capacity to rule over itself (auto-nomy), or even more, itself being its own cause (autos-arché). At least in Western tradition it seems that life is signified within the bio-theo-political paradigm of autarchy (Grassi 2018a;2018b). Of course, within this paradigm, life is turned into an analogous concept, for now the degree of autarchy (or autonomy) that living beings have is the criterion for its place in the living scale, from cells to God and backwards (Dalleur 2015;Grassi 2018c).…”

Section: Semantic Displacements Within the Bio-theo-political Paradigm Of Autarchymentioning

confidence: 99%

Self-organized bodies, between Politics and Biology. A political reading of Aristotle’s concepts of Soul and Pneuma

2019

SetF

The idea of a self-organized system brings both political and biological discourses together, for they both aim at explaining how a certain compound can achieve self-unity out of plurality. Whereas biological metaphors in politics have been much examined, political metaphors in biology have not. In this paper I intend to show how political metaphors can enlighten biological discourses, taking the work of Aristotle as a case-study. The relationship between the main elements of a living-body could be better understood within a political scheme: the soul rules over the body through pneuma, its prime minister. This scheme entails, thus, to re-examine Aristotle's definition of soul in the light of the key concept of pneuma, and to replace the hylemorphic explanation with a triadic one. On the one hand, soul is the entelecheia of the body as it keeps both the form and the end of the organism, which is its unity. On the other hand, the moving-efficacious principle that performs unity by circulating through the body, and by linking the body to its environment is pneuma. Therefore, the political formula: "the king does not govern" could shed light upon the structure of the living body: whereas the soul rules the body, pneuma governs it. Although Aristotle does not 1 This paper was written during my Post-doctoral Fellowship at the Institut für Hermeneutik of the University of Bonn, sponsored by the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung.

El paradigma bio-teo-político de la autarquía y la paradoja del Dios viviente

2021

Cueteo

In the Western tradition, life has been defined within the idea of reflexivity and unity. These two features of life are intertwined in what I call the Bio-Theo-Political Paradigm of autarchy, in which living beings are defined primarily as self-sufficient entities. The perfect living being, thus, will be the most autarchic, one that can achieve perfect unity within its own self- referred dynamics. This perfect living being is God, and Western theology (both Greek and Christian) conceptualized God as “thought of thought”, for only the intellect can achieve a pure reflexive unity. However, Plotinus and Jean-Paul Sartre (two very different philosophers, coming from very different traditions and in very different contexts) showed the difficulties of such a definition of God. This paper aims at problematizing the Bio-Theo-Political Paradigm of autarchy by showing its inconsistency when reaching the idea of a perfect living being. In doing so, a need to rethink life and God is fostered, a need that Christian Theology in particular should face in order to build a theology of a Trinitarian living God.