Aproveito este espaço para (compensando a minha ausência) partilhar dois textos que escrevi recentemente:

O primeiro texto (publicado no Jornal Rascunho), sobre Machado de Assis e Dostoiévski, tenta mostrar de que forma a obra destes dois autores tão díspares se une: neste caso, na sua veemente crítica às pretensões racionalizantes que reduzem a complexidade humana.

“Tanto Machado de Assis quanto Dostoiévski temiam a soberba que advém de um homem demasiado encantado com a sua própria criação. É o tema da vaidade que os fascina e que, ao mesmo tempo, os assusta. Mais do que deformar a realidade, as pretensões racionalistas envaidecem o homem e dão-lhe o estofo necessário para levar a cabo toda uma nova gama de atrocidades. Daí a necessidade de entender que “o homem não é suficiente” e que, na verdade, nem “tudo é permitido”.“

O segundo texto (publicado na VoegelinView) é uma reflexão sobre o impacto cultural e civilizacional do cristianismo com base último livro de Tom Holland, “Dominion” e na obra de René Girard.

“The Christian revolution was so successful that even criticizing or opposing Christianity would have to resort to its tools. Some of the most anti-Christian, or even openly atheistic, figures from Voltaire to Marx were philosophically dependent on both the position they attacked and, on some objections, and criticisms already formulated by the Christians themselves. According to Holland, the idea that the Bible was full of contradictions, for example, is not an 18th or 19th century invention. In fact, “all had been honed, over the course of two centuries and more, by pious Christians”. Some of the ideas that we think are the fruit of modern secularism have been sprouted in Christian universities or, as in the case of the Salamanca School, fully developed in them. In fact, the very separation between the secular sphere and the religious sphere, according to Holland, goes back to the 11th century reformatio, Augustine’s distinction between the City of God and the City of Men or to the scriptures themselves (“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s”). Although Martin Luther denounced the legacy of Gregory VII, the author of the 11th century reformatio, one of the results of the 16th century reformation was, as Holland tells us, “not to dissolve the great division between the realms of the profane and the sacred that had characterised Christendom since the age of Gregory VII, but to entrench it.”