Natural:Mind

by Vilém Flusser, Rodrigo Maltez Novaes (Translation)

In Natural:Mind, published for the first time in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1979, Vilém Flusser investigates the paradoxical connection between the concepts of nature and culture through a lively para-phenomenological analysis of natural and cultural phenomena. Can culture be considered natural and nature cultural? If culture is our natural habitat then do we not inhabit nature? These are only some of the questions that are raised in Natural:Mind in order to examine our continual redefinition of both terms and what that means for us existentially.


Always applying his fluid and imagistic Husserlian style of phenomenology, Flusser explores different perspectives and relations of items from everyday life. The book is composed of a series of essays based on close observations of familiar objects such as paths, valleys, cows, meadows, trees, fingers, grass, the moon, and buttons. By focusing on things we mostly take for granted, he manages not only to reveal some aspects of their real and obscured nature but also to radically change how we look at them. The ordinary cow will never be seen in the same way again.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

143 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Vilém Flusser was a philosopher born in Czechoslovakia. He lived for a long period in Brazil and later in France, and his works are written in several different languages.
His early work was marked by discussion of the thought of Martin Heidegger, and by the influence of existentialism and phenomenology. Phenomenology would play a major role in the transition to the later phase of his work, in which he turned his attention to the philosophy of communication and of artistic production. He contributed to the dichotomy in history: the period of image worship, and period of text worship, with deviations consequently into idolatry and "textolatry".

Flusser was born in 1920 in Prague into a family of Jewish intellectuals. His father, Gustav Flusser, studied mathematics and physics (under Albert Einstein among others). Flusser attended German and Czech primary schools and later a German grammar school.

In 1938, Flusser started to study philosophy at the Juridical Faculty of the Charles University in Prague. In 1939, shortly after the Nazi occupation, Flusser emigrated to London to continue his studies for one term at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Vilém Flusser lost all of his family in the German concentration camps: his father died in Buchenwald in 1940; his grandparents, his mother and his sister were brought to Auschwitz and later to Theresienstadt where they were killed. The next year, he emigrated to Brazil, living both in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

In 1960 he started to collaborate with the Brazilian Institute for Philosophy (IBF) in São Paulo and published in the Revista Brasileira de Filosofia; by these means he seriously approached the Brazilian intellectual community. During that decade he published and taught at several schools in São Paulo, being Lecturer for Philosophy of Science at the Escola Politécnica of the University of São Paulo and Professor of Philosophy of Communication at the Escola Dramática and the Escola Superior de Cinema in São Paulo. He also participated actively in the arts, collaborating with the Bienal de São Paulo, among other cultural events.

Beginning in the 1950s he taught philosophy and functioned as a journalist, before publishing his first book Língua e realidade (Language and Reality) in 1963. In 1972 he decided to leave Brazil.

He lived in both Germany and the South of France. To the end of his life, he was quite active writing and giving lectures around media theory. He died in 1991 in a car accident, while visiting his native Prague to give a lecture.

Reviews

[Uroš Đurković · Rating 5 out of 5]

Obogaćujuća, izuzetna knjiga, čuvenog češko-brazilskog filozofa. Ako se nekada kod nas uspostavi kurs o ekološkoj humanistici, ovo treba da bude obavezna lektira. Fluser dovitljivo, nadahnuto i blistavo inteligentno piše o neodrživo nerazmrsivoj dihotomiji priroda:kultura. Ukoliko je priroda nužnost, a kultura ono što je stvoreno da bi se nužnost prilagodila potrebama čoveka, onda odnosi nipošto nisu ravnoparvni, već se mogu objasniti uokviravanjem. Kultura je domet onoga što se u okvirima prirode može postaviti na način koji (može da) odgovara čoveku, ali granice su daleko nejasnije nego što se čini – jer prilagođavanje prirode nikad ne predstavlja njenu negaciju, već se s njom stapa. Tako bi najbolje bilo misliti o kulturi kao drugoj čovekovoj prirodi (131), koja je neodvojiva od (prve) prirode. Međutim, tu se krije još problema: ideja (prve) prirode je, zapravo, proizvod druge prirode, odnosno, kulture! Priroda kao priroda je van prostora diskurzivnog i uspostavlja se tek u odnosu na razmišljanje o značenju. Za Flusera, priroda ne može biti dešifrovana, rastumačena, ona je sasvim van tih kategorija. Kultura je ta koja ima značenje i koja može da bude „dekodirana”, odnosno, rastumačena (4). Priroda jeste, a kultura jeste na način (ograničene) uslovljenosti naše pozicije, gde je saznanje neraskidivo od onoga koji saznaje (137). S tim u vezi Fluser daje dobre primere kako je priroda kao pojam drukčije sagledavana u Evropi i u Brazilu – a ključna razlika, iako je on tako ne određuje direktno, nalazi se u različitom viđenju divljine – dok je jedna od konstanti evropske kulture „povratak prirodi”, ali i njeno pripitomljavanje, brazilsko društvo je utemeljeno na izazovu prevazilaženja daleko većih izazova – priroda kao datost predstavlja i raskoš, ali i nešto doslovno ugrožavajuće, što treba da bude savladano, ne kao vrt, već kao inženjerski poduhvat (140). Pritom, kao što je distinkcija između prirode i kulture neodrživa, tako ni razlikovanje između datog i stvorenog, može biti višestruko varljiva (128). Ukoliko je neko odrastao u izmenjenom okruženju, za njega će ono imati vrednost izvornosti, a o onome što je prethodilo razmišljaće samo ukoliko za to postoji specijalna potreba, ukoliko se neko, na primer, ne bavi arheologijom ili, na primer, konzervacijom šumskih resursa. Ali kad to već spomenuh, kud ćete bolji dokaz o neodrživosti dihotomije od toga – šumski resursi su održani ne nekakvim samoodrživim mehanizmom, već intervencijom čoveka! Dakle, ideja izvornosti (koja je projekcija kulture) brani se upravo delatnošću čoveka – radom druge kulture u okvirima prve. Ipak, kako Fluser zapaža, a ja se sa tim sasvim slažem, korišćenje reči priroda (od physis-a do današnjih mogućih značenja) toliko je prisutno i razgranato da bi bilo sasvim besmisleno i beskorisno odustati od njene upotrebe. Ono što, ipak, treba da se uradi je promisliti o načinima upotrebe i videti koji su zaista sadržaji onoga što nosi i kakve to posledice ima po sagledavanje sveta. 

Nije slučajno što je Fluser ovo svoje delo povezao sa „novom naukom”, čiji su pioniri Huserl, Ortega i Gaset i Bašlar. Ipak, kao sa idejama kulture i prirode i nauci treba da se posveti slična pažnja – ona ima različito značenje u različitim kontekstima i često se primer fizike kao „uzorne nauke” preslikava na sve ostale oblike saznanja. To, međutim, može da zavede na krivi trag, ali ne mislim da nešto treba da bude nazvano naukom da bi bilo relavantno. Štaviše, prostor eseja (kao misaonog pokušaja, tumaranja ideja), može da pokrije nešto što je u egzaktnosti fizike nezamislivo i što joj može dati nov kvalitet. Jer svet nije nikad samo datost, već i mogućnost sporazumevanja, prepoznavanja i prilike da u njegovo ime nešto progovorimo kao životni oblici. Mi smo i subjekti i objekti i nosimo obavezujuće breme podataka, tumačenja i tradicije. Potreba za orijentacijom je tu zaista dragocena, a najbolji put je, verujem – (fenomenološki) prirodokulturan.

[Sara G · Rating 3 out of 5]

I suppose giving this a very vague flip through before deciding to give it a read built it up in my head as more of a Poetics of Space than as what it actually is which is just...a book. I wanted it to deepen or shake my understanding of the world around me,of the little things, and it was clearly not the book to do that for me.

What it did make me think about is that philosophy would really benefit from a deeper study of folklore. That we know nature changes culture because natural similarities result in folkloric similarities. In shared themes, styles, expressions. Shared language traits.

What it made me think of is how, every year, my grandfather would get a bullock, name it Jablan (Poplar), and take care of it like a baby. He would pet it, talk to it, feed it all the best, freshest, sweetest clover. And then when the time came, he would kill and prepare it and we would have meat for a year.

[Silas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Esse livro me abriu ao conceito de ontologia para filosofia, que é o estudo sobre o ser. Dentro de uma dimensão metafísica. E penso que apesar de não compreender em sua totalidade penso que talvez seja a ontologia filosófica o que talvez mais se aproxime de algo poético e mágico pra mim.