Olavo de Carvalho and the Principle of Authorship

For that which is made shall be punished together with him that made it. – Wisdom 14:10

Introduction: Cogito Ergo Mussum

Unraveling Olavo de Carvalho’s moral vision can be controversial for some, the direct consequence of the fact that he was a multifaceted author. For our purposes, it is enough to highlight just two of these facets: the philosopher and the polemist. The former tends to be eclipsed by the latter, because although Olavo de Carvalho has been known since at least the mid-1980s, he gained notorious popularity after the publication, in the early 2010s, of the collection of articles O Mínimo que Você Precisa Saber para não ser um idiota (The Least You Need to Know to Not Be an Idiot), a book that contained, essentially, his popular side, marked by his treatment of serious subjects in a jocular tone. This mode of expression, idealized by the author as the true Brazilian style, at once popular and erudite, has its merits: it made many people, laughing at his examples, reflect on subjects and authors hitherto alien to their horizon of consciousness. However, as everything is popularized, his style was copied, degenerated and misunderstood, causing the latter quality to eclipse the former. Thus, Olavo became known as a funny and controversial old man rather than a philosopher.

This poses several challenges. The most significant is that this colloquial style makes it somewhat difficult for him to communicate effectively because it’s filled with elements that the average person tends to reject: profanity and erudition – the former can offend, while the latter can be difficult to grasp. Another issue stemming from this overshadowing is that it seems difficult for an author known for his risqué humor to encapsulate within his philosophy the seed of a moral system that might impress even his “students”, and this for a few reasons: while he vehemently argued against relativism in debates and articles,[1] he avoided discussing topics like chastity, claiming lack of personal experience, and often displayed leniency towards others’ transgressions, giving the impression that such matters were of little concern to him. Such attitudes unfortunately earned him a bad reputation among religious groups. However, such a stance is unsustainable, and the philosophical side of Olavo must prevail over the popular one. In this regard, his moral philosophy needs to be explained.

As with other elements of Olavo’s philosophy, its moral aspect is scattered throughout handouts (unedited), courses (untranscribed) and books. The main source of his moral system, the Curso de Ética, supposedly delivered at PUC in Paraná, lacks any available records, whether recorded or written; its existence is evidenced solely through quotations by the author himself. This shortcoming would be enough to discourage one from dealing with Olavian ethics; however, in an almost masochistic effort – and in the same spirit used to reconstruct Protrepticus through secondary sources – this puzzle turns out not so difficult to solve, since its pieces are scattered throughout Olavo’s Curso Online de Filosofia and his handout Esboço de um Sistema de Filosofia^[1]. In order to understand Olavian thought, one needs only to follow his footsteps.[2]

Compiling the writings that contain moral insights to depict the evolution of Olavo’s moral philosophy is a formidable task, exceeding the scope of a mere essay. However, aware that such progress has been made, we should mention that in the course[3] that gave rise to the book Husserl Contra o Psicologismo, Olavo didn’t adhere to the concept of a universal morality. His position was roughly that morality consisted in “the relationship between the individual and his own conscience”; the regulation of oneself for oneself [4]. For him, there would be no point in a general morality, since its function is to guide personal conduct. Ergo, there was no room, in his view, for actions to be universally immoral; instead, those who deemed certain actions immoral should refrain from committing them rather than passing judgment.[5] Curiously, in the next paragraph of that same book, we read: “only that which violates […] human nature is intrinsically immoral.”[6] Given the difference between the understanding found in the course and the one outlined later, it is prudent to conclude that in the period between 1991 and 1996, Olavo was still speculating on the subject and any previous remarks were merely provisory. What is found in the transcript of Husserl Contra o Psicologismo cannot be taken as a definitive postulate of Olavian moral philosophy for the following reasons: a) the course’s focus wasn’t on moral issues; b) the comments were casual and lacked rigor; c) elevating a secondary remark to a primary thesis would contradict the philosopher’s entire body of work; and d) that position was superseded in later writings.

In order to study the moral thought of Olavian philosophy, we will take as a basis what is presented in the handout Esboço de um Sistema de Filosofia and explained in various lessons of the Curso Online de Filosofia, bringing together, in a synthetic way, its fundamental principles and elements.

Reflective Self-Consciousness in the Principle of Authorship: A Synthesis of Olavo de Carvalho’s Moral Foundations

The starting point for thinking about Olavo’s moral system begins with delineating his notion of self-consciousness as the assumption of one’s own consciousness. For him, this means an act in which we commit ourselves to retaining the perception of the present moment in such a manner that its essence isn’t diluted amidst a stream of impressions, rendering it as though it never happened.[7]We see here that the notion of self-consciousness is eminently a compact symbol that includes – in addition to a Husserlian notion of consciousness as the knowledge of something[8] – the notions of presence, moral and intellectual responsibility, all reflected in that of commitment.

What we’re aware of (the “that” or alius quid) is always present; the intentional object of consciousness is the presence. Being conscious of what’s presented involves not only an external positioning but also an internal one: in Husserlian terms, intentional experiences are both immanent and transcendent. The act of commitment unfolds in two ways: moral, insofar as we react to the consequences of our actions (which inherently hold moral significance due to being undertaken following a decision by an agent) and intellectual as we speculate based on the data presented.

Therefore, it’s imperative to refine the notion of self-consciousness for clarity: a self-conscious individual is one who, upon noticing the content of his experiences, commits himself to expressing – at first, to himself – precisely what he perceived, ensuring that nothing he experienced, leaving an imprint on memory (thus affecting the person), is dismissed as lacking real significance.[9] This intricate web of nuances prevents the philosopher from reducing his symbol to an isolated concept; with the term “consciousness,” Olavo aims to encapsulate the array of elements of genuine perception wherein there isn’t merely a perceiving subject and a phenomenal object, but rather a person endowed with a multitude of interconnected dimensions.[10]

The symbol self-consciousness therefore unfolds in a structure in which the notion of self-consciousness includes that of responsibility as the capacity to answer for what we are aware of. Every aspect presented to us influences our consciousness, prompting action in response to the presented data, as evidenced by the example of a child reacting to a sweet. Any action structured in this way is the responsibility of the agent. To be self-conscious is, in Olavian terms, to be sincerely responsible.

Carvalho posits that the essence of Augustine’s “Confessions” lies in his self-consciousness.[11] Through the example of the saint, Carvalho unveils another facet of his concept of conscience: its historical-biographical dimension. [12] Augustine, being aware of his responsibility for his actions since childhood, can biographize himself, describing his acts as attached to himself across time without implying they were done by someone else. Aurelius Augustinus, realizing his accountability for his actions, was able to repent and, upon conversion, became Saint Augustine. Responsible actions are only comprehensible within a historical-biographical context embedded in the framework of self-consciousness, arising from actions occurring within a specific time and space. Men don’t act abstractly: they operate in the present, influenced by elements from the past and with the future in view. Thus, to conceive self-consciousness in an abstract way is to risk of losing the richness of its elements and distorting concrete experiences. The self-conscious agent is the genuine reference of what Olavo calls authorship. 

The foundation of morality, according to Olavo de Carvalho, is self-consciousness reflected in the notion of authorship elevated to the quality of a principle that expresses the responsibility of a person who is aware of their actions.[13] Within this framework, several aspects surrounding the principle of authorship come into play. The clearest of these is the affirmation of the unity of the subject and its actions: one’s actions are attributed to that person and not to another; hence, it’s unjust to hold one person responsible for the deeds of another. This thesis itself includes analogues of at least two Kantian theses: the autonomy of the subject and the finality of the person.[14] When actions are “used” as a means—since the “pure” use of people as mere tools is impossible—the responsibility of one person “includes” the other so that both share the burden. It’s crucial to note that this isn’t a transfer of responsibility but rather a shared culpability: while the commanding officer bears responsibility for the outcome of an order, his subordinates are not absolved of their actions, as human beings are not automatons but autonomous agents even when acting under another’s authority.

Another relevant aspect is freedom of action; only free people can be self-conscious and, in this sense, self-consciousness inherently carries moral commitment; freedom and conscience are inseparable in Olavo de Carvalho’s thought. This inextricable link between people and actions enables the attribution of both virtuous and vicious deeds; therefore, we can understand, by way of example, the principle of authorship as a candidate for the foundation of an ethics of virtue.

The birth of consciousness is full of consequences; for Carvalho, consciousness appears to us, in the order of knowledge, first morally and then cognitively. This doesn’t imply that it is moral before being cognitive—without cognition, we couldn’t recognize it—but rather that its moral and cognitive dimensions coexist, similar to how practical reason and speculative reason are two faces of the same coin. In this regard, the principle of authorship serves as a bridge between cognitive philosophy and moral philosophy.[15]

What’s crucial to understand is that the precedence of moral consciousness stems from the primacy of the perception of authorship; our authorial consciousness is identified with the primal notion that “we are” i.e., with the notion of identity. From this arises another aspect rooted in the principle of authorship: the concept of sincerity as the transparency of actions within personal consciousness.[16] Similar to Kant, Olavo believes that all our actions are in some way transparent to us as agents; we may misjudge the consequences but never the actions themselves. It’s impossible to do something without being aware that we’ve done it or to attribute our actions to someone else. As expressed by the Königsberg philosopher, even if I don’t bow to a virtuous act, my spirit will;[17] in this, sincerity is an element of the structure of consciousness: it can be clouded or twisted, as happens in an eclipse of reality, but never erased.

The incorporation of sincerity into the framework of the principle of authorship also bears resemblance to the notion of bad faith in Sartrean thought. Just as Sartre posits the necessity of a single consciousness and a hidden truth, Olavo suggests that falsehoods can only arise from truthfulness.[18] Deceiving oneself or being insincere towards oneself is fundamentally impossible in its purest form. As Sartre explains:

That which affects itself with bad faith must be conscious (of) its bad faith since the being of consciousness is consciousness of being. It appears then that I must be in good faith, at least to the extent that I am conscious of my bad faith. But then this whole psychic system is annihilated. We must agree in fact that if I deliberately and cynically attempt to lie to myself, I fail completely in this undertaking; the lie falls back and collapses beneath my look; it is ruined from behind by the very consciousness of lying to myself which pitilessly constitutes itself well within my project as its very condition.[19]

The aspect that particularly interests us here is the relationship between freedom and sincerity. Since a responsible act presupposes a free act, self-consciousness necessitates freedom of choice. And since the eruption of moral consciousness and the naturalness of our self-consciousness are fundamental data, freedom remains a defining element within human consciousness. In Sartrean language, Olavo can say that we have been condemned to freedom: we cannot deny our freedom and responsibility without falling into bad faith. A person who takes responsibility for his actions understands that he acts freely; even when influenced by others, our decisions are never entirely constrained—death, for instance, remains a choice, which explains the existence of martyrdom. Even under coercion, like a prisoner walking the plank, there’s always the option to prefer a bullet over shark bites. Similarly, someone who works at something undignified to pay the bills has chosen indignity over misery; every human action, no matter how complex, is ultimately a free choice. Bad decisions are still decisions.

Like Sartre, Olavo aims to differentiate moral conscience from social roles; merging the two constitutes a form of bad faith, as moral conscience is distinct from social roles as perceived by the person acting within them.

Within the realm of social roles, consciousness is viewed as a faculty of human essence through which we acknowledge information and act accordingly—here, the “production” of consciousness metaphorically refers to the induction of perception. [20] While social roles may influence our perceptions, they never merge with our identity; we don’t cease to be ourselves when we conform to specific roles. When we act in certain ways and then attribute responsibility to the role rather than ourselves, we attempt to shift the blame for concrete actions onto an abstraction: we pretend to be avatars of a specter. However, this is all a manifestation of bad faith and doesn’t align with the genuine perception of a self-conscious and sincere person.

Olavo argues that solipsism is inherently impossible due to the structure of consciousness, as conscious individuals act based on external data. Consciousness intentionally points to both internal and external presence, similar to arguments put forth by Husserl or Heidegger. Olavo contends that consciousness cannot trap us within itself because it is not a closed or hermetic system; a “solipsistic consciousness would not be in a “world”, it would not even act on its own self (coextensive with bodily identity), it would have no awareness of authorial identity and would, in short, be no consciousness at all.”[21]

From this we can see that, in a Husserlian sense, consciousness, for Olavo de Carvalho, is not only immanent but transcendent; it is directed towards both internal and external intentional experiences.[22] On the other hand, consciousness is always “coextensive with the unity and continuity of a human body living in space”; therefore, it is equivalent to the unity of the subject as an authorial unity. [23]But if this is so, speculation about consciousness requires its use and, in a way, a process analogous to anamnesis,[24] so that “there is not the slightest possibility of a philosophy of consciousness as a purely theoretical discipline, separated from the personal effort of self-consciousness.”[25] 

This conclusion precludes the denial of consciousness from Olavo’s philosophical horizon and underscores the imperative for sincere existential engagement when dealing with consciousness according to the principle of authorship. It’s impossible to engage with oneself while pretending to exist outside the realm of tangible human experience;[26]  such pretense would be an act of bad faith.

To underscore the significance of sincerity in his moral philosophy, Olavo introduces the concept of acts without witnesses, highlighting actions known only to oneself and unverifiable by external evidence:

[…] even if no one knows about them, they have a moral significance for me because, even though I am isolated from society, I am a witness to the unity between the person who committed them, the person who reflects on them now and the person who will suffer their consequences tomorrow. The temporal continuity of the solitary conscience shows that it is not isolated from the world, but rather only exists within a real chain of causes and consequences which, once denied, produces the denial of the unity of conscience itself and, therefore, the end of conscience.[27]

Even if a witness lies and denies that the act occurred, he must introduce insincerity and duplicity into his conscience, eroding the truth within himself. The liar is aware of his deceit and, in doing so, incriminates himself by taking responsibility for his actions and acknowledging his guilt. In this sense, guilt, rather than being an inauthentic mode of being, is its structural component. [28]

If we consider this as the cornerstone of the confessional method[29] advocated by Olavo de Carvalho, sincerity and, consequently, the principle of authorship become the foundation of philosophical methodology. Only moral and intellectual honesty, unified within conscience, allow us to deal with the great themes of philosophy.

Epilogue

We have followed a trajectory that, originating from the concept of self-consciousness, has led to two themes that exceed the scope of an essay on the principle of authorship: the confessional method and the epistemology of acts without witnesses—topics that will be addressed in future texts. Through this exploration, we discern that Olavo de Carvalho, akin to Voegelin, develops his philosophy of consciousness as a complex amalgamation of interconnected elements aimed at elucidating human experience as it unfolds. This approach carries a phenomenological hue, reflecting Husserl’s influence on the philosopher’s thinking while drawing him closer to two of his intellectual adversaries, Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger—a curious coupling where he aligns more with the former than the latter.

The notion of self-consciousness is born moral because the complex in which it participates contains the element of sincerity; it is an act of commitment that unites, so to speak, speculative reason and practical reason. When we become self-conscious, we also become responsible; however, these acts presuppose the freedom of our will. Acting freely and sincerely, we take responsibility for our attitudes, assuming the role of authors, with the principle of authorship encompassing the notion of guilt. The foundation of ethics, defined as self-consciousness reflected in the notion of authorship as a principle, means that we are attached to our actions in such a way that we are responsible for them; if virtuous, our merit, if vicious, our guilt.

The Aristotelian spoudaios is produced by the integration of virtues into the self, achievable only if the self is the author of the virtuous acts it consistently performs. As we delve into Aristotelian ethics, we also encounter another philosophical adversary, Immanuel Kant, particularly due to the emphasis on sincerity and transparency of conscious acts, which are central to Kantian ethics. Despite Carvalho’s original speculations, his philosophical discourse is steeped in explicit references to the intellectual heritage of the past, engaging in dialogue—whether in agreement or disagreement—with the great philosophers who preceded him.

Although Carvalho sought to construct an apodictic ethics, following the vein of Ferreira, he did not fully realize this project. Nonetheless, he achieved interesting outcomes: if the principle of authorship—and its accompanying complexity—is valid, then solipsism is refuted; this holds significant epistemological implications. Similarly, if Olavo’s speculations hold true, then relativism is debunked, as the principle of authorship posits at least one universally valid moral norm:

The first universal moral norms are the principle of authorship: you did what you did, not someone else. Occasionally, responsibility can be attributed to someone else, for example, in the case of a minor whose actions are placed on his father’s shoulders. But responsibility is placed on him, not authorship. Responsibility lies with the person who is responsible for the act, not the person who committed it. So much so that the son, for whose actions the father is made accountable, is in turn accountable to the father. Someone takes the car, hits the neighbor’s car, but since he’s a minor, it’s his father who pays for the damage. That person will still have to answer to his father, and he will probably get a scolding or a smack, something like that. So the principle of authorship is universal and, in fact, is the foundation of any and all moral norms. There is no moral norm without the principle of authorship. If no one is the author of anything, no one is responsible for anything, then you can’t charge anyone for anything and therefore there is no moral code, no legal code, no code at all.[30]

If there exists an undeniable moral norm, then relativism—in its strictest form—is false. If other norms stem from this principle, it becomes possible to challenge and ultimately refute or reduce nuanced forms of relativism to mere subjectivity, thereby removing it from ethical discourse. A curiosity of Olavo’s speculation is that, although it appears to follow Heideggerian notions of responsibility, they differ in that Olavo admits the notion of guilt as an element of the complex of consciousness, while Heidegger places it as an inauthentic mode of dasein – an attitude that has led some authors to point out the failure of a morality based on the ontology of Being and Time (according to Olavo’s assessment, they are correct).[31]

What can be gleaned from Olavo de Carvalho’s ethical conception? It can be posited that we are authorially responsible for our attitudes; this is a non-negotiable aspect of our moral responsibility. In order to accept this responsibility, we must be self-aware and accept the variety of elements that accompany this notion. Ultimately, the effort of consciousness to understand itself through the prism of the principle of authorship can be reduced to the following adage: know thyself.

Bibliography:

• De Carvalho, Olavo. A Demolição das Consciências

• De Carvalho, Olavo. A Filosofia e seu Inverso, Vide, 2012.

• De Carvalho, Olavo. A Consciência De Imortalidade, Vide,

• De Carvalho, Olavo. Edmund Husserl Contra O Psicologismo: preleções informais em torno de uma leitura da introdução às Investigações lógicas, Vide,

• Olavo de Carvalho – Esboço de um Sistema de Filosofia

• Olavo de Carvalho – Viver sem Culpas

• Husserl, Edmund. Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology. Springer, 1977.

• Husserl, Edmund. Ideas for a pure phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy. Hackett Publishing Company, 2014

• Voegelin, University of Notre Dame Press, 1978

• Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, 1972.

• Kant, Immanuel. Die Drei Kritiken – Kritik Der Reinen Vernunft. Kritik Der Praktischen Vernunft. Kritik Der Urteilskraft, 2015.

• Kant, Immanuel, and Kant-Gesellschaft L Rheinland-Westfalen. Kant’s Gesammelte Schriften. Band IV. Erste Abtheilun: Werke. Wentworth Press, 2018.

• Guyer, Paul. The Cambridge Companion to Kant. Cambridge University Press, 1992

• Peter Berger – Perspectivas Sociológicas

• Jolivet, Régis. As Doutrinas Existencialistas: de Kierkegaard a Sartre, Livraria Tavares Martins, 1953

• Loparic, Zeljko. Heidegger Réu: um ensaio sobre a periculosidade da filosofia, Papirus,

NOTES:

[1] A apostila data, aparentemente, de 1997.

[1] We can check, for example, Olavo de Carvalho’s participation in the program Diálogos Impertinentes, which was broadcast on TV PUC of São Paulo and hosted by Mário Sérgio Cortella in 1998. Additionally, there is the article  A Demolição das Consciências, published in Diário do Comércio on December 21, 2009.

[2] Handout from 1997.

[3] Edmund Husserl Contra o Psicologismo: Preleções Informais em torno de uma leitura da Introdução às Investigações Lógicas was a course held in the city of Rio de Janeiro between1991 e 1996.

[4] De Carvalho, Edmund Husserl Contra O Psicologismo: Preleções Informais Em Torno de Uma Leitura Da Introdução Às Investigações Lógicas p.198.

[5] Ibidem.

[6] Ibidem.

[7] De Carvalho, Olavo. A Filosofia e seu Inverso p.107

[8] “Conscious processes are also called intentional; but then the word intentionality signifies nothing else than this universal fundamental property of consciousness: to be consciousness of something; as a cogito, to bear within itself its cogitatum.” Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology. p.33

[9] This complex implicitly includes an Aristotelian notion of experience, since this act of commitment must include memory.

[10] De Carvalho, Olavo. A Filosofia e seu Inverso p.184

[11] De Carvalho, Olavo. A Filosofia e seu Inverso p.241

[12] Ibidem p.239

[13] This definition does not appear in the Olavian corpus. I offer it as a synthesis of the description of the elements of self-consciousness and its real referent.

[14] Guyer, The Cambridge Companion to Kant pp.309-310. It’s interesting to note how the “individual morality” preached by Olavo in Husserl Contra o Psicologismo parallels Kant’s conception of autonomy in that both are laws that the subject imposes on himself.  The thesis of the purpose of the person, that the person cannot be seen as an instrument but only as an end in itself, is a classic topoi of Kantian thought and can be found in Kant´s Grundlegung der Metaphysik der Sitten BA 65.

[15] A conexão íntima de consciência e autoria é o elo perdido entre filosofia cognitiva e filosofia moral. Este elo é a base de toda filosofia autêntica, na medida em que a filosofia mesma é uma realidade de tipo moral e cognitivo inseparavelmente: é a teoria e prática da responsabilidade cognitiva.” Esboço de um Sistema de Filosofia p.5

[16] De Carvalho, A Consciência De Imortalidade p.44

[17] Kant, Kritik Der Praktischen Vernunft A135

[18]“The situation can not be the same for bad faith if this, as we have said, is indeed a lie to oneself. To be sure, the one who practices bad faith is hiding a displeasing truth or presenting as truth a pleasing untruth. Bad faith then has in appearance the structure of falsehood. Only what changes everything is the fact that in bad faith it is from myself that Iam hiding the truth. Thus the duality of the deceiver and the deceived does not exist here. Bad faith on the contrary implies in essence the unity of a single consciousness. This does not mean that it can not be conditioned by the Mit-sein like all other phenomena of  human reality, but the Mit-sein can call forth bad faith only by presenting itself  as a situation  which bad faith permits surpassing; bad faith does not come from outside to human reality. One does not undergo his bad faith; one is not infected with it; it is not a state. But consciousness affects itself with bad faith. There must be an original intention and a project of bad faith; this project implies a comprehension of bad faith as such and a pre-reflective apprehension (of) consciousness as affecting itself with bad faith. It follows first that the one to whom the lie is told and the one who lies are one and the same person, which means that I must know in my capacity as deceiver the truth which is hidden from me in my capacity as the one deceived.” Sartre, Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology. p.49

[19] Ibidem pp.49-50

[20] “Mas o fato de que a consciência tenha origem moral não quer dizer que ela seja um mero produto de uma introjeção de papéis sociais inculcados pela educação. A educação apenas dá a oportunidade, o cenário propício, o meio para que a consciência se manifeste, mas ela não pode, por si, produzir consciência. A consciência é uma potencialidade que já está dada no ser biológico do indivíduo humano – que lhe permite certas possibilidades de ação superiores às do animal – e é somente atualizada, não produzida pela educação. A educação não pode produzir consciência, sobretudo, porque esta subentende a identidade e a continuidade biológicas do indivíduo humano, que são dados da natureza e não produtos sociais.” Esboço de um Sistema de Filosofia p.4

[21] Esboço de um Sistema de Filosofia p.4

[22] Husserl, Edmund. Ideas for a pure phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy. §38

[23] É justamente o reconhecimento da unidade do sujeito que reflete com o sujeito que age que desperta em nós o senso da autoconsciência. Mas esse reconhecimento não é só a ocasião temporal desse despertar, e sim também a condição lógica de sua repetição e, portanto, do desenvolvimento da consciência. Por isto mesmo, junto com o solipsismo do cogito, também as tentativas modernas de reduzir a consciência à introjeção de papéis sociais devem ser rechaçadas como absurdas e autocontraditórias.” Esboço de um Sistema de Filosofia p.4

[24] A anamnese voegeliana, enquanto exame de teor biográfico da própria consciência na esperança de tornar o conhecimento latente explícito, é baseada nos seguintes pressupostos, expostos em Anamnese p.107: “(1) que a consciência não é constituí­ da como uma corrente dentro do Eu; (2) 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) 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) que a reflexão sistemática opera com essas experiências, ou, ao menos, em sua operação, parte dessas experiências; que então (5) 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.”

[25] Assim, o filósofo que medita sobre sua própria consciência sem fazer conscientemente disto um esforço de autoconsciência, ou sem admitir que este esforço é parte constitutiva da consciência, termina ou no solipsismo cartesiano ou, o que é pior ainda, em alguma das formas modernas de reducionismo (psicanalítico, antropológico, sociológico, lingüístico etc.) que desembocam na negação da consciência.” Esboço de um Sistema de Filosofia p.5

[26] “Não é possível nem uma filosofia da consciência que isole o sujeito do mundo, como faz Descartes, nem uma que a reduza a um epifenômeno do mundo, como fazem Gadamer et caterva. Mas também me parece irrisória a solução dada por Ortega y Gasset, que explica consciência e mundo como faces do fenômeno “vida” – porque, afinal, Ortega vai definir a vida como história, como lo que hacemos y lo que nos pasa, e esquece que tanto o fazermos como o suceder-nos nada representariam para nós sem a consciência de nossa unidade autoral. Logo, digo eu, não é a “vida” (histórica) que funda a consciência, mas a consciência que, uma vez emersa da pura biologia, nos dá a possibilidade de uma “vida” histórica.” Esboço de um Sistema de Filosofia p.5

[27] Esboço de um Sistema de Filosofia p.5-6

[28] Loparic, Heidegger Réu: Um Ensaio Sobre a Periculosidade Da Filosofia.p.189: “A culpa moral, o arrependimento e a reparação moral não são, segundo Heidegger, modos de ser ônticos da existência autêntica tal como revelada na filosofia. Esses conceitos só se entendem dentro de um contexto teológico baseado na revelação bíblica.”  Isso é diametralmente oposto ao pensamento olaviano, que dá muito peso ao tema da sinceridade, da culpa, do arrependimento e do perdão enquanto potências presentes na estrutura da consciência. Há, de fato, em Heidegger, uma culpabilidade (ver Jolivet, As Doutrinas Existencialistas, p.135, em especial o rodapé), mas esta não é uma categoria de uma consciência que nasce moral, como é a olaviana. É interessante consultar o artigo Viver sem Culpas, de Olavo de Carvalho, publicado no Jornal da Tarde, em 13 de maio de 1999.

[29] Olavo calls the confessional method an exercise of authority in which we examine our conscience while standing before an omniscient observer. It is, therefore, a praxis inspired by St. Augustine’s Confessions and, consequently, by sacramental confession.

[30] Curso Online de Filosofia: Aula 217

[31] Cf. Loparic, Heidegger Réu: Um Ensaio Sobre a Periculosidade Da Filosofia.

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