A PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM CALLED POWER

ENJOY PHILOSOPHY MEETS WEEKLY EVERY SUNDAY BETWEEN 11.30 AND 14.30 AT EDUARDO VII PARK, HERE:** https://goo.gl/maps/5e3jKFEweXkNvDdK6

ITS THE GARDEN BETWEEN THE “CARLOS LOPES PAVILLION” AND THE “PRAIA NO PARQUE” RESTAURANT AT EDUARDO VII PARK.

THIS IS A GROUP FOR ANYONE INTERESTED IN ENJOYING PHILOSOPHY.

NO PRIOR KNOWLEDGE IS REQUIRED.

ONLY ETERNAL CURIOSITY AND THE PLEASURE OF KNOWLEDGE.

PLS KEEP UPDATED of any changes and updates on our WhatsApp Group:

Enjoy Philosophy Lisboa Group Access Link

We will learn, debate, enjoy and investigate philosophers and diverse themes from the philosophical perspective. Each reunion is structured as a conversation among all attendees about that day s philosopher softly moderated by the organizer. The conversation will kick-off from the very brief suggested reading providing easy access to all attendees both to the philosopher and the conversation.

Let´s be greek and dive today on…

POWER...
perhaps the main new philosophical problem explored during the 20th century. 2 World Wars give more than enough reasons to take a really good look into what Power fundamentally is...

But it was exactly 1900 when the man who fired the opening salvos died:
Friedrich Nietzsche radically expanded the philosophical meaning of power as not merely something exercised by rulers over the ruled. Friedrich looked for forces operating underneath apparently self-evident values, meanings, morals and narratives.
Power appeared thus underneath ordinary things that do not initially look like power.

Don't simply ask whether your ideas, values or institutions are true. Ask what forces produced them, what relations sustain them and what they enable people to do... In simple words: Who Benefits.
There... is where power lives.

And POWER... BIG "P" POWER... IS IN THE CORE OF EVERYTHING. Friedrich´s Will to Power goes much further than the ordinary desire of individuals to dominate others. It describes a fundamental dynamic of life—and of reality itself—as relations and struggles between forces.

His most prominent intellectual heir, Michel Foucault, expands the territory: behaviour is shaped through observation, normalisation and examination without requiring a boss, policeman or king continuously issuing commands.
Power operates not only through governments, laws and police, but through schools, hospitals, prisons, medicine, sexuality, expertise, observation, classification, norms and knowledge.

And something fundamental follows: the more effective power becomes, the less it necessarily looks like power.

Pierre Bourdieu describes how social structures become embodied dispositions—ways of perceiving, judging, desiring and acting that feel natural rather than imposed. Nobody needs to stand outside us giving orders. Social structures are incorporated into the very ways through which we experience the world.

Domination reproduces itself without constant conscious coercion. It inhabits our habits, our words, our traditions...

Power reaches an extraordinary degree of effectiveness when when we no longer need to be forced because we regulate ourselves. We internalize the external imperatives.
That is who I am.

Then Gilles Deleuze, writing years before the internet, suggested that we were moving towards “societies of control”
operating by continuously modifying the environment within which we decide what to do.
The idea sounds prophetic: algorithms do not command us.
They just display. Rank. Recommend. Filter. Organise. Include. Exclude.
They increasingly construct the environment of possibilities within which we exercise our apparent freedom.

Byung-Chul Han claims that contemporary power doesn't even need to tell us what we should do:
Prior classic power structures would make us feel “I MUST”
Contemporary Power mechanisms make us increasingly feel “I CAN”
Even “I WANT”

Power is internalized as personal desire, as choice.

Instead of an employer forcing me to work harder, I want to maximise my productivity.
Instead of somebody commanding me to consume, I may experience consumption as the satisfaction of my own desires.

The exercise of power therefore becomes much more difficult to distinguish from freedom.

But then again... so many ways to operate on us mean also... so many ways we might operate back into the world. Multiple flows of power towards us mean, also, multiple flows of power from us towards the world.

Means that there are so many unfullfiled ways to exercise power so maybe, maybe, that is not really, really... bad news...

We buy. We refuse to buy.
We give attention. We withdraw attention.
We speak. We remain silent.
We accept categories. We challenge them.
We imitate. We refuse to imitate.
We participate. We withdraw.
We persuade. We associate. We coordinate.

Maybe modern Philosophy is just silently inviting us to reconsider the obnoxious surrender of power we seem to have fallen into... to dive into the many many ways power flows all along our universe... as an invitation to act.

Lets think about Power... as good news.

-----

Our philosophy meetup has been, is and will always be totally, genuinely, joyfully and Radically free, in every sense of the words.
That is the soul of our garden.
Independently, if you would like to support our free house for philosophy, you are welcome.
Contributions can be made by MB WAY to:
+351 934 609 701
No contribution at all whatsoever is required, expected or implied in any way to attend. This event is joyfully and radically free.
You are always, always, always more than welcome.
And for those who feel that would like to, and can, support this project — here is the way.
That is all.