CONTROVERSIAL ASPECTS OF AN INTERPRETATION OF THE LANGUAGE TURN ON THE ONTOLOGY OF LUKÁCS AS A CRITICAL REFERENCE IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION

Abstract

This article is justified by the identification of limits and reductionisms found in the interpretation and description, offered by the critique of linguistic turns, about what they call: “epistemological activity in Physical Education” by a so-called “ontological reaction”. The objective is not only to oppose, but to demonstrate in the discussion presented here the possible misunderstandings in relation to the ontological critique made to the philosopher György Lukács in the field of Physical Education. Therefore, we searched the articles involved in the debate, highlighting our investigation and analysis in relation to the study by Almeida and Vaz (2010), titled: “From the linguistic turn to the ontological turn in the epistemological activity in Physical Education”.

Keywords:
Physical Education; Epistemology; Ontology.

Resumo

O presente artigo se justifica pela identificação de limites e reducionismos encontrados na interpretação e descrição, oferecidas pela crítica dos giros linguísticos, sobre o que chamam de:“atividade epistemológica em Educação Física” por uma denominada “reação ontológica”. O objetivo não é apenas se contrapor, mas demonstrar na discussão ora apresentada os possíveis equívocos em relação à crítica ontológica realizada ao filósofo György Lukács no campo da Educação Física. Para tanto, buscamos os artigos envolvidos no debate, destacando nossa investigação e análise em relação ao estudo de Almeida e Vaz(2010), intitulado: “Do giro linguístico ao giro ontológico na atividade epistemológica em Educação Física”.

Palavras-chave:
Educação Física; Epistemologia; Ontologia.

Resumen

Este artículo se justifica por la identificación de límites y reduccionismos encontrados en la interpretación y descripción ofrecidas por la crítica de los giros lingüísticos sobre lo que denominan: “actividad epistemológica en Educación Física” por una llamada “reacción ontológica”. El objetivo no es solo contraponerse, sino demostrar en la discusión aquí presentada los posibles malentendidos en relación a la crítica ontológica realizada al filósofo György Lukács en el campo de la Educación Física. Para ello, buscamos los artículos involucrados en el debate, destacando nuestra investigación y análisis en relación al estudio de Almeida y Vaz (2010), titulado: “Del giro lingüístico al giro ontológico en la actividad epistemológica en Educación Física”.

Palabras clave:
Educación Física; Epistemología; Ontología.

1 INTRODUCTION

The debate in the field of Physical Education about the epistemological activity presents various aspects and confrontation scenarios. We know that this is the terrain of science: the search for evidence, its proofs and advances on debates. In this study, we start from a critical dialogue and immerse ourselves on the interpretation offered in the article published in the journal Movimento from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), authored by Almeida and Vaz (2010), titled: “Do giro linguístico ao giro ontológico na atividade epistemológica em Educação Física” [From the linguistic turn to the ontological turn in the epistemological activity in Physical Education]. These authors present arguments that oppose the so-called studies “of a certain Marxist tradition”, and perform them under a critique arising from the so-called linguistic turn in the epistemological activity.

Our goal, therefore, is to add to the critique of the critique of the linguistic and/or epistemological turn (MORSCHBACHER, 2015; SACARDO; SILVA, 2017), and to demonstrate the limits of such arguments on the understanding about this problem, given that these descriptions and implications related to the theme of the ontology of the social being do not reflect the scientific, theoretical and philosophical assumptions that underpin the historical-dialectical materialist ontology of György Lukács (1885-1971).

The ontological position which guides our discussion refers to the theoretical-philosophical elaborations of the Hungarian Lukács, who sought to develop a renewal, deepening and development of the theoretical legacy of Karl Marx (1818-1883), Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) and Lenin (1870-1924). Always in constant concern with the restoration of the original meaning of Marxian thought, Lukács demonstrates that there is an authentic Social Theory in Marx’s scientific-theoretical elaborations, by means of his work The ontology of Social Being. In it the Hungarian philosopher points out that: “[…] nobody has occupied himself as extensively as Marx with the ontology of social being” (LUKÁCS, 2012, p. 25).

In this sense, it is important to warn about a materialist ontology that brings with it the mistakes of a certain Marxist tradition biased by problems characteristic of its time, marked by the rigidity of dogmatism, identified in the positivist limits and produced by a part of the theorists present in the organisation of the Second International, as well as years later by numerous theorists who emphasised the supposed idealist and metaphysical tone implicit in the ontological discussion resulting from Stalinism, besides a whole philosophical construction demarcated by the logical-epistemological reflections that have dominated the scene of philosophy since the seventeenth century (FORTES, 2013).

Consequently, we point out a hypothesis that the descriptions and interpretations operated in the article presented by Almeida and Vaz (2010) do not contemplate the real references to the studies of the ontology of the social being developed by Lukács in his intellectual maturity. For this author, ontology is not a theory of knowledge about the social being, but the apprehension of the ontological determinations that permanently constitute it (LUKÁCS, 2012, 2013).

To this end, we have chosen three moments that are configured as background issues for an effective ontological analysis: 1) labour, as the foundation of social being; 2) the relationship between subject and object, for the understanding of reality; and 3) language, as a social complex.

And from an investigative flow, it is possible for us to find the possible mistakes in the theoretical foundations of Almeida and Vaz (2010), when they point out in the debate a contemporary claim of the representation of reality, in which such exposure seems to be associated with a superficial correspondence with the truth, depleted of determinations that can validate it.

For Almeida and Vaz (2010), the problem they call “ontological turns” promotes the following implications for the development of Physical Education: (a) the problem of the linguistic turn to the ontological turn would be associated with just a terminological issue (epistemology and ontology); (b) the ontological theoretical foundation, for these authors, blocks the provisional and dynamic quality inherent to the processes of language, discursiveness and plurality, proper of Physical Education; and (c) the ontological turn would be supported in a theoretical referential that expresses a reinstatement of a monological reason, a unique, inflexible and arbitrary investigative path.

Thus, within the limits of a scientific article, it is only possible for us to briefly summarise our assumptions. But we emphasise that, for a convenient technique of immanent analysis of the text, it is necessary to unveil not only the philosophical contribution, but also seek to identify the origin and social function of this same contribution. It is worth mentioning that Lukács (2020) warns us in his book The destruction of reason - a controversial work from which the authors Almeida and Vaz (2010) based themselves to write their critique of ontology - that “there is no innocent philosophy”.

2 THE USE OF A CONTROVERSIAL REFERENCE FOR THE DEBATE

A crucial aspect that we need to point out from the beginning of this dialogue is the references used by the authors Almeida and Vaz (2010) to address a critique of Lukács’ ontology. They rely on secondary sources (ORTIGARA, 2002; SÁNCHEZ GAMBOA, 2007; AVILA, 2008) and on works by Lukács (1976, 1978) that did not yet have a mature theoretical development by the author regarding the ontology of social being and its grounding in Marx’s social theory.

We believe that the use of the work The destruction of reason - published in 1954, but with its writing beginning during the Second World War (1939-1945) - as a reference to elaborate a description, interpretation and analysis of the so-called “ontological reaction” was a mistake, by emptying the real meaning that Lukács (2012, 2013) developed in the book The ontology of social being in the late 1960s and originally published only in 1984.¹

The destruction of reason presents two fronts to his critique of irrationalism. The first one is based on the general ideological sphere - not restricted to criticism against Nazism and Fascism - and the second one is based on the philosophy complex - it continues the detailed discussion with emphasis on Hegel and Kant -, which, in our evaluation, is not the most adequate work to critically evaluate the linguistic turns and the ontological turns in the field of Physical Education in relation to the ontology of the social being. Despite this, it is still able to demonstrate the weaknesses, inaccuracies and failures of the foundations contained in the so-called “postmodern movement”, with which the authors Almeida and Vaz (2010) recognise themselves.

For the sake of fidelity to the historical-dialectical materialist method,

[…] the real starting point is reality itself, that its abstractive decomposition leads to mirror categories, whose synthetic construction represents a way to know reality, but not the way of reality itself, although it is obvious that the categories and connections that arise in this process have - as ideal reproductions of reality - ontological and not logical character (LUKÁCS, 2012, p. 243).

In accordance with what Lukács (2012) indicates, our starting point for arriving at the truth starts from the following critique by Almeida and Vaz (2010):

[…] it is difficult to accept, as Lukács (1976) announced and some among us end up reproducing, that those perspectives that give up reaching objectivity in terms of a correspondence with the real or that do not operate with a correspondentist concept of truth are irrationalists (ALMEIDA; VAZ, 2010, p. 25).

Interpreting ontology as a critique of what is supposed to be an anti-realism arising from a linguistic turn places the critique in a simplistic condition of dualistic opposition. It is necessary to consider that the so-called ontological reaction refers to being and not to the antinomies: irrational and rational, or idealism and realism. The social fabric of reality is supported by a web of determinations that is configured in objectivities, which carry within themselves the contradictory unity of what is: appearance and essence.

In this sense, there would not simply be a homogeneous reflection of reality to be known, but a social totality imbued with complexes of complexes,² in which the human consciousness has the possibility of elaborating concepts and syntheses that may, or may not, have efficiency for understanding and explaining the contradictions of reality. Thus, the causalities given in objective reality and their legalities in the various degrees of being present diverse properties that enable concepts and images that will be fundamental for the objectivations of fact - the social praxis. Therefore, a critique of irrationalism is far from being considered as something on the gnoseological level, on the terrain of what can or cannot be known by subjective finitude, but it is an irrationalism configured by the denial of existence itself, that is, the denial of the ontological.

In The destruction of reason, Lukács (2020) brought, from Hegel, advances on the relationship between theory and practice, which will only have its argumentative apex years later in The ontology of social being (LUKÁCS, 2012, 2013), where he found in the theoretical legacy left by Marx, Engels and Lenin substance for the development of a vigorous theory of social being, with full objective conditions to demonstrate the mode of material production of social life. The Hungarian philosopher also reaffirms that the possibility of evolution or barbarism is in the hands of the social being.

Therefore, we emphasise that the work The destruction of reason, to which Almeida and Vaz (2010) had access and used as a basis for writing that article, even though this work is a mature material in confronting irrationalism and confronting social issues, is still in an embryonic stage when related to the work The ontology of social being, which shows us that its use for an adequate ontological critique is an anachronism today.

3 LABOUR AS THE FOUNDATION OF THE SOCIAL BEING

Beyond the work The destruction of reason, Almeida and Vaz (2010) sought to understand Lukács’ ontology through third parties. Thus, we deem it necessary to demonstrate, even within the limits of this study, a very brief synthesis of the foundations used by the authors, confronting them in light of the categories of analysis expressed by Lukács (2012, 2013) in The ontology of social being.

Labour is a founding category of the social being and this is complemented in the sense that it also founds all its determinations. This means that the human being must be understood within the historical flow of its development, not linear and with ontological leaps, considering the assumption that life is nothing more than the result of the evolution of matter itself, that is, a superior form of the result of the organisation of matter.

The highlight of the labour category is due to the mediation between human action in nature for the creation of the new. This mediation is crucial for satisfying the needs of maintenance and reproduction of life, as well as other social needs that arise according to the process of creating new products through labour. In this process, the human being, when faced with a natural barrier, needs first to respond with a minimal plan in order to overcome it. This planning provoked by the objective world brings about the formation of a consciousness that confronts, questions and modifies the external world, thus seeking to guarantee the survival and reproduction of the social being, which distinguishes itself from other animals.

If the human being did not present the images of the world in their consciousness, they would be incapable of reflecting and deciding on natural laws, at their most diverse levels, for the adequate fulfilment of their needs and objectivations. That said, it is in praxis that humanity becomes increasingly human. In reference to Marx, Lukács (2013, p. 64) highlights that “[…] the reality of thought, the no longer epiphenomenal character of consciousness can only be found and demonstrated in the praxis”.

3.1 THE RELATION BETWEEN SUBJECT AND OBJECT IN LUKÁCS’ ONTOLOGY

The “labour process” presents us with a fundamental relationship that will characterise the constitution of the social world and which we will deal with through the categories: teleology and causality. It is necessary to recognise that without the consciousness of the objective world the subject would not be able to produce humanity in being.

The human being in their social dimension develops a consciousness during the act of the labour process. This action is guided by an intentionality, an active and productive factor of this new being, which in all its dynamics - planning, execution and product - will transform the causalities given by nature into socially posed causalities. In this way, the consciousness cannot fail to be understood as social, it does not emerge finished, it is constituted in an evolutionary process together with the category of labour and other complexes arising from this process, mediated by historically established social relations. All this movement configures the social totality, in which the social being is a complex of complexes, in the same way that labour also is (LUKÁCS, 2013).

But what becomes evident here is the act of labour making possible two distinct ontological moments: the being itself; and the reflection of the being in consciousness. It is through these categories that the labour process and social reproduction take place within a totality. As there is no split, fragmentary, identitary relationship between social being and nature, we have in fact the ontological possibility of the social being to be able to elaborate concepts from the reflection of the objective world for the success of the desired purposes and demanded by their needs, in which, for an adequate realisation of labour, the social being goes increasingly moving away from the limits of the causalities given by nature (LUKÁCS, 2013).

The image of objective reality, reflected in the consciousness of humans, is not identical to the real. The elaboration that occurs from this reflection enables the subject to mirror, conceptualise and transform this idea of reality without necessarily being in front of it, and without ever reproducing it in its entirety. What does not occur when an animal dependent on epiphenomenal consciousness is confronted with natural causalities.

Because there is this necessary distance between the real and thought, it is necessary that elaborations occur in the consciousness, so that this reflection avoids errors of adequacy. In view of this, this movement brings the development of language and the concept. It is not up to us here to relate the term representation, however, Lukács warns us that “[…] after being formed, the conceptual world reacts on intuition and representation” (LUKÁCS, 2013, p. 65).

What we have from this process are objectivities of the consciousness that need to acquire external forms. For this reason, a teleology needs to be socially placed in the world, since, removed from consciousness, it will only be, as Aristotle (1973) taught us, a potency, a will, a desire. The product of this consciousness, its objectification, is something distinct from the subject, it is something in nature.

In this sense, Almeida and Vaz’s (2010) mention of the determinations produced in the relation between subject and object needs to be clarified insofar as their assertions do not dialogue in any way with the ontological categories of social being developed by Lukács.

The dialectical relation between teleology and causality enables us to demarcate dualities that are fundamental to the understanding of reality. The problems of subject-object, appearance-essence, and objectivity-subjectivity rise as fundamental categories for doing science based on materialist ontological critique.

3.2 LANGUAGE AS A SOCIAL COMPLEX

Given the above, it is possible to note that the language arises with the labour, simultaneously, it is a necessary mediation for the reproduction of the social being. However, it is important to ratify the category of labour as having priority in this process and, thus, language ends up being founded by labour, by human needs (ENGELS, 2020). Its function is not only to assist the labour, but to enable the collaboration between individuals beyond the social division of labour.

The language category contributes to the formation of thought, of the conceptual type, in the consciousness of humans. The production of this higher psychological function is fundamental for the understanding of the necessary distance in the relation of the subject with the object. It is through language that the reflection of the material world to be apprehended is concretised in consciousness. It allows human beings to title, classify and name, precisely because of the cognitive ability to enable the realisation of the processes of analysis and synthesis that are linked in the relationship between theory and praxis (LUKÁCS, 2013).

Language enables the social being to reflect on the real, in which, according to Lukács (2013), when we aim for something new, language will place itself as a “secondary” teleological setting, i.e., a teleological setting that acts in other consciousnesses and gains importance in social relations. However, this broad potential that language confers can never exclude labour as its founding element, showing us that the social being has in language a relative autonomy, never entirely detached from the labour process that enables social existence and its relations.

The categorical complexes that arise within social reproduction constitute and move autonomously. By this we mean that not everything is labour, but since these complexes have their origin in the need to ensure the survival of the species - acting as mediators of the labour process - they are complexified with the purpose of serving to solve the problems to be faced.

4 ANALYSES AND CONSIDERATIONS ON THE REFERRED IMPLICATIONS OF ONTOLOGY FOR EPISTEMOLOGICAL ACTIVITY

Having offered such assumptions and recognised the fundamental categories for an immanent analysis of the text in question, it is now possible for us to point out contradictions in what Almeida and Vaz (2010) call the implications of epistemological activity in the ontological inflexion in Physical Education.

Let us consider such interpretations:

We have, initially, a terminological question, because what is posed, in the exposed framework, is not only the return of ontology, but the need for ontological reflection as precedent to the epistemological […]. Only in this way would the epistemic fallacy and its consequences be avoided. Under these conditions, instead of epistemological activity […], we should perhaps talk about ontological activity of physical education (ALMEIDA; VAZ, 2010, p. 20).

This debate should not be located in a game of discourses, because it is precisely in the artifice of this epistemic logic that postmodernity is guided to react to modernity. In this sense, ontology does not refer to a method, does not incorporate an inherent activity, but, above all, seeks to ground how human praxis develops and complexifies itself, fundamentally apprehending the ontological determinations that effectively constitute the social being. Science, education, politics, law and art are complexes which ascend from the needs of reproduction of the social being. Therefore, they assume in certain historical moments, i.e., in view of the level of social development given at each time, the determinations of the mode of production and organisation of life in its expressive particularities (LUKÁCS, 2012, 2013).

Consequently, there is no terminological question here, no cognitive a priori of categories displaced from materiality. The ontological question is not invested in predefined expressions or concepts and ideal elaborations. For Marx (2008), the categories of the social being are determinations of existence, forms of being, in this way, from Marxian theory in his ontology, Lukács (2012, 2013) is able to see that categories are properties or attributes inherent to the individual himself. Therefore, the categories cannot be reduced to conceptual means arising from the researcher’s interpretation to order reality, but are given by reality itself and in consciousness.

Because it comes from reality, it does not mean that the categories are eternal, because the movement of reality does not allow us to postulate the stagnation of the possibilities of being, that is, to be is to come to be. As already exposed, the social being is distinguished by its character of providing the new, of resulting in values for human reproduction.

The contradictory unity between teleology and the circumstances placed in the world - fundamentally human and social -, as well as the properties and legalities of nature and of the human reactions to the teleological settings, prevents Almeida and Vaz (2010) from considering the possibility of talking about an ontology of Physical Education.

A proposal of this type would undermine, according to our description, the recent advances achieved by the field in its epistemological discussion, to the extent that the notion of an activity preserves what the notion of ontology, as defended by the authors we describe, seems to dispense, i.e., our being, the always provisional and procedural character, in the words of Fensterseifer (2006), which accompanies what is alive, which is repositioned whenever new discursivities are placed within the scope of our area. To the extent that we reach the true way the world is in itself, its ontology, what is the meaning of this being? (ALMEIDA; VAZ, 2010, p. 20).

From the reflection and discussion achieved within a materialist ontology, it is not possible to consider that the historical processuality of our life is altered by discursivities, but by the legality placed in the real. From this perspective, the categories can cease to be.

The emergence of the new variably launches necessary causalities of uninterrupted knowledge. The value of the result of its purposes expresses the meaning of the relationship with what is set in reality. Lukács reminds us that:

[…] from the intrinsic tendency of the investigation of the media to become autonomous, during the preparation and execution of the labour process, scientifically oriented thinking is developed and which later originate the different natural sciences (LUKÁCS, 2013, p. 60).

We have signalled in this study, very briefly, this issue in which the ways of knowing arise from a relation of naturally existing entities, and socially placed, so it is not just about terms, but about distinct ways of existing.

Epistemology as a theory of knowledge is not annulled when we anticipate an ontology, on the contrary, the forms of how to know have served for the great social development of humanity. Nevertheless, the investments in knowledge and the production of knowledge may be dislocated from the material production of social life, to the extent that, by not recognising that science is a complex that comes from human praxis - from labour -, its implementation remains within the limits of utilitarianism, common sense or explicitly speculation (LUKÁCS, 2013).

To consider an ontological precedence is to recognise the being, to consider its origin, how it develops, consolidates and puts itself in crisis, in contradictions in the historical process itself which does not end, but which does not have a teleology prepared by a metaphysical or theological subject, defined for a last purpose. The social totality that is being constituted is the result of the relationship of the human being with nature, and mediation by labour gives a world produced by humanity, in which social materiality not only reflects the tangible result of human objectivations, but presents itself with what Lukács (2013) calls secondary teleological settings, referring to the intentionalities among humans, such as ideologies.

In view of this, social relations may be manifested through forms of reproduction that result in a masking of reality, revealing an appearance that does not necessarily represent the essence of the phenomena. But this does not mean that appearances are not part of the phenomenon, because, contrary to the understanding of Almeida and Vaz (2010), who attribute to ontological critique a duality between appearance and essence, we understand that this aspect of reality demands a necessary dialectical approach. It is for this discussion that the authors link issues of Physical Education to the ontological critique.

The adoption of this new equation would imply the resumption of questions that, for some time now, we have avoided in our epistemological activity. For example, which physical education would be 'truer', 'more scientific' or, then, which proposal could solve once and for all our identity crisis? Which of the pedagogical proposals is more critical or closer to the real human interests? (ALMEIDA; VAZ, 2010, p. 21).

But the issues they bring would not be addressed by ontology in the way it is presented in their text.

The parameter to decide on these questions, of course, would be the distance or the approximation of the real, because only under these conditions knowledge would not be limited ‘[…] to express appearances or determine formulations that cover only the immediate of the object, which, in our view, can result in a distorted view of the real or only incomplete, therefore, removing any prospect of generalisation’ (AVILA; ORTIGARA, 2007, p. 304)³ (ALMEIDA; VAZ, 2010, p. 21).

Almeida and Vaz (2010) also resort to a quote in a critical ontological tone from a pragmatic philosopher, establishing metaphysical relations about Lukács’ ontology.

With the help of the philosopher Rorty (1999, 2006), we suggest seeing the realist eagerness present in the ontological inflexion as the Enlightenment version of the religious urge to bow down before a non-human power (thus, as an inheritance of monotheism). After all, for that philosopher, the expression ‘reality as it is in itself’ or, as Lukács (1978) put it, the reality of the real, is just another of the subservient names of god, an updating of the priests’ claim that they are ‘closer’ to the eye of god than secularism (ALMEIDA; VAZ, 2010, p. 22).

For us, such a relationship seems to affirm a clear need to be based on some kind of ontological mediation, so that the scope of science as a human production and the result of the need to ensure the reproduction of the species itself cannot be recognised when reflected in the social totality given by a complex of complexes arising from human purposes.

Almeida and Vaz insist on the critique and say:

Believing that ontology has this power is the same as believing in the existence of something that is the reality behind appearances, the only true description of what is happening, the final secret. Thus, appealing to ontology would not provide this metaphysical comfort, that is, the possibility of universal commensurability in a final vocabulary? (ALMEIDA; VAZ, 2010, p. 22).

The authors, by not focusing immanently on the work The ontology of social being, by Lukács (2012, 2013), setting themselves within the limits of reading The destruction of reason (LUKÁCS, 2020), confer the monotheistic title on a hypothesis that is constituted of a deep and historical analysis of all Western philosophy, insofar as the development of science is disposed to verify the character of existence of the categories of the social being. Thus, if there were no distinction between appearance and essence, what justifications would we have for the resources of science?

Thus, there is no room for a final vocabulary that imposes a metaphysical or theological determination. The ontological question does not refer to a mere opposition against epistemological imposition or the hegemonic burden of the gnoseological debate, nor does it refer to a given being, finished in its irreducibility, since the being itself is in development. The ontological question in Lukács (2012, 2013) is not something before history, but it is specific to the forms of existence, in the reality we live, in the history that men make when confronting present circumstances.

According to Fortes,

[…] they confused the question of being with the question of how being comes about, focusing the starting point of reflection on the subject, a fact which makes the question of the autonomy and independence of being in relation to the consciousness of men totally irrelevant, completely ignoring the problem of the subject’s way of knowing and behaving. These aspects are for Lukács the most obvious signs of the philosophical crisis of his time, a reflection of the social crisis posed by contemporary forms of capital. The abandonment of ontological questions - at least those questions identified by him as authentically ontological -, as well as the predominance of logical-epistemological problems indicate in general lines the loss of the project of human self-construction, the complete rejection of the question of being and the destiny of man (FORTES, 2013, p. 14).

Since it is not an epistemological issue, it is not appropriate to give what they call ontological reaction in Physical Education a foundation for its practice. But Almeida and Vaz insist on these conclusions that

[…] the intended ontological reaction in physical education can be read as an expression of an inexorable search for Criteria, Foundations for our practices, a Vocabulary that frees us from any doubt, uncertainty and that, instead, points in the right direction (in the sense of True) amid so many paths to choose (ALMEIDA; VAZ, 2010, p. 23).

As discussed earlier, praxis is the only appropriate criterion for evaluating the attainment of human purposes. Language is a medium that makes the material moment possible. When needs are constituted as historical determinations, the answers are placed according to how human beings organise and reproduce themselves through the specific historical form. In capitalism, the choices between various possibilities are limited by the conditions posed by the relations of production. Access to the means for the efficacy of human objectivations is denied by the very form of reproduction of this totality, in this sense, no vocabulary is placed ahead of what grounds the social being.

This allows us to state that, if an ontology of language is possible, as Almeida and Vaz (2010, p. 25) indicate in this quote: “[…] being that can be understood is language”, for us, this “ontology” is no more than a projection in the object of the formal configurations discovered in the analysis of the subjective intellect. Therefore, the truths postulated in the set of symbolic systems or forms of communication would be justified in a general semiology that would justify the “world of life” as displaced and autonomous from the material world. However, as our study has shown, grounded in labour as the protoform of the social being, the implications raised by the authors in question are loaded with misunderstandings about Lukács’ ontological categories. These misunderstandings are not naive, but are reflected in the mirror of late bourgeois sociability and are not direct and immediate results, but are characteristic of the spirit of the times of late capitalism, considered by us as a postmodern ideology (NETTO, 2010).

The ontological status that demonstrates the social being indicates the totality in which we are inserted and that its infinitude shows the primordial need of science, but by an ontological critique capable of recognising that the form of being that we are today underlies the way we organise and reproduce ourselves as a bourgeois society in a capitalism in manipulative and financial expression.

Regarding the issues of Physical Education reported by Almeida and Vaz, and derived from an ontological equation, we understand that pedagogical proposals do not need to be avoided, as they claim, not because they are or are not close to the real, given their interpretations and the parameters interpreted, however, they should be better formulated based on a real ontological critique, i.e., of how the categories involved may come to be others, as of what is identity crisis or singular indetermination.

We can indicate, taking into consideration an ontological postulation, that the problem of its legitimacy and specificity, for example, will not find clarifications around Physical Education itself, but in its determinations as a complex originated in the context of the needs of capitalist society (MELLO, 2014).

This historical impossibility will contradict an entire construction triggered by ontological negation, in which the gnoseological burden that the authors criticised here carry is prized.

• 1
  The publication of the complete work in Portuguese in Brazil was only made public by the publisher Boitempo in 2012 for the first part and in 2013 for the second part.
• 2
  A posteriori, when we deal with labour as the founding category of the social being, it will be explained more clearly that social complexes have relative autonomy in relation to labour.
• 3
  ÁVILA, Astrid Baecker; ORTIGARA, Vidalcir. Conhecimento, sociedade e educação de professores: crítica consistente ou conservadorismo político? Perspectiva, v. 25, n. 2, 289-313, Jul./Dec. 2007.
• FUNDING
  This work was not supported by any funding agency.

RESEARCH ETHICS

The research followed the protocols in force in Resolutions 466/12 and 510/2016 of Brazil's National Health Council.

RESPONSABILIDADE EDITORIAL

Alex Branco Fraga*, Elisandro Schultz Wittizorecki*, Mauro Myskiw*, Raquel da Silveira*

*Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Escola de Educação Física, Fisioterapia e Dança, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil.

REFERÊNCIAS

• ALMEIDA, Felipe Quintão; VAZ, Alexandre Fernandez. Do giro linguístico ao giro ontológico na atividade epistemológica em Educação Física. Movimento, v. 16, n. 3, p. 11-29, 2010. Disponível em: https://seer.ufrgs.br/Movimento/article/view/12485 Acesso em: 06 set. 2021.
  » https://seer.ufrgs.br/Movimento/article/view/12485
• ARISTÓTELES. Poética São Paulo: Abril Cultural, 1973.
• AVILA, Astrid Baecker. A pós-graduação em educação física e as tendências na produção de conhecimento: o debate entre realismo e antirrealismo. 2008. 221 f. Tese (Doutorado em Educação) - Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, 2008.
• ENGELS, Friedrich. Dialética da natureza São Paulo: Boitempo, 2020.
• FORTES, Ronaldo Vielmi. As novas vias da ontologia em György Lukács: as bases ontológicas do conhecimento. Chisinau:Novas Edições Acadêmicas, 2013.
• LUKÁCS, György. A autocrítica do marxismo. Temas de Ciências Humanas, n. 9, p. 19-25, 1978.
• LUKÁCS, György. A destruição da razão São Paulo: Instituto Lukács, 2020.
• LUKÁCS, György. El Assalto a la razón: la trayectoria del irracionalismo desde Schelling hasta Hitler. Barcelona: Grijalbo, 1976.
• LUKÁCS, György. Para uma ontologia do ser social I São Paulo: Boitempo, 2012.
• LUKÁCS, György. Para uma ontologia do ser social II São Paulo: Boitempo, 2013.
• MARX, Karl. Contribuições à crítica da economia política 2. ed. São Paulo: Expressão Popular, 2008.
• MELLO, Rosângela Aparecida. A necessidade histórica da Educação Física na escola: os impasses atuais. São Paulo: Instituto Lukács, 2014.
• MORSCHBACHER, Márcia. O debate epistemológico na área da Educação Física: crítica aos “giros epistemológicos” a partir da ontologia e da gnosiologia. In: EPISTED, 5 - SEMINÁRIO DE EPISTEMOLOGIA E TEORIAS DA EDUCAÇÃO, 2015, Campinas. Anais eletrônico Campinas: UFBA/LEPEL; Unicamp, 2015. p. 1-19. Disponível em: https://www.fe.unicamp.br/eventos/episted/anais/pdf/750-2891-1-pb.pdf Acesso em: 6 set. 2021.
  » https://www.fe.unicamp.br/eventos/episted/anais/pdf/750-2891-1-pb.pdf
• NETTO, José Paulo. Posfácio. In: COUTINHO, Carlos Nelson. O estruturalismo e a miséria da razão 2. ed. São Paulo: Expressão Popular, 2010.
• ORTIGARA, Vidalcir. Ausência sentida nos estudos em educação física: a determinação ontológica do ser social. 2002. 219 f. Tese (Doutorado em Educação) - Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, 2002.
• SACARDO, Michele; SILVA, Régis Henrique dos Reis. A crítica crítica dos giros epistemológicos e/ou linguísticos no debate político-epistemológico da área da Educação Física. Germinal: Marxismo e Educação em Debate, v. 9, n. 2, p. 26-39, 2017. Disponível em: https://periodicos.ufba.br/index.php/revistagerminal/article/view/15883 Acesso em: 6 set. 2021.
  » https://periodicos.ufba.br/index.php/revistagerminal/article/view/15883
• SÁNCHEZ GAMBOA, Sílvio. Reações ao giro linguístico: o resgate da ontologia ou do real, independente da consciência e da linguagem. In: CONGRESSO BRASILEIRO DE CIÊNCIAS DO ESPORTE, 15., 2007, Recife. Anais.. Recife: CBCE, 2007.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  11 Nov 2022
• Date of issue
  2022

History

• Received
  13 Apr 2022
• Accepted
  22 Apr 2022