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Year 2 - N° 81 – November 9, 2008

DÉLCIO MIRANDA DA ROCHA   
emdr@tj.pr.gov.br   
Londrina, Paraná (Brasil)
Translation
FELIPE DARELLA - felipe.darella@gmail.com


The multidisciplinarity of the jurisdictional function

According to Nalini, the judge shall give the sentence with feelings and not to reduce to a mere bureaucrat repeater to others’ opinions, in order to please the majority

“To love, in the true sense of the word, is to be loyal, honest and conscientious; to do to others what we would have them do to us. It is to look around oneself and search for the inner meaning behind all the pain afflicting your fellow creatures, so as to be better able to offer some relief. It is to consider the great human family as your own, because this family will, at some future date, re-encounter itself in the other more advanced worlds together with other Spirits who, like you, are also God's children destined to infinite elevation. Thus you cannot deny to your fellow men and women what God has liberally granted to you, seeing that, on your side, you should be happy that they give you what you need. Therefore always have a word of comfort and hope for all who suffer so that you may be wholly just and loving...” (The Gospel According to Spiritism, Chap. XI, 10, Sanson, 1863.)

 

INTRODUCTION

 

This work intends to start a reflection, a movement of thought, sustained of real feelings, able to prosecute the desire and rebuild our ways, whereas our anticipations of bad understanding and that at least we can have a progressiveness of hope (1) that the judicial process is rather to make the guilty fold on himself, to dislike its lopsidedness with the cult of the harmonious, the beautiful, the good idealized by the human archetypal (2), before convicting it. 

The love for humanity must be the first factor to be recalled and never the factor to be discarded.

1 – A LOOK AT THE JURISDICTIONAL FUNCTION

 

THE human wrote the history of jurisdiction always showing the accused before someone or something (institution) representing the human archetype of justice. AND this happened, since the human primitivism as revenge, domination, adoration, intolerance, supremacy, power, authority – of the group, the tribe, the people, the nation – until materialize in the lines of State (democratic of right), as conceived by current planning.

 

 I don’t want to start wondering and this is not the place to do so, citing philosophers and theories, using a speech full of intellection, which sincerely I don’t possess. 

The venue of my testimony, excuse me for daring, for some will be a provocation, to other mere rhetoric. Above all I want to reflect about the essentiality of things.

If it is true that today the Law, moreover, as the other areas of knowledge, is blatantly interwoven, to allow bridges, as allow today Law and Psychology, Law and Sociology, Law and Economics, Law and Religion, Law and Ethics, Law and Alterity – a field completing the other, allowing for new readability of human behavior and new forms of ordering the relationships of the beings, in it multiple possibilities –, it is also true that to solve its internal problems each area of knowledge seems to not be enough anymore. They are adolescents and need to date; create other bonds outside the family, if you know what I mean. The Law is seeking at this time so intensively the human subjectivism that can no longer be within its dogmas, its positivism, as a day the Church itself had to accept that the Sun did not spin the Earth.

It’s the search by the procedure, by judgment, by feeling (sentence) more perfected, compatible with the needs of our days.

2 – THE BEING AND ITS CONFLICT

I believe that the main characteristic of the human being is the conflict – not coincidentally, the judicial process always portrays a conflict – originated from the lack of understanding that the being has about the world, the things, the phenomena, the others – his fellows – and himself. He doesn’t have the vision of the whole, but what, in his own efforts; he seeks to understand (culture).

But an undeniable phenomenal reality imposes in an overwhelming way so as to challenge the knowledge already acquired. Human behavior as it is valued by Law, only in its externalization, has been insufficient, because it reveals the tip of the iceberg – action. The intimate movement (psychic) of the individual, the feelings, thoughts, the desire, the values that serve as a north for his action – both that the concept of guilt is the core of Criminal Law and the notion of guilt, dolus and responsibility in the civil field are difficult abstractions and is predominantly a subjective and precarious judgment. The human subjectivism is still obscure for Law.

 

The glaring example of this fact is the article 16, Law n. 6368/76, which punished with the deprivation of freedom the user of forbidden psychoactive drugs. The new Law 11.343/2008, in its art. 28 brought the modification and the punishment went on to be a warning for the damages of the drug. And the art. 26 of this new Law foresee treatment. In thirty years it was understood that there is pathology in the usage of psychoactive drugs. We took thirty years to consolidate a conquest of knowledge in legislation. However, to the aforementioned sick ones which commit ordinary crimes such as robbery to obtain resources to acquire the drug, the guilt is the same and the punishment is the deprivation of freedom as well as the detainee which is not a user.

 

Reality is that even though we can superficially evaluate the intention of the agent by his external behavior, the one who analyzes such a conduct has shown to be unable to penetrate the mind, the psyche, the Spirit (being) of who’s being judged and obtain the desired certainty (by the judger – the analyst). He analyzes the external conduct such as the doctor analyzes the symptom of a disease. He prescribes the medicine for the symptoms, without going deeper into the reasons for that. For all felonious modalities the respective punishment – the penicillin of Law –, but he has no clue whether the punishment will conduct the being to be cured (conscientious assimilation of the false movement of the soul, which distances himself from the objective of the creation of the human existence), avoiding the a relapse or simply hides the disease he thinks he killed and that invariably resides in the human spirit and not in his external behavior.
 

But today the conflicts in courts refer to a crowd of depressed, drug addicts, sex addicts, forgers, and privacy invaders, virus developers, of spoliators of private and public property. Of tax contractors, outstanding debtors, tax evaders, compulsive consumers, negligent parents, violent spouses, uncontrolled adolescents, corrupt authorities everywhere.

 

I see in those who incur in a negative behavior being it civil or penal, just an egoistic behavior, exclusively centered in their own interest (conscious or not); e goes over his fellow, to harm, going against his obligation, committing a crime. It’s the expression of the human primitivism in the language of today. Still the human necessity of supremacy, subjugation, domination, feeling superior to others, owning the truth and imposing it, conquest of territory, his field of action, his market, his security line, his comfort, his nest. It’s worth to point, I think it’s important to call attention to the anteriority, the thoughts, the feelings and necessities of the being in conflict and agent of negative conduct by Law,   once such elements determine the will.

 

“It troubles us the question about what the sufficient conditions to impute someone to something are, or acquit him totally or partially. Since Aristotle those are the two fundamental conditions that answer this question. That the subject is aware of the circumstances and consequences of his action and that motivation of his conduct are free”. (Silvane Maria Marchesini – The Foreigner in the Subject and the Faculty to Judge in Contemporary – Second Journey of Law and Psychoanalysis – Intersections from “The Foreigner” by Albert Camus, under coordination of Jacinto Coutinho.) (Lúmen Júris, 2006, p.94.)

 

We see then the inability of the judge in penetrating these meanders essentially subjective to the defendant, who sees himself forced to fall back on other disciplines and reflection. To be said: a new stance, because it’s important to scrutinize his own inner world, what a few dare. The mechanical operator of Law, what juxtaposes Law and the fact, is an incapable judge to attend the subjective human demand that the conflict between the parts brings in its core and the composition given by him in a sentence, maybe it’s of a great technical brilliance, but of a moral poverty of the same extent.

 

3 – THE JUDGE – THE ANALYST AND HIS RESEARCH

 

It’s interesting to notice that the most recent doctrine starts to change at least the terminology of the impartial judge, aggregating some very interesting adjectives, such as pointing the long and winding subjective way to be followed by the judge.

 

Aury Lopes Júnior, in his Procedure of Criminal Law and its Constitutional Conformity, vol.1, 2nd ed., 2008, Lúmen Júris, says:

 

“The judge, aware of his job, cannot give up his human nature because of his role. He needs to rationalize even his fears. He must have the democratic function conferred by the Constitution, never claiming to be a punisher, being responsible for the immunologic system of society, acting stricter than the police; more persecutory than the plaintiff itself. Tolerance, humanity, humility are attributes that cannot be forgotten or overwhelmed by power.” (p.120) (my highlight)

 

I can’t go any further, without reading the human mind first, according to the psychology of Carl Gustav Jung. For this subject we prefer a Spiritist view, which considers the being in its integrity, body and soul (in fact body, perispirit and spirit). Mind as something immaterial.

 

“Jung, to understand the human creature, not having a religious definition, though he descended from a Lutheran pastor and lived in a mystical familiar environment, though a bit troubled, decided to adopt this religion for some time, pro-form. He said religion was fundamental to keep a healthy mind, saying that whatever it was would help the individual keep his balance, getting over the neurotic disorders more easily, differing from what happens to the non-religious or those who disdain religion, for disregarding this psychological stick that would support them.

 

This way, Jung started thinking how the origin of the Universe and the human creature would be, not to be attached to the Bible canons, looking for a reason for so many conflicts.

 

We consider that our psyche (later Spirit), from a Spiritist point of view, has passed through various kingdoms: mineral, plant, animal... We bring a baggage, which was typical of our necessities there. Also, from a materialist point of view, we inherited from this anthropological evolution, since the fetus repeats, in the various periods of its development, the different shapes where the human life has passed. From zygote to birth, the being represents all the primary manifestations of evolution, and as a heritage of this period, three instincts, which are called basic ones, since they preserve life: eating, reproducing and resting.

 

Jung looked for a word to bunch the idea that we are heirs of previous generations. He found it in the traditions of Christianity – archetypal – and also present in the Greek culture, originated from archaico (ancient) and typos (shape, mark), ancient marks.

 

Jung also showed that we are bearers of two unconscious minds:  the individual one, family heritage and the collective one, universal heritage. The latter is inherent in us, and we unconsciously know of things that happened in previous generations. Therefore, Jung did an adaptation of the term archetype, which had already been used by Saint Irenaeus and the ancient Greek, updating it. The archetype became an ancestral heritage, which is in our unconscious mind and takes us to some stances without being realized by us.

 

Jung started expanding this concept of archetype. One of them is capital, where lies all the myths.

 

His psychology is very beautiful, in which is also implied our existence to be product of myths. Are there any cities or countries without myths? The myth of Negrinho do Pastoreio, Boitatá, Saci-Pererê (*) and many others, all fixed on our unconscious mind.

 

Archetype is the symbol which everything comes from. Jung set a primordial archetype, as it was the basic one, that we would call God, Cause, Nature; the terminology is secondary compared to the thing itself.

 

The primordial archetype would originate three other fundamental archetypes, which follow us during our existence. The first is called Selbst, which was translated to English being called as Self, stating that we have a personality we exteriorize, the ego. We are not Ego but, Self. We have an ego, but we are self. The second, anima/animus, the male and female percentage, which harmonizes our inner self. The third, the shadow. The shadow, according to Jung, is the negative side of our personality, the evil, the ignorance, that we look to hide, the secret desires, many times and auto destructive ones.” (“A meeting with Jesus”, Divaldo Franco, ed. Leal, 2007, pp. 295-297.)

 

Well, Aury Lopes Júnior, quoting Lídia Reis de Almeida Prado, in his “The Judge and Emotion – Aspects of Logic in the Judicial Decision”, paraphrasing Jung, says:

 

“In the role of a judge, a rupture between the archetypal poles can occur, where one of them remains conscious and the other one suppressed, stays in the unconscious mind and is projected over the parts in the process. It’s the situation of the judge that believes that crime has nothing to do with him (as if he and all of us weren’t criminals...) and that evil is only present in the defendant, a creature which inhabits a very different world from his. He forgets he has “as a possibility a defendant inside himself” and starts to consider the justice incarnated. This phenomenon is called inflation of persona, which happens when the magistrates are so identified with gowns, and they can’t undress in family or social relations”.

 

“This judge lacks the conscience of his own shadow, the capacity to be at the same time, judged-judger. It’s also, an exercise and abstraction or even altruism, respecting others in their diversity and taking his place and, absolutely fundamental for the exercise of such role, but unfortunately this is not quite what happens”. (op.cit. p.118.)

 

It’s worth it to mention here, for his importance, the judge from the state of Santa Catarina Alexandre Morais da Rosa in his book “The Foreigner, the Exception and the Law”, at the Second Journey of Law and Psychoanalysis – Intersections from “The Foreigner” by Albert Camus, under coordination of Jacinto Coutinho. (Lúmen Júris, 2006, p.59.):

 

“This meeting with a human judge, bearer of a subjectivity which operates inside of an ’Institution’, to find emotions, desires, complexes, it’s a way towards the democratization of the decision-making act...”

 

Understand with Sérgio Alves Gomes (in his wonderful Constitutional Hermeneutics – A Contribution to the Construction of the Democratic State of Law, Ed. Juruá, 2008, p.310) that “the freedom to interpret, understand, build new senses conforming to new horizons,  through the responsible use of reason, will and human feelings in contraposition to the power of previously determining the interpretation and only sense to be obeyed” – as referred to the struggle between power and freedom in the multiple hermeneutic schools – is essential in this path of a new stance.

 

It’s worth it to quote the reference made by him on pp. 314-315 of his book:

 

“For the phenomenological thinking, the idea of justice comes from the world lived. The feeling of justice inhabits the world of life. The feeling of justice has existed before anyone claimed what is fair or unfair. Any normal human person, as rude as his spirit can, is endowed with the feeling of. It’s not fair to kill others, to hurt animals, our brothers, to make children suffer, and so on. The feeling of justice originates law. From this lived justice we have the normative idealizations in the juridical order. [...] The being of justice is inseparable from the human being. All juridical hermeneutics, every act of interpretation and comprehension is subjected to the opening of the human being – which Heidegger would call as Dasein = being and time – the own living of justice. Practicing justice means to interpret and understand. But interpret and understand is a human act towards humans”. (Aquiles Côrtes Guimarães, Phenomenology and Law, p. 57-58.)

 

To sum up: the absence of a more in-depth scrutiny of the judge, of the defendant, of the judge himself, of the time and the current necessities, will be the result of the insufficiency of jurisdiction – I quote Jacinto Coutinho:

 

“We from the Law need to learn from the psychoanalysts that this is no mere (especially for us) and it has produced, among other things, a disastrous effect, and this is serious. There is a distinction, however. The psychoanalysts treat about the chance of people to balance. We don’t! We kill people, because the strength of our pen is; it produces a hole where if you put your head it will be cut off”.

 

Kelsen starts his “What is Justice” quoting the dialogue between Jesus and Pilate to determine the question of what is Truth and what is Justice.

 

As for me, I bring to reflection the following reading:

 

“Jesus was in Jerusalem. It was a sunny day, and he was going to the temple when a group of Pharisees, with other impassionate people, dragged a woman by her hair as she was caught in adultery. The adultery committed by the woman was, then, liable of capital punishment.

 

The woman was discriminated, and being dragged to be taken to the proper place for the act, she would be tied to the pole and be pebbled to death.

 

How barbarians we have been, and sometimes keep being!

 

In many religious doctrines, the woman is still pebbled to death, the thief has his hand cut off, in the arbitrary regimes, the shooting is applied, showing the bestial predominance in people, when it comes to spiritual values.

 

The Pharisees saw Him, peaceful, and were tempted to provoke him. It was an excellent opportunity to set up a trap to surprise Him in any mistake, to make him liable for punishment.

 

They took her to His direction, and threw her at His feet.

 

Mellifluous, an insolent Pharisee came up to Jesus, and asked Him:

 

– So, what do we do? The Law of Moses prescribes that every adulterer woman should be pebbled to death, and she is an adulterer. She was caught by her husband, who is here, and found her cheating on him. He, outraged, asked for justice, but you preach forgiveness, and we, embarrassed, how should we act? Forgive her or punish her?

 

As we can see it was a trap which in our everyday lives we face and not always do we have the conscience for a good answer, disembroiling us from the pusillanimous with an arrogant stance in our personality.

 

But Jesus was untouchable, and came up with the answer.

 

I wonder: what would I answer? So I see the immense, colossal difference between me and Him.

 

– Follow the law! She has to be pebbled. However, but only those who never made a mistake can pebble her, people with an unspotted reputation.

 

It was a shock. They look at themselves. They wanted to make justice, but they were also liable for punishment...

 

The Gospel tells us that everybody left, the older ones before.

 

The woman cried, fearing a cruel punishment. Then, Jesus realized they were alone. He asked her:

 

– Woman, where are your accusers?

 

She looked around. Taken aback, she said:

 

– They are gone!

 

– No one condemned you?

 

– No.

 

– So I won’t do it either. Go on and don’t sin anymore.

 

We have here a beautiful lesson of ethics, compassion and justice, never proposed by anybody. Everybody was prosecuting the adulterer. Where was the man who committed it? The woman only committed an offense because someone pushed her down. No one falls alone; there is always a set up, in which we fall unwarily.

 

When Jesus dismissed the adultery, it was not only the women’s one, but the moral defection of anybody.

 

As no one referred to the adulterer man, Jesus requested the ones who had no faults to pebble her.

 

This wonderful lesson, in an incomparable dialogue of frankness and love, has been object of many controversies. The opponents of the Gospel – and they are many – say that Jesus agreed and cooperated with adultery, acquitting the defendant.

 

He certainly didn’t do so. He just didn’t convict her. She didn’t make the woman more unhappy than she was. He never said she was right.

 

Not to condemn is to not establish punishment; this is not to agree, which is different.

 

Our world is paradoxical.

 

What we should bear in mind, parents and educators, is the necessity to recognize the mistakes of our pupils, helping them, to avoid more mistakes; never condemn them, it doesn’t mean we agree with them. We are against their action, not them.

 

The psychotherapeutic proposal is to free the sick from the sickness and not to kill the sick”. (3)

 

4 - CONCLUSION

 

The legal judgment has its roots in the conquests of ethics and law, in the cultural development of the people and men, allowing the defendant the opportunity of defense while the proper measures are taken to preserve the human values, the citizen ones.

 

This difference between the conduct of civilization in relation to barbarism, of the man conqueror over the shadow dipped in it.

 

The bad conduct of someone who committed an offense is examined, for sure, but this one is still a human being, and thus he requires dignity and mercy, as heinous as the crime can get, in order to not match his rudeness and primitivism.

 

The judgment, though, when insensate, arbitrary and faulty, comes from the inferiority of the opposition, which just sees its own image projected and hates it, hungry for destruction to get rid of a heavy burden, harming others, being coward and cruel.

 

The analysis of a mistake is always a must, when it’s not done with evil intentions, totally apart from the law of love and charity. Analyze to help, correct, educate, is a valuable contribution to the construction of the moral, psychological and spiritual being.

 

This way, it’s inevitable that, every time we come across the events of our everyday life, our own critical sense and discernment precedes the judgment, examining the attitude, the behavior, not taking on, however, the stance of a censor, responsible for the society he thinks he’s protecting. The subtlety is found in the capacity to not convert the appreciation and exam of the situation which requires punishment, but solidarity or auto precaution to avoid the mistake again.

 

Thanks to this behavior the human maturity is manifested, which knows how to understand the difference between right and wrong, the dignifying act in confrontation with the reproachable one, the comparison between healthy and sick...

 

The pharisaism remains in the human relationships with many masks, harming or trying to bother the march of idealist men, of those who are building the new society for a better world in the future.

 

The shadow in projection becomes judgment that the sane conscience and the psychological harmony dilute in perfect identification of the values from Self, triumphing over the whims of ego.

 

Before the judgments directed by servile feelings and systematic judgers consider yourself, then, carefully the lessons by Jesus:

 

“Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.”. (Matthew, chap. VII, v.5.) (4)

 

The argument by Jesus, to my understanding, is philosophical and psychological and cannot be simply rejected by the academic prejudice in relation to religion, to the existence of God. without a doubt, regardless of the personal convictions (and let’s have Alterity), the wisdom and love will be the completeness of the judge and its jurisdiction, dignifying the mistaken who is the defendant, that’s why we put the words by Sanson, registered by Allan Kardec, in the pages of The Gospel According to Spiritism.

 

When I say multidisciplinarity, I refer to a state of spirit emanated by the judge, where his intern individuality is revealed and the hermeneutic autonomy according to such individuality, where the rational covers the Law, the social, the economical, the psychological and philosophical, as well as the feelings (humility, tolerance, patience, comprehension, compassion) bottled in a set, which is cast as a sole truss over the decision-making act. “The most delicate apex of sentiment is love, not the vulgar sense of the word, but that inner sun which condenses and reconciles all aspirations and superhuman revelations at its ardent focal point...” (5)

 

ESSENTIAL NOTES

 

But for those who the words by Jesus, in the humility of a carpenter, are not enough, be for disbelief, or conviction, shall we quote the doctrine, the philosophy, in complementation.

 

– “In the act of sentencing, accept it or not, he suffers an ethic-social tension that comes from his inner self, from what he fells and knows by his own experience and the social values that fall upon his personality. Following, Adam Smith recalls, one of the founders of the Economical Science, for whom the act of judging is very hard, because it presupposes the capacity of putting himself in position of others. The judge must be impartial, but the right of his decision depends, according to Reale, on this psychological capacity. That’s why; he concludes that the secret of justice lies in the fact that the judge knows that neutrality doesn’t mean to break away from the people in litigation, but wearing their boots.” [...]

 

Nalini ponders that “the judge shall give the sentence with feelings and not to reduce to a mere bureaucrat repeater to others’ opinions, in order to please the majority”. (6)
 

– Another philosopher that emphasizes the influence of psychological attributes of the judge in the sentence is Joaquim Dualde. Influenced by Bergson and by the School of Free Law, Dualde understands that the universe of rules and concepts is, in a great part, founded on feelings, forgotten by the traditional logic. That’s why, it’s necessary that the judge uses the sensitivity and intuition as a method to penetrate the reality, correcting the disfigurations that come from the search of knowledge through concepts. The author emphasizes that: [...] 

The feeling has interest for the interpretation when it is: a) A causal element of our whole activity and, therefore, the production of the Law; b) a constructive force obscured in our conscience by the act absorbent of our reason ; c) a stimulating power or depressing knowledge ; d) An energy that often settles the problems of choice; (e) in any case, a function”. (7)

 

Another focus:
 

– “This way, in a few words, the ethical teaching by Socrates lies in the knowledge and happiness. First off, ethics means knowledge, bearing in mind that, when we practice the evil, we believe to be doing something to be happy, and, normally, this reasoning is perverted by purely external impressions and appearances. To be able to judge between good and evil, knowledge is necessary, this one, then, true wisdom and discernment. The “know yourself” is this commandment that inscribes as necessary the inner gnosis for the construction of a solid ethics. In second place, happiness, the search for ethics, according to Socrates, it has nothing to do with the possession of wealth or comfort and good situation among men; it has to do with the similitude of what is valued by the gods, since they look to be the most devotee of the beings. The cultivation of true virtue, consistent in the effective control of passions and conduction of human forces for the realization of knowledge, is what leads man to happiness”. (8)

 

– Friar Betto was to the point in his article “Alterity”, which I transcribe from the site www.adital.com.br:
 

“What is alterity? It’s to be able to capture the other in its, its rights and moreover, in its difference. The less Alterity in personal and social relationships, more conflicts occur. Our tendency is to colonize the other, or having the principle I know and will teach him. He doesn’t know. I know more than he does. All the teaching structure in Brazil, criticized by the professor Paulo Freire, is founded on this conception. The teacher teaches and the student learns. It’s evident we do know some things and those who haven’t been to school know things too, and thanks to this complementation we live in society. As a worker said in a course of popular education: "I know that, as everybody, I don’t know much". In a society such as in Brazil where apartheid is so deep rooted, we have the conception of those who work in the primary sector doesn’t know anything. However, we that have been formed as baroque angels of Bahia and Minas, who have head but no trunk, can’t use our hands. We spend years at school, graduate with Ph. D., but we can’t cook, sew, change an outlet or light switch, identify the problem with a car... and consider ourselves scholars. And what’s worse, we don’t have emotional balance to deal with the relations of alterity. That’s why, now, they replace the I.Q. with the E.Q., the Intellectual Quotient with the Emotional one. Why? Because companies understand that, among their high workers, some grown-up boys, who can’t deal with a conflict, discuss with a coworker, take a criticism from the boss or criticize him. Well, we don’t need to talk about companies. We can check out the relation between couples. So many childish actions... I wish it could be taken into practice the idea of, at least every three months, the department of a company to take an evaluation, within the methodology of criticism and auto criticism. And everybody should take it. As Jesus once did, gathered the group of twelve and asked: "What do people think about me?”And later he said: "And what do you think about me?” Who, in the Occidental culture, better emphasized the radical dignity of each human being, including sacredness, was Jesus. The guy may be paralyzed, blind, stupid, useless, sinner, but he is a live temple of God, is image and similitude of God. This is a heritage of the Hebrew tradition. Every human being, inside the Jewish or Christian perspective, is endowed with the simple fact of being alive. Not only the human being, but the whole Universe. Paul, in Romans, says: “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now ". Before this picture, the challenge for us is like to transform five main institutions that we live: family, school, State (the space of public power, public administration), Church (religious spaces) and work. How to make them communities of citizenship and exercise the democratic alterity? The challenge is to turn these institutions into what they should’ve always been: community. And communities of alterity. Here we have the perspective of generosity. There is only generosity when I perceive the other as the other and his difference from me. So I’m able to relate with him through the only way possible because, without this way, I fall into colonialism, I’ll want to be like him and he like me– the way of love, if we want to use the evangelical expression; the way of respect, if we want to use an ethical expression; the way of knowing their rights, if we want to use a juridical expression; the way of redemption of his dignity as a human being, if we want to use a moral expression. It means, this supposes the shortest way of human, which is dialogue and the capacity to understand the other from your experience of life and inner self”. (*Friar Betto is a writer, author of "Alfabetto – School autobiography", Ática, among other books.)

 

– “One of the characteristics of the human being is the possibility to communicate with himself in his conscience and with other beings. The man is the link of communication between the real objective and the subjective one, axis and arrow of the transformations of the being.”

“Such as the Hegelian idea of the man as a first moment to know himself and, in a second moment, projects himself on the other while focuses the being as something external. At last, he comes back to himself as auto conscience, the being which desalinated and knows himself.” (9)

 

To summarize:
 

– “Every feeling has deep roots in the mental structure, offering the personality a set of acts, attitudes, habits and tendencies which define the mental behavior of the Spirit. Personality, therefore, is a set of such acts that deserve attention. Through it we verify the construction of the stance of the Spirit, which starts to identify its difficulties, realizing the movement of the vibrations processed in itself.”
 

“The feelings are responsible for the definition and transformations of the personality.  Such definitions develop values that are active in the order of feelings, basis of moral understanding of the Spirit.” [...]

“Feelings are energies emanated by thoughts, originated from the acts worked by will and conscience.” (1)

 

Reflection

 

So we come to Aristotle, as in pp. 5-6 of this article, and we conclude that feelings are one of the ingredients that determine not only the action, but the interpretation of the world and the situations which precede it – generating as a natural consequence the responsibility of imputation (motivation and conscience), in the end, the choices of the Being, which suffering the injunctions of his living, his choices, allows him the self-knowledge, the folding upon himself, perceive his shadow, the trap of the ego, the mistaken movement of the soul. And, finally, I wonder what the remedy is (sanction) for the bad feelings (of the defendant and the judge), those who are against the finality of creation, the objective of existence.  

 

Be through Philosophy, Psychology or even the juridical focus as prevailed of the interpretation of the being, I can’t break away from the words by Sanson in epigraph to the start or the loving lessons by Jesus.

He was unmistaken.

 

Notes:

 

(1) Feeling, the force of Spirit, Alzira Bessa França Amui and Luciano Sivieri Varanda (Mediumistic book), Ed. Grupo Espírita Esperança e Caridade, 1st ed. 2004.
 

(2) The Spirits’ Book, Allan Kardec, item 1009, by Paul, the Apostle.


(3) A meeting with Jesus, Divaldo Pereira Franco, compiled by Délcio Carlos Carvalho, ed. Leal, cap. 9, pp.81-88.


(4) Jesus and the Gospel to the light of Profound Psychology, Divaldo Franco, Joanna de Ângelis (mediumistic book), Livraria Espírita Alvorada – Leal, 2nd ed.2007, p.81-87.


(5) The Gospel According to Spiritism, Allan Kardec, chap. XI, item 8.


(6) The Judge and Emotion – Aspects of Logic in the Judicial Decision, 4th ed.2008, Ed. Millennium, pp.26-27.


(7) Op.cit., p.22, quoting Dualde Joaquim. Una revolución en la lógica Del Derecho, Barcelona, Bosch, 1933, pp.214-223.


(8) Course of Philosophy of Law, Eduardo C.B.Bittar, Guilherme Assis de Almeida, Ed. Atlas, 2nd ed.2002, p.67.


(9) Classes of Introduction to Law, Luiz Fernando Coelho, Ed. Manole, 2004, p.2.

 

(*) Brazilian myths with no translation

 

Bibliography:

 

AMUI, Alzira Bessa França, and VARANDA, Luciano Sivieri, Feeling, the force of Spirit, (Mediumistic book), Ed. Grupo Espírita Esperança e Caridade, 1st ed. 2004.

 

BITTAR, Eduardo C.B., and ALMEIDA, Guilherme Assis de, Course of Philosophy of Law, ed. Atlas, 2nd ed., 2002.

 

COELHO, Luiz Fernando, Classes of Introduction to Law, ed. Manole, 2004.

 

COUTINHO, Jacinto Nelson de Miranda, Second Journey of Law and Psychoanalysis – Intersections from “The Foreigner” by Albert Camus, Lúmen Júris, 2006.

 

FRANCO, Divaldo, and CARVALHO, Délcio Carlos, A Meeting with Jesus,  ed. Livraria Espírita Alvorada – Leal, 2007.

 

FRANCO, Divaldo, e ÂNGELIS, Joana de, Jesus and the Gospel to the light of Profound Psychology (mediumistic book), Livraria Espírita Alvorada – Leal, 2nd ed.2007..

 

GOMES, Sérgio Alves, Constitutional Hermeneutics – A Contribution to the Construction of the Democratic State of Law, ed. Juruá, 2008.

 

JÚNIOR, Aury Lopes, Criminal Law and its Constitutional Conformity, vol.1, 2nd ed., 2008, Lúmen Juris.

 

KARDEC, Allan, The Spirits’ Book, item 1009, by Paul, the Apostle.

 

KARDEC, Allan, The Gospel According to Spiritism.

 

PRADO, Lídia Reis de Almeida, The judge and emotion – Aspects of Logic in the Judicial Decision, 4th ed., 2008, ed. Millennium.

 

 

Délcio Miranda da Rocha  is a Court Judge. The text above refers to the lecture delivered at the III Congress of Law at the State University of Londrina – Law and Maintainability Social, Economical, Philosophical, Cultural and Juridical Dimensions in October, 2008.
 


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