If disaster means being separated from the star (the sunset that marks the straying when the relationship with chance above has been severed), it indicates the fall under disastrous necessity . Could the law be disaster , […] the excessiveness of the uncodable law: that to which we are destined without being concerned? Disaster does not look at us, it does not concern us, it is the boundless without a gaze, that which cannot be measured in terms of failure, nor as pure and simple loss.

M. Blanchot, The Writing of Disaster

We easily find in modern languages ​​compound terms that articulate the Latin prefix of negation, opposition or privation (dis-) and the Greco-Latin root referring to the stars (aster/astron in Greek, astrum (in Latin). Despite the ease with which modern languages ​​articulate these compound forms from Greek and Latin, we do not find similar terms in these latter languages ​​in terms of their formation. We do not find anything similar to disaster, disaster, disaster, disaster o unsternModern terms that share their form and meaning: misfortune, calamity, setback, disaster (and the damage resulting from such events). In a literal sense, disaster It would signify a bad star, a contrary or adverse star, but in reference to the luck, placing the supposed cause in the place of the effect. We only find something relatively similar in form and meaning in the Latin word astrosus: born under an ill star (Ernout and Meillet, 2001, p. 52). However, despite not finding equivalent terms in terms of form in the Greco-Latin source, the reference to accidentThis shared characteristic of all modern terms gives us a clue of enormous relevance. Nebrija, for example, towards the end of the 15th century, records in his Spanish-Latin vocabulary, infoelicitas/infortunium , the disaster andnfloelix/infortunatus , the clumsy. The Dictionary of Authorities of the Royal Spanish Academy In 1732, it recorded the Latin words "desastre" (disaster) as the origin of the Spanish word. misfortune y calamitasAnd this reference to accident (to adverse fortuneThis also occurs in French and Italian dictionaries, which, along with Spanish, are the first languages ​​to record the term at the turn of the 15th to the 16th century (disaster y disaster respectively). Misfortune e misfortune, to which etymology leads us, are in Latin the opposites of luckgood fortune, and Fortunatus, the fortunate one or the one favored by fortune (Ibid., p. 249). Thus, in the modern terms indicated above, we have a direct reference to the sphere of luck, destiny and chance (let us recall here the Greek term type) in its most disastrous aspect. Reference, then, to an area that surpasses the possibilities of human foresight and control, producing, in the case at hand, misfortunes, calamities, and destruction of various kinds.

A first philosophical meaning of the term disaster Following the etymological indications above, it would be the one of the bad luck or accidentA blow of fate, a setback, a sudden and unforeseen change, especially unfortunate. Hence the term disaster share many concept notes with the one from catastrophe (The catastrophe Greek). Indeed, this last term refers both to a turn or reversal of events, and, more specifically, to “a turn (strophé: a return, a revolver) that is accompanied by depression, that is, downwards (kata), overthrowing, subduing, putting an end” (Jiménez Heffernan 2012, p. 44). On this first meaning of the term disasterThat of accident In all the breadth we have been indicating, Greco-Roman references are numerous and suggest images relevant to the formation of the Western intellectual cosmos. This is the case, for example, with the image evoked by the concept of virtus (The virtue) in the intellectual universe of ancient Rome: that quality proper to one who attracts the good luck and resists the bad lucknobly handling whatever fortune might bring him (Pocock, 2017, p. 125). However, for a characterization of disaster In the sense we have been defining, the most complete pagan symbol, due to its reference to astral phenomena, is the sidereal torment of the titan Atlas, condemned to carry the celestial vault, as depicted in the famous Atlas FarneseThe sculpture, which, from its restoration in the 16th century until the Warburg project, would acquire enormous importance in the modern era (Didi-Huberman, 2010, pp. 60-65). “Because he supports the entire world, Atlas is able to personify the dominion of men over the universe. Because he remains immobilized under the weight of the celestial vault, he is also able to personify the impotence of men before the determinism of the stars” (Ibid., pp. 65-66). Thus, the torment of Atlas (and specifically its representation in the Atlas Farnese(with its perfectly sculpted and legible astrological sky) is the most complete symbol of disaster as we have understood it up to this point, that is, in reference to that realm that surpasses human control, sometimes producing misfortunes of various kinds (a realm also circumscribed, according to etymology, to the action of the stars).

However, certain philosophical interpretations of the term disaster This gives rise to a second conceptual meaning, not entirely consistent, in some aspects, with the first. In a gesture of philological insight, Pascal Quignard relates, by resorting to Latin, the terms Desiderium y desideratio (The desire in both cases) with the term disasterReminding us that the main astrological term in Latin is not astrumBut coherent (in plural) sidera(a set of moving constellations that preside over the seasons), Quignard emphasizes the opposition between to consideration (to examine with respect and repetition the entire set of sidera) and to desire (to stop seeing, to note the absence of the sidera). Thus, Pascal Quignard tells us, “to wish [to desire] is an incomprehensible verb. It is not seeing. It is searching. It is yearning for absence, waiting, dreaming, anticipating” and concludes: “the desire is the disaster“(Quignard, 2018, p. 120). This affiliation of the concept of disasterand with the Latin etymology of desire (and from the to wish), so suggestive for a philosophical analysis, gives rise to a second conceptual meaning of the term disasterThis second meaning emphasizes obscuring, not seeing (or ceasing to see), and not being present (the realization of absence). It is this second meaning that suggests a relationship of the concept of disaster with the complex phenomenology of disorientationIf, to recall Dilthey's words, "orientation in the celestial vault constituted the starting point of scientific research" (Dilthey, 1978, p. 34), the disaster understood as a break or suspension of time consideration (from the examination of the celestial vault), would seem to suggest the breakdown or suspension of rational knowledge itself and would point to the pérdida all orientation in reality. This meaning of disaster This also seems to be suggested by Maurice Blanchot when he speaks of disaster as a sunset, an loss and a separation with respect to the stars (Blanchot, 2015, p. 8). The primordial experience that evokes the disaster It seems to be for Blanchot, consequently, as well. disorientationIn this way, Blanchot understands the disaster , the the unlimited (apeiron): the ungraspable and unavailable, that which cannot be rationally measured and which relegates absolute passivity to a calculating and active reason, normally governed by presence and representation (Ibid., pp. 10-30).

Perhaps we could suggest a synthesis (as we will have occasion to specify later) and venture that this second meaning attempts to point to the darkening o disorientation in which it leaves us all immersed disaster understood as accident (as an unfortunate blow from something beyond our control). Be that as it may, this second meaning of the term disaster It opens a new conceptual space, relevant also for the analysis of failure in the modern era, if we take into account that this era has in the Sidereus nuncius (1610) of Galileo, one of its epistemological starting points, and, as Ortega said in his famous lectures on the Italian astronomer, the Modern Age was the era of “ultimate faith in science and pure reason” (Ortega, 1976, p. 97). The disorientation and the loss They will be strongly associated with the failure of a modernity so confident in the capabilities of human reason. We only need to add one more point regarding this second meaning we have been analyzing. This second meaning of the concept of disaster It seems selectively aligned, in some essential aspects, with what we might characterize as the paradigmatic image of disaster in the Christian intellectual cosmos: the apocalyptic image of disasterIndeed, the disaster (since there would only be one) appears in the Revelation represented, in all its literalness, as detachment and fall of the astros on earth. The image, illustrated by Lucas Cranach's workshop for Luther's Bible in 1534 (Lanceros, 2018, p. 125), makes visible divine omnipotence, its imposition over astrological determinism, and evokes an experience of darkening y disorientation before a celestial vault that has become illegible (rolled up like a book). Thus, after an eclipse that darkens the sun and stains the moon blood, John (of Patmos) recounts (Rev. 6:13-14): “And the stars of heaven fell to earth, as a fig tree shaken by a mighty wind casts away its green fruit. And the heavens receded as a scroll is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved from its place” (Ibid., p. 127). The image has the power to evoke an unforeseen and uncontrollable reversal of events, a manifestation of God’s omnipotence, but it suggests above all a sense of disaster , the darkening, disorientation e illegibility of the known world (end of history).

Despite the nuances and accents of each of the two conceptions of disaster And beyond the incompatibility between the cyclical and linear views of history that might emerge from them, there seems, nevertheless, to be an underlying harmony or complementarity between the two conceptions described. This is why, for a current conception of disasterIt is effective to suggest a synthesis of the two meanings. After all, it is evident to us that every unforeseen turn of events (especially if it involves misfortune or tragedy) challenges our frameworks of vision; that is to say, that every accident accompanies a certain disorientation and a certain sunsetThis anthropological truth, fundamental from our point of view, would be painfully experienced by the modern era, whose concept of reality It was based on the principles of objectivity and accessibility, as well as on the calculable and predictable nature of the phenomena of said reality. The disasteras the accidentIt would be especially painful and symptomatic of a great failure for an era that believed it had mastered the Fortuna the same, which he believed to be calculable and subject to laws, as shown by the representation of the goddess in the famous coat of arms of Giovanni Rucellai, Rucellai's attempt to answer the question of whether human reason and practical intelligence had any power over the Fortuna (Warburg, 1999, p. 241). Indeed, as Aby Warburg reminds us, the famous coat of arms, from the late 15th century, depicted the goddess standing on a ship and serving as its mast, holding the yardarm with her left hand and the lower end of a billowing sail with her right (Ibid.). The symbol suggested a domestication and rationalization of the goddess's demonic, insecure, and unpredictable character. However, as Blumenberg would point out, despite the optimism that characterized the birth of the modern era, the evidence of this modern concept of reality (rationally accessible and predictable) would have to crumble in the face of certain unexpected and unavoidable experiences which would call it into question. It should come as no surprise that, following Blumenberg's diagnosis, it was a disaster, the one in Lisbon in 1755, which was one of the first real experiences of disillusion and the darkening with respect to said concept of reality“The Lisbon earthquake of 1755 […] was one of the greatest nihilistic events in modern history” (Blumenberg, 2016, p. 26). Before the earthquake, in 1710, Leibniz had published his TheodicyAfter the earthquake, at the end of that decade of the 1750s, Voltaire was already talking so much about Lisbon disaster, as well as the unsustainable optimism of the theodicy program. “A century later, Nietzsche was in a position to announce: ‘God is dead’” (Ibid.).

The well-known account by Blumenberg revealed the two-sided disaster that modernity would suffer: misfortune and decline . This experience and its subsequent elaboration implied a confirmation, akin to certain discoveries of the modern astronomical revolution, of the amoral and inhuman nature of the world (Brague, 2008, p. 274), something that for Nietzsche even entailed the recognition of the absence of order within it: “the general character of the world is, for all eternity, chaos, not in the sense that necessity is lacking, but in the sense that order , articulation, form, beauty, and whatever else we may call all our aesthetic human categories, is lacking” (Nietzsche, 2014, p. 794). If a principle of order was no longer possible in reality , what was at stake, as Blumenberg pointed out, was the very concept of reality upon which the modern era was based: its rational accessibility and its predictable and calculable nature. In the span of just over a century, the Lisbon disaster had contributed substantially to the collapse of this concept of reality , plunging European intellect into obscurity and disorientation . These latter experiences would be described in detail by Nietzsche when speaking of the death of God, a disaster that the philosopher from Röcken would describe using multiple astronomical metaphors: “But how have we done this? How have we been able to drink the whole sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What have we done by detaching the earth from its sun? Where is it moving now? Where are we moving? Away from all suns? […] Are we not wandering as through an infinite nothingness? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Is it not getting colder? Does not night come continually, and more night?” (Nietzsche, 2014, p. 802).

The experience of disasteras the accident , as a disorientation, as an unfortunate blow of the luck , as a sunset (u darkening) of our concept of realityIt was bound to accompany the modern era inevitably. All the more so because that era placed excessive trust in the dominance of calculation and rationality over the realityAll the more so because this confidence led to an increasingly artificial arrangement of the world through technical prostheses threatened, like everything human, by risk and insecurity. Modernity, with its growing predominance of design, calculation, and rationalization, was opposed to disasterThat failure whose external threat he believed at certain times to have neutralized. From the other side of the modern rationalization process, already in the 20th century, some thinkers like Blanchot believed they had discovered in the disaster a first-rate philosophical experience, an experience of the passivityvaluable insofar as it limits calculating and active rationality. The reversal of the meaning of disaster Failure, to the extent that this is possible, requires an assimilation of these philosophical warnings that emerge in contemporary times. If we do not understand the fragility and instability of all human domains and institutions, if we do not recognize the disaster as a last resort within our concept of realityWe will hardly be able to reverse this sense of failure. The path to reversal has been opened, in my opinion, by philosophical anthropology, a modern discipline capable of assimilating the experience of disaster that the modern era brought with it. Thus, Plessner has spoken of human life (and every structure derived from it) as that which oscillates between the pears, the limited, and the apeiron, the unlimited (Plessner, 2018, p. 79). And Blumenberg, for his part, has pointed to the existential risk as a basic anthropological category (Blumenberg, 2011, pp. 411-464). All human domains and institutions are projective and delimit a course of action, which cannot move in the unlimitedBut all human dominion and institutions are precarious and insecure, and are beset by risks ranging from the ruling to the disaster.

Bibliography:

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Index of illustrations:

Fig. 1: Galileo Galilei, Sidereus nuncius , 1610. Public domain: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sidereus_Nuncius_1610.Galileo.jpg

Fig. 2: Gabriel Seah, photograph of the Farnese Atlas sculpture , a Roman copy of the Hellenistic original. Creative Commons license: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Atlas_(Farnese_Globe).jpg