PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLES OF SYNTROPIC AGRICULTURE FOR THE UNDERSTANDING OF LIFE

Abstract

Planet Earth is going through several crises, with climate crisis currently considered the most serious, due to several possible effects, such as large-scale human migrations, floods, desertification, among others. Researchers are trying to understand the reality that surrounds them and to point out answers. Philosophy is also called upon to make the same effort, offering a more critical, complex and comprehensive view, in dialogue with other areas of knowledge. In this text, we present the philosophical principles of Syntropic Agriculture developed by farmer and researcher Ernst Götsch. Based on the ancestral practices of the Brazilian Amerindian peoples and other nationalities, Götsch systematized a forestry agriculture that has “internal pleasure” or “unconditional love” as the driving force that drives the formation of forests as the mechanism for producing life, which also allows it to form high-performance biodiverse production systems. In dialogue with Götsch's thought, concepts from Immanuel Kant, Benedictus de Spinoza, Edgar Morin, Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela and Fritjof Capra are developed. This philosophical study allows us to understand what life means as a mechanism of existence of the biosphere of planet Earth, which, due to its capacity for self-regulation, re-updates the concept of Gaia.