Body, Soul and Spirit in Sermons by Antônio Vieira: a psychology and a philosophical anthropology

• Grant number: 11/01338-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: June 01, 2011
• End date: February 11, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Fundamentals and Assessments in Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Marina Massimi
• Grantee: Sandro Rodrigues Gontijo
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (FFCLRP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Ribeirão Preto , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 13/19967-9 - Convergence and divergence between philosophical psychology conimbricence and 'The sermons' of the Jesuit Antonio Vieira: an analysis of psychological knowledge, BE.EP.DR

Abstract

Mainly, occidental culture conceived human being's interiority in many ways, accordingly with the cultural climate and the historical period. In the colonial period, the religious oratory offers a rich matrix to the psychological knowledge's study linked at that time. The culture of the 17th century, named as baroque is a persuasion culture, in which religious speech is the privileged means of mass communication. Based on the History of Psychological Ideas, I have as principal aim to achieve a historical reconstruction of the psychological knowledge suppressed in the sermons of the Jesuit Antônio Vieira (1608-1697), as well as to introduce the philosophical anthropology that is behind them. I intend to describe and analyze the concepts and relations between the issues of body, psyche and spirit (intellect and will). We will use as primary source the sermons published by the Jesuit. Whereof the theoretical elements withdrawn whether the Historiography, the Cultural History, or the History of Psychology, we will seek to identify the context of the production and the appropriations done by the subjects of the evidenced ideas. Reading of Vieira will be done based on the theological-rhetorical-political unit's hypothesis of his "sacramental matrix" proposed by Alcir Pécora. It will be taken as secondary sources, period pieces considered significant of the world's vision of that time and tradition in which the sermons are based on, like rhetorical tracts and sacred oratory, Greek and Latin classics, classic period pieces with philosophic-theological features, and critical literature about the theme.