The resistance of reason to fascism: education as desbarbarization

• Grant number: 17/24154-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: March 01, 2018
• End date: February 28, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - Ethics
• Principal Investigator: Sinésio Ferraz Bueno
• Grantee: Cristian Chaves Rodrigues
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências (FFC). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Marília. Marília , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Theodor Adorno, philosopher of Critical Theory, developed a very useful analysis for the understanding of the phenomenon of fascism. Unlike other authors of political philosophy like Hannah Arendt, Adorno does not depart from the analysis of fascism as a merely political event, marked by historical and conjunctural matrices. The originality of his perspective before the phenomenon of fascism is to analyze about its psychological bases, signaling the development of the authoritarian culture on the psychic structure of the man. In this way, he and his collaborators can be informed about the fascist traits or about a fascist mentality present, in an ostensive or veiled way, in modern democratic societies. From this perspective, Adorno was able to expand the scope of analysis on the nature and dimension of fascism and to identify its marks in social organizations of democratic regimes. This work proposes a definition and analysis of the concept of fascism in Theodor Adorno's work, as well as his inflections, as the idea of ambivalence and imposture. From this research, our objective is to identify, from formulations, the meaning of education as a process of "debarbarization" as defined by the philosopher. Thus, we intend to articulate a theoretical perception of the phenomenon of fascism from the works of Adorno with his contribution to a proposal of continence of the fascist personality, through the importance of education as a formative process of resistance to the regression of intellectual autonomy. (AU)