The stubborn refusal: essays on conservative thought

Author(s)

Bruno Costa Simões

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2010-07-01

Examining board members

Ricardo Ribeiro Terra; Gabriel Cohn; Yara Adario Frateschi; Rurion Soares Melo; Luiz Sergio Repa

• Advisor: Ricardo Ribeiro Terra

Abstract

This study proposes a narrative pact with the reader, involving a double operation: a temporary renouncement of the usual format of a thesis directed against or in favour of conservative thinking (without losing sight of the political and philosophical positioning in question), and assuming, meanwhile, the complexity of the perspective of authors who take political issues and philosophical subjects aiming at polemizing and debating problems that belong to their own times. As to the literary genre, the proposal of making up a set of essays aims to delimit the theoretical settings that enabled the development of a conservative thought. Considering the interpretations that Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss set out concerning the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, a major question treated here is that which sees the Hobbesian philosophy as the foundation of liberalism. For this purpose, the issue of adherence or separation between political philosophy and natural philosophy becomes quite provocative in the way both authors treat Hobbes. As critics of the contemporary political directions, Schmitt and Strauss consider the settlement of modern philosophical rationalism as the theoretical basis that made at the same time possible the consolidation of a political State that overcame the former order of politics, the instauration of an absolute regimen of domination of the society and, finally, the breach which, through the technical improvement of the new science of nature and the debasement of the moral purpose of human life, made the liberal ascension feasible. As an attempt to understand the strength and the consequences that such interpreters had, this study also explores the Brazilian critical reception of the works of Strauss, which discusses and delimits the interpretation of the Hobbesian foundation of liberalism. (AU)