The Near and the Far

Preliminary incursion on Theory and Aporia, Politics and Desire in Varnhagen's social thought (1816 - 1878) on the discovery of Brazil.

Abstract

The distant experience taught us to focus our gaze. And it matters little that we are somehow beneficiaries, as we are far, each in our own way, from dominating all aspects of these new civilizations and cultures. The world of life and spiritual experience no longer has the exact dimensions of the one in which we plan to live, as we live in a world that we have not yet learned to look at. Should we take advantage of this experience? This is what we intend to analyze taking as a reference the social thought of F. A. de Varnhagen (1816-1878). In it there are common characteristics with which we are reflecting in the 500 years old ideal and that, perhaps, provide another type of explanatory understanding, if compared in their qualitative distinctions. Varnhagen was a conservative in ideas and in the conception of a Brazilian national state, imbued in the ideal construction of the nation. An idea that, in the course of history, gains momentum with the indispensability of State intervention and the role that the intellectual plays in this relationship, especially today.