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Olavo de Carvalho

Olavo de Carvalho Biography

Philosopher

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“One of the most disturbing experiences I've had in my life has been to realize, again and again over the years, how impossible it is to speak to the heart, to the deep conscience of individuals who have exchanged their genuine personality for a group or ideological stereotype. [...] In the beginning, it's not really an exchange. The stereotype is adopted as a covering, a sign of identity, a password that facilitates the subject's integration into a social group and, by freeing them from their isolation, makes them feel even more human. Then the progressive identification with the group's values and objectives replaces direct perceptions and initial feelings with a schematic imitation of the group's behavior and mental traits, until concrete individuality, with all its irreducible mystery, disappears under the mask of collective identity. [...] The desensitization of the deep conscience corresponds, by contrast, to a hypersensitization of the surface, a fake susceptibility, a predisposition to feel offended or threatened by any little thing that opposes the will of the group.”

PsychologyIndividualityCollectivismMilitancy
Book:O Mínimo que Você Precisa Saber Para Não Ser um Idiota
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“The possibility of the existence of such a thing as "science" rests on a variety of presuppositions that neither can themselves be subjected to a "scientific" examination, nor do they provide any rational basis for giving said "science" the authority of the last word not only on general questions of human existence, but even in the specialized field of each particular scientific area. Just to give an basic example, without the words "yes" and "no", logical reasoning is not possible. No science can tell us what they mean. All formal logic is based on these two words, and formal logic itself cannot define them.”

PhilosophyScienceLogicPhilosophicalLogical Thinking
Book:O Mínimo que Você Precisa Saber Para Não Ser um Idiota
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“Neoliberal ideology, so accurate in discerning the factors that hinder or promote economic development, is mistaken in suggesting that the “downsizing” of the state—its withdrawal from “inappropriate” activities—is automatically and obviously associated with a promise of greater freedom for citizens. For it is not only through the exercise of inappropriate and incidental activities that the state oppresses people, but also — and above all — through those that are most essential and proper to it: taxation, policing, justice, and public education. And these, rather than retreating in the new neoliberal framework, tend instead to grow disproportionately. There are two reasons for this: first, it was precisely in order to expand them that the state withdrew from the economy; second, as it unloads its economic burden, the state seeks new roles for itself that justify its existence, and ends up meddling in all sectors of human life previously left to private discretion.”

OppressionIdeologyPrivate LifePolitical PhilosophyPublic LifeStateNeoliberalism
Book:O Jardim das Aflições
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“One of the most serious consequences of the expansion of the supervisory gaze of the state (and the intelligentsia) into the private sphere is the reduction of the difference between the moral and the legal — a difference that, by protecting vital areas of human behavior from official interference, has always been one of the basic guarantees of civil liberty. [...] The state uses individuals' demands for autonomy — demands that are particularly strong among young people, women, the discriminated, and the resentful of all kinds — as bait to trap them in the worst kind of tyranny. By “freeing” men from their ties to family, parish, and neighborhood, protecting them under the immense network of public services that frees them from the need to resort to the help of relatives and friends, offering them the lure of legal protection against the prejudices, antipathies, feelings, and even glances of their peers—legal protection against life, in short— the state actually divides, isolates, and weakens them, cultivating the neurotic susceptibilities that infantilize them, making it impossible for them, on the one hand, to create true bonds with each other and, on the other hand, to survive without state support.”

Political PhilosophyModernitySocial CommentaryLegalityTirannyThe State
Author:Olavo de Carvalho
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