AGOSTINHO DA SILVA

Agostinho da Silva is one of the most paradoxical portuguese thinkers of the 20th century. The most pervasive theme of his work was portuguese language culture, in a fraternal hug to Brasil and the other portuguese language countries. Yet, to him the national philosophies question is not a decisive one, it seems rather an academic question: "I don't know if there are national philosophies, and i don't know if philosophers, exactly because they think about the general, do not internationalize themselfs "

The problem from which he starts is the search for a justification to Portugal: "what i want is that our philosophy emanate from portuguese people, and makes that portuguese people have more confidence in himself" understanding by 'portuguese people' not only the portuguese from Portugal, but also from Brazil, native indians and blacks included, from Africa, tribals and blacks, and also from India, Macau and Timor.

In an universal vision that denies justification to the portuguese that live only to Portugal, he present himself to his readers as a fifth empire knight, a holy spirit kingdom, a labor more adequate to cigarras than to ants as is characteristic from children: "Restoring the child in us and crown him emperor, that's the first step to build the empire", which is the same that saying that the first step from empires is always in man's spirit, able to serve, like the former templarios knights.

An empire without the classic emperors, which take to the peoples of the world a philosophy that incorporate America's freedom, economic security from Soviet Union, and materialist renounce from East, but also a philosophy that the three can correct, extracting the first of imperialisms, the second of bureaucracy and the third from dogmas.

Is this a philosophy that, as he liked to say, does not start immediately from a reflexion about exact sciences, as in Descartes or Leibniz, but from faith, as in Espinoza. Starting from believes as a vital point and take that the word believe seems to have the same origin as the word heart, doing like the Infant, opening to the science from his pilots, astronomers and mathematicians. Everything said and defended with the tranquility from someone who knows that until today nobody reach the secrets of the world and because of that knows the limits of the positive solutions.

That way, it would be possible to value that which to him distinguishes the poortuguese people as a nation and as a culture: a nation and a culture capable of incorporating in himself "many impenetrable contradictions, until today, in rationalize from any philosophic thinking".

An empire from the future prevented and purged from the evils that ruin the former four, without charging pretensions, power and materialistic ambitions, without obligatory working, without prisons and social classes, without ideological and metaphysic crises. That was not the european empire anymore, from that Europe looking to more knowledge and power, and because of that exhausted as a model to the other 80% of mankind, less worried with power than with being.

Bring the world to europe, as in the past we bring europe to the world, that's the main mission to portuguese language culture, building his domain with a spiritual base and without a land one, because property slaves and only 'don't having' can turn us free.

Works

Sentido histórico das civilizações clássicas, 1929; A religião grega, 1930; Glosas, 1934; Sete cartas a um jovem filósofo, 1945; Diário de Alcestes, 1945; Moisés e outras páginas bíblicas, 1945; Reflexão, 1957; Um Fernando Pessoa, 1959; As aproximações, 1960; Educação de Portugal, 1989; Do Agostinho em torno do Pessoa; Dispersos, 1988.

Bibliography
António Quadros, Introdução à Filosofia da História, Lisboa, 1982.

Free translation from the InstitutoCamoes.pt article by Pedro Calafate.