NATIONAL PHILOSOPHY, EUROPEAN TEACHERS: FOREIGN INTELLECTUALS IN THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF BRAZILIAN UNIVERSITY PHILOSOPHY (1908–1934)

Abstract

This paper analyses the institutionalization of philosophy in Brazilian higher education through the presence of foreign faculty members, who were responsible for shaping the disciplinary framework and institutional organization of the first philosophy programs (1908–1934). In an effort to understand the strategies these intellectuals employed to establish their legitimacy within the São Paulo context of the First Republic, the study investigates these figures’ role in establishing philosophical traditions and defining different paths toward professionalization. Philosophy is viewed as a space of action and contestation that takes shape through social, institutional, and intellectual relations throughout the period, engendering a shared and interdependent space of exchange marked by the asymmetrical relationship between institutions and agents. The research employed as its theoretical framework the notion of “figuration” proposed by Norbert Elias (1970), while prioritizing an analysis that takes the individual as both a participant in and a producer of intellectual networks, a choice that allows for understanding subjects within their multiple relationships and interpreting the process of institutionalization of university philosophy through the disputes between different arrangements of intellectual labour. To accomplish this task, both intellectual and institutional sources are used, along with the trajectory of foreign philosophers, which makes it possible to identify the conditions of possibility and the limitations arising from the local structure.