THE EVOLUTION OF THE SPIRIT: Allan Kardec’s “Evolutionism”

Abstract

We believe that in a paradigmatic framework, a religion is representative of the social face of its followers. In this article we aim to think about the racial issue within the beginnings of the spiritist religion, codified by Allan Kardec. Spiritism, in its conception, was thought to perfectly intersect science, religion and philosophy. However, in this dangerous friction of ways of looking at the world, Kardec was several times, and repeatedly, racist. To be accepted by the scientific community of the 19th century, Kardec included racial evolutionism in his speech, and thus ended up leading the spiritist religion to a paratopic place. In this way, spiritism, like any other religion, appears to be based much more on discourse than on empirical science. This is a qualitative research that attempts to carry out a general scan of Allan Kardec's writings. We will try to frame Allan Kardec as a man of his time, and more specifically, a scientist of his time. This is qualitative research that attempts to carry out a general scan of Allan Kardec's writings. Along with reports from the author of this article, who has been part of the Brazilian spiritist context for many years. This research could only be done in this way, as racism does not always present itself in religious services every day, and not always clearly. We must remember that loose speeches in religious services, which if not allocated within the academic discourse of racism, do not seem to be of great contradiction. In this way, we think that today's spiritualist religious cults still reflect, in their in-depth ways or not, the propagated racial evolutionism of Allan Kardec.