Liberal tradition, positivism and pedagogy: Rui Barbosa's defeated ideas

Abstract

The first Brazilian Republic (1889-1930) is often seen as authoritarian because of the influence of positivistic ideas, and also as oligarchic, an unintentional consequence of liberal institutions operating upon an insolidary society, as theorizes Oliveira Vianna. This article presents, instead, a liberalism which has genetic links with oligarchization and a positivism that seeks to reduce the individualism with a sense of common interest. The emphasis here is on the thought of Rui Barbosa, currently known as a typical liberal jurist aiming to implement North-American federalism in Brazil. In the opposite sense, this important brazilian political actor is shown as someone worried about the most central positivistic questions: putting the family – and not only the individual – in the centre of the nation’s building process, and asking for some political centralization, to overcome the oligarchic authoritarianism derived from the freedom of private interests. Some Rui Barbosa’s political speeches – specially those justifying his political options – are used to demonstrate the above argument, for, as it can be understood by Weber, Marx and Koselleck’s concepts, they become extremely important in periods of legitimacy crisis of the modern Abstract State. This was precisely the case in Brazil, when the Monarchy was substituted by the Republic in 1889.