The Reception of Voegelin and Arendt in Brazil: Meira Penna and Celso Lafer

• In Event: The Influence and Reception of Eric Voegelin's Philosophy in Brazil

Abstract

Eric Voegelin and Hannah Arendt shared the same world in the twentieth century: two world wars interspersed with the rise of totalitarianism and the subsequent Cold War. As German émigrés in the U.S., they tried to understand the ideologies of the century and adopted the problem of totalitarianism as the center of their reflections. Their writings were received in Brazil and the first translations of their books appeared in the 80’s. In this article, I will discuss the reception of Eric Voegelin’s works by José Osvaldo de Meira Penna (1917 - 2017) and the reception of Hannah Arendt’s works by Celso Lafer (1941). As jurists, diplomats, and public intellectuals, they have a similar career and intellectual interest. However, the first belongs to the liberal tradition, while the second to the social-democratic tradition. Thus, this paper analyzes how they interpret Voegelin and Arendt in order to understand the Brazilian reality. Along with Alberto Guerreiro Ramos, Nelson Lehmann da Silva and Lima Vaz, Meira Penna partially adopts the Voegelian themes when dealing with twentieth-century political ideologies and reflecting on Brazil, without ignoring other thinkers such as Max Weber, Raymond Aron, and Hannah Arendt. In turn, Celso Lafer is recognized by introducing the thought of Arendt in Brazil in the seventies, taking on the task of bringing the Brazilian reader the publication of Between the Past and the Future (1961), with a preface by him. As a student of Hannah Arendt in 1965 at Cornell University, Lafer has a unique status: the privilege of the closest and most fruitful exchange with Hannah Arendt about the great issues that afflicted the world in the last century. For this research, we will resort to the books of Meira Penna such as O Espírito da Revolução: da Revolução Gloriosa até a Revolução Liberal [The Spirit of Revolution: from the Glorious Revolution to the Liberal Revolution] (1985) and A ideologia do Século XX [The Ideology of the Twentieth Century] (2017) as well as Lafer’s Hannah Arendt: Pensamento, Persuasão e Poder [Hannah Arendt: thought, persuasion, and power] (1979), and A Reconstrução dos Direitos Humanos: um Diálogo com o Pensamento de Hannah Arendt [The Reconstruction of Human Rights: A dialogue with Hannah Arendt’s thought] (1988).

Author

• Daiane Eccel, UFSC - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina