The FORCES International Honour Committee
Olavo De Carvalho
Olavo
de Carvalho was born in Campinas in the state of Sao Paulo, on April
29th, 1947. He has been honored by the critics as one of the most
original and daring Brazilian thinkers. Men with as different
intellectual orientations as Jorge Amado, Arnaldo Jabor, Ciro Gomes,
Roberto Campos, J.O. de Meira Penna, Bruno Tolentino, Herberto Sales,
Josu? Montello and ex-president of the Republic Jos? Sarney have all
already expressed their admiration for him and his work.
The keynote of his work is the defence of human interiority against the
tyranny of collective authority, above all when this tyranny relies on a
?scientific? ideology. To Olavo de Carvalho there is an unbreakable link
between the objectivity of knowledge and the autonomy of individual
conscience. This link is lost from sight when the criteria of validity
of knowledge is reduced to an impersonal and uniform form only for the
use of the academic class.
Believing that the most solid abode of the individual conscience against alienation is found in the old spiritual traditions ? Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islamism - Olavo de Carvalho attempts to give a new interpretation to the symbols and rites of these traditions, making out of them the matrixes of a new philosophical and scientific strategy for the resolution of the problems of modern culture.
Further
biographical information (English) on Mr. Carvalho here
Click here for
a complete biography and list of publications on Wikipedia (Spanish)
Visit Olavo De Carvalho's
website (English and Portuguese)
