"A CAVALEIRO ENTRE A FILOSOFIA E A HISTÓRIA”: ALGUMAS CONSIDERAÇÕES EM TORNO DO CETICISMO DE JOÃO CRUZ COSTA

Abstract

This work aims to examine a set of considerations regarding the relation between history and philosophy by the Brazilian philosopher João Cruz Costa. The matter played a central role throughout the writer’s intellectual trajectory, being present from his very first writings about the history of ideas in Brazil, in 1938, until his last interventions, in the decade of 1970. In his works, the author looks for the vicissitudes of ideas in Brazil from the 16th to the 20th century, in terms of historical and sense perception. Thus, a wholesome discussion on the aforementioned relation can be extracted from his production, from which was selected as leading thought for this research, the question: was Cruz Costa a sceptical philosopher? It is not the main objective here to pose a direct and objective answer to that, but to raise an axiomatic discussion, which points out to the necessity of a more detailed reexam of the referred works. Two main unanswered questions regarding Cruz Costa’s philosophy are: 1) what was his scepticism? 2) what was his essayism?