Jackson de Figueiredo e a educação: a mente do escritor e as mãos do editor (1908-1928)

Abstract

This thesis aims to analyze the trajectory of the Catholic intellectual Jackson de Figueiredo, his roles as a writer and editor in the field of education, within the period from 1908, because it was the year of his first publication, to 1928, the year he ended his direction at the journal A Ordem, due to his death. The selected sources were the following works by the author: Bater de asas (1908), Zíngaros (1910), Xavier Marques (1913; 1916), Garcia Rosa (1915), Algumas reflexões sobre a philosophia de Farias Brito (1916), O Crepúsculo Interior (1918), A questão social na philosophia de Farias Brito (1919), Humilhados e luminosos (1921), Do nacionalismo na hora presente (1921), Pascal e a inquietação moderna (1922), A Reacção do Bom Senso (1922), Literatura reacionária (1924), Affirmações (1924), Auta de Souza (1924), Durval de Moraes e os poetas de Nossa Senhora (1925), A Columna de Fogo (1925); as well as the journal A Ordem from 1921 to 1928, during which Figueiredo served as editor. Specifically, this research aims to reconstruct the formative process of Jackson de Figueiredo, emphasizing his journey from reader to writer; to elucidate Jackson de Figueiredo’s educational formulations in light of the author’s Catholic-themed books (written from 1919 onwards); to identify the educational concept present in the journal A Ordem during the period when Figueiredo was editor (1921-1928). This thesis falls within the field of Intellectual History, in which it mobilizes Bourdieu’s theory of fields, specifically the concepts of habitus, field, trajectory, and capital. It is argued that Jackson de Figueiredo converted his activities as a writer and editor into strategies to reorder and boost the institutional and symbolic power of the Catholic Church within the Brazilian context of the 1920s, as well as to bring together other Catholic intellectuals within the framework of this religious institution and the cultural and political disputes circles. During the period Jackson de Figueiredo was the editor of the journal A Ordem, education was a concern in the publications, explored by this thesis through the following categories: religious education, moral education, intellectual education, and civic education, which were related in a complementary way. The results demonstrate that, in advocating for a moral education grounded in Catholicism and in claimimg for the presence of religious education in public schools, Figueiredo made this into an act of patriotism. He argued that the majority of Brazilians were Catholic and this right should be respected, based on the argument that neutral education does not exist. He recommended that scientific teaching be provided in schools and universities so that there would be no divergences between religion (Catholicism) and science, besides advocating that the Catholic religion should be the worldview capable of giving unity to the different areas of human knowledge.