Georg Simmel, Sergio Buarque de Hollanda e o indivíduo moderno: raízes judaicas do pensamento social brasileiro.

We investigate Brazilian social thought in the light of the sociology of Georg Simmel and

his profoundly humanistic understanding of modern life, whose Jewish roots are easily

found. We examine Simmel’s influence on historian Sergio Buarque de Hollanda, who

wrote in the 1930s and 1940s in the city of São Paulo, and who might have Jewish

ancestry. We compare Buarque’s thought, which share Simmel’s distanced interest in the

modern individual, with two Brazilian authors who started seemingly opposed schools of

thought, Gilberto Freyre and Florestan Fernandes. The former is an enthusiast of the

particular Brazilian sociability forged in sugar cane engenhos in Northeast Brazil,

providing a description of the intimate national life that inspires a loving narrative of the

country. The latter offers a conflictual picture of class and race relations; his critical view of

Brazilian society is omnipresent in intellectual circles. Far from antipodes, we argue they

fail together in seeing profound but subtle tensions in the modern individual, which

demand a gaze at once attentive and generous. Buarque’s thought goes hand in hand

with Simmel’s delicate theoretical reasoning, extremely inspiring but incapable of creating

powerful schools of thought. His interest in human destiny, devoid of exaltation or

condescendence, makes his thought difficult to instrumentalize. His followers have to start

it over from the same initial point: the inquiring gaze over men and women, their actions,

and their follies. With no dogmas or icons, Buarque’s thought demands an interpretive

ethic whose roots we recognize in Jewish thought.