Agostinho da Silva
George Agostinho Baptista da Silva ( born February 13, 1906 in Porto, † April 3, 1994 in Lisbon ) was a Portuguese philosopher and author.
Life
With a scholarship, after finishing his PhD (1929 ) classical philosophy at the University of Porto, in 1931 he went to Paris at the Sorbonne. In 1933 he returned to Portugal, where he was at secondary school ( Liceu ) of Aveiro teacher. After discrepancies relating to new staff regulations of the Estado Novo regime, he was dismissed in 1935 from the civil service. He was able to obtain a grant from the State Department and went to the Centre de estudios históricos in Madrid. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, he returned to Portugal.
After being arrested by the secret police PVDE (later the PIDE ), 1943, he went in 1944 to Latin America. After working in Brazil (Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo), he went to Uruguay and Argentina to live from 1947 in Brazil. He taught at several universities in Brazil ( Universidade de Paraíba, Universidade Federal Fluminense, etc.) and in 1955 participated in the founding of Universidade de Santa Catarina. In 1961 he was the foreign policy of President Jânio Quadros assessor before he helped establish the University 's new capital Brasília in 1962.
In 1969 he left Brazil and his Estado Novo regime and returned to Portugal, where the new head of state, Marcelo Caetano, the local Estado Novo regime implied a political spring. After the absence of significant changes to Silva devoted exclusively to writing. After the Carnation Revolution in 1974, he took part in occasional honorary professorships. With the beginning of pensions paid in its Brazilian employments and with retroactive recognition of his Portuguese occupation years by the new government Silva looked secured his financial situation, and he devoted himself to writing, has traveled and performed in television programs, which his fame grew as a philosopher. In particular, its 13 television interviews of the series Conversas Vadias ( " Around scattering talks", 1990) in the first channel of RTP made the convinced vegetarians popular. He formulated there, especially since its continuously developing thoughts on the future age of the Holy Spirit ( Espírito Santo ).
On April 3, 1994, he died at the Hospital São Francisco Xavier, the hospital of the municipality of São Francisco Xavier ( Lisbon).
Reception
He left a contradictory philosophical work. The practical philosopher combined pantheism and millenarianism, with its unconditional faith in freedom as the most important character of the people. Its formulated in everyday language notions of the Holy Spirit ( Espírito Santo ) and the fundamental freedom of man given society made him especially in his later years known due to his television appearances in which he turned to the various areas of society. He was most recently as one of the leading intellectuals of the country.
As a prolific author, his work is versatile. In addition to various philosophical writings Silva also published poems, essays, work on pedagogy and biographies of such diverse figures as Fernando Pessoa, Pestalozzi, Robert Baden- Powell, Émile Zola, Louis Pasteur, and Leonardo da Vinci, among others
In 2007, organized by the public service broadcaster RTP vote for the " greatest Portuguese of all time" (Os Grandes Portugueses ) Silva was elected on the 21th Place.