ALBERTO SALLES, EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT AND POLITICAL ACTION IN BRAZIL AT THE END OF THE 19TH CENTURY

Abstract

The article intends to discuss the trajectory and intellectual production of João Alberto Salles (1857-1904), a member of the so-called 1870 Generation who built his entire career as a man of the literature and politics in São Paulo. His work especially covers studies of sociological nature, political science, law and republican propaganda in which he employs the philosophical matrices that marked the overwhelming majority of Brazilian intellectuals between the second half of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century: Comtean positivism and Spencerian scientism. Within the scope of this work, it is intended to emphasize the educational conceptions present in the thinking of Alberto Salles, seeking to articulate them with the crisis of the Empire and the rising Republic. In methodological terms, this work makes use of the contributions of Jean François Sirinelli, who uses the notions of sociability, itineraries and microclimates to approach intellectuals.