Cecília Meireles e o humanismo cívico : palavras e práticas de um ideário político (Brasil Sudeste, 1915-1964

Abstract

The thesis studies the political conception of Cecília Meireles (1901-1964), based on her ideas, attitudes, interactions and practices. The main objective is to understand how this intellectual thought and acted regarding the basic rules of collective life, the fundamental principles of society organization, the instituting and instituted powers or the conditions for establishing rights and duties. The hypothesis adopted is that Cecília Meireles guided her ideas and her political actions by valuing human beings, cultivating a humanism with civic-republican contours, in which principles such as the duty to resist oppression, sectarianism opposition, the common good primacy over private interest, talent at the society service as the only legitimate way to obtain prestige, conviction in the human capacity to defy contingencies, bearing their action consequences. Through this interpretative key, the ethical and aesthetic references assumed by the intellectual are closely related of freedom, equality and fraternity notions, advocated by Renaissance and Enlightenment thinkers, such as Leonardo Bruni and Montesquieu, Michel de Montaigne and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Through a qualitative-based methodology, different occasions and processes in which Cecília's conceptions and initiatives come to light, intervening in collective interest problems, are analyzed. The range of sources comprises chronicles, poems, letters, interviews, conferences, essays and reports. From it, sewing description, narrative and analysis, the investigation demonstrates that Meireles guided her thinking and acting in public spaces by an ethical-political commitment of a civic humanist character.