Olavo de Carvalho

Olavo de Carvalho

Olavo de Carvalho
Born 29 April 1947
Campinas, Brazil
Awards Medalha do Pacificador (1999), Commander of Romania's National Order of Merit (2000), Medalha Mérito Santos-Dumont (2001), Medalha Tiradentes (2011)
School
Main interests
Notable ideas
 The revolutionary mind, cognitive parallax
Website
olavodecarvalho.org

Olavo Luiz Pimentel de Carvalho (born 29 April 1947[1]), also known as Olavo de Carvalho, is a Brazilian astrologer[2] and essayist whose interests include historical philosophy, the history of revolutionary movements, Kremlinology, the traditionalist school, comparative religion, psychology, and philosophical anthropology.[3] He is known in Brazil for his conservative political stance, and for being a critic of the political Left.[4][5][6][7][8]

Career

He taught political philosophy at the Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná, Brazil, from 2001 to 2005.[9] He moved to the United States, and works as an international correspondent. He writes a weekly column for the Brazilian newspaper Diário do Comércio and teaches philosophy in an online course to over 2,000 students.[10] Carvalho has previously written for several other magazines and newspapers, such as Bravo!, Primeira Leitura, Claudia, O Globo, Folha de São Paulo, Época and Zero Hora,[11] and taught philosophy to a smaller circle of students while still living in Brazil. He introduced to Portuguese speaking readers works of important philosophers of the 20th century, such as Eric Voegelin,[12][13] Xavier Zubiri, Bernard Lonergan, René Guénon, and Frithjof Schuon,[14][15] and can be credited with being responsible for the rediscovery of Brazilian philosopher Mário Ferreira dos Santos in the lusophone world.[16][17] He has commented on and developed original research and theories on the works of Aristotle.[18][19]

He founded the website Maskless Media (Mídia Sem Máscara) in 2002. It presents itself as an observatory of the news media.[20]

He was the host of the show True Outspeak on Blogtalkradio, which aired from 2006 to 2013 and had about 100,000 listeners each week.[21]

The book The least you have to know to not be an idiot (O mínimo que você precisa saber para não ser um idiota) is a collection of his many articles for magazines published between 1997 and 2013.

Carvalho founded the Inter-American Institute for Philosophy, Government, and Social Thought in 2009, and serves as its president.[9] He collaborates with Ted Baehr, Paul Gottfried, Judith Reisman, Alejandro Peña Esclusa and Stephen Baskerville through the Inter-American Institute.

Ideas

Carvalho rejects Karl Popper's open society for "not recognizing any transcendent values and by leaving everything at the mercy of economic conveniences – conveniences that are something alleged even to justify the very demolition of the free market and its replacement by the welfare state, based upon taxation and debt."[22]

In some works, Olavo de Carvalho attempts a criticism of mechanicism,[23] strongly criticizing Isaac Newton,[24] Galileo[25] and Rene Descartes.[26] He explains how Newton's First Law contradicts itself when lacking a traditional metaphysics.[27] According to him, "Galileo and Newtons's science belittled the observation of natural phenomena in favour of formulating mathematical models with no relation to empirical reality".[28]

Carvalho opposes astronomers and scientists in general who refuse to consider astrology as an object of scientific study, seeing in this refusal a partisan attitude. "There is a structural correspondence between the position of the stars in the sky at the time of a person's birth and his character. This can be verified".[29]

Another target of his criticism is Darwinism. Carvalho wrote: "All he [Charles Darwin] did was to venture a new explanation for that theory [evolutionism] — and his explanation was wrong. No one else, among the self-proclaimed Darwin's disciples, believes in 'natural selection'. The theory in vogue, the so-called neo-Darwinism, proclaims that, instead of a selection mysteriously oriented toward the improvement of the species, all that happened were random changes. [...] 'intelligent design' is not only the final touch of the Darwinist theory, but also its fundamental premise, discreetly spread throughout the whole argumentative edifice of The Origin of Species". He goes on saying that "Darwinism is genocidal by itself, from its very roots. It did not have to be deformed by disloyal disciples to become something it was not".[30]

Carvalho accused Georg Cantor of confusing "numbers with their mere symbols" in his works about transfinite numbers, and calls his math a "play on words"[31] and a "false logic".[32]

Works

Works in English translation

References

  1. ↑ Huxley, Aldous. "Preface". Admirável Mundo Novo (Brave New World). São Paulo: Editora Globo, 2001.
  2. ↑ Vani Terezinha de Rezende, "Astrologia e a Noção de Destino: Outra Forma de Racionalidade," Revista Omnia Lumina, Vol. I, No. 2, 2010.
  3. ↑ Olavo de Carvalho, "The Metaphysical Foundations of the Literary Genres," Translated by Pedro Sette Câmara.
  4. ↑ Olavo de Carvalho, "Sociopathy and Revolution," Diário do Comércio, 23 October 2006.
  5. ↑ Alex Newman. "Olavo de Carvalho on Communism in Latin America," The New American, 15 March 2010.
  6. ↑ Alex Newman, "Resurgent Communism in Latin America," The New American, 16 March 2010.
  7. ↑ Gabriel Castro, "Olavo de Carvalho: Esquerda Ocupou Vácuo Pós-ditadura," Veja, 3 de Abril de 2011.
  8. ↑ "Olavo de Carvalho Interviewed on Latin America and Socialism," The Inter-American Institute, 1 May 2013.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 "A word from our president". theinteramerican.org. Retrieved 26 February 2015.
  10. ↑ "Alguns Traços da Mente Revolucionária," Revista Vila Nova, 5 March 2013.
  11. ↑ Dornelles, Beatriz. Mídia, Imprensa e as Novas Tecnologias. Volume 24, Coleção Comunicação. EDIPUCRS, 2002, p. 53. ISBN 978-85-7430-303-1
  12. ↑ Kaio Felipe Mendes de Oliveira Santos, "O Duelo Filosófico entre Settembrini e Naphta em 'A Montanha Mágica'," Noctua, No. 3, 2011.
  13. ↑ Horácio Lopes Mousinho Neiva, "O Dilema da Justiça Natural. A Crítica de Eric Voegelin à Dogmatização do Direito Natural," Jus Navigandi, Teresina, Ano 16, No. 2804, 6 March 2011.
  14. ↑ Darc Costa, Antônio Celso (ed.) Mundo Latino e Mundialização. Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. Mauad Editora Ltda, 2004, p. 199. ISBN 978-85-7478-129-7
  15. ↑ Rezende, Vani T. de. Luzes e Estrelas – T. W. Adorno e a Astrologia. Editora Humanitas, 2006, p. 266. ISBN 978-85-7732-001-1
  16. ↑ Olavo de Carvalho, "A Filosofia de Mário Ferreira dos Santos," Seminário de Filosofia, July 1997.
  17. ↑ Olavo de Carvalho, "Mário Ferreira dos Santos e o Nosso Futuro," Dicta & Contradicta, June 2009.
  18. ↑ Antônio Alves de Carvalho, "A Sistematização dos Discursos em Aristóteles," Revista de Magistro de Filosofia, Ano I, No. 1, 2004.
  19. ↑ Joaquim Domingues, "Manuel de Góis e a Ética Conimbricense," Revista Estudos Filosóficos, No. 7. Lisboa, 2011.
  20. ↑ PATSCHIKI, Lucas. Os litores de nossa burguesia: Mídia Sem Máscara em atuação partidária (2002–2011). Marechal Cândido Rondon: Programa de Pós-Graduação em História UNIOESTE, 2012.
  21. ↑ "A Brazilian Political Philosopher Tops the Charts at Blogtalkradio," Blogtalkradio, 18 May 2007.
  22. ↑ J. R. Nyquist, "A Philosopher’s Warning," Financial Sense, 18 February 2011.
  23. ↑ Olavo de Carvalho, "O Homem Relógio", O Globo, 28 July 2001.
  24. ↑ Olavo de Carvalho, "Sonhando com a Teoria Final," Diário do Comércio, 2 December 2012.
  25. ↑ Olavo de Carvalho, "The Apex of Human Progress," Diário do Comércio, 4 February 2008.
  26. ↑ Olavo de Carvalho, "Descartes e a Psicologia da Dúvida," Colóquio Descartes, Academia Brasileira de Filosofia. Rio de Janeiro: Faculdade da Cidade, 9 May 1996.
  27. ↑ Olavo de Carvalho, "Nas Origens da Burrice Ocidental," Jornal do Brasil, 15 June 2006.
  28. ↑ Olavo de Carvalho, "Raízes da Modernidade," 2011.
  29. ↑ Interview to Pedro Bial on YouTube, GNT, 1996.
  30. ↑ "Why I am not a fan of Charles Darwin", Diário do Comércio, 20 February 2009.
  31. ↑ "§ 20. A Divinização do Espaço. (II). O Infinito de Nicolau de Cusa." In O Jardim das Aflições, Livro IV, Cap. VII. É Realizações, 2000.
  32. ↑ Cristina Poienaru, "Deus Acredita em Você?", Entrevista à Rádio Europa Livre, 21 de outubro de 1998.
  33. ↑ "A Nova Era e a Revolução Cultural – Índice". Olavodecarvalho.org. Retrieved 14 February 2012.
  34. ↑ The Garden of Afflictions, Chap. VI, §16–17 [Chapter in English].
  35. ↑ Reinaldo Azevedo, "O Mínimo que Você Precisa Saber Para Não Ser um Idiota," Veja Online, 2 August 2013.
  36. ↑ Carlos César Higa, "Livro de Olavo de Carvalho Cura a Idiotice Humana? Não. Fundamental é Ler o que Escreve e Outro Livros," Jornal Opção, October 2013.