Roland Corbisier and the Concept of Autonomy: Emancipation and Philosophy of History (1955-1960)

This Paper intends to be a contribution to the study of world politics through Begriffsgeschichte with special attention to the case of Brazil. Accordingly, we want to demonstrate how the concept of autonomy was controversial and linked to specific group interests by analysing the thought of the Brazilian philosopher Roland Corbisier from the mid-1950s through the early 1960s. During that time, Brazil was facing important structural changes which included the rise of populism and rapid industrialization. At the head of the Instituto Superior de Estudos Brasileiros (ISEB), a think-tank attached to the government, Corbisier deliberately envisaged an ideology of national development in order to understand and influence the whole political process. Thus we want to explore four lines of inquiry. By means of an onomasiological analysis, it will be possible to suggest how Corbisier worked on related ideas such as autonomy, development and emancipation. Second, through a parallel with the practice of Verzeitlichung, we intend to show that this thinker placed his concept of autonomy within a temporal frame oriented to an accelerated future. In other words, in his writing one may discern a philosophy of history which embodies a strong belief in Brazil’s destiny as a developed country as well as a marked awareness of his generation’s task to make things change. Using Hegelian inspiration at large, Corbisier offers to the reader a binary analysis which opposes dichotomous poles such as Space/Time, Nature/Culture, Heteronomy/Autonomy and Colonialism/Emancipation. This way he sees his time and himself at a turning point when negative values and practices of the past must be left behind to the extent that the Brazilian nation ought to be understood as an historical process in progress to be inevitably completed. Third, we would like to point that Corbisier’s concept of autonomy is twofold, because it addresses not only Brazil as a country among others in its international relations, especially when it comes to its demands to economic development, but also the Brazilian man in his existential dimension. Finally, it will be important to stress the way Corbisier saw the emergence of a national intelligentsia within the above mentioned ISEB as a solid group in charge of creating and propagating new concepts to understand and lead this process of rapid changes in Brazilian history as well as taking part in the political struggles that followed suit.