A genealogia do pensamento utopista de Agostinho da Silva

Abstract

Agostinho da Silva used to say that the best way to be modem and revolutionary in the twentieth century was to be a thirteenth-century conservative. The paradox-with which he nourished his poetic-philosophical discourse with stimulating heuristic productivity of such a statement combines antinomous categories (revolutionary and conservati­ve) and discontinuous and unconvertible historical time periods (thirteenth century and twentieth century). Actually, this paradox is not meant to present an ironical aporia but simply to point to a trans-temporal axiological possibility. The thirteenth century to which Agostinho da Silva refers is when, during Denis I's reign, the Holy Spirit cult was introdu­ced in Portugal and Joachim of Fiore's theology was diffused. As it is known, this popular and heterodox cult is associated with Joachim ofFiore's theological conception of history, which predicted an imminent era of spiritual and physical fulfillment for mankind under the free inspiration of the third person of the Holy Trinity. ln this article, rather than em­phasizing the common traits between Agostinho da Silva's thinking and the ramifications of Joachim of Fiore's theology on Saint Francis of Assissi's spiritualism, we shall carefully consider its introduction in a European trend of thought that we might call millenarian­utopian, which had an eminent follower named Fernando Pessoa.