Abstract:
This dissertation interprets the classical writing of the Brazilian social thought Raízes do
Brasil (Roots of Brazil), by Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, which was published in 1936.
In order to accomplish this, we analyze the essay from its original context and present
the environment in which the book arose. Next, we follow the main thematic lines
which serve as the foundations for our author. They are: the personalism, the lack of
horizontal social organization and ethics of work, the formation under the rural
dominance and patriarchal environment, which responds to a confusion between public
and private, and a certain "patrimonalism", until we reach the synthesis conception of
"homem cordial" (cordial man) as a fetter to the Brazilian modernization. Moreover,
we seek for identifying in the main arguments which were developed a specific reading
of the "protestant ethics", which helps us confirm a certain distinction between our
socio-political, cultural and religious process of formation and the Nordic protestant
context. We argument through the eyes of the ambiguity of the cultural choices that the
cordial man, as he presents an emotional ethics confronting a rationalizing protestant
ethics, is the implicit counterpoint to the "ascetic protestant" of a "Weber(ian)" origin.
In the same way, we defend the existence of a tens ion in Raízes do Brasil, which
affirms the cordial ethics as traditional and as a fetter to modernization, but, at the same
time, as a Brazilian contribution to the civilization.
