The Train of Thought

The Train of Thought (O Fio da Meada) was originally conceived as an afterword for Ressentimento da Dialética (The Resentment of Dialectics), where the author would explain why he chose to compile essays that had been written around fifteen years before about the intellectual origins of Hegelian dialectics reinterpreted according to the ABC of German Misery.

Actually, the afterword was just an excuse to co-opt the interviewers, who ingenuously and enthusiastically fell for the trick, lured by the challenge of participating in the book. But Paulo Arantes is not interviewable. Here he introduces a new style, the answer-question, through his diabolical ability to induce the questions he wishes to answer. This book might as well be considered as fiction, except for the true identity of the interviewers and the interviewee in the first part, and for the second part itself, which consists of ‘interviews’ previously published in the newspapers Folha de São Paulo and O Estado de São Paulo, and the magazine Teoria e Debate.

To paraphrase the author, this book could be called “The Drama of Conscience in Professional Philosophy”. Or, for the lay audience, it could be a manual called “Everything you always wanted to know about the Brazilian intellectual life but were afraid to ask”. And it is not only about Brazil: the reader will realize that there are more things in Brazil and the Rest of the World than are dreamt of in our philosophy.

The author and the book are so didactic and enlightening that, just like in children’s literature, it could be advised that “This book is suitable for reading aloud”.

(CR, ICC, and MEC, flap from the original edition, 1996) 

Keywords: Adorno, Álvaro Vieira Pinto, Antonio Cândido, Auerbach, Bento Prado, French overseas department, Philosophy in Brazil, USP Philosophy, Foucault, Giannotti, Hegel, French ideology, intellectuals, Marx, 1968 Revolution, Roberto Kurz, Roberto Schwarz, Ruy Fausto, Critical Theory, Brazilian critical tradition.