Newton de Macedo : da filosofia da história para a sociologia

Abstract

In the present text we present the culminant place of sociology in the Reform of the Higher Education in Philosophy attempted by Leonardo Coimbra in 1919, the time in which, as Minister for Instruction, he creates the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto (FLUP). Such a position is inscribed in the relevant interest showed for sociology, not only following the positivist tradition of the eighteen hundreds, but especially of the Portuguese Renaissance, movement that aspired to rise above it. Thus, we inform that, although the project of inscription of sociology in the philosophy’s curriculum of FLUP did not take place for political reasons, authors such as Georg Simmel were studied in detail, mainly after the critique of the philosophy of history. Newton de Macedo, historian and philosopher, is his main scholar: he shows how history as a science tends to progress from the level of historiography to the level of sociology, since historic facts should be inscribed in the category of social facts. Besides his attention to Vieira de Almeida’s scheme on historic causality, where he identi?es three phases of research, Newton de Macedo develops a critique of the naturalist and scientist visions of social phenomena produced by different positivist authors. On the other hand, when discussing the sociological thought of Durkheim, also well known in the primitive FLUP, he seems to identify himself with it. Focused on the ruins of post-war, Newton, as well as Leonardo Coimbra, produces a very critical reading of positivism (not without considering that it was a good epistemological standing point for work) and has as main purpose the research for new bases for the construction of new values needed to ?ll the dangerous moral void left by belligerent barbarity. The text reveals the exceptional international and up-to-date openness of FLUP (1919-1931) in a national philosophical academic panorama closed to contemporary novelty and to the world