{"id":162591,"date":"2014-12-27T17:01:32","date_gmt":"2014-12-27T19:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=162591"},"modified":"2015-01-27T17:04:24","modified_gmt":"2015-01-27T19:04:24","slug":"the-cordial-philosopher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/the-cordial-philosopher\/","title":{"rendered":"The cordial philosopher"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"L\u00e9o Ramos<\/span>The countless setbacks suffered by Marxism in the final decades of the 20th<\/sup> century never discouraged Leandro Konder, professor of philosophy, essayist, and writer. \u201cPhilosophy is a realm of resistance that doesn\u2019t ask what a given theory is good for, but what the truth of that theory is,\u201d he said in an interview to Pesquisa FAPESP<\/em> in December 2002 (see Issue No. 82). Konder, one of Brazil\u2019s most esteemed scholars of the works of Karl Marx, graduated in law, received his PhD in philosophy from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), and was a full professor at the Pontifical Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro (PUC\/RJ). He passed away on November 12, 2014, at the age of 78 in Rio de Janeiro, a victim of Parkinson\u2019s disease.<\/p>\n

Konder was born in Petr\u00f3polis, Rio de Janeiro State; his father was a public health doctor and former leader in the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB). While Konder earned renown as a Marxist thinker and disseminator of the ideas of Hungarian philosopher Georg Luk\u00e1cs (1885-1971), he also worked as a labor attorney during the 1950s and 1960s. Shortly after Brazil\u2019s 1964 military coup, he was quick to defend unions and workers. His ties to social movements took him to prison, where he was tortured. In 1972 he sought exile in Europe and lived in Germany, where he was a visiting professor at the University of Bonn, and in France. He returned to Brazil six years later.<\/p>\n

Beginning in the 1980s, Konder served as professor at Bennett Methodist Institute, Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF), and PUC\/RJ. He devoted himself to disseminating scholarship on Marx and Luk\u00e1cs and to writing. He authored 21 books in all, venturing beyond philosophy into education, history, sociology, and memoirs. His first book, Marxismo e aliena\u00e7\u00e3o <\/em>(Marxism and alienation) (published by Express\u00e3o Popular), was published in 1965 and his last, Em torno de Marx<\/em> (About Marx; Boitempo Editorial), in 2010. He also wrote two novels: A morte de Rimbaud<\/em>\u00a0(The death of Rimbaud; Companhia das Letras) and Bartolomeu<\/em> (Bartholomew; Relume Dumar\u00e1).<\/p>\n

According to his friends, Konder enjoyed journeying among different genres. \u201cHe loved literature; he lived for literature and philosophy,\u201d fellow philosopher and essayist Sergio Paulo Rouanet told the newspaper O Globo<\/em>. \u201cHe was among the less dogmatic Marxists, known for his gentle ways, charisma, and generosity.\u201d In the opinion of Marco Aur\u00e9lio Nogueira, professor of political theory and director of the Institute of Public Policy and International Relations at S\u00e3o Paulo State University (Unesp), Konder was also recognized for his intellectual refinement and captivating prose. \u201cKonder never made concessions to the doctrinairism and dogmatism so common in the Marxist universe and the communist field, where he was an activist his whole life,\u201d Nogueira wrote in O Estado de S.Paulo<\/em>. \u201cAs a professor, he never tired of stepping down from his pedestal and building bridges between accumulated knowledge and young intellectualism, men of culture, and democratic and socialist activists.\u201d Journalist and author Zuenir Ventura told O<\/em> Globo<\/em> that Konder never ranked people according to their ideology. \u201cHe put human relationships above all else,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The image conveyed by his friends is the same that Konder showed during the interview with Pesquisa FAPESP<\/em> mentioned earlier, when he talked about his aversion to polemics: \u201cMachado de Assis used to say, \u2018Controversy bores me to death\u2019. I like dialogue and differences, but I have no patience when they\u2019re expressed too aggressively.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Konder devoted himself to studying and disseminating the works of Karl Marx","protected":false},"author":475,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1348],"tags":[233],"coauthors":[785],"class_list":["post-162591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-obituary","tag-philosophy"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/475"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162591"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=162591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}