The image of a Positivist Temple shows the plan to build a church in Rio de Janeiro. Courtesy of the John Hay Library, Brown University.
The Positivist Church in downtown Rio still stands, and holds services, today. Photograph by Benjamin Moser.
Positivism: An Overview
Positivism is a philosophical system based on the view that in the social and natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are the exclusive source of all worthwhile information. Positivism rejects speculative philosophy, that is, all problems, concepts and propositions of traditional philosophy related to being, substances, causes, etc., that can not be verified through empirical science. Claiming to be a fundamentally new, non-metaphysical philosophy, positivism declared that empirical science is the sole source of true knowledge.
One of the earliest proponents of this new school of thought, Auguste Comte (1798?1857) introduced the term “positivism” in the 1820s. Comte viewed society as having progressed through three distinct phases: the theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific (or “positive”). He argued that knowledge should be understood as a historical process. Comte firmly believed that intellectual development was the primary cause of social change. It is precisely this socio-political dimension of Comte’s positivism that attracted such widespread interest during the nineteenth century.
Positivism in Brazil
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Comte’s positivism captured the interest of many Latin American intellectuals who identified in positivism the keys to social reformation. In Argentina, Chile, and Cuba, positivism was harnessed as a force of liberal reform and modernization that rejected the influence of the Catholic Church. In Mexico, it had a direct influence on the education reforms under President Benito Juarez and was embraced by the regime of Porfirio Diaz, holding intellectual sway until the 1910 revolution.
While positivism affected every Latin American country in the nineteenth century, its influence was nowhere as profound or widespread as in Brazil, where it gained support by criticizing the institutions of slavery, monarchy, and the Church as constraining the natural progress of the nation. One of the singular forces behind the spread of positivism in Brazil was the Positivist Church of Brazil, founded by Miguel Lemos and his brother-in-law Raimundo Teixeira Mendes, who had both studied with Comte in Paris. The Positivist Church attempted to control and direct the positivist movement, publishing thousands of tracts and pamphlets on wide-ranging social issues, though in reality it had only a small following and did not represent the views of positivists throughout Brazil. By the late 1870s, positivism had received such widespread currency that Comte’s concrete proposals for social reform, specifically his abolitionist and republican treatises, animated public zeal for modernization. The positivist contribution to these debates was to unite ideas for reformation in a systematic way.
- How did the positivist view of a rationally ordered society progressing through stages represent a shift for Brazil in the late 19th and early 20th century?
- In what ways did the positivist vision fit into the quest for a modern Brazilian nation?
The Brazilian Flag and Positivist Ideology
Soon after the installation of the Republic on 15 November 1889, a new provisional flag was proposed to symbolize the country, designed by the Clube Republicano Lopes Trovão. This flag was modeled after that of the United States of America, exhibiting 13 stripes with alternating colors of green and yellow and a quadrant of stars representing each state. Miguel Lemos roundly criticized the flag as “a servile imitation of the North American banner,” preferring instead to look toward French models.
A new flag was designed by Raimundo Teixeira Mendes and drafted by Décio Vilares. The flag adapted the positivist mantra of August Comte: “L’amour pour principe et l’ordre pour base; le progrés pour but” [Love as the beginning and order as the foundation; progress as the end]. In order to attract support for the design, Teixeira Mendes and Miguel Lemos promoted the flag as having been created by General Benjamim Constant, who did in fact present the flag to the provisional government, but whose only other contribution seems to have been suggesting that the constellation called the Southern Cross appear on the flag.
Second Imperial Flag, 1870?1889.
Flag of the United States of Brazil, November 15?19, 1889
Flag of the United States of Brazil, November 19, 1889?June 1960
Decreto No 4, de 19 de novembro de 1889
The Fourth Decree of November 19,1889, pertaining to the Brazilian flag, was drafted by Rui Barbosa and signed by the Marechal Deodoro da Fonseca (President of the Governo Provisório), Quintino Bocaiúva, Aristides da Silveira, Rui Barbosa, Campos Sales, Benjamim Constant and Eduardo Wandenkolk.
The Provisional Government of the Republic of the United States of Brazil:
Considering that the colors of our old flag recall the battles and glorious victories of the army and navy in defense of the Country;
Considering, therefore, that these colors, independent of their geometric form, symbolize the perpetuity and integrity of the country among other nations;
Decrees:
Article 1: The flag adopted by the Republic will maintain the tradition of the old national colors ? green and yellow ? in the following way: a yellow diamond on a green field, having in the middle a celestial blue sphere, crossed by a white band, descending from the right to the left [sic], with the motto ? Order and Progress ? and punctuated by twenty-one stars, which shall include the constellation of the Southern Cross, according to their astronomic placement in terms of distance and relative size, representing the twenty States of the Republic and the Neutral Municipality, all according to the model drafted in Annex 1.
Article 2: The national arms will figure on the print in Annex 2.
Article 3: For the seal and signet of the Republic, the celestial sphere will serve, which shall be sketched in the center of the flag, being surrounded by the words ? Republic of the United States of Brazil.
Article 4: All dispositions to the contrary are hereby revoked.
The motto “Ordem e Progresso” (Order and Progress) on the flag of Brazil is inspired by Auguste Comte’s motto of positivism, “Love as the beginning, and order as the base; progress as the end.” It was inserted due to the fact that several of the people involved in the military coup d’état that deposed the monarchy and proclaimed Brazil a republic were followers of the ideas of Comte.
Positivism’s Influence on Brazilian Politics
The statue of Pedro I. Courtesy of the John Hay Library.
The pamphlet this image is taken from argues that the equestrian statue of Dom Pedro I, which still stands in the Praça de Tiradentes in Rio de Janeiro, does not represent historical truth because it exaggerates the role Dom Pedro I played in bringing about Brazil’s independence from Portugal. The Positivist Church argued that the statue of Dom Pedro I should be removed, but the pedestal should remain, and another monument symbolizing the Brazilian Republic should be installed on it. The church suggested that on the pedestal below the new monument, equal recognition could be given to Dom Pedro I and José Bonifácio, an important figure in the effort to secure Brazil’s independence from Portugal.
On marriage and divorce
The Positivist Church of Brazil was extremely concerned with the relationship between the Catholic Church and the government, and it sought at length to promote the separation of civil and religious affairs. One important step positivists demanded was the creation of a civil registry. In pamphlet entitled, The Project of Civil Marriage, the positivists argue for the complete separation of temporal power from religious authority, suggesting that it is the duty of the Catholic Church to remove the confusion between temporal and spiritual powers by granting a religious marriage only after a civil marriage has been performed. This pamphlet further argues that marriage is not a contract but a social sanction (religious or civic) of the foundational union that institutes the family. This statement reveals the interesting position taken by the Positivist Church. The Positivist Church did not characterize marriage as a contract, which could be broken or nullified through divorce, but as a critical social institution. In fact, in the pamphlet Still Contrary to the Retrograde Protest for Divorce, the church states that divorce represents a “political aberration” and its legalization would signify “the profundity of the moral and mental dissolution of the Brazilian people.” Divorce would demonstrate the weakened masculinity of the Brazilian man who had “lost the profound influence of morality of feminine prestige.”
The “Ode to Toussaint L’Ouverture,” a tribute to the Haitian abolitionist hero, was written by Teixeira Mendes for a hymn composed by Professor Lima Coutinho. Courtesy of the John Hay Library.
On abolition of slavery
In the pamphlet Positivism and Modern Slavery, Miguel Lemos writes in memory of Toussaint Louverture (1746?1803), “the dictator of Haiti and martyr for the liberty of his race.” The tract contains “precious extracts” from Comte, who universally condemned the “monstrous crime that continues to smear the Brazilian nation.” Comte severely criticized what he called “decadent Catholicism” for not only sanctioning but even encouraging the institution of slavery. He considered slavery to be a “monstrous social aberration,” an embarrassment to European philosophy and civilization. This tract contains a fascinating appendix, written by Lemos, with “notes on the solution of the problem in Brazil.” After considering the economic exigencies brought about by industrialization, Lemos argues for the decisive intervention by high public powers to bring an end to the “revolting immorality of [Brazil’s] criminal colonial history.”
On the indigenous population
The Positivist Church developed a great concern for the welfare of Brazil’s indigenous peoples. The pamphlet In Defense of Brazilian Savages (1910) argues for “the need to substitute, with respect to the savages, as well as regarding all peoples, the fraternal attitude, inherent to all Humanity, for the conquering attitude.” These pamphlets all call for urgent action on the part of the government to reach out to and protect indigenous peoples, specifically by reorganizing land in such places as the territory of Acre and setting aside reservations.
Brazilian positivist leaders, especially Raimundo Teixeira Mendes, and Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, turned to their doctrine when developing a plan to govern relations with indigenous people. In a series of letters to the editors of newspapers, which were then reprinted in a series of pamphlets and annual reports, Teixeira Mendes presented an Indian policy based on protection and acculturation. He drew from Comte’s writings on Africa, in which the French thinker argued that Africans lived in the ‘fetishistic age’ of social development, which Comte considered to be the original human condition.
Teixeira Mendes wrote, “No human being can deny that it is the savages who are the rightful owners of the lands they occupy, with titles every bit as valid as those that any western nation could invoke.” Indeed, he wrote elsewhere that indigenous groups should be recognized as sovereign nations. Usurped lands should be returned, or, where this was impossible, new lands should be given to the inhabitants of these indigenous nations. He further argued that Indians had every right to resist incursions onto their lands. And he noted wryly that the armed defense of these lands could hardly be considered a crime, for “no one considers the Spanish and Portuguese as being criminals for having expelled the Arabs from the Iberian peninsula.”
- How did the Positivists fit into the overall changes within Brazil in the early years of the Republic?
- What was the legacy of positivism in Brazilian politics?
Brazilian Positivist Figures
Benjamin Constant Botelho de Magalhães (1836?1891)
O Ideal republicano de Benjamin Constant [The Republican ideal of Benjamin Constant]. Rio de Janeiro: Tip. Do Jornal do Commercio, 1936. John Hay Library.
His republican views led him to found with Deodoro da Fonseca, then Governor of Rio Grande do Sul, the Clube Militar in 1887. Despite Constant’s declared republicanism, the imperial court not only maintained his position as a royal preceptor, but also offered him a title, which he refused.
On May 13, 1888, in the absence of Dom Pedro II, Princess Isabel signed a document abolishing slavery. As a result, the Empire lost the support of the landed aristocracy, and began to collapse, finally ceding power after the military revolt of November 15, 1889. Fonseca became the country’s first de facto president through military ascension. Benjamin Constant, acclaimed as a founding father of the Republic, was named Minister of War in the provisional government and later Minister of Education, Postal Service and Telegraphs. He died on January 22, 1891, and was buried in the São João Batista cemetery of Rio de Janeiro.
Raimundo Teixeira Mendes (1855?1927)
The Brazilian philosopher and mathematician was credited with creating the national motto, “Order and Progress,” as well as the national flag on which it appears. In 1881, Raimundo Teixeira Mendes and his brother-in-law Miguel Lemos founded the Apostolado Positivista. Throughout the 1880s, Teixeira Mendes and Lemos, published numerous pamphlets to promote Positivism and to support issues such as the abolition of slavery, republicanism, and the separation of church and state. In creating the flag of the Republic, Teixeira Mendes borrowed elements from the Brazilian imperial flag by maintaining the green and yellow colors, substituting the imperial coat of arms with a blue sphere representing the sky on the day of the proclamation of independence in Rio de Janeiro, and adding the Positivist dictum Ordem e Progresso.
During the following two decades Teixeira Mendes became active in politics and continued to publish through the Igreja e Apostolado Positivista do Brasil. His writings focused on vaccination, Brazil’s participation in World War I, labor laws, women, animal rights, and the secularization of cemeteries. In 1905, Teixeira Mendes assumed the leadership of the Igreja e Apostolado Positivista but did not abandon his title as vice-director until the death of Lemos in 1917. He died in 1927 and was buried in the São João Batista Cemetery in Rio de Janeiro.
Euclides da Cunha (1866?1909)
Originally a military engineer, Euclides da Cunha left the army to become a civil engineer and later a journalist. As a reporter in 1896?1897, he accompanied the army to Canudos, a village in the backlands of Bahia state, where the messianic Antônio Conselheiro (“the Counselor”) and his followers had established their own “empire.” Five successive government expeditions were required to subdue the rebels, who resisted to the last man. Euclides da Cunha’s most noted work, Os Sertões (Rebellion in the backlands, 1902), is an eyewitness account of the War of Canudos and is considered the first written protest in behalf of the forgotten inhabitants of Brazil’s frontier.
Comte’s Positive Philosophy had an impact on the intellectual and political training of Euclides da Cunha while he was a young military cadet and during the onset of Brazil’s pre-republican period. Nevertheless, his subsequent disappointment with the republican regime and with his professor, the positivist Benjamin Constant, resulted in a final rupture with the members of the movement. In the 1890s, numerous Brazilian intellectuals, political leaders, and other members of the elite traded their positivist ideals for the evolutionist theory of Darwin.
On August 15, 1909, Euclides da Cunha died as a result of a shooting in a personal quarrel in Rio de Janeiro. Every August Brazilians observe a Semana Euclideana (“Euclides Week”) in his honor.
Cândido Mariano de Silva Rondon (1865?1958)
Cândido Mariano de Silva Rondon was born in 1865 in Mimoso, a small village in Mato Grosso. In 1890, he was commissioned as an army engineer with the Telegraphic Commission, and helped build the first telegraph line across the state of Mato Grosso. From 1900 to 1906, Rondon was in charge of laying telegraph line from Brazil to Bolivia and Peru. During this time he opened up new territory, and was in contact with the Bororo tribe of western Brazil.
As a result of Rondon’s competence in constructing telegraph line, he was put in charge of extending the telegraph line from Mato Grosso to the Amazon. In the course of constructing the line, he discovered the Nambikwara tribe and the Juruena River, an important tributary of the Tapajós River in northern Mato Grosso.
While working with the Telegraphic Commission, Rondon joined the Positivist Church in Rio de Janeiro, and remained orthodox in his approach long after the church possessed any real influence in Brazil.
According to the scholar Todd Diacon, Positivism provided a blueprint for national development that Rondon followed in the planning and construction of the telegraph line. It also shaped his ideas about Indian-white relations in Brazil.
In May of 1909, Rondon set out on his longest expedition ? starting from the settlement of Tapirapuã in northern Mato Grosso heading northwest to meet up with the Madeira River, a major tributary of the Amazon River. During their expedition they discovered a large river between the Juruena, and Jiparaná River, which Rondon named the River of Doubt. To reach the Madeira, they built canoes, and reached the Madeira on Christmas Day, 1909.
After the expedition, he became the first director of the Indian Protection Service (Serviço de Proteção ao Índio ? SPI) now known as the Fundação National do Indio ? FUNAI. Given Comte’s belief in the natural evolution of societies, Rondon and the Positivists emphasized the need to protect Indian landholdings in order for this social evolution to take place.
Further Reading
- Robert Nachman’s article, “Positivism, Modernization, and the Middle Class in Brazil,” addresses in detail the role of the Positivist Church of Brazil and the influence of positivism on Brazil’s political and social landscape.
- Stringing Together a Nation, by Todd Diacon, discusses the role of positivist thinkers in the construction of Brazil’s first telegraph, a project intimately linked to the goal of unifying and organizing the entire country.
Sources
- Carvalho, José Murilo de. A formação das almas : o imaginário da república no Brasil. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1998.
- Diacon, Todd A. Stringing together a nation: Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon and the construction of a modern Brazil, 1906?1930. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004. Rockefeller Library.
- Heilbron, Johan. “Auguste Comte and Modern Epistemology,” Sociological Theory 8 (1990): 2, 153?162.
- Hilton, Ronald. “Positivism in Latin America,” Dictionary of the History of Ideas. Volume 3, 539?46.
- Nachman, Robert. “Positivism, Modernization, and the Middle Class in Brazil,” Hispanic American Historical Review 57 (1977) 1: 1?23.
- Renato Luís do Couto Neto e Lemos. “Benjamin Constant: biografia e explicação histórica.” Estudos Históricos. Vol. 10, No. 19 (1997), p. 67?81.
- Zea, Leopoldo. The Latin American Mind. James H. Abbott and Lowell Dunham, trans. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963.
This collection of essays contains entries and historical resources from the Positivist Collection of the John Hay Library at Brown University. In 2006, the Library acquired from Benjamin Moser (class of 1998) a collection of about 250 pamphlets published by the Positivist Church of Brazil. The texts were written primarily by Miguel Lemos and Raimundo Teixeira Mendes, founders of the church. In 2007, the collection was organized into an exhibit by Patricia Figueroa and Rex Neilson, whose work in organizing the collection and providing background information made this page possible.