The world faces in the contemporary era with several crises, economic, political, social and environmental. Every day that goes by, these crises deepen, whether in the national plans, whether on a planetary scale. But the biggest crisis facing humanity today is, without doubt, the intellectual crisis of thought that is the main obstacle to overcome other crises and the construction of a new society and a new world order centered on real economic progress, political, social and environmental. The intellectual crisis of thought of the contemporary era is that makes the world we live in works chaotically like a ship drifting towards disaster.

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INTELLECTUAL CRISIS OF THOUGHT IN CONTEMPORARY ERA AND
HOW TO OVERCOME IT
Fernando Alcoforado *
The world faces in the contemporary era with several crises, economic, political, social
and environmental. Every day that goes by, these crises deepen, whether in the national
plans, whether on a planetary scale. But the biggest crisis facing humanity today is,
without doubt, the intellectual crisis of thought that is the main obstacle to overcome
other crises and the construction of a new society and a new world order centered on
real economic progress, political, social and environmental. The intellectual crisis of
thought of the contemporary era is that makes the world we live in works chaotically
like a ship drifting towards disaster.
The world is going through a difficult period in the contemporary era where everything
is swept away by the speed of change in the economic, political, social, technological
and environmental fields. If, on the one hand, there is optimism about the prospect of
advancing scientific and technological progress, there is also great pessimism on the
loss of values and references of the past and the meaninglessness of life. Although in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the progress of European civilization awaken
enthusiasm, that dream dissipated throughout the twentieth century that it was a time
devastated by wars in unprecedented scale, dictatorships, population explosion, vast
areas of extreme poverty, among other problems, that contributed to it was kept in check
the idea of progress.
In the twentieth century, disappeared utopias such as the building of a better world, a
society without social classes with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and in its place
emerged dystopias as of German sociologist Oswald Spengler with his work Le déclin
of L'Occident (The Decline of the West) (Paris: Gallimand, 1976) saying in the early
twentieth century that the West had long reached its peak and, therefore, only you left
the decline and as Aldous Huxley with his work Admirável mundo novo (Brave New
World) (Rio: Editora Globo de Bolso, 2015) and George Orwell with his work 1984
(São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2009) which envisaged a bleak future for humanity.
This pessimistic climate is not limited to the first half of the twentieth century also
extending to the period after the Second World War. Although in this period there have
been moments of great optimism as during the "glory years" of the 1950s and 1960s
expansion of the world economy that soon tended to dissipate amid the bleak 1970s and
1980s of the world capitalist system currently decline culminated with the global
economic crisis of 2008 and the global escalation of terrorism.
In the contemporary era, reason and science also went into deep crisis with the defeat of
the paradigms of the Enlightenment and Modernity in the second half of the twentieth
century which have been replaced by the new Post-modernity paradigm that, according
to its ideologues, there are no truths. After declaring that all previous systems were
wrong, postmodernism also came to the tragic conclusion that nothing can be known.
Postmodernists do not believe in reason. For postmodernists, even science is only one of
several ways to know the reality, saying nothing about the truth. The postmodern
thought is convergent with the nihilism of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
who in his work, A Vontade de Potência (The Will to Power) (Petrópolis: Editora
Vozes, 2011), said that the solution to the crisis was the reason rejection and return of
the prophets which should, not through reason, but through the determination to found

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new values that would guide the people and raise new civilizations. It must be
remembered that Nietzsche was the great ideologue of Nazism.
Nietzsche saw as inevitable in a relativistic world, tolerance to all the values and ways
of life, for they were all equally valid. This view is convergent with the opinion of many
postmodern authors who sets the Post-modernity as the era of uncertainty, of
fragmentation, of deconstruction, the exchange of values. This new interpretation of
Nietzsche is in the foundations of twentieth-century thought. Thus, the Nietzschean
irrationalism penetrated in contemporary society. Everything suggests that prevailing in
the world today nihilist thought of Friedrich Nietzsche reinforced by the post-modern
paradigm, humanity will move inevitably to economic, political, social and
environmental disaster that could threaten their survival.
The disappearance in the world today of the last of critical rationality reserves
advocated by the Enlightenment and Modernity by which degraded in successive self-
destruction processes over time of the eighteenth century to the present times, paved the
way for the Post-Modernity that is a huge threat to the progress of humanity. It should
be noted that the ideologists of Post-Modernity support the thesis that in the
construction of their future, the world people should be limited to the following
alternatives: 1) capitulation / resignation / conformity with the historic victory of the
neoliberal global capitalism; or, 2) challenge the existing order, but not from an overall
perspective, global leading to the replacement of capitalism, but in a fragmented
perspective of struggles. The practice posture of postmodernism is not to challenge the
capitalist logic as it is indeed. Deliberately, the Post-modernity defends the thesis that it
is impossible to contest a winning system and here to stay, neoliberal capitalism.
From the foregoing, it is a huge challenge for contemporary thinkers establish new
paradigms and new rational behavior amounts to be formulated for human society in the
current era aimed at defeating the nefarious political and ideological influence of Post-
Modernity that, from the political point of view, ideologically supports neoliberalism
and contemporary globalization. There is no other way for the men and women of
thought of the contemporary era but reinvent the Enlightenment adjusted to current
times so it can indicate the paths that humanity will have to walk for the construction of
a better world. Contemporary thinkers need to urgently mobilize the reinvention of the
Enlightenment project as did the thinkers of the eighteenth century for the construction
of a new world order that leads to the cavalry suffered by humanity.
About Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, it is important to note that its
ideologues used the classic science values to forge a new world view, based on equality
of all human beings. We need a new Enlightenment, for the twenty-first century. In the
center of the new thought, must be the protection of all forms of life and the planet. The
only humanly relevant progress is the fact that contributes to the well-being of
everybody that the automation of economic growth are not enough to ensure it. Progress
in this regard should not be seen as a spontaneous technique donation, but an intentional
construction by which mankind decide what should be produced, how and to whom, so
as to avoid the social and ecological costs of savage capitalism. This progress may
depend neither isolated nor business decisions of bureaucratic guidelines of a
centralizing state, but decisions taken by the society itself.
The Enlightenment of the twenty-first century must keep your faith in science that needs
to be controlled socially and that scientific and technological research to abide purposes
and values established on the basis of social consensus, so that it does not become a

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blind force in the service of war and domination. Must assume its most valuable flag
that is of human rights, without ignoring that only profound social and political reform
can ensure their effective realization. Must fight against the illegitimate power, aware
that he could locate not only in the tyrannical state, but also in the society. Must fight
without quarter for freedom and against oppression of any kind and build a new world
order to be able to organize not only the relations between men on Earth, but also their
relationship with nature. Shall draw up a global social contract that provides for
economic and social development and the rational use of resources of nature for the
benefit of all mankind.
*Fernando Alcoforado , member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor of Territorial
Planning and Regional Development from the University of Barcelona, a university professor and
consultant in strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is
the author of Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova
(Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São
Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado.
Universidade de Barcelona, http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e
Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX
e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of
the Economic and Social Development-The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Muller
Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe
Planetária (P&A Gráfica e Editora, Salvador, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e
combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011)
and Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012),
among others.