Contemporary thinkers need to mobilize themselves urgently in the reinvention of the Enlightenment project as did eighteenth-century thinkers who faced the despotism of European monarchies in order to build a new world that brings to an end the Calvary suffered by mankind.

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THE INTELLECTUALS AND ITS ROLE IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF A
WORLD OF PROGRESS FOR HUMANITY
Fernando Alcoforado *
They are considered intellectuals who dedicate themselves to letters, to the arts, to
philosophy and to the sciences in general. When a person is said to be intellectual, it
means to say that he is of great culture, produces literary and artistic works, as well as
studies and makes reflections on philosophical and scientific ideas, which cover the
most varied subjects relevant to society. An intellectual is, in short, a person who
performs an activity of a mental nature related to the intellect and intelligence aiming at
the production of literary and artistic works in general and of philosophical and
scientific thoughts in general. Throughout the history of humanity, there have always
been intellectuals who produced their works to satisfy their own ego or the interests of
Maecenas who paid them for their execution, especially in the field of plastic arts. There
were intellectuals who produced their works to describe or portray the world they lived
through, for example, novels, paintings, sculptures, music, plays and films, but there
were also intellectuals who produced their works to transform the world in which they
lived. There were also conservative intellectuals who, as thinkers, produced their works
aimed at maintaining the status quo and other revolutionary thinkers who brought light
to offer answers to the problems of society in order to promote the progress of humanity
as occurred from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century with the advent of the Cultural
Renaissance, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century with the Scientific Revolution
and in the eighteenth century with the Enlightenment.
Cultural Renaissance is called the intellectual renewal movement in Europe between the
middle of the fourteenth century and the end of the sixteenth century. At the beginning
of the fourteenth century, numerous factors combined and articulated created the
conditions for the beginning of the Cultural Renaissance. The commercial revolution,
urbanization and the improvement of the press generated the Cultural Renaissance. On
the economic front, the commercial revolution reactivated the cultural exchange
between West and East, becoming the main factor of the Cultural Renaissance. With the
urbanization process the conditions were created for the emergence of a new culture
with the cities acting as radiating pole of the Cultural Renaissance. The social and
economic rise of the bourgeoisie was also fundamental to provide support and financing
for the development of the new culture. On the intellectual plane, it was important to
improve the press, an invention attributed to Gutenberg in the sixteenth century, that is,
at the end of the Cultural Renaissance, which contributed to disseminate knowledge
throughout society.
The new culture generated by the Cultural Renaissance came first in Italy. There, the
general conditions for the beginning of the Cultural Renaissance were clearly present.
Italian cities monopolized the spice trade with the East, stimulating an effervescent
cultural exchange through contacts with the Byzantine and Saracen civilizations.
Venice, Pisa, Genoa, Florence and Rome were cities that dominated commerce in the
Mediterranean. In these cities, there was a dynamic bourgeoisie that encouraged cultural
transformations. In addition, classical culture in Italy was better preserved than in the
rest of Western Europe. Thus, in the fourteenth century, Italy was the region where the
Cultural Renaissance began.
The Cultural Renaissance should not be considered limited to Arts and Sciences, but
rather as a change in the ways of feeling, thinking and acting in relation to the patterns

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of thought and behavior in the Middle Ages. All these transformations brought about
changes in the way of thinking of many people, especially the rich ones who lived in the
big cities. In this context, movements of an intellectual, scientific and artistic character
were developed, which presented as main characteristics Humanism and the Cultural
Renaissance from the 14th to the 16th century and the Scientific Revolution from the
16th to the 18th centuries.
Humanism was a movement of intellectuals that arose in Italy in the fourteenth century
and was commonly interpreted as synonymous with anthropocentrism or appreciation of
the human being. To the humanists, man was the measure of all things and was at the
center of the Universe. Thus they regarded man not only as a creature of God, but
endowed with reason, and author of great achievements. Inspired by humanism, Italian
artists like Leonardo da Vinci, Rafael Sanzio, Giordano Bruno and Michelangelo,
among others, were protagonists of a cultural movement known as Cultural
Renaissance. Others intellectuals great philosophers of the Cultural Renaissance like
Francesco Petrarca, Giovanni Boccaccio, Nicholas of Cusa, Lorenzo Valla, Marsilio
Ficino, Pietro Pomponazzi, Paolo Ricci, Pico della Mirandola, Desiderius Erasmus
(Erasmus of Rotterdam), Copernicus, Thomas More, Francisco de Vitória , Niccolo
Machiavelli, Ulrico Zuínglio, Juan Luis Vives and William Tyndale, among others,
were also protagonists of the Cultural Renaissance.
Other great protagonists of the Cultural Renaissance were: 1) Michel de Montaigne who
analyzed the institutions, opinions and customs of the time; 2) André Vesalius who is
considered the "father of modern anatomy"; 3) Sandro Botticelli who was a famous
Italian painter of the Florentine School who produced frescoes for the Sistine Chapel; 4)
Miguel de Cervantes who was a novelist, playwright and Spanish poet who with Don
Quixote de la Mancha, a satire on the romances of chivalry, became the precursor of
realism in Spain; 5) William Shakespeare who was an English poet and playwright,
regarded as the greatest writer of the English language and the most influential
playwright in the world; 6) Erasmus of Rotterdam who was a theologian and a Dutch
humanist (now Holland) who in his time was one of the greatest critics of the Roman
Catholic dogma and the immorality of the clergy while also attacking the Protestant
movement of Luther, besides having authored Praise of Madness; 7) Michelangelo
Buonarroti, a painter, sculptor, poet and Italian architect, considered one of the greatest
creators of Western art history, was considered the greatest artist of his time; 8)
Leonardo da Vinci, described as the archetype of Renaissance man, considered one of
the greatest painters of all time, an Italian polymath who stood out as a scientist,
mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, poet
and musician; and, 9) Niccolo Machiavelli who was an Italian historian, poet, diplomat
and musician, is recognized as the founder of thought and of the modern political
science.
Humanism and the Cultural Renaissance also influenced great intellectuals scientists
and researchers of the time who started the so-called Scientific Revolution. This
movement came about by questioning the dominant retrograde knowledge imposed by
the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages considered the Dark Ages. The scientists,
valuing reason, presented a critical attitude that made them observe natural phenomena,
perform experiments, formulate hypotheses and seek their proof. Several scientists were
great architects of the Scientific Revolution like Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler,
Francis Bacon, René Descartes and Isaac Newton, among others. Thanks to the
intellectuals scientists strugglers by the progress of mankind, the Scientific Revolution

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have changed the world forever, developing a new mentality, critical, rational, and
active in the face of the passivity and traditionalism of the Middle Ages. From that
moment, the transformations in the world would begin to accelerate and the economic,
political and social structures to undergo strong shaking.
In the seventeenth century came the work of René Descartes that influenced most of the
thinkers of the following centuries. Immanuel Kant classified thinkers into two schools:
rationalists and empiricists. Rationalism is the doctrine that places total and exclusive
trust in human reason as an instrument capable of knowing the truth. Empiricism holds
that all our ideas come from our sensory perceptions (sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell).
The three main rationalists were René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz.
Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes were precursors of empiricism. After them came the
empiricists John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume.
Humanism, the Cultural Renaissance, and the Scientific Revolution preceded, for some
authors, the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was a current of thought that was born
in eighteenth-century Europe. The Enlightenment philosophers defended the
predominance of reason over faith and believed that progress and happiness would be
the path laid for mankind. The Enlightenment philosophers defended the freedom of
expression of citizens, religious freedom, believed that everyone is equal before the law
and that everyone has the right to defense against the abuse of the authorities.
The four main precursors of the Enlightenment were Descartes, Bacon, Locke, and
Newton. René Descartes was considered the father of modern rationalism and his main
work was the Discourse of Method. In this work, he adopted systematic doubt as a
means to find the truth. According to Descartes, we should doubt everything, that is,
doubt would be the premise of things. For this Enlightenment, the doubt would end
through scientific proof. The second thinker, also a forerunner of the Enlightenment,
was the Englishman Francis Bacon, considered the revolutionary of scientific method,
who was responsible for creating scientific experimentation, in which scientific truth
must be proved by experience and practice. The Englishman John Locke was
considered the third vehement critic of the political theory of the divine power of the
kings. Locke formulated the political theory that the ruler should respect natural rights
and not exceed the limits of the representatives who chose him. He was also one of the
founders of the parliamentary monarchy. The fourth precursor of Enlightenment thought
was Isaac Newton. For this enlightened thinker, natural phenomena are governed by
natural laws. He formulated the law of gravity and he is considered the father of Modern
Physics.
The four Enlightenment thinkers described above were of fundamental importance to
the changing mentality of European society. From the ideas of the Enlightenment,
French thinkers such as Rousseau, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot and D'Alembert
deepened and spread the current of Enlightenment thought throughout the world,
directly influencing the French Revolution, a break with the society of the Old Regime,
monarchical Absolutism. The main characteristic of Enlightenment ideas was the
rational explanation for all questions that involved society.
In his theories, some Enlightenment intellectual thinkers, such as philosophers and
jurists, were concerned with political, social, and religious questions, while others, like
economists, sought a way to increase the wealth of nations. In general, these thinkers

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advocated freedom, justice, social equality and national states with a division of powers
and representative governments. They believed that these elements were essential for a
more balanced society and for man's happiness. The leading Enlightenment thinkers in
the field of social liberalism were Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rosseau. And in the field
of economic liberalism: Quesnay and Smith.
The Enlightenment was seen by intellectuals as a movement that illuminated the human
capacity to criticize and aim for a better world. The roots of the Enlightenment lie in the
Cultural Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution. It can be said that the
Enlightenment was to a certain extent a continuation of the Cultural Renaissance and
the Scientific Revolution. The Enlightenment reverberated throughout the world. Before
even influencing the forthcoming French Revolution, it had influence over the
American Revolution, which resulted in the formation of the United States. The
Enlightenment intellectuals dreamed of a perfect world ruled by the principles of
reason, without wars and without social injustice, where all people could freely express
their thinking.
The ideas of the Enlightenment were based on rationalism, that is, the primacy of
human reason as the source of knowledge. In the eighteenth century, several
intellectuals began to mobilize around the defense of ideas that guided the renewal of
practices and institutions in force throughout Europe. Considering philosophical
questions that thought about the condition and happiness of man, the Enlightenment
movement systematically attacked everything that was considered contrary to the
pursuit of happiness, justice and social equality. The Enlightenment was a global,
philosophical, political, social, economic and cultural movement that advocated the use
of reason as the best way to achieve freedom, autonomy and political emancipation. The
Enlightenment was the great Intellectual Revolution in the history of mankind. The
eighteenth century saw several revolutions: the Industrial Revolution, the French
Revolution and the Intellectual Revolution promoted by the Enlightenment intellectuals.
The Enlightenment was characterized by the intense productivity of intellectuals (artists,
men of science and philosophers), and collaborated decisively to change mankind's
ways of thinking, feeling and acting. The elites, more and more, believed in reason,
defined as the ability to understand the world through systematic reasoning. This new
way of thinking, based on inductive and deductive knowledge and the use of controlled
experience, should illuminate human actions and replace the world's religious
explanations. With the Enlightenment one begins to have an optimistic view of the
world that could not interrupt its progress insofar as man had the full use of his
rationality. Natural rights, respect for diversity of ideas and social justice should
promote the improvement of the human condition. Offering these ideas, the
Enlightenment motivated the bourgeois revolutions in France and throughout the world
in the eighteenth century that brought the end of monarchical Absolutism and the
installation of liberal doctrines that prevail until today in the world.
The political theses of the Enlightenment failed since the American Revolution (1776)
and the French Revolution (1789) because its promises of conquest of freedom,
equality, brotherhood and human happiness were not fulfilled. This failure paved the
way for the advent of Marxist ideology throughout the world, which proposed to take a
step forward in relation to the Enlightenment, seeking the end of the exploitation of man
by man with the elimination of economic inequalities between social classes and, in the

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future, its complete abolition with the implantation of socialism and communism. The
facts of history demonstrate that the Enlightenment theses that guided the bourgeois
revolutions in the eighteenth century and the Marxist theses on which the socialist
revolutions of the twentieth century were held failed to fulfill their historical promises
to conquer human happiness.
Since the twentieth century, we have been living in a single catastrophe, as Walter
Benjamin, an essayist, literary critic, translator, philosopher and German Jewish
sociologist, associated with the Frankfurt School, affirmed that hell is not what will
arrive, but it is this life here and now [THIELEN, Helmut. Além da modernidade para a
globalização de uma esperança conscientizada (Beyond Modernity for the
Globalization of a Conscientious Hope). Petrópolis: Vozes, 1998]. We are living an era
whose main characteristic is the deepening of barbarism: 2 world wars (1914-1918 and
1939-1945) with 187 million deaths; a third world war (the Cold War) with at least 200
wars and 20 million deaths from 1945 to 1989 and the proliferation of conflicts in all
quarters of the Earth between the great powers in the struggle for global dominance and
the escalation of terrorism in the contemporary era.
In addition to the conflicts between the major powers and the escalation of terrorism, we
are living in the present era of another barbarism that is the permanent war against
nature that contributes to its destruction, global warming and consequent catastrophic
climate change on the planet that can threaten the own survival of humanity. Graeme
Maxton states that humanity is moving backwards because it is destroying rather than
building. In each year, the world economy grows approximately US$ 1.5 trillion. But
every year, humanity devastates the planet at a cost of US$ 4.5 trillion. Humanity is
generating greater losses than the wealth it creates. Maxton states that mankind
experienced rapid economic growth but also created an unstable world. According to
Maxton, in many countries, for the first time in centuries, we are faced with declining
life expectancy and the prospect of declining food production and water supply, as well
as the depletion of the planet's natural resources (MAXTON, Graeme: The End of
Progress - How modern economics has failed us. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons,
2011).
We also live in an era of barbarism where social inequality has reached alarming levels
and technological unemployment threatens workers around the world. Thomas Piketty
has shown in his book Capital in the twenty-first century that there has been continuous
growth in wealth inequality since the 1970s, contrary to the trend of the previous 60
years and much more pronounced and socially relevant than rent inequality. From 1970
to 2010, the richest 1% (dominant classes) held half of the world's wealth, while the
poorest 50% (popular classes) had a mere 5%. The number of billionaires, according to
Piketty, increased from 1,011 with a total wealth of 3.6 trillion in 1970 to 1,826 with an
aggregate value of 7.05 trillion in 2010. In 2010, this group had practically the same as
the poorest half of humanity. Five years later, he owns more than triple (PIKETTY,
Thomas. Capital in the twenty-first century. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 2014). In addition, Martin Ford asserts that there is a threat of
deepening global mass unemployment as 47% of current jobs are at high risk of
automation in the coming years and decades and another 19% at medium risk (FORD,
Martin. Rise of the robots. New York: Basic Books, 2015).

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The barbarism that is registered today throughout the world is the product of the crisis
of modernity and the eclipse of Reason, in the midst of the terminal crisis of capitalism
that is approaching, when the myth of Progress dies. It should be emphasized that
modernity is the set of transformations that begins from the sixteenth century and
extends until the eighteenth century, involving social, cultural and scientific aspects
(The Humanism, the Cultural Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution), political (the
emergence of Absolutist National States) and economic (Commercial Capitalism).
Modernity has as its characteristics the belief in the comprehension of totality, the
conception of history as emancipation, man as dominator of nature and thought
according to the categories of unity and totality. In fact, for both Descartes and Bacon,
nothing should oppose the exercise of rationality to the realization of human happiness,
since in the very sense of the rational organization of knowledge the objective of human
well-being in all aspects would already be included.
The project of modernity based on Reason failed because the history of modernity
showed the incompatibility between the two parts of the Enlightenment project: the
autonomy of Reason and the conquest of happiness. Today, some claim that Reason
becomes unnecessary. The attempt to destroy Reason is fairly recent. This is how the
project of postmodernity came into being as an antithesis to the project of modernity, as
a characteristic of post-industrial society, marked by the crisis of reason, loss of
confidence in technical and scientific progress, disbelief in metanarratives and all
totalizing discourse . Such transformations have been observed since the 1950s and
predominantly since the 1990s with the advent of neoliberal capitalism. The French
philosopher Jean-François Lyotard defined the postmodern project as "unbelief over
metanarratives". An example of a metanarrative is Enlightenment philosophy, which
believed that reason and its products - scientific progress and technology - would lead
man to happiness, emancipating mankind from the dogmas, myths, and superstitions of
primitive peoples [LYOTARD. Jean-François. A condição pós-moderna (The
postmodern condition). São Paulo: José Olympio, 2002].
In the postmodern project, absolute truth has collapsed because there are many truths
and it is not possible to impose a single discourse. The postmodern project approaches
the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche who states that "the only truth that exists is that there
is no truth". Today we live in a world where the postmodern project and, economically,
the religion of market capitalism are almost unchallenged. The great value that imposes
itself is money. The maxim adopted in all quarters of the Earth is: "each one for himself
and God for no one". If humanity loses sight of the project of individual and collective
autonomy, abandon its critical capacity for resistance and fail to fight for the
emancipation (intellectual, spiritual and affective) of the human being, will be at the
mercy of the domination exercised by the neoliberal capitalism that has been assuming
the physiognomy of true totalitarianism. We are living nowadays the decline of the
myth of Progress and the emergence of modern totalitarianism. This is the pitiful picture
in which the world lives. Intellectuals committed to the progress of humanity need to
rescue the project of modernity in its foundations.
It is an immense challenge for contemporary progress-loving intellectuals to establish
new paradigms and new values of rational behavior to be formulated for human society
in the present era in order to defeat the nefarious political and ideological influence of
postmodernity which, political view, ideologically supports neoliberal capitalism and
contemporary globalization. Contemporary thinkers need to mobilize themselves

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urgently in the reinvention of the Enlightenment project as did eighteenth-century
thinkers who faced the despotism of European monarchies in order to build a new world
that brings to an end the Calvary suffered by mankind.
Just as in the eighteenth century, when several intellectuals began to mobilize around
the defense of ideas that guided the renewal of practices and institutions in force at the
time, contemporary intellectuals must reinvent the Enlightenment to systematically
attack everything that is considered contrary to pursuit of happiness, justice and social
equality. The Enlightenment of the twenty-first century must maintain its faith in
science that must be socially controlled so that it does not become a blind force in the
service of war and economic domination. The Enlightenment of the twenty-first century
must take as its most valuable banner the doctrine of human rights, without ignoring
that in most countries of the world only profound economic, social and political reforms
can ensure its effective fruition. It must combat illegitimate power. It must fight without
quarter for freedom and against oppression of any kind. It must build a new world order
that is capable of ending wars and terrorism and providing social welfare for all human
beings. It must draw up a planetary social contract that enables economic and social
development and the rational use of natural resources for the benefit of all mankind.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 78, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in
Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and
consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy
systems, is the author of 13 books addressing issues such as Globalization and Development, Brazilian
Economy, Global Warming and Climate Change, The Factors that Condition Economic and Social
Development, Energy in the world and The Great Scientific, Economic, and Social Revolutions that
Changed the World.