Under the influence of Enlightenment: Jesuit thought and Enlightenment in the letters of Father David Fáy
Abstract
This article discusses how the correspondence of Father David Fáy, written to his Hungarian family of the Jesuit Vice-Province of Maranhão and Grão-Pará in 1753, dialogues with the enlightened thought in vogue in Europe in the mideighteenth century. Further, this article examines Brazil’s image portrayed by the Ignatian in a time when the Enlightenment philosophy inverts the paradisiacal vision of America, forming a new discourse on Man and Nature marked by negativity. Diagnosing in such dispatches the occurrence of an assimilation – though selective and Catholic – of some ideas that typify the Enlightenment enables us to mitigate the attacks made by a traditional approach that attributes to the Company of Jesus a retrograde vision resistant to change, associated with the “medieval Catholic” and “Baroque” tradition.
Key words: XVIII century Jesuit thought, European Enlightenment, Portuguese Amazon.Downloads
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