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Draft:José Chasin

José Chasin (São Paulo, January 6, 1937 – Belo Horizonte, December 31, 1998) was a Brazilian philosopher, essayist, and professor of Ashkenazi Jewish descent.[1] He was noted for his ontological research into the thought of Karl Marx[2]; his reflections on Brazilian historical, economic, and social reality[3]; and for formulating the theory of the "colonial way" (via colonial) regarding the objectification of capital in Brazil.[4]

He was part of the group of intellectuals led by Caio Prado Júnior, which formed around the Revista Brasiliense.[1] Chasin served as vice-president of the Campaign for the Defense of the Public School (alongside Florestan Fernandes as president), founded Editora Senzala, and co-founded the journal Temas de Ciências Humanas alongside Nelson Werneck Sodré.[1] Throughout his academic career, he taught at the School of Sociology and Politics of São Paulo, the Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique, the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB), and the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG).[1]

Biography

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Chasin was born into a poor Ashkenazi Jewish family in the Mooca neighborhood of São Paulo,[1] to parents who had immigrated to Brazil in the first decades of the 20th century. His father, Nochun (Nelson) Chasin, was from Poland, and his mother, Pepi Chasin, was from Romania.[1] His first language was Yiddish, which was spoken at home, and he learned Portuguese later in childhood. During his youth, he suffered from juvenile rheumatism, which forced him to remain bedridden for about a year.[1] This period of convalescence was crucial for his intellectual development, as he dedicated himself intensely to reading classics of world literature by Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Honoré de Balzac.[1]

He joined the Center for Preparation of Reserve Officers (CPOR), becoming a reserve lieutenant, while studying social sciences and philosophy at the University of São Paulo (USP), which he entered in 1959.[1] During his college years, he befriended Vladimir Herzog,[1] Maurício Tragtenberg, Bento Prado Jr., Flávio Rangel, Leôncio Martins Rodrigues, and Antunes Filho, with whom he frequently met at the Mário de Andrade Library.[1] He graduated in 1962, writing his final undergraduate thesis on the sociologist Karl Mannheim.[5]

His academic career was interrupted by the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état, which prevented him from immediately taking up teaching positions.[1] Chasin defended his doctoral thesis, titled O Integralismo de Plínio Salgado: forma de regressividade do capitalismo híper-tardio [Plínio Salgado's Integralism: A Form of Regressivity in Hyper-Late Capitalism], only in 1977 at the School of Sociology and Politics of São Paulo (ESP), under the supervision of Maurício Tragtenberg.[1] The work was considered a theoretical milestone in studies on ideology in Brazil by demonstrating, through immanent analysis, that Brazilian integralism was not a mere copy of European fascism, but a phenomenon with its own regressive logic.[1] From early on, Chasin expressed a desire to work as a high school philosophy teacher and writer, a project hindered by the 1968 educational reform, which removed the discipline from the secondary school curriculum.[6][7]

Chasin's trajectory was marked by his opposition to Stalinism and his pursuit of a "revolutionary lucidity."[1] He joined the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) because it was the only available space for political activism at the time, but broke with the party in 1963 due to theoretical and tactical differences, particularly regarding the diagnosis of Brazil's agrarian reality.[1]

Blacklisted from academia by the military dictatorship, he worked for 15 years as an advertising copywriter for the pharmaceutical company Ciba-Geigy, where he introduced innovations such as the blister pack for the medicine Cibalena.[1] During this period, he funded his own studies and founded major publishing projects: Editora Senzala (1966–1968), which published fundamental works, including the first book by György Lukács to be translated in Brazil, Existentialism or Marxism; the journal Temas de Ciências Humanas (1977–1981), a publication that brought together exiled Marxists and introduced debates on Eurocommunism and the crisis of real socialism; and Movimento Ensaio, a project launched in the 1980s aimed at training cadres and disseminating Marxian ontology.[1]

Between the late 1970s and early 1980s, Chasin spent 22 months in exile in Mozambique.[1] There, he taught at Eduardo Mondlane University and collaborated with the post-independence FRELIMO government. However, he returned to Brazil after concluding that a transition to socialism based on the Soviet model was unfeasible in a tribal-based society, a phenomenon he termed a "self-perpetuating transition."[1]

He taught at the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB) between the early 1980s and 1986, where he established the postgraduate program in philosophy.[1]

Chasin's work centers on reclaiming the ontological status of Marx's thought, distinguishing it from purely epistemological or politicist interpretations.[1] Some of his major research was compiled in the book A determinação ontonegativa da politicidade [The Ontonegative Determination of Politicity], published by Ad Hominem.[1] His core concepts include: "Via Colonial" [Colonial Way] (a theory explaining the development of capitalism in Brazil as a modernization process that preserves autocratic and exclusionary traits); "politicism" (a critique of the left's tendency to prioritize the political sphere over the analysis of the economic base and the world of labor); and "analítica paulista" [São Paulo analytics] (a critique of the sociological production at USP for its typologizing nature and its abandonment of class categories in favor of concepts such as "elite" and "mass").[1]

In his final years, in 1996, he transferred to the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), where he taught in the philosophy department and founded the Marxology Research Group.[8] José Chasin passed away in 1998, leaving behind an unfinished project to reconstruct ontology throughout the history of philosophy.[1]

Selected works

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  • Chasin, J. (2000). O Integralismo de Plínio Salgado: forma de regressividade do capitalismo híper-tardio [Plínio Salgado's Integralism: A Form of Regressivity in Hyper-Late Capitalism] (in Portuguese) (2nd ed.). Santo André: Estudos e Edições Ad Hominem.
  • Chasin, J. (2000). A Miséria Brasileira [The Brazilian Misery] (in Portuguese). Santo André: Ad Hominem.
  • Chasin, J. (1962). "Contribuição para a Análise da Vanguarda Política no Campo" [Contribution to the Analysis of the Political Vanguard in the Countryside]. Revista Brasiliense (in Portuguese) (44). São Paulo.
  • Chasin, J. (1980). "As Máquinas Param: Germina a Democracia!" [The Machines Stop: Democracy Germinates!]. Revista Escrita/Ensaio (in Portuguese). 4 (7). São Paulo.
  • Chasin, J. (1989). "A Sucessão na Crise e a Crise na Esquerda" [The Succession in Crisis and the Crisis in the Left]. Revista Ensaio (in Portuguese) (18/19).

References

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  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Sartório, Lúcia Ap. Valadares; Assunção, Vânia Noeli Ferreira de (2008). "A trajetória de J. Chasin: teoria e prática a serviço da revolução social (Entrevista com Antonio Rago Filho e Ester Vaisman)" [The trajectory of J. Chasin: theory and practice in the service of social revolution (Interview with Antonio Rago Filho and Ester Vaisman)]. Verinotio – Revista on-line de educação e ciências humanas (in Portuguese). 5 (9). ISSN 1981-061X. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |note= ignored (help)
  2. ↑ Sousa, Jamerson Murillo Anunciação de (2012). Ontologia e política no pensamento de José Chasin [Ontology and politics in José Chasin's thought] (PhD) (in Portuguese). Recife: Universidade Federal de Pernambuco.
  3. ↑ Paula, João Antônio de (2008). "A vertente crítica do pensamento econômico brasileiro: de meados dos anos 1950 a meados dos anos 1970" [The critical strand of Brazilian economic thought: from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s]. Nova Economia (in Portuguese). 18 (3). Belo Horizonte: 343–368.
  4. ↑ Alves, Antonio José Lopes (2003). A determinação reflexiva da particularidade nacional: a miséria brasileira na crítica de J. Chasin [The reflexive determination of national particularity: Brazilian misery in J. Chasin's critique] (Master's) (in Portuguese). Belo Horizonte: Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG).
  5. ↑ Souza, Jamerson Murillo Anunciação de (2013). "A crítica de José Chasin à sociologia do conhecimento de Karl Mannheim" [José Chasin's critique of Karl Mannheim's sociology of knowledge]. Serviço Social & Sociedade (in Portuguese) (116). São Paulo: 696–720.
  6. ↑ Vaisman, Ester (2002). "José Chasin e a Filosofia no Brasil" [José Chasin and Philosophy in Brazil]. Kriterion: Revista de Filosofia (in Portuguese). 43 (105). Belo Horizonte: 101–118.
  7. ↑ Chasin, J. (2020). "Filosofia no Brasil e aprendizagem philosophical" [Philosophy in Brazil and philosophical learning]. Verinotio – Revista on-line de educação e ciências humanas (in Portuguese). 13 (2).
  8. ↑ Cotrim, Lívia C. A.; Rago Filho, Antonio (1999). "Em memória de José Chasin: luta pela autenticidade humana" [In memory of José Chasin: struggle for human authenticity]. Crítica Marxista (in Portuguese). 1 (8). São Paulo: 173–179.
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