Forgive me Todorov!
I discover only today, who died on February 7 of this year in Paris, Tzvetan Todorov, philosopher and literary critic bulgáro, little known, but not less important for our century.
I have as his strongest phrase, one that made him a prophet of the invasion of Islam in Europe, he said long before the emigration crisis: “We can measure our degree of barbarity or civilization by how we perceive and welcome others, the different . ”
An interview he gave in France (Radio France Culture, 2009), helps to see this prophecy of Todorov: “” I wrote my first book of History of Ideas, which is called ‘We and the Others’. It was a work on the plurality of cultures analyzed from the point of view of the French tradition. I studied authors from Montaigne (…) to Levi-Strauss. I have tried to see how these authors treated this difficult question for us today: the unity of humanity and the plurality of cultures. In this series of authors, I discovered that the ones I felt closest to were the humanists. ”
In Brazil, he gave an interview to the Borders of Thought in 2012, in which he stated: “I realized that, as a historian and essayist, I took advantage of literature more than literature studies, and read novels, poetry, and Different histories than literary analyzes or written theses on literature, which seem to me nowadays to be directed almost exclusively to other specialists in literature. While the novel interests everyone, and I feel closer to everyone than the experts. ”
His most famous books are: The conquest of America: the question of the Other, São Paulo, SP: Martins Fontes, 1982 (pdf), The Man Uprooted. São Paulo: Editora Record, 1999, The Fear of the Barbarians: beyond the clash of civilizations. Petrópolis: Editora Vozes, 2010, The Intimate Enemies of Democracy. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2012, Life in common: essay on general anthropology. São Paulo: Unesp Publishing House, 2014.
Lesser known books, but no less important: I consider a classic the book Theories of the symbol. São Paulo: Editora Unesp, 2014, Symbolism and interpretation. São Paulo: Unesp Publishing, 2014 and Theory of literature: texts of the Russian formalists. São Paulo: Unesp Publishing House, 2013.
He died at age 77, in the city of Paris, was born in march 1st , Sofia, Bulgarian in 1939, though considered within the structuralist chain, without thought transcended it and is one of our important contemporaries to be read.
I share with her the idea that both fascism and Stalinism stem from the idea that we have been giving it powers over citizens, who have difficulty controlling it.
He received in 2008 the Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences, according to the document for representing “the spirit of unity of Europe, East and West, and commitment to the ideals of freedom, equality, integration and justice.”