Florestan Fernandes: sociólogo e socialista

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to summarize Florestan Fernandes' life and work trajectory, emphasizing his dimensions as a sociologist and a socialist, revisiting his writings, his contributions to Brazilian sociology, his political and publicist militancy, his human integrity, and his tireless struggle for liberation of the oppressed and less equal and for the construction of socialism in Brazil and beyond. And we do this by (re)visiting a good part of his extensive work and of a group of renowned authors who have studied his bibliography and interacted with Florestan. The conclusions we have come to allowed us not only to describe the links between the sociologist and the socialist throughout his life and in part of his work, but also to note his unquestionable integrity and morality, his coherence and intellectual seriousness. Finally, what motivates me at this moment is both to pay homage to the greatest Brazilian social scientist in his birth centenary year and to instigate, by the example of his critical and militant sociology, that collectively we can respond to and face, in theory and in praxis, all the dilemmas that appear to us contemporaneously.