ABSTRACT
Miguel Reale was one of the most important Brazilian jurists of the 20th century, having produced an important political, legal, and philosophical work. Based on the perspective of intellectual history, this article seeks to establish a connection between these three dimensions in order to reveal the legal and philosophical foundations of a clearly authoritarian and conservative political thinking. We show that the notions of culture, experience, and decision underlie Reale´s authoritarianism and are developed mainly in his legal and philosophical writings. We also argue that Reale´s so-called “integralist work”, which has been widely commented on by historians and political scientists, is not the primordial part of his political reflection. We hypothesize that the jurist evolved from authoritarian corporatism of fascist inspiration in the 1930s to the defense of an authoritarian and anti-liberal political model arising from fascist references and, from the 1950s, supported by important philosophical and legal conceptual devices.
Miguel Reale; Authoritarianism; Experience; Culture, Decisionism