Abstract
The article reconstructs the intellectual dialogue of the critic and diplomat José Guilherme Merquior with Brazilian Marxists, some of whom belong to a common intellectual generation and share the same structure of sociability. Here are highlighted the harsh controversies in the pages of the Brazilian press and the exchange of ideas in the journal Presença in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It is argued that Merquior’s dialogue with Marxism was mainly a critical conversation, not always explicit, with his friends Leandro Konder and Carlos Nelson Coutinho. With them, Merquior had a common intellectual ground, philosophically characterized by the criticism of irrationalism and dogmatism and, politically, by the defense of democracy.
Keywords:
Irrationalism; Democracy; Liberalism; Marxism; José Guilherme Merquior