Religião no contexto da conquista da América Espanhola a partir do pensamento de Bartolomé de Las Casas

Abstract

O presente trabalho tem o objetivo de aprofundar, a partir do pensamento de Bartolomé de Las Casas (1484-1566), como se desenvolveu o processo de crise religiosa no período de cristandade, que se delineia no empreendimento de conquista e evangelização da América Espanhola (1492). Ao final do século XV, e início do século XVI, Portugal e Espanha, veem-se na condição de recolocar a problemática da Salvação em relevância, ou seja, a pergunta que se impõe: os novos povos que vão sendo conhecidos, tem o mesmo direito ao benefício da salvação cristã, tanto quanto os europeus? Portanto, percebe-se em Las Casas a viabilidade da proposta do respeito absoluto às consciências, o seu posicionamento na defesa dos povos indígenas, o debate sobre a escravidão e a busca por uma colonização pacífica. Afinal, vários processos e dinâmicas anteriores a ele, e em seu momento alicerçavam práticas e costumes que indicariam uma nova consciência religiosa. Mesmo que, na perspectiva que Las Casas tenha aderido, fosse uma estruturação mais assimilacionista e utópica. Nesse contexto, a religião tornou-se referência de sentido da expansão colonial, ao ser instrumentalizada como núcleo que possibilitaria a suposta inferioridade das populações conquistadas. O que caracterizará a identificação das práticas religiosas dos povos indígenas e africanos como idolátricas, primitivas e irracionais. O que levará à polêmica entre falsa e verdadeira religião. Expressa na chamada Controvérsia de Valladolid (1550-1551), tendo como pano de fundo as ocorrências da Reforma Protestante, as novas posturas no interno das ordens religiosas, assim, como as religiosidades das novas populações conquistadas, sua resistência e o processo de tolerância religiosa.

The present dissertation aims to analyze the relationship between faith and existence in the opus Fear and Trembling, by the danish thinker Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, present in the Problemata section. Written under the pseudonym Johannes de Silentio, it is a compliment to the faith of the biblical patriarch Abraham, especially that presented in the Scripture account of the proof to which God submitted him: the request that he sacrifice his son Isaac. In order to do so, the contextualization of the author's thinking in Fear and Trembling was first carried out. The identification of relevant events in his biography and the summary of his literary work showed that Kierkegaard called himself a religious author, whose reflection was aimed at understanding existence and the christian being. The Lutheran state church and the Lutheran pietist movement formed the cultural-religious milieu in which the Danish author was formed, both influencing his thinking and composing the background of his reflections in the opus under investigation. Theology, philosophy, ecclesiastical practice, and Christianity of his time were criticized by him. In Fear and Trembling, these were elaborated by arguments referring to the theological-philosophical conceptions of Lutheranism-Pietism, Kant, the liberal theology and Romanticism of Schleiermacher, Hamann and, especially, Hegel. The Problemata, central to Kierkegaard's opus and arguments, is composed of three chapters, which present the ethical problems derived from Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac, titled: "Is there a teleological suspension of the ethical?, "Is there an absolute duty to God?" and "Has it been ethically defensible on the part of Abraham to have kept silent about his purpose before Sarah, Elieser, and Isaac?”. The interpretation of the text allowed the conclusion that, in Fear and Trembling, reason is unable to explain Abraham, for ethics can not justify his attitude. Faith is the category through which the patriarch can be understood, paradoxically related to existence and occurs as a passion, in function of the absurd; part from the resignation before the infinite, in a double movement which returns to the finite to receive Isaac back. The Problemata also presents other categories, associated with the faith of Abraham, among which were identified and analyzed ethics, anxiety, trial, repetition, individuality and subjectivity. The presence of these categories in the patriarch's existence demonstrated a faith that occurs as interiority and is not limited to ethics. In order to obtain a greater breadth in the analysis of faith and the other categories, these were correlated with two other literary productions of Kierkegaard, in which they are present in different conceptual levels, namely, The repetition and The concept of anxiety. As a result, Abraham's faith proved to be a suprarational instance of thought and religious experience, from the phenomenological perspective, of openness to transcendence and belief in divine providence, seeking to overcome the limitations of existence. In addition, the faith presented in Fear and Trembling suggests unfolding of individual religious manifestation today, a "non-religious faith" unrelated to religious dogmas and institutional ecclesiastical authority, lived in the interior as an existential relationship with God.