I said, if not in an act of courage, at least of intellectual honesty, that Nagarjuna’s magnum opus seemed delirious to me. I stopped there. And now, after about two months, I come into contact with this Filosofias da afirmação e da negação (Philosophies of affirmation and negation), by the enormous Mário Ferreira do Santos, who methodically crushes each of Nagarjuna’s lines that I found so strange, and that I did not dare to guess why. Mário, in this work, leaves whoever reads it in the difficult situation of agreeing or being cowardly, if not dishonest. There is no room for neutrality in the face of the demolishing argumentation that demands respectful assent. Nihilism, skepticism, relativism, idealism, evolutionism… come out of the debate devastated, and it is impressive how in this way Mário prepares the soil on which he erects his positive philosophy, giving it the appearance of imperiousness before the intellectual currents in vogue. It is undeniable: Mário Ferreira dos Santos is a phenomenon of the highest category in western thought.
Filosofias da afirmação e da negação, by Mário Ferreira dos Santos
