Entre a tradição clássica e o cientificismo positivista: o século XIX e a construção do pensamento criminológico brasileiro

Abstract

The ideas of Positivist School were received in Brazil by the intellectual elite. The Classical School had a lot of influence on national political and penal thought, impacting the transaction from the political organization to the Republic, the abolition of slavery and the Penal Code. However, the positivist current emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, bringing new criminal ideas, anthropology, sociology and studying no longer crime, as the Classical School did, but the criminal, being considered atavistic and biologically determined to commit crimes. In this sense, the general objective of the work is to understand the Brazilian intellectuals who welcomed this new science and how they translated them into the Brazilian criminological reality. Seeking the construction of national identity and the solution to criminality, based on the new current, they found scientific foundations, listing mainly racial questions, understanding blacks as degenerate, primitive and bringing to light the discussion of how to apply eugenics, in which the crossing race for some intellectuals was an alternative to a possible solution and for others a source of further degeneration. The reflections of the reception of the Positive School theories are still present today. The research is carried out through bibliography, which are books as primary sources, articles, magazines, periodicals of the time and the use of their results is to increase knowledge about the topic, in addition to having a qualitative and exploratory approach.