The governmental reason of Alberto Torres

Abstract

This paper seeks to investigate the work of Alberto Torres focusing the rise of a governmental reason in Brazilian political thought, which is grounded on the logic of prevention and the shaping of a field of possible actions. Michel Foucault’s contribution on governmentality provides a theoretical frame to examine the author ?s understanding of modernization, it argues that the architecture of the State designed in A organização nacional and in O problema nacional brasileiro is inseparable from the making of the “homem novo” as an ethical subject capable of facing the risks of social life, what constitutes a landmark in the tradition of political and social thought. Thus, governmental reason is analyzed on the following aspects: the influence of slavery sociability on the conception of population, based on affection and community interactions; the reform of law and the conditions for the rule of opinion, fostering the government of perceptions; the place of racial politics and territorial settlement in the expansion of the state’s administrative capacity and in the regulation of human agency.