João Cruz Costa
His intellectual work addressed different knowledge areas, especially about the development of philosophy in Brazil, "aiming to establish connections between thinking and the country's social, political and economic reality throughout its history.
[2] Born in 1904, São Paulo, Brazil; son of a Portuguese father and mother that descended from Italians, João da Cruz Costa wanted to become a doctor.
His interest on medicine probably came from the fact that his father, José da Cruz Costa, died young in 1922, 49 years old, by the crisis derived from syphilis, which had first shown its setbacks since 1920.
In 1958, he faced the outrages of the then Governor of São Paulo, Jânio Quadros: in January of that same year, Professor Cruz Costa received a reprimand for having granted an interview to Diários Associados (Brazilian newspaper), in which he had stated that the governor words were frivolous when he made reference to the then Director of FFLC Eurípedes Simões de Paula.
[7] Cruz Costa was forced to defend himself and brought the case to the STF (Brazilian Supreme Court), which granted his request on September 3, 1958,[8] canceling his punishment .
In January 1959, Jânio Quadros accepted the decision and the Professor Cruz Costa ironically commented in Folha da Manhã: "It was always the habit of the governor to be brief, as it can be asserted by his famous notes.
"[9] On January 20, 1964, Professor Cruz Costa was obliged to testify at DOPS (Department of Order and Social Politics in Portuguese, an official governmental office to control and investigate social movements) about a manifesto supporting the registration of the Brazilian Communist Party, created in September 1961, and allegedly signed by several intellectuals, among them Cruz Costa, Caio Prado Jr., Florestan Fernandes, student leaders, lawyers, trade unionists, among others.
In any case, he believes that it would be more beneficial the Communist Party to be legally accepted than being on the underground, as happens in Italy, France, England and other truly democratic countries.
The military regime established police-military investigations (IPM, acronym in Portuguese) accusing USP students, teachers and employees, which had begun at the second semester of that year, without sparing Professor Cruz Costa:At the Faculty of Philosophy, IPM was installed in a climate of great hostility by students and teachers.
During the investigation, Professor Florestan was arrested because of a letter of protest that he handed to the colonel responsible and which was only a defense of the dignity of being a teacher.
In his book, Cruz Costa defended a critic and more Brazilian-oriented thinking, not necessarily rejecting foreign authors (European and American) or uncritically accepting them.
