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This paper, which is divided in four parts, starts by considering the symbolism inherent to the election of the first Afro-American President, a sign of the democratic vitality of the United States & of the exceptionable capacity of its political & constitutional system to welcome social, philosophical & ideological transformations. We will then consider Obama's candidacy, which was able to reconcile modern strategies & a message rooted in the classical American political tradition. The third chapter includes an analysis of the potential implications of Obama's triumph in the American electoral dynamics, followed by a conclusion where we briefly describe the main challenges that his Administration will meet, especially in domestic politics. Adapted from the source document.

Raymond Aron was at once a philosopher of history, following Max Weber's epistemological critique; a critic of ideology, concentrating on totalitarianism, & in defense of liberal democracy; an interpreter on modern society & the history of the 20th century; & an analyst of international relations. The subtleness of his thinking makes him stand apart from other experts associated with the realist tradition in international relations & his intellectual legacy is crucial for our understanding of the complexity of the Post-Cold war world. Adapted from the source document.

In the paper, we will study Olavo de Carvalho's thought, focusing on his position regarding Brazilian and American Black movement in its struggle for reparation in terms of colonialism-slavery-racism. We will argue that his refusal of any reparatory praxis to political-cultural minorities and his position of a non-place for Black-African traditions in the context of Western culture/civilization, as with respect to his defense of the inferiority of Black-African culture-civilization when compared to Jewish-Christian, Greek-Latin and Medieval-Renaissance tradition, is pervaded by a dualist metaphysics with a highly anti-modern and anti-modernizing character, in which the dynamic of streamlining of "human drama about universe and eternity" is constituted (a) by the struggle between natural necessity (Behemont) and individual consciousness (Leviathan), that can only be won by the correlation of divine grace given by Jesus Christ and personal direct and immediate interiorization and intuition by each individual with God; (b) by the refusal of politics, history and intersubjective action as basically materialism and, in this sense, as the sphere of totalitarian political ideologies (to which Enlightnment modernity is the biggest example); and, finally, (d) by the centrality of spiritualism, of intimate and direct relation between God and man, mediated by Revelation, which points to the non-existence, in the Olavo de Carvalho' thought, of objective parameters to rational discussion, interaction and justification - that is the reason of his delegitimation of science, politics, history and macro-structural institutional action, and his appeal to methodological, intuitionist and spiritualist individualism.

The article intends to analyze the process of formation of the national identity of Brazil. A continuous & multifaceted process is verified, as a consequence of the influences & inclusions of many variables -- political, economical, cultural & social -- that have been altered & that are still changing today, because of the time passage & the birth of new ideologies, or even the return or continuation of old ones. Therefore, the process of the development of an identity is presented, that today results on the emphasis of the South-American character of the country. References. Adapted from the source document.

This paper aims to explore the articulation of Marxism, psychoanalysis & political theory in the particular reading of Ernesto Laclau. Consequences in two main areas are analyzed: discourse theory & political philosophy. This author reconfigures the conceptual basis of hegemony & ideology from an original position close to the Althusserian tradition (by means of deconstruction, Foucauldian archaeology & Lacanian Psychoanalysis) to a standpoint that he himself has described as post Marxist. In that frame, his conception of discourse makes a claim for a renewal of the concept of hegemony, giving up the Marxist topic of base & superstructure. Adapted from the source document.