Olavo de Carvalho, b. 1947, is a Brazilian philosopher and writer who is currently living in the United States after having taught political philosophy at the Catholic University of Paraná, Brazil, from 2001 to 2005. The author of a dozen books on philosophical and political matters, he is a respected weekly columnist with a wide following in his native Brazil and an increasingly popular public speaker in this country. He has spoken at the Hudson Institute, the Atlas Foundation, and the America’s Future Foundation, and has been honored by critics as one of the most original and daring Brazilian thinkers.

The keynote of his work is the defense of man’s innermost consciousness against the tyranny of collective authority—especially when such tyranny is based upon a “scientific” ideology. To Olavo de Carvalho the objectivity of knowledge and individual consciousness are joined together by an undissolvable link, of which one loses sight when the criteria for validation of knowledge are reduced to an impersonal and uniform set of formulae designed to be used by the academic class.