Sedas Nunes: interpreter of Portugal, self-interpreter

Abstract

The essay intends to appraise the role performed by Adérito Sedas Nunes in the making of the Portuguese social sciences, prior to 1974. Such a role was instituted by a double interpretive effort, enacted by Sedas Nunes: an interpretation of the Portuguese society and a self-interpretation, as author and actor. In the former aspect – interpreter of Portugal – a distinctive line of demarcation was drawn, between the corporatist perspective – both in its institutional framework and its set of beliefs – and the disclosure of the social realm as a factual and complex domain, to be revealed. The latter aspect – self-interpretation – reveals the persona of someone possessed by a vocation – by the intransitive taste of being active in the process of scientific making.