José Guilherme Merquior (April 22, 1941 – January 7, 1991) was a Brazilian diplomat, academic, writer, literary critic and philosopher. Biography He was a prolific writer, and member of the Academia Brasileira de Letras (the Brazilian Academy of Letters). He had a doctorate in sociology from the London School of Economics, which was directed by Ernest Gellner. Merquior also studied under Claude Lévi-Strauss (whose ideas Merquior would largely repudiate in From Prague to Paris), and took guidance from the likes of Raymond Aron, Harry Levin, and Arnaldo Momigliano. He published books written directly in French, English, Italian, and his native Portuguese. Merquior divided his published works in two segments. In one the bulk was criticism per se; in the other the emphasis was the history of ideas, or more specific investigations like the highly esteemed study of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Max Weber. Two of his books, Foucault (1985), an often scathing critique of Michel Foucault for the Fontana Modern Masters series, and Western Marxism (1986), were described as "minor classics" by Catholic scholar (and later, white nationalist) Gregory R. Johnson. Merquior was a major supporter of the Fernando Collor de Mello government and wrote many of Collor's public speeches. He died of cancer in January 1991, before Collor's downfall in 1992. Books Published in Portuguese 1963: Poesia do Brasil, (antologia com Manuel Bandeira) 1965: Razão do Poema 1969: Arte e Sociedade em Marcuse, Adorno e Benjamin 1972: A astúcia da mímese 1972: Saudades do Carnaval 1974: Formalismo e tradição moderna 1975: O estruturalismo dos pobres e outras questões 1975: A estética de Lévi-Strauss 1976: Verso e universo de Drummond 1977: De Anchieta a Euclides 1980: O fantasma romântico e outros ensaios 1981: As idéias e as formas 1982: A natureza do processo 1983: O argumento liberal 1983: O elixir do Apocalipse 1985: Michel Foucault ou O niilismo da cátedra 1987: O marxismo ocidental 1990: Crítica 1990: Rousseau e Weber: dois estudos sobre a teoria da legitimidade 1991: De Praga a Paris: uma crítica do estruturalismo e do pensamento pós-estruturalista 1991: O liberalismo, antigo e moderno 1997: O véu e a máscara Published in English 1979: The veil and the mask: Essays on culture and ideology 1980: Rousseau and Weber: Two studies in the theory of legitimacy 1985: Foucault (Merquior book) 1987: From Prague to Paris: A Critique of Structuralist and Post-Structuralist Thought 1991: Western Marxism 1991: Liberalism, Old and New