Juan José Sebreli

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Juan José Pérez Sebreli (3 November 1930 – 1 November 2024) was an Argentine sociologist, essayist and philosopher. He studied at the University of Buenos Aires and wrote mainly about reason, the city and everyday life.

Early in his career he helped start the Gay Liberation Front with Manuel Puig and Néstor Perlongher, during the last years of Argentina’s revolutionary period. During the Dirty War he ran secret study groups called Universidad de las Sombras. He was known for his work with magazines Contorno and Sur, and he wrote columns for La Nación, Perfil and Ñ. He also took part in television debates with the poet Hugo Mujica.

Sebreli was hospitalized with COVID-19 in August 2020 and died in Buenos Aires on 1 November 2024 at the age of 93.

In his writings, he was strongly critical of populism. He analyzed Peronism using Weberian ideas, describing it as having fascist elements and portraying Juan Domingo Perón as an authoritarian, charismatic leader. He argued that some parts of Argentine society cling to a distorted memory and are prone to self-deception. In his 2012 book El malestar en la política, he argued that Kirchnerism is a form of Latin American neopopulism and plebiscitary caesarism, contrasting it with a democratic republic.

Sebreli was skeptical of what he called irrational or pseudo-scientific theories, including psychoanalysis, which he saw as lacking a proper scientific method. He considered Schopenhauer the true father of modern irrationalism and saw Dostoyevski and Nietzsche as shaping the idea of turning philosophy into art and daily life. He belonged to Argentina’s early existentialist circle, helping bring Sartre to the academic world and drawing on Hegel, Marx, Kojève and Tran Duc Thao.

In 2002 he supported Ricardo López Murphy’s candidacy for president in a moment he later called opportunistic. He described himself as a social democrat in a European sense and, more recently, as a left-liberal. He spoke in favor of abortion rights during public debates. There are no known English translations of his works.