Between Suering and Salvation: Liberalism, Happiness, and the Political Economy of Existential Distress in Contemporary Brazil

This paper examines three interlocking problematics that have come to define the moral and political landscape of contemporary Brazil: (1) the conceptual decoupling of happiness from political ideology, with particular reference to Isaiah Berlin’s value pluralism; (2) the psychopolitical critique of neoliberalism as a systematic producer of psychic suffering, following Vladimir Safatle’s philosophical sociology; and (3) the sociological success of prosperity theology within neo-Pentecostal evangelical churches as a functional response to the affective and communitarian deficits generated by both market individualization and the historical estrangement of the Brazilian left from the working class. Drawing on philosophical analysis, critical theory, and the empirical sociology of religion, the article argues that the evangelical community model should be understood not merely as a theological aberration or an instrument of ideological manipulation, but as a pragmatic network of social-capital formation operating in territories abandoned by the state and by progressive politics. The paper further contends that no political program—liberal, socialist, or otherwise—possesses the intrinsic capacity to resolve the fundamental tensions of human existence, a claim grounded in Berlinian pluralism and corroborated by the comparative historical record of revolutionary projects. Methodologically, the study situates itself within the tradition of critical political philosophy, combining conceptual analysis with sociological interpretation and Brazilian intellectual history.