Abstract

This article intends to explore the philosophical potency in the work of the black writer Carolina Maria de Jesus (1914-1977). Carolina de Jesus is best known for her work Quarto de Despejo, diary of a favelada (1960), our approach, however, focuses specifically on her short story “Socrates Africano”, in which she deals with her experience with her grandfather Benedito and the relationship between her wisdom and that of the Greek philosopher Sócrates (5th century BC). Her reflection starts from the attempt to understand the reason why her grandfather was compared to Socrates and called “African Socrates”. In this sense, we intend to expand the idea of an African Socrates and the origins of one of the African philosophical matrices, the Yoruba tradition, dialoguing with the thought of the Nigerian philosopher Sophie Oluwole (1935-2018) and her approximation between Socrates and Orunmilá, as a motto to think about the philosophical potentialities of Carolina's work and the traits of an Afro-Brazilian philosophy.