Dino says criticism of his Aristotle references reflects regional bias

Dino says criticism of his Aristotle references reflects regional bias
Supreme Court Justice Flávio Dino has cast recent criticism of his courtroom rhetoric as more than a disagreement over style or scholarship. In an Instagram post, the Maranhão-born justice said references to him as a “provincial jurist,” a person with no qualifications, or a speaker with “grandiloquent provincial oratory” reveal hostility toward his regional background.

Dino said that hostility has a racial dimension. “As a consequence of this undisguisable regional prejudice, with a racist basis, they do everything to disqualify my knowledge of Aristotle and other thinkers,” he wrote. He also defended his academic formation at the Federal University of Maranhão, asking rhetorically whether critics believe Aristotle cannot be studied there. While acknowledging that public office requires him to accept scrutiny, Dino said he also has a duty to identify language he considers offensive.

The criticism he cited arose after a Supreme Court session in which he invoked Aristotle several times, including in arguments related to a proceeding involving Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Commentators questioned both the volume of those references and their precision. One editorial described Dino and Justice Gilmar Mendes as using “grandiloquent provincial oratory,” while legal scholar Conrado Mendes referred to Dino’s “pocket citations.”

Philosopher Luiz Felipe Pondé offered a more differentiated assessment. He agreed with Dino on some points, including that Aristotle praised prudence and that “corruption” can describe distorted forms of power. But he disputed Dino’s suggestion that Aristotelian irony is chiefly a way to lighten the atmosphere, saying it is more closely associated with modesty or prudence. Pondé also saw a substantial logical leap in Dino’s syllogism-based argument and warned that political use of such reasoning can slide into sophistry.

The divide, then, is not simply over classical philosophy: Dino sees a pattern of regional disparagement behind the criticism, whereas his critics focus on the substance and purpose of his citations.

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