This dissertation intends to analyze the concept of civilization in Juan Bautista Alberdi and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, emphasizing the ressignifications they both realize since the Generation of 37 took its part on the political struggle, until the 1850´s – when these intellectuals disputed which project was the best to civilize and organize the emerging Argentine nation. The main hypothesis developed throughout the dissertation is about a growing approach between the concepts nation and civilization; the national and civilizational projects idealized by those intellectuals brought – for the very first time – the possibility of transforming what they saw as a desert of nonexistent sociability into a civilization that, if it was still at a lower level than the European, was more and more perceived as an Argentine civilization, which could be transformed into a civilized nation.