It examines into the reformist and emancipationist proposal explained by Antônio Sérgio in Essays and History of Portugal, according to the proposition that the problem of culture is presented in order to identify the formation of the intelectual elite. What concerns the experience of the author next to groups of intelectuals dedicated to the nacional resurgence in the first years of the Republic, as well as the choise of a particular tradition to explain the current state of the nation and the need of the cultural revolution. Thus, it aims at setting the historical sources of the formation of intelectual so that the pedagogic gist of the work exceeds the time of its prodution and is recognized by the futur reader as instrument of the emancipation. But the notion itself of the emancipation emerges from the perception of the national history as decadence in the epic of Luiz Vaz de Camões, which clarifies the way of behaving facing such situation: the denunciation. The discipline of denunciation reflects the historic experience of the decadence that forms the awareness of the intelectuals from the concept of exceptionality and luminosity atributed to the portuguese quinhentismo. The state of decadence becomes evident in the present time by the hope that the changes lead to the pass glory, since the mentality or the problem of the culture in Portugal has as foundation the awareness that the nation of the Discoveries is unfulfilled promise.