Os fins justificam os meios: uma leitura de todos os nomes de José Saramago

Abstract

The study of the ethical aspects of José Saramago's work, All the Names, aroused great complexity in the thematic approach, especially in relation to the literary experience in the Post-Modernity, since at that time one lives under conditions of overwhelming and self-effacing uncertainty. If this is an entirely different experience of a life subordinated to the task of constructing identity, what ethical values can one speak of, then? The present epoch, also known as dystopic, causes, blinded by the inner universe, individuals to worship their own Personality and fell into the extremes of selfish self-sufficiency. Narcissism is mobilized in social relationships, and the experience of opening one's feelings towards one another becomes destructive. The structure of an intimate society is twofold. Thus man no longer as an actor or man as creator, since his self is composed of intentions and possibilities; In a society whose values are inverted, approval or censorship is directed at actions more than the actors. "And now José?" Is the dilemma presented in the adventures of All the Names, a novel created by Saramago in 1997. This study will focus on the ethos of the character and the ethical and moral aspects that are raised in the Their actions. The search for the unknown woman places the protagonist in front of the “Senhora do res-do-chão direito”, of the “Pastor-de-Ovelhas”, of he “Conservador”, before him and other characters. The falsification of the credential, the theft of old papers in the school where the woman of the entry had studied and the misuse of the official documents, are framing the protagonist in several ethical and moral dilemmas that are justified or in line with the maxim evidenced by the narrator, "if they walk So many people out there proclaiming that the ends justify the means, he who was to deny them. "(SARAMAGO,p.60,1997). The protagonist, Mr. José, is a character in search of himself, an identity, whose trajectory bears the mark of human contradiction, since the Other in its essence, is also part of what I am and platform on which it manifests my difference. This identity breaks up into Ipseity and Sameness. The research had as general objective to verify the hypothesis of the ethical reconnection between the characters present in the novel of José Saramago. The main theoretical framework of the research is formed by Zygmunt Bauman, Tzvetan Todorov, Stan Van Hooft, and Paul Ricouer. It includes as complementary theorists, Bartolomeu dos Santos, Agripina Carriço Vieira, Ian Watt, Edgar Morin, Leyla Perrone-Moisés, Horacio Costa, Teresa Cristina Cerdeira and Michel Foulcault, etc.