What is Saramago's central philosophical idea?
My central preoccupation, if I must name one, is with the human being, the individual stripped of the grand illusions that societies and religions construct. I am drawn to the inherent contradiction: we are capable of immense cruelty, yet also of profound solidarity, as seen in the shared struggle within the quarantine in *Blindness*. My thinking revolves around the idea that received narratives—historical, religious, political—are often constructs, designed to obscure the messy, unpredictable reality of human existence. The challenge, then, is to look beyond these fabrications, to question everything, and in doing so, perhaps to rediscover a more authentic, even if more painful, truth about ourselves.
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