Democracia e universidade
By: José Saramago
Edition: 1a edição.
Publisher: Ed. UFPA, Editora da Universidad Federal do Pará; Fundação José Saramago
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Belém, Pará, Brasil; Lisboa
Language: por
Number of pages: 73
ISBN-13: 9788524705182
Subjects: Democracy; Democracy and education
Description: This book brings to the reader two texts by José Saramago on democracy, unpublished in Brazil. The first of these is Democracia e universidade, given at a conference at the Complutense University of Madrid in 2005, and is accompanied by the debate that followed. From the reference to the story "Pierre Menard, author of Quixote" by Jorge Luis Borges, highlighting the historicity of language, José Saramago seeks to unravel a path of misconceptions that leads us to the current use of terms such as "justice," "kindness," "education," and, finally, "utopia." The second text that takes place in this edition is "Verdade e ilusão democrática". It is a text José Saramago read in Santiago, Chile, in April of 2003, in the cycle Las Conferencias de la Moneda. From Aristotle's Politics and his considerations on the place of the poor and rich in democracy, through the experience of the Romans, Saramago arrives at our present participatory renunciation, renewed every four years by the vote, similar to what, in the previous text, are utopias and renunciation of the present. For the author, the vote legitimizes a system that is said to be democratic, but that concentrates its power in the economic sphere and at none of its levels is for the good of the people it represents.