CONFRONTATION WITH DEATH AMIDST INAUTHENTICITY

approaches between Machadian Literature and Heideggerian Philosophy

Abstract

In 'The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas' by Machado de Assis, the character who gives the title to the novel reveals himself as an illustration of what Martin Heidegger, in his ontology of 'Being and Time,' interprets as inauthenticity. This inauthentic life, where the being-there alienates itself, allowing itself to be governed by others, deteriorates, in the narrative context, into another condition: the withdrawal from the possibility of being-towards-death, a category that reflects human consciousness in the face of its finitude. Such awareness could divert Cubas from the pursued trajectory, but, as will be examined, that is not what his narrative arc presents. In this essay, through a bibliographic investigation focused on Machado's text and Heideggerian theses, a literary-philosophical reading will be conducted, centered on the fictional being as a reference for ontological exposition linked to the notion of mortality.