The Law of Nature: “Onça parente meu”

Abstract

The paper uncovers a natural law aspect in the work of João Guimarães Rosa: mutual recognition among humans, which allows for cooperation and the birth of political life. If such recognition fails, due to either a voluntary or involuntary retreat from human life sharing spaces, the underlying conditions for cooperation and the most basic moral attitudes may also cease to exist. Thus, João Guimarães Rosa’s novel illustrates in an exemplary way issues that belong to the natural tradition, in both its lockean or hobbesian versions. The literary approach to issues, otherwise treated as a matter of philosophy, increases the readers’ sensitiveness to questions more generally dealt with in a theoretical way, and it shows how contemporary the natural law question is.