GIVING BIRTH TO GODS:

THE DELIRIUM AND THE DELIRIUM OF PERSECUTION IN MARÍA ZAMBRANO

Abstract

This work investigates the theme of delirium and, specifically, the delirium of persecution in the thought of María Zambrano, based on O Homem e o Divino (1995). The research is guided by the analysis of how the delirium of persecution relates to the sacred and the divine in this book. Thus, it explores the ontological and existential relationship between the human being and the sacred that produces the gods. In Zambrano's phenomenology, there is an inescapable human need for knowledge, such as seeing in the concealment of the sacred, the totally Other. This gives rise to the first and most decisive delirium, the delirium of persecution, in which the human being feels persecuted but does not know by what and begins to persecute this Other. From this gap, the gods are born, the intermediate sphere between humanity and the sacred. Thus, we could understand the divine as a mask of the sacred, which gives face and name to the original concealment of reality. The metaphors of light and childbirth are means through which Poetic Reason reveals itself. In short, giving birth to gods through persecutory delusion is a germination of culture, from which humanities diversify and organize the sacred, the divine, and the human.