"Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are"
About this Quote
Saramago’s line points to the mystery at the heart of identity and the limits of language to grasp it. It comes from Blindness, a novel where an epidemic erases sight and, with it, the neat surfaces of social order. Characters are not given proper names, only descriptors like the doctor or the girl with the dark glasses. By stripping away names, Saramago exposes how fragile the labels and roles can be, and how they can conceal rather than reveal who we are. The statement that what we are has no name distills this idea: our deepest self is not a category, a profession, or a narrative we recite about ourselves.
The line also registers a philosophical skepticism about language itself. Naming is a way of controlling and delimiting, but the human core is shifting, relational, and ethically tested. When the city descends into chaos, some people become cruel, others tender, often the same person in different moments. What persists beneath either mask is not easily capturable. The doctor’s wife, who alone retains sight, acts from a stubborn inner compass that refuses to let the surrounding horror define her. That compass, the something with no name, might be conscience, compassion, or an elemental sense of dignity. Saramago leaves it deliberately undefined to keep it alive.
There is a political edge as well. He often critiques bureaucracies and ideologies that flatten people into categories. If what we are cannot be named, then no institution or slogan can exhaust us. The sentence becomes a quiet act of resistance against reduction, whether by markets, media, or dogma.
The invitation is to look past our labels and narratives and ask what remains when they fall away. In crisis, and also in ordinary life, the answer is not a word but a way of being: how we attend, how we respond, how we bear witness. That unnamed core is both our burden and our freedom.
The line also registers a philosophical skepticism about language itself. Naming is a way of controlling and delimiting, but the human core is shifting, relational, and ethically tested. When the city descends into chaos, some people become cruel, others tender, often the same person in different moments. What persists beneath either mask is not easily capturable. The doctor’s wife, who alone retains sight, acts from a stubborn inner compass that refuses to let the surrounding horror define her. That compass, the something with no name, might be conscience, compassion, or an elemental sense of dignity. Saramago leaves it deliberately undefined to keep it alive.
There is a political edge as well. He often critiques bureaucracies and ideologies that flatten people into categories. If what we are cannot be named, then no institution or slogan can exhaust us. The sentence becomes a quiet act of resistance against reduction, whether by markets, media, or dogma.
The invitation is to look past our labels and narratives and ask what remains when they fall away. In crisis, and also in ordinary life, the answer is not a word but a way of being: how we attend, how we respond, how we bear witness. That unnamed core is both our burden and our freedom.
Quote Details
| Topic | Deep |
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