A morte como transformação: Uma aproximação entre Dom Quixote e a Ética de Espinosa

Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), in the last chapter of his book Don Quixote, describes the death of his protagonist caused by the character’s profound sadness. The knight, after being defeated, feels obliged to return to their village and renounce chivalry. The regression for him causes a deep transformation of his reality and his mental state - the sanity of madness – beyond his approximation to his own eternal rest. As Cervantes, the same turning point is seen in Spinoza (1632-1677) at the end of the century. By analogies with transformation and death, the philosopher emphasizes in his Ethics the relationship between the nature of being and its proportion of motion and rest, responsible for human metamorphoses. Based on these considerations, this paper intends to point out the last chapter of the work Don Quixote in connection with the 39th proposition, Part IV of the Ethics written by Spinoza. Similarities involving the concept of death as transformation have been highlighted in both the Spanish writer and the Dutch thinker, since death for both is intimately related.