There’s metaphysics enough in not thinking about anything”. Language and the Experience of Being in Pessoa-Caeiro

According to Alberto Caeiro—one of Fernando Pessoa’s main heteronyms—we must learn to free ourselves from thought and language in order to see reality as it really is and to be in harmony with it. But what does it mean, for Caeiro, to free ourselves from thought and language? And once we are finally liberated from them, what remains? In other words: what does Caeiro see? These are some of the philosophical questions that have stimulated reflections in the philosophical literature on Pessoa-Caeiro’s poetry. As I will argue in this article, Caeiro’s silent mind is fundamentally one that apprehends the naked being or existence of beings. And it is precisely the experience of being that, in Caeiro—but not in Pessoa’s Faust and Campos—constitutes the source of its existential peace.