There are those who walk in their sleep and there are those who sleep while walking, two diametrically opposed styles of sleepwalking that are a figure and metaphor of two rival ethics, that of the victim and that of the protagonist.

Two variations of the same troublesome sleep disorder are both a figure and a metaphor for two very different personal versions of the understanding of freedom and human actionThat is, ethics. With or without Aristotle, what seems sensibly true is that we direct all our actions as part of a life project that has the happiness as a destination, and as both destination and path under the best circumstances.

At least in the ever-dubious appearance of almost everything, no one seems to freely choose unhappiness and misfortune. No, we don't want anguish, sadness, or sorrow; we don't expect melancholy and heartbreak as the ports to which our efforts will arrive, and it is precisely for all these reasons that we fight not to give up.

However, the truth, and the uncertainty at the same time, is that Some of those unfortunate circumstances may come our way.And sleepwalking is an ethical response to that sepulchral adversity, or rather, two types of response depending on whether the sleepwalking style is predominantly passive or active that we frequent, that of those who walk asleep or that of all those who sleep while walking.

On “sleepwalking” we become, in both terms of the expression, in the form of a result, “we are walking and sleeping” as by another distinct from himself. On the contrary, in the phrase “sleeping while walking” The self in Ethics for Sleepwalkers remains upright as the subject of action.

They are, therefore, the ethics of the victim and the protagonist, the ethics of the one who suffers and the ethics of the one who acts.

In the ethics of the victim, the self is a perpetual and self-legitimizing creditor of the world and, in a very special way, of others: of their love, their time, their attention, and their material resources. The entire universe is indebted to us, but since whatever is granted to us will always seem insufficient in light of our almost infinite merits, The debt will remain eternally impossible to repay, and we will continually be unsatisfied, resentful, and rebellious victims.Indeed, and strange as it may seem, being a victim is the paradoxical fortunate condition of those who give up on the risky exercise of freedom.

On the contrary, The protagonist's ethics propose and invite a vision of the present and the future as subjects of conquest and care which is not diminished by acknowledging the limitations of everything that is available to us, almost always in scarce, especially ourselves, the first ones who are in scarcity with respect to what we lack and that only others can give us, but always in the form of a gift and not a debt.

Indeed, To be a person is above all to be scarce in oneself and in others.But a kind and hopeful scarcity, a lack that is answered in the "could be" of the protagonist and not with the "impossible" of the victim, in the "almost always" and not in the "Never", in the "why not?" and not in the "because?".

Ultimately, all ethics are related to time, since each of our actions takes place within it, and Every time we decide on a timeline, we take a risk with it. ruling out not only others, but all the others. And they gave the commissioner good advice.

Sostiene Pereira by Antonio Tabucchi that “Stop dwelling on the past, focus on the future”The protagonists frequent it, pursue it, yearn for it, foresee it, choose it, and imagine it freely and as a reward; the victims only suffer it as punishment in their sea of ​​irremediable tears.