In recent years, political theorists have devoted much attention to the debasement of humans and political life that occurs when governments declare “states of emergency.” (Feldman 2008; Scheuerman 2006) Perhaps it is surprising, then, that no one has looked closely at Jose Saramago’s novels Blindness and Seeing as a source of wisdom about the conditions of emergency. In both novels, states of emergency (in Seeing, indeed, a still more extreme “state of siege”) are declared. Political theorists have used the discussion about emergency powers, understandably, to focus first and foremost upon the nature of the rule of law and the relationship of exceptionalism and sovereignty, in conversation with Agamben and Schmitt. Saramago provides a different kind of lesson about emergencies, one that is ultimately deeply political, but on a different level. Saramago understands the complexities of human lives, motivations, and actions. Saramago also understands that the life circumstances shape which of those motivations, actions, ways of live, etc., will be more prominent, and which less prominent, in how humans act in any given setting. Rather than focusing our attention on the nature of the state (though this is a more obvious way to reading Seeing than Blindness), Saramago invites us to view “emergency” as a way to explore more fundamental truths about human nature. In this essay, I shall try to face what Saramago seems to tell us about humans and about politics in these two novels in which the “impossible premise” tests our most basic assumptions about being human, about being the “political animal.”