FROM THE TRAGIC SENSE OF LIFE essay
Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (1867 – 1936) was a famous Spanish philosopher who lived at the beginning of the twentieth century and explored existentialist ideas. In 1913 he published the book The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Nations, in which he criticized abstract rationalism and proposed the life of “flesh and bone” instead. Being focused on the fictional character Don Quixote created by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547 – 1616), he discovered the tragic nature of a life quest all the people are predisposed to. This quest is seen as a quest for faith which has been opposed to the systematic philosophy. After him abstract philosophy was similarly rejected by Ortega y Gasset and Jean-Paul Sartre who made a stress on the role of situation and circumstances in the life of an individual. Unamuno’s approach can be explained as a negation of all the previous systems and as the affirmation of faith in itself. Through the dissolution of rationalism he provides a new understanding of love and suffering, of pity and faith. On the whole, there are a lot of allusions to the dogmas of Catholicism, but Unamuno goes beyond them and suggests a new notion of the God is and what the faith is.
In Tragic Sense of Life Unamuno reveals as a passionate worshipper of paradoxes and contradictions. He explains that he himself may seem to hesitate constantly, to swing from one position to the opposite, but that is just the way for him to seek the truth and integrity. For example, he, on the one hand, states that the earthly life is not valuable and does not cost a thing, and on the other hand, insists that all the human being desire unending life. He positions himself as a man who affirms opposites, just like Jeremiah, a Hebrew prophet from the Bible. The matter is that contradictions mainly arise from the conflict between the heart and the head, because reason sees one truth, and the soul sees another one. This conflict is the main tragedy of human life. The life itself is contradictory, so a man cannot prevent himself from it either. This tragedy is a perpetual struggle of opposite decisions and minds, a struggle without end and with no hope for one’s victory.
At the same time, what is more, it is this conflict that makes the sense of life, as Unamuno claims. These inevitable contradictions that seem to make it impossible to live at all on the contrary unify the life of a person and give it a practical purpose. The very fact we are not sure, the very fact we are uncertain and there is always a probability of something else is what unifies Unamuno’s actions and makes him live, seek, work and enjoy the life with passion. Living in this paradox means to live for Unamuno. According to his explanation, the insolubility of any cardinal human question is a source of infinite spiritual potential. Under insoluble question he means not a question how and why, but the question what for, which is the only question that should be the interest of philosophy. It is added that life of conscience stands still if there is only definite and indisputable fact. And after all, the existence of all these paradoxes fills the Universe with lively, sensitive souls.
Further on, Unamuno disputes on the relation between thinking and living, of what is first and what is dependent. He states that we think because we live, meaning that the form we think is justified by the way we live, not in a shallow sense, but in a broad, deep one. Philosophy, Unamuno scrutinizes, appears to support the mind with explanations why and what for we do this and do not do that. We think to find links of our deeds and outcomes, and the philosophical doctrines appear to explain our behavior to ourselves and to others. Simultaneously, they are used to justify the behavior of other people to us and probably to themselves as well. Thus, life itself becomes a motive for thinking and for building theories. But it seems important to not that these motives are usually different for different people, and sometimes they can be opposite. For example, the same conclusion may become reason to commit a suicide for one person, and become a stimulus to live further for another person.
Of course, sometimes practice takes place after the invention of theory. But as Unamuno stresses, an idea for idea is simply am aborted act. For Unamuno idea is not a strong force. It may seem for a person who becomes a follower of a certain ethic or philosophical school that he builds his life on the basis of the doctrines he has learnt and taken as the core principles. This person thinks that his morality is now based on it giving way. But the more fanatic he is, the more disappointment he is disposed to. And instead of getting the light of life from philosophy, he is devoured by the darkness of his own imperfectness. No concept and no doctrine can be followed absolutely perfectly because each human being is full of contradiction no matter how hard he tries to reach the ideal. Therefore it is not the definite logic of doing something, but the fact of need for explanation that fills morality and life with sense.
Much in common can be found between Miguel de Unamuno and Seren Kierkegaard. The latter was also an existentialist, and Unamuno uses some of the Kierkegaard’s assumptions. For instance, Kierkegaard states that God does not think, but creates; He does not exist, but he is eternal. Unamuno clarifies that God does think in the process of creation. As for faith and hope, Unamuno points out that faith comprises a cognitive, logical, or rational element together with an affective, biotic, sentimental, and strictly irrational element. And thus faith appears to be a form of knowledge. Due to that fact, it turns out to be difficult to separate from some dogma. But Unamuno himself overcomes this difficulty and finds his own key to the problem. He underlines that the uncertainty we have discussed above is just the source of faith. We can never be sure whether God exists or not, but we desire Him to be, and that is the basis for our faith and our hope. At the same time, any rational concept of God cannot avoid contradictions either. Faith is born from love to God. And while reason does not prove that God exists, it does not prove the absence of opportunity for him to exist either.
Rationality and reason are in this way criticized by Unamuno. For him, reason and rationality are replaced by passion and commitment. The matter is, rationalism inevitable leads to skepticism (it is demonstrated on the example of the rationalist philosophers), and skepticism, in turn, eventually leads to despair because it is impossible to find the answers to all the questions in the Universe only through reason. Besides, as it has been already noted, each human being strives for immortality. It is impossible from the rationalistic point of view, and that truth can not satisfy our minds. And in order to live, one begins to philosophize. Not an abstract idea, not objectivity, but ingenuous experience of each creature, the experience of tragic contradiction of human being is the only possible source of sense of living on earth. And this sense is not something definite and firm, but it is created from the very beginning in the process of the very human life of every person.
Personalized is not only experience of cognizing, but personalized is even God, according to Unamuno. For him, God is personification of the Universe, and only in His humanized aspect can he be loved and understood by people. Anthropomorphism is a property of our thinking, and therefore it is quite natural to imagine God with human qualities. And though for Unamuno Catholic ethic represents the best foundation for morality, there is much to dispute on. Unamuno insists that a human God would not reject anyone who did not believe in Him, as He does not need this faith. The happiness of believing is the main reason to cultivate faith, not fear or sufferings are the motives for religion. That is what makes the concept different from any famous religion of the world.
