Tragic Sense Of Life — Miguel de Unamuno
You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org . If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title : Tragic Sense Of Life Author : Miguel de Unamuno Translator : J. E. Crawford Flitch Release date : January 8, 2005 [eBook #14636] Most recently updated: October 28, 2024 Language : English Other information and formats : www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14636 Credits : Produced by David Starner, Martin Pettit and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team *** START OF E. CRAWFORD FLITCH DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC New York This Dover edition, first published in 1954, is an unabridged and unaltered republication of the English translation originally published by Macmillan and Company, Ltd., in 1921. This edition is published by special arrangement with Macmillan and Company, Ltd. The publisher is grateful to the Library of the University of Pennsylvania for supplying a copy of this work for the purpose of reproduction. Standard Book Number: 486-20257-7 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 54-4730 Manufactured in the United States of America Dover Publications, Inc. 180 Varick Street New York, N.Y. 10014 CONTENTS INTRODUCTORY ESSAY AUTHOR'S PREFACE I THE MAN OF FLESH AND BONE Philosophy and the concrete man—The man Kant, the man Butler, and the man Spinoza—Unity and continuity of the person—Man an end not a means—Intellectual necessities and necessities of the heart and the will—Tragic sense of life in men and in peoples II THE STARTING-POINT Tragedy of Paradise—Disease an element of progress—Necessity of knowing in order to live—Instinct of preservation and instinct of perpetuation—The sensible world and the ideal world—Practical starting-point of all philosophy—Knowledge an end in itself?—The man Descartes—The longing not to die III THE HUNGER OF IMMORTALITY Thirst of being—Cult of immortality—Plato's "glorious risk"— Materialism—Paul's discourse to the Athenians—Intolerance of the intellectuals—Craving for fame—Struggle for survival IV THE ESSENCE OF CATHOLICISM Immortality and resurrection—Development of idea of immortality in Judaic and Hellenic religions—Paul and the dogma of the resurrection—Athanasius—Sacrament of the Eucharist—Lutheranism—Modernism—The Catholic ethic—Scholasticism—The Catholic solution V THE RATIONALIST DISSOLUTION Materialism—Concept of substance—Substantiality of the soul—Berkeley—Myers—Spencer—Combat of life with reason—Theological advocacy— Odium anti-theologicum —The rationalist attitude—Spinoza—Nietzsche—Truth and consolation VI IN THE DEPTHS OF THE ABYSS Passionate doubt and Cartesian doubt—Irrationality of the problem of immortality—Will and intelligence—Vitalism and rationalism—Uncertainty as basis of faith—The ethic of despair—Pragmatical justification of despair—Summary of preceding criticism VII LOVE, SUFFERING, PITY, AND PERSONALITY Sexual love—Spiritual love—Tragic love—Love and pity—Personalizing faculty of love—God the Personalization of the All—Anthropomorphic tendency—Consciousness of the Universe—What is Truth?—Finality of the Universe VIII FROM GOD TO GOD Concept and feeling of Divinity—Pantheism—Monotheism—The rational God—Proofs of God's existence—Law of necessity—Argument from Consensus gentium —The living God—Individuality and personality—God a multiplicity—The God of Reason—The God of Love—Existence of God IX FAITH, HOPE, AND CHARITY Personal element in faith—Creative power of faith—Wishing that God may exist—Hope the form of faith—Love and suffering—The suffering God—Consciousness revealed through suffering—Spiritualization of matter X RELIGION, THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE BEYOND, AND THE APOCATASTASIS What is religion?—The longing for immortality—Concrete representation of a future life—Beatific vision—St. Teresa—Delight requisite for happiness—Degradation of energy—Apocatastasis—Climax of the tragedy—Mystery of the Beyond XI THE PRACTICAL PROBLEM Conflict as basis of conduct—Injustice of annihilation—Making ourselves irreplaceable—Religious value of the civil occupation—Business of religion and religion of business—Ethic of domination—Ethic of the cloister—Passion and culture—The Spanish soul CONCLUSION DON QUIXOTE IN THE CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN TRAGI-COMEDY Culture—Faust—The modern Inquisition—Spain and the scientific spirit—Cultural achievement of Spain—Thought and language—Don Quixote the hero of Spanish thought—Religion a transcendental economy—Tragic ridicule—Quixotesque philosophy—Mission of Don Quixote to-day INDEX INTRODUCTORY ESSAY DON MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO I sat, several years ago, at the Welsh National Eisteddfod, under the vast tent in which the Bard of Wales was being crowned. After the small golden crown had been placed in unsteady equilibrium on the head of a clever-looking pressman, several Welsh bards came on the platform and recited little epigrams. A Welsh bard is, if young, a pressman, and if of maturer years, a divine. In this case, as England was at war, they were all of the maturer kind, and, while I listened to the music of their ditties—the sense thereof being, alas! beyond my reach—I was struck by the fact that all of them, though different, closely resembled Don Miguel de Unamuno. It is not my purpose to enter into the wasp-nest of racial disquisitions. If there is a race in the world over which more sense and more nonsense can be freely said for lack of definite information than the Welsh, it is surely this ancient Basque people, whose greatest contemporary figure is perhaps Don Miguel de Unamuno. I am merely setting down that intuitional fact for what it may be worth, though I do not hide my opinion that such promptings of the inner, untutored man are worth more than cavefuls of bones and tombfuls of undecipherable papers. This reminiscence, moreover, which springs up into the light of my memory every time I think of Don Miguel de Unamun