With unequivocal voice Unamuno rejects St. Those who are knowledgeable seek more knowledge instead of acceptance and live to die alone and what can be sadder than the utter desolation of a godless man or woman? Those who are wise accept that certainty and find consolation in death as a return to God. The ultimate truth is that men are the only beings that go through life knowing that death is a certainty–hence his lifetime suffering. Lesser thinkers such as Lucretius, John Stuart Mill, Freud, Marx, Sartre, and other atheists never felt the meaning of the word ‘suffering.’ Freud came close to understanding it when he said that religion comes about because of the human desire to escape death ( The Future of an Illusion). Suffering is the prelude to the ideal world of eternity where one returns to God. Thus, he prefers passion and suffering to reason, truth, and beauty. Like Dostoesvsky’s irrational, irreverent, disdainful Underground Man who says, “After all suffering is the sole cause of consciousness,” Unamuno, sees suffering as the flow of life in this real world. Undisturbed by what scholars may think, he lavishes praise to man-agon whose lot is to suffer the dread of having been cast into an alien universe.
Wither knowledge? He asks: “The end of man is to create science, to catalogue the Universe, so that it may be handed back to God in order….” he answers himself by quoting a thought from one of his novels.Ĭoncluding that the man of reason and wisdom isn’t the true creature that God created, but a shadow (or simulacra), he posits that the man that agonizes on a daily basis and craves for immortality is God’s creation. Little value does he place in knowledge–gnosis, rationality– going on the attack against Descartes’ arrogance as well as Spinoza’s atheism. Such heavy thinkers as Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Spinoza, and Descartes, Unamuno views with distrust.
Faith, reason, the man of flesh and bone, and immortality of body and soul, are themes that Unamuno discusses with the ardent –fanatical I’d say– hunger for God.Īfter such shoddy fiction as The DaVinci Code, and fake TV Documentaries (The Tomb of Jesus), I find solace, wisdom, respect for God, and much joy as I read pages upon pages of this beloved book– The Tragic Sense of Life. Whenever doubt assails me, I turn to The Tragic Sense of Life and my faith is quickly restored.
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