Tragic Sense of Life

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Tragic Sense of Life

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Title: Tragic Sense Of Life
Author: Miguel de Unamuno
Release Date: January 8, 2005 [EBook #14636]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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SENSE OF LIFE ***

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TRAGIC SENSE OF LIFE

MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO
translator, J.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
PAGES INTRODUCTORY ESSAY xi-xxxii
AUTHOR'S PREFACE xxxiii-xxxv
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 1-18

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 19-37
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 38-57
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 58-78
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 79-105
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 106-131
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 132-155
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 156-185
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 186-215
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 216-259
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 260-296
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 297-330

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