(Spanish philosopher, 1864-1936)
Unamuno’s thought is much inspired by the emotional-existential approach of Pascal and Kierkegaard. It is characterised by a passionate hunger for immortality, an unquenchable thirst for ‘being for ever’ and eternal existence in which human conscience is tragically divided by the conflict between faith and reason. Unamuno is a staunch fideist: not only is faith unsupported by reason, it is contrary to it. Those who look at the world only with the eyes of reason and the knowledge of science, are justified to profess atheism. But people of faith in spite of the evidence to the contrary believe in God and a life after death because their heart conveys the message that the truth is not what the spectacle of an indifferent nature makes it seem to be. God is not visible to the eyes of reason and science, but only to the blind eyes of faith. Seeing with their heart, the believers experience in agony the eternal conflict between faith and reason. They know that the truth of reason and science must lead to atheism…and despair. They have no argument with the atheists. They live in another world than the atheists. They are aware that no road can connect the truths of rational knowledge and the truths of the heart.
Unamuno’s brand of the fideism of the heart dispenses him with arguments: it cannot be refuted because it does not profess that its stand can be proved. The head tells one something but the heart teaches that there is another world in which reason is not the guide. There can be no peace between the head and the heart, no harmony between reason and faith. The truth is that which makes one live, not what makes one think. Truth is what assuages our thirst. Credo quia consolans: I believe because it consoles me. Reason leads to despair, but the heart opens up the road to hope and immortality. Man must choose a consoling truth rather than a despairing truth and this means that for Unamuno there is no criterion of truth. The search for truth is less important than the choice between hope and despair.
Philosophers search for truth and want to know it but why? Knowledge for its own sake and truth for its own sake are meaningless and inhuman designs. Genuine philosophizing need a wherefore. Before being a philosopher, the philosopher is a human being. He philosophizes in order to live. Primum vivere. The wherefore is more important than the why, the end is more vital than the cause. The primary reality is not that we know (cogito) but that we are (sum), not cogito ergo sum but sum ergo cogito. “Every creed that leads to living works is a true creed, as that one is false that conducts to deeds of death. Life is the criterion of truth, logic is but the criterion of reason”. “Reasons are only reasons – that is to say, they are not even truths”.
For Unamuno there is an unresolvable strife between two enemy-truths: the truth thought and the truth felt or lived. The first leads to despair but the other fills man with hope.
* Unamuno, Miguel de, The Tragic Sense of Life, Dover Publications, New York, 1954, p.19-37; Don Quixote Expounded with Comment, p.114-115, quoted in Macquarrie, J.,Twentieth-century Religious Thought, Harper & Row, New York, 1963, p. 200-201
(American philosopher, b.1942)
Skepticism serves the "truth" that knowledge is impossible
In his book Ignorance: A Case for Scepticism Peter Unger proposes a thesis of universal ignorance, that "no one knows anything about anything". Unger takes his argument to its logical end, claiming that no one is ever reasonable or justified in anything, that there is no functional truth, and that, in fact, no one ever believes, feels, or thinks anything. Unger appeals to intuitive senses he has about ignorance, a blatant paradox that Unger admits willingly. According to Unger, skepticism serves the "truth," and traditional philosophy is dead. Dissatisfied with the way philosophy currently runs, he feels that most philosophers engage in a highly uncritical examination of their most sacred beliefs.
He thinks that philosophy is wholly embedded in language, an idea that is vital to the contemporary skeptical cause. Language, he says, involves absolute terms like ‘flat’ and ‘certain’, of which a perfect representation can never be reached. The word ‘flat’ in this sense means perfectly flat, in that nothing could ever be flatter than the object being described. The object that we said was flat, may in fact not be flat, but it is not certain that it is not flat, because absolute certainty is ultimately too demanding. Accordingly, our language theory is so blatantly wrong that it involves us in lies and impossibilities such as certainty, truth, and knowledge.
Unger’s language theory leads directly into his epistemological thesis of universal ignorance. Unger says we do not know this to be so, but can still hold that it is true that "ignorance is necessary and inevitable." Knowing, like certainty, is an absolute limit of mental states that is virtually impossible.
Certainty for Unger is so absolutely severe that the individual who is certain will accept no new information that could possibly affect his or her certainty. Unger calls this state of mind dogmatism or the attitude of certainty, and, since no one can really ever be certain of anything, this attitude is unreasonable. Can a skeptic doubt that he doubts or not know that he is thinking? It seems that the skeptic has reduced himself to an idiot, devoid of all perception and intelligence. But Peter Unger suggests that this underlying flaw is not a product of skepticism, however, but stems from the very language we use to express ourselves. The paradoxes associated with skeptical epistemology and many other fields of philosophy may be products of a badly wrong theory of language, embedded deep within our minds. But then, our entire theory of knowledge, all of our explicit impressions, beliefs and thoughts, and all of our statements are wrong. Even Unger, in fact, is unreasonable in proposing his views, something he willingly admits !
* Unger Peter, Ignorance: A Case for Scepticism, Oxford University Press, 1975