UNAMUNO, Miguel de UNAMUNO, Miguel de *
(Spanish philosopher, 1864-1936)
Truth is not what makes one think, but what makes one live
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
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