Is the world rational? Unamuno, Life 1.8
Unamuno believes that reason is an emergent property of the universe, not its foundation, which lies beyond reason, in irrationalities. Reason, from a perspective like his, becomes a tool for surfing on vast uncharted seas of incomprehensibility that we can never hope to dominate or destroy. You can hear this passage <here>.
El hombre Kant sintió la moral como base de la escatología, pero el profesor de la filosofía invirtió los términos. Ya dijo no sé dónde otro profesor, el profesor y hombre Guillermo James, que Dios para la generalidad de los hombres es el productor de inmortalidad. Sí, para la generalidad de los hombres, incluyendo al hombre Kant, al hombre James y al hombre que traza estas líneas, que estás, lector, leyendo.
El hombre Kant sintió la moral como base de la escatología, pero el profesor de la filosofía invirtió los términos. Ya dijo no sé dónde otro profesor, el profesor y hombre Guillermo James, que Dios para la generalidad de los hombres es el productor de inmortalidad. Sí, para la generalidad de los hombres, incluyendo al hombre Kant, al hombre James y al hombre que traza estas líneas, que estás, lector, leyendo.
Un día, hablando con un campesino, le propuse la hipótesis de que hubiese, en efecto, un Dios que rige cielo y tierra, Conciencia del Universo, pero que no por eso sea el alma de cada hombre inmortal en el sentido tradicional y concreto. Y me respondió: «Entonces, ¿para qué Dios?» Y así se respondían en el recóndito foro de su conciencia el hombre Kant y el hombre James. Sólo que al actuar como profesores tenían que justificar racionalmente esa actitud tan poco racional. Lo que no quiere decir, claro está, que sea absurda.
Hegel hizo célebre su aforismo de que todo lo racional es real y todo lo real racional; pero somos muchos los que, no convencidos por Hegel, seguimos creyendo que lo real, lo realmente real, es irracional; que la razón construye sobre las irracionalidades. Hegel, gran definidor, pretendió reconstruir el universo con definiciones, como aquel sargento de artillería decía que se construyeran los cañones: tomando un agujero y recubriéndolo de hierro.
Kant the man (†) felt that morality sits at the base of eschatology, but the professor of philosophy switched the words around. Another professor, William James (‡), also remarked somewhere that for most people, God is the author of immortality. For most people—for the man Kant, the man James, and the man who wrote these lines you read, good folk.
One day, speaking with a farmer, I proposed the notion that there might exist a God ruling heaven and earth, a universal consciousness of some kind, without the immortality of individual souls following from that in the concrete, traditional sense. “What's God for, then?” he responded. Kant and James had the same response in the hidden theater of their mind, but as professors they had to justify it rationally, despite its being irrational. Being irrational does not mean, however, that it must be absurd.
Hegel (*) has published far and wide his aphorism, that everything rational is real, and reality must be rational. But many of us remain unconvinced, preferring to persist in our belief that reality is actually irrational, that reason builds upon a foundation of irrationalities. Hegel, the great definer, pretended to rebuild the universe from definitions, as one sergeant of artillery professed to build cannons by taking holes and covering them with iron.
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(†) Unamuno has already dropped a few details about Kant's life (1724-1804). He was raised in the Prussian city of Königsberg, in a family of Pietist artisans, whose literal interpretation of the Bible and dogged work ethic gave him tools he used to become first a gifted student, then a professor. He remained single throughout his life, though he had an active circle of friends, and worked without haste on a series of writings that ultimately changed the way many think about philosophy. His greatest contribution to philosophy might be that he framed the problem of subjectivity in terms moderns could grasp without reference to older and more obscure philosophy, which lacked the experience and language of modern hard sciences.
(‡) Along with Charles Sanders Pierce, William James (1842-1910) was the architect of a modern approach to philosophy known as pragmatism. He was raised in New York City, in a family of wealthy world-travelers with ties to the New Church of Emanuel Swedenborg. After several years of training, interrupted by a trip to Germany for his health, James took a medical degree but ended up teaching physiology, psychology (then an entirely novel discipline), and philosophy instead of going into practice as a doctor. His contribution to philosophy was to develop the idea that 'true beliefs' are best understood as those any individual puts to good use.
(*) Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) is best known for framing philosophy as a dialogue among perspectives regarding the nature of the Absolute, everything that is, which history shows to be rational. Unamuno is not the only one looking askance at this; Schopenhauer was even more volubly unimpressed. Hegel began life in Stuttgart, where he was born and bred in a family attached to the court of Karl Eugen, duke of Württemberg. After finishing primary school, he went on to study theology at the University of Tübingen, where he befriended the poet Hölderlin and the philosopher Schelling, and became a lifelong fan of the ongoing French Revolution. After graduation, he worked first as a private tutor to families of means, then as an unsalaried adjunct (Privatdozent), eventually making the transition to professor. Unlike Kant, he moved about constantly, chasing a career and carrying a family, until his death in 1831. Physicians blamed that death on cholera, which was epidemic at the time, but some historians note that Hegel reported no diarrhea.