A sense of purpose. Unamuno, Life 1.17
Unamuno lays his cards out here, explaining the importance of purpose and conscience to his outlook on the world. He takes them to be the same thing, fundamentally, and the essence of humanity. That position puts him at odds with many others in the history of people wrestling with our condition. You can hear the Spanish <here>.
El mundo es para la conciencia. O, mejor dicho, este para, esta noción de finalidad, y mejor que noción sentimiento, este sentimiento teológico no nace sino donde hay conciencia. Conciencia y finalidad son la misma cosa en el fondo.
Una alma humana vale por todo el universo, ha dicho no sé quién, pero ha dicho egregiamente. Un alma humana, ¿eh? No una vida. La vida esta no. Y sucede que a medida que se cree menos en el alma, es decir, en su inmortalidad consciente, personal y concreta, se exagerará más el valor de la pobre vida pasajera. De aquí arrancan todas las afeminadas sensiblerías contra la guerra. Sí, uno no debe querer morir, pero la otra muerte. «El que quiera salvar su vida, la perderá», dice el Evangelio; pero no dice el que quiera salvar su alma, el alma inmortal. O que creemos y queremos que lo sea.
Y todos los definidores del objetivismo no se fijan, o mejor dicho, no quieren fijarse, que al afirmar un hombre su yo, su conciencia personal, afirma al hombre, al hombre concreto y real, afirma el verdadero
humanismo—fue no es el de las cosas del hombre, sino el del hombre—, y al afirmar al hombre, afirma la conciencia. Porque la única conciencia de que tenemos conciencia es la del hombre.
Si el Sol tuviese conciencia, pensaría vivir para alumbrar a los mundos, sin duda; pero pensaría también, y sobre todo, que los mundos existen para que él los alumbre y se goce en alumbrarlos y así viva. Y pensaría bien.
Y toda esa trágica batalla del hombre por salvarse, ese inmortal anhelo de inmortalidad que le hizo al hombre Kant dar aquel salto inmortal de que os decía, todo eso no es más que una batalla por la conciencia. Si la conciencia no es, como ha dicho algún pensador inhumano, nada más que un relámpago entre dos eternidades de tinieblas, entonces no hay nada más execrable que la existencia.
A human soul is worth all the universe, someone once said, speaking very wisely. A human soul. Not a life, and certainly not this one. And it so happens that the less you believe in the soul, in the immortal conscience that is personal and concrete, the more you must exaggerate the worth of this poor, fleeting life. Here we find the source of effeminate antipathy to war. Yes, one should not desire death, but the death to fear most is the other one, the death of the soul. “He who desires to save his life shall lose it,” as the Gospel says, but it is not speaking of the desire to save the soul, the immortal soul. Or at least so we believe, and hope.
All the objectivists (‡) fail to notice, or pointedly avoid noticing, that when the individual human affirms its ego, its personal conscience, it is in fact affirming mankind, affirming the human being in concrete and actual terms, and professing real humanism, the kind that arises directly from man rather than from our possessions. And when it affirms mankind in this way, it affirms our conscience, the only conscience of which we have direct awareness.
The world exists for conscience. Or perhaps better: this notion of for, a sentiment of finality or purpose immanent in the world, arises only where conscience is. Conscience and purpose are at root the same thing.
If the sun had conscience, he would doubtless suppose he lived to light the worlds, but he would also think that the worlds existed for him to light, and to enjoy lighting, over the course of his life. And he would think well.
All this tragic battle to save the human ego, the immortal longing for immortality that caused Kant to make that great leap I told you of, all of it is nothing but a battle for conscience. If conscience does not exist, as one inhumane thinker has said, if it is nothing more than a lightning-bolt between two eternities of darkness (†), then there is nothing more odious than our existence.
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(‡) Those who think of the world as having definite, knowable limits outside the variable perception of individuals (subjects, whose outlook is necessarily subjective).
(†) Kierkegaard likens Don Giovanni, the titular character of Mozart's opera (premier in 1787), to a lightning-bolt in the first part of Either/Or (Enten-Eller 1.83, originally published 1843). Nietzsche calls the Overman (Übermensch) a lightning-bolt in Thus Spake Zarathustra 1.4 (originally published 1883). After Unamuno, Vicente Aleixandre published a book of poems (Historia del corazón, pub. 1954) including one on the human condition titled "Entre dos oscuridades un relámpago."