The essence of humanity. Unamuno, Life 1.10
What is the essence of humanity? Unamuno reads Spinoza to explain his notion that it is the desire for some kind of personal immortality. You can hear this passage <here>.
Y
ser un hombre es ser algo concreto, unitario y sustantivo—es
ser cosa, res. Y ya sabemos lo que otro hombre, el
hombre Benito Spinoza, aquel judío portugués que nació y vivió en
Holanda a mediados del siglo XVII, escribió de toda cosa. La
proposición 6a de la
parte III de su Ética dice: unaquaeque res,
quatenus in se est, in suo esse perseverare conatur; es decir,
cada cosa, en cuanto es en sí, se esfuerza por perseverar en su ser.
Cada cosa es cuanto es en sí, es decir, en cuanto sustancia, ya que,
según él, sustancia es id quod in se est et per se
concipitur: lo que es por sí y por sí se concibe. Y en la
siguiente proposición, la 7a, de la misma
parte añade: conatus, quo unaquaeque res in suo esse
perseverare conatur nihil est praeter ipsius rei actualem essentiam;
esto es, el esfuerzo con que cada cosa trata de perseverar en su
ser no es sino la esencia actual de la cosa misma. Quiere decirse que
tu esencia, lector, la mía, la del hombre Spinoza, la del hombre
Butler, la del hombre Kant y la de cada hombre que sea hombre, no es
sino el conato, el esfuerzo que pone en seguir siendo hombre, en no
morir. Y la otra proposición que sigue a estas dos, la 8a,
dice: conatus, quo unaquaeque res in suo esse perseverare
conatur, nullum tempus finitum, sed indefinitum involvit; o sea,
el esfuerzo con que cada cosa se esfuerza por perseverar en su
ser, no implica tiempo finito, sino indefinido. Es decir, que tú, yo
y Spinoza queremos no morirnos nunca y que este nuestro anhelo de
nunca morirnos es nuestra esencia actual. Y, sin embargo, este pobre
judío portugués, desterrado en las tinieblas holandesas, no pudo
llegar a creer nunca en su propia inmortalidad personal, y toda su
filosofía no fue sino una consolación que fraguó para esta su
falta de fe. Como a otros les duele una mano o un pie o el corazón o
la cabeza, a Spinoza le dolía Dios. ¡Pobre hombre! ¡Y pobres
hombres los demás!
To
be human is to be something concrete, a thing both
singular and substantive. We already know what Benedict Spinoza wrote
concerning every thing—Spinoza, the Portuguese Jew born and bred in
Holland in the middle of the 17th century (†).
The sixth proposition of the third part of his Ethics
states that each thing, insofar as it exists intrinsically,
attempts to continue being what it is. Each thing is whatever it
is on its own, viz. with respect to its substance, which according to
Spinoza is that which exists on its own and is conceived by
itself. The next proposition from the same part, the
seventh, adds this: the attempt by which each thing seeks to
continue being is nothing but the actual essence of that thing.
Your essence, dear reader—and mine, and that of Spinoza, or
Butler, or Kant, or anyone who is a human being—is nothing but an
attempt, an effort, to remain human, to avoid dying. The proposition
following these two, the eighth, says that the attempt by which
each thing strives to remain in its essence involves no fixed period
of time, but rather an indefinite one. In other words, you,
Spinoza, and I do not wish to die, ever, and this desire of ours to
cheat death is our actual essence. And yet this poor Jew,
exiled to Dutch darkness, could never manage to believe in his own
personal immortality, and forged all his philosophy as a consolation
for this lack of faith. As others experience pain on account of a
hand, or a foot, or the heart, or the head, so Spinoza suffered
because of God. Poor man! And poor us, the rest of humanity.
---
(†)
Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was born Benedito de Espinosa, to a Portuguese family
of Sephardi Jews exiled to Amsterdam in the wake of serious
persecution throughout the Iberian peninsula by militant Catholic
governments (cf. the 1492 Alhambra decree in Spain, & the 1496
edict of expulsion in Portugal). He distinguished himself early for
moral independence, earning excommunication from the synagogue for
his take on the nature of scripture and divinity, and went on to live
a quiet life, grinding lenses to pay his bills, writing books
(including the Ethics, which remained unpublished until his
death), and refusing academic honors. Spinoza conceived God as an
impersonal soul of the world, in which personal souls like ours
participate only partially and momentarily. Unamuno calls him poor
here, but Gilles Deleuze spoke for others when he named him the
prince of philosophers.