Why? Unamuno, Life 2.8
Unamuno
continues to build his case for philosophy as something we do
concretely, from interests and abilities that are necessarily limited
in time and space, unless and until we escape mortality. <Spanish>.
Y
ahora bien; ¿para qué se filosofa?, es decir, ¿para qué se
investigan los primeros principios y los fines
últimos de las
cosas? ¿Para qué se busca la verdad desinteresada? Porque aquello
de que todos los hombres tienden por naturaleza a conocer, está
bien; pero ¿para qué?
Buscan
los filósofos un punto de partida teórico o ideal a su trabajo
humano, el de filosofar; pero suelen
descuidar buscarle el punto de
partida práctico y real, el propósito. ¿Cuál es el propósito al
hacer filosofía, al pensarla y exponerla luego a los semejantes?
¿Qué busca en ello y con ello el filósofo? ¿La verdad por la
verdad misma? ¿La verdad para sujetar a ella nuestra conducta y
determinar conforme a ella nuestra actitud espiritual para con la
vida y el universo?
La
filosofía es un producto humano de cada filósofo, y cada filósofo
es un hombre de carne y hueso que
se dirige a otros hombres de carne
y hueso como él. Y haga lo que quiera, filosofa, no con la razón
sólo, sino con la voluntad, con el sentimiento, con la carne y con
los huesos, con el alma toda y con todo el cuerpo. Filosofa el
hombre.
Y
no quiero emplear aquí el yo, diciendo que al filosofar filosofo yo
y no el hombre, para que no se
confunda este yo concreto,
circunscrito, de carne y hueso, que sufre del mal de muelas y no
encuentra soportable la vida si la muerte es la aniquilación de la
conciencia personal, para que no se le confunda con
ese otro yo de
matute, el Yo con letra mayúscula, el Yo teórico que introdujo en
la filosofía Fichte, ni aun
con el único, también teórico, de
Max Stirner. Es mejor decir nosotros. Pero nosotros los circunscritos
en
espacios.
¡Saber
por saber! ¡La verdad por la verdad! Eso es inhumano. Y si decimos
que la filosofía teórica se
endereza a la práctica, la verdad al
bien, la ciencia a la moral, diré: y el bien ¿para qué? ¿Es acaso
un fin en
sí? Bueno no es sino lo que contribuye a la conservación,
perpetuación y enriquecimiento de la conciencia.
El bien se
endereza al hombre, al mantenimiento y perfección de la sociedad
humana, que se compone de
hombres. Y esto; ¿para qué? «Obra de
modo que tu acción pueda servir de norma a todos los hombres», nos
dice Kant. Bien ¿y para qué? Hay que buscar un para qué.
Now
we come to an important question: Why
do we philosophize? That is to say: Why look into the first
principles and final ends of things? What purpose does the search for
unbiased truth have? That which all men seek by nature to know is
good, but what is it good for?
Philosophers
seek a theoretic or ideal point of origin for their human work,
philosophy. But they often neglect to look for a practical and actual
point of origin, a purpose. What is the point of making philosophy,
of thinking about it and explaining it later to your fellows? What do
philosophers seek in it, and by means of it? Truth for her own sake?
Truth to which we can subject our conduct, shaping our spiritual
attitude to match what she tells us about life and the universe?
Philosophy
is a human work carried out by each philosopher, and each philosopher
is a person of flesh and bone who addresses others with flesh and
bone like his. Whatever he does, he cannot help but philosophize not
just with reason, but with will and sentiment also—with flesh and
bones, with all the soul and body. Philosophy comes from man.
I
do not wish to use here the personal pronoun I,
saying that whenever philosophy is done it is I who do it, and not a
man. This is because I
do not want
to confuse my concrete self, a finite being of flesh and bone who
suffers from toothache and cannot bear life if death is the
destruction of personal consciousness, with this other pseudo-self,
the capital and theoretical I introduced into philosophy by
Fichte, or the Only One, also
theoretical, propounded by Max Stirner (†).
It is better to say we.
But we are finite beings, occupying limited space.
Knowledge
for its own sake! Truth because it is true! This is inhuman. And if
we say that theoretical philosophy instructs our practice, that truth
informs our notion of the good, and science our notion of the moral,
I will ask, To what end? Is
philosophy perhaps an end in itself? It is, after all, something that
contributes to the conservation, perpetuation, and enrichment of
consciousness. Our notion of the good informs us for the maintenance
and perfection of human society, which is made up of men. Why? “Act
in such fashion that your action may serve as a rule for all men,”
Kant tells us. Very well, but why? We need to search out a purpose.
---
(†)
Max Stirner was the pen-name of Johann Kaspar Schmidt (1806-1856), a
Bavarian who studied philosophy, theology, and philology at the
University of Berlin, where he encountered Hegel and the society of
die Freien,
which
included Feuerbach, Bauer, Engels, Marx, and Ruge. Like many
philosophers, he failed to get either a degree or a state
appointment, and retreated from the university to teach privately—in his
case, at a finishing school for girls, where he wrote his magnum
opus, Der
Einzige und sein Eigentum
(The Only One
and its
Own,
published in 1844). His thesis was roughly this, that every self acts
selfishly, especially when it pretends to be unselfish.
He
resigned his teaching position in anticipation of backlash from this
publication, writing several other books thereafter and divorcing his
second wife (the first died from complications of pregnancy in 1838)
before his premature death in 1856, which resulted from an infected
insect bite. His second wife, Marie Dähnehardt, retreated eventually
to a Catholic commune in England, where his biographer found
her unwilling to say anything about her one-time husband except that
his love was false.