No eternal return! Unamuno, Life 3.13
What
happens when we attempt to reason with faith? To reconcile the heart
and the head, in Unamuno's terms? Nietzsche famously attempts to
answer this question, offering a well-developed outlook in his
writings which Unamuno is going to contest. As a devout Catholic, he
cannot agree with the skeptical Protestant. From Unamuno's
perspective, Nietzsche uses the head to destroy the heart,
deconstructing all hope by showing that there is no sufficient human
reason for it. For Unamuno, hope is necessary, a given that we accept
prior to reason, and independent of it.
Y
vuelven los sensatos, los que no están a dejarse engañar, y nos
machacan los oídos con el sonsonete de que no sirve entregarse a la
locura y dar coces contra el aguijón, pues lo que no puede ser es
imposible. Lo viril —dicen— es resignarse a la suerte, y pues no
somos inmortales, no queramos serlo; sojuzguémonos a la razón sin
acongojarnos por lo irremediable, entenebreciendo y entristeciendo la
vida. Esa obsesión —añaden— es una enfermedad. Enfermedad,
locura, razón... ¡el estribillo de siempre! Pues bien, ¡no! No me
someto a la razón y me rebelo contra ella, y tiro a crear en fuerza
de fe a mi Dios inmortalizador y a torcer con mi voluntad el curso de
los astros, porque si tuviéremos fe como un grano de mostaza,
diríamos a ese monte: pásate de ahí, y se pasaría, y nada nos
sería imposible (Mat. XVII, 20).
Ahí
tenéis a ese ladrón de energías, como él llamaba torpemente al
Cristo, que quiso casar el nihilismo con la lucha por la existencia,
y os habla de valor. Su corazón le pedía el todo eterno, mientras
su cabeza le enseñaba la nada, y desesperado y loco para defenderse
de sí mismo, maldijo de lo que más amaba. Al no poder ser Cristo,
blasfemó del Cristo. Henchido de sí mismo, se quiso inacabable y
soñó la vuelta eterna, mezquino remedo de inmortalidad, y lleno de
lástima hacia sí, abominó de toda lástima. ¡Y hay quien dice que
es la suya filosofía de hombres fuertes! No; no lo es. Mi salud y mi
fortaleza me empujan a perpetuarme. ¡Esa es doctrina de endebles que
aspiran a ser fuertes, pero no de fuertes que lo son! Sólo los
débiles se resignan a la muerte final, y sustituyen con otro el
anhelo de inmortalidad personal. En los fuertes, el ansia de
perpetuidad sobrepuja a la duda de lograrla, y su rebose de vida se
vierte al más allá de la muerte.
Here
the sensible folk turn to us, determined to avoid being taken in, and
attack our ears with the cant that it is pointless to yield to
insanity and kick against the pricks, for that which cannot be is
impossible. Man's duty, they say, is to resign himself to fortune,
and as we are not immortals, we should not desire to be such. We must
submit ourselves to reason without grieving for what cannot be
helped, accepting a life darkened and saddened by mortality.
Obsession with life, they add, is an illness. Illness, madness,
reason: the endless refrain! To that I say No. I do not submit to
reason; I rebel against her, instead—seeking by the power of faith
to make my God one that confers immortality, striving to bend the course of the stars by my will, for if we had faith like unto the seed
of the mustard-plant, we would say to that mountain, "Get out!," and it
would remove from before us, and nothing would be impossible to us
(Matthew 27.20).
At
this juncture you meet that notorious thief of our powers (†), who
would himself pass that title on to Christ, seeking thereby to unite
nihilism with the struggle for existence—a cowardly move, and yet
he speaks to you of bravery. His heart asked for all eternity, while
his head taught him the void of nothingness, and in a fit of
desperate madness he cursed what he most loved, trying to defend
himself against his own attack. Unable to become Christ, he
blasphemed him. Full of himself, he wished to be endless and dreamed
of the eternal return, a poor imitation of immortality. Swollen with
self-loathing, he cursed all loathing. And yet some say that his is
the philosophy of strong men! No, it is not. My health and fortitude
push me to perpetuate myself. His doctrine, in contrast, belongs to
weaklings that aspire to become strong, not to those already
confident in their strength. Only the weak resign themselves to total
death, supplanting the desire for personal immortality with some
other appetite. In the strong, on the other hand, the longing for
perpetuity overcomes all doubt of obtaining it, and life's abundance
pours itself out beyond the boundary of death.
---
(†)
A veiled reference to Nietzsche, whose doctrines Unamuno summarizes
and rejects in the paragraph that follows. Friedrich Wilhelm
Nietzsche (1844-1900) was born the son of a Lutheran pastor, and
excelled early at religious studies. He began his university career
at Bonn pursuing philology and theology, aiming to become a minister
like his father. In the end, however, his studies led him to reject
Christianity, as hopelessly entangled in the morality of European
churches whose pedantic hypocrisy did not please him. He spent a
little time trying to be a professor of classical philology at the
University of Basel, but ultimately retired to write philosophy,
beset with chronic ill health that dogged him to his early death.
When Unamuno identifies his philosophy as emanating from a position
of weakness, he has this history in mind. The doctrine of the eternal
return holds, in brief, that every moment in the present is destined
to come back somehow in future, flouting any attempt we might make to
evade or change it. Destiny and mortality thus become inescapable and
inalterable, in terms of consequence, leaving humanity to choose not
whether we suffer but how. Nietzsche advocates suffering with joy
(the dance recommended by his famous philosophical sage,
Zarathustra), but holds out no prospect of escape. Unamuno does not
want such happiness, preferring to believe that he will escape,
though it seems impossible that he should.
He also refuses to reject Christianity or the church, for reasons
that his book will explain later. There is a certain irony here, as
careful readers may note: Nietzsche's take on moral strength and
weakness is actually rather close to Unamuno's,
though he
frames
it in explicitly anti-Christian terms.