Triumph of the idiots. Unamuno, Life 4.8
Unamuno
here notices something very important: reason requires limitation,
and in biological terms this means mortality. Immortality is thus
anti-rational. And so are all the judgments worth making, Unamuno is
willing to aver: insofar as they embrace life without death, they
must oppose reason. Marcus Aurelius and Seneca would not disagree
with the opposition that Unamuno posits here, but they would argue,
vigorously, that life demands death, that immortality is not to be
sought—rationally or
otherwise—in the denial
of mortality.
Y
Atanasio tuvo el valor supremo de la fe, el de afirmar cosas
contradictorias entre sí; «la perfecta contradicción que hay en el
ὁμοούσιος trajo tras de sí todo un ejército de
contradicciones, y más cuanto más avanzó el pensamiento», dice
Harnack. Sí, así fué; y así tuvo que ser. «La dogmática se
despidió para siempre del pensamiento claro y de los conceptos
sostenibles, y se acostumbró a lo contrarracional», añade. Es que
se acostó a la vida, que es contrarracional y opuesta al pensamiento
claro. Las determinaciones de valor, no sólo no son nunca
racionalizables, son antirracionales.
En
Nicea vencieron, pues, como más adelante en el Vaticano, los idiotas
—tomada esta palabra en su recto sentido primitivo y etimológico—,
los ingenuos, los obispos cerriles y voluntariosos, representantes
del genuino espíritu humano, del popular, del que no quiere morirse,
diga lo que quiera la razón; y busca garantía, lo más material
posible, a su deseo.
Athanasius
possessed the most important power of faith: its ability to affirm
things that contradict each other. "The perfect contradiction
that exists in the formulation consubstantial (of
the same being, in Greek)
brought in its wake an entire army of contradictions, an army that
only grew as thought advanced," says Harnack. Yes, that is what
occurred, and what had to happen. "Dogma said farewell forever
to clarity of conception, and to concepts capable of defense, and
became accustomed to the anti-rational," he adds. In other
words, it reconciled with life, which is anti-rational and opposed to
clear thought. Judgements worth
making are not only never
susceptible to rationalization: they are anti-rational.
Nicaea
was a victory for the idiots, like the Vatican council (†).
These were idiots in
the proper primitive and etymological sense of the word
(‡):
feral bishops, acting of their own independent will, representing
the genuine human spirit of the people—the
spirit that does not want to die, no matter what reason says, and
seeks the most material
guarantee it can find for its desire.
---
(†)
Unamuno refers to the council known now as Vatican I (1869-1870),
since Vatican II (1962-1965). It was convoked by Pope Pius IX,
attended by 744 delegates, and issued dogmatic declarations affirming
papal infallibility and rejecting rationalism, liberalism,
materialism, and naturalism. Unamuno's take on its position is the
common one: that it rejected modernity.
(‡)
The Greek word ἰδιώτης
means variously private citizen, non-professional,
common man. It was used
non-pejoratively to indicate the persona people adopt when acting
without any public office or duty (i.e. in what we might call their
private lives, driven by intuition and taste rather than law or
custom shared with strangers in some formal, organized fashion).