Beyond Philosophy

Unamuno views Catholic philosophy, i.e. medieval scholastic theology and its rational approach to religious doctrine, as a glorious failure, a doomed attempt to reconcile vital faith with mortal doubt. Reason must impose limits that faith cannot abide. The church's special approach to reason tries to tame this contradiction, to make space within the mortal realm of reason for faith in immortality. Y así se fraguó la teología escolástica, y saliendo de ella su criada, la ancilla theologiae , la filosofía escolástica también, y esta criada salió respondona. La escolástica, magnífica catedral con todos los problemas de mecánica arquitectónica resueltos por los siglos, pero catedral de adobes, llevó poco a poco a eso que llaman teología natural, y no es sino cristianismo despotencializado. Buscóse apoyar hasta donde fuese posible racionalmente los dogmas; mostrar por lo menos que si bien sobre-racionales, no eran contra-racionales, y se les ha puesto un basamento filosófico de filosof...

Seneca urges Lucilius to let go of his desires. Release what you cannot hold, the desires that bind you fast to expectations and liability you cannot bear. Do it now rather than wait for the right moment, which never appears when we hunt for it. Utinam quidem tibi senescere contigisset intra natalium tuorum modum, nec te in altum fortuna misisset! Tulit te longe a conspectu vitae salubris rapida felicitas, provincia et procuratio et quidquid ab istis promittitur; maiora deinde officia te excipient et ex aliis alia: quis exitus erit? quid exspectas donec desinas habere quod cupias? numquam erit tempus. Qualem dicimus seriem esse causarum ex quibus nectitur fatum, talem esse cupiditatum: altera ex fine alterius nascitur. In eam demissus es vitam quae numquam tibi terminum miseriarum ac servitutis ipsa factura sit: subduc cervicem iugo tritam; semel illam incidi quam semper premi satius est. Si te ad privata rettuleris, minora erunt omnia, sed affatim implebunt: at nunc plurima et undique...

What makes something beautiful? Not praise, according to Marcus Aurelius. And blame cannot destroy what praise cannot make. Πᾶν τὸ καὶ ὁπωσοῦν καλὸν ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ καλόν ἐστι καὶ ἐφ’ ἑαυτὸ καταλήγει, οὐκ ἔχον μέρος ἑαυτοῦ τὸν ἔπαινον· οὔτε γοῦν χεῖρον οὔτε κρεῖττον γίνεται τὸ ἐπαινούμενον. τοῦτό φημι καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν κοινότερον καλῶν λεγομένων, οἷον ἐπὶ τῶν ὑλικῶν καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν τεχνικῶν κατασκευασμάτων· τὸ δὲ δὴ ὄντως καλὸν τίνος χρείαν ἔχει; οὐ μᾶλλον ἢ νόμος, οὐ μᾶλλον ἢ ἀλήθεια, οὐ μᾶλλον ἢ εὔνοια ἢ αἰδώς· τί τούτων διὰ τὸ ἐπαινεῖσθαι καλόν ἐστιν ἢ ψεγόμενον φθείρεται; σμαράγδιον γὰρ ἑαυτοῦ χεῖρον γίνεται, ἐὰν μὴ ἐπαινῆται; τί δὲ χρυσός, ἐλέφας, πορφύρα, λύρα, μαχαίριον, ἀνθύλλιον, δενδρύφιον; Everything really beautiful, in any way, is beautiful on its own and retains its beauty by itself , owing nothing at all to praise. For praise does not make stuff better or worse. I speak here of things commonly called beautiful, material objects and cunning works of art. But what does a really beauti...

Catholic philosophy, which Unamuno seeks to discover and express in this chapter of his book, requires us to deduce truth from a principle of universal kindness or utility. Deduction is a rational process, and reason is naturally the enemy of life, and so of faith that worships life. Reason works by limitation and analysis : in natural terms, these words indicate what we know as death . Catholic philosophy is thus concerned with making death into an expression of life. Y buscóse como primera piedra de cimiento la autoridad de la tradición y la revelación de la palabra de Dios, y se llegó hasta aquello del consentimiento unánime. Quod apud multos unum invenitur non est erratum, sed traditum , dijo Tertuliano, y Lamennais añadió, siglos más tarde, que «la certeza, principio de la vida y de inteligencia ... es, si se me permite la expresión, un producto social». Pero aquí, como en tantas otras cosas, dió la fórmula suprema aquel gran católico del catolicismo popular y vital, el conde ...

Find ways to retire, even when life makes you active and involved. Look for moments to plunge into the abyss where your name and station do not matter. Deinde videbunt de isto quibus integra sunt et prima consilia an velint vitam per obscurum transmittere: tibi liberum non est. In medium te protulit ingenii vigor, scriptorum elegantia, clarae et nobiles amicitiae; iam notitia te invasit; ut in extrema mergaris ac penitus recondaris, tamen priora monstrabunt. Tenebras habere non potes; sequetur quocumque fugeris multum pristinae lucis: quietem potes vindicare sine ullius odio, sine desiderio aut morsu animi tui. Quid enim relinques quod invitus relictum a te possis cogitare? Clientes? quorum nemo te ipsum sequitur, sed aliquid ex te; amicitia olim petebatur, nunc praeda; mutabunt testamenta destituti senes, migrabit ad aliud limen salutator. Non potest parvo res magna constare: aestima utrum te relinquere an aliquid ex tuis malis . In any case, the decision to cultivate fame or not belo...

Don't do anything to secure an eternal legacy for something, or someone, that nature has not made to be eternal. Marcus Aurelius here anticipates Unamuno, and rejects his worship of personal immortality as unnatural, unseasonable, inhuman. Ὁ περὶ τὴν ὑστεροφημίαν ἐπτοημένος οὐ φαντάζεται ὅτι ἕκαστος τῶν μεμνημένων αὐτοῦ τάχιστα καὶ αὐτὸς ἀποθανεῖται· εἶτα πάλιν ὁ ἐκεῖνον διαδεξάμενος, μέχρι καὶ πᾶσα ἡ μνήμη ἀποσβῇ διὰ ἁπτομένων καὶ σβεννυμένων προιοῦσα. ὑπόθου δ', ὅτι καὶ ἀθάνατοι μὲν οἱ μεμνησόμενοι, ἀθάνατος δὲ ἡ μνήμη· τί οὖν τοῦτο πρὸς σέ; καὶ οὐ λέγω, ὅτι οὐδὲν πρὸς τὸν τεθνηκότα, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὸν ζῶντα τί ὁ ἔπαινος, πλὴν ἄρα δἰ οἰκονομίαν τινά; πάρες γὰρ νῦν ἀκαίρως τὴν φυσικὴν δόσιν ἄλλου τινὸς ἐχομένην λόγου λοιπόν (†). The man excited by posthumous fame fails to conceive that each person who remembers him shall perish just as swiftly as he does. Succeeding generations will then go to dust in their turn, until all memory of his fame is extinct, snuffed out with the lives o...

Unamuno finds tragedy in the lack of coherence between what we desire, with faith and hope, and what we can be sure of, with reason. Faith and hope inspire us to seek a personal life without mortality, and reason will never grant this. If we are serious about the quest for personal immortality, then, we must abandon reason, which calls this quest impossible. La lucha reciente contra el modernismo kantiano y fideísta es una lucha por la vida. ¿Puede acaso la vida, la vida que busca seguridad de la supervivencia, tolerar que un Loisy, sacerdote católico, afirme que la resurrección del Salvador no es un hecho de orden histórico, demostrable y demostrado por el solo testimonio de la Historia? Leed, por otra parte, en la excelente obra de E. Le Roy, Dogme et Critique , su exposición del dogma central, el de la resurrección de Jesús, y decidme si queda algo sólido en que apoyar nuestra esperanza. ¿No ven que más que de la vida inmortal del Cristo, reducida acaso a una vida en la conciencia ...

To everything there is a season. Hard work must be matched by rest. As we accumulate time and stress in life, it becomes more important than ever to cultivate leisure ( otium ), a retirement from the drudgery of our lives that avoids all the temptations and anxieties that come from taking things seriously. In Seneca's time, as in ours, there were people who tried to occupy their leisure with serious pursuits—writing history or philosophy, for example. Seneca does not discourage Lucilius from scholarship of this kind ( schole in Greek translates the Latin otium ), but he warns that treating it as work is a mistake, as is the concern for public reputation that infects many scholars. Presented with the modern academic command publish or perish ! , Seneca would cheerfully perish, and leave publishing to the birds. Exulto quotiens epistulas tuas accipio; implent enim me bona spe, et iam non promittunt de te sed spondent. Ita fac, oro atque obsecro—quid enim habeo melius quod amicum roge...

Life offers limited opportunity for action. Don't waste precious time chasing the suspicion that your neighbors are wicked. Make yourself good instead, and you will enjoy leisure (instead of using it to harm your mind with constant irritation at the wickedness of others). Ὅσην εὐσχολίαν κερδαίνει ὁ μὴ βλέπων τί ὁ πλησίον εἶπεν ἢ ἔπραξεν ἢ διενοήθη, ἀλλὰ μόνον τί αὐτὸς ποιεῖ, ἵνα αὐτὸ τοῦτο δίκαιον ᾖ καὶ ὅσιον ἢ (†) κατὰ τὸν ἀγαθὸν· μὴ μέλαν ἦθος περιβλέπεσθαι, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ τῆς γραμμῆς τρέχειν ὀρθόν, μὴ διερριμμένον. How profitable the leisure of a man who doesn't care what his neighbor has said, or done, or thought! Instead of looking at that, he considers only what he does himself, seeking to make it just and holy, or at least in keeping with nobility. Don't waste time scanning the horizon for dark clouds of wickedness. Instead, run a straight course down the line marked for you, refusing to deviate or be turned aside. --- (†) This passage is marked by editors as corrupt.

Unamuno returns to his theme that  reason is deadly . In the battle for life, the Catholic church stands against rational limitations, which impose the necessity of death and thereby destroy our hope of personal immortality. When the church opposes rational teachings, like those of Galileo or Darwin or the priest Loisy, its motive is to keep the body of Christ from perishing, as it must do if it loses hope in personal immortality (which Unamuno regards as fundamental to the faith, against the judgment of rational Christians, Protestant or Catholic, who prefer ethics to eschatology). Theology exists, on Unamuno's reading, to offer the faithful rational methods for undermining and opposing reason, which on its own would destroy them, leaving them hopeless, helpless, dead before their time. Es lo vital que se afirma, y para afirmarse crea, sirviéndose de lo racional, su enemigo, toda una construcción dogmática, y la Iglesia la defiende contra racionalismo, contra protestantismo y cont...

How do we handle anger? Check it, always. Control the mind, not the world, so that you avoid unnecessary fevers.  Sed iam incipiamus epistulam complicare. Prius inquis redde quod debes. Delegabo te ad Epicurum, ab illo fiet numeratio: immodica ira gignit insaniam. Hoc quam verum sit necesse est scias, cum habueris et servum et inimicum. In omnes personas hic exardescit affectus; tam ex amore nascitur quam ex odio, non minus inter seria quam inter lusus et iocos; nec interest ex quam magna causa nascatur sed in qualem perveniat animum. Sic ignis non refert quam magnus sed quo incidat; nam etiam maximum solida non receperunt, rursus arida et corripi facilia scintillam quoque fovent usque in incendium. Ita est, mi Lucili: ingentis irae exitus furor est, et ideo ira vitanda est non moderationis causa sed sanitatis. Vale. But it is time for us to begin wrapping this letter up. “First, pay off your debt!” you say. I will refer you to Epicurus, who has your coin: “Left unchecked, anger...

Marcus Aurelius does not want immortality. Faced with the choice presented by Unamuno, between eschatology and ethics, he chooses the latter boldly . Μὴ ὡς μύρια μέλλων ἔτη ζῆν. τὸ χρεὼν ἐπήρτηται· ἕως ζῇς, ἕως ἔξεστιν, ἀγαθὸς γενοῦ. Do not live as though you might last thousands of years. The limit of your lot is set: as you dwell in its little moment and then depart, be noble.

Is the purpose of religion to optimize human moral expression, or to achieve the goal of immortality? Unamuno says that Catholicism aims at both of these ends, but primarily the latter. Thus there is really just one sin that matters: thinking without the church, whose ethics are imparted as tools for immortalizing us, not instruments for assuaging our conscience of guilt (rational or otherwise). Unamuno appears to agree with Tertullian, that Christianity is essentially irrational. This does not mean that it has no use for reason at all, only that its foundation is not to be justified by reason. A rational man, Unamuno suggests, would never seek immortality, and thus would have no use for Catholicism — and perhaps no use for the arts and sciences whose historical expression incorporates elements of personality cult. Is life rational? Unamuno thinks not. We live by desire, hope, and fear, and not simply by reason, who is a servant to these primary drivers rather than a master. ¡Y no es q...