Immortality is absurd. Unamuno, Life 4.15

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 colectiva cristiana, se trata de una garantía de nuestra propia resurrección personal, en alma y también en cuerpo? Esa nueva apologética psicológica apela al milagro moral, y nosotros, como los judíos, queremos señales, algo que se pueda agarrar con todas las potencias del alma y con todos los sentidos del cuerpo. Y con las manos y los pies y la boca, si es posible.

Pero ¡ay! que no lo conseguimos; la razón ataca, y la fe, que no se siente sin ella segura, tiene que pactar con ella. Y de aquí vienen las trágicas contradicciones y las desgarraduras de conciencia. Necesitamos seguridad, certeza, señales, y se va a los motiva credibilitatis, a los motivos de credibilidad, para fundar el rationale obsequium, y aunque la fe precede a la razón, fides praecedit rationem, según San Agustín, este mismo doctor y obispo quería ir por la fe a la inteligencia, per fidem ad intellectum, y creer para entender: credo ut intelligam. Cuán lejos de aquella soberbia expresión de Tertuliano: et sepultus resurrexit, certum est quia impossibile est! «y sepultado resucitó; es cierto porque es imposible», y su excelso: credo quia absurdum! escándalo de racionalistas. ¡Cuán lejos del il faut s’abêtir, de Pascal, y de aquel «la razón humana ama el absurdo», de nuestro Donoso Cortés, que debió de aprenderlo del gran José de Maistre!

The church's recent battle against Kantian and fideist modernism (†) is a fight for life. Can life, in her quest to secure survival, allow someone like Loisy, a Catholic priest, to affirm that the Savior's resurrection is not an historical fact, a deed demonstrated and demonstrable by the solitary witness of history? Read also the excellent work of Edouard Le Roy, Dogma and Criticism, wherein he discusses the central tenet of Catholicism, the resurrection of Jesus, and tell me if there is anything solid left upon which to support our hope (‡). Don't these people see what is at issue here? More than just the immortal life of Christ, which they would reduce to an enduring expression of the collective Christian consciousness. Can't they see that we are seeking a guarantee of our own personal resurrection, in soul and body? Defending this new position demands an actual miracle, and like the Jews, we want signs: something we can clasp with all the powers of our soul, and all the feelings of our body. With hands and feet and mouth, if possible.

But alas, we have failed. Reason attacks, and faith, who cannot feel safe without her sister, must make peace with her. This is a source of tragic contradictions, the great rents that mar our consciousness. We need security, certainty, signs, and our immediate resort is to intelligible motives for belief, a foundation for rational obedience. Though "faith precedes the miracle" according to Saint Augustine, this same doctor and bishop desires by faith to achieve intelligence, to pass by faith into understanding: "I believe in order that I may understand" (*). How far the saint is, already, from the proud declaration of Tertullian: "A corpse has returned to life from the grave: the miracle is certain because it is impossible!" And of course his most excellent remark: "I believe the gospel because it is absurd!" (⁑). A scandal for rationalists, like other honest declarations of faith. "You must become stupid," says Pascal (⁂). "Human reason loves what is absurd," declares our own Donoso Cortés, who must have learned from the great Joseph de Maistre (††).

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(†) In late antiquity and the middle ages, Christianity produced attempts to reconcile faith and reason (like the one articulated by Saint Augustine in The City of God). It also gave birth to divergent approaches, that explicitly avoided any reconciliation between these two, preferring to cultivate religion by faith alone (sola fide, hence fideism). In modern times, Kant embraced the separation between faith and reason, following the divergent tradition.

(‡) Le Roy (1870-1954) was a devout Catholic and a proponent of fideism. He believed that the truth of the gospel does not depend upon the literal truth of any dogma. He wrote several books, including the one cited by Unamuno, which appeared first in 1907. From his perspective, Christ's resurrection need not be a matter of history in order to merit faith, and become a vehicle for the salvation of souls.

(*) Here Unamuno cites the Latin confession of Saint Anselm (Proslogion 1), which echoes a sermon of Saint Augustine (Sermo 43.4: Dicit mihi homo: Intellegam ut credam. Respondeo: Crede ut intellegas).

(⁑) Like Augustine (354-430 CE), who came after his time, Tertullian (c. 155-240 CE) was a Christian from north Africa. His writings are some of the earliest Christian literature extant in Latin. Among them is a polemical tract denouncing various heretics for maintaining that Christ did not have a normal human body: Concerning the Body of Christ (De Carne Christi). This tract contains arguments that were summarized thereafter in the phrases Unamuno produces here.

(⁂) In the Thoughts (§ 418 Brunschvieg), Pascal says that you should cultivate faith by engaging in the rituals that occupy the faithful, which will necessarily make you become foolish (as they are).

(††) Juan Donoso Cortés (1809-1853) was a descendant of the conquistador Hernan Cortés. After taking a degree from the University of Seville, he became professor of literature at the College of Cáceres in Extremadura. He was politically active, originally as an ardent liberal—following the French winds of change blown into Spain in the wake of Napoleon—but experience, notably the coup that took place at the summer palace in La Granja in 1836, cooled his ardor, turning him into a conservative. His most famous work, An Essay on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism (1851), echoes the conservatism of the earlier Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821), who opposed the French revolution in a series of eloquent writings. Both men believed that government cannot have any purely rational foundation, that the quest for a social contract that makes rational sense to all members of a state is doomed.