Life resists rational understanding. Unamuno, Life 5.8
A
problem with words, historically: they are used to mark events, to
describe observation. Not all observations are reducible to rational
abstraction that parses them all equally, delimiting them according
to some universal plan that can be rendered explicit. A descriptive
grammar is not the same as a prescriptive one, and a collection of
descriptions is no exhaustive index of prescription. Having a term
for something is not the same as knowing that that something exists
in any actual, definitive form outside our language (subject to our
direct control or manipulation, as words are).
Jorge
Berkeley, obispo anglicano de Cloyne y hermano en espíritu del
también obispo anglicano José Butler, quería salvar como éste la
fe en la inmortalidad del alma. Desde las primeras palabras del
Prefacio de su Tratado
referente a los principios del conocimiento humano
(A
treatise concerning the Principles of human Knowledge),
nos dice que este su
tratado le parece útil, especialmente para los tocados de
escepticismo o que necesitan una demostración de la existencia e
inmaterialidad de Dios y de la inmortalidad natural del alma. En el
capítulo CXL establece que tenemos una idea o más bien noción del
espíritu, conociendo otros espíritus por medio de los nuestros, de
lo cual afirma redondamente, en el párrafo siguiente, que se sigue
la natural inmortalidad del alma. Y aquí entra en una serie de
confusiones basadas en la ambigüedad que al término noción da. Y
es después de haber establecido casi como
per
saltum
la inmortalidad
del alma, porque ésta no es pasiva, como los cuerpos, cuando pasa en
el capítulo CXLVII a decirnos que la existencia de Dios es más
evidente que la del hombre. ¡Y decir que hay quien, a pesar de esto,
duda de ella!
Complicábase
la cuestión porque se hacía de la conciencia una propiedad del
alma, que era algo más que ella, es decir, una forma sustancial del
cuerpo, originadora de las funciones orgánicas todas
de éste. El alma no sólo piensa, siente y quiere, sino mueve al
cuerpo y origina sus funciones vitales; en el alma humana se unen las
funciones vegetativa, animal y racional. Tal es la doctrina. Pero el
alma separada del cuerpo no puede tener ya funciones vegetativas y
animales.
Para
la razón, en fin, un conjunto de verdaderas confusiones.
George
Berkeley (†), Anglican bishop of Cloyne and brother in spirit of
fellow bishop Joseph Butler, wished like Butler to save faith in the
soul's immortality. The first words of the preface to his Treatise
Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge make
this intention clear, informing us of his opinion that this treatise
will be especially useful to those tinged with skepticism, or
to any who might need a
demonstration of the existence and immateriality of God, and of the
natural immortality of the soul.
In chapter 140 he explains that we have an idea, or perhaps better a
notion, of spirit that knows other spirits by recourse to its
knowledge of itself. From this he
proceeds in the next paragraph to deduce, in circular fashion, the
consequence that the soul is naturally immortal. He then enters
upon a series of confused
observations founded on the ambiguity of the term notion,
and having established the
immortality of the soul almost by naked assertion⸺leaping
to it from the fact that the soul is not passive, like the body⸺he
goes on to tell us in chapter 147 that the existence of God is more
evident than that of man. And yet somehow, he finds, in spite of
this, people doubt it!
The
question is historically complicated by the fact that consciousness
is typically conceived as a property of the soul, which
latter extends itself beyond
the realm of thought to become a substantial form of the body, a
material point of origin for all the latter's organic functions. The
ancient soul does not merely think, feel, and desire: it moves the
body and gives birth to all vital processes. In the human soul, the
ancients find vegetable, animal, and rational processes united
together. Such is their doctrine. But once separated from the body,
the soul cannot anymore contain vegetable and animal processes.
In
short, the concept of soul is rationally inscrutable, invoking a
conjunction of things whose mutual relationship is truly confused,
and confusing, when we consider them rationally.
---
(†)
Born in Dysart castle in Ireland, George Berkeley (1685-1753) grew up
there and attended Trinity College in Dublin, where he took two
degrees and taught Greek before making the Grand Tour, taking holy
orders in the Church of Ireland, and traveling to Rhode Island (where
he settled for a time in Middletown with his newlywed wife, Anne Forster). When his
plans to found a college in Bermuda came to naught, owing to lack of
parliamentary funding, he returned to London, then to Cloyne (where
he was bishop from 1734), and finally, after retirement, to Oxford,
where he died. He is most remembered for his theory of immaterialism,
which propounded that our material world is actually composed of
immaterial perception (hence the Latin phrase quoted by Unamuno to
sum him up: esse est percipi).