Rational limits. Unamuno, Life 5.25
Unamuno
is wrapping up his assessment of reason. Within rational limits he
finds no room for personal immortality, which thus becomes rationally
impossible (as Christians recognized as early as Tertullian).
No
sé por qué tanta gente se escandalizó o hizo que se escandalizaba
cuando Brunetière volvió a proclamar la bancarrota de la ciencia.
Porque la ciencia, en cuanto sustitutiva de la religión, y la razón
en cuanto sustitutiva de la fe, han fracasado siempre. La ciencia
podrá satisfacer, y de hecho satisface en una medida creciente,
nuestras crecientes necesidades lógicas o mentales, nuestro anhelo
de saber y conocer la verdad; pero la ciencia no satisface nuestras
necesidades afectivas y volitivas, nuestra hambre de inmortalidad, y
lejos de satisfacerla, contradícela. La verdad racional y la vida
están en contraposición. ¿Y hay acaso otra verdad que la verdad
racional?
Debe
quedar, pues, sentado, que la razón, la razón humana, dentro de sus
límites, no sólo no prueba racionalmente que el alma sea inmortal y
que la conciencia humana haya de ser en la serie de los tiempos
venideros indestructible, sino que prueba más bien, dentro de sus
límites, repito, que la conciencia individual no puede persistir
después de la muerte del organismo corporal de que depende. Y esos
límites, dentro de los cuales digo que la razón humana prueba esto,
son los límites de la racionalidad, de lo que conocemos
comprobadamente. Fuera de ellos está lo irracional, que es lo mismo
que se la llame sobre-racional que infra-racional o contra-racional;
fuera de ellos está el absurdo de Tertuliano, el imposible del
certum est,
quia impossibile est. Y ese absurdo no puede
apoyarse sino en la más absoluta incertidumbre.
I
do not know why so many were offended, or took occasion to appear so,
when Brunetière proclaimed again the bankruptcy of science (†). As
a substitute for religion, science has always failed, the same way
that reason fails as a substitute for faith. Science will be able to
satisfy our growing need for logic and mental calculation, our desire
to apprehend and understand the truth—indeed, it already does this
better now than ever before. But science does not meet our needs for
affection or will, our hunger for immortality: it is so far from
satisfying these needs that it contradicts them directly. Rational
truth stands in opposition to life. Is there perhaps a truth other
than the rational?
It
must be conceded that reason—human reason, operating within its
essential limits—fails to prove that the soul is immortal,
rationally speaking, and that human consciousness persists
indestructible in the series of future times. More than that, our
reason succeeds in proving—within the limits of its operation, I
repeat—that individual consciousness cannot endure beyond the death
of the material organism on which it depends. The limits of this
proof are rational limits, known because we test them. Beyond them
lies the irrational, which might just as easily be invoked as
super-rational, or infra-rational, or counter-rational.
This is the domain of what Tertullian calls the absurd, the
impossible: “It is certain, because it is impossible” (de
Carne Christi 5). Such
absurdity can only dwell in the most absolute uncertainty.
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(†)
Ferdinand Brunetière (1849-1906) was a French critic and professor
of literature at the École Normale (which he entered by dint of
publishing articles and books, since he failed his one chance at
examinations). A devout Catholic, he published at least two articles
which questioned popular conceptions of science and its benefits (cf.
Revue des Deux Mondes 94.214-26,
127.97-118).