Tragic doubt. Unamuno, Life 6.3
Real
doubt shows us problems outside the reach of purely rational
solutions. We want to live for reasons that are not fundamentally
rational (in the strictest sense, such that anyone with good logic
would recognize and agree with our position).
Esta
duda cartesiana, metódica o teórica, esta duda filosófica de
estufa, no es la duda, no es el escepticismo, no es la incertidumbre
de que aquí os hablo, ¡no! Esta otra duda es una duda de pasión,
es el eterno conflicto entre la razón y el sentimiento, la ciencia y
la vida, la lógica y la biótica. Porque la ciencia destruye el
concepto de personalidad, reduciéndolo a un complejo en continuo
flujo de momento, es decir, destruye la base misma sentimental de la
vida del espíritu, que, sin rendirse se revuelve contra la razón.
Y
esta duda no puede valerse de moral alguna de provisión, sino que
tiene que fundar su moral, como veremos, sobre el conflicto mismo,
una moral de batalla, y tiene que fundar sobre sí misma la religión.
Y habita una casa que se está derruyendo de continuo y a la que de
continuo hay que restablecer. De continuo la voluntad, quiero decir,
la voluntad de no morirse nunca, la irresignación a la muerte,
fragua la morada de la vida, y de continuo la razón la está
abatiendo con vendavales y chaparrones.
Aún
hay más, y es que en el problema concreto vital que nos interesa, la
razón no toma posición alguna. En rigor, hace algo peor aún que
negar la inmortalidad del alma, lo cual sería una solución, y es
que desconoce el problema como el deseo vital nos lo presenta. En el
sentido racional y lógico del término problema no hay tal problema.
Esto de la inmortalidad del alma, de la persistencia de la conciencia
individual, no es racional, cae fuera de la razón. Es como problema,
y aparte de la solución que se le dé, irracional. Racionalmente
carece de sentido hasta el plantearlo. Tan inconcebible es la
inmortalidad del alma, como es, en rigor, su mortalidad absoluta.
Para explicarnos el mundo y la existencia —y tal es la obra de la
razón—, no es menester supongamos ni que es mortal ni inmortal
nuestra alma. Es, pues, una irracionalidad el solo planteamiento del
supuesto problema.
This
Cartesian doubt—methodical
or theoretical, cooked philosophically on a stove—is
not really doubt. I am not discussing such skepticism or uncertainty
with you here. No! My doubt is different, a doubt that arises from
passion, from the eternal conflict between reason and sentiment,
science and life, logic and biology. For science destroys the very
concept of personality, reducing it to nothing more than a momentary
conjunction in continuous flux: in other words, science destroys the
sentimental foundation of the life of the spirit, which then rebels
against reason rather than surrender.
The
doubt I discover cannot make use of any provisional morality:
instead, its morality, as we shall see, must be founded on conflict—a
morality of battle that inevitably becomes the foundation of
religion. My doubt inhabits a house that is always being destroyed,
that it must continually be rebuilding. What I mean to say: our
will—the will never to
die, never to surrender to death—forges
constantly a dwelling for our life, against which reason is ever
beating with whirlwinds and torrents.
There
is more: the actual, vital problem that we have is one that reason
does not even address directly. Strictly speaking, reason does
something even worse than simply deny the immortality of the soul, which
would be a solution: she does not recognize the problem in the form
that our vital desire presents it to us. In rational, logical terms
there is really no problem here to solve. Our preoccupation with the
immortality of the soul and the persistence of individual
consciousness is not rational: it falls outside the realm of reason.
As a problem, no matter what solution anyone might offer, it is
basically irrational. There is no rational sense in posing it. The
immortality of the soul is ultimately, rigorously speaking, just as
inconceivable as its absolute mortality. In order to explain the
world and our existence—this
is the work of reason—it
is not necessary for us to suppose that the soul is either mortal or
immortal. So the entire question becomes entirely irrational from the
beginning.