Will & Intelligence. Unamuno, Life 6.7
Unamuno
contrasts will and intelligence, echoing Schopenhauer, whose most
famous idea was that the world of humanity is fundamentally dual,
being divided between Wille,
or will (the love and lust for life that is not fixed in any
particular form we give it), and Vorstellung,
or representation (which is what intelligence produces: it represents
the world to us in legible forms).
La
voluntad y la inteligencia se necesitan y a aquel viejo aforismo de
nihil
volitum quin praecognitum,
no se quiere nada que
no se haya conocido antes, no es tan paradójico como a primera vista
parece retrucarlo diciendo
nihil
cognitum quin praevolitum,
no se conoce nada que no se haya antes querido.
«El conocimiento mismo
del espíritu como tal —escribe Vinet en su estudio sobre el libro
de Cousin acerca de los
Pensamientos
de Pascal—,
necesita del corazón. Sin el deseo de ver, no se ve; en una gran
materialización de la vida y del pensamiento, no se cree en las
cosas del espíritu.» Ya veremos que creer es en primera instancia
querer creer.
La
voluntad y la inteligencia buscan cosas opuestas: aquélla absorber
al mundo en nosotros, apropiárnoslo; y ésta, que seamos absorbidos
en el mundo. ¿Opuestas? ¿No son más bien una misma cosa? No, no lo
son, aunque lo parezca. La inteligencia es monista o panteísta, la
voluntad es monoteísta o egotista. La inteligencia no necesita algo
fuera de ella en que ejercerse; se funde con las ideas mismas,
mientras que la voluntad necesita materia. Conocer algo, es hacerme
aquello que conozco; pero para servirme de ello, para dominarlo, ha
de permanecer distinto de mí.
Will
and intelligence require one another. And if we revise the old Latin
saying, that nothing is willed unless foreknown, to affirm
that nothing is known unless forewilled, the sentiment is not
as contrary to common experience as it first appears. “Knowledge of
spirit as such requires heart,” writes Vinet in his study on
Cousin's book about the Thoughts of Pascal (†). “Without
the desire to see, there is no sight. In any great materialization of
life and thought, belief in things of the spirit ceases to exist.”
We shall see presently that believing is, in its initial instance,
wanting to believe.
Will
and intelligence seek opposite ends. Will looks to absorb the world
into ourselves, to appropriate it for us. Intelligence facilitates
our absorption into the world. Are these ends really opposed, though?
Aren't they arguably one and the same thing? No, they are not, in
spite of appearances. Intelligence is monist, or pantheist. Will is
monotheist, or egotist. Intelligence requires nothing outside its own
realm: it subsists on ideas alone. But will needs alien matter. To
know something intelligently is to make myself into that which I know. But
to make wilful use of something, to dominate it, requires that it
remain distinct from myself.
---
(†)
Unamuno has referred before to Vinet, who here invokes Victor Cousin
(1792-1867), a French philosopher and educator whose prolific oeuvre
includes Études sur Pascal,
originally published in 1848
(and subsequently in many editions, at least six).