Truth & Sincerity. Unamuno, Life 6.11

Unamuno presents his position squarely. On the one hand, it would be irrational to say that our individual souls are immortal. On the other, it would be insincere if he denied his feeling that they are, a feeling that he has in spite of all reason. For we do not live by reason alone.

No faltará a todo esto quien diga que la vida debe someterse a la razón, a lo que contestaremos que nadie debe lo que no puede, y la vida no puede someterse a la razón. «Debe, luego puede», replicará algún kantiano. Y le contrarreplicaremos: «no puede, luego no debe.» Y no lo puede porque el fin de la vida es vivir y no lo es comprender.

Ni ha faltado quien haya hablado del deber religioso de resignarse a la mortalidad. Es ya el colmo de la aberración y de la insinceridad. Y a esto de la sinceridad vendrá alguien oponiéndonos la veracidad. Sea, mas ambas cosas pueden muy bien conciliarse. La veracidad, el respeto a lo que creo ser lo racional, lo que lógicamente llamamos verdad, me mueve a afirmar una cosa en este caso: que la inmortalidad del alma individual es un contrasentido lógico, es algo, no sólo irracional, sino contrarracional; pero la sinceridad me lleva a afirmar también que no me resigno a esa otra afirmación y que protesto contra su validez. Lo que siento es una verdad, tan verdad por lo menos como lo que veo, toco, oigo y se me demuestra —yo creo que más verdad aún—, y la sinceridad me obliga a no ocultar mis sentimientos.

Y la vida, que se defiende, busca el flaco de la razón y lo encuentra en el escepticismo, y se agarra de él y trata de salvarse asida a tal agarradero. Necesita de la debilidad de su adversaria.

Of course some fool will present here, babbling that life simply must submit herself to reason: to this we respond that nobody has any obligation to do what is impossible, and life certainly cannot submit to reason. “It must! and thus it can,” a disciple of Kant objects. Our riposte: “It cannot, and so it mustn't.” Life cannot submit to reason because the purpose and end of life is to live, not to understand.

Meanwhile, the past has already revealed critics who invoke a religious duty to resign ourselves to mortality. This position is the height of aberration and insincerity. When we note its problem with sincerity, some defenders will call our attention to truth. They have a point, but it is possible for us to be at once sincere and honest, open to the truth, here. It is honesty—the respect I bear for what I believe to be rational, that which we logically call the truth—that moves me to make this affirmation: that the immortality of each individual soul is logically impossible, is in fact something not merely irrational, but contrary to reason. But sincerity drives me to say further that I am not resigned to this rational judgment, that I protest against its validity. What I feel here, as I protest, is also a kind of truth, at least as true as whatever I see, touch, hear, or witness—I would trust it more, myself—and sincerity obliges me to reveal it, to own my honest sentiments.

Life, avid in her own defense, looks for reason's weakness and finds it in skepticism, which she then clutches and holds fast, seeking to save herself with the only tool at hand. She needs the weakness of her adversary.