Two masters. Unamuno, Life 6.10
Unamuno
returns to his assessment of reason as fundamentally morbid: it
imposes limits upon us, which in biology we call mortality. Against
it lies everything that we might call our will to live, a longing for
immortality that Unamuno makes an essential, and irrational, feature
of religion.
La
consecuencia vital del racionalismo sería el suicidio. Lo dice muy
bien Kierkegaard: «El suicidio
es la consecuencia
de existencia del pensamiento puro ... No elogiamos el suicidio, pero
sí la pasión. El pensador, por el contrario, es un curioso animal,
que es muy inteligente a ciertos ratos del día, pero que, por lo
demás, nada tiene de común con el hombre».
(Afsluttende
uvidenskabelig Efterskrift,
cap. 3, § 1).
Como
el pensador no deja, a pesar de todo, de ser hombre, pone la razón
al servicio de la vida, sépalo o no. La vida engaña a la razón; y
ésta a aquélla. La filosofía escolástico-aristotélica, al
servicio de la vida, fraguó un sistema teleológico-evolucionista de
metafísica, al parecer racional, que sirviese de apoyo a nuestro
anhelo vital. Esa filosofía, base del sobrenaturalismo ortodoxo
cristiano, sea católico o sea protestante, no era, en el fondo, sino
una astucia de la vida para obligar a la razón a que la apoyase.
Pero tanto la apoyó ésta que acabó por pulverizarla.
He
leído que el ex carmelita Jacinto Loyson decía poder presentarse a
Dios tranquilo, pues estaba en paz con su conciencia y con su razón.
¿Con qué conciencia? ¿Con la religiosa? Entonces no lo comprendo.
Y es que no cabe servir a dos señores, y menos cuando estos dos
señores, aunque firmen treguas y armisticios y componendas, son
enemigos por ser opuestos sus intereses.
The
vital consequence of rationalism, the event that shows its most
perfect expression in our lives, is suicide. Kierkegaard puts this
very well: “Suicide is a consequence of pure thought successfully
existing … We who choose life do not praise suicide, but passion.
But the thinker, in contrast, is a curious animal—very intelligent
at certain times of day, but aside from that he lacks anything in
common with humanity” (Final Unscientific Postscript 3.1).
But
nevertheless, the thinker remains human. And as such, he puts reason
at the service of life, whether he is aware of this or not. Life
deceives reason, and is then seduced in turn. In service of life,
Christian scholastics fused their philosophy with that of Aristotle,
forging a system of metaphysics that unites divinity and matter. This
system, seemingly rational, existed originally to support and sustain
our will to live. Its philosophy, the logical foundation for all
orthodox Christianity that is Catholic or Protestant, was essentially
a clever trick life pulled to make reason back her. But reason's
support was so powerful that she ultimately unmade life's trap,
smashing it to smithereens.
The
ex-Carmelite Hyacinthe Loyson (†) used to say that he could present
himself to God at ease, for he was at peace with his own conscience
and with reason—or so I've read. What conscience or consciousness
was this? A religious one? In that case, I don't understand him. It
is impossible to serve two masters—no matter how many treaties, or
cease-fires, or formal concords they might conclude between
themselves—especially when these masters are enemies because of
their opposing interests, like religion and reason.
---
(†)
Hyacinthe Loyson (1827-1912) was born Charles Jean Marie Loyson, but
took the name Hyacinthe when he entered holy orders—first as a
Sulpician, then as a Dominican, and finally as a Carmelite. He was
excommunicated when he left his order rather than retract his public
criticism of the First Vatican Council (1868). He subsequently
married, allegedly with support from liberal Catholic clergy, and
continued to advocate within the church for liberal and modernizing
reforms (altering Catholic doctrine and practice to correct, in his
view, some of the vices that drove others to become Protestant).