Humanity is uncertain. Unamuno, Life 6.23
Unamuno
continues to prepare the reader for the second part of his book, in
which he will discuss how the strife between faith and reason is a
fertile spring of hope, as well as despair. Here he makes the
important observation that our moral action cannot depend on
certainty, since that is not human: we are creatures who act from a
position of uncertainty, always, no matter what we might say to the
contrary. To deny this is ultimately to deny our humanity.
Sí,
ya sé que otros han sentido antes que yo lo que yo siento y expreso;
que otros muchos lo sienten hoy, aunque se lo callan. ¿Por qué no
lo callo también? Pues porque lo callan los más de los que lo
sienten; pero, aun callándolo, obedecen en silencio a esa voz de las
entrañas. Y no lo callo, porque es para muchos lo que no debe
decirse, lo infando —infandum—,
y creo que es menester decir una y otra vez lo que no debe decirse.
¿Que a nada conduce? Aunque sólo condujese a irritar a los
progresistas, a los que creen que la verdad es consuelo, conduciría
a no poco. A irritarles y a que digan: ¡lástima de hombre!; ¡si
emplease mejor su inteligencia! ... A lo que alguien acaso añada que
no sé lo que me digo, y yo le responderé que acaso tenga razón —¡y
tener razón es tan poco!—, pero que siento lo que digo y sé lo
que siento, y me basta. Y que es mejor que le falte a uno razón que
no el que le sobre.
Y
el que me siga leyendo verá también cómo de este abismo de
desesperación puede surgir esperanza, y cómo puede ser fuente de
acción y de labor humana, hondamente humana, y de solidaridad y
hasta de progreso, esta posición crítica. El lector que siga
leyéndome verá su justificación pragmática. Y verá cómo para
obrar, y obrar eficaz y moralmente, no hace falta ninguna de las dos
opuestas certezas, ni la de la fe ni la de la razón, ni menos aún
—esto en ningún caso— esquivar el problema de la inmortalidad
del alma o deformarlo idealísticamente, es decir, hipócritamente.
El lector verá cómo esa incertidumbre, y el dolor de ella y la
lucha infructuosa por salir de la misma, puede ser y es base de
acción y cimiento de moral.
Y
con esto de ser base de acción y cimiento de moral el sentimiento de
la incertidumbre y la lucha íntima entre la razón y la fe y el
apasionado anhelo de vida eterna, quedaría, según un pragmatista,
justificado tal sentimiento. Mas debe constar que no le busco esta
consecuencia práctica para justificarlo, sino porque la encuentro
por experiencia íntima. Ni quiero ni debo buscar justificación
alguna a ese estado de lucha interior y de incertidumbre y de anhelo;
es un hecho, y basta. Y si alguien encontrándose en él, en el fondo
del abismo, no encuentra allí mismo móviles e incentivos de acción
y de vida, y por ende se suicida corporal o espiritualmente, o bien
matándose o bien renunciando a toda labor de solidaridad humana, no
seré yo quien se lo censure. Y aparte de que las malas consecuencias
de una doctrina, es decir, lo que llamamos malas, sólo prueban,
repito, que la doctrina es para nuestros deseos mala, pero no que sea
falsa, las consecuencias dependen, más aún que de la doctrina, de
quien las saca. Un mismo principio sirve a uno para obrar y a otro
para abstenerse de obrar; a éste para obrar en tal sentido, y a
aquél para obrar en sentido contrario. Y es que nuestras doctrinas
no suelen ser sino la justificación a
posteriori de nuestra conducta, o el modo como tratamos de
explicárnosla para nosotros mismos.
Yes,
I am aware that others before me have felt what I feel and express
here; that many others feel it today, though they remain silent. Why
am I not silent as well? Because so many who share this feeling, the
majority even, choose to hold their peace. But even so, though they
refuse to give utterance, they obey in silence the voice that lurks
in their guts. I do not hold back this voice, which utters what many
regard as unutterable, the word that must never be spoken, for I
believe that it is necessary every now and again to say what
shouldn't be said. It's pointless, you say? Even if its only point
were to goad the progressives, who believe that truth is comfortable,
this would be no mean achievement. To prick them to the point of
uttering their own feelings: “What a wretched excuse for a man! He
should make better use of his intelligence!” One of them might add
to this that I don't even know what I am saying, and I would respond
that he might be right—such a paltry thing, being right!—but that
I feel what say, and say what I feel, and that is enough for me. It is better to lack reason than to have too much of it.
The
reader who perseveres will see how hope too can rise from this abyss
of despair, how this critical position can become a source of action
and labor that is profoundly human, building solidarity and even
making some meaningful progress. This reader will find pragmatic
justification for his persistence in following my book. He will see
how effective ethical work has no need either of faith, or of
reason—neither the one nor the other of these two opposing
certainties. Still less does such work demand that we avoid the
problem of the soul's immortality, or deform this problem
idealistically, in other words, hypocritically. My reader will see
how doubt—and the pain born from her, and the fruitless fight to
flee her grasp—can be, and actually is, the basis for our action,
the bedrock of our morality.
Recognizing
that our feelings of doubt—our apprehension of the struggle between reason and faith
that occurs inside us, and our passionate desire for eternal life—are
the basis of our action and the bedrock of our morality would be
enough to justify them to a pragmatist. But I must insist that I am
not looking for this consequence as justification; I have
already found it, in my own intimate experience. I neither want nor
recognize any duty to justify the state of my own inner strife, my
own uncertainty, and my own desire. It is a fact, and that is enough.
If another should find himself in the same place, drowning in the
depths of the abyss, with no motive or incentive to act or to live,
and should thereupon kill his own body or his spirit, I shall not be
the one to condemn him. Evil consequences such as these only prove
that a given doctrine is bad for our human desires, not that it is
false per se. More importantly, I must emphasize,
consequences always depend more on the character of the person who
finds them than on any doctrine he may discover. The same principle
or doctrine that inspires one man to work will lead another to
refrain from working, and among those who learn from it to work, some
will act in ways directly opposite to the paths pursued by others.
The fact is that our doctrines are generally nothing more than tardy
justifications, illustrations of our conduct that we offer a
posteriori in an attempt to
explain to ourselves what we were doing.