Human truth is tragic. Unamuno, Life 6.25
Philosophy
aims for truth that we can live by, not truth that is beyond question
or refutation. Unamuno's philosophy is not a prescription of what
must be true, but a description of the truest human insight he has
been able to achieve. As such, it is necessarily imperfect, founded
in sentiment rather than reason, incapable of claiming more universal
scope for itself than its origins will allow.
Y
nada tampoco se adelanta con sacar a relucir las ambiguas palabras de
pesimismo y optimismo, que con frecuencia nos dicen lo contrario que
quien las emplea quiso decirnos. Poner a una doctrina el mote de
pesimista, no es condenar su validez ni los llamados optimistas son
más eficaces en la acción. Creo, por el contrario, que muchos de
los más grandes héroes, acaso los mayores, han sido desesperados, y
que por desesperación acabaron sus hazañas. Y que aparte esto y
aceptando, ambiguas y todo como son, esas denominaciones de optimismo
y pesimismo, cabe un cierto pesimismo trascendente engendrador de un
optimismo temporal y terrenal, es cosa que me propongo desarrollar en
lo sucesivo de este tratado.
Muy
otra es, bien sé, la posición de nuestros progresistas, los de la
corriente
central del pensamiento europeo contemporáneo;
pero no puedo hacerme a
la idea de que estos sujetos no cierran voluntariamente los ojos al
gran problema y viven, en el fondo de una mentira, tratando de ahogar
el sentimiento trágico de la vida.
Y
hechas estas consideraciones, que son a modo de resumen práctico de
la crítica desarrollada en los seis primeros capítulos de este
tratado, una manera de dejar asentada la posición práctica a que la
tal crítica puede llevar al que no quiere renunciar a la vida y no
quiere tampoco renunciar a la razón, y tiene que vivir y obrar entre
esas dos muelas contrarias que nos trituran el alma, ya sabe el
lector que en adelante me siga, que voy a llevarle a un campo de
fantasías no desprovistas de razón, pues sin ella nada subsiste,
pero fundadas en sentimiento. Y en cuanto a su verdad, la verdad
verdadera, lo que es independientemente de nosotros, fuera de nuestra
lógica y nuestra cardíaca, de eso, ¿quién sabe?
There
is nothing substantial to be gained here by bringing forth yet again
the ambiguous words pessimism and
optimism, which often
tell us the opposite of what the person using them wants to say.
Describing a doctrine as pessimistic
does nothing to condemn its validity, nor are those folks called
optimists more
effectual when it comes to action. My own belief, on the contrary, is
that many of our greatest heroes, perhaps even the majority, have
been without hope, accomplishing their feats by dint of despair. Even
if we set this aside and accept optimism and
pessimism as valid
descriptors, for all their ambiguity, we find a certain transcendent
pessimism at the root of temporal and earthly optimism, a conundrum
which I propose to examine at greater length in the remainder of this
treatise.
I
am well aware that my position is far removed from that of our
progressives, those in the mainstream of contemporary European
thought. But I cannot shake my perception that these people are
willfully closing their eyes to the great problem before us, living
what amounts to a lie as they seek to snuff out every honest spark of
the tragic sentiment that pervades human life.
The
foregoing is a decent summary of the critique developed over the
course of the last six chapters of this treatise, which aim to
establish and illuminate the practical position a thoughtful person
might find, should he desire to renounce neither his life nor his
reason. Here in that position we find our life and work caught and
crushed between two millstones, vital hope and morbid reason, which
grind our souls to pieces between them. The reader who carries on
already knows that I shall bring him through this mill to a field of
fantasies founded upon sentiment, though reason won't be lacking
there, either, as nothing subsists without her. As far as truth is
concerned—the purest truth that exists independent of us, beyond
our logic and the beating of our passionate hearts—who knows
anything about that?