Beyond Philosophy

Don't wait for life to happen, driving you down paths chosen for you haphazardly by events. Seize the reason that shows you the straight way to wisdom, a path that folk walk deliberately, as they choose. Your way to death should not be chaotic, as the way of fortune is. Quomodo ergo inquis me expediam? Effugere non potes necessitates, potes vincere. Fit via; et hanc tibi viam dabit philosophia. Ad hanc te confer si vis salvus esse, si securus, si beatus, denique si vis esse, quod est maximum, liber; hoc contingere aliter non potest. Humilis res est stultitia, abiecta, sordida, servilis, multis affectibus et sa ev issimis subiecta. Hos tam graves dominos, interdum alternis imperantes, interdum pariter, dimittit a te sapientia, quae sola libertas est. Una ad hanc fert via, et quidem recta; non aberrabis; vade certo gradu. Si vis omnia tibi subicere, te subice rationi; multos reges, si ratio te rexerit. Ab illa disces quid et quemadmodum aggredi debeas; non incides rebus. Neminem mi...

Marcus takes two views of the world: first an Epicurean view that sees all outcomes as accidental, emanating from contingency that lacks any unifying integrity; then, a Stoic one that sees them serving a greater purpose, essential somehow to the integrity of the whole. Ἤτοι κυκεὼν καὶ ἀντεμπλοκὴ καὶ σκεδασμὸς ἢ ἕνωσις καὶ τάξις καὶ πρόνοια. εἰ μὲν οὖν τὰ πρότερα, τί καὶ ἐπιθυμῶ εἰκαίῳ συγκρίματι καὶ φυρμῷ τοιούτῳ ἐνδιατρίβειν; τί δέ μοι καὶ μέλει ἄλλου τινὸς ἢ τοῦ ὅπως ποτὲ αἶα γίνεσθαι; τί δὲ καὶ ταράσσομαι; ἥξει γὰρ ἐπ’ ἐμὲ ὁ σκεδασμός, ὅ τι ἂν ποιῶ. εἰ δὲ θάτερά ἐστι, σέβω καὶ εὐσταθῶ καὶ θαρρῶ τῷ διοικοῦντι. The world is either a mess—a mad brew seething with momentary entanglement and scattering—or the opposite: a unified integrity marked by order and rational anticipation. If the former is our situation, then why would I wish to persist in any fixed position as part of a random heap, carried on in total disorder? Why does it matter to me that the earth be one way rather than anot...

Unamuno finishes presenting his initial portrait of God as the personification of the universe, which latter believers like him regard as an external, material expression of interior consciousness or awareness (cf. mind as imagined by Anaxagoras) that cannot be portrayed or conceived in purely, merely, or simply rational terms. Cuando la compasión, el amor nos revela al universo todo luchando por cobrar, conservar y acrecentar su conciencia, por concientizarse más y más cada vez, sintiendo el dolor de las discordancias que dentro de él se producen, la compasión nos revela la semejanza del universo todo con nosotros, que es humano, y nos hace descubrir en él a nuestro Padre, de cuya carne somos carne; el amor nos hace personalizar al todo de que formamos parte. En el fondo, lo mismo da decir que Dios está produciendo eternamente las cosas, como que las cosas están produciendo eternamente a Dios. Y la creencia en un Dios personal y espiritual se basa en la creencia en nuestra propia pers...

Seneca tells Lucilius how to be a philosopher in the army. Quod maximum vinculum est ad bonam mentem, promisisti virum bonum, sacramento rogatus es. Deridebit te, si quis tibi dixerit mollem esse militiam et facilem. Nolo te decipi. Eadem honestissimi huius et illius turpissimi auctoramenti verba sunt: uri, vinciri ferroque necari. Ab illis qui manus harenae locant et edunt ac bibunt quae per sanguinem reddant cavetur ut ista vel inviti patiantur: a te ut volens libensque patiaris. Illis licet arma summittere, misericordiam populi temptare: tu neque summittes nec vitam rogabis; recta tibi invictoque moriendum est. Quid porro prodest paucos dies aut annos lucrificare? sine missione nascimur. You promised the army a good man, and now the time is come to honor that solemn oath, the strongest tie that binds us to a sound mind. If anyone ever tells you that military service is soft and easy, he is definitely mocking you. I don't want you to be deceived. Your real wages are best summed ...

Unnatural events? Impossible, for Marcus Aurelius. Κατὰ τὴν τῶν ὅλων φύσιν ἕκαστα περαίνεται· οὐ γὰρ κατ’ ἄλλην γέ τινα φύσιν ἤτοι ἔξωθεν περιέχουσαν ἢ ἐμπεριεχομένην ἔνδον ἢ ἔξω ἀπηρτημένην. Everything achieves its final form in keeping with the nature of all things together, for there is no other nature containing it, whether we look within the whole of all things or in some realm beyond it.

Unamuno imagines our moments of awareness as soul, which leaves its trace in material that we know as our bodies (with feelings, emotions, and expression). As our bodily cells have moments of awareness whose totality is an expression personally ours, so he imagines the universe having moments of larger awareness that include but also supersede us, subsuming us into a universal personality that is larger than humanity—that is, in fact, divine. Ancient philosophers precede him on this path, though they often speculate that the individual vanishes in the collective, whose immortality or mortality is not the same as the immortality or mortality of the individual. Unamuno's desire is to retain some personal soul or awareness that is still uniquely his though it be part of something much vaster than he could ever be. He wants to be an constant, recurring current in the ocean of being, rather than a just a momentary wave. Tal vez la inmensa vía láctea que contemplamos durante las noches c...

The natural cycle of life must be punctuated by death, which we should accept fearlessly, as part and parcel of what it means to be alive. Sed postea diligentius docebo omnia quae videntur perire mutari. Aequo animo debet rediturus exire. Observa orbem rerum in se remeantium: videbis nihil in hoc mundo exstingui sed vicibus descendere ac surgere. Aestas abit, sed alter illam annus adducet; hiemps cecidit, referent illam sui menses; solem nox obruit, sed ipsam statim dies abiget. Stellarum iste discursus quidquid praeterit repetit; pars caeli levatur assidue, pars mergitur. Denique finem faciam, si hoc unum adiecero, nec infantes nec pueros nec mente lapsos timere mortem et esse turpissimum si eam securitatem nobis ratio non praestat ad quam stultitia perducit. Vale. But I shall teach you hereafter how all things that appear to perish are really only changed from one state to another. The man destined to return must take his leave with a mind at ease. Witness the world of things always ...

Marcus describes the Stoic logos that rules our conscious mind, in the form of human reason, and the entire universe, as reason writ larger than any particular part of the Whole. Τὸ ἡγεμονικόν ἐστι τὸ ἑαυτὸ ἐγεῖρον καὶ τρέπον καὶ ποιοῦν μὲν ἑαυτὸ οἷον ἂν καὶ θέλῃ, ποιοῦν δὲ ἑαυτῷ φαίνεσθαι πᾶν τὸ συμβαῖνον οἷον αὐτὸ θέλει. The ruling principle of a thing is that which rouses and steers it, giving it the form that it desires and making every event legible to it in signals that it is willing to read.

Unamuno continues discussing Schopenhauer's doctrine of the Will, which refuses to consider the world in purely empirical terms, as this would reduce all life to material conditions or outcomes, with no room for immaterial motivation or direction. The will to live is a will to avoid reduction, to escape chains of cause and effect that would bind us over to life and death that we don't choose. We are bound by material and empirical conditions, but the binding is not total, according to Schopenhauer. Unamuno agrees, and identifies the philosopher's Will with God. Compréndese, por otra parte, su aversión a las doctrinas evolucionistas o trasformistas puramente empíricas, y tal como alcanzó a ver expuestas por Lamarck y Darwin, cuya teoría, juzgándola sólo por un extenso extracto del Times , calificó de «ramplón empirismo» ( platter Empirismus ), en una de su cartas a Adán Luis von Doss (de 1.º Marzo 1860). Para un voluntarista como Schopenhauer, en efecto, en teoría tan sana y...

The basic human lesson, according to Seneca, is that we should not fear death. We must work early, beginning as children, to learn that death is something to face well rather than flee. Throughout our lives, we will be tempted to forget this lesson; there are some thoughts we can cultivate for these moments, thoughts that will return our minds to the proper perspective and allow us to die fearlessly, and so to live without surrendering our dignity or humanity. Si in Parthia natus esset, arcum infans statim tenderet; si in Germania, protinus puer tenerum hastile vibraret; si avorum nostrorum temporibus fuisset, equitare et hostem comminus percutere didicisset. Haec singulis disciplina gentis suae suadet atque imperat. Quid ergo huic meditandum est? quod adversus omnia tela, quod adversus omne hostium genus bene facit, mortem contemnere, quae quin habeat aliquid in se terribile, ut et animos nostros quos in amorem sui natura formavit offendat, nemo dubitat; nec enim opus esset in id comp...

Divinity is our perception of the world as one whole: a complete thing whose vivid expression includes our life, but also more than can ever be properly just ours. If you can remember moments that show you insight into the Life that is larger than you, you will learn how common work can be divine, how the little things you do have great meaning, and not merely for you. Ἑνὶ τέρπου καὶ προσαναπαύου, τῷ ἀπὸ πράξεως κοινωνικῆς μεταβαίνειν ἐπὶ πρᾶξιν κοινωνικὴν σὺν μνήμῃ θεοῦ. Take delight in oneness, resting ever with your integrity, by holding your memory of divinity close as you move from one common task to the next.

Unamuno likes the doctrine of Will put forward by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who thought that before the world is anything we represent (semantically, logically, etc.) it must be something that drives us (emotively, prerationally, without fixed limit we can find). The driving will to represent produces our lives, our thought, and our culture, which is fundamentally sad or doomed because nothing represented is ever perfectly able to capture or satisfy the will that drives it. Sensing the frustration in others that we feel in ourselves, with our natural inability to represent what is beyond final representation, we develop compassion, the source of our ability to cooperate and behave, as people. We also learn in time, by suffering, to renounce will, to resign ourselves to lack of representation. The final form of this resignation, conceived as blissful release from the compelling drive to represent, is death. Y por lo que a Schopenhauer hace, no es menester esforzarse en...

Seneca talks about the way learning changes for us, over the course of our lives. Initially, we learn the basics: what things are, what we can do. As we age, we learn how to change what we are doing: this is not changing the basics or relearning them, but applying them. Our goal is to create a mind inured to good and bad fortune: no matter what happens, we remain calm, active, and adaptive. Hoc est discendi tempus. Quid ergo? aliquod est quo non sit discendum? Minime; sed quemadmodum omnibus annis studere honestum est, ita non omnibus institui. Turpis et ridicula res est elementarius senex: iuveni parandum, seni utendum est. Facies ergo rem utilissimam tibi, si illum quam optimum feceris; haec aiunt beneficia esse expetenda tribuendaque, non dubie primae sortis, quae tam dare prodest quam accipere. Denique nihil illi iam liberi est, spopondit; minus autem turpe est creditori quam spei bonae decoquere. Ad illud aes alienum solvendum opus est negotianti navigatione prospera, agrum colen...

Don't be an easy target. If you are unlike the world, then it won't expect the defenses you deploy against it, defenses it has never learned to make or recognize for itself. If everyone is purchasing, don't purchase. If everyone is heading one way, don't go there. Earn a way that is different. Become what nobody expects. Ἄριστος τρόπος τοῦ ἀμύνεσθαι τὸ μὴ ἐξομοιοῦσθαι. The best method of defending yourself is to avoid being like others.

For us, to be is to be doing, and doing is a process that requires feeling. It is not enough to think the world; we must feel it to know what we think. El hombre no se resigna a estar, como conciencia, solo en el Universo, ni a ser un fenómeno objetivo más. Quiere salvar su subjetividad vital o pasional haciendo vivo, personal, animado al Universo todo. Y por eso y para eso ha descubierto a Dios y la sustancia, Dios y sustancia que vuelven siempre en su pensamiento de uno de otro modo disfrazados. Por ser conscientes nos sentimos existir, que es muy otra cosa que sabernos existentes y queremos sentir la existencia de todo lo demás, que cada una de las demás cosas individuales sea también un yo. El más consecuente, aunque más incongruente y vacilante idealismo, el de Berkeley, que negaba la existencia de la materia, de algo inerte y extenso y pasivo, que sea la causa de nuestras sensaciones y el substracto de los fenómenos externos, no es en el fondo más que un absoluto espiritualismo o...

Seneca urges Lucilius not to care whether the populace, or the fast set of up-and-comers in imperial society, approves his character. Studying philosophy is about developing virtue, which is not something we can do by appealing to the emotions of strangers. At bene aliquis illam fert. S ic, quomodo vinum. Itaque non est quod tibi isti persuadeant eum esse felicem qui a multis obsidetur: sic ad illum quemadmodum ad lacum concurritur, quem exhauriunt et turbant. Nugatorium et inertem vocant. Scis quosdam perverse loqui et significare contraria. Felicem vocabant: quid ergo? e rat? Ne illud quidem curo, quod quibusdam nimis horridi animi videtur et tetrici. Ariston aiebat malle se adulescentem tristem quam hilarem et amabilem turbae; v inum enim bonum fieri quod recens durum et asperum visum est; non pati aetatem quod in dolio placuit. Sine eum tristem appellent et inimicum processibus suis: bene se dabit in vetustate ipsa tristitia, perseveret modo colere virtutem, perbibere liberalia st...

As a good Stoic, Marcus does not accept Epicurean ideas about the world being a random outcome of blind material collisions occurring over time. He sees the soul of Nature as being rational, even when its reason escapes the limited perspective or horizon available to human faculties for reasoning. Every event in nature is meaningful as part of the living whole, even those we perceive as coincidental or wrong. Ὁ διοικῶν λόγος οἶδε πῶς διακείμενος καὶ τί ποιεῖ καὶ ἐπὶ τίνος ὕλης. The rational principle that rules knows its place, what it is doing and what material it needs.

According to Unamuno, it is impossible for humanity to achieve perfect philosophical clarity, as this would require us to think with something other than our actual thought, which is an artifact of senses whose nature resists too much clarity. Our senses show us the universe personified because that is how we perceive things, even before we relate to them. The world, for us, is a vast experience of human shape whose dimensions appear written in language necessarily allusive rather than inclusive, descriptive rather than definitive. It is myth. ¡Ver claro!... ¡ver claro! Sólo vería claro un puro pensador, que en vez de lenguaje usara álgebra, y que pudiese libertarse de su propia humanidad, es decir, un ser insustancial, meramente objetivo, un no ser, en fin. Mal que pese a la razón, hay que pensar con la vida, y mal que pese a la vida, hay que racionalizar el pensamiento. Esa animación, esa personificación va entrañada en nuestro mismo conocer. «¿Quién llueve? ¿quién truena?», pregunta...

Happiness in a corrupt state such as imperial Rome is not something we want, according to Seneca. We must refuse to take upon ourselves a burden that serves nobody, least of all those who possess it. Amicum tuum hortare ut istos magno animo contemnat qui illum obiurgant quod umbram et otium petierit, quod dignitatem suam destituerit et, cum plus consequi posset, praetulerit quietem omnibus; quam utiliter suum negotium gesserit cotidie illis ostentet. Hi quibus invidetur non desinent transire: alii elidentur, alii cadent. Res est inquieta felicitas; ipsa se exagitat. Movet cerebrum non uno genere: alios in aliud irritat, hos in impotentiam, illos in luxuriam; hos inflat, illos mollit et totos resolvit. Urge your friend to defy boldly those who curse another because he has sought rest and shade, abandoning his public dignity and preferring quiet over all the ruckus that could yield him greater consequence in society. Let his daily life show them how profitably he has arranged his affairs...

Life is change: unity becomes division. E pluribus unum, ex uno plura. Πάντα τὰ ὑποκείμενα τάχιστα μεταβαλεῖ καὶ ἤτοι ἐκθυμιαθήσεται, εἴπερ ἥνωται ἡ οὐσία, ἢ σκεδασθήσεται. All foundations change swiftly, consuming like so much incense on life's altar. If ever the being of things manages to achieve unity, it at once begins to scatter.

Unamuno believes that it is a mistake to think we can escape from religion, in the broadest sense, because the essential element of religion is something vital in our psyche, a will to live beyond the moment we currently inhabit. Rejecting the historical tradition of any particular religion, and its philosophies, does not liberate us from the need to do the work these tools existed for. So we reinvent that which past ages already invented, in a new form that we can use. Rejecting medieval religions, and their philosophies, doesn't set modern philosophy free from humanity, so in due time a Bergson will arise to cast modern molds for the ancient will to live that persists in us. There is no avoiding the expression of our vitality as some kind of worship that manifests in our language as belief. The role of belief is not limited or limitable to expressing merely the facts; we put facts into myths, which always show us the world in human shapes, shapes that we relate to instinctively, ...

Seneca wants to meet Lucilius in person, and uses this invitation as an excuse to compare friendship with love, and to discuss the total calm characteristic of a Stoic sage. Love cannot be friendship, he says, because lovers harm as friends never will. The perfection of philosophy, meanwhile, requires us to cultivate a mind that has learned by experience to avoid changing its wants, or will, constantly. Wanting the same things, regardless of fleeting circumstance (good or bad or indifferent), is a sign of mature wisdom. Cum te tam valde rogo ut studeas, meum negotium ago: habere amicum volo, quod contingere mihi, nisi pergis ut coepisti excolere te, non potest. Nunc enim amas me, amicus non es. 'Quid ergo? haec inter se diversa sunt?' immo dissimilia. Qui amicus est amat; qui amat non utique amicus est; itaque amicitia semper prodest, amor aliquando etiam nocet. Si nihil aliud, ob hoc profice, ut amare discas. Festina ergo dum mihi proficis, ne istuc alteri didiceris. Ego quide...

Marcus wants to pay attention to everything he does. See every action. Know its purpose, and the worth it expresses in fulfilling that purpose. Ἔσω βλέπε· μηδενὸς πράγματος μήτε ἡ ἰδία ποιότης μήτε ἡ ἀξία παρατρεχέτω σε. Look inward. Let the unique quality and worth of no deed escape you.

Modernity rests upon the premise that reason allows us to dominate the world. Unamuno does not believe this: our domination of the world fails, and with it our reason, which depends fundamentally upon language and imagination that are not susceptible to perfect rationalization (now or ever). Attempts to create purely rational semantics, signals for action and thought that never speak falsely, must fail, he warns, as the very humanity that demands them is necessarily irrational, with whatever power of reason we have existing to facilitate our vital lunacy, not replace it. This position is also Hume's (though he arrives there with a different background, on a different path). En vano Comte declaró que el pensamiento humano salió ya de la edad teológica y está saliendo de la metafísica para entrar en la positiva; las tres edades coexisten y se apoyan, aun oponiéndose, unas en otras. El flamante positivismo no es sino metafísica cuando deja de negar para afirmar algo, cuando se hace re...