Divinity is social. Unamuno, Life 8.1
Unamuno
begins his chapter on God by proposing to examine the concept of
divinity. What experiences show us divinity? Unamuno believes that
our experience and understanding of divinity is necessarily social
(communal, shared) before it becomes personal (private, unique).
Approaching divinity requires us to engage society before we look at
ourselves.
No
creo que sea violentar la verdad el decir que el sentimiento
religioso es sentimiento de divinidad, y que sólo con violencia del
corriente lenguaje humano puede hablarse de religión atea. Aunque es
claro que todo dependerá del concepto que de Dios nos formemos.
Concepto que depende a su vez del de divinidad.
Conviénenos,
en efecto, comenzar por el sentimiento de divinidad, antes de
mayusculizar el concepto de esta cualidad, y, articulándola,
convertirla en la Divinidad, esto es, en Dios. Porque el hombre ha
ido a Dios por lo divino más bien que ha deducido lo divino de Dios.
Ya
antes, en el curso de estas algo errabundas y a la par insistentes
reflexiones sobre el sentimiento trágico de la vida, recordé el
timor fecit
deos de Estacio para
corregirlo y limitarlo. Ni es cosa de trazar una vez más el proceso
histórico por que los pueblos han llegado al sentimiento y al
concepto de un Dios personal como el del cristianismo. Y digo los
pueblos y no los individuos aislados, porque si hay sentimiento y
concepto colectivo, social, es el de Dios, aunque el individuo lo
individualice luego. La filosofía puede tener, y de hecho tiene, un
origen individual; la teología es necesariamente colectiva.
I
do not believe that it does any violence to the truth to say that
religious sentiment is an apprehension of divinity, and so it is only
by doing violence to the language current among us that we can speak
of atheist religion. Of course this will all depend on the concept of
God that we fashion for ourselves. A concept which in turn depends
upon our understanding of divinity.
Thus,
before we put a proper head upon our concept of divinity,
articulating it in capital and personal form as God, we must address
our feeling or apprehension of that which is divine. For man has
rather gone to God by noticing the divine than he has deduced the
divine from any knowledge of God.
Already
in the course of these wandering and insistent reflections on the
tragic feeling that pervades our life, I have remembered the poet
Statius' dictum, that fear made the gods (†), to correct it
and put proper limits on it. There is no need to retrace yet again
the historical process by which the nations have arrived at the
apprehension and conception of a personal God such as Christianity
worships. I speak of nations and not isolated individuals, because
God, if he exists, is a collective feeling and conception that is
really social, though the individual may parse it separately for
himself, once he has taken it from the group. Philosophy can
originate with the individual, as in fact it does. Theology is
necessarily collective, an expression of groups.
---
Publius
Papinius Statius (c. 45-96 CE) wrote an epic poem in Latin about the
mythical war between Eteocles and Polynices, sons of Oedipus and
heirs to his throne in Thebes. The line Unamuno quotes (Thebaid
3.661) is from an early speech by Capaneus, who rejects warnings of
impending doom from the seer Amphiaraus, son of Oicles, and shows the
uncompromising atheism that will lead him to challenge Zeus before
being struck dead by divine lightning while ascending Thebes' walls.
tua
prorsus inani
uerba polo causas abstrusa atque omina
rerum
eliciunt? miseret superum, si carmina curae
humanaeque
preces. quid inertia pectora terres?
primus in orbe deos fecit
timor! et tibi tuto
nunc eat iste furor;
Shall
these words you utter here
Make
causes from the sky appear?
Empty
sky you fill with signs
Omens
of our future times!
Pity
the gods who have to care
For
spells like this, and human prayers.
Why
then torture worthless hearts?
Fear
it was first made our gods
Cowards'
refuge in this world.
Let
their madness go with thee
Far
away from folk like me!