What is truth? Is it only rational? Unamuno, Life 7.23

Unamuno asks what truth is. We want things to be true, because we have real needs that must be met. What meets those needs should be true insofar as it causes us to cease striving to fulfil needs. If I am hungry, true food makes me really not hungry, when I eat it. Thirst is quenched by true drink. Man and society must be held together by truth like this, truth that answers our need for unity and integrity. Is reason such a truth? Perhaps not. It does not appear to satisfy our need to become whole or healthy, as social individuals or individual historical societies.

¿Es todo esto verdad? ¿Y qué es verdad? —preguntaré a mi vez como preguntó Pilato. Pero no para volver a lavarme las manos sin esperar respuesta.

¿Está la verdad en la razón, o sobre la razón, o bajo la razón, o fuera de ella, de un modo cualquiera? ¿Es sólo verdadero lo racional? ¿No habrá realidad inasequible, por su naturaleza misma, a la razón, y acaso, por su misma naturaleza, opuesta a ella? ¿Y cómo conocer esa realidad si es que sólo por la razón conocemos?

Nuestro deseo de vivir, nuestra necesidad de vida quisiera que fuese verdadero lo que nos hace conservarnos y perpetuarnos, lo que mantiene al hombre y a la sociedad; que fuese verdadera agua el líquido que bebido apaga la sed y porque la apaga, y pan verdadero lo que nos quita el hambre porque nos la quita.

Los sentidos están al servicio del instinto de conservación y cuanto nos satisfaga a esta necesidad de conservarnos, aun sin pasar por los sentidos, es a modo de una penetración íntima de la realidad en nosotros. ¿Es acaso menos real el proceso de asimilación del alimento que el proceso de conocimiento de la cosa alimenticia? Se dirá que comerse un pan no es lo mismo que verlo, tocarlo o gustarlo; que de un modo entra en nuestro cuerpo, mas no por eso en nuestra conciencia. ¿Es verdad esto? ¿El pan que he hecho carne y sangre mía no entra más en mi conciencia de aquel otro al que viendo y tocando digo: Esto es mío? Y a ese pan así convertido en mi carne y sangre y hecho mío, ¿he de negarle la realidad objetiva cuando sólo lo toco?

Is all this true? What is truth, really? My turn to pose the question put to Jesus by Pilate. But I shall not turn away to wash my hands without waiting for an answer.

Is truth to be found in reason? Is it on top of reason, or beneath it, or beyond it in some way? Is nothing true unless it be rational? Will there be no reality that lies beyond the grasp of reason by its very nature—no reality that doesn't oppose reason, by that same nature? How can we know such reality as this if we only know things rationally?

Our will to live, the urgent need for life that grips us, will want the thing that makes us save and perpetuate ourselves to be true, as the means of keeping man and society together. It will want that the liquid quenching our thirst be truly water, because it works, and that the thing sating our hunger be truly bread, because it works.

Our feelings exist to serve our instinct for preservation, and anything that serves this instinct in actual terms, even if we don't feel it, is like a deep and intimate revelation of reality to us. Is the process of digesting food any less real than the process of knowing & recognizing what food is? Someone will observe that eating bread is not the same as seeing it, touching it, or tasting it—that bread only enters our body in one way, and is not thereby lodged in our consciousness. Is this true? Does the bread that I have made part of my own body and blood not enter more into my consciousness than the bread I only see and touch as I say, This is mine? Should I deny the objective reality of all bread until I have made it part of my body and blood? Is it unreal when I merely touch it?