Consensus isn't rational. Unamuno, Life 8.8
Rational
proofs of God, for Unamuno, require concepts of reason that will not
really do, as they render reason irrational. Here, the proof of
universal agreement is really just an appeal to consensus, which is
not strictly rational. In the end, Unamuno believes, we must have
faith irrationally, beyond and even against reason, which is
necessarily mortal in ways that our life instinctively rejects.
Queda
la otra famosa prueba, la del consentimiento, supuesto unánime, de
los pueblos todos en creer en un Dios. Pero esta prueba no es en
rigor racional ni a favor del Dios racional que explica el Universo,
sino del Dios cordial que nos hace vivir. Sólo podríamos llamarla
racional en el caso de que creyésemos que la razón es el
consentimiento, más o menos unánime, de los pueblos, el sufragio
universal, en el caso de que hiciésemos razón a la vox
populi que se dice ser vox Dei.
Así
lo creía aquel trágico y ardiente Lamennais, el que dijo que la
vida y la verdad no son sino una sola y misma cosa —¡ojalá!—, y
que declaró a la razón una, universal, perpetua y santa. (Essai
sur l’indifférence,
IVe partie, chap. VIII). Y glosó el «o hay que creer a todos o a
ninguno» —aut
omnibus credendum est aut nemini—,
de Lactancio, y aquello de Heráclito de que toda opinión individual
es falible, y
lo de Aristóteles de que la más fuerte prueba es el consentimiento
de los hombres todos, y sobre todo lo de Plinio (in
Paneg. Trajani
LXII) de
que ni engaña uno a todos ni todos a uno—nemo
omnes, neminem omnes fefellerunt.—
¡Ojalá! Y así se acaba en lo de Cicerón (De
natura deorum,
lib. III, cap. II, 5 y 6) de que hay que creer a nuestros mayores,
aun sin que nos den razones:
maioribus
autem nostris, etiam nulla ratione reddita credere.
Sí,
supongamos que es universal y constante esa opinión de los antiguos
que nos dice que lo divino penetra a la Naturaleza toda, y que sea un
dogma paternal, πάτριος
δόξα, como
dice Aristóteles (Metaphysica
lib. VII,
cap. VII); eso probaría sólo que hay un motivo que lleva a los
pueblos y los individuos —sean todos o casi todos o muchos— a
creer en un Dios. Pero, ¿no es que hay acaso ilusiones y falacias
que se fundan en la naturaleza misma humana? ¿No empiezan los
pueblos todos por creer que el Sol gira en torno de ellos? ¿Y no es
natural que propendamos todos a creer lo que satisface nuestro
anhelo? ¿Diremos con W. Hermann (v.
Christliche
systematische Dogmatik,
en el tomo
Systematische
christliche Religion,
de la colección Die
Kultur der Gegenwart,
editada por P. Hinneberg), «que si hay un Dios, no se ha dejado sin
indicársenos de algún modo, y quiere ser hallado por nosotros»?
Piadoso
deseo, sin duda, pero no razón en su estricto sentido, como no le
apliquemos la sentencia agustiniana, que tampoco es razón, de «pues
que me buscas, es que me encontraste», creyendo que es Dios quien
hace que le busquemos.
There
remains another famous proof, that of the supposedly unanimous
agreement of all peoples to believe in one God. But this proof is not
rigorously rational, nor is it alleged to support the rational God
who explains the Universe. Instead, it backs the God of the heart,
who makes us live. We can only call it rational if we can manage to
believe that reason is consensus, a more or less unanimous vote by
all nations; in that case, we would make reason out to be the voice
of the people that claims to be the voice of God.
This
is the belief espoused by Lamennais, that tragic and ardent man who
said that life and truth are one and the same thing—would that it
were so!—and proclaimed a reason at once single, universal,
perpetual, and holy (Essay on Indifference 4.8).
By way of explanation he
added the comment of Lactantius—“We
must believe all witnesses or none” (Divinae
Institutiones 3.4)—along
with the judgment of Heraclitus that every individual
opinion is
fallible (cf.
Sextus Empiricus, Adversus mathematicos
7.133),
Aristotle's affirmation that the strongest proof is the assent of all
men, and above all the saying of Pliny, that one does not fool all,
nor all the one
(Panegyricus 62).
If only! His credo ends with the passage of Cicero that says we must
believe our ancestors, even though they provide us with no reasons to
justify belief (De natura deorum 3.2.5-6).
Fine.
Let us grant the universality and stable consistency of this opinion
of the ancients—an ancestral legacy, as Aristotle says (Metaphysica
7.7)—that informs us
that divinity penetrates all Nature. This would prove only that there
exists a motive driving peoples and individuals, whether all or
almost all or at least very many, to believe in a God. But aren't
there then many illusions and fallacies that find their foundation in
the same human nature? Don't all peoples begin by thinking that the
sun revolves round them? Isn't it natural that we tend to believe
what satisfies our longing? Shall we say with Wilhelm Hermann
('Systematic Christian Theology' in
Systematic Christian Religion,
from the collection edited by Hinneberg, The Culture of our
Time) that, “If there is a
God, he has not omitted to mark for us his existence, and he wishes
by us to be found”(†)?
A
pious wish, certainly, but no reason
in the strict sense of the word. Of course we apply here the judgment
of St. Augustine, which also is no reason: “The fact that you look
for me shows that you have found me” (cf.
Confessiones 1).
For we believe that God is
the one causing us to look for himself.
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