Beyond Philosophy

Seneca invites Lucilius to address life directly, without using the arguments of others as a medium, and to avoid the very Stoic tendency to confound good things with necessary things. Seneca is Stoic enough to say that all good things are necessary, but he will not concede that all necessary things are good. I wonder how Marcus Aurelius would feel about this! Quid me detines in eo quem tu ipse pseudomenon appellas, de quo tantum librorum compositum est? Ecce tota mihi vita mentitur: hanc coargue, hanc ad verum, si acutus es, redige. Necessaria iudicat quorum magna pars supervacua est; etiam quae non est supervacua nihil in se momenti habet in hoc, ut possit fortunatum beatumque praestare. Non enim statim bonum est, si quid necessarium est: aut proicimus bonum, si hoc nomen pani et polentae damus et ceteris sine quibus vita non ducitur. Quod bonum est utique necessarium est: quod necessarium est non utique bonum est, quoniam quidem necessaria sunt quaedam eademque vilissima. Nemo usqu...

Marcus Aurelius draws a little picture of the world, which he imagines as a kind of living giant. Its ruling principle is a mind that orders movement in a kind of dance that all things follow, including things we regard as evil; but these things also have their place, Marcus says, and contribute ultimately to the wonder and awe and order of the world, which for him is divine. Ἡ Ἀσία, ἡ Εὐρώπη γωνίαι τοῦ κόσμου· πᾶν πέλαγος σταγὼν τοῦ κόσμου· Ἄθως βωλάριον τοῦ κόσμου· πᾶν τὸ ἐνεστὼς τοῦ χρόνου στιγμὴ τοῦ αἰῶνος. πάντα μικρά, εὔτρεπτα, ἐναφανιζόμενα. Πάντα ἐκεῖθεν ἔρχεται, ἀπ’ ἐκείνου τοῦ κοινοῦ ἡγεμονικοῦ ὁρμήσαντα ἢ κατ’ ἐπακολούθησιν. καὶ τὸ χάσμα οὖν τοῦ λέοντος καὶ τὸ δηλητήριον καὶ πᾶσα κακουργία, ὡς ἄκανθα, ὡς βόρβορος, ἐκείνων ἐπιγεννήματα τῶν σεμνῶν καὶ καλῶν. μὴ οὖν αὐτὰ ἀλλότρια τούτου οὗ σέβεις φαντάζου, ἀλλὰ τὴν πάντων πηγὴν ἐπιλογίζου. Asia and Europe: these are corners of the world, and every sea its drop of blood. Athos (†) is just a little speck on it. Each moment taken ...

For Unamuno, God is what appears when we notice the universe aware of us, as we become aware of ourselves. The mystery of my ongoing communion with something deeper and greater than what I know or control perfectly. A principle of continuity that shows me, and welds me to, my own inner abyss, the microcosm of the ancients, and our mighty universe, a macrocosm whose borders are too many and too remote for me to draw in any definitive compass. El Dios de que tenemos hambre es el Dios a que oramos, el Dios del pater noster , de la oración dominical; el Dios a quien pedimos, ante todo y sobre todo, démonos o no de esto cuenta, que nos infunda fe, fe en Él mismo, que haga que creamos en Él, que se haga Él en nosotros, el Dios a quien pedimos que sea santificado su nombre y que se haga su voluntad —su voluntad, no su razón—, así en la tierra como en el cielo; mas sintiendo que su voluntad no puede ser sino la esencia de nuestra voluntad, el deseo de persistir eternamente. Y tal es el Dios de...

Seneca describes the truly happy man for Lucilius. He is a diligent student of nature, not the darling of fortune. He does not care if the bank is solvent or not. Si utique vis verborum ambiguitates diducere, hoc nos doce, beatum non eum esse quem vulgus appellat, ad quem pecunia magna confluxit, sed illum cui bonum omne in animo est, erectum et excelsum et mirabilia calcantem, qui neminem videt cum quo se commutatum velit, qui hominem ea sola parte aestimat qua homo est, qui natura magistra utitur, ad illius leges componitur, sic vivit quomodo illa praescripsit; cui bona sua nulla vis excutit, qui mala in bonum vertit, certus iudicii, inconcussus, intrepidus; quem aliqua vis movet, nulla perturbat; quem fortuna, cum quod habuit telum nocentissimum vi maxima intorsit, pungit, non vulnerat, et hoc raro; nam cetera eius tela, quibus genus humanum debellatur, grandinis more dissultant, quae incussa tectis sine ullo habitatoris incommodo crepitat ac solvitur. If you really want to dissolve...

Marcus exhorts himself to remain true to his mind, to note and solicit its judgments with respect. A good person cannot live well by ignoring or despising his own mind. Οὐχ ὁρᾷς πῶς οἱ βάναυσοι τεχνῖται ἁρμόζονται μὲν μέχρι τινὸς πρὸς τοὺς ἰδιώτας, οὐδὲν ἧσσον μέντοι ἀντέχονται τοῦ λόγου τῆς τέχνης καὶ τούτου ἀποστῆναι οὐχ ὑπομένουσιν; οὐ δεινὸν εἰ ὁ ἀρχιτέκτων καὶ ὁ ἰατρὸς μᾶλλον αἰδέσονται τὸν τῆς ἰδίας τέχνης λόγον ἢ ὁ ἄνθρωπος τὸν ἑαυτοῦ, ὃς αὐτῷ κοινός ἐστι πρὸς τοὺς θεούς; Don't you see how unthinking technicians render themselves as near to idiots as it is possible for them to be, refusing to grasp the rational order of their craft and hastening rather to get away from it as quickly as they can? Terrible as it is for an architect or a doctor to be ashamed of the order that belongs properly to building or medicine, is it not worse for a man to despise his own indwelling order, the rational faculty that gives him common cause with gods?

Unamuno articulates once more his view of humanity as necessarily schizophrenic, or bipolar. Reason draws us to set limits, whose ultimate expression is death (the final frontier of this life). Imagination draws us to unite everything, beyond all limit, burying ourselves in infinity (another kind of death: the individual is revealed to have innumerable parts, so many that he cannot take definitive shape). Our passage through life necessarily requires us to engage both reason and imagination. We must limit but also unite, as individuals and as groups. The outcome is that we never achieve a perfectly rational or utterly imaginary life: real life partakes in mortality, which we witness rationally, and imagination, which reveals wholes we cannot rationalize. La razón es una fuerza analítica, esto es, disolvente, cuando dejando de obrar sobre la forma de las intuiciones, ya sean del instinto individual de conservación, ya del instinto social de perpetuación, obra sobre el fondo, sobre la ma...

Seneca urges Lucilius to pay more attention to action than to words, and to be especially careful of accepting flattering appearances (whether of others, or in ourselves: what seems too good to be true is often a vice pretending to be virtue, an enemy wearing the cloak of friendship). The important thing is to act carefully, not to craft verbal arguments (especially not the kind of verbal arguments that make good action harder to find rather than easier). Quid mihi vocum similitudines distinguis, quibus nemo umquam nisi dum disputat captus est? Res fallunt: illas discerne. Pro bonis mala amplectimur; optamus contra id quod optavimus; pugnant vota nostra cum votis, consilia cum consilis. Adulatio quam similis est amicitiae! Non imitatur tantum illam sed vincit et praeterit; apertis ac propitiis auribus recipitur et in praecordia ima descendit, eo ipso gratiosa quo laedit: doce quemadmodum hanc similitudinem possim dinoscere. Venit ad me pro amico blandus inimicus; vitia nobis sub virtut...

Anything that delights us can draw attention, but not everything delightful or attractive is something we want to give our attention to. Some things that attract become distractions, when they lead us into circumstances that make future happiness hard to find. Ἡλίκας ἡδονὰς ἥσθησαν λῃσταί, κίναιδοι, πατραλοῖαι, τύραννοι. Pleasures swiftly past their prime draw pirates, p osers , parricides, despots who admit no law.

Unamuno accepts Hume's position: that reason is servant to the passions, which become its foundation, the source from which it flows, & the background against which it must make sense. This sense, rational sense, is necessarily lesser than the irrational sense that births it. We perceive more potentially significant information than we can ever reduce to any perfectly rational account. So our most vivid accounts of the world we inhabit are always more than rational, incorporating description of more than we are able perfectly or comprehensively to define. God appears here as a personal character, not a rational entity, and his native habitat is passionate mythology, not rational theology or theodicy. No es la razón humana, en efecto, razón que a su vez tampoco se sustenta sino sobre lo irracional, sobre la conciencia vital toda, sobre la voluntad y el sentimiento; no es esa nuestra razón la que puede probarnos la existencia de una Razón Suprema, que tendría a su vez que sustent...