Beyond Philosophy

~ Unamuno sees belief or faith (he does not distinguish the two) as active commitment that necessarily transcends any kind of intellectual conviction. The latter is not sufficient to inspire lively action, which needs more will than it is ever capable of drawing down. ~ Mas, por otra parte, este elemento personal de la creencia le da un carácter afectivo, amoroso y sobre todo, en la fe religiosa, el referirse a lo que se espera. Apenas hay quien sacrificara la vida por mantener que los tres ángulos de un triángulo valgan dos rectos, pues tal verdad no necesita del sacrificio de nuestra vida; mas, en cambio, muchos han perdido la vida por mantener su fe religiosa, y es que los mártires hacen la fe más aún que la fe los mártires. Pues la fe no es la mera adhesión del intelecto a un principio abstracto, no es el reconocimiento de una verdad teórica en que la voluntad no hace sino movernos a entender; la fe es cosa de la voluntad, es movimiento del ánimo hacia una verdad práctica, hacia u...

~ Seneca plays a riddle-game with Lucilius, mocking the way pedants pose & solve rhetorical problems (like the problem of overdefining friendship). This is either a completely new epistle (as some MSS have it), or a continuation of the one before (as others record). ~ Mus syllaba est; mus autem caseum rodit; syllaba ergo caseum rodit. Puta nunc me istuc non posse solvere: quod mihi ex ista inscientia periculum imminet? quod incommodum? Sine dubio verendum est ne quando in muscipulo syllabas capiam, aut ne quando, si neglegentior fuero, caseum liber comedat. Nisi forte illa acutior est collectio: mus syllaba est; syllaba autem caseum non rodit; mus ergo caseum non rodit. The word mouse is a single syllable. Mouse gnaws nummy cheese (†). So a single syllable consumes three. Imagine that I am incapable of solving this riddle. What danger threatens me, because of the ignorance that keeps me from solving it? Where is my difficulty or discomfort, here? No doubt we must fear that I may...

~ Sometimes, Marcus just waves his fist at the sky. Too much regularity in our experience of the world is painful, as is too little. ~ Ὥσπερ προσίσταταί σοι τὰ ἐν τῷ ἀμφιθεάτρῳ καὶ τοῖς τοιούτοις χωρίοις ὡς ἀεὶ τὰ αὐτὰ ὁρώμενα, καὶ τὸ ὁμοειδὲς προσκορῆ τὴν θέαν ποιεῖ, τοῦτο καὶ ἐπὶ ὅλου τοῦ βίου πάσχεις· πάντα γὰρ ἄνω κάτω τὰ αὐτὰ καὶ ἐκ τῶν αὐτῶν. μέχρι τίνος οὖν; The same events are always starting up before your eyes in the arena and other public venues. Familiarity makes these spectacles boring, so that you become weary of witnessing them. This you suffer with all your life. Always the same things going up and down, from the same origins. To what end?

~ In Unamuno's view, belief requires some personal confidence whose referent is eventually future (and so unknown to creatures like ourselves, which dwell in the present & see the past rather than the future). The future is unknown until it manifests as present, & the past is vulnerable always to lies (in good faith, when we deceive ourselves unknowingly, and bad, when we deceive others on purpose). Faith is the bridge that we create between what we know (a past whose appearance in our memory is eternally suspect) and what we don't (a future that is invisible & unknown, essentially unknowable). This faith is not strictly belief, per se, but Unamuno will take both faith & belief as referring ultimately to the same thing: personal confidence in the universal Person(s) known as God. ~ Y como la persona es una voluntad y la voluntad se refiere siempre al porvenir, el que cree, cree en lo que vendrá, esto es, en lo que espera. No se cree, en rigor, lo que es y lo qu...

~ Seneca continues his discussion of friendship, talking about the way we distinguish between actual friends, whom we know and care for personally, and fellow human beings, for whom we ideally cultivate a general & even friendly affection, though we do not know them personally or intimately. Seneca would not call any general relationship to mankind friendship, though Lucilius appears to have suggested this & asked Seneca to parse friendship more precisely, a task that Seneca refuses. ~ Hoc, Lucili virorum optime, mihi ab istis subtilibus praecipi malo, quid amico praestare debeam, quid homini, quam quot modis amicus dicatur, et homo quam multa significet. In diversum ecce sapientia et stultitia discedunt! cui accedo? in utram ire partem iubes? Illi homo pro amico est, huic amicus non est pro homine; ille amicum sibi parat, hic se amico: tu mihi verba distorques et syllabas digeris. Scilicet nisi interrogationes vaferrimas struxero et conclusione falsa a vero nascens mendacium ...

~ Marcus reflects on healthy human society, which requires all its members to assume burdens together. If we cannot share liability, then we are not part of a functioning human whole. A telling observation in all times, but especially ours (when we frequently hallucinate wholes that don't really exist, because nobody shares liability within them). ~ Ὅσα ἑκάστῳ συμβαίνει, ταῦτα τῷ ὅλῳ συμφέρει· ἤρκει τοῦτο. ἀλλ’ ἔτι ἐκεῖνο ὡς ἐπίπαν ὄψει παραφυλάξας, ὅσα ἀνθρώπῳ, καὶ ἑτέροις ἀνθρώποις. κοινότερον δὲ νῦν τὸ συμφέρον ἐπὶ τῶν μέσων λαμβανέσθω. What happens to each individual part matters also to the whole. You have known this for a while. But still, the more you look closely, the more you will see how what occurs to one person also ends up happening to others. What is essential for folk in the middle of your society must be taken up now as a burden shared more by outliers, too.

~ Unamuno continues to parse the difference between rational mortality, with its concomitant utility & practical legibility, and irrational vitality, with its affection for personality & will to immortality. ~ «Hay una distinción en la geografía del mundo que se nos presenta cuando establecemos los diferentes pensamientos y deseos de los hombres respecto a su religión. Recordemos cómo el mundo todo está en general dividido en dos hemisferios por lo que a esto hace. Una mitad del mundo, el gran Oriente oscuro, es místico. Insiste en no ver cosa alguna demasiado clara. Poned distinta y clara una cualquiera de las grandes ideas de la vida, e inmediatamente le parece al oriental que no es verdadera. Tiene un instinto que le dice que los más vastos pensamientos son demasiado vastos para la mente humana, y que si se presentan en formas de expresión que la mente humana puede comprender, se violenta su naturaleza y se pierde su fuerza. Y por otra parte, el occidental exige claridad y ...