In his work On the tragic sense of life, Miguel de Unamuno speaks of the tragic history of human thought, consisting of the struggle between reason and life. Any position of agreement and lasting harmony “between reason and life, between philosophy and religion becomes impossible” (1). The reason wants life to come to terms with the inevitable, with death, while life wants to revive the mind, forcing it to serve as a support for its vital desires. Hence the tragic contradictions of consciousness. Unamuno suggests that the solution to this intimate affective problem may lie in a desperate refusal to solve it. You just need to accept this tragic feeling of life and live with it. I will try to show that, on the contrary, we can resolve this conflict if we consider mortality as exactly what gives vitality and the desire to live. The ultimate goal of each person can be based on an aesthetic sense of life that gives value to our own way of acting.

Unamuno argues that life is counter-rational and contrary to clear thinking (2). Rationalists seek a definition and believe in a concept. Vitalists seek inspiration and believe in man. Some study the universe to extract its secrets; others pray to the Consciousness of the Universe, they try to put themselves in direct connection with the Soul of the world, with God, in order to find a guarantee or substance for what they hope for, namely not to die. We cannot imagine freedom of the heart or peace of mind unless they are sure of their permanence after death. The temptation to prove or disprove the existence of God with the help of reason could only be in vain. On the other hand, it was appropriate to bet on faith in God, that is, faith in something whose existence cannot be assured. If someone does not find motives and impulses for action and life, therefore, commits bodily or spiritual suicide, either by killing himself or by refusing any work of human solidarity. Hopelessness in the form of complete skepticism would be the extinction of the mind and the complete death of humanity. Reason, teaching us to doubt everything and ourselves, would lead us to a state of absolute inaction. Reason leads us to a vital skepticism, to a vital denial, a denial that our consciousness survives our death. Without faith in the immortality of the soul, we will be tormented by the prospect of the afterlife and self-emptying. Thus, faith and reason must fight each other.

To believe in God, according to Unamuno, is to believe in a living, cordial God (3). God is the Highest Love, that is, Will. The cordial God suffers and desires in us and with us. The world suffers, and suffering is the touch of the flesh of reality, it is touching oneself, it is immediate reality. Pain is the substance of life and the root of personality, because only through suffering is personality felt. And it is universal, and all that unites all beings is pain, the universal or divine blood that circulates in all. Will is pain. To believe in God means to love him, and to love him means to feel that he is suffering, to pity him. The most direct and immediate thing is to feel and love your misfortune, your anguish, pity yourself, feel compassion with yourself. And this compassion, when it is alive and abundant, pours out from me to others, and from the excess of my own compassion, I pity those around me. My living “I” is the “I” that is really “we”; my living personal “I” lives only in others, for others and for other “I”. God is a projection of my “I” onto the infinite, or rather, I am a projection of God onto the finite. The sentimental and figurative revelation of love, faith, the work of personalizing this Higher Consciousness – that is what leads us to faith in the living God. Unlike the living God, the rational God is not something personal. Ultimately, God Mind does not suffer or wish (4). He who does not suffer, and does not suffer because he does not live, is that logical and frozen, is that impassive being and by this impassiveness it is no more than a pure idea. The category does not suffer, but also does not live and does not exist as a person. The rational God is necessarily necessary in his being and in his creation, he can do nothing but the best in each particular case. And we go to a rational God, like to the God of Leibniz or to the God of Kant, through reason (5). But reason, rather, separates us from Him: it is impossible to know Him in order to love Him later; we must begin by loving Him, wishing Him, longing for Him, before we know Him. The human God is reached through love and suffering. The knowledge of God comes from the love of God, and it is knowledge in which there is little or no rationality. Because God is indefinable. Whoever defines God tries to limit him in his mind. Definition kills it, because to define is to put an end, to limit.

Every created being seeks not only to preserve itself, but also to perpetuate itself, as well as to invade all other beings, to be different without ceasing to be itself. Unamuno explains that he does not want to lose his individuality, merging with God (6). However, he is aware of the sacrifice of our personality if it were to enrich the Higher Consciousness. If we knew that the Universal Soul feeds on and needs our souls, we might perhaps die in desperate obedience, giving our soul to the soul of humanity. In the depths of our souls, there is our desire not to lose the sense of the continuity of our consciousness, not to break the chain of our memories, even if we feel that this is impossible. Gradually we will lose our consciousness, plunging into the Higher Consciousness. Moreover, if we don’t even remember who we were at eight years old, how can we remember who we were when we will be a soul without a body in eight thousand years? In this case, the striving for the personal immortality of the soul loses its meaning, because in the new life we will lose our personal consciousness. What difference does it make to me in life after death if I have no memories of a past life? It is not much different from all these religious beliefs about life after death in the form of reincarnations in other forms: an animal, a plant, another body. But to call it a continuation of life is absurd. It’s a different life that doesn’t inspire me at all.

What a person seeks in religious faith is the salvation of his individuality, the perpetuation of it. Human being needs God so that God can save him, and not let him die completely. Nevertheless, my mind exposes this salvation, not seeing in it the preservation of individual consciousness. But suppose that the human soul can live forever and enjoy God without losing its individual personality. The most common option is to imagine that after death our souls will go to heaven, while breaking off all connection with the earth. This means that the human soul finds itself in completely different conditions than in earthly life. With no connection to the earth, no sense of the body, not all that I called myself a man, my soul keeps only memories of my past life. But did I want such a continuation of life? Such an existence can be endless suffering. I am no longer me because I don’t have a body, but I am still me because I have memories of myself when I had a body. To which Unamuno would reply that this is wonderful (7). To get used to something is to begin to no longer be. A human being is more human, that is, the more divine, the greater his capacity for suffering, or rather, for grief. Pain tells us that we exist, pain tells us that those we love exist; pain tells us that the world we live in exists, and pain tells us that God exists and that God suffers; but it is a bitter pain, a grief to survive and become eternal. Grief reveals God to us and makes us love him. However, my Reason refutes that immortal suffering soul satisfies my desire to live. The immortality of a pure soul without any body is not true immortality. And in the depths of my soul, the desire to prolong this life, this one, and not another, this one of flesh and pain, the one that we sometimes curse only because it ends.

Can we then imagine the continuation of life after death with the same body and the same consciousness? Yes, it can be another dimension in which we live the same life with the same body from the very beginning and with the awareness of the life of the previous dimension that we have already lived. God’s intention might be that our consciousness improves as we move from one dimension to another in the same body and in the same life every time since birth. Contradictions and absurdities multiply in this imagination. If every person from the past also moves after death to another dimension of the world in order to live it with the same body and consciousness, then there is a high probability that the present will already be different than it was in the previous dimension. My ancestors in another dimension may have made different decisions under the influence of a life lived in a past life. In this new present, therefore, I may no longer exist or live in completely different conditions in which our past mistakes and achievements lose their meaning. This problem is solved if we assign each person a separate dimension, to which only he or she moves after death. So, in my new dimension, my consciousness in my body remains the same. I live the same life given my past life. However, there is no room in this dimension for the improvement of my personal consciousness. I will not have a life desire and motivation to act, knowing that after death I will live the same life. A child with the personal consciousness of an old man and with absolute certainty about the future would be in complete alienation and isolation from society. It would be absolutely pathetic, and this suffering would intensify with each subsequent transition to a new dimension. Such a misfortune could be alleviated by wandering the world in search of the unknown. One could live with each new dimension in a new country, with new people, with a new culture, with a new language. But why do we need such colossal costs to create a new dimension for each person in order to save mind and body after death? Why didn’t God just create immortal man for one lifetime? We do not need an infinite number of dimensions of the same world. Rationally, one and the same world would be enough to improve the human consciousness of each person and all mankind. And here it comes to doubt. Immortality in the same dimension would also not guarantee that human consciousness would be better than in the case of a mortal person. An immortal person will lose motivation to do something: “I still have time; I will live a long time.” His life will be full of multiplied monotony. An increase in the routine of life will cloud the eyes on novelty and lead to depression. The acquisition of knowledge will not accumulate progressively, but will be replaced due to the forgetfulness of previous ones. In addition, immortal man will not be able to keep up with each of the past centuries, and will fall further and further behind with the next generation. That is, the isolation of the mind and hyperconservatism of an immortal person will slow down or fix the improvement of human consciousness in comparison with the speed of development of the consciousness of a mortal person. Thus, the mortality of a person is justified from the point of view of the realization of his human essence and improvement of his consciousness in this life. Human mortality is the best thing that has happened to man. It is paradoxical, but on what the pitifulness and insignificance of human life is built, that is, on mortality, this is what makes us live and act. When Schopenhauer convinces us that this world is the worst possible, he builds his metaphysical pessimism on the fact that no matter what a person does, he will still die (8). For him, life is unhappy and meaningless, because all happiness, all satisfaction are negative things. We feel nothing but suffering and pain, thus, they are positive. The history of human life is a history of futile efforts, tragedies, mistakes, disappointments leading to nothing but death. If you ask a person at the end of his life if he wants to start all over again, he will prefer absolute nonexistence. Man is born only to die in suffering, because his mortal life is endowed with no other real meaning than suffering. However, we can reformulate this statement as follows: a person is born to die, contemplating his or her work. This contemplation is positive because, suffering or not, it allows us to generate the values of aesthetic judgment that evaluate and give meaning to our mortal life. Let’s see it.

The most direct and immediate sensation is to feel and love your own Reason, evaluate yourself, have love for yourself through your Reason. And this aesthetic evaluation of myself, when it is alive and abundant, pours out from me on others, and from the excess of my own evaluation I feel and love my neighbors. My own beauty is so great that my aesthetic perception of myself soon overwhelms me, revealing to me the universal beauty. It follows that this beauty fills me with such a great inspiration, pouring out in everything that has to be poured out on others. The impulse of creation is thus the work of self-love in relation to Reason. From it is born, what reveals to us a vital desire and a motivation to action. A human being desires to be loved, to be appreciated. A human being wants his or her inspiration to be shared. Aesthetic appreciation of oneself is the essence of self-love, love that recognizes itself as such, the love of a rational person. As I go deeper into myself, I discover my own Reason, that I am everything that I feel and love about myself, that I am everything that Reason creates in me. Touching my creation, feeling my constant depth, coming to my beauty, I admire myself with all my heart and ignite with delight. From this love for myself, from this strong delight, I turn into admiration for all my relatives and those around me, the creations of their radiant Reason. Starting from those who are most like me, through my close people, I will also admire all those who simply live and create. When love is so great and so alive and so strong and overflowing that it loves everything, I find that the Wholeness of everything is Beauty. This Beauty reveals to us the likeness of the entire universe and allows us to discover in it our vital desire and inspiration.

Not through pain, living beings realize themselves, but through an aesthetic assessment of themselves. Self-consciousness is nothing but self-love consciousness. I feel when I feel that I love myself. People’s greatest delight is to appreciate themselves and others, and from this delight comes inspiration. Will comes from the self-love of Reason. Will is a force that creates in us because we value it. It should be said that we are human through the collective creation, the Beauty of the universe. If there is a Universal Beauty, then I am part of it. Beauty gives transcendent meaning and ultimate goal; but it is given in relation to each of us who contemplates it. The only thing that’s really real is what feels, loves and desires, and this is the aesthetic feeling of life. And we need love for the Reason in order to open this feeling. The work of inspiration, the love of Reason, is to try to contemplate the Beauty of the universe, to try to raise awareness of it and to universalize it. This is our tangible end goal. Reason, objectified by the will, thirsting for Beauty, leads us to the idea that love for Reason is possible only in human mortality. Man’s highest pleasure is to acquire and multiply beauty. The pleasure of contemplating the Beauty of the Universe, whole and perfect, is its constant discovery. To love the Reason in me means to know my work and create it. Therefore, this world is not worse than all possible ones, because it strives to perpetuate inspiration, and with it the will, because Reason increases the will and improves it, because the ultimate goal of man is the contemplation of Beauty. To live this limited and mortal life, to live it only once, is to attain the best form of contemplation meant for every human being.

According to Unamuno, to see God when God is everything in everyone is to see everything in God and live in God with everyone (9). A more perfect society than the society of this world is a human society that has become a person. And to be perfect means to be everything, to be yourself and everyone else, to be humanity, to be the universe. And there is no other way to be everything else than to surrender to everything, and when everything is in everything, everything will be in each of us. Apokatastasis is more than a mystical dream, it is the norm of action, it is a beacon of high deeds. But in this grandiose dream of ultimate human solidarity, must I sacrifice myself for what, and for what only, do I know purpose and consciousness? And here we are at the peak of tragedy in the perspective of this supreme religious sacrifice. The individual consciousness itself is sacrificed to the perfect Human Consciousness, the Divine Consciousness. Unamuno tries to minimize this sacrifice by citing the example of a stream that flows into the sea and feels the bitterness of ocean salt in the sweetness of its waters (10). It is impossible to imagine the stream returning to its source, because its joy is to be swallowed up. But the stream has no Reason to admire and appreciate. I do not want to be absorbed, because the contemplation of my Reason is the basis of my life’s aspiration and motivation. The fact that I am going to enrich the Consciousness of the Universe does not inspire me to be creative, because the Reason does not accept being a mere means of the human destiny of the Universe. My Reason tells me that I am mortal, but does not tell me that I am just a passing accident that must be consumed by God. I do not want to participate in the collective work according to a certain plan of nature, as Kant said (11). What difference does it make to me, what is the human purpose of the Universe, if I cannot contemplate and evaluate the result of my work after death? It is for this reason that my earthly life is valuable because I can contemplate and appreciate every moment of my labor in it. If I were immortal, I would not be able to love my Reason and, as a result, pour out this love on others up to the contemplation of the beauty of the universe. Hence the essence of goodness lies in its temporality, in the fact that it strives towards a final and permanent goal, that is, towards an aesthetic contemplation of the Universe, which I can achieve in this life. For what was immortalized would lose its goodness, lose its temporality. From immortality arises aesthetic impotence, which destroys the desire for life and the motivation. We must rise to the aesthetic sense of life which proceeds and descends from our love of Reason. To create each at one’s own post, not taking one’s eyes off contemplation, out of love for Reason, that is, out of love for one’s temporality, means to make this work the final work. Denying a person’s purpose in this life is a desperate idea. Whoever imagines a goal in the afterlife hopes to achieve it in eternal life, in God. For this, the prospect of non-existence forces one to give up all hope, all love for life. For him, non-existence is even more terrible, because for him if he suffers, then he lives, and the one who lives suffers, loves and waits. If people go from non-existence to non-existence, humanism is the most inhuman thing known. And, perhaps, to want the contemplation of the beauty of the universe to be prepared for us as the ultimate goal of each person is our salvation. And then, when my body dies, and if my consciousness returns to the absolute unconsciousness from which it came, then let’s not make a painful, tragic revelation out of this. In the same way, an artist, when he finishes his work, admiring his work, does not make a tragedy out of it. With a collective human purpose that goes beyond the death of each individual, our industrious human race is nothing but a doomed procession of ghosts. But possessing a human ultimate goal in the same mortal life of every person, humanism is the most human thing that is known, because it makes it possible to see, to feel, to love the ultimate work of one’s life.

Though Unamuno adds that he doesn’t want to die (12). He wants to live forever. This me wants to live, this poor me that feels here and now. Why does a person need all these acquisitions of the world if he loses his soul? Why live? For this miserable enjoyment of life that passes and does not remain? No, not for the enjoyment of life, but for the love of reason, which makes us crave and contemplate the Beauty of the universe. The aesthetic sense of life replaces the striving for personal immortality. Contemplation of the Beauty of the universe surpasses the doubt in achieving the goal of man, because this is the goal itself. Unamuno would reply to this that a human being takes different positions and seeks consolation in different ways for being born. And some say that this universe is a spectacle which God Himself gives, and that we should do our best to make the spectacle as bright and varied as possible (13). They made a religion out of art and invented the nonsense “art for art’s sake”. Whoever writes, draws, sculpts or sings wants at least to leave a shadow of his spirit, something that will outlive him. But the sky of glory is not very big. The more people enter it, the less each of us touches it. This thirst for glory, in fact, is nothing more than a thirst for immortality. But this is not a substance and volume, but just a name and a shadow. All this applies to those who, again, do not see integrality and completeness in their creations, who believe in the Higher Consciousness and expect to contribute to it after death at the expense of their glory. And the one who feels and contemplates the completeness of one’s works even at the moment of their creation does not need worldly fame and glory, and therefore does not yearn for immortality. But Unamuno tells us that man is incompatible with the rational. Man wanted to give life a final purpose, and as a result he got what is called final failure (14). Man did not cease to seek happiness; finding it neither in wealth, nor in knowledge, nor in power, nor in pleasure; neither in obedience, nor in conscientiousness, nor in culture. This pessimism was the result of a loss of faith in the immortality of the soul, in the human destiny of the universe. And perhaps the explanation for this impasse is that it is impossible to rationally give life an end in itself. Love for Reason, from which the ultimate goal flows, is not rational. It is vital because it serves for life. Love for the Reason cannot be sustained except by the Reason which makes it transferable. Reason, in turn, cannot be maintained except by love for it, because love gives it life. Giving an ultimate purpose to life does not mean seeking or doing anything in particular, but loving and contemplating one’s work through the creations of others. This aesthetic contemplation generates the most universally valid values, because a multitude of values can be conceptually organized and united. On the one hand, value is created by the artistic qualities of an object; on the other hand, it occurs in perceptual subjective experience. Since the experience of value is related to creation and is the same for all people, value is understood as the objective cause of this experience (15).

The more I love myself and the more I am myself, the fullness of my love pours out on my brothers, and pouring out on them, their love enters me. To love your neighbor means to want him to be like me, to be another me, that is, to want me to be him. It is where this effort to erase the boundary between me and others come from. The inspiration I receive from others through their love fills my life with life desires and motivation. In the aesthetic contemplation of life, culture, language, science, religion do not matter – all this only provides content for evaluation. At the same time, Unamuno speaks of the uniqueness of Spanish philosophy, in that it is fluid and scattered in Spanish literature, in life, in action, in mysticism, but is not fixed in philosophical systems (16). If it is said that the Spaniards do not have a scientific spirit, it is because they have some spirit that does not have to be compatible with science. And emphasizing this discrepancy between the Spaniards and the rest, Unamuno fails to show collectivity, human solidarity with religious feeling. On the one hand, he argues that all these individual consciousnesses, those that were, those that are and those that will be, they will all be given into society and into the solidarity of the Higher Consciousness. But, on the other hand, history, the process of culture, does not find its perfection and full effectiveness, except in the individual (17). A human being is the end of the universe, which the Spaniards feel very well, compared to other nations. Speaking of the individuality of the Spaniards, Unamuno draws a dividing line between himself and others, making it difficult to surrender to everything in the arms of God. He wants to give himself entirely, to give his spirit in order to save himself, to perpetuate himself by sacrificing his life. But wants to preserve his individuality, opposing himself to others. This is the complexity of the religious feeling of Unamuno, who himself admits that he is a man of contradiction and struggle (18). He is the one who says one thing with his heart and another with his head, and this struggle is his life.

In conclusion, Unamuno states that God is nothing but Love, which arises from universal pain, compassion for oneself and others and which becomes conscious. For the purpose of the world is consciousness. And all this tragic struggle of man for his salvation, this immortal striving for immortality is nothing but a struggle for consciousness. If there is no Supreme Consciousness, then there is nothing more disgusting than existence. And the Reason that mocks faith and despises it, turns life into a tragedy. This tragedy is an eternal struggle, without victory and hope. And yet there is hope to reconcile reason with life. It is the love of Reason that gives rise to the concept and the aesthetic feeling of life. When I love myself with the love that pours out on others, I contemplate life fully, appreciating my creation. I feel the ultimate goal of this work because I appreciate its values of universal reality. My Reason, therefore, is not obliged to contribute to the preservation, perpetuation and enrichment of consciousness. He is freed from the heavy burden of the purpose of the universe. Then, existence is filled with a new meaning, because mortality becomes a creative force. To be mortal means to give value to one’s existence by contemplating one’s work. This is the basis of the aesthetic sense of life, which gives us motivation and inspiration to create, that is, to live and desire.

References:

1. Miguel de UNAMUNO, Del sentimiento trágico de la vida, 1913, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59852, p.90.

2. Ibid. p.51.

3. Ibid. p.159.

4. Ibid. p.129.

5. Leibniz’s God means the God who created the best of all possible worlds. It is a rational God, because he knew which possible world was the best and was able to create it. More details can be found in Leibniz’s treatise Theodicy (1710). Kant’s God is understood as God whose proof is carried out by means of reason. One of the postulates about the existence of God is the postulate of the presence of a moral Ideal, which is possible in our world only under the assumption of the existence of God. See Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781) for details.

6. Miguel de UNAMUNO, Del sentimiento trágico de la vida, 1913, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59852, p.142.

7. Ibid. p.160.

8. Arthur SCHOPENHAUER, The Worst Possible World, French translation by Jean Bourdo in “Thoughts and Fragments” https://www.schopenhauer.fr/fragments/le-pire-des-mondes.html

9. Miguel de UNAMUNO, Del sentimiento trágico de la vida, 1913, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59852, p. 198.

10. Ibid.

11. This refers to the progress of mankind from the point of view of the realization of the plan of nature. For more details, see the analysis of the progress of mankind according to Kant in French https://postulat.org/fr/kant-sur-le-progres-de-lhumanite/

12. Miguel de UNAMUNO, Del sentimiento trágico de la vida, 1913, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59852, p.36.

13. Ibid. p.41.

14. Ibid. page 230.

15. You can read more about my work on the rationalization of aesthetic judgment https://postulat.org/category/by-theory/criteria-of-an-aesthetic-judgement-of-contemporary-art

 16. Miguel de UNAMUNO, Del sentimiento trágico de la vida, 1913, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59852, p. 237.

 17. Ibid. page 240.

 18. Ibid. page 201