the tragic sense of life miguel de unamuno

The man we have to do with is the man of flesh and bone-I, you, reader of mine, the other man yonder, all of us who walk solidly on the earth. A man neither of here nor there, neither of this age nor of another, who has neither sex nor country, who is, in brief, merely an idea. Between despair and the desire for something better, Unamuno finds that saving incertitude that alone can console us. He is the legendary featherless biped, the social contractor of Rousseau, the homo economicus of the Manchester school, the homo sapiens of Linnaeus, or, if you like, the vertical mammal. This strife between enemy truths, the truth thought and the truth felt, or, as he himself puts it, between veracity and sincerity, is Unamunos raison dtre. The man of flesh and bone the man who is born, suffers, and dies-above all, who dies the man who eats and drinks and plays and sleeps and thinks and wills the man who is seen and heard the brother, the real brother.įor there is another thing which is also called man, and he is the subject of not a few lucubrations, more or less scientific. Neither 'the human' nor 'humanity,' neither the simple adjective nor the substantivized adjective, but the concrete substantive-man. For to me the adjective humanus is no less suspect than its abstract substantive humanitas, humanity. And I would rather say, Nullum hominem a me alienum puto : I am a man no other man do I deem a stranger. There are undoubtedly echoes of philosophers such as the French thinker Pascal and the Danish thinker Kierkegaard in the existential angst conveyed by this essay, but the ideological basis owes as much to the Bilbao-born author's knowledge of the Bible, the Spanish mystics –particularly Saint Teresa–, the Jesuit Saint Ignatius of Loyola, and Protestant thought and theology.Homo sum nihil humani a me alienum puto, said the Latin playwright. This essay corresponds to the preoccupation with the existential problems of contemporary man, which was so much in vogue with the European schools of philosophical thought –particularly existentialism– of that time. Spanish philosopher MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO (1864-1936) was a prolific writer of essays, novels, poetry, and the stage plays.

With this agitated and fervent book, Miguel de Unamuno does not explore what he himself believes, but rather shines the light on what, according to him, man would be best advised to believe in the face of the unavoidable fact of death. For numerous specialists, this essay contains the clearest and most comprehensive expression of the philosophical thought of Miguel de Unamuno, one of the most important intellectual figures in Spain before the Spanish Civil War.

The tragic sense of life miguel de unamuno