Consciousness forces on to us an insistence of perhaps from the inherent anxiety we all have regarding nothingness. That is, we know we are alive and that we will die with certainty. We are living an absurd existence and we are surrounded with the knowledge of our own demise giving us dread.
Unamuno’s hope about hope is his insistence of the perhaps (for amplification on that phrase see Caputo’s book Insistence of God). According to Spinoza, a substance is that which needs nothing else in order to exist. Unamuno knows his Spinoza. Unamuno knows his Kierkegaard. Let’s just say Unamuno knows that for which he speaks about and knows there is a severe problem at hand between consciousness and existence.
Unamuno’s beginning essays lays the foundation for his insistence, and Spinoza’s substance plays a part. For each reality there is only one substance and our universe is that one reality that gives us our contrast between the particular and the whole, for without others there could be no self and meaning would be elusive. Unamuno writes with clarity and foreshadows what others will say before they will say it.
The more certain we are in our own immortality the less we appreciate this life and the less we get to live fully. A return to passion supplemented by our feelings precluding our reason can keep us sane in an insane world, at least Unamuno will argue that. Kierkegaard takes his leap of faith across a chasm that lands on a special brand of Christianity. Unamuno likes Kierkegaard, but can’t bring himself to embrace the contradictions between irreconcilable realities but does allow for the insistence of perhaps since there is only one substance, one reality that we know about.
I have no idea how somebody could rate this book below excellent. The writer is gifted. His system is not coherent and not systematic, he tells the reader that multiple times, but who needs consistency and a system since Unamuno is creating a world through his feelings, he makes his reality (and for Spinoza another word for reality is substance). He’s very much an existentialist before Husserl makes it a phenomenal. Nietzsche’s nihilism bothers Unamuno, but at the same time he knows there’s something special within Nietzsche. Atheist bother him. It’s clear for him ‘a fool in his heart says there is no God’, but Unamuno can not bring himself to say there is a God, and wants immortality even if it means he can at best have hope that there is hope but will tell the reader a belief in hell is for the foolish.
I’ve actually did a search on the book for the occurrences of the word Dante and copied each paragraph that was spread across the book. Each paragraph is rich with complexity and hints at how great of a writer Unamuno is.
Unamuno is telling a story that I disagree with, but he does it so smartly that this book is a pure delight to read. Just check out those copied paragraphs below, you’ll get a sense for how he writes and how his writing is chock full of depth even at the paragraph level and these examples are only in reference to Dante.
Our dread keeps us whole while absolute certainty closes off any opportunities for change. Unamuno understands the complex relationships and at times his frustration for existence comes through because the world he is thrown into is not really ready for the message he was trying to deliver at that time. He is definitely an anti-humanist, non-believer who hopes that there is hope and could do without science in general and doubts logic and reason and such, that’s partly where his frustration comes thru, because he wants Reason, but just can’t embrace it while believing in ‘men and peoples’.
I found this book a delight and a pleasant read even though I disagree with what he is concluding, but I thoroughly enjoyed how he was getting there.
THE FOLLOWING ARE JUST SOME RANDOM PARAGRAPHS WITHIN THIS BOOK THAT ALL REALTED BACK TO DANTE.
From the depth of this anguish, from the
abyss of the feeling of our mortality, we emerge into the light of another heaven, as from the depth of Hell Dante
emerged to behold the stars once again—
are the words that Dante puts into the mouth of Francesca da Rimini (Inferno, v., 121-123); but if there is no greater
sorrow than the recollection in adversity of happy bygone days, there is, on the other hand, no pleasure in
remembering adversity in days of prosperity.
Those who
believe that they believe in God, but without any passion in their heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty,
without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God-Idea, not in God
Himself. And just as belief in God is born of love, so also it may be born of fear, and even of hate, and of such kind was
the belief of Vanni Fucci, the thief, whom Dante depicts insulting God with obscene gestures in Hell (Inf., xxv., 1-3). For
the devils also believe in God, and not a few atheists.
When in the thirty-third canto of the Paradiso, Dante relates how he attained to the vision of God, he tells us that just
as a man who beholds somewhat in his sleep retains on awakening nothing but the impression of the feeling in his
mind, so it was with him, for when the vision had all but passed away the sweetness that sprang from it still distilled
itself in his heart.
Cotal son to, che quasi tutta cessa
mia visione ed ancor mi distilla
nel cuor lo dulce che nacque da essa
like snow that melts in the sun--
cosi la neve al sol si disigilla.
That is to say, that the vision, the intellectual content, passes, and that which remains is the delight, the passione
impressa, the emotional, the irrational--in a word, the corporeal.
In his Inferno Dante condemned the Epicureans, those who did not believe in another life, to something more terrible
than the not having it, and that is the consciousness of not having it, and this he expressed in plastic form by picturing
them shut up in their tombs for all eternity, without light, without air, without fire, without movement, without life
(Inferno, x., 10-15).
A suffering, a pain, thanks to which it grows without ceasing in consciousness and in longing. Do not write
upon the gate of heaven that sentence which Dante placed over the threshold of hell, Lasciate ogni speranza! Do not
destroy time! Our life is a hope which is continually converting itself into memory and memory in its turn begets hope.
Give us leave to live! The eternity that is like an eternal present, without memory and without hope, is death. Thus do
ideas exist, but not thus do men live. Thus do ideas exist in the God-Idea, but not thus can men live in the living God, in
the God-Man.
What I call the tragic sense of life in men and peoples is at any rate our tragic sense of life, that of Spaniards and the
Spanish people, as it is reflected in my consciousness, which is a Spanish consciousness, made in Spain. And this
tragic sense of life is essentially the Catholic sense of it, for Catholicism, and above all popular Catholicism, is tragic.
The people abhors comedy. When Pilate--the type of the refined gentleman, the superior person, the esthete, the
rationalist if you like--proposes to give the people comedy and mockingly presents Christ to them, saying, "Behold the
man!" the people mutinies and shouts "Crucify him! Crucify him!" The people does not want comedy but tragedy. And
that which Dante, the great Catholic, called the Divine Comedy, is the most tragical tragedy that has ever been written
This mortal Don Quixote died and descended into hell, which he entered lance on rest, and freed all the condemned, as
he had freed the galley slaves, and he shut the gates of hell, and tore down the scroll that Dante saw there and replaced
it by one on which was written "Long live hope!" and escorted by those whom he had freed, and they laughing at him,
he went to heaven. And God laughed paternally at him, and this divine laughter filled his soul with eternal happiness.