TRAGIC SENSE OF LIFE MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO translator, J.E. CRAWFORD FLITCH DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC New York This Dover edition, first published in 1954, is an unabridged and unaltered republication of the English translation originally published by Macmillan and Company, Ltd., in 1921. This edition is published by special arrangement with Macmillan and Company, Ltd. The publisher is grateful to the Library of the University of Pennsylvania for supplying a copy of this work for the purpose of reproduction. _Standard Book Number: 486-20257-7 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 54-4730_ Manufactured in the United States of America Dover Publications, Inc. 180 Varick Street New York, N.Y. 10014 CONTENTS PAGES INTRODUCTORY ESSAY xi-xxxii AUTHOR'S PREFACE xxxiii-xxxv I THE MAN OF FLESH AND BONE Philosophy and the concrete man--The man Kant, the man Butler, and the man Spinoza--Unity and continuity of the person--Man an end not a means--Intellectual necessities and necessities of the heart and the will--Tragic sense of life in men and in peoples 1-18 II THE STARTING-POINT Tragedy of Paradise--Disease an element of progress--Necessity of knowing in order to live--Instinct of preservation and instinct of perpetuation--The sensible world and the ideal world--Practical starting-point of all philosophy--Knowledge an end in itself?--The man Descartes--The longing not to die 19-37 III THE HUNGER OF IMMORTALITY Thirst of being--Cult of immortality--Plato's "glorious risk"--Materialism--Paul's discourse to the Athenians--Intolerance of the intellectuals--Craving for fame--Struggle for survival 38-57 IV THE ESSENCE OF CATHOLICISM Immortality and resurrection--Development of idea of immortality in Judaic and Hellenic religions--Paul and the dogma of the resurrection--Athanasius--Sacrament of the Eucharist--Lutheranism--Modernism--The Catholic ethic--Scholasticism--The Catholic solution 58-78 V THE RATIONALIST DISSOLUTION Materialism--Concept of substance--Substantiality of the soul--Berkeley--Myers--Spencer--Combat of life with reason--Theological advocacy--_Odium anti-theologicum_--The rationalist attitude--Spinoza--Nietzsche--Truth and consolation 79-105 VI IN THE DEPTHS OF THE ABYSS Passionate doubt and Cartesian doubt--Irrationality of the problem of immortality--Will and intelligence--Vitalism and rationalism--Uncertainty as basis of faith--The ethic of despair--Pragmatical justification of despair--Summary of preceding criticism 106-131 VII