Miguel de Unamuno

Miguel de Unamuno

A while back, in "Throw Those Crutches Away ... ", I had occasion to mention the Basque-Spanish writer-philosopher Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936), who said, "To believe in God is to yearn for His existence and, furthermore, it is to act as though He did exist."

I have another blog, Beyond Darwin, in which I also mentioned Unamuno (see Grounding Faith in Reality? (I.D. IV)). I noted that Wikipedia's article on the man says:

Unamuno's philosophy was not systematic, but rather a negation of all systems and an affirmation of faith "in itself."

The topic of Unamuno's thought had come up briefly in a book I was (and still am) reading, William A. Dembski's Intelligent Design. In it, Dembski presents an argument to the effect that biological evolution has "information content" that may be detected scientifically, thereby demonstrating that the origin of living species has "intelligent causation." Theologically, that cause is God.

Dembski insists that signs from God must have what he refers to as "empirical content," of which "information" is a prime type. Early on, Dembski, a Christian (as was Unamuno), equates such empirically detectable signs to the significance inherent in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. Here in particular is where Miguel de Unamuno comes in:

For signs to induce conviction they actually have to occur. It is not enough to pretend a sign has occurred or to wish that it had occurred. According to [the Basque-Spanish writer and philosopher] Miguel de Unamuno [in 1913's Tragic Sense of Life], "To believe in God is to yearn for His existence and, furthermore, it is to act as though He did exist." The faith de Unamuno describes is not grounded in reality. The faith confirmed by signs is. (p. 42)

Just from that and what I then looked up in Wikipedia, I knew Unamuno's thought resonated with me deeply and personally ... even though I admitted I knew next to nothing about Unamuno. I also found that I disagreed deeply with Dembski about the need for "empirical content" in signs from God. Basically I discovered that, to me, the search for "empirical content" empties faith and hyperinflates reason.

Tragic Sense of Life, by Miguel de Unamuno

At any rate, I sought out Unamuno's book, Tragic Sense of Life, which I have begun to read. The book apparently goes back to 1912, or 1921 in its English translation. The excellent introduction by Salvador de Madariaga (1886-1978), the Spanish diplomat, writer, historian and pacifist, confirms that Unamuno and Dembski would not have gotten along:

It is on the survival of his [Unamuno's personal] will to live, after all the onslaughts of his critical intellect, that he finds the basis for his belief — or rather for his effort to believe. Self-compassion leads to self-love, and this self-love, founded as it is on a universal conflict [between faith and reason], widens into love of all that lives and therefore wants to survive. So, by an act of love, springing from our own hunger for immortality, we are led to give a conscience to the Universe — that is, to create God. (p. xvii)

Madariaga says Unamuno, before anything else, is

... a whole man, with all his affirmations and all his negations, all the pitiless thoughts of a penetrating mind that denies [religious truths], and all the desperate self-assertions of a sould that yearns for eternal life. (p. xvi)

Madariaga's subject is, simply because of "that passion for life that burns in Unamuno," a "knight errant of the spirit" (ibid.). Accordingly, Unamuno embraces all the contradictory aspects of the life of a man, including — especially — "his inner deadlock" (p. xvii).

Dembski avoids the deadlock; Unamuno embraces it. Dembski looks for ways reason can bypass doubts about God and the afterlife. Unamuno leverages those doubts into "love of all that lives." Dembski whistles past the graveyard which taunts us that our "reason can rise no higher than scepticism" — a reason that, says Madariaga, "unable to become vital, dies sterile." Unamuno admits to the problem ... and declines to knuckle under to it:

... [H]e feels that, despite such conclusive arguments [for atheistic skepticism], his will to live perseveres, [so] he refuses to his intellect the power to kill his faith. (p. xvi)

I consider Unamuno's outlook — which I chucklingly characterize as "I fret, therefore I am" — as handsome as Dembski's is homely. Dembski's makes us merely rational; Unamuno's makes us human.

(More later.)