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GOD, IMMORTALITY, AND LIVED EXPERIENCE IN UNAMUNO
Muray, Leslie A

In this article, I examine Miguel de Unamuno's understanding of God, his ideas about the suffering Christ, immortality, and his meditations on Don Quixote. I also briefly examine the affinity between Unamuno's stress on the practical importance of ideas and beliefs and those of William James and of some process thinkers. In a way that is hopefully consistent with the Spanish philosopher's focus on the concrete and particular, on "flesh and blood," I conclude with a discussion of the relevance of his ruminations about God and immortality for lived experience.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Miguel de Unamuno was born in the Basque city of Bilbao on 29 September 1864, the third of six children. Formative early experiences included the death of his father when young Miguel was six years old, a very strict Roman Catholic upbringing, and the bombardment of Bilbao in 1874 during the last Carlist War.

In secondary school (1875-1880), Unamuno developed certain patterns that would remain rather typical for the rest of his life. Plunging into his studies with great enthusiasm, he was invariably bored with the content of the subject matter. When his health became frail, his doctors recommended long walks, a regimen that would account for his life-long love and in-depth knowledge of the nonhuman natural world. Unamuno seriously contemplated studying for the priesthood during this period, but his nascent love for his future wife, "Concha," dissuaded him.

The years 1880-1884 were intellectually formative for Unamuno at the School of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Madrid. Not only was the budding philosopher exposed to positivism, biblical criticism, and skepticism; various movements of national regeneration were nurturing his skills at critical reflection. He admired the enthusiasm of his professors more than their knowledge of the subject matter.

Unamuno received the licentiate degree in june of 1883, and his doctorate the following year. His thesis dealt with an analysis of the origins and prehistory of the "Basque race." he returned to Bilbao, and for the next seven years supported himself by teaching part-time in the schools as well as by private tutoring. During this period, he was attempting to prepare for the very competitive examinations called "oposiciones." he also did research on the Basque language, including some translation. It is interesting to note that while Unamuno was keenly aware of the political ramifications of such academic pursuits, he nevertheless rejected their use to serve and legitimate Basque separatism.

Effective 13 july 1891, Miguel de Unamuno was appointed to the Chair of Greek Language at the University of Salamanca. It was a second major transition for him that year: he married Concepcion Lizârraga on January 31. As much as his work would be influenced by Kierkegaard, Unamuno's personal life and his conception of its relation to the vocation of the philosopher bore little resemblance to that of the Danish thinker: the Spanish philosopher was happily married and took particular delight in a no less joyous family life. Not only did Unamuno not find such joys to be a hindrance to the vocation of philosopher, they were to him part of the "flesh and blood" experiences in which human beings find significance and meaning in their lives. Although situated in the patriarchal historical and cultural context of late nineteenth, early twentieth-century Spain, it is clear that their marital relationship reflected a perhaps-surprising degree of egalitarianism, with Concepcion being an integral part of her spouse's life in her own right, quite apart from any a particular roles she may have played in the marriage.1

In his new position, Unamuno truly came into his own, in time acquiring the nickname "the sage of Salamanca." Although older than most of its leading exponents and the only writer who was a university professor, Unamuno was a luminary in the "Generation of '98," a rather heterogeneous group of Spanish intellectuals at the forefront of attempts to revitalize Spanish culture in the wake of its defeat in the Spanish-American War and the ensuing loss of status and prestige as a former world power. From 1900-1914, when for no apparent reason he was dismissed from the position, he served as rector of the university. During World War I, the Spanish philosopher's pro-Ally sympathies were the subject of much controversy, especially in light of the king's pro-German proclivities. In 1915, Unamuno refused appointment as dean. he did accept the position of vice-dean in 1920. he was dismissed from this position in February of 1924 on account of his conflict with the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and was exiled to Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands. he escaped to Paris after a few months, moving to Hendaye in August of 1925. Unamuno's return to Spain in February of 1930 was the occasion for much triumphal celebration.

One of the most profoundly formative series of experiences in the life of the Spanish philosopher revolved around his son, Raimundo Jenaro, born in January of 1896.

In early infancy, the young boy contracted meningitis, leaving him with a hydrocéphalie condition that was terminal (Raimundo Jenaro died in 1904). Unamuno's "crisis of 1897" was a transformative turning point: in the face of such personal anguish, neat and facile solutions would not do; there were depths to lived experience that eluded reason; depths that put us at the edge of "an unending Void."2 While he could no longer find solace in the inherited religious tradition in which he had been reared, Unamuno became all the more obsessed existentially with immortality and with God.

From this point, the focus on the depths of lived, "flesh and blood" experience that defied rational elucidation and neat categorization, and was furthermore often ineffable, became one of the key characteristics of the writings of Unamuno. Nicodemus the Pharisee (Nicodemus el fariseo, 1898); The Life of Don Quixote and Sancho (La vida de Do Quixote y Sancho, 1905); "My Religion and Other Short Essays" ("Mi religion y otros ensayos breves," 1910); most especially, On the Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Nations (Del sentimiento tragico de la vida en los hombres y en los pueblos, 1913), which I shall discuss later in detail; as well as The Christ of Velasquez (El Cristo de Velazquez, 1920) and The Agony of Christianity (L'Agonie du chistianisme, 1925; published initially in French during the author's exile: La agonia del cristianismo, 1931) all display a virtual dualism between faith (not as intellectual assent but as radical trust of the whole person) and reason. Each of them expresses eloquently, sometimes poignantly, the difficulty of coming to terms existentially with the range and depth of human experience.

It is probably fairly easily discernible that for Unamuno, the leading Spanish exponent of existentialism (along with Ortega y Gasset), the Danish philosopher S0ren Kierkegaard was a major influence. This can be seen in the previously emphasized inability of reason to explain the depths of experience; the emphasis on subjecttivity; the awareness of one's mortality and its connection to the meaning of life; the distinction between "Christendom" and Christianity; the more conventional, institutional, "outer" expression of that particular religious tradition versus its "inner," more authentic dimension; and a focus on the individual and the possibilities of his or her authentic or inauthentic existence.3 The distinctive style of Unamuno's existentialism is also profoundly shaped, needless to say, by the ethos of his Spanish culture, perhaps most apparent in his reflections on Don Quixote, and his understanding of Jesus Christ in terms of Quixote.4

Ever the individualist, the Spanish philosopher was nevertheless always politically active. In 1894, he joined the Socialist Party, frequently contributing to the party newspaper The Class Struggle (La Lucha de Glases), especially during the years 18951897. However, he relinquished his party membership a few months before his "crisis of 1897." Although retaining his socialist sympathies, Unamuno's socialism, as one might expect, was rather imprecise. It emphasized inner, "spiritual" transformation rather than class struggle and a singular concern with the transformation of social structures, all the while maintaining an unequivocally critical and rebellious attitude toward any socio-politico-economic structures and/or undue concentrations of power that violated human dignity.5 In the final analysis, as far as he was concerned, no political program could deal with the ultimate issue of the meaning of life and death.6

The year following Unamuno's return from exile (1931), the Republic was proclaimed and the king went into exile. Unamuno was reappointed as rector of the University of Salamanca and was elected deputy to represent the city in the Constituent Assembly, or Parliament.7 A Republican with anti-clerical leanings, he became disillusioned with what he saw as the dogmatism, anticlericalism, insensitivity to the lived experiences of people, and hostility to the dynamic creativity of national and religious culture of the RepublicanSocialist-Anarchist coalition. Feeling that national unity was disintegrating, Unamuno initially supported Franco in the early days of the Spanish Civil War. On account of this, he was dismissed from the position of rector by the Republican government, only to be reinstated shortly thereafter by the Falangists. Initially perhaps somewhat naive about the fascist nature of Franco's rebellion, he had a quick change of heart as some of his friends and colleagues were arrested, some even executed. he also became increasingly aware of the dependence of the Falangists on their unsavory allies, the totalitarian governments of Germany and Italy. These realizations culminated in Unamuno's 12 October 1936 speech condemning the fascist cult of death. This time, he was escorted from the hall and dismissed from his post by the forces of the right. Unamuno died on 31 December 1936. Quite incongruously, he was given a Falangist funeral.8 I find it quite ironic that both in the Falangist and later Sandanista funerals, when the name of the deceased was read, the attendees would shout in unison, "Presente!"

Martin Nozick has quite aptly described the Spanish philosopher as "anti-clerical vis-a-vis an unenlightened clergy and equally exasperated by hackneyed atheism; a Republican under the monarchy, a reactionary under the Republic, a rationalist dealing with irrationalities . . ."9 One could describe Unamuno as always engaged but never surrendering his sense of self, never "selling his soul" to a party or movement. One can admire the integrity of such a position, yet question its effectiveness.

Frequently denounced as a heretic in his life time, Unamuno's The Tragic Sense of Life and The Agony of Christianity were placed on the Index of Forbidden Books as recently as January of 1957. At the same time, Osservatore Romano itemized Unamuno's syllabus of errors: denial of the possibility of rational demonstration of the existence of God; denial of faith and transcendental order in the name of reason; denial of the immortality of the soul, of the Trinity, of the divinity of Jesus Christ, of original sin, of eucharistie transubstantiation, and of the eternality of the punishment of Hell.10 I would like to think that today the Spanish philosopher's challenging treatment of these topics would not cause such consternation. Having maintained this, I now turn to Unamuno's views concerning God and immortality.

GOD AND IMMORTALITY IN UNAMUNO

Unamuno develops what at least on the surface seems to be a simple view of the concept of God out of his reflections on the complexities of human existence - of concrete, lived experience. As high-lighted previously, for the Spanish philosopher, the depths, range, and complexities of experience are such that reason by itself is insufficient to grapple with them, to do justice to them. Or, in the words of Bernard E. Meland, "We live more deeply than we can think".11 Thus, there is a fundamental rift between faith and reason; faith not as assent to in-tellectual propositions or "a blind leap into the dark," but as an act of the whole person involving "flesh and blood," the intellect, the will, and, most especially, feelings. It is such faith, such radical trust that enables us, in spite of its vicissitudes, to experience life's fullness and to search for its meaning. The most shattering, the most profound of these experiences is death, including our awareness and anticipation of it. Unamuno's poignant analysis of death and our awareness of it leads to the human quest for immortality. And the search for immor-tality is full of its own paradoxes: the more you hang on to what you prize in life, the more likely you are to lose it; and often the more one loves life, the more one seeks its fulfillment in death. Whatever the paradoxes, the quest for immortality and the search for meaning are inseparable: human existence is meaningful if it has an abiding and ultimate significance. While there can be no empirical or rational grounds for the absolute certainty of such abiding and ultimate sig-nificance, for eternal life, we need to live life "in spite of the lack of absolute certainty. The proof that is sufficient unto itself is in the lives such faith helps to produce.

Unamuno finds the solution to the insolubly linked problems of immortality and the meaning of life in an image and concept of God that is quite suggestive of panentheism. The Spanish philosopher begins his handling of this issue with a discussion of the significance of reaching out towards others as a result of some sense of the bonds of our common humanity (integral to his understanding of the word "pity"), in part motivated by the unceasing reaching beyond ourselves toward immortality.12 Thus, Unamuno writes that "consciousness [conscientid] is participated knowledge, is co-feeling, and co-feeling is compassion"; hence, "love personalizes all that it loves."13 he elaborates:

And when love is so great and so vital, so strong and so overflowing, that it loves everything, then it personalizes everything and that the total All, that the Universe, is also a Person possessing a Consciousness, a Consciousness which in its turn suffers, pities, and loves and therefore is consciousness. And this Consciousness of the Universe, which love, personalizing all that it loves, discovers, is what we call God. And thus the soul pities God and feels itself pitied by Him; loves Him and feels itself loved by Him, sheltering its misery in the bosom of the eternal and infinite misery, which, in eternalizing and infmitizing itself, is the supreme happiness itself14

He states, furthermore, that "God is, then, the personalization of the All; he is the eternal and infinite Consciousness of the Universe Consciousness taken captive by matter and struggling to free himself from it.15 Moreover, "We personalize the all in order to save ourselves from Nothingness; and the only mystery really mysterious is the mystery of suffering."16 Not only is God in us and we are in God, we are born in God and God is born in us; as we suffer, God suffers in us.17 It is thus that God seeks to unite all things in the divine and to give an ultimate significance to the transitory of character of existence.18 And it is thus that we come to understand how it is that in God we live, move, and have our being.'9

It goes without saying that, consciously and unconsciously, Unamuno's understanding of the suffering God is profoundly shaped by images of the suffering Christ that are such a vital part of the culture of which he was so proudly a part. These images of the suffering Christ are images of redemptive suffering conveying that although in some sense suffering is a part of life, and though there is unexplainable, inordinate, unjust suffering, all suffering is transformed as Christ suffers with us, enabling us to share each other's suffering. And if Jesus Christ is the very incarnation of God, the sufferings of Christ - our sufferings - are the very sufferings of God that give new and transformed significance and meaning to the lives of all creatures.20

Though all too briefly, I must mention the profound impact on Unamuno of Don Quixote, a virtual metaphor for Spanish culture for "the sage of Salamanca." he sees Don Quixote as the Spanish Christ and in turn interprets Christ in quixotic terms. While there is a comic element in "jousting with windmills," the quest for immortality and the search for meaning, fulfilled in our union with God and decisively incarnate in Jesus Christ, as described above, has every appearance of being nothing more than "jousting after windmills."21 In a sense, we are back to the Spanish philosopher's starting point: as we wrestle with the issues of the meaning of life and death amidst the depths, range, and complexities of experience, we need to develop a tragic sense of life that empowers us to have the kind of faith, in the sense of radical trust, through which we can live life in all its depth and intensity, without absolute guarantees and certainties, yet with a sense that it is worthwhile, full of significance and meaning.

UNAMUNO, PRAGMATISM, AND PROCESS THOUGHT

As we have seen, Miguel de Unamuno situates his understanding of God and the meaning of immortality in the experience of death, including perhaps most especially in the awareness and anticipation of death. It is this encounter with death that leads us to the quest for immortality and the search for meaning, which culminates in the sense that our lives matter to God, that our experiences, in all their ambiguity, are preserved in the divine memory. It is this that gives us a sense that our lives are worthwhile, significant, and meaningful in an ultimate and abiding sense. While there are no absolute guarantees and certainties about such a faith or the divine suffering which empowers that kind of faith, we need to live as though there is such a God and as if the significance of life depended on that kind of faith. The proof will be in its fruits, the kind of lives it enables to be lived.

It is readily apparent that Unamuno's existential orientation has considerable affinities with North American pragmatism, particularly as it is expressed in the philosophy of William James. The fundamental attitude of both thinkers, living in quite different geographical, historical, and cultural contexts, can be seen in James's assertion that "on pragmatic principles we cannot reject any hypothesis if consequences useful to life flow from it."22 Thus, one key test for the adjudication of truth is in terms of consequences, as in the notion that ideas and beliefs have consequences in peoples' lives. For example, "what makes a life significant" is, in large measure, seeing it as significant.23

Neither Unamuno nor James (nor other North American pragmatists such as Dewey for that matter) can be accused with any degree of fairness of the crass kind of cost/benefit practicality with which pragmatists have often been stereotyped (in spite of James's statement about the "cash value" of ideas). Both of them assert that, for good or ill, consciously or unconsciously, ideas do not exist in a vacuum, are not independent of context, and are not "innocent" but have consequences. If that is the case, one of the tests for truth is the consequences, the effects of ideas.

For both thinkers, ideas, however inadequately they may reflect the complexity of lived experience, arise from and are a dimension of the vast range of lived experience. Indeed, it was James himself who coined the term "radical empiricism" to distinguish it from British Empiricism. The philosophical tradition of British Empiricism restricted the meaning of experience to sense experience; James, on the other hand, coined the term "radical empiricism" to refer to experience in all its depth, range, and complexity. For the North American philosopher (as well as other pragmatists such as John Dewey), pragmatism and radical empiricism are insolubly linked.24 Thus, "making a life significant" by seeing it as significant is enabled by an increased capacity to enjoy the richness of life.25 For both Unamuno and James, there is a fundamental interconnectedness between the complexities of lived experience and the consequences of ideas for the living of life.

Although both Unamuno and James emphasized the "ineffable," non-rational elements of experience, the North American thinker rejects the kind of dualism between the rational and nonrational features of experience that typifies the Spanish philosopher. While one could claim that Unamuno is engaging in the kind of hyperbole that seems to be not atypical in rhetorical tone in at least one aspect of Spanish culture (and, one might say, without stereotyping, other Mediterranean cultures, and not exactly unknown in the cultures of Central and Eastern Europe as well as Russia and the successor states), we also see a fundamental difference between the two thinkers at this point: the basically dualistic outlook of the Spanish philosopher, reflecting a characteristic of much of Continental philosophy, versus the fundamentally anti-dualistic views of the North American thinker, who in this regard reflects a trajectory common to pragmatism, radical empiricism, and process thought.

A related point is that, given James's rejection of all forms of dualism, in spite of his keen awareness of and reservations about the limits of reason, he has a much more positive estimate of reason, seeing it as a dimension of experience, even developing a metaphysics, than does Unamuno. he is certainly less susceptible to the charge of irrationalism than the Spanish philosopher.

One of the aspects of Unamuno's thought most intriguing to me has been its affinity with some of the features of process thought. I am thinking in particular of his stress on the quest for immortality and finding ultimate meaning and significance as all lives are preserved in the divine life, in the sufferings of God. In this regard, his thought bears a striking resemblance to that of a number of process thinkers. If existence is characterized by the passage of time, "the flux of things," by "perpetual perishing," the transitoriness of momentary experiencing has an ultimate significance and meaning because all momentary experiences are preserved everlastingly in the divine memory.

Perhaps no one has developed this argument more elaborately than Schubert Ogden, following a line of thought developed by Charles Hartshorne. Ogden claims that for life to be meaningful, we need to have a sense that we are contributing to something beyond ourselves. Contributing to posterity, to future generations, to the ongoingness of history, and so on, are, however, all insufficient and inadequate; they are all transient, subject to "perpetual perishing." What we need, Ogden argues, is a sense that we contribute not only to something beyond ourselves but to something that is abiding and everlasting.26 To Ogden, only God, conceived in panentheistic, process-relational terms, can fulfill that function.27 Thus, to paraphrase John Cobb's summary of Ogden's argument, our lives matter because they matter everlastingly; and they matter everlastingly because they matter to the One who is Everlasting.28

While the similarities between the positions of Unamuno and process thinkers such as Schubert Ogden are easy to discern, they also have significant differences: subjective immortality, while not clearly defined, is indispensable for a meaningful life as far as the Spanish philosopher is concerned, while the process theologian is satisfied with the objective immortality of being preserved in the divine memory. Ogden argues in fact that there are few things as un-Christian as a preoccupation with the continuity of one's subjective experiencing after death. Needless to say, there are considerable differences of opinion among process thinkers about subjective versus objective immortality. In this regard, Unamuno is closer to those process thinkers who argue for the importance of subjective immortality (Cobb, Suchocki, Griffin), the important albeit relative difference being the precise rational argumentation of the Whiteheadians in contrast to the more intuitive, poetic, hyperbolic style of the Spanish philosopher.

I have always found arguments such as those of Unamuno and Ogden, different as they are, to be moving, powerful and compelling. Yet, I am haunted by two related issues. One concerns the following question: if all experiences are of intrinsic value, as they are to Unamuno and to process thinkers like Ogden, why is there a need to contribute to the divine self in order to find ultimate significance and meaning? Why is the momentary experiencing, in its integrity, not sufficient unto itself?

In a related way, I have been haunted by the narratives I have read of the experiences of Hungarian freedom fighters who were condemned to death following the suppression of the Revolution of 1956 (as well as those of the survivors of the Stalinist purges, of the Gulags, and of the Holocaust). There were many different reactions, as one might expect, on the part of the condemned. I have always been moved by the remarkable and perhaps surprising stories of courage, often about people one might not expect to display such bravery. What has haunted me is the question of what accounts for such courage? Is it a sense of "contributionism?" Of wanting to be remembered a certain way in both human and divine memory? But how is that so when the victims were constantly told that nobody on the outside cared about them, that nobody remembered them, that they had been relegated to the "dustbin of history?" Or did they display courage out of a sense of integrity, to themselves, to the moment, to history, regardless of whether or not they would be remembered?

I do not believe that there is one answer to my haunting question. In more "Unamunoesque" moments, I wonder if trying to find such an answer is not idle speculation that dishonors the experiences and memories of the dead. I am certain that there was plurality of reasons, perhaps none sufficient, to account for the behavior of the condemned - just as there is vast diversity in the ways we find significance and meaning in life and death given the complexities, depths, and ranges of our experiences and how we respond to them.

CONCLUSION

In this article, I have attempted to explore Miguel de Unamuno's concepts of God and immortality and their connection to lived experience. After providing a biographical sketch, I examined his linkage of the quest for immortality and the search for meaning, the context and springboard for the development of his idea of God. I analyzed the Spanish philosopher's notion of a suffering God whose experience of our experience bestows ultimate and abiding significance and meaning to our lives. I explored briefly the connection between the suffering God, the suffering Christ, and Don Quixote. Throughout my treatment of Unamuno, I highlighted his ever constant reiteration that though there are no absolute certainties we can find meaning in living as though there were grounds for radical trust, as though there is such a suffering God. I compared the thought of Spanish philosopher with some of the features of the pragmatism of William James and of process thought, as exemplified by Schubert Ogden in particular.

The pertinence of Miguel de Unamuno's ideas concerning God, immortality, and lived experience are, to me, perhaps best illustrated by the following. If I may paraphrase, I heard David Tracy make this statement at a Buddhist-Christian dialogue held at Purdue University in October of 1986: if Socrates was right in claiming that the unexamined life is not worth living, Zen Buddhists are no less correct in maintaining that the unlived life is not worth examining.

1 Martin Nozick, Miguel de Unamuno: The Agony of Belief (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University. 1982), 22-23.

2 Nozick, 35-38.

3 Ibid., 43-44, 47, 49, 68.

4 NoZiCk, 57-59, 85-100.

5 IbId., 74-76.

6 Ibid., 75.

7 Ibid., 33

8NoZiCk, 33-34, 110-128.

9IbId., 32.

10IbId., 18.

11 Bernard E. Meland, Fallible Forms and Symbols: Discourses of Method in a Theology of Culture (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976), 24.

12Miguel de Unamuno, Tragic Sense of Life, trans. J. E. Crawford Flitch (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1954), 133-139.

I3Ibid., 139.

14Ibid.

15IWd., 139-140.

16Ibid., 140.

17IbId., 148-150, 179-180, 182-183,205-218.

18Unamuno, Tragic Sense of Life, 148-150, 179-180, 182-183,205-218.

19Ibid, 153.

20Miguel de Unamuno, The Agony of Christianity, trans. Kurt F. Reihardt (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1960), 17-35.

21Unamuno, Tragic Sense of Life, 297-330.

22William James, "Pragmatism and Religion," in The Writings of William James, ed. John J. McDermott (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1977), 461.

23William James, "What Makes a Life Significant," in The Writings of William James, ed. McDermott, 645-660.

24William James, "The Pragmatic Method [Pragmatism and Radical Empiricism]," in The Writings of William James, ed. McDermott, 311-317.

25James, "What Makes a Life Significant," 645-660.

26Schubert M. Ogden, The Reality of God and Other Essays (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1966), 1-70.

27ibid., 64.

28John B. Cobb, Jr., God and the World (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1969), 84.

Leslie A. Muray

Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion

Curry College

Copyright Christian Theological Seminary Autumn 2003
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved

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