TRAGIC SENSE OF LIFE

Miguel de Unamuno's Tragic Sense of Life, is an affective, heavy piece of philosophy, and a work with an arguably misleading title. Taken at face value, the title implies that life is tragic and existence is a debacle. But this implication is untrue. One cannot take Unamuno, the title of his work, or his work as a whole at face value. The nature of Unamuno's Tragic Sense of Life requires that readers dig beneath the surface to uncover its true meaning. Which, coincidentally, is exactly the point Unamuno attempts to prove in his writing.

Rather than propose that life is in and of itself tragic as the title might imply, Unamuno posits that tragedy is an integral facet of life – a subjective condition of existence and a method by which man can arrange the details of his life. The tragedy of life does not exist in extraneous events – such as heartbreak, sickness, and death – but rather in the essence of events and the manner in which events are interpreted. Unamuno suggests that the pith of the tragic sense of life, its most tragic feature of all, is that life demands that man be rational and aspire to achieve his full rational potential, while at the same time, he must acknowledge and accept his utter irrationality. Unamuno rejects that man is rational, and argues in favor of passion and the desertion of rational aspirations. In this sense, Unamuno's ideologies are akin to Kierkegaard's “leap of faith”. And as with Kierkegaard, it is Unamuno's rejection of human rationality that I find myself at odds with.

That isn't to say that I disagree entirely with Unamuno. The bit about the “matter” of one's life – if the matter of one's life is founded on accepted but not truly believed doctrines and dogmas, then the inevitable onset of fissures and quakes in one's moral foundation will cause one's morality to give way entirely – I agree with that. Virtues and values held independent of doctrines and dogmas are the true 'matter' of life, and give life meaning. These virtues and values develop as a result personal experiences, not because of some scripture or because “the man” says it is so. These virtues are the essence of the individual, and as such, one will rationalize the circumstances of his/her life in order to preserve these virtues.

All this talk of reason and rationality, and passion and irrationality, brings me to a question posed by the first group. Are reason/rationality and faith/passion mutually exclusive? Or can they exist simultaneously, despite their glaring deviations? Reason tells me the former is more plausible. And although I'm usually one for reason, I'll take a look at the other side of the coin. 

Perhaps reason and passion exist not only simultaneously, but symbiotically. I think reason is often cast in an unfair light. That is, to be truly objective, one mustn't be influenced by emotions. The same can also be said of passion. To be passionate is to be subjective, and in order to be truly subjective, one must rely entirely on emotions and go with his/her gut or heart or any number of romanticized organs. The dichotomy between reason and passion can also be attributed to the general assumption that the physical world and the metaphysical world are separate and exist on entirely different planes. Reason is thought to exist in the physical world of cold, calculable logic. Passion is thought to exist in the metaphysical world of the mightiest intangible – emotion. But maybe there is no distinction between the physical world and the metaphysical world. Maybe each requires that the other exists. The lingering doubt left by a choice made in a fit of passion requires the rationale of reason to alleviate uncertainty, just as the cold, calculable nature of reason requires that passion light a fire in one's heart to signal that the choice one has made is in keeping with the essence of oneself. Maybe reason and passion are not unlike one another. Maybe passion is the reason.