Living the Contradiction

While I have at times found myself sharing the views and beliefs of many of the existentialist philosophers that I have read up to this point, the same cannot be said for Miguel de Unamuno, and the philosopher he most takes after, Kierkegaard. Within the first page of my reading from Unamuno’s The Tragic Sense of Life, I find my own personal viewpoint represented as a foil to the view that Unamuno presents. Specifically, I find myself in the camp of those who hypothetically tell Unamuno that his position is untenable, and that “unity and clarity are essential conditions for life and thought” (Solomon 157). Despite the fact that I, at this time, hold to a different perspective that Unamuno, I still find his belief extremely interesting as well as slightly disturbing. Unamuno, in direct acknowledgment of the contradiction it entails, claims that it is the disjunction between his beliefs and his actions that unifies him under one purpose. While someone such as myself would claim that in order for a person’s life to have unity, that person must also hold to the tenets of logic and reason that govern the universe, Unamuno seems to call upon Kierkegaard’s ideas concerning passion and claim that it is the conflict in his life that brings him passion and therefor purpose. His philosophy becomes rather disturbing when he comes to the justification for his passion in living in this perpetual contradiction. He gives the metaphor of a man who believes that he is on an unstable boat, if the boat starts to sink, he will be unphased because he already knew that this was a possibility. If the man is the philosopher living in the real world, and the boat is the belief system that a person has, than Unamuno is effectively suggesting to abandon absolute faith in anything. A type of ultimate skepticism where nothing can be believed in too intently lest it give way like the unstable boat as the foolish philosopher, “himself trembles in the earthquake” (Solomon 158).

Solomon, Robert C. Existentialism. New York: Oxford UP, 2005. Print.