The Revolt of Unreason: Miguel de Unamuno and Antonio Caso on the Crisis of Modernity

201 Pages·2012·1.44 MB·English

by  Michael Candelaria

THE REVOLT OF UNREASON
VIBS
Volume 253
Robert Ginsberg
Founding Editor
Leonidas Donskis
Executive Editor
Associate Editors
G. John M. Abbarno Steven V. Hicks
George Allan Richard T. Hull
Gerhold K. Becker Michael Krausz
Raymond Angelo Belliotti Olli Loukola
Kenneth A. Bryson Mark Letteri
C. Stephen Byrum Vincent L. Luizzi
Robert A. Delfino Hugh P. McDonald
Rem B. Edwards Adrianne McEvoy
Malcolm D. Evans J.D. Mininger
Roland Faber Peter A. Redpath
Andrew Fitz-Gibbon Arleen L. F. Salles
Francesc Forn i Argimon John R. Shook
Daniel B. Gallagher Eddy Souffrant
William C. Gay Tuija Takala
Dane R. Gordon Emil Višňovský
J. Everet Green Anne Waters
Heta Aleksandra Gylling James R. Watson
Matti Häyry John R. Welch
Brian G. Henning Thomas Woods
a volume in
Philosophy in Spain
PSP
Stella Villarmea, Editor
THE REVOLT OF UNREASON
Miguel de Unamuno and
Antonio Caso on the Crisis of Modernity
Michael Candelaria
Edited and with a foreword by
Stella Villarmea
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2012
Cover image: www.morgueFile.com
Cover Design: Studio Pollmann
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO
9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents -
Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN: 978-90-420-3550-8
E-Book ISBN: 978-94-012-0821-5
© Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2012
Printed in the Netherlands
Dedicated
to
Ariel Zachary Candelaria
CONTENTS

EDITORIAL FOREWORD ix

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xiii

INTRODUCTION 1

Part One: Miguel de Unamuno

ONE Philosopher of Spiritual Innards 21

TWO Consciousness and Life: ¿Para Qué? 35

THREE The Longing for Immortality and 47
Pascal’s Doubt

FOUR Failed Solutions and Dissolutions 59

FIVE The Way Out: A Quixotic Basis for 73
Practical Ethics

SIX Conclusion 85

Part Two: Egoism and Sacrifice: The
Existentialism of Antonio Caso

ONE Toward an Anti-Positivist Philosophy 91

TWO Making Way for a Metaphysics of 99
Morality

THREE Existence as Economy, as Art, and as 111
Morality

FOUR From Psychological Egoism to Moral 117
Altruism

FIVE Conclusion 139
viii REVOLT OF UNREASON

CODA Variations of the Modern Problem 143

NOTES 157

BIBLIOGRAPHY 171

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 181

INDEX 183
EDITORIAL FOREWORD
The Revolt of Unreason is the provocative title chosen by Michael Candelaria
for his book devoted to the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno and the
Mexican thinker Antonio Caso. The book’s primary goal is to present the
philosophical ideas of Unamuno and Caso to the English-speaking public.
This alone is a worthwhile objective that makes the book worth publishing
since the topic and approach are not often treated in English. While there is
indeed a good bibliography on Unamuno’s literature in English, not much has
been published on his philosophy in this language. As for Caso, the offering
in English is even scarcer.
Thus it might be interesting to introduce Miguel de Unamuno and
Antonio Caso to an English-speaking audience by mentioning some important
facts about their lives and philosophies. Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (1864-
1936) was a Spanish essayist, novelist, poet, playwright, and philosopher.
Unamuno was an early existentialist who concerned himself largely with the
tension between intellect and emotion, faith and reason. At the heart of his
view of life was his personal and passionate longing for immortality.
According to Unamuno, man’s hunger to live on after death is constantly
denied by reason and can only be satisfied by faith. The resulting tension
results in unceasing agony. Unamuno provided a stimulating discussion of the
differences between faith and reason in his book The Tragic Sense of Life.
The multiple influences on his philosophy as well as his profound convictions
on life are shown in the following citation from that book: "Among men of
flesh and bone there have been typical examples of those who possess this
tragic sense of life. I recall now Marcus Aurelius, St. Augustine, Pascal,
Rousseau, Rene, Obermann, Thomson, Leopardi, Vigny, Lenau, Kleist,
Amiel, Quental, Kierkegaard—men burdened with wisdom rather than with
knowledge." As a result, Unamuno's philosophy is not systematic, but rather a
negation of all systems. It is also a profound contribution to the role of doubt
and skepticism in reason and faith.
More interestingly, Unamuno’s philosophy of existencia concreta is not
skeptical or relativistic; rather, it is an appeal to poetry, narrative, and action.
Hence, the tension between reason and faith present in Unamuno’s writings
and explored by Michael Candelaria in his book is also, I think, a reflection
by Unamuno on the limits of science and the limits of poetry. Appetite, desire,
wish, will, intelligence, feeling, affection, emotion, action, body, heart,
reason, consciousness, knowledge, spirit, biography, sense, human, divine,
love, existence, boredom, passion, pain, tragedy, finiteness, life and death, all
or nothing, hunger of being, fear of dying and fear of not dying, being
unresigned to annihilation, longing to not die completely, yearning to not live
eternally … are all Unamunian expressions. His peculiar way of relating these
notions gives rise to luminous thoughts on time and hope, creative
x REVOLT OF UNREASON
appreciations of the systole and diastole of the human soul. That, in my
opinion, is his most significant contribution to his contemporary readers.
In addition to his writing, Unamuno played an important role in the
intellectual life of Spain. He served as rector of the University of Salamanca
on two occasions: from 1900 to 1924 and 1930 to 1936, during a time of great
social and political upheaval. Unamuno was removed from his two university
chairs by the dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera in 1924 despite the protests of
other Spanish intellectuals. He lived in exile. Returning to Spain after the fall
of the dictator in 1930, he took up his rectorship again. In 1936 Unamuno
clashed publicly with the Nationalist general Millán Astray at the University.
Unamuno denounced the battle cry of the elite armed forces group La
Legión—“Long live death!”—, finding it ridiculous and repellent, and
expressed his fear that Millán Astray “could dictate the norms of the
psychology of the masses.” Morally and politically courageous to the end, he
concluded his speech by prognosticating: “You will win, because you have
enough brute force. But you will not convince.” Shortly afterwards, Unamuno
was removed from his University post for a second time. He died ten weeks
later.
It could well be argued that Antonio Caso Andrade (1883–1946) has less
philosophical density than Unamuno, and yet he was a highly regarded
Mexican philosopher at the beginning of the twentieth century. His eagerness
to integrate culture led him to search for a unitary and harmonious sense of
personal life. His philosophy of existence appeals to unselfishness, charity, as
well as to a peculiar notion of economy. Finally, he saw his meditations on
social issues and on the philosophy of law as a necessary consequence of his
philosophical anthropology.
A central figure in Mexican academic life, Caso was rector of the former
Universidad Nacional de México, now known as the National Autonomous
University of Mexico, from December 1921 to August 1923. In order to
understand his philosophical and political position, we note that Mexican
politics of education during the second half of the nineteenth century had two
outstanding features: the introduction of positivism during the years of the
restauration of the Republic, that is, around 1867; and the attempts to
centralize and homogenize the whole educational process that were carried
out by the administration of Porfirio Díaz (1877-1911). It was then that
Mexico tried to build a complete educational system, to strengthen
intermediate education through the creation of the National Preparatory
School, and to reinforce professional education through the founding (albeit
belated) of the National University. Caso rebelled against the positivist
atmosphere that invaded social, political, and educational thinking in his
country—a feature common to other Latin-American countries at the time and
still acknowledged, for example, in the Brazilian flag, which has exhibited the
positivist motto “Ordem e progresso” since the country’s founding. Along
with José Vasconcelos, Caso founded the Ateneo de la Juventud, a humanist