Unamuno, ¿filósofo?

Abstract

Don Miguel de Unamuno, sin la menor duda, es el más importante representante de la llamada Generación del 98. Fue un personaje genuinamente heterodoxo, difícilmente clasificable y resueltamente indomable, a la par que ligeramente insociable y pedante. Poseía una cultura vastísima y dominaba todos los géneros literarios, desde la poesía, el drama, el ensayo, hasta la novela. Era, además, filósofo; eso sí, sin escuela. Hasta su forma de filosofar era diferente. Su preocupación principal era la vida, a la cual consideraba trágica; además —y quizás por eso—, su finitud le sacaba de casillas: él quería ser inmortal, por lo que no era extraño que se cuestionara la religión. Todas sus preocupaciones las exponía en sus nivolas: la existencia humana, el hombre concreto, y la problemática religiosa. De ahí que me pregunte si era filósofo existencial o filósofo religioso.

Mr. Miguel de Unamuno is without doubt the most important representative of the so called Generation of 98. He was a genuine unorthodox person, difficult to classify and rebellious but at the same time antisocial and pedantic. Vastly cultured he dominated every literary genres from poetry to drama, essays and novels, even philosophy, all without schooling. Even his way of philosophizing was different. His main concern was life, conceiving it as a tragedy and furthermore, or perhaps because of this, his downfall. What pushed him to his limits was he wanted to be inmortal, so it wasn’t strange for him to question religion. He expounded all of his worries in his nivolas (derived from the Spanish word “novela”, to distinguish his work from the supposedly fixed form of a novel). His concerns were human existence, mankind specifically, and the prolem of religion. From this point of view we can now query whether his philosophy was existential or religious.