The tragic sense of life is the realization that we will die. This could lead to an existentialist exploration - how can we continue, since in the beginning is the end - but Fra Unamuno prefers to deny that we do in fact die. Railing against the "Jewish" philosopher Spinoza and Protestant theologians for being too rational, he extols the Catholic faith. This is a delightful absurdity, given Catholicism's reliance on Aquinas' scholastic philosophy, which, in its attempts at rational proofs of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul serves only to prove that medieval monasteries lacked fresh air and the smell of women. Unamuno, good friar that he is, confuses the natural desire not to die with a desire to live forever, not for a moment considering what that means. To continue as he is forever - but how is he? Aging, suffering loss of memory, loss of concentration, loss of, well, everything, as the brain winds down. All that increases is guilt and remorse as the pain of things done and undone grows. To continue that course forever? That cannot be eternity in God's presence - it can only be death without God.

Other reviewers have called this book "philosophy for real men." Unamuno begins with this assertion. He rejects the Socratic "Man" as a creature of thought and not of substance. "Soy un hombre de carne y hueso!" he says: "I am a man of flesh and bone."

He works to provide the basis for a belief based on on reason, which he calls anti-vital, but on necessity. It is necessary for us, as men of flesh and bone, to believe that we can exist indefinitely. Reason tells us that we cannot. It is the confluence of these two beliefs that creates the tragic sense of life.

This is one of the best and most important books I've read, and I'd recommend it to anyone capable of sitting down and reading it.

...and a passionate philosopher who can write! It's here: the verdancy of flowers, the whiff of a woman's fine perfume....well, not exactly those, but an immense hunger for attachment to the world in which we actually live and a yearning for more, for more...I love his assessment of Descartes and his rationalist ilk: "I think, therefore I am a thinker..."

La grandeza de este libro no solo se encuentra, en que es un ensayo, con un alto contenido filosofico, del mejor libro escrito en la lengua castellana. Si no que tambien su autor a travez de su habilidad, conocimiento y manejabilidad del idioma logra escribirlo de manera muy similar a la que cervantez ocupo al escribir su libro. Al mismo tiempo describe la vida de Ignacio de Loyola como quijotesca, con ejemplos de gran similitud a los de la novela. Con esto logra captar la atencion de todos aquellos lectores que con anterioridad a este hayan leido el Quijote.

Very interesting! This is a disguised biography of St. Ignatius de Loyola! Don Miguel sees him as a quixotic hero of Spain