GOD, IMMORTALITY, AND LIVED EXPERIENCE IN UNAMUNO

It is readily apparent that Unamuno's existential orientation has considerable affinities with North American pragmatism, particularly as it is expressed in the philosophy of William James. The fundamental attitude of both thinkers, living in quite different geographical, historical, and cultural contexts, can be seen in James's assertion that "on pragmatic principles we cannot reject any hypothesis if consequences useful to life flow from it."22 Thus, one key test for the adjudication of truth is in terms of consequences, as in the notion that ideas and beliefs have consequences in peoples' lives. For example, "what makes a life significant" is, in large measure, seeing it as significant.23

Neither Unamuno nor James (nor other North American pragmatists such as Dewey for that matter) can be accused with any degree of fairness of the crass kind of cost/benefit practicality with which pragmatists have often been stereotyped (in spite of James's statement about the "cash value" of ideas). Both of them assert that, for good or ill, consciously or unconsciously, ideas do not exist in a vacuum, are not independent of context, and are not "innocent" but have consequences. If that is the case, one of the tests for truth is the consequences, the effects of ideas.

For both thinkers, ideas, however inadequately they may reflect the complexity of lived experience, arise from and are a dimension of the vast range of lived experience. Indeed, it was James himself who coined the term "radical empiricism" to distinguish it from British Empiricism. The philosophical tradition of British Empiricism restricted the meaning of experience to sense experience; James, on the other hand, coined the term "radical empiricism" to refer to experience in all its depth, range, and complexity. For the North American philosopher (as well as other pragmatists such as John Dewey), pragmatism and radical empiricism are insolubly linked.24 Thus, "making a life significant" by seeing it as significant is enabled by an increased capacity to enjoy the richness of life.25 For both Unamuno and James, there is a fundamental interconnectedness between the complexities of lived experience and the consequences of ideas for the living of life.

Although both Unamuno and James emphasized the "ineffable," non-rational elements of experience, the North American thinker rejects the kind of dualism between the rational and nonrational features of experience that typifies the Spanish philosopher. While one could claim that Unamuno is engaging in the kind of hyperbole that seems to be not atypical in rhetorical tone in at least one aspect of Spanish culture (and, one might say, without stereotyping, other Mediterranean cultures, and not exactly unknown in the cultures of Central and Eastern Europe as well as Russia and the successor states), we also see a fundamental difference between the two thinkers at this point: the basically dualistic outlook of the Spanish philosopher, reflecting a characteristic of much of Continental philosophy, versus the fundamentally anti-dualistic views of the North American thinker, who in this regard reflects a trajectory common to pragmatism, radical empiricism, and process thought.