Unamuno en el crisol, 1895-1912: la elaboración de la dialéctica abierta

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The first concrete indication in Unamuno's writings of what would eventually be an open clialectic is in En torno al casticismo (1895): "It is preferable, I believe, to follow another approach: the alternative affirmation of contraries; it is preferable to bring out the power of the extreme positions in the soul of the reader so that the median point that results from this struggle comes forth" (I: 784; my trans.). Nevertheless, years of reflection and of personal anguish were to pass before the dialectic took its final form in Del sentimiento trágico (1912). In this essay I outline the trajectory that took him from contradiction to dialectic. Step by step, Unamuno constructed a philosophical and metaphorical language that could describe a dynamic system, a running current that did not have to be stilled in order to be described. By 1908 Unamuno began to rewrite "Tratado del amor de Dios" which he had started in 1905. He rewrote it as an open dialectic that brought out the creative tension of the force field. The "Tratado del amor de Dios" becomes Del sentimiento trágico de la vida en los hombres y los pueblos; the transformation marks the culmination of the transition from contradiction to open dialectic.