Abstract

Among the many thinkers Miguel de Unamuno mentions in his writings, Arthur Schopenhauer , Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche have special relevance in light of Unamuno's relation to Modernism. The writings of the latter three philosophers constitute a distinctive counter-discourse that undermines the rational systematization of existence initiated and sustained by the European Enlightenment. This counter-discourse also influences the genesis of the movement of Modernism in substantial ways. ;The dissertation approaches the relationship among these four thinkers through separate, though interconnected, investigations of their conceptions of reason, faith, art, and the imagination. As concerns reason, each resists the temptation to equate the real with the rational and simultaneously perceives rational discourse as marked by significant limitations. Further, they all reject any attempt to impose restrictions on the individual and oppose dogmatic tendencies within religious faith. Finally, the existential task of art and the imagination, as it is understood by each writer, is considered at length. ;In dealing with Modernism, the dissertation demonstrates how this movement attacks the notion of reason's limitless capabilities; how the unitary perspective characteristic of the rational faculty is rejected in the arts , the sciences , and related spheres; and, finally, how art and the imagination are granted a central role in human existence. ;The conclusion identifies the theme of struggle as a unifying link between our four thinkers' and Modernism's central concerns. Modernism manifests the discovery of both the limits and fundamental necessity of reason as well as the clash of fruitfully antagonistic perspectives in art. In Unamuno, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, this struggle is present in the dual movement of rejecting reason as absolute while simultaneously seeing it as clearly indispensable; in the notion of the necessary opposite; and in the violent and conflicting tendencies identified not only at the heart of the artistic task, but also at the heart of existence itself