Abstract

In The Tragic Sense of Life, Miguel de Unamuno writes that one way for humans to respond to the tragedy of death was through the will to personal, carnal immortality, however irrational that could seem. This essay proposes that Karl Jaspers' post-Kantian notions of reason, of transcendence versus Unamuno's sense of tragedy, and of the way he articulates the Encompassing in terms of what human beings are as antinomical existents, presents one with a positive alternative view to Unamuno's dogmatic irrationality, in an age where the tragic forces of irrationalism surface once again.