‘Man, by the very fact of being man, of possessing consciousness, is, in comparison with the ass or the crab, a diseased animal. Consciousness is a disease.’
Unamuno’s existentialist philosophy finds its fullest and maturest expression in The Tragic Sense of Life. Unamuno agonized over the realisation that everyone will die and the burden of this knowledge is what he termed the “tragic sense of life”. What is to be done with this knowledge is the question that Unamuno sought to answer with this book.
Miguel de Unamuno was a Spanish philosopher, writer, and scholar of Classics. His writings were influential in early 20th century Spain.