Miguel de Unamuno's Quest for Faith: A Kierkegaardian Understanding of Unamuno’s Struggle to Believe

While I will argue that Kierkegaard and Pascal share much of Unamuno’s view, it is ultimately Unamuno’s view of reason that is the source of his inability to make the leap of faith that Kierkegaard and Pascal make. Kierkegaard and Pascal see that there are limits to human reason and this makes them approach the problem of the “hiddenness of God” ve

I do not see reason as the enemy of faith;

“unhealed wound”

These two authors offer an important counter-discourse for our twenty-first century aversion of suffering, but the ultimate purposes of that suffering are very different in Unamuno and Kierkegaard, and those goals should be clear to anyone who would take up the possibility of seeing positive ends for suffering.

others, largely by working with their doubts, emerge with a stronger faith, a faith that is no longer their parents’ faith but is now uniquely theirs.

Reason separates us from God, Unamuno held, but we come to God by way of love and suffering. The knowledge of God, which is not rational, proceeds from the love of God.

Unamuno was convinced that out of the tragic sense of life—the despair and pain that unfulfilled religious longing entails—emerges heroics deeds, hope, and love.

it might be interesting to ask what is so frightening about death. Why do people fear death? Why did Unamuno shrink from it?

Is doubt a necessary part of faith? Are doubt and faith mutually exclusive? Are there dangers in claiming certainty for belief?