Miguel de Unamuno's Quest for Faith

How can this life have meaning if at my death nothing of me remains? This is the essential question with which Miguel de Unamuno, the most accomplished Spanish man of letters of the twentieth century, struggled during his entire life. Unamuno's views have been the subject of vigorous debate: was he a Christian or an unbeliever? Miguel de Unamuno's Quest for Faith seeks to appreciate and clarify Unamuno's faith commitments without diminishing or exaggerating them. His milieu encouraged him to equate knowledge with science, but his existential angst told him humans must be something more than short-lived products of matter. He believed that his philosophy and his resulting faith must affect the choices he made in life. Jan E. Evans surveys what was at stake in Unamuno's desire to believe and the stance that he came to live with. That stance is contrasted with thinkers whom he read and admired: Søren Kierkegaard, Blaise Pascal, and William James. Ultimately, this book tests Unamuno's philosophy against his own criterion that demanded concrete actions that were motivated by principled passion. It draws new readers of Unamuno into his world and provides critical new perspectives for those who know Unamuno's work well. Jan E. Evans is Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director in the Division of Spanish and Portuguese, Department of Modern Foreign Languages at Baylor University, Texas. She holds a PhD from Michigan State University and is the author of Unamuno and Kierkegaard: Paths to Selfhood in Fiction. By comparing Unamuno's reflections on faith with those of Pascal, Kierkegaard, and William James, Jan Evans exposes Unamuno's preference for existential conflict and, thus, a human role in the creation of God. She finds in his acknowledgment of these factors certain impediments to a faith that would convince him of the sufficiency of his belief. This book breaks new ground because, like its human subjects, it is not content with abstractions. Thomas R. Franz, Professor of Spanish, Ohio University.