Tragic Sense of Life

Philosophy and the concrete man--The man Kant, the man Butler, and the man Spinoza--Unity and continuity of the person--Man an end not a means--Intellectual necessities and necessities of the heart and the will--Tragic sense of life in men and in peoples 1-18

II

THE STARTING-POINT

Tragedy of Paradise--Disease an element of progress--Necessity of knowing in order to live--Instinct of preservation and instinct of perpetuation--The sensible world and the ideal world--Practical starting-point of all philosophy--Knowledge an end in itself?--The man Descartes--The longing not to die 19-37

III

THE HUNGER OF IMMORTALITY

Thirst of being--Cult of immortality--Plato's "glorious risk"--Materialism--Paul's discourse to the Athenians--Intolerance of the intellectuals--Craving for fame--Struggle for survival 38-57

IV

THE ESSENCE OF CATHOLICISM

Immortality and resurrection--Development of idea of immortality in Judaic and Hellenic religions--Paul and the dogma of the resurrection--Athanasius--Sacrament of the Eucharist--Lutheranism--Modernism--The Catholic ethic--Scholasticism--The Catholic solution 58-78

V

THE RATIONALIST DISSOLUTION

Materialism--Concept of substance--Substantiality of the soul--Berkeley--Myers--Spencer--Combat of life with reason--Theological advocacy--Odium anti-theologicum--The rationalist attitude--Spinoza--Nietzsche--Truth and consolation 79-105

VI

IN THE DEPTHS OF THE ABYSS

Passionate doubt and Cartesian doubt--Irrationality of the problem of immortality--Will and intelligence--Vitalism and rationalism--Uncertainty as basis of faith--The ethic of despair--Pragmatical justification of despair--Summary of preceding criticism 106-131

VII

LOVE, SUFFERING, PITY, AND PERSONALITY

Sexual love--Spiritual love--Tragic love--Love and pity--Personalizing faculty of love--God the Personalization of the All--Anthropomorphic tendency--Consciousness of the Universe--What is Truth?--Finality of the Universe 132-155

VIII

FROM GOD TO GOD

Concept and feeling of Divinity--Pantheism--Monotheism--The rational God--Proofs of God's existence--Law of necessity--Argument from Consensus gentium--The living God--Individuality and personality--God a multiplicity--The God of Reason--The God of Love--Existence of God 156-185

IX

FAITH, HOPE, AND CHARITY

Personal element in faith--Creative power of faith--Wishing that God may exist--Hope the form of faith--Love and suffering--The suffering God--Consciousness revealed through suffering--Spiritualization of matter 186-215

X

RELIGION, THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE BEYOND, AND THE APOCATASTASIS

What is religion?--The longing for immortality--Concrete representation of a future life--Beatific vision--St. Teresa--Delight requisite for happiness--Degradation of energy--Apocatastasis--Climax of the tragedy--Mystery of the Beyond 216-259

XI

THE PRACTICAL PROBLEM

Conflict as basis of conduct--Injustice of annihilation--Making ourselves irreplaceable--Religious value of the civil occupation--Business of religion and religion of business--Ethic of domination--Ethic of the cloister--Passion and culture--The Spanish soul 260-296

CONCLUSION

DON QUIXOTE IN THE CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN TRAGI-COMEDY

Culture--Faust--The modern Inquisition--Spain and the scientific spirit--Cultural achievement of Spain--Thought and language--Don Quixote the hero of Spanish thought--Religion a transcendental economy--Tragic ridicule--Quixotesque philosophy--Mission of Don Quixote to-day 297-330

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY