7 Key Themes in ‘The Tragic Sense of Life’ that Reflect Unamuno’s Existential Philosophy

By Agence de presse Meurisse – Bibliothèque nationale de France, Public Domain

Life’s a joke. And Unamuno gets it. Or, maybe it’s a tragedy. He gets that too.

How do you reconcile these two truths? Well, you don’t. You live in the tension, like an old, unkempt dog that still thinks it’s the king of the street.

You laugh, but you’re sad about it. Welcome to Unamuno’s world.

In The Tragic Sense of Life, the Spanish philosopher takes a deep dive into the absurd, and often painful reality of human existence.

But don’t expect any neat answers. This isn’t your feel-good self-help book. No, no. This is where life and death bump into each other with no soft landing.

Here are five key themes from the book. You might cry or laugh…

Either way, you won’t walk away unaffected.

1. The Conflict Between Faith and Reason

Unamuno was caught in a constant struggle. Faith promised eternal life, but reason insisted that we’re all just dust and bones in a cosmic void.

How’s a person supposed to live when everything they believe in is fighting each other?

Unamuno wasn’t afraid to say, “Look, I can’t prove there’s a God, but I’m still going to believe. Because, without it, what’s the point?”

2. Immortality and the Fear of Death

Unamuno’s obsession with immortality wasn’t born out of vanity or the ego of a man who thought he deserved eternity. No, no. It came from the raw, trembling fear of nothingness—the kind of fear that crawls into your bed at night, whispers in your ear, and asks, “What if this is it?”

He couldn’t stomach the idea that one day he’d be gone, and with him, everything that mattered: the warmth of a lover’s hand, the sting of a good argument, the poetry of a sunset.

All those moments, all that life, just poof, vanished. Like a drunken promise you forget in the morning. That scared him more than death itself—the oblivion that swallows us whole, leaving no trace, no echo, no nothing.

For Unamuno, immortality wasn’t about power or glory or sitting on some celestial throne. Hell no. It was about hanging on, even by a thread, to existence itself.

To be, even in the face of the infinite void. The abyss was always there, yawning wide, ready to consume him.

He felt it in his bones, in the empty spaces between words, in the moments when the world grew too quiet. And he hated it, fought it, clawed at it, even though he knew the fight was hopeless.

3. The Tragic Nature of Existence

According to Unamuno, life is a tragedy. It’s not neat. It doesn’t have a happy ending, and it sure as hell isn’t fair.

Every single human is stuck in the middle of this struggle: we want meaning, we want comfort, but we can’t seem to find either.

His philosophy is a bit like stepping on a Lego in the dark: you scream, but at the same time, you know you’re not alone in your pain.

Everyone’s feeling it too, even if they don’t admit it. This is the tragic sense—life keeps knocking us down, and we keep getting back up. It’s a mess, but we still try to make sense of it.

4. The Will to Live and Human Defiance

Despite the grind, the heartbreak, the endless gray mornings where getting out of bed feels like a victory, Unamuno believed in the will to live.

Not the sunshine-and-rainbows kind of “will to live” you see in greeting cards, but the raw, gritty kind. The kind you find at the bottom of a bottle or in the deep breaths you take after crying yourself hoarse. It’s primal. It’s stubborn. It’s ugly and magnificent all at once.

Life is a rigged game, a tragedy where the hero always dies, and the villains aren’t even paying attention. Unamuno knew this. He wasn’t selling hope or salvation. He was selling fight. The kind of fight that makes you pick yourself up off the floor after life kicks you in the ribs, look the universe in the eye, and say, “That all you got?”

This will to live isn’t about logic or reason. It’s about sheer defiance. It’s the refusal to go quietly, the instinct to keep moving even when you’re dragging yourself through the mud.

Unamuno didn’t romanticize it. He didn’t think it made you noble or virtuous. It just made you human. And being human, messy and broken as it is, is enough.

Life punches you. You punch back. Life lands a harder one, splits your lip, sends you sprawling. You spit out the blood, grin like a lunatic, and say, “Is that all you’ve got?”

You’re not going to win. Nobody wins. But Unamuno believed in the beauty of fighting anyway. Fighting because you’re alive. Fighting because, for some inexplicable reason, you still care.

That’s what makes us human, he thought: not the fear of death, not the longing for immortality, but the insane, relentless, irrational drive to keep going.

Life is absurd, sure. But our will to live? That’s our middle finger to the abyss. And as long as we keep raising it, we’re alive.

5. Solitude and the Search for Meaning

Unamuno didn’t sugarcoat it: you’re on your own. Life doesn’t come with a buddy system. No one’s holding your hand, and no one’s carrying you through the muck.

Sure, people can walk alongside you for a while—friends, lovers, family—but the road you’re on? It’s yours and yours alone.

He wasn’t saying this to be cruel; he was saying it because it’s the truth. To face life, to really look it in the eye and not blink, you have to embrace solitude.

Not the Instagram-filtered kind where you meditate on a mountaintop and feel “one with the universe.” No, no. He meant the gut-wrenching, bone-deep kind of solitude where you realize that nobody else can live your life for you.

You have to make your own choices, take your own punches, and figure out what the hell it all means on your own.

Unamuno knew it was terrifying. The thought of being so utterly alone in the chaos of existence could send anyone spiraling. But he also believed it was necessary.

Because when you finally stop looking for someone else to fix it, to give you the answers, to point you toward meaning, that’s when you start to figure it out.

You don’t find purpose until you stop running from the fact that you’re the only one who can find it.

6. The Role of Doubt in Belief

Doubt walks hand in hand with faith, Unamuno said. They’re like old, bitter lovers who can’t quit each other. Faith isn’t clean, and it sure as hell isn’t easy. It’s a street fight, a busted lip, a black eye. It’s believing in something while the voice in your head calls you a fool.

You want comfort? Look somewhere else. Faith isn’t a pillow. It’s a fight in the dark. It’s the trembling hand reaching out, knowing well there’s nothing there but still hoping.

Faith doesn’t make you feel safe. It doesn’t make the monsters go away. It just makes you stubborn enough to stand in the shadows and say, I’m still here.

Unamuno got it. Faith isn’t about answers; it’s about holding on when the abyss stares back at you, when the void whispers, You’re wasting your time. He didn’t have proof, but he didn’t care. Proof is for cowards. Faith is for the ones who know the fight is fixed but still throw punches.

7. The Tension Between Individuality and Community

Unamuno knew the deal. Life’s a tug-of-war between me and us. You can’t live for just yourself—you’ll rot. But if you give yourself up to the crowd, you’ll vanish. So what do you do? You wobble on the tightrope, falling too far one way, then the other, hoping you don’t lose your balance.

He said humans are stuck. We want to be free, but we also want to belong. We want connection, but we don’t want to disappear. It’s messy, it’s lonely, and nobody’s getting it right.

You walk your road, but you pass people on their roads, too. Some stick around for a while. Most don’t. And it hurts, but what can you do? You keep walking. Unamuno wasn’t saying we’re doomed—he was saying this is it. The dance between being alone and being together, trying not to screw it all up too bad.

No tidy answers, no big solution. Just you, the road, and the occasional hand reaching out, sometimes to hold you, sometimes to let you go. That’s life. You can cry about it, or you can just keep walking. Maybe both.

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