“ Love does not make you believe in God, in whom we wait, and from whom we hope for future life; it makes us believe in what the dream of hope creates us” Unamuno, From the tragic feeling of life.
Unamuno was an original, assematic and lonely thinker who would collect themes from Kierkegaard even though he had not attained renown, thus being one of the precursors of existentialism.
Starting from Spinoza Unamuno insist that the fundamental desire of man is his own susbsitence, the desire for eternity, which unfolds into two antagonistic yearnings:
The desire to be oneself (“to be”)
The desire to be more (“be all”)
Thus, the obstacle to consummation of these desires is death, and therefore life is a tragedy. Certain individuals and peoples, such as the Spanish people, have experienced the “tragic feeling of life”. Here one perceives the influence of Kierkegaard because philosophy is nothing but “the science of the tragedy of life”, that is, neither science nor rationalism can tell us anything in reality, there is only one faith that wants, creates and believes (because believing is creating) one's own immortality and the existence of God).
Unamuno thus denied any system because he insisted on “faith in faith itself”: “And if faith the substance of hope is in turn the form of faith. Faith before giving us hope is an informed, vague, chaotic, potential faith; it is nothing but the possibility of believing, the desire to believe. But you have to believe in what is expected, you believe in hope.” Unamuno, from the tragic feeling of life .