The Tragic Sense Of Life Revisited

 A while back I was writing about the tragic sense of life being the useful precondition to understand the human heart and what it must face and muscle through before optimism can be deployed.

I was reading John Macquarrie's book Existentialism, Page 164, this morning when this phrase popped out at me: "On the whole, it has been 'the tragic sense of life' , as Unamuno called it (el sentimentio tragico de la vida) that has been prevalent among the existentialists; and the attempt to redress the balance and to encourage a more hopeful sentiment has come later and is less pronounced. Thus we shall consider first of all anxiety as a fundamental ontological affect, and this is probably most typical of existentialism as a whole. But so our account may be a fair one, we shall also take not of the different, more positive tendencies to be found in some writers."

The tragic sense of life is not the last word for a religious practitioner, but it is part of his metaphysical posture.

Now let me contrast this sense of gloomy orientation with a quote from Eric Hoffer's writing, from The Syndicated Articles, Page 233: "Man is the only young thing in the world. A deadly seriousness emanates from all other forms of life. The cry of pain and fear man has in common with other living things, but he alone can smile and laugh."

The tragic aspect of living is instructive, but our humanism, our faith in the Divine Couple, our association with the Good Soirits, these encounters restore our souls, and good news is in our ken and anticipation.