우나무노의 문학에서 불멸과 개인 동일성의 문제

Abstract

The quest of immortality is one of the central themes running through Unamuno''s works. The starting point of his thought in this regard is the conflict between the faith that pursues the immortality of existence and the reason that awakens human beings to the impossibility of it, as well as the ‘tragic sense of life’ that appears as a result. Based on this, Unamuno explores the way in which a being can become immortal in the midst of his life in literary works such as Mist and The Christ of Velázquez. However, at the end of his life, he reveals a negative view on the afterlife and immortality, as seen in Saint Manuel Bueno, Martyr, and seems to give up his intense longing for the survival as an individual after physical death. This study considers this change not as a result of Unamuno’s end of his longing for immortality but as a shift in the way he pursues immortality and tries to understand it in relation to his modified perspective on ‘personal identity’. Considering this aspect, we find that the immortality he seeks is transformed from an individual level based on personal identity to a collective level. In this way, the present study attempts to examine how the immortality pursued by Unamuno is related to the problem of personal identity.