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Santayana, Unamuno, and the Concept of the Tragic
- Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy
- Indiana University Press
- Volume 45, Number 4, Fall 2009
- pp. 689-706
- 10.2979/tra.2009.45.4.689
- Article
- Additional Information
The concept of the tragic has been frequently discussed as a major theme in literary theory and the philosophy of art. Eventually it took renewed significance in the case of Unamuno when he assigned to this concept a central role in defining the meaning of human life. Whereas Unamuno had decidedly extended the concept of the tragic beyond anything the Greeks thought about it and attached to it his religious convictions about the meaning of life, Santayana regarded the tragic in a totally different way. He essayed to design it as a concept that could recapture the original classical view as far as modernity could assimilate it. The present article explores the basic ideas that Unamuno and Santayana employed in their respective views of the tragic and discussed the historical antecedents as well as the irreconcilable differences between the two thinkers.