Date of Award

5-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Hanson, Jeffrey

Area of Concentration

Philosophy

Abstract

The purpose of the present thesis is to comment on the philosophy of Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo as presented in The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Peoples, and to propose a possible line for its systematization focusing on the themes of selfhood and communication. I endeavor to do so, on the one hand, by contrasting the articulation of certain lines of thought in the text to their appearance in other of the author’s major works such as Agony of Christianity and Life on Don Quixote & Sancho; and, on the other hand, elaborating on some of the text’s underdeveloped themes in reference to other thinkers with whom Unamuno was in constant dialogue and which have been formative in the author’s development as a thinker – notably Kierkegaard, American pragmatism through the figure of William James, and wide array of Lutheran theologians. It is my hope that the present project, delineating the interconnections between the author’s philosophical anthropology, epistemology, and practical philosophy, may prove edifying for future Unamuno scholarship, especially as an antidote to a section of commentators who still take Unamuno’s polemical style and self-avowed a-systematism as an irrationalism lacking any cohesive throughline to the point of labeling him a man of letters rather than a philosopher.

Rights

The author has granted New College of Florida the nonexclusive right to archive, make accessible, and distribute for educational purposes this work in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The copyright of this work remains with the author.

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