Quo Vadis? The Transcendence of Freedom

• In Event: The Transcendence of Freedom

Abstract

Our world lingers on the verge of a decisive moment. Ideological forces we presumed defunct blossom again and we find ourselves in an era marked by the excesses of radicalization, hesitating between hardly visible horizons and wondering in which direction we should go. Through an analysis of the work 20th century thinker, novelist, poet, and public intellectual Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936), the present essay points towards a rediscovery of the transcendent sources of meaning that show the way beyond the current crisis. Through Unamuno’s work, this essay proposes an answer to what is perhaps the fundamental question of politics: quo vadis?

In his 1602 painting, Domine Quo Vadis, Annibale Carracci depicts Saint Peter’s apocryphal encounter with Christ: Peter is fleeing Rome, heading south through the Appian Way; the viewer stands as next to him; on the left of the image is Christ, walking in the opposite direction, with his right finger pointing behind the viewer, towards Rome, and the cross upon his left shoulder, centered in the panel with its bottom protruding to the front, as if reaching out for the viewer to take up. According to Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend, in that moment Peter asks Jesus, “Domine quo vadis?” (Lord, whiter goest thou?) to which Christ responds by saying, “I go to Rome for to be crucified again.”

This question is indeed always the central question at hand, and to a great extent, it is the question that lies beneath all inquiries of political thought, for without a horizon we can hardly know which path to take. Yet if our world was asked “quo vadis?” today, we would be hard-pressed not to stutter. However we interpret the events of our recent history, the liberal consensus is, to say the least, in question. Liberalism, we hear everywhere, contained the seeds of its own destruction. Yet we fail to consider that all things human contain the seeds of their own destruction. Like Plato, Unamuno knew that political order requires the constant rediscovery of the spirit and order that underpins it.

Although this crisis may be disconcerting, it is not new. Before we despair or hasten to answer that momentous “quo vadis?” in a way that we may come to regret, it is more important than ever that we pause to contemplate our assumptions, our history, our calling, and our horizon. This essay is just that: a modest proposal to pause and consider an understudied and often misunderstood figure in the history of philosophy who faced challenges of uncanny resemblance to those we face today. Here we will give particular attention to Unamuno’s understanding of liberalism and his notion of intrahistoria (intrahistory), and show that, in times of great political turmoil, Unamuno’s work offers an important yet often neglected guiding light that illuminates the direction of a meaningful answer to our present “quo vadis?” Through this analysis, the present essay shows that the freedom we often see under attack is not an optional feature of politics but its condition of possibility. It is a transcendent reality that sustains political life and the only path toward true order in history.

Author

• Enrique Pallares, University of Pennsylvania