In a paper published recently in this journal, Buben attempted to show the philosophical relevance of Unamuno’s philosophical works when addressing the current debate on whether an endless existence would be something desirable—a debate which is nowadays commonly known as “The Makropulos Debate” since it was Bernard Williams’s “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality” (1973) that aroused interest in this question among contemporary analytic philosophers. Unfortunately, Buben’s paper fails to capture or even outline the reasoning behind Unamuno’s claim that we all naturally (and so, inevitably) long for an endless existence —and consequently it also fails to clarify how Unamuno’s position may (if so) contribute to the current philosophical debate on the question as to whether an endless existence would be something desirable. In this paper I will point out that Unamuno’s affirmation that we all, without exception, long for an endless existence is grounded in his metaphysical claim that the most basic and natural inclination of all singular things is to increase their own singularity. In doing so, I will also be showing that Unamuno’s proposal is not philosophically relevant when addressing the current debate on the question as to whether living an endless existence would be something desirable.

在最近发表在该杂志上的一篇论文中，布本试图在解决当前关于永无止境的存在是否是可取的争论时展示乌纳穆诺哲学著作的哲学相关性——这场争论现在通常被称为“马克罗普洛斯辩论”，因为它伯纳德·威廉姆斯 (Bernard Williams) 的“马克罗普洛斯案例：对永生乏味的反思”(1973) 引起了当代分析哲学家对这个问题的兴趣。不幸的是，Buben 的论文未能捕捉甚至概述 Unamuno 声称我们都是天生的（因此，不可避免地）渴望无尽的存在——因此它也未能阐明乌纳穆诺的立场如何（如果是这样）对当前关于无尽存在是否是可取的问题的哲学辩论做出贡献。在本文中，我将指出 Unamuno 断言我们都无一例外地渴望无尽的存在，这是基于他的形而上学主张，即所有奇异事物最基本和最自然的倾向是增加其自身的奇异性。这样做时，我还将表明，在解决当前关于永无止境的存在是否可取的问题的辩论时，乌纳穆诺的提议在哲学上没有意义。