Unamuno on the Ontological Status of God and Other Fictional Characters

In this paper I will argue that Unamuno was conceiving of God (and ordinary, non-religious fictional characters more generally) in realist, though non-evidentially grounded, terms. I will point out that this way of conceiving of God allowed Unamuno to claim the actual existence of God (though as a fictional, purely humanly created char-acter) and, with this, the possibility of there being an actual relationship between the con-crete religious person and God without having to dispense with his own core claim that religious faith is just a subjective, though natural and thus inevitable, human reaction.