Santayana The Philosopher

George Santayana was unique in his contribution to American culture. For almost sixty years before his death in 1952, he combined literary and philosophical talents, writing not only important works of philosophy but also a best-selling novel, volumes of poetry, and much literary criticism. In this fascinating portrait of Santayana’s thought and complex personality, Irving Singer explores the full range of his harmonization of the literary and the philosophical. Singer shows how Santayana’s genius consisted in his imaginative ability to turn various types of personal alienation into creative elements that recur throughout his books. Singer points out that Santayana was a professional philosopher who addressed immediate problems of existence, a materialist in philosophy who believed in both a life of spirit and a life of reason, a product of American pragmatism who nevertheless rebelled against it, a Spaniard who wrote only in English, an American author who spent the last forty years of his life in different European countries. Against the grain of most twentieth-century philosophy, Santayana kept in view questions that matter to us all in our search for meaningful and satisfying lives.

Regarding Santayana it has been claimed that he lacks a system while contradicting himself in outrageous ways. An attentive analysis of his complete œuvre, however, reveals something else entirely. It is not easy to classify a thinker as a Platonic materialist, an ironic nihilist, a spiritual atheist, and a conservative without political commitment, but, if one respects his own language, one discerns an astonishing, little-known Santayana, whose philosophical leitmotif consists in: 1) detecting the numerous “false steps,” logical and moral, supplied by the imagination when it confuses things with the names that designate them, or the world with the feelings that it provokes in the human animal—these errors assume diverse faces: pantheism, moralism, egotism, subjectivism, transcendentalism, Platonism, Puritanism, and utopianism; 2) avoiding these illusions in such a way as to keep the spiritual door open as a form of life to be lived out in an honest fashion; 3) recognizing the natural origin of these temptations and asking oneself what moves humans to succumb imperceptibly to these mistakes, at times tragic, at others comical, and what precautions one can take to remain cognizant of the deceitful leaps that can hijack one’s life; and 4) proposing as an alternative the radical distinction between essence and existence, which leads him to distinguish four realms of being: the realm of essence, the realm of matter, the realm of truth, and the realm of spirit. Essence as logical identity, matter as contingent existence, truth as frozen history, and spirit as the flames that part from contingency and approximate the eternal. An attempt has been made in this book to expand on and clarify these questions.

George Santayana’s renowned work of moral philosophy outlines his vision of the ideal life. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. George Santayana’s The Life of Reason stands as one of the most influential and beautifully written works of philosophical naturalism. In it, Santayana articulates his vision of human progression from chaos to reason and the pursuit of the ideal life. Focusing his thought on the lived experiences of people, these phases are traced through humanity’s many endeavors, including art, science, politics, religion, friendship, and reason. Drawing on a range of influences, from Democritus and Aristotle to Spinoza and Schopenhauer, Santayana develops a materialist system of thought that stresses the importance of imagination and spiritual experience. Originally published in five volumes, from 1905 to 1906, The Life of Reason is Santayana’s most complete statement of moral philosophy and an inspiring account of human dignity. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

This classic study of Santayana was the first book to appear in the Arguments of the Philosophers series. Growing interest in the work of this important American philosopher has prompted this new edition of the book complete with a new preface by the author reassessing his own ideas about Santayana and reflecting the new interest in the philosopher's work. A select bibliography of works published about Santayana since the book's first appearance is also included.

Santayana's Life of Reason, published in five books from 1905 to 1906, ranks as one of the greatest works in modern philosophical naturalism. Acknowledging the natural material bases of human life, Santayana traces the development of the human capacity for appreciating and cultivating the ideal. It is a capacity he exhibits as he articulates a continuity running through animal impulse, practical intelligence, and ideal harmony in reason, society, art, religion, and science. The work is an exquisitely rendered vision of human life lived sanely. In this first book of the work, Santayana provides an account of how the human animal develops instinct, passion, and chaotic experience into rationality and ideal life. Inspired by Aristotle's De Anima, Darwin's evolutionary theory, and William James's The Principles of Psychology, Santayana contends that the requirements of action in a hazardous and uncertain environment are the sources of the development of mind. More specifically, instinct and imagination are crucial to the emergence of reason from chaos. Separating himself from the typical thought of the time by his recognition of the imagination, Santayana in this volume offers extensive critiques of various philosophies of mind, including those of Kant and the British empiricists. This Critical Edition, volume VII of The Works of George Santayana, includes a chronology, notes, bibliography, textual commentary, lists of variants, and other tools useful to Santayana scholars.

George Santayana was one of the most influential twentieth-century philosophers. Because of his broad-ranging interests and lack of any permanent home in one particular country, he has often been stereotyped as a meditative philosopher removed from the world, living in what he himself called the "realm of spirit" among eternal essences. While there is some truth in this characterization, it is also true that Santayana was a penetrating analyst and critic of contemporary societies.'Character and Opinion in the United States' is his comprehensive critique of American thought and civilization and reflects the detached cosmopolitan perspective that lent his criticism its characteristic objectivity and strength. Santayana's subject here is the conflict of materialism and idealism in American life. In his view there exists a dualism in the American mind: One side, dealing with religion, literature, philosophy, and morality, tended to stay with inherited, old doctrines-the genteel tradition-and failed to keep pace with the other, practical side and its new developments in industry, invention, and social organization. Santayana traces the first mentality to Calvinism and its sense of sin, an attitude out of keeping with a new civilization and the dominance of practical interests. As a consequence of separating philosophy from everyday life, its study merely served religious and moral interests cut off from the free search for truth. At the heart of the book is Santayana's examination of the influential thought of William James and Josiah Royce, who typified for him the dilemma of American thought. The subordination of thought to social form and custom underlies Santayana's sharp critique of academic philosophy at Harvard where he early on studied and taught. He was disturbed by the very idea of philosophy as an academic discipline. Philosophy, he felt, should be an individual, original creation, "something dark, perilous, untested, and not ripe to be taught" Santayana's analysis of how social imperatives may impede the pursuit of knowledge remains pertinent to contemporary intellectual debate. This volume ill be of interest to philosophers, intellectual historians, and American studies specialists.

Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, known in English as George Santayana (1863 - 1952), was a philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist. Originally from Spain, Santayana was raised and educated in the US from the age of eight and identified himself as an American, although he always retained a valid Spanish passport. At the age of 48, Santayana left his position at Harvard and returned to Europe permanently. Santayana is popularly known for aphorisms, such as "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it", "Only the dead have seen the end of war", and the definition of beauty as "pleasure objectified". Although an atheist, he treasured the Spanish Catholic values, practices, and worldview in which he was raised.

Spanish-born philosopher George Santayana made a number of significant contributions to his academic discipline, but his popularity stretched beyond the ivory tower when he began to publish his essays and observations for a wider audience. The collection Winds of Doctrine offers readers a glimpse of Santayana's personal perspective with his insightful assessments of several influential philosophers and literary figures.