Ghostly Messenger

The hedonist, the christian, and the epicurean.

2012-01-28T14:38:00.000-05:00

ByRicardo Mena.

I.-Character of the epistolar source of Santayana.

Inthe letters of Santayana one finds the intimacy, sincerity andpeaceful dimension of this Hispanic American philosopher. JaimeNubiola informs us of a conversation that the Catalonian (not very"Spanish" himself) Eugenio D'ors had with him. Nubiolainforms us of what Eugenio D'ors wrote when Santayana passed away(see http://www.unav.es/users/Articulo21.html):

"Onthe death of Santayana (October 5th, 1952).

–Andyou count me as Catholic?, Jorge Santayana asked me that night. (Hehad received me at nine postmeridie, like if we were in Madrid; anunheard of event in a convent.)

–Yes,I replied. Just like Michael Angelo.

Momentslater it was I who interrogated him.

–Andyou consider yourself Spanish?

–Yes,was the reply. Just like Christopher Columbus."

II.-The moral dimension of Santayana.

Whenhis friend from Harvard (class of 1886) Henry Ward Abbot asksSantayana what to do with his life, what path to follow, whethergoing for business or going for philosophy or art, Santayana trieswith his pointed knowledge of the human spirit and, thus, ofpsychology, to suggest him some steps. The calm, peaceful, anddetached spirit of Santayana may be explained by saying that, becausehe believed each human being had the right to have his or her ownperfection, he always developed and perfected his own moral one inthe same individualway. Let us listen to him now.

III.-First step: the sincerity of the patient.

Santayanaasks him to tell him what and how he feels truly in his letter of 27August 1886 from Göttinguen, Germany, where Santayana has gone witha scholarship. Recognising that truth can be, sometimes, many times,painful and dark, the physician of the human soul that is Santayana,warns his friend:

"Iwill not think any the worse of you for telling me what ispsychologically (or, as in Ward's case, physiologically) true of you.I know before hand that at the bottom of things spiritual isdarkness, and at the bottom of things physical, filth; but I think ita pleasant thing for a few persons (and there have always been such)to say it to each other in a decent way."

IV.-Second step: to know what one wants.

Santayana,in the second letter to his friend Ward Abbot from Berlin on the 6thOctober, 1886, gives him this second advice to his desperate friendthat finds himself in a crossroads where all of us have findourselves, more or less consciously, after leaving the family bossom.

"Allthat an emancipated man asks is which objects attract him most, andwhat are the means of attaining those objects. To do right is to knowwhat you want. Now when you are dissatisfied with yourself, it'sbecause you are after something you don't want."

V.-Third step: the parable of the mustard seed.

Inthe third letter that we rescue for this essay of the 1^stNovember, 1886, from Berlin, Santayana explains his meaning to hisconfused friend thus:

"Ican easely make my general position more clear by a parable. Supposea mustard seed asked advice of an oak how it should grow, and thatthe oak (being a fanatic) said: Young seed, unless you grow up intoan oak and bear acorns you will be a worthless and immoral plant.(...)

Andsuppose further the mustard seed asked advice also of an elm, whichsaid: My little seed, consider yourself and study your own nature,till you discover what kind of a seed you are. Then look for theground where your species grows best, and plant yourself there. Inthis way you will have the best chance of growing up into a good andbeautiful tree. But if you plant yourself in ground unfit for you,you may never spring up, or if you do, you will live with pain anddifficulty, and be a shrunken and feeble plant. Yet if you shouldmake a mistake, do not be too much troubled; for in the end all treesalike must perish, and the time will soon come when neither boughsnor dry branches will be remembered."

Andparagraphs later, the psychologist (or physiologist) adds to hisfriend:

"Ifit is contradictory and hypocritical to have tastes and prejudices, Imust give up logic and sincerity. But it seems to me that when onessees the arbitrariness of all ideals, the à priori equality of allaims, one can stick to one's own with all the better conscience. Thatis what I had in mind when I said that to do right is to know whatyou want. (...)

Theonly obligation possible appears when your needs and aspirations aregiven and you ask what you ought to do to satisfy them."

VI.-Forth step, only for thinkers: epicureism vs hedonism.

Todo what one wants for the sheer pleasure of doing it is known for thepeyorative name its enemies use against it: hedonism, which it should bedifferentiated from epicureism; the latter is rather like aphilosophy that avoids pain and tries to live away from the worldlyproblems in order to achieve spiritual peace, something that, itseems proper to me, is related with Buddhism more than withChristianism, for Christianism does not avoid pain, but accepts itand, in extreme cases such as Christ or Francis of Assisi, salutes itand blesses it. Ithink that in here we have one of the new values that Christianismoffers to the world and the human spirit; in place of trying to avoidpain, it is to receive it and salute it with courage andhumillity.

Santayanawas more epicurean than hedonist; because of this, he says to hisfriend Abbot (on his letter of 16 January 1887) that "[t]hedifference between the hedonist and the naturalists [i.e. epicurean]will thus be reduced to an original difference in their observations.If a man believes that men usually know what they are about, he willlike the hedonist; if he thinks men usually don't, he will like thenaturalists. I like the naturalists."

Santayanasays to his friend why he loves philosophy and why he wants to makehis life a philopher's one:

"Ithink the talking philosophers alone are worth hearing; they come toyou as one man to another, on the basis of everyday facts and life.That is what makes Aristotle so much the safest and wisest of men."

ThatSantayana is a naturalists, and epicureist, is confirmed when hehimself writes at the end of this letter to his friend Abbot:

"Bythe way, do you ever read Lucretius? If you don't, I should adviseyou to try him. He fills me with the greatest enthusiasm and delight.The arguments are often childish, but the energy, the flow, themagnificence and solidity are above everything."

Whata brave and sincere spiritual mind.

Rest in peace, Stranger.

Oremus...

Good news for all Santayanians.

2012-01-20T15:14:00.000-05:00

Dear brethren in Santayana's thought,

I have the pleasure to inform you that one Santayanian may have hit the nail concerning who was Edmund Spenser, that enigmatic poet who was always living away from London and enjoying the wilderness of Ireland:

http://shakespearemelodijo.blogspot.com/2012/01/john-donne-man-for-all-seasons.html

If future researches confirm this find of yours truly, there would be one explanation and one explanation only; viz., this one given by Santayana:

"Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer. (...) A true sceptic will begin by throwing over all those academic conventions as so much confessed fiction; and he will ask rather if, when all that these arbitrary tendencies to feign import into experience has been removed any factual element remains at all." (Scepticism and Animal Faith, Charles Scribner's Son, 1923).

Without any further particulars, I remain

Yours faithfully,

Ricardo Mena.

Egotism in German Philosophy.

2011-05-08T05:25:00.004-05:00

Hello, santayanians,

As I am now with another issues

(vide http://www.belianis.es/elteatrodelmundodericardomenacuevasbase.htm, and the Proemio of my book, full of santayanian teachings),

my spanish translation of Egotism in German Philosophy will be published next year 2012 in Alvaeno editions. I have selected that book of Santayana because, in my opinion, is full of his shining wisdom AND in a way that can be read and understood by the layman in philosophy who wants to "enter" the santayanian empire through the easiest gate. Your opinions on this santayanian work will be welcomed.

I will inform you about it when the publishing is done.

You take care all,

Ricardo Mena.

Reissue of Character and Opinion in the United States

2009-12-14T09:25:00.003-05:00

James Seaton has edited a reissue of "The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy" and Character and Opinion in the United States with four new essays by Seaton, Wilfred M. McClay, Roger Kimball, and John Lachs. The book is part of the series Rethinking the Western Tradition published by Yale University Press. The book is reviewed in the Wall Street Journal.

International Conference on George Santayana

2009-03-17T11:21:00.001-05:00

The Third International Conference on George Santayana will be held in Valencia, Spain, 16-18 November 2009.

The Call for Papers and other information is available here.

The Essential Santayana

2009-03-17T11:19:00.004-05:00

The Essential Santayana, a collection of selected writings by George Santayana and edited by the Santayana Edition, is now available from Indiana University Press.

You may order the paperback or the hardcover edition from the publisher.

It is also available from Amazon.com.

THE ROOTS and CAUSES of SANTAYANA's love for the "universal maternity" of NATURE.

2009-01-20T08:27:00.014-05:00

McCORMICK, who succeeds in bringing to life Santayana’s personal and philosophical pilgrimage, argues (what is shared by many santayanians) that “any reader who honors English prose, even if he lacks any interest in philosophy, can read The Realm of Spirit with the same fascination and pleasure as a musical illiterate might find in listening to a Mozart concerto.”

Now, I will try to go to Santayana’s roots, his sour ideas about his mother, and concentrate on this theory: Santayana’s love for Nature, as any love, came from an irrational instinct of preference to be perfected, and that because he had no real mother to love him instead, he chose “Mother” Nature, her “universal maternity”. Farewell.

Initially, we can read the quotation choosen by McCORMICK in The Realm of Spirit (1940), when dealing with Santayana’s sour relationship with his mother, that “Love suffers and hopes; it is attached in its aspirations to something not spiritual; it clothes this something as best it may in spiritual guise, but constantly with the sense of fear of a mist, of a disappointment. We sometimes find that the mother we love is not the mother we should have liked (…). Often we cannot but hate the things we love, and hate ourselves for loving them; and we are right in blaming our fallen nature for these contradictions.”

One is tempted to go, after this sour opinion about love and mothership, to the son’s Sonnets, and formulate the opinion that, because Santayana was raised without his castillian soil and his mediterranean mother, that because he was chosen by his energetic sister Susana as her child, though he did not correspond to her catholic and religious feelings, Nature (à la Lucretius) was chosen by him as the only legitimate substitute for his infant feelings of love and naïve passion, not accepted nor recognized by Josefina Borrás, his mother.

Indeed, Susana was his second mother, or his mother in law, but, as we read in “Her true self”, from Chapter V (“My sister Susana”) of Persons and Places, although he understood his sister with more insight (and love) than his dear father, he could not share his religious love for the Virgin Mary as Catholicism stipulates:

“I remember how seriously my father upset me one day, after Susana had returned to Spain and had lived with him for a season, when he said: “Ah, Susanita, whom we thought the world of, so exceptional, so sprightly, so perfect, now she has become a woman like any other woman.” There was truth, I couldn’t deny it, in this judgment, but there was no charity. Susana was still herself, we are all always ourselves at bottom, however disfigured by the incrustations of life. She had been defeated by unhappy circumstances, forced out of her native element, denied the Lebensraum [i.e. vital space] necessary to her nature; and charity will always judge a soul not by what it has succeeded in fashioning externally, not by the body or the words or the works that are the wreckage of its voyage, but by the elements of light and love that this soul infused into that inevitable tragedy.”

And yet, Santayana had said that “The Virgin Mary (…) is an even clearer illustration of this inward building up of an ideal form. (…) The figure of the Virgin, found in these mighty scenes, is gradually clarified and developed, until we come to the thought on the one hand of her freedom from original sin, and on the other to that of her universal maternity. We thus attain the conception of one of the noblest of conceivable roles and of one of the most beautiful of characters. It is a pity that a foolish iconoclasm should so long have deprived the Protestant mind of the contemplation of this ideal.”

Although Josefina Borrás’ son says this, he himself could never shared that ideal of “universal maternity” in the Virgin Mary, but in “Mother Nature.” Let’s go to Sonnet I, where we read his “philosophy in the making”, the feelings of Josefina Borrás’ last son growing up:

“I sought on earth a garden of delight
(…)
My sad youth worshipped
(…)
So came I down from Golgotha to thee,
Eternal Mother; let the sun and sea
Heal me, and keep me in thy dwelling-place.”

Moreover, Nature is for Josefina Borrás's last son Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruíz Sturgis (nome de plume "George Santayana") “a second mistress that consoles us for the loss of the first “.

Dealing with sex and passion as a source and material of beauty, Santayana said that “if the fancy is occupied by the image of a single person (…) all the values gather about that one image. (…) If the stimulus does not appear as a definite image, the values evoked are dispersed over the world, and we are said to have become lovers of nature, and to have discovered the beauty and meaning of things.” And later on, he insists that “Sex is not the only object of sexual passion. When love lacks its specific object, when it does not yet understand itself, or has been sacrificed to some other interests, we see the stifled fire bursting out in various directions. One is religious devotion, another is zealous philanthropy, a third is the fondling of pet animals, but not the least fortunate is the love of nature, and of art; for nature also is often a second mistress that consoles us for the loss of the first.” (The Sense of Beauty, p. 61)

According to Reason in Society (p. 107), “to choose an imitable hero is the boy’s first act of freedom; his heart grows by finding its elective affinities, and it grows most away from home.”

Considering that his mother “returned with her Sturgis children to live in the United States and my father and I remained in Spain”, although later on his father “decided to take him to Boston where (…) he left me in my mother’s care (…)”, Santayana, who “felt like a foreigner in Spain, more acutely so than in America”, chose for his hero the mediterranean Lucretius and, renouncing everything else for the sake of English letters, “[he] might be said to have been guilty, quite unintentionally, of a little stratagem, as if I had set out to say plausible in English as many un-English things as possible. (“A general confession”, The Realms of Being).

In conclusion, taking his “sad youth” and his choosing an imitable hero in the Mediterranean and roman Lucretius, we can say that Nature was, for Josefina Borrás’ last son, the “second mistress that consoles him for the loss of the first one” because:

1º.- He was raised without the love directed to his perfected mother (see “We sometimes find that the mother we love is not the mother we should have liked”, from The Realm of Spirit).

2º.- He loved the Virgin Mary’ ideal of “universal maternity” as a good substitute ideal for his lack of sexual love to his mother, but could only target his love to perfected Nature instead, because he wanted to discover “the beauty and meaning of things”, because “If the stimulus does not appear as a definite image, the values evoked are dispersed over the world, and we are said to have become lovers of nature" (from The Sense of Beauty).

3º.- And he decided to imitate his hero, the Mediterranean and roman Lucretius (the poet of Nature, the poet of beloved and “universal maternity” Nature) and determined, because he felt “like a foreigner in Spain, more acutely so than in America”, “to say in English as many un-English things as possible” (from “A general confession, The Realms of Being).

Having traced Santayana’s roots that explain his love for Nature, “universal maternity”, and Lucretius, there follows easily his love for Greek ideals, the true paradigm of Mediterranean culture, and his love for measure, Plato, Aristotle, and harmony as an aesthetic and moral ideal, as well as his "fight" against anglosaxon and barbaric culture, exemplified in "the genteel tradition", romanticism, and modern culture.

In fact, Josefina Borrás’s last son loved Epicureism and detachment, exactly what Lucretius has tought in his “De Rerum Natura”. Because he gave vent to all his ideal Mediterranean culture when observing the "anglosaxon" world that surrounded him, he is a figure apart, alone, distant; a careful and detached philosopher that wrote in a punctillious way, a personal writting which consisted in, as he said once (using his French) in one of his letters on the subject of writting, like Nabokov would say years later:

"Polish it continually, and repolish it; add ocasionally, and delete often."

Richardson Reviews Santayana's Letters

2008-12-23T14:40:00.003-05:00

Robert D. Richardson reviews Santayana's letters in the Wall Street Journal.

I learned of the review from an entry at Anecdotal Evidence: `The American Champion of the Inner Life'. The blog was brought to my attention recently for its regular mentions of Santayana.

In one entry the blogger discusses the joys of reading Santayana:

Blanshard writes admiringly, with reservations, of a philosopher-writer I value highly – George Santayana: “To read him is to be conducted in urbane and almost courtly fashion about the spacious house he occupies, moving noiselessly always on a richly figured carpet of prose.” In other words, Santayana is a joy to read, a lesson I learned almost eight years ago, when my wife and I were married in Nova Scotia and we spent several days honeymooning in Halifax. All that week I was reading and luxuriating in The Realms of Being, a book that now reminds me how manifold happiness and pleasure can be. But Blanshard adds, regarding Santayana: “The style is not, as philosophic style should be, so transparent a medium that one looks straight through it at the object, forgetting that it is there; it is too much like a window of stained glass which, because of its very richness, diverts attention to itself.”

For all the entries that make reference to Santayana click here.

THE STRANGER'S ONTOLOGY BASED ON INVERTED ARISTOTELIANISM...

2008-11-07T13:45:00.004-05:00

Let's see, dear Jessica.

Matter exists, and it is BEING, atomic being, material being, but you are forced to believe in material being because your psique needs some basis to get ideals from: that is called by the Stranger, 'animal faith'.

Let's follow last chapter "The Secret of Aristotle" on "Dialogues in Limbo".

Let's recall that "Dialogues..." was Santayana's dearest child of his eyes, because it is the most personal book of his pen; let us remember when Democritus says (it won't be a quotation, but a paraphrase, as I follow my memory):

"The Stranger suffers from a malady; he says all ideals are perfect and beautiful and good, because all are natural, but he follows his own ideals and gives them a better statement and position over the rest; the Stranger, Santayana, says then:

"Thank you for your kind assistance; it is a first step into finding a cure, to have found out where the disease is.

The Ontology solution rests, when one inverts Aristotle:

First, Matter exists, and its BEING is a MATERIAL AND FLUX BEING. That is based on ANIMAL FAITH, on common and aristotelian sense.

Second, from Matter, Essence appears; ESSENCE DOES NOT EXISTS, BUT FLOWS FROM MATTER, its BASEMENT. Essence is like IMAGINATION: pure poetry, pure invention. It is like the Third World of Karl Popper, but just broader. All "seems" to be, like the hindus said. But, the Strager may have written: matter is, essence seems to be, and is waiting its time to be.

Third, MATTER cannot be NOT BEING, because then, ESSENCE won't be either. Matter "is here", essence "is", or "seems" to be here, and "could seems to be here in this world in the incoming future" (vide "Some meanings of the word "is", in "Obiter Dicta").

The relation between MATTER and ESSENCE and SPIRIT and TRUTH is the Catholic Trinity, as translated by the naturalistic approach of the Stranger:

1º.- The father is MATTER, all things that we need to survive and act. THIS MATTER IS PURE aristotelian ACT, heraclitian FLUX, platonic "appearance".

2º.- The son is ESSENCE, all "images" perceived in the natural world, based not in survival and natural needs, but in detachment, imagination, potential beings born inside our mental projections, be they doubts, theories, form and expression of aesthetical natural things, etc. Essences can be infinite because they "seem to be", they are in POTENCE, potential, waiting to be in this world, but not yet here, not like matter I mean; like when I think how to write a poem but the poem is not yet created. (see Leibniz's quoation on "Realms of Being"). Essences have FORM, are potential, its end is to be created at some future point in universal TIME. And they "seem to be" now to me, if I do not misunderstood myself when I say that they "are" real. This is parmenidian "BEING", platonic "reality", aristotelian "form of things".

3º.- The Holy Spirit is SPIRIT, that part of man that can be described as theoretical, not concerned with matter and life's survival, but with abstractions, universals, images, colours, etc. (e.g. the colour of a yellow flower: the flower "is there" (matter), the colour yellow "seems to be there" (essence). The contemplation, the hindu's contemplation of it, is the Stranger's affinity with Buddha, the Vedas, and the Uppanishads.

When you contemplate all material things, all natural things, under the form of eternity (Spinoza's way, as well as hindu's way, heraclitian and parmenidian and jonofanes' way; vide Guthrie "History of Greek Philosophy" for more info), everything "seems to be", everything dissapears, even ourselves and matter. But matter, here, and now, IS now, it exists now. Our existence seen under the form of contigency, IS. Only the Gods or God, may be permmited to see the FLUX actually under the form of eternity.

4º.- All above three unite in the TRUTH, in GOD (as a universal reunion of FATHER, SON, AND HOLY SPIRIT). That is the FIRST MOVER, the aristotelian concept of GOD: pure intelect, the greatest thing that can be imagined, as the Neoplatonics said (I think this metaphysical proof of God was thought first by Plotinus; correct me, please, if I am mistaken).

Appendix: "The red rose's example".

This flower that I touch and smell here IS.

This red that I see SEEMS to be red; I cannot touch the red, but only the rose. So, red "seems" to me to be "in" this flower. In a beautiful flower, the flower "is", the beauty that I sense and feel, "seems". Aesthetics is a Greek thing for the Stragner, who based his philosophy values on classic Greek ideals, id est: proportion, beauty, virtue, good, truth, aristotelian and platonic virtues.

The universal concept "FLOWER" or "RED ROSE" is not, but seems to be, because humans have created that concept and that name for that "material thing" that appear to their eyes.

The ANALYTICS of Aristotle is a MUST READ before we understand the Stranger's ontholoty; then, all we have to do is accept matter and form, act and potence, from the theory of Aristotle, but being careful not to place the cause of our existence in the end (or efficient cause) that is GOD, but in the source, the genetic cause: MATTER.

Because, let us not forget, the Stranger knew that Nature was not guided by finality, by teleology (Darwin tought the Stranger that, as well as William James's psicology), as Aristotle not scientifically thought, because "il maestro di color che sano" was, deeply, platonic (do not forget that Aristotle entered the Academia when he was 17, and left it when he was nearly 40; see Werner Jaeger "Aristotle" for a close look at the platonic evolution of Aristole, and how he might be read correctly; see W.D. Ross "Aristotle" as well).

Buddhism and Santayana

2008-09-03T13:16:00.002-05:00

I need to check this blog more often (though not TOO much more often, as it still seems lightly visited). I just came on to ask you all a question, and I find corroboration of my thesis in Mena's interesting post. He writes:

"There is someting of the buddist under the classical and athenian grounds of Santayana."

I have just been reading a paper on emergent properties in physics (the author is critiquing both emergence *and* reductionism in an interesting way), and my musings led me to the following (loosely conceived and articulated) syllogism:

The realm of matter is flux (change)
The realm of essence is being
The realm of matter exists, so flux/change exists.
Essences do not exist, so being does not exist.
Matter (that which DOES exist) is Non-Being.
The non-reality of permanence and reality of change is a basic Buddhist precept, sometimes phrased as the claim "all is Non-Being, Being is an illusion."

Therefore: Santayana's a buddhist in his ontology.

What do you guys think? I also have thoughts on how one could translate (in limited ways) the Buddhist concept of no-self into GS's notion of spirit illuminating essence, but I won't bore you further at present.

While I'm at it, does anyone have ANY ideas about E.B. White and Santayana (see post below from a year ago)??

--Jessica

Santayana's sense of completion.

2008-04-03T16:23:00.003-05:00

One of the sentences I was surprised to read while inmersed in the new and abridged one-volume edition of The Life of Reason, is found in its Preface, where Santayana said (if we may believe Daniel Cory):

"What I have yearned for all my life is not so much cosmic unity--like Whitehead, but simply 'completion'. If I see a circle half-drawn, I yearn to complete it."

Santayana accepted matter as the only "real" thing, and the rest are details of poetical and essential value, just pure imagination, "appearances". Not even science is more than an essence, as it is based on theories gathered by a poor intelligence, as we read in Santayana's essay Understanding, Imagination and Mysticism, from Interpretations of Poetry and Religion, were Santayana's democritian scepticism of finding an absolute truth of the universe says:

"Five senses, then, to gather a small part of the infinite influences that vibrate in Nature, a moderate power of understanding to interpret those senses, and an irregular, passionate fancy to overlay that interpretation--such is the endowment of the human mind. And what is its ambition? Nothing less than to construct a picture of all reality, to comprehend its own origin and that of the universe, to discover the laws of both and prophesy their destiny. Is not the disproportion enormous? Are not confusions and profound contradictions to be looked for in an attempt to build so much of so little?

Yet the metaphysical ambition we speak of cannot be abandoned, because whatever picture of things we may carry about in our heads we are bound to regard as a map of reality."

Surely, "Conciousness is a born hermit (...). He [Man] is encased in a protective shell of ignorance and insensibility which keeps him from being exhausted and confused by this too complicated world (...). Thus the best human intelligence is still decidedly barbarous; it fights in heavy armour and keeps a fool at court" (Reason in Common Sense, Chapter 2).

Yes, we are animals, we are "decidedly barbarous", we are governed by our passions and instincts; that is why Santayana said that the life of reason was not intelligence, but "simply the unity given to all existence by a mind in love with the good." But what good is that? Is it universal? Is there an absolute good in this universe for Santayana? Did he not said that good and bad were relative, as Spinoza tought him and he proclaimed all the time, since his first work The Sense of Beauty?

Well, decidedly there is an absolute good for sure to Santayana. Only, he knew that absolute truth was hidden and prohibited for us to know. As it is explained in the Preface of The Realm of Being (I translate from my Spanish edition, so the original text will be mutilated with your kind permission--I beg your pardon):

"This relativity does not imply that an absolute truth does not exist. On the contrary, if there were not the absolute truth, which contained everything and were eternal, the capricious opinions that individuals create from time to time would be absolute."

Santayana completes the circle half-drawn, as we see; but he does not say what it is; Santayana does not try to save himself, or be kind to us, or be a preacher to us like Chesterton was to make us happy. Santayana completes the circle half-drawn, not for us, but for himself, because he yearned to complete it. After having completed it, presumably, we may imagine he just started to laugh. Because his imagination had won the game again against his conciousness, the born hermit. Because "the metaphysical ambition we speak of cannot be abandoned."

There is someting of the Buddhist under the classical and athenian grounds of Santayana. Matter exists, like Democritus said, but do not believe in appearences. As Aristoteles wrote in his Metaphysics, "God is energy in action", is the only substance, like Spinoza felt passionately, and for that reason, the only good to think of if you want to give your existence a unity, a completion, if you want to be in love, is to complete the circle of life that you feel inside yourself half-drawn, and then start laughing.

There is just this explosive epigram of Santayana that complete this issue about unity and completion in our existence extracted from his Soliloquies in England:

"Human life is comical in its existence, lyrical in its essence, and tragic in its destiny."

Explaining Santayana

2007-12-10T16:35:00.000-05:00

I am going to have to give some thought to how this question SHOULD be answered, but, in terms of how I in fact DO answer it, I tend to take the easy way out and just say that he is the person who once wrote, "Those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it." That is the easiest handle for the non-specialist, especially the non-philosopher, to grasp. I sometimes go on to explain that this quotation is taken out of context and does not mean quite what it is usually taken to mean, although it does mean something very similar.

Santayana and E.B. White

2007-08-21T09:01:00.000-05:00

Greetings Santayanists (is everyone still out there)? This is a request for information from any knowledgeable parties.

I was out at the lake recently, doing a little leisurely reading of E.B. White's essays for the New Yorker. I was struck by how like Santayana White sounded, both in style and content. Just as I was musing on this, reading along, I found him quoting Santayana on the notion of the democratization of culture. I was amazed!

So, does anyone know of any connection between White and Santayana? Was White a fan? An avid reader of Santayana? Did he correspond with Santayana at all? Or is this just another coincidence of harmony of the spirit?

Santayana Audiobook

2007-07-24T19:43:00.000-05:00

Santayana's Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy is available as an audiobook for free download at LibriVox.

LibriVox features mp3 recordings of works in the public domain. The project is all-volunteer which means that the works are read by volunteers and the catalog is determined by those readers. This suggests that interested persons could promote more Santayana audiobooks by volunteering to read for LibriVox.

Cocktail Party Santayana

2007-07-23T15:52:00.000-05:00

Jessica recently told of being asked by one not a student of philosophy what Santayana is all about. After finding myself in a similar situation I realized that I had not fully understood the challenge Jessica described. I was asked, "Why Santayana? Why now?" and I had to answer in 45 seconds. Since that encounter (at which I barely mumbled anything coherent) I have come up with a three-part answer that comes in around 65 seconds (the bracketed headings are intended to function as unspoken mnemonics).

[I. Philosophical aspect - Higher vision without superstition]

Santayana offers a vision of human life and values that transcends crass materialism without retreating into superstition. He conceives science without arrogance; religion without fundamentalism; pluralism without coercion; and disillusion without nihilism.

[II. Social aspect - Public intellectual]

Santayana was the most intellectual of public intellectuals, a best-selling novelist who wrote unconventional philosophical works. He rejected academic professionalism but never aspired to punditry. He lived a relaxed and ascetic life devoted to contemplation, writing, and quietly generous friendship.

[III. Relevance today - Reason in response to post-modern fragmentation, globalization]

Santayana’s broadly humanistic outlook is grounded in European culture with deep appreciation of Asian philosophy and irreducibly influenced by American experience. It is a serious and cheerful alternative to irrationalism of all kinds. It takes seriously the richest fruits of social life, religion, art, and science; acknowledges the conflicted nature of human experience; and imagines in detail the harmony of a life of reason. Santayana’s philosophy is materialism without reductionism and idealism without fanaticism.

a test

2007-07-21T17:25:00.000-05:00

This is an experiment to see if posts from me actually do show up on the blog.

Shameless Self-Promotion

2007-06-17T10:34:00.000-05:00

The shameless self-promotion department would like to announce that The Grateful Dead and Philosophy has been released from Open Court Books (see link). How does this bear on ol' GS, you ask? Well, there's an essay in the book on the Grateful Dead and George Santayana. Some Deadhead chick named Jessica Wahman wrote it. I guess it's my own version of GS in 3000 words or less. Check it out and let me know how badly I've trivialized our man!

http://www.opencourtbooks.com/

(Should also be out on New Releases tables in Barnes and Noble)

Santayana at the James & Royce Conference

2007-05-31T16:45:00.000-05:00

I attended the James & Royce conference at Harvard last weekend (the full title of the meeting was "William James and Josiah Royce a Century Later: Pragmatism and Idealism in Dialogue"), and encountered Santayana only a couple of times but they were memorable and both in the graduate student session. First, Michael Brodrick of Vanderbilt presented a paper entitled "Spirituality and Moral Struggle" contrasting Royce and Santayana on spirituality. Royce seems to stress moral struggle with little appreciation for the life of the spirit. The paper provoked a good discussion about spiritual life that ended too soon.

The second Santayana mention occurred during the session break in an informal conversation with Cornel West. West lauded Santayana for his "charisma on the page"--something rare among writers and especially philosophers. He remarked Santayana's tragicomic sense, which I understand as a capacity to both be disillusioned and have a comic sense. West said Hume approached this sense but did not achieve it; Hume pulled back from the abyss and played backgammon instead. Finally, West said he thought Santayana was coming back and philosophy that encompasses broad cultural learning would become more mainstream; and I assume that means academically.

It certainly pleased me to hear West express interest and admiration for Santayana. I wonder how these comments might strike others.

What's Santayana All About?

2007-05-14T09:43:00.000-05:00

Greetings Santayaneros--Today, I pose a challenge to you all. I just got in from a long drive back from NYC, dead tired, and on mental fumes. In the car, my boyfriend had asked me "what is Santayana all about?" I get this question a lot (as I'm sure you all do), and it always gives me pause, even when I'm fully functional (which is not this morning). How to sum up the guy in 25 words or less? So, I'm passing the buck.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is the following:

If asked, by a non-academic, to explain who Santayana was (and historical stuff doesn't count), what do you say? How do you "sum up" his philosophical outlook?

We all know lots and lots about Santayana, but it's hard to wrap it all up into a clear and meaningful statement. And while no philosophy should be reduced to a sound bite, I think the question merits an answer.

To get you all started, I gibbered something about aesthetic worldviews and moral relativism. But, as I said, I'm incoherent this morning. So do better than I did....it should be easy!

Santayana, Friendship, and Writing

2007-05-03T09:24:00.000-05:00

George Santayana, in a letter to Ira Cardiff dated 17 June 1950, writes

Personally, I don’t feel at all neglected as an author, never having expected popularity nor permanent fame. . . . I never wished to be a professional or public man. Nor do I want disciples: I want only a few sympathetic friends, and I have them.

This suggests Santayana wrote for friends. But who were his friends? Why did he publish books if he wrote only for friends? For Santayana, friendship depends on ideal sympathy which entails loving the same ideas (Scepticism and Animal Faith 1923, 251), but this common love of ideas must be refracted through the human medium: "unless intellectual sympathy and moral appreciation are powerful enough to react on natural instinct and to produce in the end the personal affection which at first was wanting, friendship does not arise" (Reason in Society 1905, 153).

Could readers today who find Santayana's work not only appealing but enlightening and vital be friends of Santayana in a way he would recognize? To what extent must the human medium refract the ideal relations? In earlier writings Santayana emphasizes common life as important to friendship (Reason in Society 1905, 156).

The questions seem relevant to understanding why Santayana wrote, that is, how writing was part of his spiritual life and philosophical outlook.